A Forbidden Affair

by Yvonne Lindsay

  “But this is a new millennium,” he reminded her. “And surely there’s some kind of statute of limitations on curses.”

  “Well, I don’t know about a statute of limitations,” she conceded, “but, according to family legend, there is one way to break the curse.”

  Well, that certainly helped, Marcus thought. “And that would be?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Supposedly, any Meade who finds true love with someone—really, truly, wonderfully true love—then that’s supposed to break the curse for that particular Meade.”

  “True love?” Marcus echoed.

  “True love,” Dinah confirmed.

  “Well, you know, all things considered, that’s not such a bad way to break a curse.”

  “Oh, sure. Easy for you to say. But where am I supposed to find true love in this day and age?” she demanded. “Nobody finds true love anymore.”

  Oh, now that was a matter of opinion, Marcus thought. He opened his mouth to say just that when Dinah cut him off.

  “All of the good ones are taken,” she told him. “Or else all of the good ones are gay.”

  Marcus narrowed his eyes at her. “You really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Well, that didn’t sound very promising. How could Dinah not think he was one of the good ones? ’Cause he sure wasn’t taken. He opened his mouth to say just that when the SUV cut him off.

  Because it skittered wildly, jolting him back to awareness. And the first thing he became aware of was that Dinah was having some major difficulty maneuvering the big SUV. The second thing he became aware of was that it was because they had a flat tire.

  He gritted his teeth and held on tight as she downshifted, slowed and gradually pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. And he admired the coolness with which she handled everything.

  That coolness, however, turned into frozenness the moment the truck came to a complete halt. Because all she did was sit stock-still, staring straight ahead, her knuckles white as she gripped the wheel with both hands.

  “Dinah?” he asked softly. “You okay?”

  No response from the driver, save some erratic breathing.

  “Dinah?” Marcus tried again.

  Nothing.

  He reached across the seat and carefully pried her fingers free, then wove them with his own, only to find that they were as rigid and cold as an icicle.

  “Dinah,” he tried again. “It’s okay. We’re okay. We’ll just have to change the tire, that’s all.”

  Finally, finally, she seemed to realize what had happened. But when she glanced over at Marcus, her eyes were huge and shiny with tears. “We’re not going to make it, are we?” she said. “I might as well just kiss that five million bucks goodbye.”

  Four

  Of course, finding a gas station open so early on a Saturday in such a small, by-the-way town, and replacing Marcus’s spare tire with a new one helped, too.

  With their stomachs full, their spirits lifted and their mental attitudes improved, Dinah and Marcus generated some exceedingly good karma. For the rest of the weekend, they made excellent time, with nary an overturned semi, flat tire or traffic jam in sight. By midnight Sunday, they had crossed into Mississippi and were feeling pretty celebratory.

  They were also feeling pretty sleepy.

  “We need to stop for a while, Dinah,” Marcus said from the driver’s side. “We need to find a hotel, if just for a few hours. I’m beat.”

  Beat didn’t even begin to cover how she was feeling herself. More than forty-eight hours had passed since she’d showered or changed her clothes, and she knew she must look as ragged as she felt. In spite of that, she offered halfheartedly, “I’ll take over the driving for a bit.”

  He shook his head. “You’re no better rested than I am.”

  “Sure I am,” she countered wearily. “I slept for a while this afternoon.”

  He expelled an incredulous sound. “Yeah, right.”

  “Okay,” she conceded, “maybe I didn’t actually sleep, per se, but I did nap for a while.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t napping so much as it was dozing. I did doze. Some.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t a lot of dozing, but I did have a dream,” she told him.

  “Oh, really?” he asked dubiously. “About what?”

  Actually, Dinah recalled now, it had been a dream about Marcus. And in that dream, Marcus had been doing things with her, to her, that she would just as soon not describe to him in detail right now. Or ever. Her face flamed when she remembered some of the more explicit, more erotic, highlights.

  Oh, boy, was she glad she wasn’t the kind of woman to fall in love easily. Because if she was, after that dream… Well. Between the passion she’d experienced for him in that dream, and the easy camaraderie she shared with him in real life, Dinah would definitely be over the moon by now where her feelings for Marcus were concerned.

  “The dream was about, uh…a, um…” She scrambled for some kind of explanation and blurted out the first thing that popped into her head. “It was about a powerful locomotive speeding through a dark tunnel.”

  Gee, now why would that be the first thing that popped into her head? Dinah wondered. Then she recalled something else from her Psych 101 class—or True Confessions magazine. Something about how a powerful locomotive speeding through a dark tunnel was symbolic of something… Symbolic of…of…of…

  Uh-oh.

  “A powerful locomotive speeding through a dark tunnel, huh?” Marcus echoed with a chuckle. “Interesting dream.”

  Boy, you don’t know the half of it.

  But all Dinah could manage in response was, “Um, yeah. It was. Interesting, I mean.”

  Marcus chuckled some more. “We definitely need to stop and get some sleep. We’re starting to get punchy.”

  Dinah sighed, relenting. He was right. It would be dangerous for them to operate any kind of heavy machinery in their current mental states. Then again, she pondered further, did she really want to check into a motel with Marcus in her own current mental state?

  Then again, she pondered further still, what difference did it make? He wasn’t going to make a pass at her. And he’d rebuff any pass she might make at him. Not that she had any intention of making a pass at Marcus.

  In your dreams, Dinah.

  Well, okay, maybe there. But only there.

  “I guess you’re right,” she finally surrendered. She noted the next mile marker she saw, then pulled out the map and flicked on the overhead light. “We should be hitting a town called Garvey in about forty-five minutes. It looks big enough to have at least one decent motel. Maybe if we just check in for a few hours, we won’t lose too much time. We should still make Georgia by late afternoon with no problem.”

  I hope.

  They remained silent after that, both of them probably too tired to do much more than concentrate on staying conscious long enough to cover the next forty miles. Dinah, however, didn’t have to concentrate as hard as Marcus did over there in the driver’s seat, and, inescapably, her mind wandered back to the dream she’d enjoyed that afternoon. Boy, had she enjoyed it. Yepper. Probably way more than she should have.

  Her mind then wandered back further still to their near miss on the highway two nights before, when she’d landed in Marcus’s capable hands. Or rather in his capable hand. Quite literally, in fact. Which, now that she thought about it, might be what had sparked that odd dream. Because in her dream, he’d had his hand on a lot more than her—

  But that wasn’t really important, she told herself. What was important was that she needed sleep. Because exhaustion could be the only explanation for why she was thinking the t
hings she was thinking, and feeling the things she was feeling. Exhaustion. Nothing more.

  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  Normally, it would have caused Dinah some concern to be alone with a man in a hotel room, wearing nothing but a little white towel. But Marcus was still in the shower, and she was having an awful lot of trouble finding the underwear she was sure she’d packed in her duffel bag. And the man in question was Marcus, who wouldn’t even notice her little white towel because it was wrapped around—sort of—a body that just didn’t do anything for him.

  Would that she could say the same about the little white towel wrapped around—sort of—his body when he stepped out of the bathroom then, a body that did, oh…a lot for her.

  They’d both collapsed onto separate beds immediately upon entering the room three hours ago and now felt rested enough to continue with their grand adventure. But they’d both wanted—nay, needed—showers before continuing, even if it did cost them precious time. They could make it to Georgia by this afternoon, Dinah promised herself. They could.

  They could.

  Now, as Marcus stepped out of the bathroom, surrounded by billows of steam and that little scrap of terry cloth, Dinah couldn’t quite quell the spiral of wanting—and something else, too, something less distinct, but infinitely more troubling—that wound tighter inside her.

  His dark hair was wet, slicked straight back from his face, and his cheeks were ruddy from his recent shave. Dark hair covered the ropes of muscle and sinew on his chest, swirling down over a flat torso to disappear into the towel. She watched as he dragged a comb through his hair, biting back a wistful sigh at the way his biceps and triceps, and oh, my goodness, those abs, danced to an erotic tune playing in her head.

  And she couldn’t halt the blush that crept into her face when his gaze met hers in the mirror, and he caught her ogling him so blatantly. Immediately, he spun around to face her, his own cheeks ruddy, his expression bordering on stunned.

  Oh, yeah, she’d bet he was stunned. Nothing like having a woman panting after you when all you felt for her was a fond and friendly affection.

  “Dinah?” he asked, his voice low and husky and very aroused.

  Honestly, if she hadn’t known better, Dinah would have sworn the man was completely turned on. But, of course, she knew better. There was no way Marcus could be turned on by her.

  Could he?

  Before she could ponder that particular quandary, he pitched the comb onto the sink and made his way slowly, deliberately, and oh-so-sexily, across the room. He said nothing as he approached, only held her gaze steadily with his own. And when he dropped down to sit on the bed beside her, something made her clutch her towel more resolutely to her chest.

  “You, uh…you got something on your mind?” he asked softly. “Something maybe I should know?” Then, to her surprise, he lifted a hand and nudged a strand of hair near her face back behind her ear.

  “Um, no,” she lied. “Not really.”

  He nodded slowly, withdrawing his hand, but only to skim the pad of his thumb gingerly along her jaw line. “Funny,” he murmured. “’Cause you really look like you have something on your mind that I should know about.”

  Dinah swallowed hard, and when she did, Marcus dropped his gaze, then his hand, to her throat, curving his fingers intimately over her nape. The heat that curled through her was keen and piercing and very demanding.

  “No,” she said again, her voice coming out thready and embarrassingly squeaky. “It’s nothing.”

  “C’mon,” he cajoled, stroking his thumb along the column of her throat with a maddening gentleness. “You can tell me.”

  Dinah eyed him levelly, her thoughts, assumptions and doubts all colliding at once in her brain. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly, thinking it a very good question.

  His lips turned up in a very seductive smile. “What? You can’t tell? Maybe I should work a little harder.”

  Oh, my.

  “Hmm?” he said, his mouth hovering a scant inch from hers.

  “But…but, Marcus…” she tried again.

  “Yes, Dinah?”

  “But…but…”

  “But what?” he asked, his voice a little less seductive now.

  “But I thought…I thought…”

  “You thought what?” he asked.

  “I…I thought you… I thought you were…were…”

  “You thought I was what?”

  “Marcus, I thought you were…gay?”

  Gay? Gay?

  Well, this was news to Marcus. “Gay?” he echoed. “Gay? How the hell could you think I was gay?”

  She plucked nervously at the blanket beneath her. “Well,” she said quietly, “you are a single man living in San Francisco.”

  He studied her blankly for a moment, telling himself that couldn’t possibly be the extent of her assumption. But when she said nothing more, he replied, “Um, yeah. As are thousands of other heterosexual men. What else made you think I’m gay?”

  “Well,” she tried again, “you do dress very nicely.”

  He continued to eye her intently. “And?”

  “And you always smell so nice,” she pointed out.

  “And?”

  “You’re an excellent dancer.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dinah, how many more pieces of this stereotype puzzle are we going to add?”

  “You have the soundtrack for West Side Story,’” she added.

  “It has that kickass Leonard Bernstein score,” he replied. He pointed a finger at her and stated, quite adamantly, “Hey, that’s the most macho show that ever hit Broadway.”

  “But it is a musical,” she reminded him.

  He sighed heavily.

  “Well, it is.”

  Marcus muttered an impatient sound. “What else?” he asked wearily. “Might as well just get all this out in the open now.”

  “Well, you used the word ‘fussy’ once.”

  He gaped at her. “I have never used the word ‘fussy.’”

  She nodded. Vehemently. “Oh, yes, you did, too.”

  “When?”

  “That first day I met you in the lobby, when we were talking about the window treatments.”

  Marcus searched his brain, trying very hard to recall the episode. Not surprisingly, however, he came up completely blank. “Nope. Sorry. Didn’t happen. You must have misunderstood.”

  Boy, was that an understatement.

  “Well, anyway, you’re much too good to be true,” Dinah finally concluded. “Certainly much too good to be heterosexual.”

  Marcus gazed at her for a long, silent moment, wondering just how to proceed. Suddenly, it all made sense, why she’d never returned his interest. And he realized then that he should have tried just a tad bit harder to illustrate that interest. Especially since he was beginning to understand that what he felt for Dinah was a lot more than just interest. He only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  “Dinah,” he finally said softly. “Dearest. I assure you, I am not homosexual.”

  “Oh, please, Marcus, you don’t have to pretend with me. I’m a very open-minded person. In fact—”

  She never got to finish what she was going to say, because Marcus took it upon himself to prove his assertion to her the only way he knew how.

  He kissed her. Soundly. Towels be damned.

  Five

  Well, actually, she didn’t notice too much after that.

  Because Marcus deepened the kiss, covering her mouth with his, and tasted her passionately, intimately, thoroughly. He skimmed his fingers lightly along her jaw, brushed his bent knuckles down the side of her neck, dipped his forefinger into the elegant hollow at the base of her throat.
<
br />   Little by little, Dinah was drawn under his spell, and it felt so good to finally be doing something she had wanted to do for a very long while. All this time she’d been thinking Marcus couldn’t be interested in her, not in the way she was interested in him. All this time she’d thought it would be pointless to pursue anything with him. All this time she’d been so certain he would never, could never, return her feelings for him.

  All this time she’d been wrong. Oh, boy, had she been wrong. And now… Well now just about anything seemed possible. And now all those feelings she’d been feeling for him were starting to make sense and ceasing to seem pointless.

  Heat bubbled up inside her as she lifted a hand to his hair, threading her fingers through the damp, silky tresses. Her touch must have stirred something more insistent in him because he looped his arm fiercely around her waist and pulled her closer still. Two brief scraps of fabric were all that came between them then. There was nothing more than that to prevent them from doing what they both so obviously wanted to do. Nothing except those two brief scraps of fabric, and—

  Five million dollars.

  “Stop!” she cried, jerking away from him. “We don’t have time for this right now!”

  Marcus grinned devilishly, reaching for her again. With one swift, deft maneuver, he hauled her back into his arms. “Oh, Dinah. There’s always time for this.”

  He burrowed his head against her neck and dragged his open mouth along her throat, his breath hot and damp and tantalizing against her skin. And Dinah had to admit then that maybe he might have a point....

  She doubled both fists loosely against his chest and pushed him back. But not too far. “Is it worth sacrificing five million dollars?” she asked pointedly.

  He thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, actually. As a matter of fact, I think it is.”

  She gaped at him. Well, when he put it like that.... “Wow,” she whispered reverently. He must be really, really good.

  His grin turned roguish. “Oh, baby, ‘wow’ doesn’t even begin to describe what we’re about to do.”

  She wanted so badly to give in to her desires and spend the rest of the night—hey, the rest of the week—right there in that hotel room, exploring things with Marcus she had only dreamed about enjoying before. And she came very, very close to doing so. But even without the five million dollars waiting for her in Georgia, things with Marcus were happening much too fast.