Joey turned away from the chill of his words. “Quite satisfactory. I don’t think you’ll find that I’m any burden to you.”
There was a moment of silence, she felt his eyes on her, burning into her back. “It’s late, Joey. You’d better get some sleep.”
Walking over to the window, Luke drew back the curtains and stared out into the night, Joey glanced uneasily at the bed. It was certainly big enough for two people—if they didn’t mind close proximity. Luke showed no signs of leaving—or hinting that he expected to share it with her. After the night at the cabin and today’s unsettling confrontations, Joey’s feelings were so muddled that she could do nothing but stand frozen there, torn between an unremitting awareness of Luke and her own desperate uncertainty.
“Go to bed, Joelle.” Luke’s voice was soft, almost gentle. He leaned against the window frame, his breath condensing on the glass.
“What about you?” Hugging herself, Joey was appalled at the way her words emerged, small and vulnerable. The silence grew so complete that she could hear the faint whisper of his sigh.
“Go to sleep.” He did not turn from the window, and at last Joey crept over to the bed, gathered up her night things from the bedstand, and closed the door softly behind her as she made a final trip to the washroom down the hall. The time away from Luke while she brushed her teeth, combed the tangles out of her hair, and donned her warm pajamas gave her a chance to put things back in perspective, and she was ready to face him again when she came back to her room.
Except for the single bedside lamp and the faint glow of moonlight sifting through the curtains, the room was dark. Joey paused to scan the room, searching for Luke’s form in the dimness. She found him at last, stretched out on the floor under the window, head pillowed in his arms. His side rose and fell with the even breathing of sleep, and Joey padded quietly to the bed to pull back the covers.
She paused again with her hand at the lamp, watching Luke where he lay on the hard, cold floor. The overwhelming flood of sympathy and yearning that came to her then was something she wanted to reject utterly, something that could bring nothing but pain and more questions than she could answer. She struggled for a moment, but the struggle was brief. Tugging at the quilted bedcover, she bunched it up in her arms and let her bare feet carry her across the room. She stood over Luke, closing her eyes against the longing, and crouched down beside him to lay the bedcover over his shoulders, pulling it down so that its inadequate length covered everything but his feet.
He turned then, half-rolling onto his back with a sigh. Joey held herself still until the moment passed and he subsided, she knelt there and stared at his face where the faint haze of moonlight defined it, at the harsh planes softened in the gentlest of illumination. The grim line of his mouth had relaxed, stirring memories of the few times he had truly smiled at her with a warmth he hid from the world, a mouth capable of tenderness and possessive fury against her own. Lines of care between the dark slash of his brows had eased, and Luke’s face in the utter repose of sleep was that of a man she didn’t know and had barely glimpsed. A man she could want, even now.
It should have helped to remind herself that he had pursued her for his own ends, twice rejected her, treated her with careless negligence, and even come close to violence. It should have been possible to regard him with contempt, but she could not. The only resolution she could make was that he would never know her weakness.
She risked tucking the edges of the bedcover under the curve of his body and retreated before the feel of him against her hands could demolish the remaining fragments of her composure.
The bed seemed very cold and empty when she crawled into it at last. Sleep was long in coming, when it took her at last, the dreams had returned.