Refusing to be distracted, he adjusted the setting to replay and, not looking at the picture, passed her the camera. What he did look at was her. Her breath coming in small misty puffs. Her cheeks and nose getting redder still with the cold. The lips that had moments ago touched his face. So much for not getting distracted.
He dropped all pretence of resolution and cupped a hand to one rosy cheek. Meg looked up, a smile playing about her lips. The smile dimmed and her lips parted as she read his intent. Using his teeth he pulled his other glove off, let it fall to the snow so that he could frame her face with both his hands. Skin against skin.
Slowly, he lowered his head and kissed her.
Properly.
If they only had this day left, if he only had a finite and too-limited number of kisses left, then he wasn’t going to let her waste them on his cheek.
The warmth of her mouth was an erotic contrast to the chill of her lips. Her heat, as his tongue teased and tasted, swamped him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him back, softened against him. Pure Meg. Laughter and depth, temptation and innocence. His past, his present and his- Just his past and his present. That’s all it would be.
He kissed her still, widening his stance so that he could fit her more closely against him. Kissing her out here was safe. Layers of clothing and a bitter chill to prevent his taking any of them off. But the temptation was so great that he’d likely stay out till they both froze just for the pleasure of feeling her pliant mouth beneath his, her warmth and sweetness, her eagerness.
It was Meg who broke the kiss, leaning back, her arms looped around his waist so that her hips pressed a little more firmly against his. “I don’t think we should.”
He’d think a little more clearly if it wasn’t for those hips. He knew all the reasons why she was right. This was ending. And it needed to end cleanly. As cleanly as was possible given what had already passed between them. He didn’t want to hurt her. “You’re right. But just one more.” He waited for her smile, waited till the indecision in her eyes was swept away by agreement and the flare of hunger as she abandoned reason and caution and lifted her face to his. Meg. His wife. So quick to respond to him. Something primal stirred. More than lust. He chose not to examine it, let desire and pure pleasure take the upper hand.
They were both breathing heavily, their breaths mingling in the air, by the time she again pulled away. And this time she broke all contact, stepping away from his touch, turning to adjust the snowman’s carrot nose. “We should go in.”
And this time he knew better than to disagree. Because despite what he’d thought, kissing her out here wasn’t safe. Far from it. Kissing the way they had been spoke too openly of more, of picking up where they’d left off last night. Of his falling into her heat. Of staying there.
“Besides, I’m cold.” Her cheeks were flushed.
Luke lifted her hand, pulled a glove off and enclosed her fingers in his. He tucked her hand against his side as he led her back to the house.
Inside again, he hung up their coats. He didn’t look at her cases by the front door as he led her toward the living room, knew a moment’s hesitation as they passed the Christmas tree, he wouldn’t kiss her inside, knew another moment as they passed the stairs, the stairs he wouldn’t lead her up to his bedroom. Finally in the relative sanctuary of the living room, he lit the fire. “Stand here. Warm yourself.”
Unquestioning and not meeting his gaze, she held her hands out to the flames.
Luke left the room, returned in five minutes carrying two cups of cocoa. He didn’t know why looking after her gave him such pleasure and satisfaction, but it did. She stood exactly where he’d left her, staring into the flames.
“You’re warm enough?” He handed her a cup of cocoa and she nodded as she took it, seemingly intrigued by the marshmallows floating on the top.
“What now?” she asked.
Almost all of the ideas that sprang to mind were unwise. “I have a suggestion.”
Her gaze lifted and narrowed on him.
“Not that.” He laughed. Because if he didn’t laugh he’d take the assumption as an invitation. “Not that the idea doesn’t have merit.” A slow blush crept up her face. “I’m suggesting a movie.” She quickly covered the flash of disappointment in her gaze. But the flash had pleased the unwise part of him. Like her, he covered the reaction. He slid a movie into the player, picked up the remote. “The snow’s stopped. Soon enough the roads will be cleared and you’ll leave.” He led her to the couch and sat close beside her, pulling the broad coffee table closer so that he could rest his feet on it. She watched him, waiting for him to continue. He settled into the soft black leather of the couch, pulled her back with him and tried to explain his reasoning. “I never intended to marry. Never thought I would. I don’t need other people the way some do.
I’m content on my own.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “So this might be it. My only chance to spend time with my wife. To experience married life. We can be like an old couple who have comfortable routines they’ve settled into over a lifetime of being together. Cocoa and a movie on a snowy afternoon. We’ll argue over chick flick or action movie.” He picked up the remote, pointed it at the TV and the screen flickered to life. “Action movie will win because we watched your chick flick last week.”
As the opening credits rolled and on-screen a car wound its way up a rocky mountainside at night, she nestled a little closer and stretched her legs out alongside his, resting her small feet, in their red socks, beside his.
They were an hour into the movie which had managed to capture only a portion of his awareness away from her, when Caesar started barking. Moments later the doorbell chimed. Luke glanced at his watch, his mood darkening. He stood. “You keep watching. I just have to deal with this.”
She reached for the remote, located the Pause button. “I’ll wait.”
“I’m not sure how long this will take. Depends on how much of a fuss he makes.”
“He? Jason?”
Luke nodded, resenting this intrusion, the sullying of his afternoon with her. But he needed to deal with it. He’d been thinking about their earlier conversation, about finding a way to deal with Jason that did justice to his mother.
“I’ll wait,” she said, looking away from him as she settled back into the cushioning leather, looking small and stoic, expecting better of him than he was prepared to give. On-screen, the hero was frozen with a gun pressed to the villain’s temple, his eyes bleak.
Seven
Seconds after Luke strode from the room, the sound of voices, muted but clipped, reached Meg, then faded as they headed to Luke’s office along the hallway. She made a bowl of popcorn, set it on the coffee table and then crossed to the wide windows. Outside, Frosty stood a lonely sentinel on the lawn, Meg’s scarf loose about his neck, his eyes dark and desolate. For a time she heard nothing. Then shouting. She crossed to the open living room door, her fingers gripping the door frame, hesitant.
Only one man was shouting. Jason. She couldn’t hear Luke at all.
She was still standing there, distressed by the anger she heard and wondering whether there was anything she could do to help, when the voice quieted. A minute later, Jason stormed out of Luke’s office, slamming the door behind him. He stalked along the hallway toward her.
“Will you be okay?”
Jason looked up, a dark dislike glittered in his eyes. “Don’t pretend you care.”
“I’m not pretending.”
His step slowed. “Then call your husband off.”
“It’s not my place.”
Jason shook his head, disbelieving. “Indonesia. What the hell am I supposed to do there?”
“Indonesia?” That was what Luke had decided?
“The precious Maitland Foundation. I’m supposed to spend the next two years in hell.”
“Beats jail,” she said quietly.
“He couldn’t prove it.”
Not, I didn’t do it. “It�
��s not so bad. You might even like it. It might even be good for you.”
“That’s what he said.” Jason strode away cursing, and Meg went back into the living room, resumed her seat on the couch. Such a world of difference between the two men. Outside, an engine roared into life. Tires screeched. Several minutes later Luke eased himself down beside her, slipped his arm back around her shoulders. He tugged her in close.
“Good choice.” She chanced a glance at him. He didn’t look happy but wasn’t quite as grim as when he’d left.
He leaned closer, kissed the top of her head and for a second rested his cheek there. “I guess so. Now start this movie up again or I’ll have to assume control of the remote.” No mention of the fact that the roads must now be drivable.
Meg relaxed against him, breathed in his nearness and pressed the button for play. If only.
If only they were a married couple and this was their life. If only he wanted to spend all his snowy afternoons, and rainy and sunny and windy ones, with her. A good man sharing the moments as he held her. Not to mention his nights and mornings, too. Instead of a man who wanted to have this brief time with her and then send her on her way.
Too soon the movie ended. She should stand, move away from Luke, get him to take her to Sally’s. But she didn’t move.
“The sequel’s even better,” he said, his arm still draped over her shoulders, his body pressed against hers.
“I’d heard that it was. So often they’re not.” She was pathetic. Wanting this. Wanting the crumbs of his presence and affection. She was too scared to analyze what it was she felt for her husband, but it was powerful enough that she wanted to eke out every moment she had left with him.
“I have it. Do you want to watch it?”
More than anything, because it bought her another couple of hours with Luke. She made to stand because another couple of hours only prolonged the inevitable. He wanted hours; she wanted years, a lifetime even. He pulled her effortlessly back down. “I should get going to Sally’s,” she said. She’d always been the type to rip a bandage off and get the pain over with.
“Should or want to?” He searched her face.
“Should.” It was the last thing she wanted.
“Then don’t. Stay here. This is okay, isn’t it?” As though that was the only thing stopping her from staying.
This was so much better than okay, which was precisely why she should go to Sally’s.
“I make a mean spaghetti Bolognese.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if I left now?”
He contemplated her question, gave it more thought than she’d expected and she found herself on tenterhooks for his answer. Finally, he shook his head. “I like being near you, Meg. I don’t know why. You ease something within me. I’m going to miss you when you go, so I’m in no hurry for that to happen.”
He spoke an echo of her thoughts out loud.
Whatever time they had would be all that she would get. She wasn’t going to curtail it. She sank back into the cushions of the couch, determined instead to make every minute, every second of these precious hours count, to store every moment in her memory.
As they watched the sequel, the afternoon bled into dusk which darkened quickly to night. They ate together, his spaghetti Bolognese as good as he’d claimed. And then they watched the third and final installment.
As the closing credits rolled, neither of them made any move to stand.
Far from it. “Lie down here with me,” he said as though he knew that if she got up from the couch it would be to leave. It had to be. “It’s wide enough.”
So they lay down facing one another, heads on cushions. His hand resting at the curve of her waist.
“What will you do when you leave here?” he asked.
Meg chewed her lip. “Sally’s offered me a job with the Maitland Foundation.”
“You’ve accepted?”
She shook her head. “I wanted to see what you thought. Whether that might keep me too close?”
His hand curved more firmly around her. “The thought of having you close isn’t such a terrible thing.”
“But after people have thought we were married.”
“We were married.”
“Not properly.”
He shifted his hand, found hers, touched a finger to the gold band adorning it. “Tell that to the minister.”
“I just mean that it could be awkward.”
“I do what I think is right. I thought, still do, that marrying you was the right thing to do at the time.” He pulled her a little closer. “I’ve had no cause to regret that decision.”
“You don’t regret what we did last night?”
A smile spread across his face. “How could I possibly regret that? The very thought of it could sustain me for years to come.”
“I can’t help feeling that we’re missing something. That we ought to be regretting it.”
“In that case, you’re thinking too much.”
Maybe he was right. She was overthinking things. They’d had their night. She’d be able to take those memories and these with her, tucked up beside him, the scent of his cologne, the snow outside, the fire inside. He would be her benchmark, her standard. But he so far outshone anyone else she’d ever met that it was impossible to imagine that standard being reached again.
They lay on the couch talking for hours about everything and nothing. She’d never shared so much of herself with anyone or felt so honored and warmed by the trust he showed in sharing with her.
They changed positions so that he was spooned behind her, stroking her side. After a time his hand slowed and stopped. His breathing softened.
Meg still lay awake. “What if I loved you?” she whispered into the darkness.
She felt a deeper stillness steal over him.
He’d heard.
He said nothing.
And she knew there was no “what if” about it. Somewhere, somehow she’d fallen in love with him, with his quiet strength and his deep integrity, with his silver eyes and the way he kissed her, held her, and because he of all people seemed to see the person she was inside.
But he hadn’t asked for that-her love.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said gently.
Luke felt Meg shrink a little away from him and against overriding impulse he didn’t pull her back. She didn’t really love him. She couldn’t because he was all wrong for her. He was too old, too cynical about life and people and love. He was a loner. Wasn’t he?
She deserved someone closer to her own age, someone closer to her in optimism and kindness. She imagined qualities in him he didn’t have.
He would let her go. Set her free.
In the morning.
And the thought filled him with desolation. It was the thought of a Meg-less existence that broke his resolve, made him pull her in closer to him, made him try to absorb a little of her essence into himself. He wanted something from her that he’d never wanted from a woman before-just to be with her, to have her near. And the nearer the better. The feelings were so new that he didn’t know what to do with them, how to deal with them.
She’d helped him so much. Helped him on the island when he’d first been injured, helped him by marrying him, and the very thought of her had sustained him when he’d been ill. Even now, lying here like this, her breathing soft and gentle, she soothed something within him, filled and completed him. In so many ways she was his better half. But she deserved more. She deserved to find her own better half.
So he would help her by letting her go.
The doorbell chimed through the house. Meg and Luke struggled to sitting, his arm falling from her. Through the windows a clear, bright day showed snow-covered mountains on the far side of the crystalline lake. Meg had never been so disappointed to see a beautiful day.
Luke stood, running a hand through his hair as he looked down at her. “That’ll be Mark.”
His attorney. That announcement, more than the weather
even, told her that her time with Luke was over. She’d served her purpose, and in return had found a deep, brief perfection. That would be enough. It had to be.
They walked to the front door together. He would take Mark to his office. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
She nodded. She’d be gone before then. It was the best, the only, way. She wasn’t going to stay for the humiliation of the terms he wanted to end their connection with, no matter how gently he would do it.
He turned for his office. Mark looked at her, pity in his gaze. “He’ll look after you,” he murmured.
Great, even his attorney felt sorry for her.
Luke stopped at the office door. “Wait,” he said as though he knew she’d already decided to go. He held her gaze until she nodded.
Unable to stay in the house where for such a brief time she’d found bliss, Meg took Caesar outside, striding unseeing along the path she’d walked so often, and tried to shut out her awareness of the ticking time bomb that was Luke’s meeting with Mark.
Caesar found and then dropped a stick in the center of the path. “Not today, buddy.” She strode past it, but when he next overtook her, it was back in his mouth.
It was over. Her fantasy. And she knew the answer to the question she’d posed to Luke-would her working close by be a problem. It might not be for him, but it would be for her. Seeing him and having to not let him see she loved him. Hearing people talk about him. Seeing him dating other women. No, it definitely wasn’t going to work for her. She wasn’t that reasonable. She wasn’t that thick-skinned.
She stopped at the base of a dead and blackened pine that alone had at some point been struck by lightning. Caesar dropped his stick and sniffed, his nose tracking to the body of a small bird, a mountain chickadee, lying still and stiff. Meg stared at the little corpse, her heart breaking at the sight.
She had to leave.
Despite tacitly agreeing to wait, she couldn’t. She would get her car and go. She would do it before the meeting was even over, before Luke and Mark gently, kindly explained the details of how her happiness was to end. Because she knew she couldn’t take their explanations with anything like the dignity they deserved. She considered her options. Sally would come if she called. Her friend would take her to collect her car. And then she could go. Somewhere. Anywhere. Away.
Under the Millionaire's Mistletoe Page 14
