Chapter 7: Understanding

Remington sat back against the couch heavily, still absently caressing Laura's shoulders, as he digested her admission. Disappoint me? Of everything she might have said, these were likely the last words he expected the normally confident Laura Holt to utter… let alone feel. Why in the bloody hell….? A memory crept in, interrupting the thought.

"There was a lot of me too."

"Yes. I saw that. Where do you suppose that Laura's been all this time?"

"Hiding. She already cost me one relationship, couldn't take a chance on her doing it again."

Her striptease act in the winery had come from out of the blue, and watching it, watching her – free of all her normal constraints, impishly teasing a half-dozen men – had been a sight to behold. It had been a truly wonderous surprise to see a side of her that he'd long suspected existed, but until then he'd seen no proof of. In the aftermath, however, she'd been embarrassed, had almost been… waiting for his condemnation, something again at odds with the woman he'd come to know who cared naught of garnering the approval of others, knowing precisely who and what she was… and owning it. Her shyness, her need to apologize, to explain, after that dance, had spoken volumes of the cost she'd paid for her relationship with the uptight banker, Wilson Jeffries.

Having inadvertently walked up upon a conversation between Laura and Jeffries, he'd witnessed with his own ears the man's condemnation of her little display – a display, it should be noted, put on to save his censorious hide.

"Laura, I know I asked for your help, I just didn't expect anything like that."

"I never expected you to leave me."

"It just wasn't working out, Laura."

"For whom?"

"Either of us. I like things being organized, regular, predictable. You love spontaneity, being reckless, living dangerously."

"I also loved you,"

The last words had been said with a devastation he'd, until then, never heard in Laura's voice. He, a man who'd known her for less than a year, who'd been in pursuit of her since first they'd met yet had never come close to being intimate with her, had heard the injury, the confusion, residing in her words. Yet the man who'd once been her lover, had lived with her, had supposedly loved her, had been oblivious to it.

Ah, if you don't mind my asking Wilson, umm, when you and Miss Holt were ... ah... umm..."

"Co-habitating?"

"Yes, ah .. was her driving always so uh, exuberant?"

"If anything, it's gotten a little better. But I'm sure you know how she is. Impulsive. Uninhibited. Absurdly passionate. It must get trying for you at times, keeping her in check?"

Not a glimmer of discomfort had the man exhibited, in the wake of his conversation Laura… not a bit of apology resounded in those words. If anything, he looked upon those days fondly, having absolutely no clue of the damages he'd imposed upon her. But perhaps the words that had stayed with Remington were the last: 'keeping her in check." Keep her in check? He had no desire to keep her in check, if anything he wished to remove her shackles, to set her free… to know every morsel of her flights of frivolity, to revel in her passion, to be the target of her disinhibition… to know all of Laura Holt, not just what she felt safe sharing with the world.

Having revealed her fears, he saw their conversation in Acapulco in a whole new light.

"It scared the hell out of me. Don't laugh. I saw what happened to my mother. She was completely, totally consumed by my father. Nothing moved in our house unless it revolved totally around him. When he left her, her life just stopped. No joy, no sorrow, nothing. Not even anger. It was as if he'd taken every bit of feeling she had with him."

"Laura, you're not your mother."

"No. But a part of me could be very easily. That's the part I have to guard against."

He hadn't realized, hadn't put together the clues, as adeptly as she would have done. He'd assumed she'd been speaking in a manner of 'could be's'. Now, as he gave himself a mental kick in the shin, he realized she'd been speaking in terms of what could happen again. Wilson had mattered, and had left some part of her broken enough she felt compelled to hide a side of herself from the world. He, Remington, mattered, and therefore had the power to break her as well… even worse, to find her wanting.

It was a powerful revelation, one that made his blood pound, his heart hammer… and made him realize, in an instant, just how badly he wanted to matter to her that much, to know that he was worthy of whatever it had required of her to take the chance he'd keep not find her wanting, not wish to change her… would keep her heart safe.

And then had come last night, and with it the belief he'd found her wanting as she'd always seemed to fear…