by Rachel Lacey
She tasted sweet, like whatever fruity punch she’d been drinking at the party. She nipped at his lower lip, and his dick surged against his jeans. Then his tongue was in her mouth, stroking hers, and his whole body was burning up for her. He was on fire in a way he hadn’t been in years, maybe not since he’d given her up back in high school.
She pressed closer, all the warm, soft parts of her pressed up against all the hard parts of him. Heaven. She felt like heaven in his arms. All those long, cold nights in the desert…he’d been so disconnected from the rest of the world. A lot of the guys turned to porn, but for Mark, it had always been Jess.
His fantasy woman. But his fantasies didn’t hold a candle to the real thing. Holding Jess in his arms, kissing her, he felt alive in a way he hadn’t in a long damn time.
“Mark.” Her breath whispered across his neck, driving a bolt of red-hot need straight to his dick.
He tightened his arms around her, wishing like hell he could touch more of her, but in that dress, all her best parts were completely off limits. Didn’t stop him from running his palms over her ass, so frustratingly covered in all that fabric and lace, and giving it a firm squeeze.
In response, Jess went up on her tiptoes, pressing her hips against his. They kissed until he’d all but forgotten where they were, until nothing existed but Jess, her hot, eager mouth and her body fitted against his like a second skin.
Finally, she lifted her head and gave him a dazed smile. “That was…wow.”
He had a feeling it had a lot to do with the magic they created every time they touched.
She gave him a funny look. “You have a little, um…my makeup is all over your face.”
That would make sense because her makeup was a mess. “Shit, Jess…I’m sorry.”
But she was laughing. “It’s okay. It was totally worth it.”
And now he was smiling too. Hell, yeah, it had been worth it. Kissing Jess was like fuel for his body. It filled him up and turned him on, gave him an energy and a vitality he didn’t feel any other time.
She reached up and dabbed at his cheeks, presumably cleaning up some of the makeup that had rubbed off on him. “Got most of it.”
“Yours is all messed up.” He rubbed her cheek, smoothing out the whisker marks in her white makeup. Around her mouth, it was almost completely gone. It added to the ghoulish effect of her outfit but also made it painfully clear what they’d been doing out here in the woods.
“Nicole’s makeup kit is in the car. If we can sneak over there without being seen, you can fix it for me.”
“Uh.” He had no fuckin’ clue how to fix her makeup.
“Just wing it. You’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t so sure about her makeup, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was recon work. Keeping to the shadowy back regions of the spa grounds, he ushered Jess into the parking lot through the woods without being seen. She grabbed a black bag out of the backseat of her sister’s car and rummaged through it, coming up with a white tube, which she handed to him.
“Something tells me you’re going to regret this.” He took the tube and squirted a small amount of the stuff onto his fingers. Hesitantly, he rubbed some of the white cream onto her skin. Okay, that didn’t look half bad. He smoothed makeup over all the areas he’d messed up while he’d been kissing her, trying not to think about the feel of her warm, soft skin beneath his fingers and how it made him want to kiss her again.
When he’d finished, she pulled out a pocket-sized mirror and inspected her reflection. “Not bad.” Then she opened a tube of pink lipstick and applied it to her lips.
When she turned to smile at him, she looked almost the same as she had before he’d kissed the daylights out of her back in the woods. Well, I’ll be damned.
“Let’s go get some food,” she said. “I’m starving.”
He nodded. Despite the sandwich he’d eaten earlier, he was hungry too. And the thought of spending more time with Jess made even the prospect of going back to the party sound bearable. He followed her across the patio, heading for the tables of food against the back wall.
He’d just zeroed in on a pile of sandwiches when he saw her, the blond woman from the deli. The woman whose presence made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end every time he laid eyes on her because he was more certain than ever that he was looking at the woman who’d given birth to him.
The woman who’d walked away and abandoned him when he was six years old.
But this time, it was his turn to walk away.
CHAPTER NINE
Who’s that?” Mark asked.
Jessica grabbed a ham and cheese slider and glanced over her shoulder at him. He was staring at the woman who’d brought the food. “She’s from the deli. I think her name is Sharlene.”
Jessica’s head was starting to pound, and she hoped food would help. She wanted to find a quiet corner to share with Mark and try to feel him out for where this thing between them was headed. She loaded up a plate and turned around, but Mark was gone, vanished somewhere into the crowd. A particularly vicious pain shot through her temples. He’d done it again. Kissed her and then shut down and bolted.
Goddammit.
“Your makeup looks funny.” Nicole stood in front of her, frowning. “You’ve got all this extra white paint on your left cheek.”
Jessica was glad for the heavy coat of makeup that hid the blush she felt creeping over her skin. “I, um, tried to touch it up.”
“Why? What happened to it?” Nicole narrowed her eyes. “Were you off kissing Mark again?”
“Why would you think that?” Exasperation laced her tone because how did her sister already know what she’d been up to with Mark?
“Because I saw him follow you into the woods, and you were gone a long time, and now your makeup is all messed up.” Nicole was grinning now.
“He was helping me fix a lightbulb.” Jessica sighed. “And yes, then we kissed, which was so stupid because now he’s run off again. Seriously, why am I such an idiot where he’s concerned?”
Nicole’s grin faded. “What do you mean, he’s run off? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. He was just here, and then he was gone. This happened the last time we kissed too, but apparently, I’m a slow learner.” Jessica took a big bite of her slider and tried to remember when she could take another pill for her head.
“Well, if I happen to bump into him, we’re going to have words,” Nicole said, heading off into the crowd.
But Jessica doubted her sister would find him because her suspicion was that he’d left the party altogether. Coward. How could such a good guy be so bad at relationships? And why did he have to be the one guy she had such crazy-hot chemistry with? The one guy who could tie her heart up in knots with a single touch?
Over the next few hours, she proved her theory correct because Mark never resurfaced. Not until she was cleaning up sometime after midnight did she find his mask, still hanging in the tree where he’d left it so many hours earlier, like Cinderella’s slipper left behind at the ball.
* * *
Sharlene.
With that one word, Mark’s whole world had shattered. It was true then. For whatever reason, his mother was here in Haven. Had she come looking for him, after all this time? Or had she forgotten him so completely that her appearance in town was totally unrelated to him?
His first instinct had been to bolt. He’d actually had the duffel bag on his bed and halfway packed before he realized how ludicrous that was. He was one-third owner of Off-the-Grid Adventures. He couldn’t just skip town. As solitary as his life still was, there were people in it now. People who depended on him and who he depended on too.
No, it was Sharlene who needed to leave. She might have given birth to him, but she was not his mother. Not anymore.
He slept like shit that night, haunted by dreams he couldn’t remember by the time he’d woken up the next morning, but they left him feeling restless. Off.
He couldn�
�t share this town with her. That’s all there was to it. With that decided, he drove out to the deli an hour before it opened and sat there, waiting. About thirty minutes later, he got lucky. A gray Honda Accord pulled into the lot, and Sharlene got out. She had on khaki pants and a navy jacket, her blond hair in a messy ponytail.
Mark stepped out of his SUV and intercepted her about halfway across the parking lot, blocking her path. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “Sharlene.”
She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. Her brown eyes widened. “Mark?”
“So you do remember.”
She swallowed hard. “I do. Of course I do. That’s why I’m here.” Her voice was low, scratchy, like a smoker’s. It stirred nothing inside him. A stranger’s voice.
And suddenly, he had no idea what to say. All the air had been sucked out of his lungs. His hands clenched inside the pockets of his jeans. She seemed to have been struck just as silent. She stared at him for several long seconds while a strange feeling of detachment descended over him.
Strangers. That’s all they were now.
“I had hoped…I’ve been trying to find the right time…” She raised her arms as if to give him a hug.
He stepped backward out of her reach. “There is no right time.”
She flinched. “You have every right to be angry.”
“I’m not angry.” Not anymore. In those first weeks after she left, he’d cried himself to sleep every night. His heart had felt like a raw wound in his chest. He hadn’t known it was possible for anything to hurt that much. The anger hadn’t come until later, and he’d directed it at his various foster families first. He’d yelled, pushed them away because they weren’t his real family and he’d so foolishly believed his mom would come back for him.
He’d waited for her for so damn long. By the time he’d finally realized she wasn’t coming back, he was an angry kid no one wanted, furious with the world and everyone in it. Eventually, though, even his anger had faded. And then, for a long time, he’d felt nothing at all.
Until Jess.
“You should be angry,” Sharlene said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I wish I could say that not a day has gone by when I didn’t regret what I did, but that’s not true either. For a long time, I thought I’d done the right thing for you, that you were better off without me.”
“I was better off without you.”
“Yeah.” Her face fell. “Maybe you were.”
A weighted silence fell between them.
Sharlene fidgeted with the strap of her purse. “Your face.” She reached up as if to touch the scar on his cheek.
He gave her a warning look, and she withdrew her hand. “Haven is my home now, but it’s not yours. You don’t get to just come back after all these years and pretend we’re still a family.”
“I know it won’t be easy, but I’ll do whatever it takes.”
He shook his head. His heart pumped ice through his veins, leaving him cold. Numb. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s too late. So do what you do best and leave.”
* * *
Jessica kept her eyes closed, despite the sleep mask that she wore at Mark’s suggestion. She wore special MRI-approved headphones that filled her ears with a playlist of all her favorite spiritual music. And while she could hardly meditate right now, she could almost forget—almost—that she was lying on a narrow board inside a big metal tube that clanged loudly enough to be heard over the flute music playing through her headphones while a machine took detailed 3-D images of the inside of her brain.
Not freaky at all. Nope.
Not going there. Sunshine. Rainbows. Puppies. Mark kissing every last thought out of her head night before last…Okay, strike that last one because Mark was a jerk and also thinking about kissing him made her horny, which was absolutely inappropriate in her current situation. Still, it kept her mind off her predicament, and really, anything that kept her mind off the fact that she was inside this tube…
Her eyes popped open, and thank God for the mask. All she saw was the faintly pink darkness it provided. Not being able to move was unnerving. Of course, she had an itch on her toe she was dying to scratch. The fingers on her right hand were starting to get tingly from lack of circulation. Her head ached. And now that she was taking stock of her discomfort, she needed to pee too.
She needed to move…couldn’t breathe…oh God, get me out of here!
She fingered the button they’d given her, the one that would stop the MRI and get her out of this tube right now. But if she pressed it, she’d have to start the MRI all over again another time, and she had to be at least halfway through already. She wasn’t a quitter, dammit. Squeezing her eyes shut, she drew in a slow breath and focused on her music, the calming notes of the flute…Mark’s lips on hers, his big, strong hands on her body, his iron shaft pressing into her belly. And phew, was it getting hot in here?
It was. It definitely was getting hot in here. Sweat beaded on her brow and trickled down into her hair. She wanted to wipe at it. She wanted to move, dammit.
And then she was moving. The board she was on was moving, she was almost certain of it. Sure enough, a few seconds later, she felt fresh air blow across her skin and then a hand touched her arm. Someone lifted the mask from her eyes, and she blinked up into the smiling face of the nurse who’d put her into this torture device some thirty minutes earlier.
“Okay?” she asked as she helped Jessica sit up.
“I am now.” Even if she was still gulping air like a fish out of water.
“You can get dressed now. Dr. Ledinski will call in the next day or two with the results.”
Jessica swallowed over the burst of butterflies in her stomach at what he might find. “Okay.” She climbed down off the table and headed for the changing area.
Ten minutes later, she was on her way to the spa. She hadn’t put in nearly enough time here this month. Between being sick and everything involved in finalizing the sale of the land, she’d been absent too much and not fully focused when she had been here. Luckily, her staff had been doing an awesome job in her absence, but it was past time for her to pick up her own slack.
“The numbers are in, and we had our biggest year yet,” Dana said as Jessica walked through the lobby. “Over five thousand dollars raised for the children’s wing.”
“That’s amazing.” Jessica paused, a smile on her face. The fact that her annual Halloween party also helped the pediatric wing of the hospital was just the icing on the cake, and five thousand dollars would buy a lot of new supplies for the kids. She could hardly wait to call her mom and tell her the good news.
“Everything go okay this morning?” Dana asked in a lower voice.
Jessica’s smile wilted. “Yeah. I mean, the MRI itself was…not fun, but it’s done. I’ll know the results in a day or two.”
“We’re all praying for good news.” Dana placed her hand on Jessica’s. “Just let us know if there’s anything you need.”
“Thank you, and really, you’ve already done way more than I could have asked for.”
The phone beside Dana began to ring, and she reached for it with a wave toward Jessica. “Don’t mention it.”
Jessica continued down the hall to her office to put down her bags and take a look at her schedule for the day. Her cell showed a new text message from Mark.
How did it go?
She fumed so hard her head started to pound. Oh, now he wanted to check in? He just vanished in the middle of a conversation two nights ago, right after kissing her, and not a word since, but now he cared? Well, screw him.
She shoved her phone into her desk drawer and went about her day. By lunchtime, though, her manners had gotten the best of her, and she texted back: Fine.
There. She’d answered his question. Let him wonder about the shortness of her response, if he even cared. Quite likely, he wouldn’t notice or hadn’t expected any more than what she’d sent. After all, it wasn
’t like he was beating down her door trying to open the lines of communication between them.
Frustrating man.
She powered through the rest of her day, fueled by sheer rage at her stupid body for being so weak these days and at Mark for being…well, for being himself. Whatever was causing the bone-crushing weariness that clung to her like a shroud could just kiss her ass. She didn’t have time to lie in bed all day. She had things to do. So. Many. Things.
She worked a full day at the spa and then met with a contractor for the resort project. She had three more contractors lined up this week, all providing quotes and mock-ups for her spa cabins. She was beyond excited to get this project started, but fear had started to snake its way in through her excitement. What if something serious was wrong with her? What if she had some kind of chronic condition—or worse?
This was not the time for a health crisis, not with the added expense of the mortgage on her new property and the small business loan she’d taken out to pay for the cabins. She dragged herself through her front door and closed it behind her, sucking in deep breaths against the fear suddenly flooding her system. Right at that moment, she hated living alone. She’d have given anything for someone to talk to, and yeah, she had a big, nosy family she could call on. Any one of them would come over at a moment’s notice. But the person whose company she was craving was more proof that she was losing her mind. Mark was the absolute last person she needed right now.
Only try convincing her stupid, naïve heart of that.
She pulled out her phone and checked her messages, but of course he hadn’t texted back.
CHAPTER TEN
Mark couldn’t think of anything but Jess. Had she gotten her test results yet? It was driving him absolutely crazy not knowing, and the waiting had to be even worse for her. Things at Off-the-Grid had slowed down a lot this week now that Halloween was past and the haunted zip-line had ended. They were still giving a fair amount of zip-line tours, and Mark had a survival skills class booked later in the week, but right now, this morning, he had nothing to do and too damn much on his mind.
