A Marriage To Remember

by Cathryn Clare

  “I was the biggest one of all.”

  “And he took you in when your parents died?”

  “Is that what I told you?”

  She gave him a sharp look. It was obvious she’d always wondered about this. Or perhaps something in his account hadn’t jibed in that quick mind of hers.

  “You told me your grandfather adopted you when you were seven,” she said. “And that your parents were both dead. I guess I assumed—”

  It made sense to Ryder. “I probably wanted you to assume that,” he said. “The reality wasn’t very appealing.”

  Even with Jayne’s sympathetic, heart-shaped face so close to his, these things weren’t easy to think about, much less to say. He paused, those old feelings threatening to rise and swamp him again.

  “Ryder.” How could a woman’s voice be firm and sultry at the same time? He looked up and saw her frowning at him. “If you clam up on me now, I swear I’ll be very tempted to use this knife on you.”

  He looked down at the knife she still held. Some of his memories, at least, were crystal clear—like the solitary hours he’d spent working on that inlaid handle, hiding out in this cabin, trying to find someplace he could call his own between his parents’ on-again, off-again love and his grandfather’s stern sense of right and wrong.

  “Why did your grandfather adopt you?”

  She wasn’t going to let him out of it, he realized. He might as well just get this over with.

  “I think I was pretty much a mistake in my parents’ lives,” he replied. “Sometimes they enjoyed having me around, but mostly I was only in the way. They had a tendency to leave me with friends and just forget to come collect me again.”

  Like checked luggage, he’d often thought as a child. He’d long since learned to clamp down on the hurt of those old rejections. But Jayne’s eyes darkened with indignation as she listened to him.

  “How long did they leave you for?” she wanted to know.

  “Weeks. Sometimes months.”

  “Nick—”

  He shook his head at her instinctive protest. “They were the original party kids,” he said. “They lived to have a good time. I just didn’t fit into that lifestyle.”

  “So your grandfather adopted you to give you some kind of real home.”

  “He bought me from them.” This time he couldn’t keep his voice casual. “At least, that was how I thought of it when I was a kid. He tried not to let me know about it, but I found out he’d paid my parents off—settled a big chunk of his money on them in exchange for a promise that they would disappear from my life.”

  Jayne’s face was appalled. “And they did?” she said.

  “They had—expensive habits. Anything you could drink or snort or bet money on was like a magnet to those two.”

  He tried to keep his old anger out of his words, but his efforts didn’t quite work. There was so much tied up with these memories.

  There was his own misplaced but fierce love for those flamboyant, feckless people, his parents.

  And his childhood certainty that if he hadn’t been such a nuisance, they would never have left him behind.

  And his slow realization that if you wanted to be loved in this world, you had to earn the privilege. It wasn’t something that came naturally. It wasn’t a gift. It was a reward, something you got once you’d proved you deserved it.

  All those recollected tensions were gnawing at him now, making his gut ache again. He hauled in a slow breath and realized Jayne was reaching out a hand to cover his. He wanted to draw back—damn it, this was difficult enough without his feelings for Jaynie confusing things even more. But before he could move, her slender fingers were entwined with his.

  “What did your parents die of?” she asked softly.

  “My mother died of an overworked liver. And my father...” He paused, thinking of that charming, good-looking rogue who’d been so slick on the outside, but so weak when it counted. “I think my father died of lack of my mother,” he said. “They weren’t very good at behaving like adults, but they really did love each other.”

  And they hadn’t loved their son, despite their occasional giddy outbursts of affection. His grandfather’s love had been uncertain in another way. It had always been tied to how well Ryder could live up to his grandfather’s exactingly high standards.

  Love, he’d discovered early in his life, could be as sharp and dangerous as the knife Jayne was sliding back into its scabbard.

  She’d let go of his hand to do it. He could feel the loss of contact like a sudden cold draft on the mild evening air. He looked up into her face, half hoping to see that sympathetic light in her eyes again.

  To his surprise, she was looking almost pleased.

  “That explains it,” she said.

  “Explains what?”

  She snapped the sheath closed and set the knife on the bed between them. Even in the faint candlelight, the abalone inlay of the handle shone against the old red blanket he’d dug out of the closet.

  “It explains why we were so drawn together when we first met,” she said.

  “How did we meet, anyway?”

  “Greg Iverson introduced us. He was editor of the college newspaper, and I was a staff photographer. The two of you played on the baseball team together.”

  Ryder didn’t like the little twinge of jealousy that grabbed him at the mention of Greg Iverson’s name, not to mention this thumbnail sketch of Iverson’s all-round college career. Athlete, editor, law student, future governor of the state, no doubt—not to mention a suitor for the hand of the woman who was still Ryder’s wife.

  “I had done a photo layout, accompanied by an article I’d written about my mother’s death,” Jayne continued. “She drank herself to death over a period of about fifteen years, after my father was killed in Vietnam. Greg let me do a very personal piece about it for the paper. When you read it, you bugged him and bugged him until he finally introduced us.”

  Ryder could imagine Iverson resisting the idea. What man wouldn’t want to have a woman like Jayne all to himself?

  “We just—seemed to know each other somehow,” she said. “You always dodged my questions about your own family, but—I knew there must have been something that had taught you how it felt not to be able to count on anyone but yourself.”

  There were too many emotions shoving at Ryder now. He was thinking of that moment when he’d first seen her in his hospital room. He’d had exactly that feeling—that they knew each other, that somehow, without even hearing her name, he’d recognized her as a central part of his life.

  A temporary part, his mind told him. And Greg Iverson was standing in the wings, just waiting for Ryder’s exit.

  The strength of the possessiveness that suddenly swept through him took him by surprise.

  Maybe their marriage was over. Maybe it would all happen exactly the same way if he and Jayne were to do it over again. Maybe the uncertainty about love that had been ingrained in Ryder so early on just didn’t fit with what Jayne wanted from life.

  But right here—

  Right now—

  He needed to know that what he and Jayne shared—what they’d instinctively recognized in each other—was real.

  Even if it was almost over.

  The light from the clearing outside was faint and fading fast. From the floor at his feet, the single candle made a soft pool of golden light that seemed to join the two of them together in the midst of the shadows around them.

  Ryder couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t lead them into subjects he didn’t want to talk about. And he could see Jayne thinking hard, opening her mouth to speak. She was going to pursue this thread to its very end, he thought. She was so single-minded, so quietly persistent. He could almost hear her next question. He didn’t want to answer it.

  So he leaned forward and kissed her, instead

  Chapter 11

  He’d intended to stop with a kiss.

  After all, he’d managed to restrai
n himself yesterday, carrying her toward the cabin. And only this morning, even with the soft touch of her hands against his hair, he’d managed to sit through the haircut she’d given him without once betraying how his body was reacting to her nearness, the scent of her skin, her gentle fingers.

  Of course, yesterday he’d been nearly exhausted. And this morning they’d been out on the water, secluded for the moment but still visible to anyone on the river.

  Neither of those things applied now.

  Now it was just the two of them in this nearly silent, nearly dark cabin.

  And with the first touch of Jayne’s lips, Ryder could feel himself losing all control.

  He’d been certain her attention had been fixed on the questions she’d been asking him, and on the story that had emerged about his past, his family. But as his mouth met hers, he heard—or maybe felt—a throaty sigh that made him realize he hadn’t been the only one aware of how close they were sitting on the old rope bed.

  He threaded his hands into her hair and felt those short, soft strands falling over his palms. She was so delicate—when he ran his hands along it, her neck felt as slender, as elegant as a crane’s.

  But there was a strength in her that was impossible to miss. Ryder could feel it as he lowered his grip and clasped her closer to him. And he could feel it, too, in the way her tongue arced against his, enticing him, answering him.

  He had no conscious memory of what making love with Jayne Robards had been like. But his body was telling him very clearly that it was the kind of experience a man might happily die for.

  This is just a kiss, he told himself.

  He couldn’t stand to end it, though—not yet, not when the perfume of Jayne’s skin was surrounding him like an exotic genie let loose from a magic lamp.

  She was still wearing the lavender sweater she’d had on when he’d first caught sight of her in the doorway of his hospital room. Even with his eyes closed, Ryder could see the color of it. It was a pale copy of the deep violet of her eyes. And it was loose around the waistband of those tight, sexy jeans she’d bought for herself in Narvaez.

  He couldn’t resist the urge to slide his hands up inside the sweater. Her waist was so small he thought he could probably encircle it completely with his hands.

  He didn’t stop to find out. The feeling of her skin against his palms was driving him crazy. He glided higher, feeling the long curve of her rib cage, then the soft weight of her breasts. He rubbed one thumb over the tight nipple he could feel through her lacy bra, and heard that throaty moan again, quivering deep inside her.

  Every cell in his body was begging him to wrap both arms around her and carry her down with him onto the bed.

  But it’s just a kiss. Nothing more. Anything more spells trouble.

  He tried to hang on to the words, even as the sensation of her breasts growing taut under his hands had him feelings half-wild.

  “Jaynie—”

  There was a pleading note in his voice that startled him. He never pleaded, never wasted time wishing for dreams that were out of his reach. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

  The problem was, time wasn’t behaving itself these days. His recent past—everything that included his marriage to Jayne, his career, his arrest, his jail sentence—had vanished into the air.

  And the more distant past—the cabin, the forest, the lonely kid he’d been—all seemed very immediate. He was that lonely adolescent again, hungry for love and afraid to reach for it, aching for the heat and comfort of a woman’s touch.

  And not just any woman.

  It was this woman he wanted—urgently, desperately.

  And he’d already had her—and lost her.

  The thought of it was enough to push most of the remaining caution right out of his thoughts. How could Jayne imagine turning her back on anything as scintillating as the way their mouths knew how to tease and tantalize each other? Knowing how perfectly their two bodies fit together, how could she stand the thought of being apart?

  He was pleading with her to give this relationship a second chance, he realized. Or maybe it was himself he was pleading with. He didn’t know.

  He only knew that the longer he went on kissing her, the harder it was to think of turning back. The satiny warmth of her mouth was turning his insides to liquid fire. He was intensely aroused, yet each new swirl of Jayne’s tongue against his seemed to make the blaze burn a little higher.

  He wanted to take her right now, hard and rough against the pine boards of the cabin floor.

  He wanted to spend all night just savoring her sweetness, coaxing an endless waterfall of those sexy little sounds out of the back of her throat.

  He tried to say, We should stop ‘right now, and found he couldn’t make a sound. Jayne had reached up her hands and pushed them past the open collar of his polo shirt. The feeling of her gentle, knowing fingers against his collarbone was like throwing fuel on an already blazing bonfire.

  He couldn’t stand it any longer. Releasing her for a moment, he pulled the navy blue shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor. What was left of his conscious mind reminded him that the single candle was still burning down there. Scooping it up with his left hand, he reached behind him and set it out of the way at the foot of the bed where he wouldn’t kick it over.

  Jayne’s rapid breathing betrayed her own arousal more clearly than words. Her hands, once he’d freed her, had gone automatically to the row of little buttons at the front of her sweater. She’d undone the top few. But now, as Ryder turned to her, she paused.

  Her eyes were nearly black, her lips parted and rosy pink. Her words, though, held an undercurrent of doubt.

  “This isn‘t—going to turn out to be another dead end, is it, Nick?” He knew she was thinking of the morning in the Olde Maritimer, when he’d pulled back from her at the last moment. “I don’t think I could stand—”

  He took both her hands in his and kissed first one, then the other. Such small hands, he thought, and yet so sure and strong—like Jaynie herself.

  Then he let them go and took over where she’d left off with the buttons of her sweater, pushing them open to reveal the silken purity of her skin.

  “It’s not a dead end.”

  He didn’t tell her about the condoms he’d bought in the little beer and bait shop at the dock in Narvaez. With his face half-hidden by the sunglasses and baseball cap, it had seemed safe enough to show himself. He hadn’t exactly planned on this happening again, but only an idiot would have pretended it wasn’t possible.

  He was glad now he’d bought the protection. Like Jayne, he didn’t want a replay of the way his fears had come between them a couple of days ago.

  “I don’t know where this is leading,” he said. His voice sounded like a bear’s growl, he thought. And that was what he felt like—a wild animal, responding to wholly primitive urges that he couldn’t have denied if he’d wanted to. “But I do know one thing,” he added.

  He got the last button of her sweater undone and gazed in awe at the milky perfection of her skin in the soft candlelight. He ran a hand over her belly, her breasts, and felt her quiver as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

  “I don’t think I could stop this if someone was holding a gun to my head,” he finished, and leaned forward to kiss the base of her long, exquisite neck before pulling her arms free and tossing the sweater onto the mattress behind her.

  His choice of words wasn’t the best, he realized. He moved slightly away from her again and saw her eyes open, as though the dangers of the past few days suddenly threatened to crowd in on them again.

  But there was no danger around them now. There was only the velvet warmth of the deepening Florida night, and the sounds of the evening birds, and the quiet murmur of the breeze in the tops of the trees.

  This was a sanctuary, just for the moment. Jayne’s eyelids half closed again as she eased back into pleasure, silently telling him she felt the same way. They were safe. They were hidden.<
br />
  In each other’s arms, they were home.

  “Nick...”

  He loved the way she breathed his name. And the feeling of her fingers running through his hair. He loved everything about her, he realized suddenly, even the tiny, stubborn frown that hadn’t quite left her forehead as she spoke.

  “Why—why couldn’t you have been this honest with me—when we were still married?” she asked huskily.

  He didn’t have a good answer. Except the obvious one.

  “We are still married.” He could feel that spurt of possessive desire again, urging him to claim her as his own, to imprint her body with his loving so she could never truly belong to another man.

  He reached one hand behind her back and flicked open the clasp of her bra. His fingers seemed to know exactly how to do it, just as he knew exactly how she would respond when he lowered his head and kissed the hollow between her breasts as he tossed the scrap of lace onto the floor next to his shirt.

  Still, she seemed to be trying to cling to the common sense Ryder had long since abandoned. “I’ve spent such a long time—trying to convince myself that it’s really over between us,” she said.

  The little gasp in the middle of her sentence was prompted by Ryder’s tongue curling around the center of her breast. She was leaning back in his grasp, gripping his shoulders hard with her hands, fighting, he thought, for self-control,

  And losing.

  “Are you trying to convince yourself of that right now?” He spoke against the satin-smooth curve next to his cheek. He could feel her heartbeat pounding right through her body. It was like a muffled drumbeat urging both of them to go on, and on, and on.

  “No. Right now, I‘m—oh, Nick, that feels so good.”

  That was the way he’d gently captured her nipple between his teeth. He wanted to devour her, he thought, to absorb all her sweetness and strength and beauty into his own weary, battered body.

  As he turned his face against that seductive spot between her breasts again, she let go of his shoulders and leaned back on her wrists, opening herself wide to his caresses. Ryder eased himself toward her, and heard the old rope mattress give an ominous creak.