Unexpected Temptations

Chapter: 5

Pairing: Reba/Brock

Rating: PG

After Brock's confession Reba had left the restaurant and walked the four blocks back home. She had never been more confused in her entire life. A nice quiet evening alone had turned into...a date...was that the word...with her ex-husband. She honestly didn't know what had happened. They were having a good time, talking and laughing and all of the sudden he's telling her that his marriage is over.

Reba's head was spinning but there was one thing she was sure of and that was that she was not about to be Brock's rebound. Jumping from her to Barbra Jean and then back to her again was insane! And she doesn't even know why she's thinking about being a rebound. She and Brock were over and had been for quite sometime. They weren't even an option but she couldn't seem to get him out of her head and she didn't understand why.

She closed the door behind her and made her way over to the sofa, turning on the lamp before she sat down. She threw her purse on to the coffee table and slipped her shoes off. And the more she sat there the guiltier she felt. She had pulled the dress from the back of her closet, the one with the tags still on it, and wore it to dinner with Brock. She had put on earrings and a necklace. And incredibly too much thought into something supposedly innocent.

Did she want him? Was that was this was about? She wanted her ex-husband? That couldn't be right because it was so wrong. Wrong on many, many different levels. She didn't want to be the other woman. She couldn't be the other woman. And she had no idea why her mind was jumping to all these scenarios. It was dinner and dessert, a dessert that she left in the middle of.

There was a soft knock at the front door. And she didn't have to get up to answer it, she knew who it was. And he knew that she would be waiting for him. Brock gently pushed the front door open to find her sitting on the sofa in dim lamp night. A vision in black, not knowing how perfectly the light illuminated her face and the red of her hair.

"I'm sorry." he said, closing the door. "We were having a nice time and I had no right to dump all of that on you like that. It was selfish of me and I'm really sorry, Reba."

"Are you?" she asked, watching him as he walked toward her. "What do you want from me, Brock? Why all of this? And why now?"

He sat down on the sofa beside her. "I don't know." he admitted, honestly. "I thought that this was an innocent gesture. I thought it would be nice for the two of us to just go out and have dinner together. I had no idea that it would open up so many..."

"Please, Brock, don't say it." she told him. "You and I are in a different place now. You're married to Barbra Jean and that's the relationship you need to worry about rebuilding, not ours. We're in a really good place, if you take out tonight, and that's the way I want it to stay."

"Barbra Jean and I have tried, we really have." he replied. "It's not working out."

"And I don't want you to come running back to me because it's the safe thing to do." she said. "I don't want to be the second choice or the safe choice. I want to come first, I want someone to be passionately in love with me. I don't want to be your rebound."

"Then give me a chance." he said. "Let me prove it to you. Let me prove to how much I still love and want you. Please, Reba."

Her eyes searched his. She wanted to believe what he was saying she really did. But then on the other hand she couldn't. She didn't want to be that person, the other woman and she knew that's exactly what she would end up being.

"I think you should leave, Brock."

"No." he said, looking into her eyes. "I'm not going to walk out on you. Not again."

tbc...