The Gift of Love

by Lori Foster

  Then his hands touched her hair, and he tilted her head back, anchoring her the way he wanted her.

  Staring into his eyes, she held on to this moment.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  A hint of a smile curled his lips. “I love you.”

  “I know,” she said, because she did. But it was so much better to hear him say it.

  He hesitated, and in that one moment, she saw every emotion under the sun pass over his features, all battling for supremacy: joy and sorrow, excitement and trepidation, desire most of all.

  The desire won.

  With a rough groan, he pulled her up, just enough, and kissed her.

  three

  There was no gentle meeting of lips, no gradual buildup of intensity from one to ten.

  The kiss exploded the second their mouths connected, and there was no turning back after that. He held tight to her head, and she surged upward, starving for the taste and feel of him and needing to do this if she wanted to survive another minute.

  His mouth was hot and slick, sweet from cake, his lips softer and yet more demanding than she’d imagined. He claimed her with his sweeping tongue, thrusting deep before backing off just enough to run his lips all over her forehead and cheeks, kissing every part of her he could reach.

  She was just as desperate, clinging to his head and neck, and holding him close because she couldn’t stand to ever let him get away, not after this.

  Without warning, he broke free and jerked her away by the shoulders. Maybe he needed a break, a second to catch his breath, or maybe he couldn’t believe that something this glorious could happen between them.

  They stared at each other, both panting, and in his eyes she read astonishment, awe, and a dark, driving need every bit as strong as hers. The arrested moment pulsed and grew, heightening the tension until she felt it in every atom of every nerve ending in her oversensitized body.

  Then, with a low groan, he kissed her again.

  He was delicious, God … so strong and amazing, so unbelievably thrilling. He tasted like home and everything she’d ever longed for in her life, everything she’d ever needed. Parts of his body were damaged, yeah, but it didn’t matter because the passion pouring from him now was more potent than she’d ever felt from any other man, and that was enough.

  She wanted all of him and wanted him to have all of her. So when his lips slid down to her bare neck, she arched for him and pulled the bodice of her dress down, baring herself and offering everything she had.

  So what if they were in the middle of a wedding reception? It was dim and secluded here, and the door was shut, and nothing short of a bomb scare and ballroom evacuation would force her to cut short this stolen moment with him.

  He stiffened and stared, his eyes wide and fixated on her swollen breasts and dark nipples. There was no shyness or shame in her. She was ten—no, fifteen—pounds overweight, easy, and she’d felt like a stuffed sausage squeezed into the dress, but he seemed to have no problems with any of that.

  “God,” he said, cupping and caressing her. “You’re perfect.”

  The words were right there, so she didn’t hold them back. “So are you.”

  Tipping her chin up, she tried to reclaim his mouth and kiss him again, forever, but he jerked her away again, harder this time, and she knew it was over even if her bewildered body wasn’t up to speed.

  It took her a minute to shake off her sensual haze. “What—”

  “Fix your dress.” Turning away—she had the feeling he never wanted to lay eyes on her again—he swiped his mouth with the back of his hand, removing all traces of her lipstick and her.

  Still kneeling, she fixed her bodice but then clung to the arms of his chair, unwilling to move away from him, even a little. “Did I do something wrong?”

  His lips twisted in a disconcerting bastardization of a smile. Taking one of her hands, he pressed it against his crotch and held it there. “What do you think?”

  Oh, God.

  If he was trying to slow this train down, he’d just made the wrong move.

  Her mouth dried out. She tried to remember that he was upset about something and didn’t want this to go any further, but it was hard when his erection strained for her. Acting on instinct, she murmured appreciatively and—

  Cursing, he shoved her hand away. “Don’t.”

  Diana stood, and the weariness washed over her. She was so tired of being held at arm’s length, so tired of putting everything she was on the line only to be rejected again and again.

  But, she reminded herself after a minute, this was Keenan. Keenan. And he was worth the effort, even if his eyes were now flashing murder at her.

  “Why?” Brushing her now-messy hair out of her face, she stared down at him. “Tell me why I can’t touch you. If I love you, and you love me, and we want each other, then tell me—”

  He snorted, the ugliest sound she’d ever heard. “Because it doesn’t always work, that’s why.”

  She let this settle for a minute, trying to come up to speed and reconcile what she’d read and seen about spinal cord injuries with what she’d just experienced. “But… you’ve had other girlfriends since the accident, and I thought—”

  His eyes were hard and flat. “Well, that’s the tricky thing about incomplete spinal cord injuries, Diana. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I need extra stimulation and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes—and this is where it gets really fun for the woman—it works for a while and then quits. Doesn’t that sound like a blast?”

  Was that it? She ran through these various scenarios in her mind, made peace with them, and then moved ahead. “Okay. I understand.”

  Another snort. “You understand?”

  “Yes.” She spoke slowly, determined to make sure he understood. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t.” He flapped a hand in the direction of the ballroom. “This is why you need Cro-Magnon man out there. You won’t have these kinds of problems with him. You’ll never have to worry about pressure ulcers or infections—”

  “I’m sorry.” It was impossible to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, because, really—where was this going? Did he think if he framed a logical enough argument, he could talk her out of loving him? “I don’t mean to be slow here, but you seemed to be doing a great job with a couple of other parts of your body just now. Your mouth, for one, and your hands—”

  “There’s no substitution for making love, and you know it.”

  “Actually, there are lots of substitutions, most of which you can buy online at some very tasteful and discreet stores—”

  “You want to have sex with some battery-operated device?”

  “If it’s your hand holding the device and your lips kissing me, then yeah—you bet I do.”

  Shaking his head as though he just couldn’t understand her willful refusal to listen to him talk sense, he pressed his hands to his temples and made a low, rumbling sound, like a growl. “You’d be better off taking your chances with whatshisname out there—”

  Okay. He was really starting to piss her off again.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure Evan could screw me real good, if I let him.”

  Keenan shut up midsyllable, stunned and all but gagging on the tail end of his sentence.

  Good. Maybe she could get a word in edgewise, for once. “But here’s the problem with your dictating my life choices to me: I don’t love Evan. I don’t even want him. I want you.”

  “That’ll change after the novelty wears off,” he said flatly. “So why don’t we call it quits here and save ourselves the trouble?”

  Was she actually hearing this nonsense? “Are you really that idiotic, Keenan?”

  He swore under his breath and looked away.

  “Can I just point out that I have a few physical issues, too?” she asked.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Well, I’m fifteen—hell, who am I kidding?—no, twenty pounds overweight, for o
ne.”

  His jaw dropped. “Not from where I’m sitting, you’re not. From where I’m sitting, you’re freaking perfect. And are you actually comparing being a quadriplegic to being allegedly overweight?”

  “No. I’m saying that everyone has issues. If I don’t have one now, what if I develop one later? What if I turn up with cancer and lose a breast? Or heart disease? What if I’m in a car accident tomorrow? Would you stop loving me just because—”

  He growled with frustration, cutting her off. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “I dream about you,” he said helplessly. “Almost every night.”

  Wow. And here she’d thought he’d already claimed her entire heart. How was it that he managed to keep stealing more pieces of it? “I dream about you, too.”

  His eyes narrowed into disbelieving slits. “Sexually?”

  Remembering the last dream, just the other night, after which she’d woken, sweaty, aroused, and grossly unsatisfied, she shuddered. “God, yes.”

  This confession only seemed to agitate him. “Well, here’s what I dream: that I have two good legs. That I can pick you up and throw you around the bed in all kinds of positions—”

  She shuddered again, unable to control her responses to him, his longing, and his voice.

  “Or against the wall. That we can do it all night—”

  She held up her hand. “Let me stop you right there. I’m way too heavy for you to pick up anyway. Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Will you listen to anything I’m saying?”

  “No. Because you’re not saying anything that matters to me. Do you want to know how it is when I dream about us?”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  That was just too damn bad. “I dream that you’re all over me. Your arms and your hands and your mouth. And I can’t get enough of you. And when I wake up, and you’re not there, I—”

  She broke off. There was no way she could convey how lonely she was for something she’d never had anyway, or how much she missed him when she reached for him and he wasn’t there.

  He stared at her for a long time, his expression closed and unreadable.

  “I can’t give you what you need, Diana,” he said finally.

  “And you get to decide what I need?”

  “In this case, yes.”

  “So what if I lost a breast to cancer? Or a kidney or a leg to diabetes? Would you not want me then? Are you that shallow, or is it just that you think I am?”

  “Of course I’d still want you, but that’s not the point.”

  She laughed then, bitterly, looking to the ceiling, because if divine intervention was coming, now would be a really good time for it to show up. “Then what is the point? Please enlighten me, because I’m not getting you at all, Keenan.”

  “The point is that you need to stop with the bullshit hypotheticals. I can come up with a bullshit hypothetical, too. Want to hear it? Here it is: Maybe Martians will invade earth tomorrow and blow us all up, and all of these issues will be moot. But until then, you have to face the fact that I’m not even sure I can produce kids—”

  What? What?

  “Kids? Is that what we’re talking about here? Well, ease your mind, Keenan. I’m thirty-seven and I’ve never been pregnant, so as far as we know, my plumbing doesn’t work either.”

  “Stop minimizing this,” he shouted. “I’m trying to protect you.”

  Protect her. Right. And wasn’t that the biggest bit of cowardly hypocrisy of all?

  So now they were right back where they’d started.

  “No,” she said, too exhausted to keep her voice above a husky rasp. God, he wore her out. “You’re trying to protect yourself. Because you’re scared, and you think I feel sorry for you. Either that or you think I’ll feel sorry for you one day in the future. And you’re a coward hiding behind that chair.”

  Her little speech was exactly the wrong thing to say. And exactly the right thing.

  Gripping the arms of his wheelchair, he pushed himself up as though he wanted to escape, his neck and upper body straining against the circumstances that had trapped him there, and against her, and against himself.

  “Don’t you call me a coward!”

  “Why not?” she wondered. “It’s the truth.”

  four

  Coward.

  The word was still reverberating, a whizzing Ping-Pong ball trapped inside Keenan’s skull, when the door opened again, emitting a burst of the thundering bass line from the reception, which was clearly in full swing.

  He braced himself, hoping round three with Diana wouldn’t lead to a KO with him spread-eagle on the floor in front of the roaring fire, but it was only his sister.

  He relaxed a little, coming down off heightened alert.

  He also felt the sharp pang of disappointment deep in his chest.

  “Hey.” Lisa crept into the room, peering around as though she needed to make sure the furniture was all still in one piece. Hell, she’d probably been listening at the door this whole time. “Someone’s been looking for you.”

  She’d had Atticus’s leash in her hand, but now she let it go. The monkey raced across the room, scrambled into his usual perch on Keenan’s lap, and then turned his back on him, trying to hide something in his hands. It was… Keenan peered over his little shoulder for a better look… a bag of those pastel candied almonds, wrapped in that fancy netting stuff, tied with a bow that Atticus would have undone in two seconds.

  Candy-covered almonds. Because that was what the monkey needed to wash down all the cake he’d eaten earlier. Nice.

  But Keenan was happy to see the little guy. The sight of him, with his little black bow tie today, in honor of the occasion, was always comforting. God knew Keenan needed some comfort right about now. Raising his clumsy fingers, he scratched the thick mat of hair on the tiny little head. And Atticus grabbed the first almond and went to work gnawing on it in a two-handed grip, like a squirrel on amphetamines.

  “How’s it going?” Lisa asked.

  “Peachy.”

  “Right. That must be why you look so happy.”

  The concern in her eyes was hard to face. Here she was, on her wedding day, looking like an angel in her white dress and veil, a beautiful goddess come to earth, and she was wasting time worrying about him.

  He focused on the back of Atticus’s head. “I’ll be okay.”

  She looked dubious but said nothing.

  He thought about today’s significance. Man. Lisa, his big sister. A married woman. Amazing.

  He remembered how far she’d come in the last few months, and how Cruz had helped her past her guilt. She’d been the driver the night Keenan was paralyzed. Not that it was her fault a drunk had plowed into them, but she’d still felt responsible.

  Now, though, she’d let all that go. All the darkness, all the pain.

  And here he still was, waist-deep in it.

  Taking her hand, he tugged her to the sofa Diana had just vacated, and she sat.

  He stared at the shiny band on her fourth finger and grinned. “I can’t believe it.”

  She giggled, reminding him of that Christmas morning so long ago when she’d discovered a purple bike with a basket and handlebar streamers under the tree. “Neither can I.”

  “You’re happy.”

  “I’m sooo happy.”

  He scowled. “You should be. I told you Cruz was a good guy.”

  “Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Right after you threatened to knock his teeth down his throat for hitting on me.”

  Keenan scrunched up his face. “I don’t remember that part.”

  “Riiiight.”

  Laughing, she squeezed his hand, and it hit him: Lisa didn’t belong to him anymore—she belonged to Cruz. And that was the way it should be. Still, he wondered how many more private moments like this they’d have, just the two of them. She seemed to be thinking the same thing,
because some of the joy dimmed from her face.

  It was a poignant moment, but not sad.

  “I love you, Lis.”

  “I know you do.” Being Lisa, she got right to the heart of the matter. “And you love Diana, too, don’t you?”

  That choked him up. Way to go, sister. Rendering him speechless inside two minutes. That was a real record, even for her. He looked away, blinking back hot tears, and brushed some of Atticus’s almond debris from his lap.

  “Eeeee,” Atticus said by way of thanks, and kept munching.

  Lisa scooted closer and squeezed his arms, reassuring him just by being there. “She loves you, too, Keenan. I know she does. I can see it when she looks at you.”

  Through God’s grace, he pulled it together. “That’s not the point.”

  “Well, what is the point?”

  Oh, come on. Did they really need to have this discussion? For real? “The point is: I’m stuck in this wheelchair.”

  She gave him a blank stare. “So? You made peace with that a long time ago. Before I did, in fact.”

  Was she serious? Was she really going to force him to explain? “It’s one thing to make peace with it for myself. It’s another thing to talk about having a relationship with a sexy woman who—”

  “Oh.” Lisa’s expression cleared. “This is about sex, then. But you can have sex, right—”

  Whoa. He wasn’t quite up to discussing his sex life with his sister.

  “I can’t use my legs, Lisa.”

  There she went with the bewildered eyes again. “Yeah? So?”

  Frustration crept into his voice. “So, I can’t dance at weddings. I can’t climb up on ladders and change lightbulbs—”

  “Diana can change the lightbulbs.”

  “What if I can’t have children?” he barked.

  Atticus jumped and muttered with disapproval, but Lisa didn’t miss a beat.

  “What if you can?”

  What the hell?

  What was with these women tonight? Why couldn’t they face facts and see what was right in front of them? Was there something funny in the wedding cake they’d been eating? “Diana deserves a man who—”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  Keenan was so stunned to see Lisa cursing and fierce while looking like an angel in her wedding dress that he snapped his jaws shut. Even Atticus froze and blinked at her.