by JoAnn Ross
He was leaving, she reminded herself.
In just days.
Did she really want to risk running him off sooner just because he’d mentioned some negatives to an idea that still hadn’t fully formed in her mind? Cutting off her nose to spite her face, as the old saying went? As her mother had done so many times in the past. Including during this latest storm with Judge Benton Templeton.
“I think,” she said slowly, gathering up the scattered threads of her composure as she felt the anger leaving like air from a deflating balloon, “that it’s possible we’ve just had our first fight.”
“I think you may be right. But don’t worry about it.” That bad-boy grin that had been making more and more frequent appearances since the first night they’d made love flashed. “We’ll spend tonight making up.”
53
Charity couldn’t tell if her mother had suddenly begun filling up a social calendar because she’d truly decided to move on with her life, or was so heartbroken over what seemed to be a seriously shattered marriage that she was attempting to keep busy so she wouldn’t have to think about the future.
Or there was always the possibility that she was merely trying to give Charity and Gabe as much private time as possible before he left town.
Last night Amanda had eaten dinner at the Douchetts’, returning home with knitting needles and some sunshine yellow yarn for squares she’d signed up to make for Project Linus, a charity Adèle was active in that made blankets for ill, traumatized, and otherwise at-need children.
“So at least something positive can come out of this debacle,” she’d said proudly as she’d shown off the first few rows of her first evening’s work. “I’m going to knit the squares. Then Adèle’s going to link them together for me.”
“That’s a really lovely idea.” And the last thing she’d ever imagined her social butterfly of a mother doing.
“I thought so. Adèle told me there’s also a chapter in Washington, so if my marriage survives, hopefully I’ll be able to help them, too.”
Tonight she was playing bunco with Doris, Dottie, Adèle, and Maureen Douchett, Adèle’s daughter-in-law and Sax and Cole’s mother.
Her mother’s 180-degree turnaround only added to the local lore that there was, indeed, something in Shelter Bay’s water.
Gabe was standing in the doorway when she arrived but was at the car before she got out of it.
“It’s about time you showed up.” He scooped her off her feet and carried her up the metal steps into the motor home.
“I got stuck on the other side of the bridge,” she said.
His dog, overjoyed to see her, began jumping up and down like a jack-in-the-box. “Hello, sweet boy,” she said, reaching down to pat its head on one of the jumps.
“I’m obviously not the only one happy to see you.”
Gabe managed to grab a training cookie from a jar on the counter without so much as bobbling her, reminding Charity again how strong he’d have to be to carry not only all his Marine military gear but his body armor and camera equipment over those Afghan mountains.
“Sit,” he said.
The dog obediently plopped its fuzzy butt down on the floor.
“Good boy.” He tossed a cookie, which disappeared with a snap of the small, square jaw.
“Now stay.”
Amazingly, it did.
When he shut the bedroom door behind them, Charity could hear it jumping up on the couch. Which was the same thing Peanut, who believed himself to be a lapdog, tended to do when left alone.
“That’s very impressive,” she said.
“We’ve been working on it.” He covered her mouth with his and gave her a long, deep kiss that stole her breath and set her head to spinning. Then he put her on her feet. “But can we table the dog-training discussion for later? Because it seems like I’ve been waiting forever for you to show up.”
“I felt it was taking me forever to show up. That damn bridge took ages to go back down. But now that I’m here . . .”
Grabbing the bottom of his T-shirt, she pulled it over his head. Her hands grazed over the hard muscles of his chest, his ribs, her fingers playing with the line of dark hair arrowing down to the waist of his jeans.
When she pressed moist kisses against his warming skin, she could feel his heart beating wildly beneath her lips, matching the rhythm, the beat, of her own runaway pulse.
“You do realize that you’re making me crazy.” Gabe took her hand and pressed it against his lower body.
“My . . .” Charity bit her lip, trying not to grin as she looked up at him. “Did I do that?”
“What do you think?”
“I think,” she said, struggling with the cumbersome buttons on the fly of those faded jeans, “that the first thing I’m going to do when the stores open in the morning is buy you a pair of pants with a zipper.”
“Perhaps I can help.”
His dark, deft fingers dispatched the row of metal buttons. Just the sight of him was enough to send thrills skimming beneath her skin. But when he slid first the jeans, then his gray boxer briefs, over his hips and down his legs, Charity forgot the vow she’d made while waiting for the damn bridge to go back down, to take things slowly.
Unlike her, who’d always felt a little uncomfortable taking showers with all those girls at boarding school, Gabe appeared to have no problem with nudity. He seemed totally at ease in the magnificent male body that made her mouth go dry.
She wondered for a fleeting moment how many women had seen Gabriel St. James this way. Worse, how many would see him after he’d left Shelter Bay.
Don’t go there.
Sticking to her recent vow of living in the moment, she turned her mind to the now.
He was tall and lean, with the power and endurance of a long-distance runner. His deeply tanned skin was smooth and tight over his bones and muscles. Although definitely, relentlessly male, he was beautifully formed, and if he’d been around in the days of Michelangelo, the sculptor wouldn’t have been able to resist immortalizing him in marble.
No, she decided. Marble was too cold.
“Bronze,” she decided, realizing she’d spoken out loud when he arched a dark brow. “Have I mentioned that I love your body?”
His laugh was rough and strained. “It’s all yours.”
“Oh, goody.” Because it had been too long since he’d kissed her—at least a minute—she cupped her hand at the back of his neck and dragged his mouth to hers.
The power was volcanic, erupting with a force that nearly buckled her knees.
Desire. Need. Want. All were too weak to describe the powerful sensations surging through her.
“You know those things I said I wanted to do to you?” He’d murmured them in her ear after they’d gone back to photo editing, hot, sexy, mind-reeling suggestions of ways they could make up after their brief fight.
“I seem to recall something about that.” Her legs were going weak. She dug her short, filed nails into his shoulders to keep her balance.
“That was just for starters.”
Charity’s head spun as she pressed her palms against his chest. He’d already brought her to levels of passion she’d never imagined. And yet now he was telling her there was more?
“Promises, promises,” she said on a ragged laugh.
He cupped her chin, holding her gaze to his. “That sounds a lot like ‘Bring it on.’ ”
Just as she’d never been all that comfortable parading around naked, Charity had never felt all that confident about her sexual skill set. After all, it was difficult to be proficient at something you didn’t practice. It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex. She just had never understood why sensible, rational people made such a big deal of it.
Now she knew.
She also knew that Gabe knew things she’d only ever dared dream of. She’d witnessed it in his hot, hungry eyes when he looked at her. She’d felt it in his hands, which revealed a familiarity with the female body that caused need
s to well up inside her even as she hated all the women he’d ever touched.
“I want you.” She skimmed her fingertips down the side of his face, over the raised scar bisecting his brow, down the five-o’clock shadow that felt like the finestgrade sandpaper against her fingertips. “I want everything.”
“Then hold on, sweetheart.” His fingers went to the buttons of the pretty white blouse she’d bought for their first date. “Because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Before she could sense his intention, he ripped the blouse open, sending the white buttons skittering across the floor.
Speed. Fury. Heat. Gabe’s hands were everywhere, sending her torn blouse and lacy ivory bra flying.
His mouth was hot and hungry as it fastened on a bared breast while his roving hands yanked her jeans down her thighs.
Caught up in the storm she’d invited, Charity was as helpless as a raft caught in a tsunami. She heard herself cry out, heard her heart pounding like the surf in her ears, the sob that escaped her lips as he ripped away the bit of lace between her thighs, pressed her back against the bedroom door, and plunged his fingers into her.
The orgasm, quick and sharp, and bordering on pain, shot through her. Even as she struggled for air, before she’d even caught her breath, those rough, sinfully wicked hands were taking her up again.
Surely it wasn’t possible to feel so much and survive, she thought as he used his mouth and teeth and tongue on her, driving her beyond reason.
She heard her own cry of shocked release as her body rocked from the hot explosion of pleasure. Destroyed, her bones turned to sand, Charity sagged against the door.
But her surrender only fanned the flames.
She’d never been ravished. Never imagined she’d want to be. But as the forbidden thrill of being overpowered shot through her, she wrapped her legs around his hips as he lifted her off her feet and impaled her.
“Stay with me,” he said as his mouth ground against hers.
As if she’d had a choice. As if either of them had from the beginning.
He carried her, half-walking, half-stumbling, to the bed. And when he tumbled down onto the mattress, Charity clung tight as she fell with him.
54
“Are we still alive?” Charity asked when she could finally speak again.
“I think so.” He touched his mouth to hers. “But I’m not that certain about anyone else in town, because either that was an earthquake, or we’ve just logged a personal best.”
“And here I always thought that was a literary cliché. Making the earth move.”
She laughed lightly at that and snuggled against him, loving the way he could make her burn one moment and feel so amazingly lighthearted the next. She’d never laughed in bed. Though there had been times when she’d nearly wept.
Ethan had always assured her that sexual compatibility was something that took time. That the passion they were lacking in their relationship would inevitably come. She’d wanted to believe him, even though deep down inside, she’d always secretly blamed herself for her inability to respond as she sensed he’d wanted. The way the woman he’d cheated on her with must have done.
“My wedding was supposed to be the highlight of the social season.”
“Not surprising. Since you mentioned your fiancé’s blue blood.”
“Blue as ice,” she muttered. “Anyway, all the newspapers sent their society reporters. They were gathered together on the sidewalk, like vultures, when I arrived at the church.”
“Which isn’t exactly the casual, anonymous life you’re living now.”
“Hardly. One of them, a reporter from a tacky little supermarket tabloid, managed to slip into the church before the ceremony, posing as a flower-delivery guy. He caught me at one of the rare moments I was alone—which makes me think he’d been lurking in the corners waiting for my mother to leave the room—and asked me to comment on the story of the lawsuit that had been filed against Ethan.”
“Someone was suing Douglas?”
“Apparently so. Since it was the first I’d heard of it, I told him I had no comment, and asked him to leave.”
Charity realized that just as it no longer hurt, she didn’t care enough to harbor even the slightest bit of anger anymore.
“It was a paternity suit.”
His hand, which had been idly playing with her hair, stilled. “Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed.”
“So, I guess the fiancé admitted it was true?”
“Actually, he denied it.”
“He wouldn’t be the first guy to deny screwing around.”
“Ah!” She held up a finger. “But he didn’t deny having had sex with the woman. Just that it was his child.”
“Which you didn’t believe. Which is why you called off the wedding.”
“Actually, I did believe him. And not just because I’m gullible, which I’m not. Well, maybe a bit, since I had no idea he even liked sex enough to be having it with two women, one of whom he was supposed to be marrying, during the same period of time.”
“Shows he was an idiot. Because any man lucky enough to have you in his bed sure as hell wouldn’t need anyone else.”
“Thank you.” She smiled and pressed her lips against his.
He lifted his right hand. “It’s the God’s honest truth.”
“It’s different with you,” she said. I’m different with you.”
“Lucky for me the guy turned out to be a dud. Or you might be living in some McMansion in a gated suburb in Chi-town and we never would’ve met.”
“I’m beginning to wonder about that,” she murmured. She’d been wondering about fate ever since he’d brought it up the first night they’d made love.
“Anyway, it turned out that he had proof that although apparently they’d been having an affair for several months, he couldn’t possibly be the father because he’d had a vasectomy.”
“I see.” But Charity could tell from his tone that he didn’t. Not really.
“Since the woman in question filed a paternity suit, I take it he hadn’t told her about his little snip job,” Gabe said.
“Actually, he hadn’t let either of the women in his life know about his surgery.”
He looked down at her. She liked the surprise on his face because it revealed what she’d already figured out for herself. That Gabriel St. James truly took the Marine code of honor seriously.
“Are you saying—”
“I’m saying that Ethan knew I wanted children. We’d discussed it. We’d even put a down payment on that stone McMansion with lots of bedrooms and a big backyard for a swing set. And he purposefully chose, for whatever reason, to deceive me. Which is why I didn’t go through with the marriage.”
“That’s a damn good reason.”
Tenderness. Gabe felt it and fought against it. He tried, instead, to focus on his anger that the cheating bastard had hurt her.
Like you’re not going to?
If he had half the sense of that mutt he’d somehow ended up adopting, he would’ve left town before they’d gotten this far.
Because as much as he cared for her, and he did, more than any other woman he’d ever met, there was no way he could see this ending well.
Even knowing he was being selfish, and in his way as much of a bastard as her fiancé, Gabe wanted Charity.
And because he also needed her, more than he’d ever thought possible, more than was comfortable, he made love to her again.
And again.
He’d always been a loner. Even during his short-lived marriage, as his ex had pointed out to him on numerous occasions, he never let anyone else in.
How many different beds had he slept alone in over his lifetime? How many mornings had he awakened alone?
Countless.
Which had been just the way he’d liked it.
But now, as he lay awake long into the dark of night, stroking the silk of Charity’s hair and listening to her quiet breathing along with the sound of the su
rf hitting the cliff below, Gabe wondered if he’d ever be able to recapture that sense of solitary contentment.
55
The Lab proved a hit. Leia behaved like a perfect lady, charming Kelli and even impressing Cole, who Charity imagined would be willing to move heaven and earth to give his bride anything she wanted.
Professing a need to show her new furry baby off to her in-laws, Kelli dashed out the door before Charity had gathered up the adoption paperwork to take back to the clinic.
“She’s certainly excited,” she said.
“She is. But she also has an ulterior motive. I’m supposed to talk with you.”
“With me?” Charity looked up from the manila folder she’d been about to put in her laptop bag. “About what?”
“Gabe.”
“What about him?”
“She says that I should tell you about him.”
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” It was what she knew she should say. But Charity was also so curious.
“Kelli says that Kara told her that you two have gotten pretty involved.”
He gave her that same long, steely-eyed look she’d grown accustomed to getting from Gabe. The one that looked right into you. Charity wondered if the Marine drill instructors taught it at boot camp, or if it was something warriors were born with. “I suppose you could say that.”
“Then it’s not serious?”
“I can’t speak for him.”
He laughed at that. “I can’t think of many people who’d dare. He’s a tough nut to crack. At first I thought that the reason he always seemed to be different from the rest of us is because he was a photographer instead of a real Marine, whatever the hell that is. Then Fallujah happened and I watched him switching back and forth between his M4 and his camera during a firefight without blinking an eye, and I realized that he was actually the kind of gung ho Marine they made all those old World War Two movies about. The guy actually believed he was bulletproof.”
“Yet he wasn’t,” Charity said, thinking of the scars.
