‘It’s a simple question.’ I felt my own protective emotional barrier go up, the intimacy of a moment before drying like sweat on my damp skin. ‘It’s OK if you don’t,’ I said, sounding as pathetic as I felt. ‘I just wondered, since you’ve never said it.’
‘Do you think I love you?’
How could I answer that question and not sound needy or conceited? I shook my head, something hard and cold settling behind my breastbone like a rock. ‘I don’t know. Why can’t you just answer the question and tell me?’
‘What do you think this is between us?’
He was like that, always responding to my questions with questions of his own. Forcing me to analyse my motives for even asking in the first place. Why did I want to know? What did it matter? I was finishing my PhD and would go wherever I could find an academic job. I couldn’t stay where I was just because of Christopher.
Unless he loved me, too.
The thought, the faintest whisper in my heart of hearts, is why I asked. Why I needed to know.
‘Do you love me?’ I asked again, on a rush of breath that left me feeling as if I would suffocate if he didn’t say what I needed to hear.
‘I love your body and how it responds to my words and my touch. I love your clever, inquisitive, sexy mind,’ he said, reaching to tug at my bottom lip, which I realised was quivering, the only hint that I was feeling any emotion at all. ‘I love the way you whisper my name – and scream it. The way you grow your hair long just for me even though you’d rather keep it short and simple.
‘I love that you know my favourite wine and how to touch me to get me instantly hard,’ he continued. ‘I love how we fuck – and how we make love, because there is very much a difference between the two and you fulfil me in both ways. In all ways.’
He paused, and in that space I asked, ‘Is that all?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ he asked, his eyes impossible to read. ‘What more do you want?’
‘Your heart.’ I whispered it so softly, I wasn’t sure he heard. I wasn’t sure I even wanted him to hear. I had my answer in the words he did not say and the rest, lovely, beautiful, sexy compliments all, didn’t matter a whit to me.
He closed his eyes and I thought he was going to sleep. Then he turned to me and gathered me in his arms, roughly yet somehow tenderly, and pressed a kiss to my lips that was enough to spark my arousal all over again.
‘I love you, Laura. Of course I love you. It’s in every word, every look, every action,’ he said, sounding slightly exasperated, as if I’d asked for the combination to a lock and he couldn’t remember the digits. ‘You have my heart and I love you with all of it, almost to the point of anything else. And it scares the hell out of me.’
‘It scares me, too,’ I whispered, tucking my head against his shoulder.
‘Then let’s be scared together,’ he said, giving me a little shake. ‘Love me and I will love you and we’ll be scared together.’
It was me that was falling asleep, every need I had satiated by this man whose kisses were rough and sweet and whose touch left bruises on my body. I had his heart and he was as terrified of that as I was.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. Let’s be scared together.’
Healing the Wounds
The clock hanging on the wall behind me ticked loudly. I dug my fingers into the arms of the leather chair and studied the man behind the big desk. Jason looked older than I remembered. He still had the same square jaw and blue eyes, but the face had more lines, the hair more silver. There was a sag in his shoulders that had never been there before. That shouldn’t be there now.
It had been nine months – no, ten, I amended – but he looked like he had aged ten years. I was one to talk, of course. I resisted the urge to brush a tendril of hair from my cheek, certain that my severely cut short hair made me look like a matronly grandmother. It had been a dramatic move, cutting off my shoulder-length hair, but I didn’t regret it. I had needed a change – a change I could control. I had lost my husband. Cutting my hair off the day after his funeral, the thick wavy curls he had adored so much falling like black feathers to the white bathroom floor, had seemed a fitting tribute. And I had maintained the short length and natural colour, despite the silver that increasingly threaded through the cropped curlicues.
‘I never thought I’d see you sitting behind a desk.’
It was true. Jason wasn’t the sedentary type any more than Randy had been. The two of them were like thoroughbreds in a race for the triple crown – powerful and fast and meant to run until their hearts stopped.
He shrugged, a smudge of colour coming into his ruddy cheeks as if I’d accused him of looking at porn at work. ‘I was too old to stay on active duty, and defence contracting pays the bills. It’s not so bad.’
‘No?’ One word, but that’s all it took to make his cheeks redden even more.
I knew the age comment was a lie. I knew why he was no longer a SEAL. I glanced at the photo on the file cabinet behind him – a picture of Randy and him in sand-coloured fatigues, standing in some desert somewhere in the mid-90s. The years had been kind to Jason and he was in as good shape now as he had been then. Age had nothing to do with him leaving the military. It was the man next to him in the picture that was the reason for the suit and tie and mahogany desk in a nondescript office building amid a landscape of concrete and asphalt.
‘I’m surprised to see you,’ he said. ‘You look … good.’
The hesitation intrigued me. I laughed. ‘What were you really going to say? I want to know.’
He hesitated a moment longer, as if gauging what my reaction to the truth would be. He knew me well enough to know I’d settle for nothing less than his honesty. It was ironic, considering the secret I had kept for so long. ‘I was going to say you look older, but that seemed rude.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing about you,’ I said. ‘And I am older. Forty in August. I was twenty-five when we … met.’
It was his turn to laugh, though it was more of a bark than a chuckle. ‘We’re both getting old, aren’t we?’
‘In some ways. In other ways, it seems like I’m still that girl.’
I didn’t have to specify what girl. He knew. We both knew. But neither of us was going to say it out loud. The elephant in the room would have to wait patiently for a while longer. We had another dance to do first.
‘So why did you come, Cele?’
His abbreviation of my name – he was the only person to call me anything other than Cecelia – gave me a jolt. I had a flash of a memory, passing in a moment, of him cupping my face in his hands and saying, ‘I need you, Cele.’
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs and bring me back to the present. Front and centre to the last man who had seen my husband alive.
‘I want to know what happened that day.’
His expression didn’t change. ‘Why?’
‘You were his best friend. You were there,’ I said. ‘I need to know –’
‘No, you don’t,’ he interrupted. ‘You need closure and I can’t give it to you.’
I clenched my hands into fists. ‘Stubborn as always, Jason? Still?’
He smiled and it was as if the years melted away. ‘Me? Cele, you’re the most tenacious woman I’ve ever met. How many times did you call me? Office, home, cell. Hell, you even called my ex-wife.’
I could feel heat suffusing my cheeks. ‘I didn’t know you’d gotten divorced.’
‘Of course not,’ he said gruffly. ‘I didn’t even tell Randy we’d separated. By the time it was finalised –’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. I was sorry for so much.
His easy shrug belied his grief at all the losses he’d suffered. ‘Life goes on.’
‘For some of us.’
It was his turn to look pained. ‘Sorry. I’m – sorry.’
‘Life goes on,’ I said. ‘Right?’
‘Jesus, Cele.’ He smacked his hand on the desktop, the vibration causing a ceramic mug to f
all off the edge and crash on the floor, shattering into a hundred jagged fragments. ‘I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know what to say to you.’
‘Tell me what happened. I’ve turned it over and over in my mind and I just need to hear it from you. I trust you.’ Another irony. There were so many.
His expression was stark and angry. ‘No, you don’t need to hear it from me. Because you won’t like it. You want to hear something that I can’t say.’
‘No, I don’t. I just want you to be honest with me.’
‘I can’t say what you want to hear, Cele. Trust me.’
I stared at him, focused on his eyes, because they were the one thing that hadn’t changed, and the years slipped away before me. He used to laugh so much, Jason. He wasn’t like Randy. Randy was serious, always so serious. Everything was life and death to him, everything was personal. Randy couldn’t do anything halfway. He lived by the motto ‘Go big or go home’ long before it became popular. It wasn’t just work that drove him. It was his need for excellence. To be the best at everything, no matter what the consequences. Randy ran full tilt into danger like a kid running after an ice-cream truck. I had spent two decades holding my breath with him, waiting for something bad to happen. And then it finally did. I was still holding my breath, waiting for answers only Jason could give me.
‘He was a SEAL,’ I said evenly, not betraying the tempest going on inside of me. ‘I know his work was dangerous, but he was on the downhill slide to retirement and shouldn’t have been on the front lines of anything.’
The information had been vague. Randy was dead, that much they would tell me for certain. But that was all they would tell me. Everything else had been couched in shadowy terms. He’d been caught in some crossfire in a hostile situation somewhere. I wasn’t even sure where he’d been. Iraq? Afghanistan? He’d been everywhere, twice. Broken every bone in his body, twice. Received more blood transfusions than a vampire. Had bullet wounds and knife wounds that he couldn’t – wouldn’t – tell me about. And now he was dead. And the only person I trusted to tell me the truth was sitting across from me.
‘I need to know, Jason. Please.’
Jason was different than Randy. Jason had a soft spot. Me. And I knew it. I had only ever taken advantage of it once before and I was doing it again. Shamelessly.
He let out a weary sigh. ‘Fine. But not here.’
I wondered if it was paranoia left over from his SEAL days or something else. ‘OK, where? Do you want to meet for dinner?’
‘Nowhere public,’ he said. ‘This isn’t something I’m supposed to be talking about.’
Ah, paranoia. I was all too familiar with it. Taking different routes to and from a restaurant. Checking the perimeter of the house before letting me go inside. Booby-trapping the lawn with household items. Just in case. Always being careful. I’d never so much as broken a toe, but Randy was convinced something bad was going to happen to me because of him. And because of him, we didn’t have children.
‘OK. Come to the house. I’ll make dinner,’ I said. It sounded like an invitation to a date. I could feel the heat suffusing my cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound like it did.’
Jason smiled. One minute he was glowering at me like I was the enemy, and the next he was the boy I remembered, fresh-faced and eager to serve his country. ‘You don’t have to apologise to me, Cele. I’d love a home-cooked dinner.’
And that was that. After months of tormenting myself with doubts and questions, wondering if I could have said or done something to keep Randy from that last assignment, Jason was going to tell me the truth. Dread crept along my skin. Could I handle what he told me? He said he couldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. I had no expectations – I only wanted to know how Randy had spent his last weeks, his last day. To know what, exactly, had happened to him. I suspected Jason was right – he wouldn’t be able to tell me what I wanted to hear. Because I wanted to hear that Randy hadn’t been planning to divorce me when he came home from his last mission.
* * *
I was nervous as a high school girl on her first date when Jason rang the doorbell at six o’clock on the dot. Military men, always so precise. Even in retirement, I thought as I took the steaks off the broiler and answered the door.
My first thought was that I was grateful I’d seen Jason at his office first. I was already nervous, but breaking the ice across a desk had been easier than having him up close and personal like this. My second thought was he looked a hell of a lot better in a polo shirt and khakis than he did in a suit. He looked … free. Unconstrained.
I ushered him into the house and took the bottle of wine he offered with a shrug. ‘I felt like I should bring something.’
I laughed, leading him into the kitchen. ‘Always the gentleman.’
I flashed back to the night I had met him, Randy’s best friend since boot camp, the three of us going out to dinner before they shipped out on their first mission together. He’d opened my car door for me and I’d laughed and called him a gentleman then, too.
‘Smells delicious,’ he said, pulling me from my reverie.
‘Just steaks under the broiler. Caramelised onions and baked potatoes on the side.’ I opened the wine to let it breathe and then faced him for the first time, my arms out in an awkward appeal for a hug. ‘It’s good to see you, Jason.’
He took me in his arms, the two of us standing there in the kitchen, holding each other like strangers instead of the longtime friends we were. And the lovers we had been, once.
I pulled away first, my thoughts going down a path that was better left unexplored. I laughed. ‘Well, that was weird.’
He didn’t share my amusement. ‘I didn’t say it earlier, but it’s good to see you, too. I just wish –’
I laid my fingers across his lips. ‘Don’t say it.’
A moment ago, it had seemed strange to hug him. Foreign. Now, I touched his lips like we’d been intimate for ever. Granted, it was to still him, to keep the words he was thinking – I was thinking – from being spoken. As if that would keep them from being true.
My fingers lingered on his lips too long. Long enough for me to feel the soft heat of his skin. Long enough for him to smell my hand lotion, his nostrils flaring as if it was the most erotic scent he’d ever encountered. Long enough to bring it all back in vivid detail. A young, sad, drunk couple missing a friend, a husband, needing comfort and empathy, needing human touch and love, falling into an unmade bed, stripping off clothes as they went, loving and touching and whispering words of longing that could never, would never, be repeated in the light of day.
I had slipped out of Jason’s bed the morning after our indiscretion and I didn’t see him again for five years. When I did, I kept my distance. Which was easy enough, since it was his wedding. At that point, I’d been married for six years and was chasing after two toddlers. And he only had eyes for his bride and his best friend, who was none the wiser. We both pretended it had never happened, but I had never forgotten – and I had never forgiven myself until a few months before Randy’s death.
I felt Jason’s lips moving over my fingers, the softest of kisses, the barest touch of his skin on mine. And that was all it took to have me instantly, immediately aroused. It had always been this way between us, this chemistry that burned hot and bright under my skin like an electrical fire racing through the walls of a house, unseen until it was too late to do anything about it.
I knew he was going to kiss me before he even took me in his arms. I could see the promise of it in his steady, steely grey eyes. He was a man who made quick, life-changing decisions. This wasn’t war, this wasn’t a mission, but he was making that decision even as his lips descended over mine. And I was letting him. Again.
The last time he had kissed me, he hadn’t had all the details about why I was letting him. This time, there was information he still didn’t have – and information I needed. Which is why, after only a moment of the warm press of his mouth against mine and the tel
ltale press of his erection against my belly, I pulled away. It wasn’t because I didn’t want him – God help me, but I had wanted him and fantasised about him for fifteen years – but it was time to set the record straight. On both sides.
‘I’m sorry, God, Cele, I’m sorry,’ he said, backing away from me as far as the kitchen counter would allow. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’
‘I do.’ I reached out to him and took his hands in mine. ‘We both know why, then and now. But we need to talk. There are things I need to know.’ I hesitated. ‘There are things you need to know.’
He was a man of action. I knew that about him. I also knew he didn’t do anything without being one hundred per cent committed. In that way, he was just like Randy. He squeezed my hands, calluses still rough on the balls of his fingers despite his office job. ‘OK, let’s talk. Let’s eat, let’s talk, let’s make this right.’
And we did. I served him dinner in front of the big bay window that looked out over the wide leafy oaks I loved so much. As the sun went down, we ate steak and potatoes and drank a fine red wine that made it easier to say the things I did and to hear the things he said.
‘It was ugly, Cele,’ he said. He was staring at his plate, but he was thousands of miles away. ‘Randy wasn’t even supposed to be there, in Kabul, did you know that?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I – we – hadn’t talked much before he left. I didn’t even know where he was. I never did, sometimes not even after he got back.’
He glanced up at me then, but he didn’t ask why we hadn’t been talking. ‘He wouldn’t. But we had lost a unit in that helicopter crash –’
‘I remember,’ I said. It had been all over the news.
‘– and Randy insisted he wanted to go. I was fine sitting back and running intel, but he wanted me with him. “One last hurrah,” he called it. Fuck, I wish I’d talked him out of it.’
He ran a hand through his hair, hair that was longer than I had ever seen it. Thick, wavy, silver at the temples. My fingers clenched into my palms with a desire to push my hands through his hair the way he was doing, to soothe him, to comfort him.
Seduce Me Tonight (Mischief Books) Page 7
