Between These Walls Read Online Free PDF Page B

reached for Kara’s hand and massaged her fingers with his free hand.
    “How was New York?” he asked.
    “I found a new line of purses I’d like to take a closer look at. I didn’t catch them until the end of my trip, but I’ll be back there for a few days next week and can follow up at that point. We’ve never carried this particular line in our stores. In the meantime, I’ll get some more demographic information from our marketing people to help me determine if the line is a good fit.”
    Kara worked as a buyer for a national retail chain. With a focus on purses and jewelry, she traveled often, visiting major cities throughout the world, on a mission for the products her stores should carry. As a result of her travels, she and Hunter spent much time apart. Large blocks of time—a few days here, a week or two there. Hunter, by comparison, covered a large region of northern Ohio in his sales position and traveled by car. Kara’s frequent flyer miles were the envy of anyone who took the time to perform a few mental calculations. Most people dreamed of traveling to an exotic city as a capstone event, the vacation of a lifetime. Not Kara. At twenty-six, the same age as Hunter, Kara dreamed of seeing few cities. She had already visited them. While Hunter dreamed of discovering new places, Kara savored their familiarity while passing through. She spoke of Tokyo the way most Americans spoke of a local pub.
    “How was work?” Kara asked. “Didn’t you say you had a big sales opportunity with an insurance company this week? How’d that go?”
    Yes, he’d said that.
    “It doesn’t look promising.” Hunter fixated on the television in front of them, which they hadn’t turned on. “In the lead-up to the demo meeting, their interest looked high, but they re-evaluated their situation by the time I got there.”
    Kara leaned her head toward him, searching his eyes. “So where do you go from there?”
    Though disappointed, Hunter pushed his frustration into hibernation. He refused to pull Kara into his pity. He resolved to let it go.
    “I’ll find another prospect to replace them.”
    “I know you’ve had a dry spell for a while.”
    He rubbed her fingers again, then moved his hand over her shoulder blade and massaged her back with his thumb. He smiled. “No big deal. It’s part of the game.”
    In truth, he wondered whether the floor was about to collapse beneath him.
    Kara squinted a moment, as though to evaluate him in her pixie manner, then grinned at him. She set her wineglass on the coffee table, then lifted Hunter’s glass from his hand and set it beside hers. She peered into his eyes and held his gaze. For a split second, her pupils dilated, inviting Hunter into her world.
    He wanted to feel drawn into her world. He really did. And he’d tried so hard.
    Over and over, he’d tried to will it to happen; nevertheless, he couldn’t take that final step across the broad gulch he knew existed between Kara and him. Between any woman and him.
    With a tender expression on her face, she ran the tops of her fingers along his cheek and leaned in for a kiss. Hunter closed his eyes and responded, but sensed an absence of involvement from his heart. In a flash, his mind flitted back to an image from that morning, the way Jake had studied him when it didn’t look like Hunter had noticed.
    And in another flash, the memory vanished. Hunter smothered it, forcing it into hiding the way he would fold a sweater and shove it into a dresser drawer. He closed the drawer tight. Concealing such memories and feelings from others had served as his protocol for the last 14 years, since he was twelve years old.
    Two light kisses before Kara hesitated. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    Hunter hoped her question referred to his day’s professional loss and that she hadn’t picked up on his lack of romantic response. “Yeah, I’ve got plenty of other possibilities. Pipeline was my biggest and best, but I’ll find another one.