He stroked her hair off her forehead, rested his hand there. “I won’t make the same mistakes with you. I won’t leave you, Krissa. Any longer than I have to. I know I was partially responsible for what happened with Lauren.”
“No.” She looked at him. “No, don’t do what I do. Don’t blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault.”
“I’m not taking all the blame. Believe me, I know Lauren was responsible for her own decisions. But…I have to accept some responsibility for things I did wrong. I know I neglected her. My career was just taking off. I was so excited, it was all I could think about.” He shook his head. “I was an idiot. But…I didn’t feel the way I do now. Sad to say. The truth is…I couldn’t leave you like I did Lauren.” He wouldn’t be taking off for months at a time to travel, like he did with Lauren. If he had to go for more than a couple of weeks, Krissa—and the baby—would come with him. He wouldn’t put his career over his family.
“You are so different from Derek,” she whispered.
“I watched you keep your anger all bottled up inside you and I knew you couldn’t keep doing that either. Some day it was going to come exploding out of you.”
“Oh, yeah. It came out.” She giggled. “You should have seen my parents’ faces when I told them about us.”
“Oh, Jesus. What did you say?”
“My mom figured we’d been screwing around on Derek after that morning she showed up.” She related her conversation with her parents, designed to shock them. And she told him about Cameron.
“Wow,” he said. “When you let it out, you let it out.”
“I never would have if it weren’t for you. You made me fight.”
“Ah, bunny.” He gathered her close.
“I’m not responsible for everyone’s problems.”
“Uh…no.”
“I’ve always felt that way,” she confessed into his chest. He stroked her hair. “With my mom, and with Derek. He did blame me for our problems. Even when we realized it wasn’t me that couldn’t get pregnant, he still made me feel like it was all my fault. It was my fault that he had to go screw other women.”
“Jesus. I’ll kill the fucking bastard.”
She moved her head against him. “No. Don’t kill him. He’ll figure it out. Maybe he already has.”
Nate knew he and Krissa had betrayed Derek. Derek had known about them, approved of it, encouraged them to have sex—but he hadn’t planned on them falling in love.
“I want us to be together, Krissa,” he said. “I want to be a father to this baby.”
She rolled toward him, pushed him onto his back and moved over him. “I want that too.” Eyes glistening, she bent and kissed him. “I love you. And I’m so sorry for how this started.”
“Don’t be sorry. Things happen for a reason. It was whacked, but in the end—maybe we all get what we deserve. I don’t know why I deserve you, but I’m just going to count myself lucky. I’m just sorry I lost my best friend.”
“Maybe you can forgive him some day.”
And maybe one day Derek would forgive him, too. A sad and hopeful anticipation filled him.
“I think I understand why he did what he did,” Krissa continued. “He just wasn’t a strong enough man to accept responsibility for his mistakes. And then he tried to make them right by using us to make him feel better. I was so determined to get what I wanted, I let him do it.”
“We all have our weaknesses.” And clearly, Krissa was his. He, too, had been drawn into Derek’s manipulations and he had to admit he hadn’t resisted all that hard. He’d known the kinds of problems they could face doing what they’d done, but he’d done it anyway because he’d been unable to resist Krissa’s sweet temptation. Logic and the knowledge of consequences, right versus wrong, had nothing to do with decisions made with the heart.
“Does he know…you’re pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t told him. I haven’t seen him other than just after I left. I wasn’t showing then. He may have heard from other people, though.” She sighed. “When he blamed me for him screwing around, that was it. I couldn’t take any more.”
“I wish you’d called me. I hate thinking about you being alone, finding out you were pregnant when you were alone.”
“I think it was good,” she whispered, stroking a hand through his hair, then over his cheek. “I had to be alone. I was so confused. I thought I loved Derek, and I thought I loved you. Then I felt like I hated him. I didn’t know how I felt. I was a mess.”
He covered her hand with his, pressed a kiss to her palm.
“I needed to figure myself out before I could figure us out,” she continued. Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. And he did.
“I know.” He paused. “Me, too. Christ, Krissa, I didn’t know how lost I was. Until I found you.”
They’d done things that many would consider unforgivable. Nate wasn’t sure why he and Krissa were lucky enough to have found a second chance; a chance at happiness together. But he wasn’t going to risk losing it again. Facing the loss of his eyesight and his photography had been painful, but losing Krissa had been the worst agony of all.
She leaned in and kissed him. “We found ourselves. And we found each other.”
About the Author
To learn more about Kelly Jamieson please visitwww.kellyjamieson.com. Send an e-mail to info@kellyjamieson.com or join her Yahoo! Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KellyJamiesonnewsletter/ to get the latest news and contests.
Look for these titles by Kelly Jamieson
Now Available:
Love Me
Friends With Benefits
Love Me More
2 Hot 2 Handle
They agreed: All the fun, no messy emotions. Until their charkas aligned..
Friends With Benefits
© 2009 Kelly Jamieson
Yoga is Kerri Harris’s life, but that doesn’t mean she’s a New Age flake. She’s a successful businesswoman, and it’s about time everyone took her as seriously as her mother-of-two, “real-career” sister. That means adding a new item to her spreadsheet—marriage plan. There’s only one person she trusts to help her check off this task: her best friend Mitch.
Divorce attorney Mitch MacAuley gets the cold shivers at the mere mention of matrimony. After the disasters he’s witnessed from childhood, marriage equals miserable. The last thing he wants is to help Kerri down that road, but he’s never been able to say no to her. He expects to feel pity for her as she goes on one disastrous date after another. The complete surprise? Thinking about Kerri with those other guys makes him crazy.
Her frustration collides with his confusion, leading to a big fight, a hot kiss and a scorching sexual tension that hits them both broadside. Prompting Kerri to propose a new plan…to add the bedroom to their list of BFF benefits.
They quickly find out there’s nothing casual about the heat they generate. In fact, the burn could ruin a perfectly beautiful friendship.
Warning: This story contains a late-night booty call, hot hotel sex and naked yoga!
Enjoy the following excerpt for Friends With Benefits:
“I can’t believe you’ve set me up with all these guys and every single one of them has been all wrong for me. Not just wrong for me…like, not even close.”
“Uh…Kerri. I didn’t set you up with Eric. You met him at the golf tournament.”
“Well. You invited me to the golf tournament.”
Mitch sighed.
“It’s not just a coincidence, is it? You are doing this on purpose because you don’t want me to get married.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he corrected her.
“So you admit it!”
“No! No, I don’t. You’re twisting things.”
She snorted. “How do you tell when a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving.”