by Karen Anders
Making incoherent sounds against his mouth, Laurel twisted free and a violent shudder coursed through Mac when he felt her hands fumble with the snap, then the zipper, on his pants. The instant she touched his hard throbbing flesh, he groaned out her name and let go of her, desperate to rid them both of the barrier of clothes.
Somehow he got her overalls off, and her shirt pulled over her head, but the instant he felt her hand close around him, he lost it completely. Jerking her hand away, he hauled her up against him. On the verge of release, he dragged her legs around him again, then backed her against the workbench. Wedging his arm between her and the roughened wood, he clenched his eyes shut and thrust into her, unable to hold back one second longer. The feel of her, tight and wet, closing around him drove the air right out of him, the sensation so intense he couldn’t move.
Laurel locked her legs around him, her movements urging him on, and Mac crushed her against him, white-hot desire rolling over him. Angling his arm across her back, he drove into her again and again pressure building and building. A low guttural sound was torn from him, and his release came in a blinding rush that went on and on, so powerful he felt as if he were being turned inside out. He wanted to let it roll over him, to take him under, but he forced himself to keep moving in her, knowing she was on the very edge. She cried out and clutched at his back, then went rigid in his arms, and she finally convulsed around him, the gripping spasms wringing him dry.
His heart hammering, his breathing so labored he felt almost dizzy, he weakly rested his head against hers, his whole body quivering. He felt as if he had been wrenched in two.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, with her trembling in his arms, not an ounce of strength left in him.
It wasn’t until he shifted his hold and tucked his face against hers that he realized her cheek was wet with tears. Hauling in an unstable breath, he turned his head and kissed her on the neck, a feeling of overwhelming protectiveness rising up his chest. Yet the only person he really needed to protect her from was him.
He was acutely aware of how important this moment was in time. Laurel trusted him with a significant part of her life.
He waited a moment for the knot of emotion to ease; then he smoothed his hand up her back. “Can you hang on for a minute?” he asked thickly.
She nodded once and tightened her arms and legs around him. Mac withdrew his arms from around her back and supported her buttocks enough for her to release her hold and slide down until her feet touched the concrete.
They dressed quickly, the early morning chill cooling the sweat on their bodies.
When they were done, he pulled her toward him. Inhaling unevenly, he covered her mouth with a soft, searching kiss, trying to give her something he wasn’t sure what. An apology? She’d given of herself to a man who’d been false to her. Her breath caught when he deepened the kiss with slow, lazy thoroughness. Working his mouth softly, slowly against hers, he drank from her, probing the moist recesses, savoring the taste of her.
His hand tangled into her silky hair. His chest tightening. “Laurel, I love it that you trust me, but you need to trust yourself, too. Your furniture should be part of that auction.”
Laurel recoiled and said, “No!”
His hand not quite steady, he could barely hold her hand, the lump in his throat so intense it made his jaws ache. He didn’t know what he would do if she walked out of his life forever, but this was too important for him to back down because she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“Why not, Laurel. Look at this stuff.” He walked over to the deep-blue sofa with the silver circles on it and ran his hand along the square back. Next, he squatted and examined the arm of a chair. “Look at this joint, it’s flawless, unless you look closely it looks like one piece of endless wood.”
“Mac, you’re wasting your breath. I’m not good enough to enter that auction. The designers and craftsmen have been at it for years. They studied—”
“Who gives a damn, Laurel? You’re fooling and cheating yourself as well as people who would admire and be proud to put a piece of your furniture in their homes. This right here is the most profound legacy to your mother.” He walked up to her. “You are a living, breathing legacy.”
She turned away, her face closed, a stubborn set to her jaw. “I’m not doing it. So, you can just drop it. You’re wrong about it all. I don’t want to take a risk because I’m afraid, pure and simple. I don’t have what it takes.”
There was nothing more he could say. He stayed mute until they got outside of the garage and headed for the house.
He realized in that moment that he had to tell her. He couldn’t wait. Even though he’d formed them in his head, still, the words stuck in his throat and he opted to build up to his confession. “I know how it is to love a place as much as you do.”
“You do?”
“My parents have a place in the Hamptons. We spent all our summers there. I loved it. The beach, the house, the lazy family time.”
“The Hamptons?”
There was a sudden wariness in her voice as if it unnerved her they were on the same social scale. Not what she wanted from her bad-boy stud.
“Yes, my parents are wealthy. My father is a real estate developer.”
“That’s it,” she said softly. “The manners, the inborn confidence you possess. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”
“There’s a reason why I seem like I’m two different guys….”
“Laurel, Mac. Come over and have some blueberry pancakes.”
Laurel waved at Mr. Hayes. “Come on. Mr. Hayes makes the best blueberry pancakes in the State of New York.” She walked past him, leaving him in her wake and the words he was about to utter died on his lips.
Laurel didn’t notice. The emotions in her too much for her to sort through. He had to be wrong about all that he said. Her furniture wasn’t good enough to be auctioned at the Met in her mother’s wing of the museum.
She pushed away his argument that she was reacting to the fact that she was trying to live up to her mother’s reputation. Laurel wasn’t anything like her mother.
She stopped short and thought about that as the words reverberated in her head. It was true. She wasn’t like her mother at all.
They made their way up the stairs into Mr. Hayes’s living room and Mac followed Mr. Hayes into the kitchen, but Laurel stopped dead staring at a photograph sitting on the mantel of the fireplace.
The world seemed to move out of kilter as she stared at the photograph. She’d seen it before. The very same photograph, only larger, hung on Mac’s bedroom wall. Could this be Tyler and their mother?
“Come sit in the kitchen,” Mr. Hayes said close to her shoulder. “That’s a picture of my ex-wife and my son. We were divorced a long time ago.”
Mr. Hayes looked at the photo and traced the laughing faces of the woman and child. “We all used to live in this house. After the divorce, I took off for California to live in a commune. The house was mine. I bought out my ex-wife’s share. I could never bear to sell it. Later, I lost track of them, but I retired here because it made me feel closer to them, to the happiest part of my life.”
“Why did you leave?”
“My wife told me something shocking about herself and I couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t forgive her for lying to me.”
Mr. Hayes shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not sure why it mattered so much then and I have deep regrets.” He set the photograph onto the mantel and turned toward the kitchen. “But it was a long time ago.”
Mr. Hayes paused then faced Laurel. “I have some wisdom for you. If you love that young man in the kitchen, never let him go and let him know every day how you feel.”
He continued onto the kitchen, saying, “We’d better hurry before Mac eats up all the pancakes.”
MAC DECIDED WHILE he was eating Mr. Hayes’s pancakes, he would take another stab at telling Laurel who he was. Laurel seemed unsettled, but that was understandabl
e after the argument they’d had over her submitting pieces to be auctioned off at her mother’s memorial. Her hands trembled, when she picked up her fork, and Mac reached under the table and rubbed her thigh. Laurel jumped, but threw him a weak smile.
There was a knock at the door and Mr. Hayes went to answer it. Mac smiled when he heard Wanda’s voice.
“Mac, I have to show you something.”
She got up from the table and he followed her into the living room. Mr. Hayes had gone onto the front porch and had closed the door for a more private conversation.
She pointed out the photograph and Mac swallowed hard. He knew the people in it. One was his brother Tyler when he’d been a baby. The other person was his mother.
Mac and Tyler had both loved this photo of their laughing mother in a big floppy hat so much so, she’d blown it up for both of them and had it framed. One sat in his living room, in his loft. Another hung on the wall in Tyler’s bedroom.
This was Tyler’s father. It was almost more than Mac could take in.
“Mac, is Mr. Hayes your father?”
“Laurel, it’s too complicated to go into here.” He glanced toward the porch. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, I see. I can spill my guts, but when it comes to you, you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Laurel, that’s not it.”
“Sure,” Laurel said coldly.
Mac bit off his next words, praying that she wouldn’t say anything to Mr. Hayes, who walked back in the room with Wanda in tow. “Look who decided to join us for breakfast,” he said beaming.
LAUREL INSISTED THAT they leave after breakfast. She said that she was starting to worry about all the preparations for the auction and she really needed to get home.
Mac didn’t argue.
They didn’t speak all the way back to Manhattan. Laurel fumed and drove as fast as she could. He realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, she wanted to get away from him. He was sure she thought he was being distant and unapproachable. He couldn’t deal with it right now anyway. He was too shell-shocked at what he had learned to respond to her. How would he tell Tyler what he’d found out? How would his brother respond? Should he keep the information to himself? After all, Tyler hadn’t ever said he wanted to find his father or talk to him.
Mac had sympathy for Mr. Hayes. He’d talked openly about his ex-wife and son at breakfast. Mac didn’t condone what he had done, but it sounded like he truly felt he’d made a mistake.
Mac was overwhelmed with emotion and wasn’t really adept at handling any of it at this point.
He was in love with Laurel. But his brother meant a lot to him and he had to come to terms with this before he spoke to Tyler. He didn’t want to bring up painful memories, but he just couldn’t hold on to this information.
Mac thought about calling his mother, but discarded the idea. He didn’t know how he really felt about his mother’s other life. Sure he’d known about it. But it was weird to meet the man she’d been married to and find out that he wasn’t as much of a villain as Tyler made him out to be.
It could have been a reaction on Tyler’s part to protect himself. If his dad was such a bastard and left him, it would be easier to accept than his dad being a decent guy who couldn’t handle a situation in his married life.
When Laurel drove up to Tyler’s apartment, Mac felt downright irritable. He hated the information he possessed. He hated the stupid disguise he had to wear. Right now he could really use Laurel’s advice. So when he said goodbye to her it came out rough.
“Look, Mac. Maybe it would be better if we cooled it for a while,” Laurel said, her shoulders rigid.
“What is that supposed to mean.”
“It was fun, but I need a man who can express himself, not take all I have to give and give nothing back.”
“Laurel, that’s not what I’m doing.”
“You’re not being straightforward at all. You know so much about me, but I know so little about you.”
“Laurel, don’t do this. Not now. I do need you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, waiting for him to close the door.
He did, but came around to the driver’s side and Laurel’s open window. Mac couldn’t let her go. “Let me call you tomorrow.”
“Do you expect me to believe that? I know guyspeak when I hear it.” She stared straight ahead.
“That’s not fair. I’ve never treated you badly. Don’t start a fight now.”
She turned toward him. “I care about you, but you won’t let me in and maybe that’s some kind of bad-boy thing, but it’s not for me.”
“I just need a little space.” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. He had so much on his mind that he couldn’t deal with her. He was in a deep hole, one he’d dug for himself. If he told her, he would lose her, but not telling her wasn’t an option, either.
He had to tell her and it had to be soon.
“Oh my God. That particular guyspeak I know.”
Before Mac could say another word, she put the SUV into gear and sped off.
Mac couldn’t handle seeing Tyler then, so he caught a cab home. The heaviness inside him unbearable. He climbed the stairs to his loft and walked directly to his bedroom and sat on the bed and stared at the picture atop his dresser.
His mother laughing with a cute, chubby Tyler in her arms, that big floppy hat with the flowers. She looked so happy and carefree.
He sat and looked at that picture for a long time.
LAUREL SLAMMED INTO her brownstone and chucked her luggage so hard it slid all the way to the bottom of the stairs.
“Give me my space. I’ll give you some space.”
Why couldn’t he have been honest and just told her how he was feeling? It’s exactly how she imagined her father would react—closemouthed and irritable. It still shocked her that he was from the same social strata as her father. How could she have deluded herself so badly?
Of all the nerve. He’d taken her in the sun in her workshop and, at the time, she thought they had connected deeply, but maybe it had all been one-sided. It was as if he’d touched her soul in the garage, a melding poignant interlude that she would never forget as long as she lived.
Then the silence and the moodiness. She didn’t like it. She wanted a man who could communicate his feelings and thoughts and wants and needs. Mac just wasn’t right for her. She should have seen that a while ago.
She bit her lip. Okay, so she was partly reacting to her anger and partly to the fact that she was frightened at the intensity of her feelings for him.
The bombshell that he was the son of a wealthy real estate developer had thrown her. It made him suitable. Her father couldn’t argue with his pedigree no matter how much he didn’t like the package.
The truth of the matter was that Mac thought nothing of blowing off his job, wasn’t an ambitious ladder climber, and didn’t give a damn what was expected of him.
Laurel had to be honest with herself. Although she wanted to dictate her own life and be her own woman, she wanted certain things and she was punctual and trustworthy and wouldn’t ever think about blowing off her job. She wouldn’t have it for long if she did.
But Mac worked for a tolerant brother and had the luxury of living his own kind of lifestyle. Although there were jarring idiosyncratic personality shifts, she just didn’t understand. The dinner was a perfect example. He’d taken her to a ritzy restaurant and paid with a credit card. He’d taken her for a sweet, mundane bicycle ride through the park, and he’d endured Nine Inch Nails for her, snagging her difficult-to-get, expensive tickets.
He was a jumble of strange interesting characteristics that kept her guessing. Do The Unexpected seemed to be his motto. A man who kept her off-guard, a man whom she could love.
Or was it that she’d already fallen?
Hard.
Maybe, just maybe, she was reacting to that most of all.
MAC LEFT TYLER’S APARTMENT, knowing that he had
to see his brother. When he got to Hayes Cycles, he made his way into the back of the shop. Tyler was directing two of his employees in the loading of the truck for the motorcycle rally tomorrow.
“Are you competing?” Mac asked when his brother spied him.
“Yes, I’m entered in a couple of races to show off the new Ducati and to advertise Hayes Cycles.”
“How are you enjoying my loft?”
“The cleaning lady caught me in the shower yesterday. Saw me bare-assed naked. Screamed like a crazy woman until I told her that I was your brother. I laughed like hell when she was gone. She doesn’t know I speak Spanish and she had some interesting words to say about my dick.”
“You scared the hell out of Mrs. Lopez? Geez, now I’ll have to call her. She’s the best cleaning lady I’ve ever had.”
“Speaking of the best you ever had. Am I going to get my apartment back any time soon?”
“This was your idea, Ty.”
“I know. What’s going on with the chick?”
“Laurel. We had a fight. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but she’s one of a kind and I love her.”
“That’s deep.”
“I was just thinking that.”
“Whatever happens, man. I’m here for you.”
“I know that, Ty. Thanks.”
Tyler nodded his head. Mac shifted and rubbed the back of his neck, tension deep in his shoulders. “There’s something I need to tell you and I’m not sure how you’re going to take this, but here goes. I know where your father is.”
Tyler’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned, he asked, “How? Where?”
“Laurel has a country house in a little town called Cranberry. She lives next door to him. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction.”
Tyler’s hands were shaking as he jammed them into his pockets. “Yeah.” He tried to laugh it off, but his laugh came out forced.
