“Well,” she said softly, “How you feel about Christmas for instance.”
“I don’t need therapy.”
“Good. Not a therapist.”
He glared at her. “Then drop it.”
“What is it about Christmas that you hate, Tanner?”
His jaw worked as if he were biting back a flood of words trying to escape. Lamplight shone on his tanned skin and made him seem golden. And though she could stretch out one hand to touch him, Ivy knew he was farther from her than he’d ever been.
A tense moment or two passed before finally, he shrugged and said, “I never really did Christmas as a kid.” He shifted position and sat up, resting against pillows he bunched against the headboard, sheet pooled across his abdomen.
“That’s not the only reason,” she said.
He gave her a quick look. “Why do you care, Ivy?”
“Call it curiosity,” she told him, though it was more. So much more. She wanted to understand him. Wanted to know him.
Shaking his head, he said, “Okay, doesn’t matter anyway. My holidays were usually spent in an empty hotel room wondering when my mom was going to come back. She was usually off lining up her next lover and didn’t have time to do the tree and present thing.” He shrugged as if what he was saying meant nothing, though she could see it did. “My nanny usually got me something so it wasn’t a complete wash. And whatever my dad sent me always arrived around the twenty-fifth, so it didn’t matter really.”
A twinge of pity zipped through her. Not for the man he was now, but for the boy he’d once been. On the outside, looking in and not knowing why. The boy had been alone and miserable. The man was still alone, yet had convinced himself that it was the way he wanted it.
“I can see in your eyes that you’re getting all weepy on my account,” he said and shook his head with a smile. “You don’t have to. I did fine. I do fine.”
She took a breath and blew it out. “Of course you do. But I don’t mind telling you I’d like to step back in time and shake your mother until her teeth rattled.”
He laughed a little and she was grateful to see some of the tension leave his features.
“You know,” Ivy told him quietly, “you don’t have to avoid Christmas forever. Just because you had crappy holidays as a kid doesn’t mean you have to continue the tradition. You can make your own choices instead of living with old hurts.”
“Here comes the therapy,” he muttered, sliding a look at her. “Everybody’s got answers. Everybody knows what somebody else should do. What makes you think I’m in pain over something that happened decades ago? What makes you so sure that I’m suffering? I do what I want when I want. I don’t need your concern because it’s pointless. There is no angry little boy inside me waiting to be soothed, so spare me.”
“Wow.” She sat up, drawing the sheet with her and clutching it to her chest. All of her earlier warm, fuzzy thoughts were quickly dissipating. Okay yes, she loved him. That didn’t mean she was going to sit there and be a target for him. “For a guy who’s put it all behind him, you sound a little sensitive on the subject.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” he demanded. “Where do you get off giving me advice, anyway? What do you know about pain, Ivy? Easy enough to sit on the sidelines and tell everybody else how they should get over it and move on. Well you don’t know jack about what my life is like.”
“No, I don’t,” she said, fisting her hand in the fabric of the sheet and squeezing. She wasn’t sure how they’d gone from spectacular sex and cozy afterglow to this raging argument, but she wasn’t about to let him talk to her like that. “But I know enough to stop licking old wounds. I know that shutting myself away in a house where I never have to speak to anyone isn’t the answer.”
“Is that right?” His dark eyes went wide as he feigned astonishment. “And you’ve come by this magical knowledge how? Watching TV? What great pains do you have to deal with? Hell, you live in a town that might as well be Christmas central!”
A sharp jab of hurt bit into her and Ivy lifted her chin to glare at him. She knew what this was, damn it—why they were having this ridiculous fight. They were both feeling emotionally shaken by what they’d shared and they were both going into defense mode. Oh, wasn’t that wonderful, she thought. And just when had she gotten so insightful, anyway?
“Fine,” she said, scooting off the bed because she needed to be standing on her own two feet, not sharing the mattress with a man she wanted to kick, “you don’t want advice, your choice. But don’t bother to assume that you’re the only person on the planet who’s had trouble.”
“Ivy—”
“No,” she stopped him, thoroughly disgusted with him now. “You said you had a mother and father. Are they still alive?”
“Yeah…”
“My dad died when I was a little girl,” she told him. “I miss him still.”
A flicker of what might have been regret crossed his face briefly. “Look, maybe I was out of line…”
She tipped her head to one side and stared at him. “Have you ever loved anyone, Tanner? I mean love?”
His gaze darkened. “No.”
“Well, I have.”
He blinked but that was the only sign of surprise he showed her. She didn’t care. All she wanted to do now was get out of this house and away from him. But she wasn’t going anywhere until she’d clued him in on a little something.
“Four years ago, my fiancé David was in a car accident and died.”
“Damn it, Ivy…” He came up off the bed and made to go to her, but she scrambled back and away, holding up one hand to keep him at bay.
“Three weeks before our wedding,” she said, “I went to David’s funeral.” Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them back. Somehow they’d both torn open old wounds and were now taking turns dribbling salt on them. All to avoid talking about the emotional connection they’d made. She didn’t know who she was more furious with. Tanner? Or herself?
The only way out now was to keep on going. “I could have curled up in a ball and reveled in the pain,” she whispered. “I could have shut myself up in the house and never talked to anyone again. But you know what, Tanner? That’s not life. That’s just taking up space. So you keep going forward. You don’t stay trapped in the past, you move on. You keep breathing because that’s what life is.”