Forever…Again

by Maureen Child

  Which made no sense at all. It wasn’t any of his business what she did with her off hours.

  His gaze locked on her mouth for a long minute, and there was a definite tug of interest. He’d thought himself long past the time when a beautiful woman could hit him so damn hard. Apparently, though, he’d been wrong. Blast it, what was it about her that had him reacting in fits and starts?

  He cleared his throat and she looked up, startled. An instant later, though, that mouth of hers curved in a smile and even her eyes seemed to glow in welcome. “Well,” she said softly, “look who’s here.”

  “So you do work, huh?”

  Her smile dimmed a little and her eyes narrowed a fraction. Hell, he didn’t even know why he’d said that. But maybe, he thought, it was the fact that he’d been enjoying knowing that she was glad to see him. The whole, illogical, cheating-husband sensation was back. Didn’t seem to matter that it was ridiculous. It was there, and he’d just have to find a way to deal with it.

  “Occasionally.” She set her pen down. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yeah.” He moved into the room, a part of his mind admiring her office, as he always did. She’d taken a nondescript cubicle with one small window and turned it into a plush working space. Style. She definitely had it. “First,” he said, moving to the captain’s style chair opposite her desk and dropping into it, “you can forgive me for being…”

  “Crabby?” she offered, obviously more than willing to help him define his ill temper.

  Ron laughed shortly. “Crabby and stuffy. There’s a combination you don’t run into every day.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised how often the two go together.”

  “And you’d know this…”

  “The people I’m constantly hitting up for money are, more often than not—”

  “Like me,” he provided, so she wouldn’t have to repeat herself.

  “Like you.” She nodded and smiled again. “And handing over their money…even a tax-deductible contribution to an excellent cause…tends to make those stuffy people very crabby.”

  Good humor fairly bubbled from her, even in the face of his poor manners. Ron had a feeling that Lily Cunningham was one of those perpetually cheerful people who were generally so difficult to live with. But she would always be interesting.

  That thought brought him up short. Living with Lily? Who the hell had said anything about living with her? They could hardly spend fifteen minutes together without verbal shots being fired.

  “So,” she said, interrupting his runaway train of thought, “what brings Your Royal Crabbiness to my humble door so early in the morning?”

  “PR.”

  “Then you came to the right place.”

  “Good.”

  “So what do you need?”

  “I need to think of a way to help Mari. This is driving me insane.” His hands curled over the arms of the chair and squeezed the dark wood until he wouldn’t have been surprised to feel it snap off in his hands. “Some idiot called my house this morning. Said Mari should be arrested.”

  He still could hardly believe it. Arrested. Mari. Of all people. His daughter had devoted her life to taking care of people. To seeing to it that the women in Merlyn County had the best possible obstetric care. And for that, what did she get…innuendo, gossip. The very people who should have been applauding her were, instead, the first to hurl verbal stones.

  “Idiots.”

  Ron shot Lily a look and somehow felt better to see the unmistakable signs of temper etched on her features. Damn, it was good to have someone share your indignation. To feel connected enough to another person that their support made a difference.

  He hadn’t had that in ten long years.

  And to find it with Lily stunned him.

  “You know,” she said, leaning forward and planting both elbows on her desk, “it never ceases to amaze me just how quickly a swarm of admirers can become an unruly mob.”

  “I don’t understand how the local people could believe any of this gossip about Mari.” He pushed himself to his feet, unable to sit still for another minute. Irritation again jumped into life inside him as he stalked to her window and looked out on the greenbelt that ran alongside the clinic.

  Morning sunlight dappled through the leaves of the trees, tossing cooling shade on the well-trimmed grass. A slight wind brushed through the tops of the trees, sending them swaying as though they were dancing to music only they could hear. A few young mothers sat beneath the trees, watching as toddlers stumbled and crawled. A gardener knelt beside a bed of marigolds, eagerly digging out the few weeds who’d dared to raise their heads.

  He braced his hands on either side of the window frame and stared through the lacy sheers ruffling in the slight breeze slipping beneath the partially opened window. “I don’t understand it.” He said it again, as if repeating the words echoing inside his brain would make everything clear.

  Ron had lived in this place his whole life. Grown up with most of the people who were busily trying to dig the earth out from beneath his daughter’s feet.

  And he just didn’t get it.

  “Wanna punch something?”

  “What?” He looked back over his shoulder at her.

  She hadn’t moved from behind her desk, but she’d turned so that she was facing him. Her stocking-clad legs were crossed, and one red high heel dangled from her toes as she waved her foot back and forth.

  “I asked if you would like to punch someone.” She smiled and tipped her head to one side. “Not that I’m volunteering for target practice, you understand.”

  He shook his head, more to get his fixed gaze off her shapely legs than for any other reason. “You have someone in mind?”

  “Bryce Collins?” she offered cheerfully. “I saw him myself a couple of days ago and was sorely tempted to plant one on him.” She curled her right hand into a fist, and Ron smiled at her fierce expression. Her hand was so damn small, a punch wouldn’t have made a dent in anybody.

  But he appreciated the sentiment.

  “Tempting.” He turned around, braced a hip on the windowsill and folded his arms across his chest. “Too tempting, actually. And that’s saying something. I haven’t felt the need for a good fist fight in twenty years.”

  “Only natural,” Lily said, and reached down to slip her shoe back on before uncrossing her legs and standing up. Since the moment he’d stepped into her office, Lily’s heartbeat had been thundering in her ears. Something about this man got to her like no one else ever had.

  Certainly couldn’t be his charm, she thought wryly. The man had as many sharp angles and stiff bristles as a concrete box filled with porcupines. But for all his glowering and grumbling, there was something in his eyes. Something that made her want to reach out to him, despite all her instincts insisting that her empathy wouldn’t be welcomed.

  His large frame was outlined in sunlight, leaving his face in shadow. Tall and broad, he seemed to take up an awful lot of room in her very feminine office. And in the wisp of wind drifting through the window, the scent of his cologne reached her.

  She nearly smiled.

  Old Spice.

  No trendy, ultrahip, uberexpensive cologne for Ron Bingham. She’d seen enough of him in the past few months to know that he wasn’t easily impressed by the new and shiny. He was an old-fashioned kind of man. The kind who stuck by a friend through thick and thin. The kind who didn’t play games and wouldn’t stand for lying or cheating.

  Too bad she hadn’t met him years ago.

  Back when she still believed in romance and happily ever after.

  But years ago he’d been married to Violet, the “love of his life,” according to local gossip. The townspeople still said the woman’s name with a nod and a whisper of respect, though she’d been gone for ten years.

  And according to that same local gossip, Ron had never been seriously involved with any woman since Violet’s death. What would it have been like, she wondered, to have be
en loved like that? To feel a love that lasted beyond the grave? To know that no matter what happened, there was one person in the world who would always stand beside you?

  Inwardly sighing, Lily wondered, too, if the late, great Violet had known how lucky she was.

  “As satisfying as it must feel to hunt down the bad guy and pummel him into the dust,” she said, “it wouldn’t do Mari any good.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “The truth will come out. You know that, too, don’t you?”

  “Thought I did.” He pushed away from the wall and straightened up.

  Worry for his daughter was clearly eating at him. Ron Bingham was the kind of man who’d always believed in the law. The system. It was in his blood, in the way he lived his life. To be questioning it all now only served to show just how worried he was.

  And Lily didn’t know how she could help. But she was compelled to try.

  “Haven’t you been telling me for months how wonderful Binghamton is?” she asked, and met his gaze when it snapped to her. “I’ve only been here a few months and I know that.” Lily reached out and laid one hand on his arm. Even through the fabric of his sports jacket, she felt his muscles corded tight beneath her hand and a flicker of purely female approval whispered through her.

  He glanced down at her hand, then lifted his gaze to hers again. When he spoke, his already deep voice dropped until it seemed to rumble along her spine. “What makes you so damn sure?”

  “Because,” Lily said, taking a deep breath to still the flutter of nerves rippling through the pit of her stomach, “she’s innocent.”

  He snorted a short laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “Wouldn’t have figured you for naive.”

  “I’m not.” Heaven knew she’d had cause enough—with her love life alone—to be cynical. But she’d fought against that tendency as hard as she’d fought to keep from being too trusting…again.

  “Good guys always win?”

  “Eventually.” She believed it. Karma was a powerful force in the universe, and Lily was a firm believer in just desserts.

  “Yeah? How long does that take?”

  “No way of knowing.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “It wouldn’t be,” she said with a slow shake of her head. She felt his frustration and shared it. And she’d only known Mari a short while. What must it be like for her father to have to stand by helplessly? “No. Not for you.”

  He stiffened and Lily reluctantly let her hand drop from his arm, severing their contact.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Irritation spurted to life inside her. Honestly, the man was impossible to talk to without feeling the urge to shout at him. “Well, nothing insulting, so dial it down a notch, okay?”

  He blinked at her. Then his frown slowly dissolved and a very small smile curved his mouth briefly. “Not insulting, huh?”

  “No,” she said, but disgusted with the eager way his porcupine quills jutted up in self-defense, she added, “but give me a minute, and I’ll come up with something appropriate.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a heartbeat.” She shook her hair back from her face and glared at him.

  He stared down at her for so long, she almost wished for a mirror so she could check and see if she’d sprouted a third eye in the middle of her forehead.

  Then he spoke, and what she wanted was distance.

  From him.

  “Who the hell are you, Lily Cunningham?”

  The words weren’t bad, but his tone held the idle curiosity of a man looking at a bug under a microscope. Lovely. “Just who you think I am.”

  “A rich dilettante killing a few months in a backwater town?”

  She sucked in air like a drowning man. She hadn’t insulted him, but obviously he didn’t share her restraint. “That’s what you think of me?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “Only totally.” Anger now swirled where irritation had blossomed, and she let the tide rise inside her. Planting both hands on his broad chest, she gave him a mighty shove that, much to her disgust, didn’t budge him an inch. “You are a completely infuriating man.”

  “That’s been said before.”

  “Hardly surprising, considering.” Since she couldn’t push him away from her, Lily whirled around and took two fast steps.

  That’s as far as she got.

  Ron dropped one big hand on her shoulder, holding her in place, before he slowly turned her around again to face him. “Running away?”

  “I do not run away from anything.” Lily wanted to yank herself free of his grasp, but since his grip felt pretty strong, she thought she’d only look like a fish, wriggling on a hook.

  “Then what’s your hurry?”

  She put a stopper on her temper, took a long, deep breath and prayed for patience. “Tell me why I should stand here and let you insult me in my own office.”

  He looked down at her and held her gaze. Then he said softly, unexpectedly, “I don’t want you to go.”

  Chapter Five

  Everything in her went completely still.

  The quiet room echoed with the sound of his voice and those few, unexpected words. A soft breeze carried the scent of roses and new-mown grass. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence and sounded like the pulse of the room.

  For one heart-stopping moment she felt like a teenager, staring up into the quarterback’s steely gaze. And just as she would have been in that situation, Lily found herself totally speechless for the first time in her life.

  It didn’t last long.

  “Ron—”

  “Don’t—” He shook his head, huffed out a breath. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here.”

  “You think I do?”

  “Was hoping one of us did.”

  “Out of luck.”

  His hand tightened on her shoulder, and Lily was sure she could feel the heat of his touch seeping into her bones. He was only inches away.

  His gaze never left hers. Those blue-green eyes softened, then hardened, then an emotion she couldn’t identify flashed across their surfaces and was gone again in the next instant.

  “I don’t want this.” His voice was harsh, deep, and sounded as though it had scraped its way up his throat.

  “Not exactly what I was looking for, either,” she said, thinking, oh, that was the biggest understatement of the century.

  She didn’t want romance.

  She sucked at romance.

  Her marriage had ended with a whimper. Hers. Then her next attempt at love had fizzled to a close when she’d discovered that the man she was seeing had only used her to ingratiate himself with the CEO of a company he was planning to sue. And her third and so far, final, leap into the churning waters of passion had ended when her erstwhile lover had suddenly decided he was gay.

  Needless to say, she’d expended enough energy and heartache trying to find the fairy tale. And now she was just too old and cranky to be bothered with it anymore. She’d been happily single and carefree for years and she liked her life just the way it was.

  And even if she were going to be crazy enough to try her hand at love again…it wouldn’t be with Ron Bingham. The father of her employer. The widower of—from everything she’d heard—the most fabulous woman on the planet. The crabby, stuffy, bearded man who could, it seemed, turn her crank like no one else ever had.

  Oh, this could be nothing but trouble.

  His hand tightened on her shoulder. Firm, yet gentle, his touch simmered through her, making her feel a lot like a slow-cooked goose, building to a boil.

  “Don’t want you to go,” he murmured, his gaze moving over her face as if looking for a way out, a way to escape the emotions suddenly churning in the air between them. “Don’t want you to stay, either.”

  “Well,” she said gruffly, trying for and failing to find a nonchalant tone, “that sort of leaves us at an impasse.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked b
riefly. But a moment later his features were stone-cold serious again and his eyes looked nearly bleak.

  “Whatever there is between us, it can’t go anywhere.”

  “Who said I wanted it to?”

  “No one. I’m just saying—”

  “You’re just saying what exactly?” Don’t push it, Lily. Just turn and walk away. Break the contact between you and leave the room. Hell. Run from the room. This could only get more complicated.

  But she couldn’t run.

  Wouldn’t.

  Which of course, made her completely crazy.

  “I’m saying you’re making me think things I don’t want to think. Things I haven’t thought about in—”

  “I’m not making you do anything, Ron.” She interrupted him cleanly, sharply. “I won’t stand here and be blamed for something we’re both feeling and we’re both unwilling to—”

  He pulled her close, snaked one strong arm around her waist and tipped her head back in a ferocious kiss that stole her breath and scattered her thoughts. Lily clung to him, her knees weak enough that she had to hold on to him to remain standing.

  One kiss.

  One kiss shouldn’t have this kind of power. That single, stray thought rocketed through her brain and caromed around like a billiard ball, ricocheting wildly.

  Then there was nothing. Nothing but the touch of his lips pressed to hers. His breath puffing across her cheeks. His beard rough against her skin. Every cell in her body tingled. She felt the rush of her blood pounding through her veins and a swirl of something warm and delicious in the pit of her stomach.

  Then he parted her lips with his tongue, swept inside her warmth and stole what was left of her brain.

  Breathless with anticipation, excitement, Lily wrapped her arms around him and held on. His arms tightened around her middle in an almost desperately fierce hug, fusing their bodies as one.

  Their tongues dipped and danced, caressed and stroked, and Lily’s blood danced in her veins. Lights exploded behind her eyes and she gave herself up to a wonder she’d never expected to find. Head spinning, she leaned into him further, silently asking for more.