by Joanne Rock
“Hurry.”
He sheathed himself with the condom she’d set out, his hands nudging her belly and her thigh while he worked with the prophylactic. She braved a peek at him, her gaze eating up the rippled ab muscles as he positioned himself between her thighs.
Flashbacks to other times together flitted through her brain for a moment, but she closed her eyes to shut them out, not wanting to spoil this chance to be with him just for the pleasure of it. She’d fallen hard for him once, and that was more than enough, thank you very much. This time, she’d take all the sensual bliss, all the sizzle, without the heartache.
“Open,” he whispered, his breath warm against her skin as he brushed a kiss over her temple.
She inhaled deeply and edged one thigh higher as the hard, thick length of him slid over her core.
“Your eyes,” he clarified, kissing the closed lids. “Open them. Look at me.”
As she met his gaze, he edged inside her in perfect synchronization, so that by the time she’d dragged her lids all the way open, he was seated deep within her. He cupped her hip in one hand and cradled her jaw in the other, tipping her face to his. Her heart beat wildly, erratically, and she knew it wasn’t because of how good he felt inside her.
It was because opening her eyes felt like opening her heart, if only for a moment.
Slamming her lids shut again, she closed out everything but the feeling. That much she could have. That much she would take.
Jack let go of her cheek to bracket her shoulders, his fists on either side of her on the mattress as he found a rhythm that pleased them both. Too soon, the pleasure built all over again, rolling through her like a tidal wave, pulling her under as the release pulsed along her feminine muscles. Dimly, she felt him find his own satisfaction, and she wished she’d contributed more to help take him to that place.
Still, his shout of satisfaction reverberated through her, reassuring her that he’d been right there with her in those final moments.
At last, sated and boneless, she stirred up just enough energy to tug him down onto the bed beside her. His scent was as familiar as the feeling of being wrapped in his arms. She rubbed her cheek along his chest, savoring the warmth of his skin and the silky dark hair at the center of his pecs. For a few more days, she would soak up all she could of him. Or at least, all she could without allowing her heart to get tangled up in the mix.
Jack Murphy had never wanted all she’d been ready to give him. So now she would dole out only this one small piece—the sexual side of her that he’d coaxed to life for the first time with his own two hands. Was it any wonder she fit so well with him when he’d been the man to take her virginity?
This time, she would simply enjoy what he had to offer. And when the day came to say goodbye in Maine, she would be the one to do the walking.
5
JACK HAD BEEN IN THE military long enough to know a battle line when he saw one. And Alicia had drawn hers clearly for him the night before when she’d closed her eyes and shut him out, broadcasting her intent to keep him at arm’s length even when he was buried heart-deep inside her.
While he wasn’t surprised, per se, he’d been…rattled. Okay, maybe a little stung. For four years, he’d remembered her the way she’d been when he’d left for officer candidate school in Newport. Back then, Alicia had been crazy about him, wearing her heart on her sleeve as she’d pulled him into her world. There was a coolness about her now that he imagined came from more maturity, at least in part. But he mourned the loss of that effusive, affectionate woman she’d been.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye the next afternoon as she sat on the forward deck, soaking in the late-summer sun while she worked on more notes for the bed-and-breakfast she planned to buy. That damn inn of hers. This morning, she’d shown him half-a-dozen photos and diagrams of the place. She had layouts of the existing structure with overlays of the additions and changes she wanted to make in five years and ten years.
What could he say when he’d been floored by her meticulous planning? Obviously, the place in Bar Harbor was about more than escaping him and Chatham. She truly had big plans for this project. But it was tough to share the enthusiasm when he thought she should open an inn back home where she had family to watch over her. Where he could be sure she didn’t run into any trouble.
“Do you think we’ve reached the coast of Maine yet?” she asked him suddenly.
She shaded her eyes with one hand to study the green hills and beaches on the shore. Her hair bobbed in a loose knot at the back of her head, a few stray pieces escaping because of the constant breeze.
“No. We got a late start this morning, remember?” He checked the horizon for oncoming boats and set the self-steering mechanism so he could join her on the forward deck.
They’d showered together upon waking, an activity that had further depleted the condom resources and caused them to linger in bed for over an hour afterward. While Alicia had been as sweetly responsive physically as she had been the night before, she also held something back from him. If he didn’t know her so well, he probably wouldn’t have recognized it.
“I remember.” She grinned at him over the sketch pad. “Are you fishing for compliments on another stellar performance?”
Dropping onto a seat cushion beside her, he tugged the paper from her hands and set it aside, weighing it down with a heavy picture book about Bar Harbor so her work wouldn’t blow away.
“Hardly. But if your recall is faulty, I’m more than happy to refresh your memory.” He figured his odds of bringing her back home to Massachusetts with him increased each time he undressed her.
They hadn’t discussed what the night before meant, and he wasn’t eager to press her for a commitment. Yet. But being with her again made him realize that’s what he was aiming for.
For now, he would concentrate on taking down her barriers whenever he wasn’t taking her. He trailed a finger down her arm, her skin sun-warmed through the gauzy white blouse she wore over a turquoise-colored tank top. Her denim cutoffs were so short the pockets peeked out from the frayed edges, displaying lean, tanned legs tucked underneath her on the seat.
“Your generosity knows no bounds.” Unfurling her legs, she stretched out in the sun. “But since we’re falling behind, I wonder if we should move out deeper into the ocean. We could make better time.”
He let go of her shirt, sensing a battle of wills brewing.
“Safer for us if we hug the coast.” Why take chances with her? “It’s a big, unwieldy boat for one person. We might as well take it easy and arrive in one piece.”
She frowned. “You weren’t concerned about the size of the boat that first night when I woke up in the middle of the Atlantic.”
“I didn’t know you were on board.”
“So you’ll take chances with yourself, but not with me.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Folding her arms across her midsection, she stared hard at the coastline, a furrow in her brow. “I can’t imagine how you got the mistaken impression that I’m some fragile flower—”
“I don’t think—”
“—because I can’t picture many of your other girlfriends playing football with your brothers.” She cast him a dark look, the wind catching tendrils that escaped the knot in her hair. “Or personalizing a weight-lifting program to maximize power on the breast stroke. Oh, and were you aware that I am certified to teach water sports?”
“Then I’m sure you’re familiar with survival statistics for capsized crafts with visibility of the coast versus those that are out to sea.” He wouldn’t budge on this point.
“Didn’t we agree to share steering on this boat?” she reminded him. “That means I can weigh in on decisions about the voyage.”
“With the understanding that, as captain, I reserve the right to pull rank when necessary.”
“You realize you run the risk of me jumping overboard to swim ashore if I think I’m going to be even a moment late
for my appointment with the owner of the bed-and-breakfast?”
Something in her voice warned him she wasn’t kidding.
“This isn’t the Vesta, Ally. It’s one thing to sail in a boat you know inside and out. But I’d never been on this tank until two nights ago.” He slapped a palm against the decking around the hot tub. “I don’t know how it reacts in a storm or big swells, so why push our luck? Besides, we’ve got plenty of time to get there.”
“You’re not just delaying, to try and talk me out of buying the bed-and-breakfast?”
If anything, he would have delayed to spend more time with her before she hightailed it out of his life for good. But that didn’t take away from his primary reason for hugging the coastline.
“You’re really jazzed about this place, aren’t you?” He reached behind her to retrieve the notebook she’d laid aside, checking the horizon for water traffic before returning his attention to the diagrams and lists she’d made.
“I’ve worked hard to afford something that’s all mine.” She peered over his shoulder at the main drawing of the inn, as if she couldn’t see it often enough. “I really thought Keith would help me finalize the business plan on this trip. That’s the reason I agreed to let him take me to Bar Harbor.”
If Jack had had that kind of enthusiasm for his father’s resort complex, he’d still be a part of the family company.
“I never knew it was so important to you to start your own business.” He turned toward her, reassessing her yet again.
“Turns out there was a lot we didn’t know about each other.” She met his gaze and he could see the wheels spinning behind those pretty brown eyes. “For instance, I had no idea you harbored a deep-seated need to serve in the military. When we used to talk about a future, it never came up.”
Ah, crap.
Words escaped him. He should have known she’d bring it up sooner or later, but he hadn’t considered what—or how much—to say.
He must have taken too long to decide because she turned away again, her eyes fixed on the shore. “Never mind. There are some mysteries destined to remain in the cold-case file, I guess. Your need to serve your country seemingly overnight will have to be one of them.”
Overnight? Hell, it hadn’t felt that way to him. But then, he’d tried to keep that part of his life away from Alicia to protect her. Maybe that had been a mistake. One thing was for sure. If he continued to keep his secrets, he’d have no chance of talking her into coming back home with him.
FURIOUS AT HERSELF for asking Jack about the past, Alicia shaded in her latest sketch a little too hard, digging into the paper with the pencil instead of darkening the roof of a converted carriage house she hoped to repurpose into a honeymoon suite for her guests.
Hadn’t she told herself that she was going to keep things simple with him this week? But no. She had dared to ask Mr. Closed Mouth about his navy stint, and had felt him raise his shields as if he were the USS Enterprise.
“Remember when the terrorist group claimed responsibility for kidnapping those two female journalists? It was around Valentine’s Day the year I enlisted.” Jack’s voice seemed to be speaking a different language for a minute as her mind grappled with the fact that he was actually sharing something with her.
Slowly, she put down her pencil.
“Christina Marcel and her camerawoman.” Alicia remembered the two of them perfectly. The war in Iraq had been at a low point, with casualties in the news every day. Even abroad, there had been incidents, with different groups claiming retaliation against the U.S. for their role in the fighting. “Christina wasn’t that much older than me.”
The news had been all over campus at Boston College. The journalists were from New York, but they’d worked for a station that broadcast to the Boston area. Marcel and her colleague had been held six weeks before being let go. But at the time, many other prisoners had been brutalized and killed, often in front of rolling cameras, to the horror of their families back home.
“Christina is our cousin.” Jack’s green eyes were haunted and murky.
The pencil rolled off the sketch pad and onto the deck while Alicia tried to absorb the news.
“What do you mean? How?” The questions didn’t make sense, but neither did what he was saying. He was related to that woman and had never told her?
The whole country had been glued to their televisions as they worried about the kidnapped journalists. Why wouldn’t he mention a connection?
“My mother is from an extremely wealthy New York family. Most people don’t know her background because she eloped with a poor kid from Brooklyn and her family disowned her.” Jack flexed his fingers before fisting them. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Plus, Christina doesn’t share her dad’s name, since her mom didn’t marry her father. Anyway, it’s not common knowledge that she’s related to a wealthy family—not her New York clan nor her relationship to the Murphys. We were advised to keep that connection a secret, since her captors might have increased their demands if they’d known about us. Not that we wouldn’t have paid, far from it. But the government advised us not to let it be known that she was potentially a very valuable prisoner.”
Alicia’s mind reeled with the picture she was beginning to form. Jack’s family had been a part of some international horror and she hadn’t even been aware of it. His thoughts had been on a kidnapped girl overseas while she’d been whining that he’d missed another one of her swim meets.
“Your family kept it a secret.” It wasn’t just Jack who’d withheld the information then. His whole family had been trying to comply with a hostage negotiation. “I wish I’d known,” Alicia said softly. Then once again realized that was probably the selfish thing to say. “That is, I would have been more supportive. All those trips overseas for your father’s business…”
“Some of them were for business, but several were to meet with people we thought might be able to help free Christina. Traveling for the company was an easy cover and my brothers and I took turns trying to urge various businesses and governments to get involved with demanding her release. We tried to keep it low-key so no one realized our personal interest. But almost right away, my brother Daniel decided to put on a uniform and go make peace the old-fashioned way.”
Jack stood and moved toward the helm to make a few adjustments to their course. Alicia used the time to peer around at the quiet, calm water. Her insides were anything but.
“He convinced you to join, too?” She tried to remember what she and Jack had talked about during those months when he’d had all of this weighing on his heart.
And while she regretted not being more supportive during such a trying time, she couldn’t help a stab of resentment that he hadn’t trusted her with any of it. She’d felt like part of his family. But she hadn’t been allowed into the fold with the most important Murphy affairs.
“No. He never asked me to join. You know what a rebel he is. He just made the decision and never looked back. But while Ryan was off learning the family business, from the inside out, my part in Murphy Resorts was smaller and I didn’t enter the business until a few years after him. So I was the stand-in oldest brother for a long time. Maybe that’s why it felt wrong to watch Danny go to war while I—”
“Stayed home and went to my spring formal.” Alicia shook her head, the last few strands coming loose from the twist in her hair. “No wonder my world seemed so juvenile to you.”
She’d just qualified for the women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association swim championship in three events that year. She’d been a junior captain on a team full of promising talent. But damn it, she would have been more understanding about Jack’s decision if he’d given her any inkling of what had been going on in his world. After finger combing a few snarls from her wind-tousled hair, she tied it into a low ponytail.
“Never.” He didn’t return to the foredeck, remaining in the captain’s chair. “I looked forward to being with you and not thinking about what was
going on in the family. Christina’s capture stirred up a lot of old resentments between my dad and my mother’s family. Chrissy’s mother was the only one my mom had any contact with—we’d met her family a few times. And my mother was stressed because her efforts to reach out to the rest of the relatives were rebuffed. Then Danny…”
“What?” She knew the least about Daniel Murphy. She’d gotten to know the patriarch, Robert, and his oldest son, Ryan, through her internship with Murphy Resorts. In high school she’d been in the same class as Kyle and Axel, so she’d witnessed their rise to hockey stardom in college and then in the NHL. Keith had been so friendly at family gatherings that he’d been easy to get to know. And of course, she’d fallen head over heels for Jack.
But Danny Murphy remained a mystery other than his stint with a rock band that had gone on to achieve fame and fortune without him. Also, that he’d taken a navy contract the same day Jack had.
“He was crazy about Christina’s journalist friend, the camerawoman who was taken in the kidnapping.”
Alicia tried to process what that meant. “He didn’t think he’d…save her?”
Both hostages had been returned safely six weeks after they’d been taken. But no doubt those weeks would have been harrowing for someone close to the captives.
“No. If anything, we knew we’d be farther from the negotiations if we entered the service, but Danny was going nuts thinking he wasn’t doing enough.” Jack scrubbed a hand through his dark hair, his gaze a million miles away even though he stared at a yacht cruising out to sea just ahead of them. “He said he’d always felt called to serve, and if he didn’t answer the call then, he’d never get out from under the family business to make it happen.”
She could see that argument resonating with the younger man Jack had been.
“And you realized you felt the same way.”
