A Beauty Uncovered

by Andrea Laurence

  Sam was intrigued about the idea of making love to him right here. The blanket of stars and eerie glow of their movements was so romantic. But there were no smooth sandy beaches here. Or protection. It was an interesting but impractical idea. They needed to go back to the house.

  “Take me to bed,” she whispered.

  Brody complied, walking them out of the water and onto the beach. She expected him to put her down once they reached the trail back to the house, but he didn’t. He continued walking, carrying her as though she were no heavier than a small child. She clung to him, burying her face in his neck. She couldn’t resist tasting his skin with him so close. Her lips and tongue moved over him. He tasted salty from the ocean.

  Seeing the lights of the house shining on the landscape around them made her bolder. She let her tongue swirl up the side of his neck to the sensitive skin just below his earlobe. She flicked it and then gently bit at him. She could feel Brody shiver and tighten his grip on her.

  They climbed the steps to the deck with the pool and walked through the open sliding glass door. Brody continued up the stairs to the master loft without putting her down, but she could feel the gentle tug of his fingertips at the tie of her bikini top. Easing back from her grip on him, she let the tiny white fabric slide down and fall to the ground, exposing her breasts and the tight pink tips.

  Brody allowed his gaze to dip down for a moment, then tore it away so he didn’t trip on the stairs. Sam pressed her breasts into his bare chest, eliciting a sharp hiss in her ear.

  At the top of the stairs, he went directly to the bed, dropping her onto the mattress and immediately covering her body with his own. Sam was grateful for the heat of him over her. The cooler air of the house combined with her still damp hair and skin drew goose bumps across her flesh and made her nipples even more painfully tight. Brody captured one in his mouth, and the sharp pleasure of it sent her head flying back with a gasp.

  It was then that she saw that they’d brought the blanket of stars back to the house with them. The skylight over the bed showed a perfect snapshot of the inky black night with its shimmering sea of twinkling stars overhead. It was awe-inspiring, and combined with the pleasure of Brody’s hands gliding over her skin, she was very nearly overwhelmed by the moment.

  Everything about the past few days had been perfect. Like a dream she never even dared to imagine. Even Brody’s confession about his childhood, while tragic, had breached one of the last barriers between them. She’d never felt closer to another man in her life. He was amazing in so many different ways and he didn’t even know it.

  She wished she knew of a way to tell him that he would believe. Words were easily brushed off. She would have to show him how much he meant to her. How much she…loved him.

  Sam tried to take a deep breath and focus on the stars overhead as tears started to form in the corners of her eyes. Her chest was painfully tight, even as her stomach fluttered with excitement and nerves.

  “Sam, is something wrong?”

  She shifted her gaze from the skylight to Brody’s concerned face. He was hovering over her, his strong arms pressed into the mattress beside her. His damp hair was curling slightly as it dried, and his eyes were black in the dim light but still just as penetrating. He was worried that he’d done something wrong, when in fact, he’d done everything right.

  At that exact moment, the first tear rolled down the side of her face. With a slight shake of her head and a soft smile, she reached out and pulled him back down to her. She closed her eyes as their lips met and another tear escaped. She wasn’t certain if most men understood tears of emotions other than pain and sadness. Sam could cry through any number of emotions, including joy and contentedness. And she was anything but sad right now. Being with Brody here on this beautiful island felt so perfectly right.

  When he eased forward and filled her, she could only cling to him and bite her bottom lip to keep from telling him how she felt. It would be so easy to whisper it into his ear or to cry it out to the night when she came undone. But she was afraid to. There was no way to know how he would react, and she didn’t dare ruin this moment. There would be time later, and maybe then, she might get the response she wanted to hear.

  Instead, she turned off her thoughts and tried to focus on loving him. It wasn’t long before she was swept up in the pleasure he coaxed from her, drunk on the warm musk of his skin. When her powerful climax came, she didn’t cry out. She buried her face in his neck, gasping his name as he filled her again and again.

  * * *

  Brody was tossing the last of his things in his suitcase when his cell phone rang. It was Wade’s ringtone, “Opportunities” by the Pet Shop Boys. The song was upbeat, but for some reason, it made his stomach ache with dread. Wade knew he was at the island with Sam. He would only call if it was really important.

  Deborah Wilder.

  He checked to make sure Sam was still in the shower before he answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your trip,” Wade began, but Brody could tell exactly where this was going. “You told me to call the minute I heard something.”

  Brody sank down onto the bed and let Wade talk without interruption.

  “Deborah is in Cornwall. She was at the Wet Hen last night asking around for anyone that knew her brother.”

  The Wet Hen was the center for a lot of activity in their home town. If you wanted to have a beer with the mayor and the sheriff, that was the place to go. It was also the place to start trouble quickly because everyone in town would know about it as certainly as they were sitting there.

  “Skippy called, but by the time I got down to the bar, she was gone. I hung around and chatted with a few folks for a while. It didn’t take much to find out what happened before she left.”

  “Did she learn anything?”

  “No,” Wade said. “It’s been a long time and most people have forgotten Tommy Wilder even existed. Those that remembered told her what she already knew—he ran away from his foster home and was never seen in Cornwall again.”

  Brody nodded. Maybe that would be enough to convince her that Cornwall was a dead end and send her packing. “Is she still in town?”

  “Yes. And apparently she went to the farm first to talk to Mom and Dad.”

  “What?” Brody nearly shouted into the phone. This was way too close for comfort.

  “I didn’t find out until later. Mom mentioned it when I went by this morning. Nothing came of it, but Mom is a little upset to know that Tommy has been missing since the night he vanished. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven herself for ‘failing’ that one.”

  Even knowing that she’d raised three millionaire CEOs, a U.S. congressman and a world-acclaimed artist, Molly would focus on the one that got away. “Not even Mom could have saved Tommy. I hate that she upset Mom like that. Where is Deborah staying?”

  “She’s staying at the Cornwall Inn. I gave Carol a call at the desk, and she said Deborah hadn’t checked out yet. She had a reservation through tomorrow. For now, I think things are okay. I don’t know who she could possibly talk to that might cause us trouble.”

  “Her presence in town causes us trouble, Wade. It starts to raise questions. People forgot about Tommy, but knowing he hasn’t been seen since then will make people wonder what happened. The sheriff is new. If Deborah pressures him enough, it might make him curious. Hell, Mom might even encourage the sheriff out of some misguided feeling of disappointing Tommy. He might start looking at the old case file and start his own search for him. The farm was the last place he was ever seen. Tell me that won’t bring questions into our lap.”

  “Then we tell him the same story we’ve always told. Why would we know what happened to him after he ran off?”

  “He’s dead, Wade. We killed him. Eventually people are going to wonder why he completely disappeared off the
face of the earth.”

  A soft gasp over Brody’s shoulder set ice running through his veins. He turned to find Sam standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. Her eyes were wide with surprise and fear, her lips parted to speak but silenced by shock.

  “I’ve gotta go, Wade. Call me if you hear anything.” He hit the button, ending the call before his brother could respond. Brody dropped the phone to the bed and slowly got up to face her.

  Sam watched him warily as he moved, her whole body tense.

  He didn’t go any closer. She looked like she would spook too easily, and there was nowhere for her to run. She could scream bloody murder on the beach and no one would hear her, but he didn’t want her to be afraid of him. Brody hated to see that expression in her eyes. She’d always looked at him with interest and openness, even early on. Now the fortress walls had slammed down. It made his chest ache with disappointment. He couldn’t let her slip away over this.

  “Sam, I know that sounded bad, but it isn’t what you think.”

  “You didn’t kill someone?” Her voice was icy cold.

  “No. I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, and that was true. Heath had been the one to actually kill Tommy, although that was splitting hairs. “Please relax. I’m not some serial killer about to slaughter you in the basement because you’ve uncovered my horrible secret. I’ve got enough problems right now without you, of all people, turning on me.”

  Sam took a deep breath, relaxing slightly but not making a move toward him. “So tell me what’s going on, then.”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Brody wished he could. He would love to have someone he could confess his darkest secrets to, but the brothers had a rule—protect the family above all else. He sat back down on the bed, defeat hunching his shoulders. “I wish I could.”

  Sam watched him for a moment before crossing the room and sitting beside him. She wasn’t shoulder to shoulder with him like usual, but it was an improvement. “Yes, you can. I know of five million reasons why you can tell me anything you want and know that I would never tell another living soul.”

  “The confidentiality agreement won’t cover this.” And even if it did, he didn’t want to burden her with it. He’d already dumped enough crap on her this weekend. He looked down at the floor, unable to meet her eyes as he spoke. “You’re…important to me, Sam. Even if I knew I could trust you enough to keep this secret, it’s only a partial consolation. You’ll still know. I don’t ever want to tell you something that changes the way you look at me. You’re one of the only people in the world that looks at me with something other than shock and disgust. I can’t risk losing that.”

  A hand rested gently against his scarred cheek. He turned to Sam, hoping to see the fear gone. It was. In its place was a drawn brow of concern and a slight frown. He wasn’t sure that was much better.

  “You won’t lose it, Brody. You can trust me with this. I want you to tell me.”

  Her dark brown eyes were penetrating as she spoke. She meant every word. He had to have faith she meant what she said. Rejecting her promise and walking away without telling her would likely do more damage to their relationship than the truth. He would still speak carefully, though. Some details didn’t need to be shared to help her understand his situation.

  “Do you remember the first day you came into my office?”

  She nodded, a smile faintly curling her lips. “Our first kiss.”

  Brody was glad that’s what she remembered instead of his angry rant. “Before that, when I was so angry… I thought you’d seen my computer and what was on it. It was information on a man, a child really, I knew when I was younger. Tommy. When we were teenagers, we were all living as foster children with the Edens. He was trouble from the start, nothing like the rest of us. I worried about him and what he might do, but the others told me I was just paranoid because of my accident.”

  “You were right.” It was a statement, not a question. She had come to know him so well, so quickly.

  Brody nodded. “He did something terrible one day while we were all out working on the farm. Our dad had the flu and was in bed, so we were out there doing our chores alone. Tommy took advantage of that. One of my brothers tried to stop him, and when it was over, Tommy was dead. We were kids. We didn’t know what to do.”

  “Of course not. Most adults wouldn’t know what to do, either.”

  “I was afraid that they would take us away from the Edens if someone found out about what happened. None of us wanted that to happen. It was our home. So we panicked. It was an accident and we should’ve called the cops, but we were too scared to risk it. We hid the body, cleaned up and pretended like it never happened. When our parents asked where Tommy was, we told them he left in the night. He was treated as a runaway and since he was almost eighteen, they didn’t spend much energy looking for him.”

  “That’s a long time for you to carry a secret that big.”

  “It is. We try not to think about it, but it’s hard to forget. I always keep an eye on the internet for people that might look for him. The day you came into my office, I had gotten a report that his sister was searching for him. We’d hoped that everyone would forget. My brother called and told me she’s in Cornwall asking questions about him.”

  “Do you think she will find out the truth?”

  “I don’t know. Only the five of us kids know the real story, aside from you, and even then, we each only know our piece of what happened that night. We didn’t talk about it with each other, much less anyone else. I don’t know of any way his sister could find out unless one of us tells her. Or the body turns up.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Is that a possibility?”

  Brody shrugged. “I hope not. But we were kids, not master criminals. We didn’t have a clue how to dispose of a body and keep anyone from ever identifying the remains. We’ve been lucky so far. Without a body, there’s no reason to doubt that he ran away.”

  “And if someone finds him?”

  Brody swallowed hard. “I try not to think about that.”

  Eleven

  It felt strange to be back in Boston. It was an odd thought for Sam to have considering she was born and raised in Boston and loved it. She had never even entertained the idea of moving, even when her job prospects in town were weak.

  She was cold. It was overcast and sleeting. It wouldn’t be long before the snow and ice started in earnest and didn’t let up until April. The only bright spot in the day was the fuchsia rose that was on her desk again this morning.

  Sam looked through her office window and dreaded going out to lunch today. Even to see Amanda. She really just wanted to go back to the island. Everything was different there. Including Brody.

  The open, happy, carefree man from the island was gone. He returned to being wary, guarded Brody the moment their jet landed back in Boston. He was still affectionate with her, that hadn’t changed, but there was something in his sapphire eyes. A worry. A tension that hadn’t followed him to his tropical retreat. She missed that Brody, and she had no idea how to coax that side out of him. At least not at work.

  The alarm sounded on her computer, reminding her to go meet Amanda. With another glance out the window, she grabbed her lined, turquoise raincoat, slung her scarf around her neck and grabbed her Coach bag. She paused at Brody’s door, knocking gently until he called for her to enter.

  “I’m going to meet a friend for lunch at the deli on the corner. Do you want me to bring you a sandwich back?”

  Brody nodded, his eyes darting to his monitor several times as she spoke. He was distracted by his work. Another thing she hadn’t missed about Boston. He’d barely scrolled through his emails in Puerto Rico.

  “That would be great.” He scribbled an order on a yellow sticky note and handed it to her. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be back in abo
ut an hour.”

  Brody gave a quick wave and returned to his computers. With a sigh, Sam shut the door behind her and headed through the various security hoops she needed to get outside. On their island, they hadn’t even closed the doors, much less needed fingerprint scans to open them.

  She got a text from Amanda as she crossed the street. She had a table in the back of the deli with her food. Sam ordered quickly and joined her, setting her phone on the table beside them.

  “You have a tan,” Amanda remarked. “I hate you.”

  Sam smiled sheepishly. She did get a nice tan. And no tan lines at that. It had been indulgent and naughty to sunbathe nude on the beach, but she took the chance while she had it. “Sorry.”

  “What brought on this impromptu vacation? You didn’t mention it the last time we had lunch.”

  “I didn’t know I was going then. My boss wanted to surprise me with a long weekend away. It was spur-of-the-moment.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “Wow. This romance is progressing quite nicely.”

  Sam nodded and opted to take a bite of her sandwich to avoid elaborating. Amanda had no idea of the truth of her statement. But Sam couldn’t even tell her best friend that she had feelings for Brody. It was all too fast, and she had to leave so many details of their relationship out of the conversation. Declaring her love for her nameless supervisor would send up a red flag, and she didn’t want Amanda to be more concerned than excited for her budding romance.

  “Well, while you were cavorting on the beach, I had my own development in the man department.”

  Sam immediately felt guilty. She should’ve noticed how much her friend was beaming, but she’d been distracted by her own thoughts. Amanda was wearing one of her nicest outfits, her hair and makeup done with more attention to detail than usual. “What? Do tell.”

  “His name is Matt. I met him at a bar downtown on Thursday night. They had a band in that I wanted to go see. And since you were out of town, I had to go it alone. Matt was there alone to see the band, too. We started chatting and he bought me a drink. It blossomed from there. We went out Friday night and Saturday night. Then we had breakfast Sunday morning,” she added with a sly grin.