Her sister’s piercing shriek tore through the house. “Meg!” She yelled, “Come quickly! It’s mom.” Meghan flew off the bed and raced out into the hallway to find her brother hovering around the door to her parents’ room. She rushed in to find her sister sobbing and hunched on the floor with her mother in her arms, not moving, not awake.
Meghan fell to the floor, almost crushing the bottle of pills that lay tipped over on the floor. “Go!” She yelled, reaching over to take hold of her mother and wiping her vomit-covered face with her sleeve. “Call 911!” she yelled, frantically searching for a pulse. It was there. Faint, and barely-there, but there.
“Mom,” she whispered, feeling as if the walls of the room had caved in around her. She could barely breathe, so tight was her chest. “Mom, wake up!” She couldn’t die. She couldn’t. She suddenly hated her mother for taking the coward’s way out.
At the hospital, later that night she sat by her mother’s bed, relieved that Aunt Cherie had come over to look after Jenson and Erica. Her mom was asleep, and the monitors showed promise. Meghan closed her math book. The formulae and theorems weren’t getting through. Weren’t sticking. Weren’t making sense. They were all jumbled up along with the visions she couldn’t shake; of the vomit, her mom’s face, the bottle of pills and her siblings screaming all over the place.
She wished she’d been the one to have found her mom, not her siblings. Almost teens, they were still children who should not have seen what they did.
“You should try to get some rest,” the nurse told her.
“I will.” But she couldn’t rest any more than she could revise this math gobbledygook. And Shaun wasn’t answering his phone. Arla would be studying too, and she didn’t want to disturb her.
She was due to sit for her math exam tomorrow but she couldn’t concentrate and it left her with only one option, with only one place to run to, with only one person to turn to. She got up, kissed her mom on her forehead and left.
In the falling rain she ran all the way to his place. The rain with all its wretched coldness soothed her, the water trailing down her face like fresh tears, soaking her clothes until they clung to her frame like cellophane.
She didn’t care, couldn’t feel, couldn’t think straight. Being with Lance made more sense and by the time she turned up at his place, she was soaked through to the bone. She stood on the doorstep, banging on his door, her hair falling over her face like wet spaghetti, her feet squelching in her sneakers.
Lance opened the door, his face twisting with worry. “I’m sorry for coming here,” she said, composing herself, still trying to keep it together, still trying to be strong, as she had been for her siblings, and her mom, as she had been while riding in the ambulance all the way to the hospital, cursing her father for the way he had so easily walked out of their lives.
“What is it?” he asked, and then she couldn’t hold it in any more. She fell into his arms, letting go, sobbing uncontrollably as she fell apart. He held her close, his hand closing around her head as he reeled her in closer, chest to chest, his heart beat rising and falling with hers until at last she calmed down. He smelled of wood, and pine and safe things and she didn’t want to move from this safe harbour. She lifted her head up, the water drizzling from her hair onto her shoulders.
“Tell me,” he said, lifting her chin gently with his finger then holding her face in his hands. He gazed into her eyes intensely causing electricity to shoot through her body, making her feel all kinds of crazy. “You’re soaked all the way through. Meg,” he whispered, his voice overflowing with concern and something else, something soft, like a lover’s caress. He stroked her cheek gently with his thumbs, and she reached for his hand and held his palm against her cheek.
Falling into Lance Turner’s arms was wrong, but it was the one thing she most needed right now. Standing this close to Lance Turner was wrong because her mind went to places she secretly visited in her dreams. Being in Lance Turner’s arms was forbidden but it was the only thing that made her feel as if things could get better. He truly cared, she could see that, it was in the way his fingers he wiped away her tears, and the way he held her, so close that his own clothes were damp. “What happened?”
“My mom…” Even saying the words, recalling the moment she’d walked in and found her mom, made her want to cry all over again.
“Meghan,” he said when she’d finished, and hugged her closer, holding her tighter, making her feel wanted in all the ways her eighteen year old body wanted to be held. “I have my math exam tomorrow,” she whispered. “My aunt came over to look after my brother and sister, and I was at the hospital by my mom’s side, trying to study and I couldn’t take it in. I’m sorry,” she said. She knew she shouldn’t have come here, that in doing so she’d overstepped a boundary somewhere along the way, but the hurt in her heart was so deep, it needed a caring soul, and Shaun wasn’t it.
She examined his face now, tried to read his expression, wondered if he felt what she did and before she could stop herself, she leaned forward and touched his lips with hers. She thought he’d been waiting for it, but his hands around her back fell limp. He pulled away then, stepped back, folded his arms, closed off. “We shouldn’t do this, Meg.”
It threw her. Losing the warmth and comfort. Getting back into reality. He didn’t mean it, she knew, could tell by that hungry look in his eyes, that haunted look on his face, that he was torn, that his words said one thing but his lips said something else.
“I need you,” she said, stepping towards him, because her heart and soul did need him more than she needed air to breathe. Her arms slipped around his shoulders, then snaked around the back of his neck. She smelled his desire, so potent, so heavy. His mouth brushed against hers, or maybe she stood on tip-toe and brushed her lips against his, it didn’t matter how it started because in the next moment their lips smacked together and she was lost in a soft, wet kiss that grew deeper, sensual and more sinful the longer they were locked together. It was so wrong, and yet not. She pressed against him, her hungry body yielding to his hard one and wanting more than just a kiss.
“We… can’t… Meghan,” he said, pulling away. He wore the haunted look of a man torn in two, as if he were cheating himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.”
“You didn’t,” she swallowed hard, her knees buckling, her brain short-circuiting as waves pulsed below her belly and fire pooled between her legs. She was desperate for comfort, for release, for him to be that release. She unzipped her sweatshirt, was about to take off her shirt when his hands grabbed her. And he stopped her. “We can’t do this, Meg.”
“I want to.”
“I can’t.” His voice was strangled, his words not making sense, not with that look in his eyes.
“Please, Lance.”
“It’s Mr. Turner.”
“But I thought…”
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
It was as if he’d slapped her. She stepped back, stumbled almost, while an icy fissure formed in her heart. The cry choked in her throat and held there. Hadn’t he heard what she’d been through? She was wet and cold, drowning in misery. And desperate. What was she supposed to do? “Please let me stay, at least until the morning. Please.” She stepped away, letting him know she wouldn’t go there again. To that forbidden place she should never have gone to.
Creases formed along his forehead. “I’ll get you a change of clothes, and you can sleep on the couch.” But it was a while before he moved away.
Chapter 12
There were times when he wished he’d never gotten mixed up with Meghan Summers. He’d been ecstatic at the thought of seeing her again but it was obvious that she was mad at him. He had to fix it. She didn’t know and he had to tell her because it wasn’t fair to let her think he’d walked out on her like that.
And this was how he found himself outside Meghan’s place of work a week later. He leaned against a wall and pretended to read a newspaper. It was a tactic which had helped a
nd one which he’d used successfully ever since the shooting incident had catapulted him to unwanted fame. Like an ill wind, it brought him unwanted attention; students and other professors at the campus still stopped to talk to him about it. Whenever he was out, he was still sometimes recognized even though the shooting had taken place weeks ago. He was no longer completely invisible and he wanted to be.
He would lower the newspaper, keeping an eye on the revolving doors of the building when, every so often, people would pour out. He caught the eye of a group of women who eyed him as they walked by, smiling at him, a flicker of recognition in their eager eyes. He pushed off the wall and walked away, not wanting to indulge in conversation.
By chance he caught sight of Meghan in the distance, walking away with a man by her side. He rushed off after her, a hard knot formed in his gut as he stared at the man she was with.
“Meghan?”
She turned around. “Lance?” Her mouth fell open. He noticed her hair, admiring the way she wore it now. It used to be straight and silky before, and now it had a gentle wave in it. The schoolgirl was gone, and in its place was a grown up beauty, looking as if she meant business in that smart dark suit she was wearing.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you both,” he said, sensing that the tall gangly guy she was with looked less than pleased by the interruption.
“Sorry, Vincent. I’ll see you back at the office,” she said to the man. He walked away looking none too pleased.
“Have you been stalking me?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know where I work?” Her voice was hard and unwelcoming.
“You told me where you worked.”
“I did?”
He nodded and knew he had less than a few seconds to get her attention. “I’m sorry for showing up like this but I had to see you.”
“Why?”
“To explain.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“I want to.
“I don’t want you to explain.” Annoyance took hold and he reached out for her arm. “That may be but you’re mad at me and you need to listen.”
She glared at him in disbelief. “I need to listen? I didn’t realize we were still in the classroom, Mr. Turner.”
“Lance,” he said, remembering a similar conversation from long ago.
“Lance?” She peered at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He could tell just by looking at her that she remembered that night, too. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re angry and I need to tell you something.”
“I’m over it now. Let it go.”
“You don’t look like you’re over it,” he said, refusing to give in. “You hate the sight of me. I don’t want this bitterness between us.”
“Why not? It doesn’t matter how we are now, does it?”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?”
“It would give me closure.”
“You want closure?” She snorted, fixing him with a stern look. “This has to be a joke. I’m not going to turn up on your doorstep again, in case you’re worried.”
“I’d be happy for you to turn up at my doorstep.” He’d revisited those memories more times than he cared to admit. “You’re pissed off, Meghan. I know your moods.” She raised her chin and held it there, fixing him with a gaze that made him uneasy. “I don’t think it a good idea to delve into the past.”
“But you need to know so that we can move on.”
“I have moved on.”
He swallowed. He thought he had as well but now, having seen her again, she had stoked something deep inside him, a longing that he had been forced to put to bed. She had stirred the deepest of desires in him, something that was impossible to ignore. Maybe it was the history they shared, or maybe it was because he had stopped himself in time, because he’d denied her the thing she had so badly wanted then.
It wasn’t closure he sought as much as connection. Even now, talking to her in this moment, it was there—that invisible force that vibrated invisibly between them. Seeing her at the street crossing had awakened it once again. Awakened it hard. As if he’d been hit, not by a bullet this time but by something as painful, and as sharp and as sudden. He grabbed her hands and looked into her mahogany eyes. “Tell me you don’t remember that night.”
She snatched her hands away. But she didn’t deny it. “Just give me this one chance,” he begged, “and then I’ll never hassle you again.”
She appeared to consider it. “We could go somewhere for a drink,” he suggested, before she could find a good excuse. “One drink, one conversation and you won’t ever hear from me again.” How could she refuse that?
“Coffee,” she replied, “At McDonald’s.”
Coffee, it was.
Chapter 13
She sat opposite him on the plastic red shiny seats and poured sugar into her coffee. Stirring it slowly, she marvelled at the surreal moment, that she and Lance Turner were sitting across the table and reconnecting as if they were old friends.
“I don’t have long,” she said, looking at her watch.
“But it’s past six. Weren’t you going home?”
“I’m working on something for a client. It’s going to be a late night at the office.” She cleared her throat, then silence grew long.
“Look, Meghan. I know it might have felt to you as if I vanished off the face of the earth.”
“You did vanish off the face off the earth. It didn’t seem like it. You did.” She lowered her head, remembering that time well.
Her boyfriend Shaun, soon to be her ex-boyfriend, hadn’t wasted any time in ruining her reputation. Thinking she would be at the hospital by her mother’s side, he had gone to the hospital with Arla the next day to be told that she hadn’t been by her mother’s side at all the previous night. And when she came clean and explained where she’d been and insisted that nothing had happened, he hadn’t liked it at all. She understood his rage for it didn’t look convincing. Shaun hadn’t wasted any time in spreading rumors around the school. It was just as well that this was her last term.
“You had your final term exams, Meg, and a lot was going on behind the scenes, a lot you weren’t privy to.”
She jerked her head up. “I suffered the humiliation and heard all the rumors. The likes of Tillie Collins had a great time, as did my boyfriend. I was there, not you. You went AWOL.” He pressed his lips together, not saying a word, looking guilty as hell.
“Principal Fielding called me in a few days’ after that night,” he said, finally. “He gave me a verbal warning and told me some students had reported that you’d stayed the night at my place. Things took a turn for the worse.” It could only have come from Shaun and no doubt Tillie Collins. That slut always had a thing for him and it wouldn’t have surprised Meghan to know that she might have given him sympathy and sex.
“And then you left? Like that, over a warning?” Did his career mean that much to him that he needed to have a clean slate? “You could have said something. You even returned my clothes while I was at school.”
He looked away. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to see you, you had your exams going on, and given your situation, I thought it would be best if I stayed away. If the Principal knew, then I was sure things were being said amongst your peers. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, to take the heat. Giving your clothes back to you at school didn’t strike me as being appropriate to do. Your aunt said your mom was recovering in the hospital and that she’d be home in a few days’ time. I thought it best to lay low.”
“Lay low?” She hissed.
“You didn’t need more complication in your life.”
“Who were you to decide what I did or didn’t need?”
“How is your mom now?” he asked, not answering her question. Probably because he had nothing else to say.
“She recovered, and we all lived happily ever after,” she replied dismissively, not wanting to talk about her mom.
“But your mom was okay?”
“Yes.”
Her mom would be furious if she could see her now. Lance Turner’s name was as bad as a curse word after her mom had pieced things together from what her friends told her. She’d believed the rumors and gossip over what Meghan tried to tell her.
She took a sip of coffee so that she wouldn’t have to look at him again, or notice the way he was looking at her. It was unsettling, sitting here opposite the man who had consumed so much of her life by not being a part of it, a man she’d built up into some mythical god and who, by his absence, had turned into something bigger than the man he really was.
It had all been emotional, a fantasy in her head and she often wondered if what had been in her head had also been in his. Sitting across from him, she tried not to see the man she’d become so emotionally wrapped up with all those years ago; the man she had stopped seeing as her teacher, and, somewhere along the way, had started to see as a friend, and maybe more. The man who had become woven into the emotional fiber of her being.
She stared at his scar again. He’d told her about it that time in the donut shop when they sat and talked for longer than they should have. Her mother had become suspicious then, because Shaun had come by and neither of them knew where she was. Lance had told her how he’d gotten the scar while trying to save his younger sister from hurting herself. He’d been around eleven years old, and was helping her to learn to ride a bike. It got to the point that she was confident enough for their dad to remove the training wheels and he’d been encouraging her to cycle forward and get over her fear of falling. She came towards him, then veered towards the fence and he rushed towards her, throwing himself in front so that she would land on him. But she fell with the bike, the bell hitting his jaw hard and sharp, slicing it.
“What stopped you from calling or getting in touch? Did you take off and leave the country?” She wanted specifics and grabbed her opportunity to get the closure she had so desperately needed. She felt like the lost 18 year old, with the hurt and abandonment as real now as they had been then.
Hot Silver Nights: Silver Fox Romance Collection Page 54
