In Bed with Beauty by Katherine Garbera

can’t be near you and not want you.”
    She quirked her head to the side. “Is that true?”
    “I don’t lie,” he said, slipping his finger a bit farther down her chest. She trembled and shifted on the seat. Her arms falling to her sides.
    “I’m coming to believe that,” she said. One of her hands falling to his thigh and kneading it. “What are we doing in the car?”
    “I was trying to make sure you understood something,” Harris said.
    “What?” she asked. Her voice was husky. Her skin flushed and her pupils dilated. She was aroused and watching the change come over her body tightened him painfully. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against the globes of her breasts. Hmm, she smelled so sweet. He ached to possess her again.
    Why had he hesitated? Then he remembered. Hurting Sarah wasn’t something he could live with. Lifting his head, he stared into her dark eyes.
    “You make me want to be better than I am, yet I don’t think I can be.”
    “Stop worrying about me. If my parents’ death taught me one thing it was not to look ahead. That the only time we have is now.”
    “All you want is now?” he asked.
    She took his face in both of her hands and kissed him thoroughly. Everything he’d come to expect from Sarah was in that kiss. Her sweet caring, her spicy personality and a deep need that he couldn’t explain. “I’m hoping I can convince you that we deserve more than that.”
    “How are you going to do that?” he asked.
    “By showing you what you’re missing,” she said with a sweet smile that cut him to the bone.
    “Don’t let me hurt you, Sarah. I don’t think I could live with myself if I knew I took the smile from your eyes.”
    “I control my happiness, not you,” she said.
    “Hold that thought, honey.”
    “I will.”
    Harris pocketed her keys and exited the car. Sarah had already climbed out by the time he got there. He took her elbow and led her to the house. “Tonight I’m going to make you think that happiness is a place that belongs to only the two of us.”

    One week later, Sarah was alone in her office. The crowd tonight was slow and steady, leaving her too much time to think. Sade sang softly in the background. Her haunting voice singing of cherishing the day and Sarah wished that she could do that. But instead she looked to the future and worried. Paul had been easy to love and easy to break her heart over because she’d been young and unaware of the nuances of love.
    Harris was different. There was something about him that made her weary and afraid for the first time that she might fall in love with him. It didn’t help that Thanksgiving was right around the corner. The family holiday always made her heart feel heavier with the loss of her parents and the loneliness of her life.
    Harris was everything she ever wanted in a man. He was a skilled lover who could bring her to the heights of passion again and again each night. She hardly recognized the woman she’d become in bed with him. But she knew that it was a part of herself she’d always hidden because she’d been afraid to risk too much of herself. But with Harris knowing him as she did, she realized it was going to take everything she had to give to keep him in her life. And she realized she wanted—no needed to keep him in her life.
    He was also intelligent in ways she hadn’t expected him to be. He knew everything. Literally there wasn’t a subject that she brought up that he couldn’t discuss or argue. She loved listening to him talk about his travels and his studies. Harris was an observer she realized and she wanted to change that.
    She could pretend all she wanted that he might stay with her in her little house in Orlando but she knew he’d be leaving two days after Thanksgiving. Not to return to his home in California but to Tokyo. And a small-time restaurateur was no match for the global mover and shaker that Harris was.
    She reached for the Magic 8 ball on her desk and flipped it over in