Chapter 5

Sim's house wasn't what I was expecting. It was smaller and messier than I would have supposed, filled to over-flowing with crooked stacks of books and mismatched furniture, discarded shoes and carelessly tossed aside sweaters. It was wonderful.

In the window a large, orange tabby cat ignored me completely, half-asleep in the afternoon sun. Sim ushered me through the livingroom and out through a set of French doors to the backyard. The lawn needed to be cut and there were more weeds in the flowerbeds than flowers, but I was immediately struck by the charming green space.

I sat at the patio table and accepted the offer of tea with as much grace as my jittery stomach could allow. If Sim was thinking of the recent intimate events it didn't show on his face; he was as calmly suave as always. When he left me alone to go put the kettle on, I laid my head on the table and tried to breathe deeply to settle my nerves. I felt hot all over, a little in awe of what he'd just done to me, and very apprehensive about what was coming.

I tried to play out every possible scenario in my head, every position I knew, every minute of porn I'd snuck a peek at on the internet. The truth was, as much as I wrote about sex, I'd never really had it, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to please Sim the way he pleased me. I didn't know what to do or what to say, what noises to make or what noises not to. Where did I touch him and what if he didn't like it? Was I supposed to return the favour he'd bestowed upon me earlier? And just how the hell did I do that?

To be honest porn stars made sex look easy: detached and impersonal - that's what I'd always sort of figured it would be like. Sure, in my stories it was different, earth-shattering and profound, but in real life? I didn't even know where to begin. I didn't know much, but I knew that watching Sim between my legs and feeling his mouth on me was more intimate than I ever could have dreamed. I was in over my head.

"Imogen?" Sim's deep voice broke through my reverie. I raised my head swiftly and tried not to blush. "Are you all right?"

I nodded, unable to speak the words. He was standing the doorway clutching two steaming mugs of tea, his hair rumpled, his dress shirt even more so. He looked sexy as hell. I was definitely in over my head.

"I thought for a moment that you were asleep," Sim chuckled, seating himself across from me. He pushed a mug my way.

"Not asleep," I confessed. "Just..."

"Hiding?" Sim finished with a slow smile. "Did I freak you out back at the office? I'm sorry."

Again I shook my head, mystified by the sensitivity Sim was exhibiting. In my limited experience guys weren't like that. They'd tried to get me in bed, been rebuffed, and taken off faster than you could say 'cold feet'. The first few times had been embarrassing, after that I just gave up and didn't really care any more. Men wanted sex, I wasn't going to give it to them, therefore I had little to say to them. Period.

Sim was different though. He'd managed to sneak his way past my usually stalwart defence system and get me to do things I'd only ever written about, and I knew instinctively I'd willingly do more. But in the back of my head I couldn't shake the fact that at the end of the day it was entirely possible that Simeon Forster Jr. was his father's son; perhaps he was just better at hiding his ulterior motives than his progenitor.

"What are you getting out of this, Sim?" I asked bluntly, voicing my fears without preamble. Sim watched me with a blank expression; it was almost as if he'd been expecting the question.

"Apart from the pleasure of your company, you mean?" he replied smoothly. I nodded and tried to ignore the little flirtatious upturn of his mouth. "You're wondering why I'm bothering with you, aren't you?"

"A little," I admitted, suddenly feeling shy. I watched the steam roll off the surface of my tea; it was easier than looking Sim in the eye.

"Imogen," Sim chided gently. "You're being ridiculous. You're funny and smart and sexy as hell. You have the most amazing legs under those little sundresses of yours, and there's just enough cleavage there to make me think of doing the naughtiest things with you. I look at you and I just want to kiss you, to make love to you. Not every woman makes me feel that way. That's why I'm bothering."

"But you could have any woman you wanted," I interjected. Inwardly I cringed at how insecure I sounded; I hoped Sim didn't hear it the same way.

Sim shrugged. "I've done that, Imogen and it doesn't satisfy me. I guess you could say I like a challenge and you're a challenge. I like the idea of knowing I'm the first to do these things for you. It's selfish, I suppose, but I like to think that ten years down the road when you're happily married to some lucky guy, he'll touch you in a certain way and it'll remind you of me, of right now and what we had together."

I turned my attention from my tea to Sim's chocolate brown eyes. "Immortality, huh?"

"Of a sorts," he chuckled warmly. "Does that bother you?"

I considered him for a moment. "Surprisingly, no," I admitted with a crooked smile. "It should, but for some reason it doesn't."

Sim returned my smile with a breathtaking one of his own. "Good, then we can begin lesson two."

"Which is?" I prompted.

"Flirting," Sim replied swiftly. "You're already very good at it, but you don't even realize you're doing it, and while there is a certain amount of charm in your approach, with a little practice you could be downright dangerous."

I laughed, feeling a little of my anxiety ease as I watched Sim's own expression soften. "You're going to teach me how to flirt?"

"I happen to be very good at it," Sim said with mock derision. His smile was wide.

"Your first words to me were 'Actually, I think it's great'; not exactly Don Juan," I teased.

"Ah, but it produced the desired effect," Sim pointed out. "I got your attention, didn't I?"

"I wanted to punch you in the face!" I admitted with a laugh. "I hated you."

"But you were thinking about me." Sim laughed and took a sip of his tea. I watched the progression of the mug to his lips like a hungry woman being denied food. The way his mouth met the porcelain made my knees weak. The memory of those same lips between my legs was like being hit with a lightening flash of arousal.

One look in Sim's eyes revealed he knew exactly what he'd just done to me. "Is that a lesson too?" I asked breathlessly.

"Of course," Sim grinned. "Your body says more than your words."

"Riiight," I drawled. "I know words, Sim; I'm a writer. My body however, we're not always on speaking terms."

"Part of the problem, don't you think?" Sim asked. "You do the cutest little things without realizing it, but just think of the possibilities if you did know the effect those subtle movements had on men. Think of what you could do!"

"I don't know about that. I'm really not that sort of girl," I admitted with a wry smile.

"What sort of girl? The sort who understands the power she has just by being female? There's no shame in that, Imogen. I'm not saying you have to flash your tits around like some floozy. I'm suggesting you become comfortable with yourself, confident in your body. Once you accomplish that, you can do anything."

"What makes you think I'm not confident?" I countered defensively. I wasn't, but I didn't think it was apparent to others.

"You can barely look people in the eyes. I'd say that's a pretty obvious indicator. It's only when you're mad at someone that you actually raise your chin and look at them." Sim's smile was gentle but it didn't stop my feelings from being hurt.

"You hide behind things: your hair, your computer, the image of yourself as an aloof writer. You think you should be above us all, looking down and watching us, writing about us, but writing doesn't work that way. You have to get your hands dirty. Live what you write, Imogen, and there's no limit to what you can accomplish."

I had no response for Sim. There wasn't anything I could say to refute his argument. All of it was true, but hearing it from a virtual stranger didn't make it hurt any less.

"I don't like this lesson," I confessed in a whisper.

"Yeah, well that's how intimacy works, Sweetness. You have to open yourself up and let the other person see the messy insides." Sim's gaze was direct and I fought hard to hold it, to resist the urge to look away and hide from the piercing brown depths of his eyes.

"All right," I conceded with a shrug. "What about you? When do I get to see your messy insides?"

Sim froze and the concerned expression on his handsome face fell away. He stared at me for a moment before laughing bitterly, shaking his head. "Fine. What do you want to know?"

The question which had been plaguing me for days flew from my lips without thought. "What happened between you and your father, Sim? Why do you two treat each other the way you do?"

Sim's answered chuckle was dry and cynical. "That's a long story, Imogen. It goes back a long way. I'm not sure you want to hear it."

"Why wouldn't I? I'm caught up in it somehow; don't you think I deserve to know?"

Sim's gaze dropped to the tabletop. We both watched his hands flex against the glass as the silence lengthened. "Not here," Sim said finally. "Let's go inside."

I stood and followed him from the garden patio, watching warily as the long line of his broad shoulders stooped under some unseen weight. His normal, cocky demeanour disappeared, so by the time we were seated on the battered old sofa in his livingroom he looked like a shadow of his usual self. I felt inextricably like I was sitting beside a lost little boy.

"When I was sixteen my Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer," Sim said quietly. The hurt in his voice was audible and made my throat ache. "It took her almost two years to die and watching her go through that... well, I wouldn't wish that sort of death on anyone, not my worst enemy."

He paused to look up at me, his eyes haunted and wounded. I nodded my encouragement, afraid to say anything.

"I'm the oldest in my family and through it all I had to be the strong one, you know? The one who made sure the groceries still were bought, the house was cleaned, and my little brothers were dressed and off to school every morning. Dad was always working. He's always been like that, a complete workaholic, but you'd think he would have taken some time off when his wife got sick. But he didn't. I guess that's where it started between us.

"Mum finally died a few days short of my eighteenth birthday. I don't know if losing someone is easier when you see it coming or not, but it was hard, harder than I would have thought. I was happy she wasn't suffering any more, but damn I missed her. I still do."

I reached for Sim's hand and held it. Words of comfort sprung automatically to my lips, but they all seemed so shallow and unnecessary; instead, I kept quiet and let Sim continue.

"Not long afterwards Dad started bringing women home. When I think about it now I guess he was just lonely too, for all his problems he loved Mum a lot. But it seemed like every Saturday morning the boys and I would wake up to a different woman standing in the kitchen, wearing Dad's bathrobe, and fussing over breakfast.

"I don't really remember any of them, what they looked like, who they were. We made it into a big joke at the time, my brothers and I, but I always hated it. Then just before Christmas that year I was cleaning the den and came across a card in Dad's desk. It was signed by some woman named Kathy and said 'Happy Second Anniversary'..." Sim paused and the bitterness in his words made tears spring up behind my lashes.

"Two years, he'd been seeing some bitch for two years, which meant they were together while Mum was sick. He couldn't even wait for his wife to die, even when he knew she would. I was so mad I couldn't think, couldn't speak. But I couldn't keep quiet about it either, it was eating me up inside. So one night I had a few drinks and confronted him. Accusations were made and punches were thrown. I don't think I've ever hated him as much as I did that night.

"And then we both woke up the next morning and never spoke of it again. Life went on at our house just as it always had. I graduated high school later that year and went away to university, studied English Literature, played varsity soccer, met Julie."

Sim's laugh was cold. "Julie was perfect. Smart, funny, beautiful. I'd never loved a girl the way I loved her. I was going to marry her, I was sure of it. You would have liked her, Imogen. Everyone did. I'd wake up in the morning at just marvel at the fact that she was mine, you know?" He paused and looked at me for acknowledgement, but he wasn't really looking at me so much as through me. I nodded weakly through my unshed tears.

"I brought her home for Thanksgiving my senior year so she could meet my brothers and my father. I had the ring in my luggage and every word of the proposal planned. Damn, I loved her."

Sim stopped and for a moment I was scared he might not continue. The silence in the room was oppressive. I was afraid to breathe. Sim's hand in my own was unmoving.

"Two days, that's all it took him. Two days to steal the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I woke up at 3am and she wasn't in the room with me. I thought maybe she'd gotten up to get a drink, or perhaps she'd eaten too much at dinner and wasn't feeling well. I found her with him. She'd gotten out of my bed and gone straight to his. How do you forgive that, Imogen?"

"I don't know," I admitted truthfully. "What did you do?"

Sim pulled me into the crook of his arm and smoothed my hair down before settling his chin atop my head. "I got in the car, drove back to school that night, and never spoke to Julie again."

I hated her. Hated a woman I'd never met simply because she had the power to make Sim sound so hurt, so bitter. I tried to picture what he'd been like before that time and even further back, before his mother fell ill: a younger, happier version of himself, free from the cynicism and cockiness that surrounded him like a fortress wall.