Yesterday's Scandal

by Gina Wilkins

  They paused together beside his truck. Sharon reached out to touch the deep scratch across the door. “You’re going to have this repaired, aren’t you?”

  “Eventually.”

  She drew a deep breath, the action pushing her breasts against the thin fabric of her summery blouse. Again, his fingers itched to have a go at that row of tiny, flirty buttons. Her next comment brought his attention abruptly away from her cleavage.

  “I want you to bill the repairs to me,” she said firmly.

  He studied her determined expression. “Forget it.”

  “I’m serious, Mac.”

  “So am I. You aren’t paying for my repairs.”

  “Look, I know you still think Brad had something to do with this. And even though I really hope you’re wrong, I believe in taking care of my responsibilities. If there’s even a possibility that he’s the guilty party, then I should pay for—”

  “I said forget it.” He wasn’t about to let her take this any further. “Regardless of what I believe about the person who did this, I know for certain that it wasn’t you. You aren’t going to pay for it.”

  “But if Brad really did—”

  “If Brad’s guilty, then it should be up to him to make restitution, not you. I won’t take your money, Sharon.”

  “But—”

  “Have you even asked Brad if he had anything to do with it?” he asked gently.

  Her stricken expression was answer enough.

  “You haven’t,” he interpreted. “You’re afraid of what he might say.”

  She sighed and rubbed her temples. “I’m such a coward.”

  Catching her wrists, he pulled her hands away from her head. “You,” he said, “are the least cowardly person I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine many other women your age who would have accepted the amount of responsibility you’ve taken on this summer. You’re the one who deserves a vacation, but it seems like everyone’s taking one except you. No one could expect more of you than what you’ve already given.”

  Her hands cradled in his, she shook her head. “I don’t mind watching out for my brother while my mother takes a trip that was the chance of a lifetime for her. It’s just—well, not quite as easy as I’d expected.”

  “So don’t take on more stress than you’ve already got. I’ll take care of my problems, even if they involve your brother. Neither Brad nor I need you to handle this for us.”

  She bit her lip, seeming to contemplate his words for a moment. And then she gazed up at him again. “Mac? Why didn’t you tell me you were a police officer?”

  He winced. “It didn’t come up?” he offered lamely.

  She only looked at him.

  He sighed. “I don’t know. It just never seemed like the right time to mention it.”

  “Or maybe you thought it was something I had no need to know about you?”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer that.

  She let him off the hook with a slight smile and a shake of her head. “It’s okay. I’m not trying to learn all your secrets. I just wondered.”

  All his secrets. He glanced toward the house where so many of the McBrides were still gathered. “Sharon—”

  “I guess I’m just a little stressed today.”

  “I don’t want to cause you any more.”

  She squeezed his hands. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it.”

  He remembered the vow he’d made to himself that he wouldn’t hurt her. He devoutly hoped it was a promise he would be able to keep. Taking a chance that they wouldn’t be seen—and not really caring at that moment if they were—he leaned over to brush his lips across hers. Her mouth was warm and soft and clung to his for a moment before he straightened away from her. It wasn’t easy for him to release her hands and step back. What he really wanted to do was toss her into his truck, take her to his apartment and spend the next twenty-four hours making love to her.

  At least twenty-four hours.

  “I want to see you again,” he said, his voice gruff. “When can you get away?”

  He didn’t think he needed to clarify that he wanted to see her alone. She smiled at him in a way that let him know she understood. “Soon,” she said. “I want to be with you, too.”

  He almost kissed her again. Instead, he reached for the door handle of the truck. “I’ll call you later.”

  “You do that,” she said, then turned to rejoin her friends.

  So what, exactly, had he accomplished? he asked himself as he turned out of the Davenports’ driveway and onto the road that would take him to the Garrett house. He’d learned that there was a good chance Jonah McBride had been his father—something he’d already figured. He’d caused Sharon to be embarrassed by her brother’s behavior—and they’d both known it was a possibility. And, even though he knew the McBrides weren’t prone to gossip, he’d made the relationship between Sharon and himself the focus of attention at least briefly that afternoon.

  What had he accomplished? Damned if he knew.

  But it was becoming harder and harder for him to think of the McBrides as just a group of people who owed him answers and apologies.

  JAMIE WAS POISED to pounce almost the moment Sharon returned. “Well?” she said while the others were busy taking care of the little ones and putting away cookout supplies. “Anything you want to share with me?”

  “What do you mean?” Sharon asked, though she knew very well what had piqued Jamie’s curiosity.

  “You’re seeing Mac Cordero, aren’t you? I’d heard around town that you are, and now that I’ve seen you together, I think the rumors might have some merit for a change.”

  Sharon still wasn’t sure who’d started that rumor. She and Mac had been very discreet. They’d hardly been seen in public together. She could only assume that some of the construction workers had reached certain conclusions from watching them together—which only proved that men were just as bad as women to spread gossip, she thought with a shake of her head.

  “Mac and I have been spending some time together. But it’s still very early, Jamie. Much too soon to make any predictions.”

  Jamie laughed and patted Sharon’s arm. “Don’t worry, I’m not starting a betting pool. I just thought it was sweet the way he looked at you. It feels great to have a guy walking into walls when you’re around, doesn’t it?”

  Flustered, Sharon laughed. “He doesn’t actually—”

  Jamie waved her hand dismissively. “I was speaking metaphorically, of course. Mac could hardly take his eyes off you all afternoon, even though he was very discreet about it. He’s like Trevor, I think. It isn’t easy for him to express his emotions, but he feels them very deeply.”

  Sharon remembered the afternoon when she had watched Mac and Trevor descending the stairs of the Garrett house side by side. Even though they were very different physically, she’d had the feeling that they were quite a bit alike in other ways.

  “I guess you’ve heard Jerry’s been telling everyone in town that you dumped him for Mac.”

  Sharon frowned. “No, I hadn’t heard that. Has he really been saying those things?”

  “I’m afraid so. He’s really quite bitter about it.”

  Sharon put a hand to her head. “I wish he wouldn’t do that. It isn’t as if Jerry and I were ever really a couple. There was never any talk of a future between us.”

  “Men.” Jamie heaved a dramatic sigh. “There’s no understanding them.”

  Sharon heartily agreed.

  Abruptly turning serious, Jamie touched Sharon’s arm again. “I know your mom’s away and you have a lot on your plate now, with your brother and everything. I remember how terrifying it was starting a new relationship. I know how it feels to fall for a complex, exasperating man with emotional baggage—which I would bet big money describes your Mac as well as my Trevor. If you ever need to talk, you know where to find me.”

  “Is it that obvious?” Sharon heard the touch of wistfulness in her own voice. “That I’m falling for him, I mean.”


  Her eyes ruefully sympathetic, Jamie smiled. “Sweetie, you might as well be wearing a sign.”

  Sharon groaned.

  “Maybe I’m just particularly sensitive to it because it hasn’t been that long since it happened to me,” Jamie encouraged her. “Maybe no one else noticed.”

  Glancing automatically at the others, Sharon decided that every other woman there seemed to be surreptitiously watching her and Jamie. Oh, yes, she thought. They had noticed.

  She might as well have been wearing a sign.

  MAC WAS SITTING at his kitchen table again, brooding. His notes were spread in front of him, but it was the photograph in his hand that held his attention. A bottle of bourbon sat on the table, a half-empty glass near his elbow. He didn’t drink often, but tonight there had seemed to be no reason to stay completely sober. He had nothing better to do and no one to do it with.

  From the snapshot, his ex-wife and infant son gazed up at him. The picture had been taken in a hospital. Karla sat in a wooden rocker with four-week-old Emilio in her arms. Several tubes were attached to the baby, leading to equipment outside the boundaries of the shot. Emilio had never known a day without tubes or needles. Two weeks after this photo had been taken, the child had died, as quietly and unassumingly as he had lived.

  Mac was in the photograph, too, kneeling beside Karla’s chair. He hadn’t wanted to have this picture taken, but Karla had insisted, and it had seemed like little enough to do for her during that nightmarish ordeal. It was ironic that she hadn’t wanted to take the photograph with her when she left him.

  The doctors had told them that Emilio’s birth defect was genetic, something passed down through generations. Having been adopted as a baby, Karla knew nothing of her own genetic history. Mac, of course, knew only that there had been no history of the disease on his mother’s side. There had been tests available to find out which of them carried the gene that had caused Emilio’s death, but Mac hadn’t bothered to take them. It had been too easy for him to shoulder the blame, himself.

  Perhaps Karla had been tested during the past two years. Mac wouldn’t know. He hadn’t talked to her since they’d drifted apart in the weeks after they’d lost their child.

  It had been Karla who had filed for divorce, even though Mac had tried to talk her into giving their marriage another try. He’d even offered to go to counseling with her—and he hated that sort of thing. But she hadn’t been interested. Whatever love she’d had for him in the beginning had been lost in grief and anger and bitterness. And his own distance.

  Mac accepted his share of the blame for the end of the marriage. He’d lost his mother only six months before Emilio’s birth, and he’d still been reeling from that devastating loss. He and his mother had been very close. They’d had to be. They were all the family each of them had.

  Still grieving for his mother and trying to deal with the facts he’d learned after her death about his own parentage, he hadn’t been adequately prepared for the second blow of losing his son. Maybe he hadn’t been supportive enough of Karla during the difficult six weeks that Emilio had lived. Or maybe what they’d had simply wasn’t strong enough to survive that kind of hardship.

  He’d thought attraction, passion and affection were enough. Apparently, he’d been wrong.

  What he was starting to feel for Sharon was entirely different than what he’d shared with Karla. But how was he to know whether this was any more real? Any more lasting?

  The doorbell rang, drawing him out of his painful reverie. He wasn’t expecting anyone, which meant there was a good chance this wasn’t something he wanted to hear. He sighed heavily, took another sip of his bourbon and rose.

  A few moments later, he opened the front door to find Sharon Henderson standing on the other side.

  “I probably should have called,” she said, eyeing him uncertainly.

  Aware that his hair was tousled, his shirt half unbuttoned and his feet bare, he cleared his throat. “No. I was just relaxing. Come in.”

  He moved aside to hold the door open for her. After only a momentary hesitation, she entered his apartment.

  He closed the door behind her.

  SHARON COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off Mac’s face as she stepped inside his living room. As usual, his expression gave away little of his thoughts, but she had become strangely attuned to his emotions. She sensed that he had been feeling sad this evening. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing. You just caught me by surprise.”

  She really should have called. She had never been the type to act on impulse, but she’d done a lot of things that were out of character for her since Mac had come into her life. “I found myself on my own for the evening and I wondered if you would be interested in keeping me company for a few hours. But if you have other plans…”

  “On your own, huh?”

  “Yes. Clay and Brad talked me into letting Brad spend the night there. They’ll probably play video games until dawn.”

  “And you thought maybe you and I could play a few games of our own?”

  She loved the way his mouth quirked when he sort of smiled. “Only if you’re interested, of course.”

  He reached out to tug her into his arms. “I am most definitely interested,” he assured her, his mouth close enough to hers that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she murmured, noting the faint scent of alcohol and the slight flush on his cheeks.

  “Yeah. Are you worried that I’m a closet drunk?”

  She thought about it only a moment before shaking her head. “No. I think you’ve had a drink tonight because you were upset about something.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did it help?”

  His mouth twisted. “No.”

  She raised a hand to his jaw. “Is there something I can do?”

  Catching her hand, he planted a kiss in the palm. “Oh, yeah.”

  The fervency of his reply made her smile. “Why don’t you tell me what you need?”

  He slid his hands down her sides, gripped her hips and pulled her closer. “Why don’t I show you, instead?”

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she murmured into his mouth, “That would work.”

  He didn’t carry her to bed this time. They walked side by side, their bodies close together, their steps slow. They both knew there was no reason to hurry.

  They left the overhead light off, turning on the small, dim lamp beside the bed for illumination. Sharon pushed Mac’s shirt off his shoulders and then reached for the snap of his jeans. She intended to take a much more active role this time.

  Because she was looking, she found the white scar low on his back, just above his left hip. Her fingertips brushed the puckered flesh. “This is where you were shot?”

  “It wasn’t that bad. My injuries were never life-threatening.”

  Kneeling beside him, she pressed her lips to the scar. “It must have been very painful.”

  The way he flinched when her lips touched him, she’d have thought he was in pain now. And perhaps he was, she mused with a secret smile. But it was a good pain this time—an ache only she could soothe.

  Standing unselfconsciously nude in front of her, he lifted her up and reached for the first tiny pearlized button on her white summer top. “I wanted to do this all afternoon.”

  “I know.” She smiled wickedly at him, remembering Jamie’s comment about how good it felt to have a man “walking into walls.” “I could tell by the way you looked at me.”

  Brushing his lips across her forehead, he murmured, “Sometimes I worry that you see too much when you look at me.”

  She didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t try. Instead, she placed a hand on either side of his face and brought his mouth to hers.

  By the time the kiss ended, her blouse and bra were on the floor and her shorts were puddled around her feet. Mac lifted her out of them and fell to the bed with her. “You are so perfect,
” he half groaned, running his hands over her.

  “Not perfect. I have a scar, too.”

  “Where?”

  Feeling deliciously mischievous, she smiled and ran a finger across his lower lip. “Why don’t you try to find it?”

  It was a challenge he accepted with enthusiasm. There wasn’t an inch of her he missed in his search—not an inch he didn’t touch or kiss. Even after he found the small scar from her childhood appendectomy, he kept looking—just in case, he informed her gravely, there was a flaw he had missed. Not until he’d kissed his way to her toes did he pronounce her as perfect as he had believed her to be.

  By then, she could hardly think clearly enough to remember what he’d been looking for.

  He was doing it again, she thought weakly. Clouding her mind with passion and pleasure, keeping her so dazed and befuddled she could only lie against the pillows and gasp. Calling on all her strength, she pushed herself off the pillows and pressed him onto his back. “My turn,” she said firmly.

  He spread his arms. “Knock yourself out.”

  Her breath catching on a giggle, she bent over him. It wasn’t the most romantic invitation she’d ever had, but it was sincerely offered, and that was what mattered. By the time this night ended, she promised herself, she would know his body as well as he knew hers.

  It wasn’t easy keeping him still while she explored him. He kept wanting to roll her beneath him. Sharon had to hold him in place with a firm hand. He could easily have overpowered her, of course. He wouldn’t even have had to put much effort into flipping her onto her back and pinning her there with his own body. But he let her set the pace, even though he almost quivered with impatience.

  He jerked violently when she took him into her hand. Groaned deep in his chest when she placed her mouth on him. And a few long, emotion-filled moments later, he did something she hadn’t expected from this strong, hard man. He begged. “Sharon—please…”

  The request affected her in a way no amount of machismo could have. She melted. “Mac—”

  They moved together, a fluid, silent duet of desire. It took only a heartbeat for him to don protection, and then another for him to bury himself so deeply inside her she felt as if he had become a part of her.