by Joss Wood
She was a successful businesswoman, a confident woman...
Who was, technically, trespassing. Jules raised the sash window and flung her leg over the windowsill. Actually, there were no technicalities involved, she was definitely trespassing.
Jules dropped her feet to the floor and wasn’t surprised to see Noah in his room, dressed in a pair of old, well-fitting jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Thanks to his recent shower, his blond hair looked a shade darker. She inhaled the dust and mustiness of a closed room but also soap and toothpaste and his special Noah-only scent.
Jules stood up straight, slapped her hands on her butt and looked at Noah. “Levi says breakfast is nearly ready.”
Noah sat on the edge of what used to be his bed and frowned at her. “Not that hungry, actually.”
Jules wanted to go to him, to drape her arms around his neck and snuggle in, but the expression on his face was remote, his body tense. Knowing that he wouldn’t open up without some prodding—if he opened up at all—Jules sat on the edge of the sill and stretched out her legs. “Why did you break into your dad’s house, No?”
“Ethan’s house,” Noah corrected her, his mouth tightening. “He stopped being my dad a decade ago.”
“What happened, Noah?”
Noah stared at his feet, his hand draped between his bent knees. “My mom’s will wasn’t clear and there was room to maneuver. Ethan essentially tried to screw us out of our inheritance. When he was faced with the choice of inheriting millions or keeping his kids, he chose the cash.” Noah stared at the hard, glossy wooden floor. He cleared his throat and when he continued speaking, Jules heard his voice crack with emotion. “He raised us. We called him Dad. Eli and Ben were toddlers when he came into our lives and he spent twenty-plus years being our dad. He was at every sport match he could make, at every play, prize giving. I thought he loved my mom with every fiber of his being.
“Two weeks after her death, I called him at the city apartment and a woman answered his phone, a very young-sounding woman. He was in the shower and she told me that she intended to keep him busy for the rest of the night, if I understood what she meant.”
Jules fought the urge to go to him, but if she did he’d clam up and stop talking. She gripped the sill to keep herself in place.
“I confronted Ethan the next day and he laughed in my face. He told me to grow up, that the woman I talked to wasn’t the first nor would she be the last. It was what men did, he said.”
No, it wasn’t. Her dad never cheated on her mom.
Noah’s knee bounced up and down. “He then went on to tell me that he’d done his job—he’d raised us as Mom wanted him to do, and he was cashing in. The businesses, the house, the bank accounts, it was payment for being incarcerated in his marriage, his life, for the past twenty years.”
Jules bit her lip at Noah’s bleak tone. “If I behaved, let him take, well, everything, he’d continue paying for our education, if not, we could waft in the wind.”
“Oh, Noah.”
“I couldn’t let him do that, not without a fight. I needed money to hire lawyers and Ivan gave me more than I needed, provided I stayed engaged to Morgan for two years. After a lot of legal wrangling, the judge gave us the marina and boatyard. Ethan got the cash and the estate. I needed to keep sailing to keep generating the cash to upgrade the marina and boatyard so that they could become profitable again.”
“But you did it, Noah. You saved your grandfather’s businesses.”
Noah lifted his head to look at her. “The price was enormous, Jules. When I finally broke it off with Morgan she had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to some psychiatric facility. They blamed me, despite the fact that our relationship hadn’t been anything more than a few calls and emails for months.”
“They needed someone to blame, No, and you were handy.”
“Maybe.” Noah stood up and walked over to his desk, looking at the medals hanging on the wall, the sailing trophies still on the shelf. “Most people think that the opportunity to sail for Wind and Solar was a dream come true.”
“Wasn’t it?”
She could see the tension in his back in the way he held his neck. But when he turned around and looked at her, Jules saw the devastation on his face. “Leaving Boston was a freaking nightmare. Oh, the sailing was fun, visiting new places was interesting, but when I stepped onto that plane at Logan, I left everything behind. My mom was gone and I was still mourning her, trying to come to terms with her early, brutally unfair death. I lost my dad, too. I didn’t recognize the man standing in front of me, taking us to court for his paycheck. I had to leave my brothers and hope like hell that they were sensible enough to stay out of trouble, and if not, to run to your folks if they found themselves in a sticky situation. I left my friends, not only Levi, but other friends of both sexes. I left you, the person who knew me best, and I left this weird thing between us, an attraction that blew in from nowhere and was left unexplored. I felt like I had my entire life ripped from me...”
“Which you did.” Jules waited a beat before speaking again. “You could’ve told me this, Noah, at any time. I would’ve understood because, dammit, I needed to understand.”
Noah shrugged. “Time passed and as it did, the words grew harder to say.”
Noah pushed his thumbs into his eyes and Jules wondered if it was because he didn’t want her to see the tears there. Hers were about to overflow.
Noah folded his arms, looked up at the ceiling and, a long time later, looked back. The grief was gone and determination was back on his face. “There is no way I am going back there, Jules, back to that place where I felt lost and scared and alone. I’ve learned how to live on my own, be on my own—I can’t do this happy-family thing...”
She didn’t recall asking him to but...okay.
Noah looked around the room, his face hard. “This is just a house, these are just things. This is just land. My mom isn’t here and by buying it I won’t change the past, change what he did, the choices I made. Mom doesn’t care whether it stays in the family or not—she’s not here!”
Jules winced at the muted roar. “I’m killing myself, and for what? To design a boat for a woman who doesn’t seem to care what I come up with or not? So that I can raise the money to buy a property I’m not sure I even want in a town that holds nothing but bad memories for me?”
Well, that stung.
“I could forget about buying the house and the estate. I could walk away. I have a client begging me to meet him on the Costa Smeralda, another in Hawaii, both wanting designs I could do in my sleep. I don’t need to be here, Jules! I don’t need this crap in my life! Sun, sailing and sex...with none of the drama!”
Jules nodded, pain punching tiny holes in her stomach lining and her heart. He didn’t want a life in Boston and he didn’t want her. He needed his freedom, she knew this... She’d always known this. So why did it hurt so much? Jules pushed her hair off her face and forced herself to look him in the eye, to confront her feelings. “I’m sorry you feel like that, No. I’m sorry that you think a life in Boston can’t give you what you need.”
“You don’t know what I need, Jules!”
Yeah, she did, but getting him to realize that was an impossibility. But she’d try. At least once... “You need us, Noah, and you need me. You need to wake up with someone who loves you, who gets you, understands your past and who will always be on your side. You need to spend your days with your brothers and play pool with them in The Tavern and golf outside your front door. You need to have coffee and dinner with my mom and talk about your mom. You need to buy this house and you need to stay.”
Noah frowned at her and she could see hope and frustration and fear going to war in his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
Because she loved him. She’d loved him every day of her life and she’d fallen in love with him a
gain when she saw him standing naked in her shower. Her brain had just needed a little time to come to terms with what her heart always knew.
“Because if you walk away from this house, from Boston, from me, you’re going to regret it every day for the rest of your life. You belong here, Noah. You belong with me.”
Jules held up her hand, knowing he was about to make a hard rebuttal. “I get it, Noah. I understand how much it must have hurt leaving because I felt it, too. Not having you in my life was horrendous and I was determined that I wouldn’t give you another chance to hurt me. But here I am, doing it again. Love is scary, Noah, but it’s the one thing that should be scary! We shouldn’t just be able to jump into love without thought. I know if you walk away again I’ll be in a world of pain, again, but I can’t divorce myself from what I feel because loving you is an essential part of who I am.”
Jules stood up and made herself smile as she placed one leg over the windowsill. “If you leave, if you don’t fight for this house, fight for your life, fight for me, you’ll be an old man living with regret, unable to look yourself in the eye.”
“I don’t love you, Jules.”
Such impetuous, defiant words. Jules closed her eyes, trying to hold back the pain. “Of course you love me, Noah. You always have. Just as I’ve always loved you. You’re just too damn scared to admit it and even more terrified to do something about it.”
Callie...
There was no way that Mason would hear that she’d been on two dates in the past week. While many of her friends frequented his coffee shop, she doubted that he made it a habit to quiz the elderly about their love lives.
And if he did, he shouldn’t.
Her friends, the few who knew she was dating, wouldn’t think to tell him. To them Mason was part of the service industry, not someone to gossip with. The thought made her feel ugly, petty and ashamed. She shouldn’t even be coming here but she was as addicted to his gorgeous face as she was to his coffee blend.
Oh, who was she kidding? He could serve strychnine-flavored java and she’d be coming back for more. It was official: she was pathetic. Callie pushed open the door to the coffeehouse and cursed when her eyes flew around the room, instinctively seeking out the man she’d come to see. She’d blown off a round of golf this morning with Patrick and an invite to lunch with John. Her dates thought that their evenings had gone well but, apart from the salsa dancing, she’d been as bored as hell—and Mason was to blame.
Patrick and John were perfectly nice, urbane, successful men in their early sixties. Accomplished, successful and courteous, they were appropriate men for a woman of her age to date.
They were also deeply, fundamentally, jaw-breakingly boring. And they seemed, dammit, old.
“Stop frowning. You’re going to get wrinkles,” Mason murmured.
Callie turned her head to see him standing behind her, dressed in khaki shorts and an untucked, white button-down shirt with the cuffs rolled back. He was carrying a cup of coffee and a slice of carrot cake, and her mouth watered—at the sight of him and the dessert. She couldn’t indulge; she had to try and keep her muffin top under some sort of control. Though she suspected that horse had bolted a long, long time ago...
“I already have wrinkles,” Callie told him, sitting down at the nearest table and glaring at him.
“Hardly any,” Mason replied, his eyes wandering over her face and down her neck. “In fact, you have the most gorgeous skin. Want some coffee?”
No, I want to stop thinking about you. I want to stop imagining what your hands feel like on my skin, your tongue in my mouth. I want to be able to date and not feel like I am cheating on my dead husband and you.
Callie sighed. “S’pose.”
Mason delivered the coffee and carrot cake to a nearby table before returning to her side. He held her chin and lifted her head, blue eyes assessing. “Who pissed on your battery?”
He was so damn irreverent. “Don’t be crude.”
Mason’s thumb skimmed her bottom lip. “Stop acting like you are 103. Spit it out, woman.”
She should object to him calling her “woman,” should tell him to go to hell. But his rough voice and the tenderness in his eyes just warmed her from the inside out.
Or more accurately, from that space between her legs and up.
Callie gestured for him to take the other seat. “Don’t call me ‘woman,’ and don’t loom over me. Sit if you want to but don’t...hover.”
Mason frowned, slid into the chair opposite her and rested his arms on the table. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her with assessing eyes. Callie drummed her fingers on the table between them, wondering what to say. She couldn’t tell him that she’d missed him, that she’d wanted to be with him, that eating out with another man seemed wrong.
“Cal? Talk to me.”
“Jules, my daughter, is going through a rough time. She and the man she loves, who I think also loves her, can’t find a way to be together.”
Mason remained silent for a moment. “As a parent, I fully understand that you are worried but that’s not why you are upset. Tell me the truth, the full truth.” Mason stopped one of his passing waitresses, ordered a latte and turned his attention back to her.
“I wanted an espresso,” Callie muttered.
“No, you didn’t, and aren’t I supposed to be the child in this nonrelationship?” Mason asked, his voice sounding tougher than she’d ever heard it. Callie flushed, sat back and tried to get her anger under control. None of this was his fault and her acting like an angry teenager wasn’t helping.
“One of the reasons I like you, Callie, is that you appear to be a straight shooter. So, last chance, speak or shut up,” Mason said, his eyes flat and his jaw hard.
Callie ran her thumbnail across the wooden table. “I went on two dates this past week.”
Mason immediately stiffened. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because they were very nice, very successful men of a certain age and they were—”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Mason interjected.
“—as boring as hell. I spent most of that time wishing they were you,” Callie continued, ignoring him.
Mason’s eyes lightened, darkened and lightened again. Callie fell into all that interest and emotion and, yeah, desire. “What are you saying, Callie?”
“I’m saying that I am a fifty-four-year-old woman who is not only just coming out of mourning, but menopause, too. I am a cocktail of hormones, insecurity and confusion. I am both terrified of having sex and equally terrified of not ever having it again. I’ve been a wife, am still sort of a mommy, but I’ve forgotten how to be a woman.”
Mason ran his hand over his jaw, visibly shocked by her blunt speech.
“I want you but I don’t want to want you. I don’t want to disappoint you but I don’t want to disappoint myself. I’m never getting married again—Ray was the only husband I’ll ever have.”
“Jesus.”
If she stopped now, she’d never start again. “If you keep asking me, I might say yes to a date. I might even get up enough courage to put my overweight, very unsexy body in your hands and I might let you kiss me.”
“Might? Screw that.”
Mason pulled her to her feet and led her through the crowded tables toward the counter on the far side of the room. Callie tried to tug her hand away but he was too strong and, yeah, this was the most excitement she’d had since she and Ray made love in the hot tub—
The slap of Mason’s hand on a swinging door dragged her from that memory—from the guilt rising in her—and she found herself in a tiny kitchen. Mason hauled her across the room and, keeping his hand around her wrist, flipped the dead bolt on the back door. Hot, humid air swirled around her as Mason guided her down the steps and, the next moment, her back was against the rough brick wall. Mason stared down at her, his eyes bo
ring into her.
“Tell me now you don’t want this and I’ll back off.”
Callie placed her hands on his chest and lifted her face up. “I do but I shouldn’t—”
“Again, screw that.”
Mason’s hands captured her face and his mouth covered hers and plundered, sliding over hers like he owned it, his tongue twisting hers into submission.
This wasn’t a boy’s kiss but a man’s, a man who knew what he wanted and how he intended to get it. There was no hesitation because Mason listened to her body language, saw the desire in her eyes. Impatient and determined, he wasn’t the type to waste time, to hang around waiting for her to be 100 percent ready.
Turned out that he was right, she was ready. Her tongue knew what to do, her hands ran up his strong back, down his hard butt, skirted around to feel his flat, hard stomach. Since she was touching him, Mason obviously thought that a little quid pro quo was in order and his broad hand sneaked between them and covered her breast, immediately finding her nipple and rubbing it into a hard, tight point.
It felt natural to tilt her pelvis, to push against that long, hard erection...
His erection. His...
Erection.
God, she was kissing a man who wasn’t her husband, who was so much younger than her, in the alley behind his coffeehouse. Whoa, brakes on, Brogan.
Mason, feeling her resistance, rested his forehead on hers. “Please don’t regret this, Callie. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Callie’s hands fell to her sides as Ray’s face flashed on the big screen in her mind. What would he think? What would her kids think? Her friends? Callie stepped away from Mason, who looked flushed and, oh, so frustrated.
“Then why do I feel like I have?”
“This again.” Mason shoved his hands into his hair. “He’s dead, Callie, and you’re alive, still here, still sexy, still a woman. You didn’t die with him.”
