by JoAnn Ross
Lena shook her head and dragged her hand through her hair. In the moonlight streaming in through the window, the diamonds in her wedding band glistened like ice.
“Molly put a Band-Aid on her head to stop the bleeding, which it really didn’t do, but it finally slowed down. At least it wasn’t streaming down her face anymore.
“Once Mama seemed to be all right, Molly wrapped Miss Puss in a clean nightgown. Then, when we knew he wasn’t coming back that night, when it was safe, she got a flashlight and we went out in the backyard and Molly dug a hole and we buried Miss Puss.
“Our house was by Dodger Stadium and Molly had just finished saying a prayer, when the game ended and suddenly the sky lit up with the most wonderful fireworks.”
She closed her eyes. “I can still see them today. They were so beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And Molly told me they were in celebration of Miss Puss’s arrival in heaven, where all the angels would love her and she’d have all the cream and kibble she’d ever want.”
Reece had always known what a special person Molly was, but for the first time he was getting a sense of the burden she’d had put on her young shoulders, and he finally began to understand her seemingly limitless capacity for caring.
As if in a trance, Lena continued to relate the story of the lives and times of Lena and Molly McBride. Reece had been sickened by the saga of Miss Puss, but he was horrified by his wife’s tale of the murder/suicide of her parents.
When she was finally finished, when she’d unburdened her heart and her soul, including the self-destructive sexual behavior that may have left her unable to have children, she turned to him, her eyes wide and dark in her too-pale face.
“So now you know the truth. And I’ll understand if you decide you can’t love me any longer.”
A complicated rage burned through Reece. He wanted to beat her dead father to a pulp for having inflicted such terrible pain on his family. His feelings for Lena’s mother wavered somewhere between fury and pity.
But since there was nothing he could do to correct past sins, at this moment Reece’s overriding urge was to shake his wife. To shout at her. To ask her what the hell kind of man she thought he was that he could ever hold her responsible for any of those horrors she’d described. But understanding that his anger was directed toward the injustice of what had been done to her, he managed, just barely, to hold his tongue.
“I told you—” He had to force the words past the massive lump of anguished fury that had taken up residence in his throat. “I love you, Lena.” Needing to touch her, to hold her, he crossed the room and drew her into his arms. “More than life itself.”
“But…”
“Shh.” He pressed a finger against her trembling lips. She was like a block of ice in his arms. “You’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn, okay?”
She nodded, her shimmering wet eyes on his.
“If I could go back in time and erase all those things that happened, I would. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, so I can’t change the past. But the one thing I can do is to vow to spend the rest of my life helping you to feel happy. And safe.”
Relief flooded through Lena, like a cool crystal river.
“You’ve already done that,” she said on a deep, shuddering breath. “I realize I don’t say it enough, but I’ve been happier since meeting you than I ever thought possible. And I’ve never felt so safe.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, Lena hung on for dear life.
Reece kissed her then. A deep, heartfelt kiss filled with love and promise. And then he carried her into the bedroom, where he made love to her with a tenderness that made her cry all over again.
But this time, Lena’s tears were not born of sorrow, but joy.
Chapter Seven
“You’re very good,” Miles said with apparent surprise as he led Tessa through a sophisticated tango.
She tilted her head back and gave him a coolly dismissive look that fit the style of the dance to perfection. “For a ‘chipmunk-cheeked farmer’s daughter’?”
He had the grace to laugh at that. “Thanks to my brother’s expert eye, no one would ever know you weren’t born with a fistful of gilt-edged stock certificates in your lily-white hands.”
He slipped his fingers beneath her hair, brushing at the suddenly ultrasensitive skin at the back of her neck in a way that created little tremors. “I think you should pose for me.”
“Really?” Her pulse quickened. The photographs lining the trophy wall in his Bel Air home looked like a promo for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”
“You’re a gorgeous woman, Tessa. With the right photographs you could end up owning this town.”
“Right now I’d settle for a part in a feminine hygiene product commercial,” she muttered.
Although Jason had told her that it would be almost impossible to make an appointment with an agent during the holidays, she was admittedly impatient. And there was also the salient fact that her traveler’s checks were disappearing a great deal faster than expected.
His hand warmed her back as he bent her into a low dip. Tessa could feel each of his long fingers against the pale flesh bared by the halter-style dress. “Oh, I think we can do a great deal better than that.”
There was something in his eyes—something that promised more than a photography sitting—that caused a frisson of fear to skim up her spine. But before she could dwell on it, the music stopped.
“You can let me up now,” she suggested.
“I suppose you’re right.” His smile was slow and unnervingly intimate as he kept her bent backward over his arm. If he suddenly let go of her, she’d fall to the floor.
“Miles—” Her heart was hammering in her throat. From fear. And something else. An emotion darker and more dangerous than she’d ever felt before. And strangely, more enticing.
They’d become frozen in some sort of strange tableau, Miles’s hooded eyes looking down at her, while she stared back up at him, when a familiar deep voice shattered the spell.
“Dammit, Miles,” Jason complained, “quit playing your cat-and-mouse games with Tessa. She’s not one of your usual women. She’s a nice girl.”
“So you keep telling me.” His eyes not moving from hers, Miles lifted her back to an upright position. But as he did so, his fingers dipped even lower beneath the black silk, creating a flare of sparks. “Such a pity,” he murmured as he trailed the back of his other hand down the side of her face. Tessa could feel the heat, the bane of a true redhead, rising in her cheeks.
“Don’t pay any attention to my brother.” Jason knocked Miles’s hand from her face in a fraternal, nonaggressive way that suggested this was not the first time he’d had to come to the rescue of one of his dates. “Anyone in town can tell you that Miles is the evil twin.”
“It’s a dirty job.” Miles’s insolent eyes settled on her lips in a way that made Tessa’s mouth go dry. “But someone’s got to do it…. So, when are we going to do it?”
“Do it?” she echoed blankly.
“Your photos. As it happens, I have some time next Wednesday afternoon about five.”
Tessa couldn’t help glancing over at Jason, who laughed in response. “You’ve gotten her spooked, Miles.” He put his arm around her waist and drew her against his side in a possessive gesture that made Tessa feel immediately safe. “I’ll go with you and stand guard to make certain my evil twin doesn’t get any kinky ideas, then afterward we’ll go out on the town.”
“That sounds wonderful.” There was one more thing to be considered. She didn’t want to be obligated in any way to Miles. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your fitting me into your busy schedule, but I’m not certain I can afford—”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that,” Jason broke in smoothly.
“But you’ve already done so much.”
“And had a dandy time, too.” His smile, in contrast to his brother’s, was warm and absolutely harmless. “Why hoard money when you
can use it to make people feel good?”
He was such a good man. Such a generous one. Tessa was instantly reassured. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
He winked in a sexy, seductive way she suspected very few women could resist. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something. If we put our heads together.”
He then turned to Miles. “Five o’clock it is. And don’t forget, my partner, Dan Kovaleski, just got transferred to the vice squad. You try to use my girl for any of those dirty pictures you like to take, and I’ll turn you in.”
“The kid always was the family snitch,” Miles told Tessa in a light, easygoing way that almost made her think she’d imagined his earlier dark edge. “I suppose that’s why he became a cop.”
As the twin brothers shared a laugh, Tessa’s mind was not on a joke she suspected they’d shared before, but on what Jason had called her.
My girl.
As the words warmed her, thrilled her, Tessa decided that they were the sweetest she’d ever heard.
While Lena slept in Reece’s arms and Tessa rang in the New Year on the dance floor, Molly was tangling the sheets of the queen-size bed in the Longworth guest room.
Caught up in the grips of a nightmare, she tossed and turned, tortured by images that shifted in and out of focus like a fun-house mirror, tossing back reflections that altered reality.
She was struggling up the side of a steep, rocky cliff. Although it was raining, she was clad in a flowing white nightgown so sheer, the streaming white moonlight rendered it nearly transparent. Icy raindrops stung her bare flesh like needles; her hands and knees became scraped and bloody as she crawled over the sharp stones of the path.
Behind her, she could hear the heavy footfalls belonging to the man who’d forced her into this dangerous flight. A man more than capable of chasing her to hell and back.
In the distance, the sun had begun to set into a vast expanse of ocean. Although the wind was blowing at gale force, she managed to stand up. She found herself teetering on the rocky edge of the precipice.
There was, finally, absolutely nowhere to go.
A gust of wind swirled upward from the cove below, threatening to blow her off the face of the earth. As she held out her arms in an attempt to balance herself, the man caught up with her.
He was dressed all in black; dark shadows obscured his face. As if conjured out of the air, a jeweled chalice appeared in his hand. He held it out to her, the gold skull ring on his left hand flashing in the slanting silver moonlight.
As if he’d stolen her will, Molly took the chalice between her palms and took a tentative sip. The bloodred wine tasted like vinegar in her mouth. She closed her eyes, swallowed and felt her stomach roil.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself looking into the face of pure evil.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.” Her words were whipped away by the cold swirling winds. “Now, and at the hour of our death…”
It’s too late to seek intercession. Although he hadn’t spoken the words out loud, they tolled in her head like a funeral knell. Too late. Knowing she was lost, she had no choice but to cling to her captor as he flew off the cliff, taking her with him to his dark kingdom beneath the sea.
As desperately as she struggled to wake up, Molly remained locked in the grips of the nightmare. The creature dragged her through a dark dank labyrinth, stopped before a granite slab and forced her to gaze down at the ghostly waxen face of a young woman lying dead on the cold damp stone.
“No!” Molly screamed as she recognized her sister.
Magic. That was all Tessa could think of as Jason drew her into his arms and finally kissed her the way she’d been yearning to be kissed.
“Happy New Year,” he murmured against her mouth.
“Happy New Year,” she whispered back. Twining her fingers together behind his neck, she smiled up at him as the band broke into a juiced-up rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.”
He grinned back down at her. “How about we blow this place and go downstairs to our room?”
“You got us a room?”
“I’ve always believed in planning ahead.” He put his hand on her bare back and began leading her through the crowd. As they rode down in one of the glass elevators, they could hear horns and the voices of merrymakers welcoming the New Year. But Tessa could barely hear them over the wild pounding of her heart.
The room was as spectacular as the rest of the hotel, but she scarcely noticed. Every atom in her body was focused solely on Jason.
“You have the most expressive eyes.” He drew her into his arms and brushed his lips against hers. His kiss teased, tantalized, tormented. When he finally drew the moan he’d been seeking, he pulled back, leaving her shaking in her high heels.
“Turn around.”
Tessa did as instructed.
He lifted up her hair and brushed his lips against the nape of her neck. “Did you know you have a little mole? Right here?”
Her heart hammered against her ribs when he touched the tip of his tongue to that small brown spot. “When I have enough money, I’m going to get it removed, but—”
“Don’t. It’s unique. And it draws a man’s eyes—and his mouth—to your neck.” He began slowly lowering the zipper on the dress. “I think, as luscious as your hair is, we’ll have to cut it short.”
The air conditioner was blowing on the exposed flesh of her back, making her shiver. “Don’t I have a say in the matter?” she challenged, striving for some balance in this fledgling relationship.
“No,” he said simply. With a flick of the wrist, he sent the dress skimming over her body to land at her feet like a black silk pool. “You can turn around again.”
Unable to deny this man anything, she complied. He stood there, for a very long time, studying her as if she were some exotic piece of art he was considering buying.
Her long-line black lace strapless bra dipped to the dimples at the base of her spine in back. With the bra, she was wearing a pair of thong bikini underpants and black nylons that ended at the top of her thighs.
“Your skin is like porcelain,” he murmured, tracing a finger along the top of the nylons, seeming entranced by the contrast between the ebony lace and her pale thighs. “But you’re cold.” He made a slow, lazy figure eight up the flesh on the inside of her right thigh, and repeated the gesture on her left leg. “Do I frighten you?”
His treacherous touch enervated even as it excited. “No.” Tessa didn’t tell him that it was his brother she found threatening. “It’s the air-conditioning.”
“I could turn it off.” He lifted his hand to his mouth, touched his tongue to his fingers, then skimmed the wet tips along the high-cut leg on her panties. “Or, perhaps we could find some other way to warm you up.”
A hot heavy moisture had gathered between her legs, soaking the jet silk crotch of the skimpy panties. “Oh, yes.”
Jason smiled at her breathless answer. Framing her flushed face between his palms, he kissed her again, a slow deep, drugging kiss that stole the breath from her lungs.
Using his body, he nudged Tessa toward the bed until the backs of her knees were pressed against the mattress. From there it took only the slightest nudge to send her tumbling.
“Absolutely exquisite,” he murmured with approval, standing there, looking down at her.
The satin spread was cool against her back, but his heated gaze warmed her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. She realized how wanton she must look, sprawled on her back, the white mounds of her breasts provocatively displayed in the long black push-up bra, her legs spread, her mound barely covered by the minuscule triangle of silk. But instead of feeling embarrassed, Tessa felt a surge of feminine power that such a handsome, rich man—a man who could have any woman he wanted—wanted her.
There was also something extremely erotic about being nearly naked while he remained dressed.
As her nerves heightened with anticipation, waiting for his next move, a foreign sound
captured her attention. She turned her head, saw the police helicopter passing by, and the erotic mood threatened to shatter.
“We forgot to close the curtains.”
“I didn’t forget. It’s more exciting this way. Knowing that anywhere in the city, someone with a telescope, or binoculars, or even a helicopter can watch us.”
Tessa had never considered herself an exhibitionist. But his words, crooned in that deep, almost hypnotic tone proved thrillingly seductive.
“Perhaps a television news helicopter will fly by,” he suggested as he reached down and ripped the scanty underpants away. “By this time tomorrow, bootleg videotapes of me ravishing you will be circulating all over town….
“I told Miles you were a natural redhead,” he murmured as he viewed the fiery curls that were glistening with diamond-bright drops of moisture.
“You talked about me that way? With your brother?”
“Of course.” He knelt down beside the bed, put his palms against her inner thighs and pushed her legs farther apart. “You’re so pink. And wet. Like a ripe piece of fruit.” He seemed to delight in the way she shuddered at his intimate touch. “Good enough to eat.”
His hands cupping her bare bottom, he lifted her up to his mouth. It was wonderful. Better than wonderful, Tessa thought as her eyelids, too heavy to stay open any longer, fluttered closed and her hands grabbed fistfuls of satin bedspread. It was sublime.
As his wickedly clever tongue delved deep into her hot core, and his teeth scraped at her clitoris, Tessa willingly, blissfully surrendered to Jason. Body, mind and soul.
Chapter Eight
Tessa frowned into the mirror surrounded by lightbulbs. Her lips were decidedly too full, her nose slanted just a bit to one side, and her skin, in this land of tanned bodies, looked as pale and translucent as skim milk.
“Or a ghost,” she muttered.
