Yours to Savor (9 page)

“
All
of it was wrong,” Sandra said. “I mean, there was nothing
bad
about him. Henry was the type of guy every mother wants her daughter to marry. He graduated from a good school. He worked for a few years in a well-paying job. He went to get his masters to advance his career—his company promised him a promotion once he got the degree. When my parents first heard about him, they were over the moon.”

“But something tells me you weren’t,” Brandon observed.

“I was, at first. But…” Sandra took another deep breath, “…I was living a lie. I was doing what was
expected
of me rather than what I wanted. Actually, maybe it
was
what I wanted, at first,” Sandra corrected. “But it turned out all wrong in the end.”

“You weren’t true to yourself.” He locked eyes with her and held her gaze. Sandra found the moment sobering. She didn’t know if she could handle his intense eyes now. She looked away, back toward the island. “What did he do?”

“He worked as a quant in one of those big trading firms. He studied theoretical physics in school, did his masters in computational finance. He was freakishly smart. Large investment companies love guys like him. Henry always put his nose to the grindstone and worked hard. He didn’t complain, didn’t make trouble—”

“A wallflower,” Brandon observed.

“Yes,” Sandra said. “Yes,
exactly
.”

“I’ve met a hundred men like him.” Brandon shook his head. “You’re not the type to be satisfied with someone like that.”

“How can you be so sure? You don’t know me.”

“I know enough.” His eyes twinkled. “So, he proposed to you?”

Sandra nodded. “Getting engaged was the safe choice for me. He promised to look out for me when we got married, but first we had to move to Dallas for his job. The move was supposed to be temporary—eighteen months, no more—so I agreed. I put grad school on hold for him.”

“But you never got married?”

“No. I told him I wanted to do the ceremony at home, surrounded by family and friends. He couldn’t take time off for that, not when he’d just returned to the firm. It wouldn’t have looked good to his superiors. So he agreed to delay the wedding until we moved back from Dallas.”

“A guy who put his career ahead of you never deserved your affections in the first place. But I think you know that. The way you speak of him…” he trailed off, frowning.

“What?”

He looked at her, that piercing, unblinking gaze searing right into her soul. “You didn’t love him.”

Sandra’s eyes widened, and she felt a fluster of heat enter her cheeks. Her pulse quickened. How well Brandon could read her was… unbelievable. “No,” she agreed finally. “No, I never did. I was following the safe path. I always felt obligated to do that.”

“By whom?”

Sandra sighed. “By society?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. My parents thought it was good for me, too. I think they were mostly looking out for their youngest daughter.”

“So because of them,” Brandon nodded. “I get it.”

“Even my friends pressured me toward the engagement,” she admitted. “I remember… I remember my girlfriends being so jealous. I was the first of us to be proposed to. It was our last week in school. They threw me a party, and I remember looking at them, showing them the ring, wearing a smile on the outside… but on the inside, I
envied
all of them. They were not tied down to anyone. Not yet. They could still change their lives.”

“It’s never too late to change your life,” Brandon observed.

“I wish somebody would have told me that back then. It took another year before I started to figure it out.”

“Is that how you ended up here?”

“Yes.”

“So you moved to Dallas with this guy. Did anything happen to make you break it off?”

“No. Nothing…
happened
,” Sandra admitted. “Not really. That was the problem. The move to Dallas was exciting at first. It was a new city, we had a new apartment, new furniture, new everything. But it didn’t take long for us to fall into a routine. He would work long days, leaving at seven in the morning, coming home at nine at night. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. When we were in school, even though he focused on his classes, he’d find time for me almost every day. I thought it’d be similar in Dallas, but I was wrong. He started putting work ahead of everything—ahead of me. But he never drank. He never yelled, never got mad. He was faithful. There were no problems with him, except—”

“He was insipid.”

“Yes!” Again, Sandra was impressed by his insight. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Practically, it wasn’t a bad situation. I’d imagine many girls would be… maybe not happy, but
satisfied…
with that arrangement.”

“You’re not any girl.” Brandon trailed his fingers along her arm. Shivers followed his caress on her skin. She was glad the sweater hid them from him. “You’re more than that. You need variety in your life. If you’re trapped by routine….you become dissatisfied.” He paused. “So, how did it end?”

“It ended on the one-year anniversary of our engagement. I was dreading the day for months because I didn’t want the rest of my life to look like the year we spent together in Dallas.”
That was also when the nightmares had become unbearable
. “The whole year was stationary. After we got settled in, nothing changed. Don’t get me wrong!” she hastened to add, “I didn’t expect—or even
want
—things, so it wouldn’t have mattered if he showered me with gifts every week. It’s just… everything was so monotonous. I was sinking, slowly going under without even realizing it. There was no excitement in my life, no passion.”

Sandra hesitated, deciding how much more she wanted to add. Brandon remained silent, willing her to go on. She continued with a breath. “Maybe I should have picked up on my feelings earlier. But you have to understand that when I first moved in with him, I had just finished four grueling years of university. And I worked incredibly hard in high school just to get that opportunity. So for the first time in eight years, I had time to myself. I was free to do what I wanted. I could catch up on things I’d missed doing, things I had put aside: Books, movies, and everything else I’d neglected before. The plan was for me to go to grad school when we moved back from Dallas, so I savored my freedom at the start.

“With Henry gone for so long each day, I had almost unlimited time to myself. Maybe it would have been different if I had tried to make more friends, but when we got there, I was just so happy to be
free
, you know, to finally be able to have time to myself without school looming over, that I ignored that part. But that freedom… was an illusion. Oh, maybe I didn’t have course work to do, or things to study for, but I had stepped into an even worse trap. It took a whole year for that realization to sink in.

“And then the day arrived: the one year anniversary. When Henry proposed, I wasn’t saying
yes
because I loved him. I said yes because I thought it was the safe path. So even though accepting was my choice, I never
made
the choice.” She shook her head. “Does that even make any sense?”

“Of course it does,” Brandon said softly. He was completely attentive, focusing on every word she said. Sandra felt that he understood what she was saying, and, moreover, that he
appreciated
it—appreciated her opening up to him.

“He was in love with me,” she continued, “but I never felt anything in return. Or, whatever I may have originally felt quickly faded. I wasn’t living my life. When the anniversary hit, there was no denying it any longer. I had to make a choice.
My
choice. The one I didn’t make the first time. If I married Henry… I could already see the rest of my life flash before my eyes in little piecemeal bits. First, there would be the marriage. Then, the pregnancy. Then, the kids. There was no way I’d be able to go back to school after that. Before I knew it, I’d be dependent on Henry—and for what? Because all the people around me thought he was good for me?”

“So you left him.”

“Yes. That day, when he came home, I told him exactly how I felt. I thought it would break his heart… but he kind of just shrugged and accepted things. It wasn’t like Henry to be confrontational. He never fought for what he wanted if it wasn’t related to his career. So, even though I thought he loved me, maybe he didn’t. He let me go.”

Brandon grunted. “Any man who lets you go without a fight is a moron.”

“You’re just saying that…”

“No, Sandra, I’m serious. You deserve more than that. The story you told shows that you’re strong. Stronger than most women would be. It would have been easy to leave him if something had prompted it—if he had cheated on you, if he hit you, if he were a drunk. So few people have the courage to turn away from the well-travelled path to do what
they
want. That takes real courage.” Brandon smiled. “I should know. I did something similar with my life. What you did speaks volumes about you as a person,” he noted. “It’s… impressive.”

“Thanks.” Sandra hid her own smile as she lifted her glass to her lips, took a sip. Then she giggled. “Wow! Look at me. I’ve never told all that to anyone.”

“Maybe you trust me,” he said softly.

Before Sandra could even fathom a reply, he pointed off into the distance and said, “Look.”

Brandon pointed out to the sea, and Sandra realized that as she’d been talking, the sun had sunk lower and lower on the horizon. Now it sat in a fat red ball at the end of the world. The light of the setting sun illuminated the island before them in a brilliant shower of crimson. The shadows of the tall evergreens fell upon the water like long sentries, and Sandra felt like she was watching the world take its last breath.

She stood there, regarding the splendor of the sunset in quiet awe. She sighed as the sun dipped below the horizon. “You timed this perfectly, didn’t you?”

“I knew I had an hour.”

“Maybe I can give you more time.”

He raised an eyebrow, and tilted his head down to regard her. Sandra felt the heat of his gaze again, and her imagination ran wild as she imagined his lips falling onto hers, consuming her skin with delicious kisses. What promises did Brandon’s touch hold? Would their passion run wild and unabated? Would she lose herself in his embrace? What flurry of emotions would overcome her as their lips met? How much would instinct take over conscious control of their bodies?

Brandon was so close that she could all but breathe him in. She yearned to taste the salty sea spray on his lips, to feel her skin prickle beneath his affectionate touch.

“Sandra…” Brandon trailed off. He shifted the glass of champagne to his other hand, and brought it around to press against the small of her back. Even through her sweater, she sensed the coldness of the glass, and tensed as the feeling spread through her spine in clashing contrast to the heat from his fingers.

“You know,” he admitted in a half-murmur, half-growl, “I don’t really know how to do this.”

“What are you talking about?” Her voice came out as a whisper as his finger started to entice her senses, gently, lightly grazing her upper arm. Sandra caught herself melting under his caress. She tried to suppress the feeling with all her might.
This man is telling me he doesn’t know what he’s doing with me?

“This.” Brandon took his hands off her, making her instantly yearn for his touch again, and motioned at everything around them. “The yacht. The champagne.
You
.”

“You’ve done perfectly. I totally misconstrued you before,” she confessed. “You’re a sweetheart.”

She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

His gaze changed in an instant. Fire exploded in his eyes. She had only the briefest sliver of a warning before his mouth crashed into hers. The passion of his tongue was overwhelming. She didn’t remember telling her lips to open so easily, but they did. Brandon kissed her with the raw edge of a man who desired a woman completely.

Sandra’s mind went blank, and she lost herself in Brandon’s power.