by Nalini Singh
She burst out laughing. "I can't believe you said that."
"I thought I was being nice. Then again, you're the only one I'm ever nice to." His chuckle was sinful enough to curl her toes. "I won't have time to change so she'll have to take me as I am."
She bit her lip, then pushed on bravely. "You're very sexy as you are."
A short silence. "You can't say things like that to me when I'm in the middle of drafting a memo. I think I just misspelled the client's name." His voice was husky, holding echoes of the pleasure they'd found in each other's arms the night before.
"Come home for lunch," she whispered, scandalized at herself. Who was this woman enticing her husband so boldly?
Caleb groaned. "I have a meeting way out in the suburbs at one o'clock."
Disappointment nipped her flaring sensuality in the bud. "I'll see you around six-thirty, then?"
"Bye, sweetheart."
* * *
When the bell rang a little before twelve, she didn't think anything of it. Walking to the door, she opened it, expecting a deliveryman, and gasped in surprise as Caleb pushed inside. "I have twenty minutes before I have to leave for the meeting." He kicked the door shut and kissed her. Hard.
Moaning into his mouth, she didn't protest when his fingers went to the top of her sweatpants. Her body had gone from cool to blazing hot in the space of two seconds. He pushed down her panties at the same time as her sweatpants and broke the kiss barely long enough to bend down and whip the garments off her feet.
Rising, he ran his hands up the backs of her thighs to her buttocks. She wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him as he lifted her and pressed her against the wall. When he didn't move fast enough for her, she grabbed his face and brought his mouth to hers for a kiss, so hungry for him that she wanted to scream. There was no room for fear or inhibition. Everything was happening too fast. She bit at his lower lip and felt him jerk.
His hand slipped over her stomach and then his fingers were stroking her with raw intimacy. Hard and fast, it was propelling her over the edge. When he drove two fingers deep inside her, she screamed, her hands clenching on his shoulders. "Caleb!"
His fingers left her and, a second later, she felt the blunt tip of his erection pushing into her. "You're so hot, sweetheart. So damn tight."
She couldn't speak, her body starting to shudder even before he was completely inside her. Groaning, he entered her fully. That was all it took. She orgasmed so violently that she saw stars. With a shout, he began to rock in and out of her, his movements powerful and strong. But a part of her was aware that he held her carefully even in his passion, never letting her slam into the wall. And then even that measure of thought was lost and she became a creature of sensation and pleasure.
* * *
He nuzzled at her and kissed the beat of her pulse before raising his head. When their gazes met, she saw such joy that she was stunned. Smiling, she leaned forward and rubbed her nose against his in a silly affectionate gesture. He chuckled, his hands sliding to hold the backs of her thighs.
"You have—" she glanced at the hall clock "—twelve minutes left to shower and eat." She couldn't stop stroking his body, his face. He was so dear to her and at last he was treating her like his wife, his woman, one who could take everything he had to give.
All this time she'd concentrated on the pain that would come if she ventured outside her protective walls. Today she'd been shown the flip side—endless pleasure and the most incredible happiness.
He groaned and started to pull out, releasing her legs as he did so. When they were finally extricated, he kissed her and said, "Shower?"
Her eyes went wide. "I'll make you late." But she put her hand in his and let him lead her to the bathroom off their bedroom.
Once there, he tugged off her sweater and unclipped her bra while she worked feverishly to pull off his tie and undo the buttons on his shirt. It took them maybe a minute to get naked and under the shower, the cool spray a crisp relief to their overheated bodies.
"Eleven minutes." Caleb picked up the soap.
Before he could touch her with it, she took it from him. "You're the one who needs to hurry." She lathered up her hands and returned the soap. "I'll do your back." She forced herself not to linger over her self-appointed task, though she wanted to luxuriate. This was not how she'd thought her fantasy would play out but it worked for her. "Done."
Instead of turning off the water, Caleb looked at the waterproof watch strapped to his wrist. "Eight minutes. I have time." And then he started to torture her.
She wondered how she could possibly want him again after the heat that had singed her in the hallway. His hands, soapy and slick, were everywhere. When they slipped between her thighs to bring her effortlessly to her second orgasm in under twenty minutes, she felt her legs turn to jelly.
"Done," he rasped as she collapsed in his arms, the water pounding at them. "Six minutes."
She made herself turn off the shower with sheer strength of will and got out. Rubbing herself haphazardly with a towel, she grabbed the robe at the back of the door. "I'm going to warm up something for you to eat."
He tried to catch her as she whipped out but she laughed and escaped him. The last thing she saw as she ran from the room was the sight of his glorious body shiny with clear droplets of water, his hair tangled and wet.
Three minutes later, he walked into the kitchen dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie almost identical to what he'd been wearing earlier. His grin was wicked. "If I return to the office looking too different, people might wonder what I've been up to."
She felt her cheeks heat up. "Eat. It's nothing special but it'll fill you up."
He came around the counter and stood beside her, eating quickly as she found an insulated travel mug and filled it with hot coffee, screwing the lid closed. "For the road." She put it in his hand as he finished the meal in record time.
They were at the door five seconds after the twenty minutes had passed. Unable to resist, she reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed the life out of him. When she drew back, red streaked his cheekbones and there was a spark in his eyes she'd never before seen. Her Caleb was starting to come home to her in more ways than one.
"Hold that thought," he whispered, backing out the door.
"I'll be waiting." She watched him until he'd pulled out of the driveway. A huge grin creased her face as she closed the door. She couldn't believe what she'd just done. Not only had she had the fastest, most furious sex with her husband, she'd showered with him. Two fantasies taken care of in twenty minutes. Not bad. Not bad at all.
* * *
She was waiting for Caleb to pick her up for the ride to Ada's when he called. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I've got to stay at the office."
Disappointment deflated the lingering joy from their lovemaking. "I'll go alone, then."
"No, you won't. I keep my promises." His voice was caressing. "I got us off the hook. We're not due at Ada's until Sunday, now. Together."
A slow smile whispered across her face. "How did you manage that?"
"By lying creatively," he said, unrepentant. "I'll try to be home by nine."
"See you then." She hung up the phone feeling very good about her marriage. Not only was Caleb learning to let go of work a little, he was starting to learn her. She hadn't missed the fact that he was working late once again. But he'd taken off Monday to be with her, so he was probably playing catch-up.
She understood what his work demanded of him at times. That was part of the reason she wanted something of her own. Aside from giving her a sense of pride, it would provide her with something to hold on to when Caleb's devotion to his work pushed her aside.
And if, deep down, there was a niggling voice worrying that maybe her husband wasn't busy with work at all but something, someone, else, she buried it under so many layers of denial that she managed to convince herself it had ceased to exist.
* * *
On Friday night, Vicki a
ccepted that she'd made a colossal mistake. It was 3:00 a.m. and she'd just heard the sound of Caleb's car through the autumn rain. He'd worked late every single day since their wild lovemaking in the hallway, apparently taking her calm acceptance of that first late night as a free pass to go back to his workaholic ways.
She'd finished several memos for Heart during the time that she'd waited up for him. Now, she walked into the kitchen, poured coffee into two cups and carried it into the living room. The location was a deliberate choice on her part. Their new and vibrant sensual connection had had an unexpected side effect. Caleb was a very sexual man and she'd been starving for him for too long to ever deny him. As a result, too many of their problems were being buried under the blazing fire of their lovemaking.
"Vicki?" he called out as he walked through the back door, obviously having seen the light.
"In here." Shifting several magazines to the side of the coffee table, she wondered how she was going to broach the subject without creating a huge fight. Sounding like a nag was the last thing she wanted to do but this was important, both for her and for their child. As she'd told Caleb, she refused to have their baby feel like an unwelcome obligation.
However, her priorities changed the second he walked in. She knew something was terribly wrong. It wasn't because his suit was wet from the rain or that his hair looked wildly tumbled as if he'd been running his fingers through it. It was the bleak look in his eyes. The only time she'd seen him look that way was the night he'd inadvertently revealed his pain at the way she'd kicked him out of their home.
"What's happened?" She walked over to help him with his coat.
He let her hang it up before collapsing on the couch. She sat down next to him, worried. "Caleb, honey?"
"I'm just tired." He stared at the wall opposite the sofa but she knew he wasn't seeing the painting hanging there.
"No," she said, cupping his jaw with one hand and turning him to face her. "You don't get to do that anymore."
"Do what?" He raised his hand to hers but didn't pull her away.
"Keep secrets that cause you pain." She shook her head in reproval.
"You don't need to be stressed right now. I don't want anything to hurt you."
His tenderness broke her heart. How could she not keep sinking deeper in her feelings for him? "You know what hurts me the most? Being shut out of your life. Don't do that to me, Caleb. Not again." Her voice trembled with the intensity of her emotions.
Looking at her with eyes clouded by unknown demons, he opened his arms. She tucked her body against his and held him. Would he speak to her? Would he take the next step in this new relationship they were building? A relationship of equals, where she took as much responsibility for him as he'd always taken for her.
"Two days ago," he began to explain, "a huge deal we've been working on for almost a year started to come apart at the seams."
"What happened?"
"Maxwell is our client. Horrocks the buyer. We were almost to the signing stage when Horrocks discovered a major discrepancy in the financial reports provided by Maxwell during due diligence."
She'd read enough business journals to appreciate the scale of the problem. "Horrocks is refusing to sign?"
"More than that, they're accusing Maxwell of deliberate subterfuge."
Vicki knew that Caleb was an absolute perfectionist in his work. He would never do anything underhanded. "Did someone on the Maxwell side let you down?"
"Not deliberately. It was basically a massive cock-up on the part of their chief financial officer and his staff." He sighed and dropped his chin onto her hair. "Did you see the paper today?"
"No, I didn't have time." Warned by his tone, she walked over to the side table where she'd put the paper after it had been delivered and carried it back to him.
Caleb took it from her and waited until she was sitting with him again before opening it to the front page of the business section. What he saw still made his stomach churn. "Respected Law Firm Fumbles Billion-Dollar Buyout," he read out, feeling his dreams collapse.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. "You know you didn't fumble it. Is the deal still alive? Have you got something to work with?"
He dropped the paper onto a cushion. "Barely. If we can't get Horrocks to agree to give Maxwell time to clear up this issue, it really will gurgle down the drain."
"The fault was Maxwell's, not yours."
"No. It was ours. Maxwell is our client and we should've picked up this problem." He refused to go easy on himself.
Victoria slapped his shoulder, making him look down at her scowling face. "You're a lawyer, not an accountant. These are financial problems."
"Callaghan & Associates was in charge of the overall deal from the Maxwell side. We were paid to ensure everything went smoothly." Taking her hand from his shoulder, he kissed the tips of her fingers. "If we don't rescue this deal, the firm will begin to hemorrhage clients. The end."
Her eyes flared. "If it comes to that, we start over, even if that means I have to be your secretary." She smiled. "No regrets."
A weight lifted off his chest. A small part of him had worried that she'd welcome the closure of a firm she saw as a rival for his attention. "No regrets?"
"Never."
He thanked God for her. One of his associates was already feeling the pressure from his socialite wife—she wanted assurance that she'd be kept in the style to which she'd become accustomed.
Vicki stroked the line of his jaw. "I have every faith in you. You'll succeed. Can I do anything to help?"
"Thanks, honey, but unless you can convince my clients not to cut and run before we fix this, it's up to me and the team."
"Hmm." Vicki tapped her mouth with one finger. "I have an idea."
"Should I be worried? The last time you had an idea, I spent two months living in a hotel."
The words were out of Vicki's mouth almost before she'd thought them. "Yes well, I had a little help in that from you." She knew it was the worst possible time to bring this up but it was out of her control—some switch in her had inadvertently been thrown by his flip comment.
"I wasn't exactly a prize husband, huh?" He grimaced. "But we're doing okay."
"Are we really?" Why was she doing this now? she thought, horrified at the destruction she was about to instigate. She'd thought she'd put this issue in the past where it belonged but that had obviously been a huge lie, a final remnant of the self-protective shell she was so used to living in. "We promised no more secrets and yet…"
"You think there's something else we need to clear up?" There was nothing but concern in his voice.
"We've never talked about Miranda." The words fell like grenades between them. At the same time, a sweeping sense of relief washed over her. Until she'd spoken, she hadn't realized the pressure that had built up inside of her.
"Miranda? What the hell does she have to do with anything?"
The complete lack of understanding on his face made a sick feeling crawl through her stomach, curdling the relief. Either Caleb was flat-out lying to her, or she'd made a terrible mistake. And Caleb wasn't a man for subtleties—there was no way he could have counterfeited his confusion.
Suddenly, comprehension swept across his expression. "Goddamn it, Vicki!" He thrust his hands through his hair. "I can't believe what I'm seeing on your face. Say the damn words."
It was too late to back away. Far too late. "I knew our marriage was in trouble for a long time," she said, "but the reason I decided to ask for a divorce was because I thought you were having an affair with Miranda." It had been the proverbial straw that had broken the camel's back … broken her. Infidelity was the one thing she couldn't take, perhaps because of the guilt she'd always carried on her mother's behalf.
His eyes grew hard with anger. "Why?"
She knew he deserved answers. "You were always at the office late and when I called, she'd answer and say you couldn't come to the phone."
"That was enough to convict me?" His tone was c
lipped and he didn't touch her.
She wondered if, after everything they'd done to repair their marriage, she was going to lose him because of her own stupidity. The idea of never being able to hear his laughter felt like a knife to the soul.
Pushing back the fear, she looked straight into his eyes. She had to confront this head-on. She was no longer that woman who'd tried to bury her pain and keep going with a marriage she'd believed had been betrayed … without once asking Caleb if he'd done what she'd judged him guilty of.
"No. I mean it made me suspicious—we both know I wasn't the most confident of women then."
"Vicki," Caleb began, a frown on his face.
"Let me finish," she begged. "I can't do this twice."
"Talk." When he raised his arm and slid it along the back of the sofa, his fingers touching her nape, the relief she felt was almost crushing. Caleb's touch was her anchor when everything else spun out of control.
"Then you went on that trip to Wellington four months ago and she went with you. Remember?"
"Yes." Of course Caleb remembered. In nearly five years of marriage, it had been the first time he'd left his wife for more than a week and he'd ached for her every moment. But she hadn't cared enough about their relationship to make the first move for once and call him. Hurt more than he would have thought possible, believing that their marriage had come to the worst place it possibly could be, he hadn't contacted her, either.
"I missed you so." Vicki's eyes were bright blue with emotion. "I couldn't sleep without you there beside me."
All his conclusions about the past came to a screeching halt.
"That first night you were gone, I waited and waited for you to call like you always did. When you didn't, I finally picked up the phone at around 3:00 a.m. I tried your cell phone first but you must've turned it off, so I called your hotel room instead." Her hands fisted against him. "She answered!"
Those fists hit his shoulders, as if the emotion inside her had become too much to bear. "She said you were out on the balcony but she could get you if I wanted. The way she spoke … how was I supposed to think anything else? We'd had that fight and you'd been so angry—angry enough to do something hurtful."
