“I assure you,” Gemma told her. “He’s very much alive.” Very much.
“Then, you owe it to our readership and to yourself—”
“Please don’t tell me what I owe, Frannie. I’ve spent the last decade doing what was best for everyone but me. For my mother. For Somerhalder. Even for Ash. But it’s me I have to look at in the mirror. I’ve done some underhanded things in my career, but doing this…doing this would top them all. Trust me when I tell you—I’m too close to this story. And it’s not right.”
“Fine. Don’t out him. Write another angle. Write the story of who Eamon Connelly really is. Give the world a new perspective. Help us understand what makes him tick. What he’s really thinking about and why he checked out without a word.”
“I can’t.”
Frustration made Frannie take a deep breath. It wasn’t just for Gemma that she wanted her to stay at the paper, but to beat the crap out of Ash’s stupid vendetta and win. Selfishly, she couldn’t bear the thought of being here without her. Watching her walk away from this story was like seeing all of that slip away in tragic slow motion. “Do you even know how lucky you are right now, girl? To walk into a story like this?”
“I’m aware. But I think I’m falling for him, Frannie.”
“You’re drinking the freaking water. Stop it! I don’t want to sound harsh, but get real, Gem. As much as you might want it, or think you want it, a future with the Eamon Connelly, one of the wealthiest guys in the country—reputed to be one of the coolest, most ruthless business minds around—it’s just not going to happen.”
A long silence stretched between them and Frannie’s heart sank. She’d hurt Gemma and she’d done it for probably nothing.
“You think I don’t know that?” Gemma said finally. “I’m perfectly aware of our differences.”
“I didn’t mean that. I just meant—”
“Yes, you did. And you’re right. But none of that even matters. Something…happened here with us. I did drink the water here. And maybe I just have the weekend. Maybe that’s all right. Maybe that’s all I’ll ever get with any man. But I’m going to give this time to myself, ’cause I can. And I have to live with what I do here. I do. Not you. Not Somerhalder.”
For just an instant, Frannie felt ashamed to realize that she actually contemplated asking her best friend if she could take the story instead. Ugh. What a business. What a horrible business.
A series of fireworks went off over the Mariners’s Safeco Field, which she could see from her office window. Color streaked the night sky.
“Sweetie, you’re right,” she said at last. “I’m the wrong one here. Forgive me for pressing you?”
“Of course,” Gemma answered without hesitation. “Frannie?”
“Yeah?”
“I know you’re looking out for me. I know it. It’s just time I looked out for myself, that’s all. See you on Monday, okay?”
“You got it. I still owe you that wine.”
Gemma laughed and hung up.
Frannie put down her phone, staring at the fireworks illuminating the night sky. Balls of red, white and blue exploded in pinballs of fire and points of light that formed streamers of color. She was about to turn her attention back to her screen where she was finishing up the last edits on tomorrow’s article. But something in the window’s dark reflection caught her eye.
Not the fireworks, but the open door in the hallway behind her. Standing there, in silhouette—
She whirled to find Ashton, arms folded, leaning on her doorjamb. Smiling.
She froze, guessing he’d heard every bit of that conversation. At least enough to know she was talking to Gemma and about whom.
“What are you doing? Get out of my office, Ash,” she demanded in a tone she’d never dared use with him before.
With a smirk, he said, “She just can’t keep herself out of trouble, can she?”
Frannie felt her heart sink. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think we both know that’s a lie.” He started to walk away, but she stopped him.
“What are you going to do?”
“If you know what’s good for you here, Frannie—what’s good for her—you’ll shut the hell up about what you and I both know. You understand me?”
Without another word, he turned and headed down the hallway.
She stalked to her door and shouted after him, “Are you threatening me? Are you…are you actually threatening me?”
“Take that any way you want,” he said over his shoulder before turning the corner and disappearing.
For a long, frozen heartbeat, she simply stared at the empty space he’d just occupied. That overbearing, unconscionable piece of—!
She’d go to Somerhalder.
Accuse him of…of…what? Threatening to out Gemma? Threatening her job? Hostile work environment? God, she hated him.
This was her fault. Totally. And now, Gemma would never forgive her. She slammed her office door shut and sank back down into her desk chair cradling her head in her hands.
Until now, she’d managed to avoid becoming collateral damage in the breakup of her best friend and that entitled prig. But that was over. He had crossed the line tonight. And now her own career might be on the line.
She picked up her phone and dialed Gemma back. The call went immediately to voice mail and she knew what that meant. She left a detailed message for her that ended with: “Get out of there as soon as you can.”
*
The light under her door shone through the crack between their rooms when he got back. She was awake.
I don’t sleep very much, she’d said. He could relate. For a long time, after the war, he didn’t sleep at all. Just prowled the house at night looking for distraction. Eventually, he settled, but often woke from dreams that shook him to his core. Dreams about that day in Afghanistan, in the Korengal Valley when all of them nearly died. Or that other day, when he’d almost lost his leg.
During the day, he could push those thoughts away, but at night, when all was quiet, was the worst. The whomp-whomp-whomp of the choppers overhead, the exploding shrapnel, the screams of his brothers, all converged in his memory like IEDs, waiting to be rolled over and blow up his peace of mind. Slowly, over almost two years, Dr. Nichols, his therapist at the V.A., had helped him quiet that noise and find a balance in his life again. Nichols was also the only one outside of his family who knew about the lies he’d told his brothers in the military and what that meant.
Noah turned on a music station on his phone and hooked that up to his portable speaker. Music that would clear his head.
Sitting down on his bed, he stared at that door for a while, willing the music to distract him. Knowing he should leave things alone. Leave her alone. Aside from his obvious physical attraction to her, there seemed no rhyme or reason to his growing feelings for her. They went against every survival instinct he’d spent years honing. She posed a threat to everything he had built, or become. But at the same time, he felt all of those things crumbling, like a crack in an Arctic ice shelf, spreading and breaking apart beyond his reach. And his will to stop whatever was happening between him and Gemma seemed equally out of his control.
What a mess. What a stupid mess he’d made of his life. He couldn’t even blame that on his screwed-up youth anymore. He’d made choices of his own free will. The consequences were his as well. He’d drawn himself into a corner and now he was stuck there. Unless he came clean. Told everyone the truth and faced the fallout. Maybe he was a coward after all. But the thought of risking everything with the truth made him sick to his stomach.
Now, the timing of Gemma walking into his life only made matters worse.
He wanted more of her. Much more. He wanted to spend days with her, nights. Wake up in the morning next to her. Fix breakfast with her in his kitchen. Do the things regular people did every day. He wanted to know her in a way he’d never wanted to know another woman. She already knew him in a way other women n
ever had.
He stood and paced the room to the sound of an Ed Sheeran song, feeling caged and restless.
Noah contemplated a cold shower to quell the heat rising in him. Or a quick alternative under the hot sluice of water. But that would only stoke the conflagration growing in him. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He wanted her under him. To be inside her. To taste her again, everywhere. And yet, for the third night in a row, she’d turned him away. She was right to do so. If he couldn’t bring himself to protect her from the train wreck he saw coming, then she had to do it. And he had to respect that.
Deciding, he tore off his shirt and tossed it on the bed. Halfway to the shower, he heard the sound of a latch turning on their connecting doors and her side opening.
“Noah?” He heard her muffled voice through his door. “You up?”
It took him all of two seconds to unlock his door to find her standing there, dressed in black yoga pants and a T-shirt embellished with a photo of Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars.
He was up. Man, was he up. He managed a smile as her gaze traveled over his chest for the second time today. “Hi,” he said, gesturing her into the room.
“Hi. Is this weird, my knocking on our connecting door?”
He reached for his shirt, threw the thing on and half-buttoned it. “Weird in a good way. Want a drink? I saw some wine in my mini fridge.”
“Do I look like I need a drink? Don’t answer that. Clearly the answer is yes.”
He poured them each a glass. They clinked and took an awkward sip, then sat in the two captain’s chairs near the windows.
She ran a nervous finger along the rim of her glass. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“I saw the light under your door. I was just thinking about calling you, to see if you were still up.”
“You were?”
The hopefulness in her expression pinged around inside him like a moth caught in a light fixture. He nodded. “But then I realized, I don’t have your number.”
“Good thing I knocked then,” she said. “Besides, I put my phone, my computer in the safe. Turned them off. I don’t want to think about Monday anymore this weekend. I just want to—” She broke off, unsure what to say.
“You want what?” he asked.
“To be with you.”
She did? He set his glass of wine down on the coffee table and stood, reaching for her hand. He pulled her up beside him. “That’s funny. I was feeling the same thing.” He took her glass and set it down beside his own.
With their faces close, she looked up at him through her lashes. Her eyes mesmerized him. “This is a dumb idea, right?”
“A hundred percent,” he agreed, stroking her cheek with the backs of his fingers. She leaned in to his touch like a cat.
“Which is why I came over. Just to clear up the confusion,” she pointed out, her eyes sliding shut as his other hand cupped her ass and pulled her closer. “The…misunderstanding.”
“I’m really…really glad you did.” Her skin, in the soft light of the lamp beside them, looked almost translucent. He dropped his mouth onto her cheek, scraping a kiss there with a delicious friction.
She shivered in his arms, her breath shaky. “The last thing we both want is a…a misunderstanding.”
Still cupping her ass with his hand, he drew her hips up against the ache in his, nearly losing control with the contact. “Nobody…wants that,” he murmured, even as he felt her fingers tugging the half-tucked shirt from his jeans to wander across the muscles of his back. “What misunderstanding?”
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “I sent you away and here I am, still awake. When I said I was ‘tired,’ I meant…” She sighed. “Mixed up.”
“About—?”
“You. Me. The universe. With its ironic sense of humor and timing.”
“Amen to that,” he agreed brushing hair from her eyes. “I thought maybe what happened down by the river—”
“No,” she said emphatically. “Nothing to do with that. It’s me. My life is complicated and there are things—”
He put a finger to her lips with a warning shake of his head. “Don’t.”
“But if I—”
“Let’s just be us for tonight. Let the past be.”
“For the record, this is not who I am,” she clarified. “A weekend affair is—” she exhaled as he nibbled along the length of her neck “—not what I do.”
“Agree with all that. In theory.” He couldn’t get enough of touching her, his hand sliding into her hair, tugging her closer.
“And in reality?”
“There’s no damned way I’m not going to kiss you right n—”
She took the decision out of his hands, and pulled him down to her. Their mouths met with a hungry haste, inhaling the taste of each other. She tasted of the red wine they’d just drunk and something delicious that belonged only to her. He didn’t want to talk about their complications. Or his truth, for that matter. He needed all of that to go away, to slake this thirst for her, the thirst that made him feel raw and wanting.
Even more, he wanted to forget the universe and its terrible timing. So he deepened the kiss, meeting her tongue as she opened to him, feeling her shiver in his arms. She stole his breath, a theft to which he willingly submitted, and his hands captured her with equal hunger, exploring the soft curves of her back, her neck.
Gravity tugged them toward the nearby bed with an inevitable pull until they fell across the mattress, still locked in a kiss. Her hands moved to the buttons of his shirt, undoing them with a frantic kind of effort and he ripped the thing off—buttons pinging off across the room—desperate to feel her against his bare skin. Ignoring his scars, she ran her hands over his chest with aching gentleness, pausing for a moment to re-explore the cut of his bicep.
He relinquished her mouth and she smiled at him as he hovered above her. She made him feel like a damned kid again. Like he’d just climbed a rose trellis to get to her window and this…this was his reward.
“You,” he murmured, “are…so beautiful.”
“No, you are,” she said, looking embarrassed.
A smile lifted his mouth. “This feels good.” His hips flexed against hers. “It feels good to hold you.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’ve wanted to all night. I could barely keep my hands off you.”
She slid hers down his naked back with a sweet kind of pleasure. “Have you always been able to do that so naturally?”
“Do what?” he asked, in between kisses.
“Make a woman feel special?”
He lifted his head from her shoulder and met her gaze. “You are special.”
“See?” she breathed. “There you go again.”
He laughed, then kissed her, deeply. Without reservation. His fingers were in her thick hair that tangled around them as they rolled on the bed together. Damn, he wanted her like he’d never wanted a woman before.
Feeling her wrap herself around him, and his own response, made him fear he would not be able to hold it together. So he slowed things down, taking his time undressing her. Sliding her clothes off one piece at a time until she was naked underneath him. He set about exploring every inch of her with his mouth until she was groaning with need. Only then did he touch her with his fingers in the vee of her legs, that hot, damp place of need.
It was his turn to sigh at that exquisite feeling, sliding his fingers into her—just long enough to put her on the edge of coming, but stopping short. He liked staring down at her in his bed. The way she moved. The shape of her breasts. The taste of her.
Her hands found his belt and she tugged it open, then dispensed with his jeans as he’d done with her clothes. Before it hit the ground, he grabbed his wallet and pulled a small foil packet from inside. She took it from his fingers and put the thing on in a most erotic way. Two could play that game he’d started and she wasted no time putting him on his back to return some of what he’d given her.
On his playlist, Coldpl
ay wooed them with a moody song about birds as she explored him, kissed the scars on his chest and ran her palm down the fading one on his knee. Looking up at him through a sweep of lashes, she didn’t have to say what she was thinking. His knee was an ugly collection of scar tissue, but it worked. He’d worked hard to make it so, and her smile told him she understood that. Maybe even admired it.
He pulled her back toward him until he could roll her underneath him again and get her right where he wanted her. He smiled down at her, watching her face as he entered, slowly. Easing his way in until she closed her eyes with a shiver.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.”
With exquisite patience he took her to the edge again—his own edge as well—and back before the ancient rhythm overtook them. His hips moved against hers with an urgency out of his control. They were both beyond teasing now and his thoughts spun out at the sound of her cry and a moment later, he spilled into her, hard, until he was spent. And afterward, all he could do was to curl around her and hold her. And wish the night wouldn’t end.
Chapter Eight
Gemma opened her eyes as morning spilled through the hotel’s curtained windows on the day of the wedding. She wasn’t sure of the time. Only that she’d finally fallen asleep in the darkest part of the night with Noah holding her after the second time. Beside her, he was still asleep, curled on his side, one hand loosely on her wrist, which lay on his pillow.
She studied his dark lashes, his even breathing, his handsome face, remembering every tender moment of last night. A smile curled her lips and a shiver of pleasure ran through her for how generous he’d been, and on the other hand, disbelief that she’d broken every rule she’d set for herself. She had no one to blame but herself, yet even lying beside him now, she would do it all again. Every moment of this weekend, no matter how things ended.
Sometime during the night, as she lay awake, she’d decided to tell him the truth about who she really was. Admit how she’d deceived him and pray he would believe her when she told him she wouldn’t betray him. Forgiving her was another matter altogether. She was pretty sure the odds against that were huge, considering how important his own secret was, having guarded that with everything he had for so long. But she would take the risk. She had nothing to lose, after all.
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