In Bed with Beauty by Katherine Garbera

after the first time Harris had refused to go to Sarah’s house.
    “Ray, you take your job too seriously. I’m paying you to chauffeur me to and from meetings. Not to drive me through life.”
    “You need someone to,” Ray said.
    “Not you.”
    “Hell. Definitely not me. Sarah. She can bring you things no one else can.”
    “What are you talking about, Ray?” Harris asked. He wasn’t sure but his driver seemed almost desperate to get him to see Sarah again.
    “ Merda. I’m trying to help you and Sarah….”
    “Don’t. I’m not the right guy for her. Surely you can see that.”
    “Yeah, I know what you are saying, man. But let me tell you letting her go will haunt you.”
    “I’m already haunted, Ray.”
    “It gets worse.”
    “Maybe that’s a man’s burden.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” Ray said.
    He wondered if Ray wasn’t having his own woman problems. Ray had the hounded look that only a woman can produce in a man.
    “Here she comes.”
    Ray got out of the car and opened the door for Sarah. She started to slide in, noticed Harris and paused. Damn, she looked better than he’d remembered. He wanted to grab her hand and pull her into the car with him.
    To take her in his arms and kiss her until they both forgot about the other problems between them. Problems which stemmed solely from him. Problems that had nothing to do with heat or desire.
    “I didn’t realize you’d be here,” she said.
    “It is my car.”
    “I know. It’s just that I had the impression you were avoiding me.”
    “What are we, in junior high?”
    She flushed. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
    He felt ashamed of himself. “Come on in. I won’t bite.”
    “Biting would be the least of your offenses,” she said.
    “Suit yourself.”
    “I will,” she said.
    She clamored into the car over his legs and sprawled on the seat across from him. She smelled uniquely of Sarah and also of lasagna. He realized he was hungry not for food but for Sarah. His own actions had put a wall between them that only he could tear down.
    She was silent while the car rolled through the busy October night. Finally she sighed and looked over at him. “I thought you were going to give us a try.”
    “I…can’t.”
    She scooted next to him on the seat. The fragrance of her perfume wrapped around him and he clenched his hands to keep from reaching out and touching her. The way he wanted to. The way he needed to. The way he longed to.
    Sweat broke out on the back of his neck. He didn’t know if he could do it. Was it already too late to keep her out of his system? Hell, yes his body said. Give up the fight and grab her before she disappeared like every other woman in his life ever had.
    She put her hand on his thigh and looked up at him with those dark eyes that promised redemption. Like a hungry man he wanted to reach out and take a chance. But like an alcoholic who’d fallen off the wagon more than once, his cynical side warned she was too good to be true.
    “I’m not going to keep throwing myself at you. If you don’t want to see me, then stop coming by my restaurant.”
    “It’s not that I don’t want to see you, Sarah. It’s that you are worlds too soft for a man like me. If you were any other type of woman I’d say to hell with it.”
    “What type of woman am I?”
    “The kind that still believes life is more than a rat race.”
    “Then let me show you my reality.”
    “I don’t want to have to spend my life trying to find something that doesn’t exist.”
    “Because of your dad?”
    Harris shrugged. Sarah slid her arm around his back and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m living proof that it exists. Give it a chance.”
    “How?”
    “Come to the Halloween party we’re throwing at Taste of Home. Costumes are required.”
    “I’ve never put on a costume.”
    “It’ll be fun.”
    Fun? It would be torture. He’d be surrounded by her warmth, her scent, the essence of this woman and it was impossible to say no to her.