He just wished…
He sank to the edge of the bed as a realization washed over him. He wished she’d told him herself. He wished it had been a big deal to her. Because it sure as hell had been a big deal to him.
Even without knowing she was a virgin, making love to Ana had been a big deal to him. Hell, this was the first time he felt like he had been making love to a woman since Cara had died.
That summed it up perfectly.
He’d had sex with women since Cara. But he hadn’t made love. He hadn’t really cared about any of those other women. He hadn’t felt so much as a scrap of real emotion until Ana.
And that was the way he’d wanted it. Cara’s death had been brutal on him. Worse, still, was the way she’d pulled away from him. From the moment she’d been diagnosed, she’d started pushing him away. Suddenly, the woman with whom he’d once shared everything couldn’t even talk to him about the disease that was tearing her apart. Even in the beginning, when her prognosis was good, she’d distanced herself. Thrown herself into her charitable works. She’d given so much of herself to others, there was nothing left for him.
Talk about a complaint you can’t even voice aloud. What kind of jerk complains because his dying wife is spending too much time helping the needy children of the world? At first, he’d thought it was because she feared not accomplishing all the things she wanted to in life. For a long time he wondered if she just couldn’t stand to be close to anyone. By the end of her life, he realized the truth. She’d fallen in love with a rock star and ended up married to a mere human. She just didn’t want to spend her dying days with someone who’d been such a disappointment.
Not that she’d ever said so much aloud, but he’d felt her emotional distance like a third person in the room with them every time he’d been with her. On her deathbed, every conversation they’d had had been about what she hadn’t yet accomplished in her charitable works.
It was why he’d started the Cara Miller Foundation. He couldn’t be what she’d needed when she was alive, but he could damn well fulfill her dying wish.
Of course, this was a hell of time to remember all of this. But this was a hell of a situation to be in.
Cara—the love of his life—had pushed him away. And now he was involved with yet another stubborn woman determined to keep her emotional distance. So here he was. Right where he’d sworn he’d never be again.
The funny thing was he’d spent so much time trying to protect Ana from himself, he never wondered who was going to protect him from her.
He was well on his way to falling in love with her, and she…well, who the hell knew what she felt for him.
What exactly was he supposed to say here? I wanted it to be a big deal. I wanted you to care more about me. Why do you think I waited to sleep with you…? I waited because I wanted it to matter. I wanted you to care.
Yeah. That would sound about as manly as a thirteen-year-old girl. Hell, actual thirteen-year-old girls sounded tougher than that. At least the ones he knew did.
If he said anything even approaching that, it would send Ana running for the door. If she hadn’t already been walking in that direction anyway.
Eleven
Before Ward could even consider how to handle this, the bathroom door opened.
She’d pulled her hair back off her face with a clip and scrubbed off the last traces of her makeup. She’d dressed once again in jeans and a sweater, but this time they weren’t clothes she’d bought God only knew where. They were her own clothes, obviously favorites. The jeans flattered Ana’s curves, the sweater was conservative, hiding as much as it revealed, only hinting at the bounty beneath.
Looking at her now, it seemed so obvious she’d been a virgin. As inherently sensual as she was, she kept that part of herself tightly under wraps. Hidden under layers of prickly defenses and steely determination.
Whatever emotions she’d been wrestling with when she’d stormed off into the bathroom were now tightly under control. She looked very much as she had the first day they’d met. Wary. Reserved.
She gave him a quick once-over, judging his emotional state more quickly than he’d judged hers.
Her expression shifted to exasperated, as if she’d just read every thought that had passed through his mind while she was dressing and then dismissed them as being tiresome.
“Stop torturing yourself,” she muttered, walking past him and out of the bedroom.
“Torturing myself?” he asked, following her.
She marched straight to the kitchen. “Yes. Obviously you’ve been playing it over and over again in your mind, trying to figure out what you should have done differently. Or maybe telling yourself how you should have guessed. Or—”
“Enough.” He reached out for her arm, spinning her around to face him as he cut her off. So far, she was right on target and as whiny as he sounded in his own mind, he sure didn’t need to hear her voice his doubts aloud. “If you think you know me so well, then you should understand exactly why I’m…what was the word you used? Oh, right, torturing myself.”
“Honestly, though, I don’t.” For a moment, genuine confusion flickered across her face, then she shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Trust me, that’s the kind of thing a guy notices. How could you imagine otherwise?”
Again she gave a little shrug, this one seeming almost self-effacing. “With all the women you’ve been with, and all the experience you have, I just thought…” She let her words trail off, leaving him to draw his own conclusions.
“That I was such a self-indulging wastrel that I wouldn’t notice your virginity?”
“No! I just—”
“Thought I was too self-absorbed? Too selfish? Too what?” His anger grew with each question until he was looming over her, glaring down at her upturned face.
She met his gaze defiantly. “Why are you so sure this is all about you? It was my virginity. Why can’t you just accept that if it’s not a big deal for me that it shouldn’t be a big deal for you, either?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Why?” Her chin bumped up and her gaze narrowed in determination. This time it was her stepping closer to him. “What would you have done differently if you’d known? What would you have changed?”
“I…” But before he had a chance to think of an answer, she continued, getting right in his face.
“Would you have been more sensitive?” she continued. All signs of the nervous virgin had vanished. Or maybe that had merely been a figment of his imagination, anyway. “Would you have been more attentive to my needs? Would you have made sure I cl**axed three or four times, instead of merely twice?”
“That’s enough,” he all but growled out, his own temper rising to match hers. Her flippant tone was driving him crazy.
She arched a haughty brow. “Or what?”
“Let’s not go there.” He stepped away from her before he did something he regretted, like pull her back into his arms and make love to her all over again. Which would so not be helpful right now, even though the tension between them was still simmering.
“Look,” she began again, her tone marginally softer. “I never meant to deceive you.”
“Then what was it you did want?”
“I just didn’t want it to be a big deal.” She spoke slowly, enunciating each word.
“But it is. You were a virgin. At… How old are you? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-seven,” she muttered, suddenly unable to meet his gaze. As if her age were something to apologize for.
“Nobody’s a virgin at twenty-seven by accident. Certainly no one who’s as beautiful and vivacious as you.”
Again, that defiance flashed in her eyes. As if his words were insults rather than compliments.
“How I look doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s not as if I didn’t have opportunity.”
“That’s precisely my point.”
“It’s just the way I was raised. That’s all.” She spun away from him, stalking to the other side of the room to stare out the window. “From the time I was twelve, my mother drilled it into my head. I couldn’t mess around with boys. I couldn’t sleep with them. I couldn’t even date them. If I fell in love with some boy, and fooled around or had sex, I’d just end up pregnant and married by the time I was twenty. Just like almost every other poor Latina girl in Southern California.”
Though her back was to him as she stared out the window into the darkness of the neighborhood, he could see the tension in the lines of her back. He could hear it in her voice, like she was quoting a lecture she’d heard over and over again, complete with hand gestures slicing through the air.
“If I got pregnant by twenty, it was all over. I’d be dooming myself to a life of poverty. The only way out was to stay out of trouble. Finish my education. Start my career. By the time I accomplished my goals and got a job out in L.A., I realized I was the oldest virgin in the city. And then there I was. Twenty-three, working in Hollywood, this beautiful and vivacious woman—” she practically sneered the words “—and every guy I dated expected me to be sexually experienced. Men were actually insulted if I didn’t fall into bed with them on the first date.”
There was enough bitterness in her tone for him to know there was more to that story.
“What is it you’re not telling me?” He almost didn’t want to know.
She shot him a surprised look. “It was nothing.”
“Is it nothing the same way your virginity was nothing?” Her jaw tightened and her cheeks flushed. “Yeah,” he continued. “That’s what I thought. Why don’t you tell me anyway and I’ll be the judge of whether it was really nothing.”
“Just the occasional actor who made things awkward when I didn’t jump into bed with them.”