Read Online Rocky Mountain Hero (To Love Again Book 3) by Kate Fargo - Free Book Online

eyebrows.
    “Thirty?”
    “I’m thirty-five, Isabel.”
    “Thirty-five?” She spit out the words and a few heads turned near by, so she lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “Thirty-five? Come on, you don’t expect me to buy that.”
    “It’s true. I could show you my birth certificate.”
    “Then why were you masquerading as a college student?”
    “I am a college student. People just always assume I’m younger – I look younger.”
    “You certainly do. So I haven’t been robbing the cradle after all?”
    “Were you feeling guilty about that?”
    “Frankly, yes.”
    “Well, you can rest at ease. There’s only a few years between us.”
    Isabel leaned back in her chair twisting the napkin in her lap. Thirty-five? He was only five years younger than she was. Clearly not a boy. And his actions earlier this evening hadn’t been those of a boy. She thrilled again with the memory of his voice, commanding, in charge. The feel of his body as he pushed her against the counter in the kitchen. No, clearly all man.
    “So what was the line about needing a Mrs. Robinson? That was just an easy way to get laid?”
    “Not at all, that much is true. Look, I’ve not had great success with women. Because I look so much younger, and since I’m in college, I do date a lot of younger women. You would think I’d naturally have more confidence with them, but things never clicked. Never worked.”
    “So you went to The Shore?”
    “I heard it was a sure thing.”
    “I was a sure thing?”
    “The club was a sure thing.”
    “You’ve been playing me for a fool since we met.” Her anger surged to the surface. She’d vowed no man would ever treat her like a fool again.
    “That’s not the way it was, Isabel. You know it! It suited you, too. We were both playing a game.”
    “But your goal was not a one-night stand, it was to find a Mrs. Robinson?”
    “Yes. There was something missing, and I thought an older woman, or more precisely, a woman closer to my age, could help me find it.”
    “And you hit the jackpot when you hooked up with a sex therapist?” She spat the words bitterly across the table, unable to contain them.
    Tray reached across the table to take her hand, but she pulled away, placing her hand in her lap.
    “I hit the jackpot, Isabel, because I met you.”
    Isabel caught the waiter’s eye and motioned for the bill.
    “I noticed you right away. I could see your sparkle from the other side of the room.”
    “This conversation is finished, Tray. Let’s just pay and go.”
    The waiter placed the bill on the table and Tray quickly placed his hand over it before Isabel could whisk it away.
    “As soon as you hear what I have to say.”
    She leaned back in her chair and eyed him warily, tapping her foot nervously against the table leg.
    “You know it isn’t just sex between us. I know it, and you know it. And here’s what I’ve figured out. The reason I wasn’t successful with those other women, is because they didn’t have what we have. There was no chemistry.”
    “Chemistry is-”
    “Let me finish, Isabel. You’ve taken the lead through most of our relationship –”
    “We don’t have a relationship.”
    “Any two people involved in some interaction have a relationship, Dr. Chapel.”
    She was furious, and she also knew he was right. They did have a relationship. As much as she wanted to fight it, she couldn’t deny there was something between them. Something that made each interaction exciting, exhilarating and yet, at the same time, as comfortable as an old slipper. It was a feeling she thought she could get used to. But she couldn’t stand that he had lied to her.
    He leaned forward in his chair, eyes searching hers. “Don’t you see, Isabel, that it was you that inspired my confidence? Your easy acceptance of me, who I was, the way I did things. I realized that who I was, just the way I was, was enough.”
    “It’s more than enough, Tray.”
    “Then let me into your life.