“Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Fine. Better than fine, actually. It’s a relief to get that off my chest.”
Her chest was exactly what he was trying not to think about. He handed Marshall over and Holly hugged him close. Jason followed her inside, through the dark house and up the stairs to the twins’ room. While she laid Marshall down, he checked on Devon, whose breathing sounded normal as far as Jason could tell.
Holly stood over Marshall’s crib stroking his hair.
“We should let him sleep,” Jason said.
“I don’t want to leave him.”
“He sounds fine now.” Jason needed to get her out of there and back into her bed, where the light from the hallway didn’t make her shirt so transparent. So he could get back to his own bed, before he did something he really shouldn’t.
Holly backed hesitantly away from the crib, and Jason put a hand on her shoulder to steer her in the right direction. Though she was all skin and bones, there was a sturdiness about her that was strangely alluring.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll tuck you in.”
She actually laughed. “Get out. No one has tucked me in for years.”
“Well, I’ve never done it before. If I’m going to be a good uncle I need the practice.”
“You make a valid point,” she said. She didn’t balk at his thinly veiled excuse to insinuate himself into her bedroom, and that was all the invitation he needed.
Her room smelled like flowers and a hint of peppermint, and something inexplicably soft and girly. Like her.
She climbed under the covers, but she didn’t lie down. She patted the edge of the mattress instead, inviting him to join her. Though he knew that their being together on a bed in any way, shape or form was a bad idea all around, he sat down anyway.
“Thank you. For your help and your honesty,” she said, her appreciation and vulnerability so vivid, so honest, it made his heart skip. She was killing him and she didn’t even know it. Turning him into some sentimental fool.
The woman was a total contradiction. Sweet and innocent one minute, enticing and sexy the next. How she managed it was beyond him, but it was screwing with his brain.
“So, how does this tucking thing work?”
“Don’t even try to convince me that your mother never tucked you in.”
She had, thousands of times. And he knew exactly what to do. But where was the fun in that? What was the point in playing with fire if they didn’t get just a little burned? “It was a long time ago, but I’ll give it my best shot.”
Her smile was a wry one and said that she knew exactly what he was up to. But she wasn’t doing or saying a damned thing to stop him, and the power struggle going on in his head, between what he should do—get the hell out of there—and what he wanted to do—crawl under the covers and really tuck her in—was shorting out his brain. He couldn’t recall ever being so enchanted by a woman. By the idea of touching her.
In a word, he was toast.
“First, she would usually read me a book or sing to me,” he told her.
“I think we can skip that part.”
“Sometimes she would do this.” He reached up and touched her hair, stroking back the silky strands that had escaped her ponytail, mesmerized by the desire in her eyes.
“That’s nice,” she said, humming a soft sigh of pleasure as he brushed her plump lower lip with the pad of his thumb. Her lids hovered at half-mast and her pupils were so dilated they swallowed up all but a narrow band of blue. Her voice was low and husky when she asked him, “Did she kiss you good-night?”
Holy hell, she was killing him. And she didn’t have to ask twice. He leaned in and her eyes drifted closed. He intended to brush a kiss against her cheek, the way his mother would have. But she wasn’t having any of that. She cupped his face and steered him a little to the left so that he got her lips instead.
It was the sweetest, hottest kiss he’d ever given or received. And when her tongue brushed against his, it was like napalm and fireworks and every other cliché all at once. She tangled her fingers in his hair, her nails scraping his scalp, sending a shockwave of blazing desire down his spine right to his groin. He knew that if he didn’t do something to stop this, things were about to get out of hand. But that didn’t dissuade him from tugging the elastic band from her ponytail, letting her hair tumble across her shoulders and down her back. He thought she couldn’t look any sexier or more desirable, but he was wrong.
Holly’s arms went around his neck. When her nails sunk into his back, a groan worked its way up from somewhere deep inside him. She kicked the blanket off and pulled him closer, clawing him through his shirt. One creamy, slender thigh brushed against his leg and the reaction was nuclear. But when she fisted his shirt and tried to pull it over his head, the idea of what she would find underneath instantly cooled his jets.
What the hell was he doing? She would see his scar, then he would have to explain. There was so much she didn’t know about him, so many things he needed to tell her. He couldn’t help but feel that he was misrepresenting himself somehow. And what if she fell in love with him? Jeremy had done enough damage. Jason couldn’t risk hurting her again.
Though it tested the boundaries of his self-control, Jason caught her wrists in his hands, pulled them from around him. “Holly, wait.”
She gazed up at him questioningly, sounding a little winded. “What’s wrong?”
She looked like pure sex sitting there, her hair messy, her lips swollen and bruised from his kisses. Her shirt had ridden up her slender thighs, revealing the crotch of a pair of transparent pink lace panties. If there was ever a question of whether she was a natural blonde, now he knew.
He cursed under his breath, then cursed again. “We can’t do this.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, not at all. You did everything right. The problem is with me.”
“Could you maybe elaborate a little?”
Not at three in the morning. “It’s late. Can we pick this conversation up tomorrow? When we’re both a bit more clearheaded.”
Looking confused and maybe a little hurt, she nodded and said, “If that’s what you want.”
“Believe me when I say that it’s for the best.”
Eight
Holly woke late the next morning, if 8:00 a.m. could be considered late. For the mother of twin infants it was.
The boys weren’t in their beds, meaning Faye must have had them with her. She probably figured Holly hadn’t gotten much sleep caring for Marshall last night. But her son’s illness wasn’t the only reason Holly had been awake half the night. She was suffering from a good old-fashioned case of unquenched lust.
She had tried to convince herself that Jason had done her a favor. That sleeping with him would have been immoral somehow, but she just couldn’t work up the steam. She wanted him, and he’d seemed to want her, too. Right up until the second he’d shot her down. Though he had looked conflicted, as if the decision had been a difficult one.
She could have insisted they talk about it last night, but something in his eyes told her to back off. Could it have something to do with all the mixed messages she’d been sending him? Telling him one minute that they could only be friends, throwing herself at him the next. Maybe he thought it was too soon after his brother’s death. She tried to put herself in his place and imagine how she would feel if she had an identical twin sister and was becoming romantically involved with her widower. Would she always feel as if she had come in second place?
Wanting to get this over with as soon as possible, she took a quick shower, dressed and tugged her wet hair into its usual ponytail, remembering the way Jason’s hands had felt tangled in her hair last night, feeling the hot pull of lust all the way to the center of her womb.
Sex with J
eremy had been adequate, but he’d never made her feel this pulse-pounding, panty-drenching arousal. She couldn’t recall anyone else who had. Not that she was some sort of sex expert. The list of men she’d slept with was a short one. But she knew what she liked, and she didn’t doubt that Jason could give it to her.
She found Faye and the boys in the kitchen. The twins were asleep in their bouncy seats and Faye was loading the dishwasher. She turned and smiled when Holly walked into the room.
“Well, good morning, sleepy head.”
She took a peek at Marshall, gently checking his forehead with the back of her wrist. “How has he been?”
“You can barely tell he was sick, and so far Devon hasn’t been showing any symptoms.”
“Thanks for letting me sleep in,” Holly said, even though she hadn’t done a whole lot of actual sleeping. And when she had drifted off, she’d been plagued with frustrating dreams. She’d dreamed about the day she found Jeremy, only this time when she found him he was still alive, but unconscious and barely alive. She tried to dial 911, but she couldn’t make her hands cooperate. She kept hitting the wrong numbers, or her phone had no reception. And when she finally got through, she and the operator were disconnected before she could ask for help.
Then she was in the backseat of her parents’ car, and though physically she was her ten-year-old self, mentally she was an adult with all the experiences she had now had. She knew what was about to happen, but when she tried to get the attention of her parents in the front seat, her vocal cords had frozen and she couldn’t make a sound. She tried kicking her mother’s seat but it was as if they didn’t even know she was back there. She could see the truck coming at them in slow motion. That was always the way she remembered it. She’d read that in the face of an inevitable tragic experience the brain went into overdrive, taking in more information faster, which made the passage of time appear slower. Which she supposed made sense.
In her dreams she never felt pain or heard the sound of metal crumpling like a paper bag until the car was barely recognizable. And while in the dream she knew something bad was going to happen, she didn’t feel scared or anxious. She was oddly detached, as if the situation were too surreal for a ten-year-old to process, the concept of death too unfamiliar or distant to imagine. Especially losing both her parents at the same time. And she always woke the instant before the truck hit them head-on.
In real life there had been pain like she’d never imagined possible. At first, when she’d woken in the hospital a week later, she’d had no memory of the accident, but during the following miserable months she’d spent confined to a hospital bed, healing from a plethora of injuries, the memories had slowly begun to resurface. Making her almost wish they hadn’t. It had taken more than a year of physical therapy before she could walk without a noticeable limp. And nearly two years of psychotherapy to assuage the guilt of being the only one to survive.
“The boys have been angels, of course,” Faye said, dragging Holly back to the present. Where she belonged.
“Have you seen Jason around or is he still asleep?” At the mere sound of his name, spoken from her own lips, her stomach did a backflip with a triple twist. She had nothing to be nervous about, yet she was nonetheless.
“He’s out back on the deck reading the paper. Go ahead on out. I’ll keep an eye on the twins.”
“Are you sure?”
Faye looked at the boys sleeping soundly, then back at Holly. “As you can see, they’re quite a handful.”
Holly smiled. It did seem that they had been on their best behavior since they’d arrived, or maybe it was the huge financial burden lifted from Holly’s shoulders, or the help she’d been receiving from Faye and Jason, that had lifted the pressure. Or a combination of the two.
“I won’t be long,” she told Faye, then headed out back.
Dressed in running pants and a white T-shirt, his hair wet and a little messy, Jason looked more like a soccer dad than a big shot executive. Straddling the chaise longue, he sipped from a cup of coffee, engrossed in the paper spread out in front of him.
“Good morning,” she said.
Looking up, he said, “Good morning.”
He wore a smile, but it was guarded and a little uncertain.
Well, no point beating around the bush. “I owe you an apology,” she said.
His brows lifted in surprise, as if that was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “No, you don’t.”
She sat on the chair next to his. It was cool and still damp with dew. “I really do,” she told him.
“Because we kissed?”
“No, that part was wonderful. You’re a really good kisser.”
The instant flash of heat in his eyes could have singed her hair. “So are you.”
“I sent you some horribly mixed messages. I tell you that we can only be friends, and not ten minutes later, I practically dragged you into my bed. For all I know you could have a girlfriend.”
“I could have a dozen.”
She hoped he was joking. Or was he seriously some sort of charmingly rakish sex machine? And why did the possibility only intrigue her further?
“But I don’t,” he said and she tried not to feel relieved. “I’ve taken a break from dating. Time to step back and re-evaluate.”
“Re-evaluate what?”
He hesitated, then said, “It’s complicated.”
“I’m smarter than I look.”
He rubbed his palms together, as if he was working up to something big. “The thing is. I keep my romantic relationships very superficial.”
“So you’re only in it for the sex?”
“In a way, I guess. I don’t do commitment.”
“So you’re commitment phobic.”
The sun reflecting off the lake made the blue of his eyes especially piercing. “I suppose you could call it that, but not for the reason you’re probably thinking.”
He couldn’t possibly have any idea what she was thinking. Hell, she didn’t even know for sure what she was thinking.
His tone changed, eyes went dark and stormy when he said, “Jeremy told you that he was sick when he was a kid, and that’s why no one wanted him?”
“That’s what he said.” Of course she knew it wasn’t true now.
“Jason wasn’t sick. I was.”
“You?”
“My mom died young of heart disease. A trait she passed on to me.”
Holly was almost too stunned to reply. “B-but...you look perfectly healthy. Better than healthy. Men don’t grow muscles like yours without a fair amount of physical stress.”
“I am healthy—” he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in that purposeful way that men have of undressing, revealing a long scar down the center of his chest “—since I got a new heart.”
If he’d claimed to be superhero she couldn’t have been more surprised. “You had a heart transplant?”
“Four years ago,” he said.
She never would have guessed. And she couldn’t help noticing that besides the scar, his body was perfect. Better than perfect and oh, how she wished she could put her hands on him. All over him.
“And just in the nick of time,” he said. “Another week or two and I wouldn’t be standing here today.”
“How long were you sick?”
“I was diagnosed just after our twelfth birthday. I always knew there was a chance that Jeremy or I could get it. I just never expected it to hit me so young. As you can imagine, it was a really tough time for Jeremy.”
Tough for Jeremy? What about Jason? “And for you. Seeing as how you were the one who was sick.”
“It took a while, but eventually I was able to accept the diagnosis and not see it as a death sentence. Jeremy never could. He had already begun experimenting with drugs at tha
t point, but my illness was the catalyst that sent him into a downward spiral.”
“Don’t tell me you feel responsible.”
“Wouldn’t you? For a good part of our childhood most of our parents’ attention was focused on me.”
Maybe at first, until she’d had a chance to approach it logically. Which probably would be tough to do as a sick adolescent. But Jason wasn’t a kid any longer. He was a grown man who at some point would have to stop taking responsibility for his brother’s shortcomings. “You didn’t choose to get heart disease, did you?”
He shot her a look. “No one chooses to get heart disease.”
“Exactly. So how can you be at fault for your brother’s inability to cope? You could even say that the stress of having the twins pushed him over the edge, but you wouldn’t blame the boys, would you?”
“Of course not. As I said, it’s complicated.”
Actually, it sounded pretty cut-and-dried to her. “If he was already experimenting, have you considered that if you hadn’t gotten sick, something else might have set him off? Or perhaps that, tragedy or no tragedy, he would have ended up going down the same path?”
Jason’s eyes suggested that he hadn’t. “He felt guilty that it was me, and not him who’d inherited the gene.”
“I know all about survivor’s guilt, believe me.”
“The accident with your parents?”
She turned her back to him and lifted her shirt, exposing the scars most people never knew she had. “It was bad.”
“What happened?”
She tugged her shirt down and swiveled back to him. “We were hit head-on by a drunk driver. My parents died instantly. I was beat to hell, but I was alive, although barely. I heard the nurses tell my social worker that it was a miracle I survived, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. I broke almost every major bone in my body. Including my back. In three places. I was in constant, excruciating pain.
“I was in the hospital for months, and then spent almost a year in a rehab facility learning to walk again. After the pain I endured, labor was practically a cakewalk.”
Demanding His Brother's Heirs Page 8
