by Harper Allen
“Tell me the details, Tam.” His tone was low. “I didn’t mean to shut you out. What else happened that night, honey?”
She shook her head and stared down at her hands. “It was like you said. I got a little drunk. I went a little crazy. Drink your hot chocolate, Stone.”
She heard him sigh. Then out of the corner of her eye she saw him pick up his mug. He tipped his head back, the muscles of his neck working as he drained it at one go. He set it down again on the table with an audible click.
“You’re right. Hot Chocolate a la King wins hands down,” he said huskily. “But Omelet McQueen sucked, so don’t let it go to your head. What else happened that night, Tam?”
She looked up at him, her smile uneven. “You jerk, McQueen,” she said, her laugh catching painfully in her throat. He smiled back at her, and it was the smile he’d given her earlier in the car—the smile that had the power to undo her completely. Her vision blurred, and through the blur she saw him lean toward her and take her hands in his.
“Tell me, honey.” There was an edge of pain in his voice. “Tell me and I’ll make it go away.”
“Oh, Stone.” She shook her head. “I wish you could. But you can’t. Nobody can.”
“Then maybe telling me will make it hurt less, Tam,” he said softly. “You got a little drunk. You went a little crazy. And then what did you do?”
She’d been wrong, Tamara thought, gripping his hands desperately. Not even Stone would understand. She hadn’t been able to understand her actions, so how could she expect him to? The next morning she’d looked at herself in the mirror with total self-loathing. She’d hated the woman she’d seen looking back at her.
You’re too damned afraid to trust anyone enough to fall in love with them.
He’d told her that the second day he’d known her. He’d been almost right, but not quite.
No, McQueen, she told him silently, feeling the tears slip down her cheeks. What I’m really afraid of is that no one could love me back—not even a man who says he knows what it’s like to go down as far as it’s possible to go. And I’m about to prove that to myself right now.
She blinked her tears away and met his eyes unflinchingly, her own gaze hardening.
“I went looking for a stranger. I found one—a man I’d never met before in my life, a man who didn’t know me. When I’d found him I took him up to the bridal suite and let him give it to the bride all night long.” She gave him a tight smile. “And I haven’t been able to live with myself since, because as ashamed as I am about what I did, some part of me—”
Her voice faltered. Her gaze wavered. She forced herself to go on, and her words came out in a harsh whisper.
“Because some part of me just loved it, Stone.”
Chapter Eleven
Lying on her bed, Tamara stared into the darkness, wondering what had possessed her to spill her tawdry little confession to Stone McQueen. She’d been wondering that for the past hour, ever since she’d spoken those last shameful words and had fallen silent, waiting for him to respond.
He hadn’t. He’d looked down at his hands, still wrapped around hers. His jaw had clenched into rigidity.
Were you hoping he’d give you absolution? The voice in her head was mocking. McQueen’s never been able to absolve himself, so how did you think he’d help you off the hook?
When she’d pulled away he’d let her go. He hadn’t looked up as she’d left the kitchen.
He’d known what she wanted him to say, but he hadn’t been able to give her the comforting lies she needed. She wasn’t fool enough to think what she’d told him had wounded him personally in any way, or naive enough to believe a man like McQueen would have been shocked at her confession. But he knew her. He knew that what another woman might have been able to accept as a regrettable moral lapse had been much more to her.
You wanted to look into its face. You thought you might see yourself looking back.
Right from the start McQueen had seen into the most hidden corner of her soul, had guessed at her most dreadful suspicion. For as long as she could remember she’d lived with the fear that she couldn’t trust herself—that the chaos she saw raging around her when she went up against the beast had somehow escaped from her. And on the morning following that night of uncontrolled passion, she’d known all her fears were true.
The blackness behind her closed eyes lightened suddenly to charcoal, and her pain was instantly transformed into trembling anger.
“Get the hell out of my bedroom, McQueen.” She opened her eyes as she spoke, and saw him silhouetted in the doorway of her room. What remaining tears she hadn’t yet had a chance to shed thickened her voice. “That’s one of the house rules, remember?”
“I’m tired of the rules, honey.”
He walked over to the bed. He was barefoot and bare chested, Tamara saw, suddenly all too aware that under the concealing bedclothes she herself was wearing a sleep shirt and nothing else. He looked down at her, his expression closed.
“And not just yours. I’m tired of my own, too.” He flapped his hand impatiently at her. “Shove over. I’m coming in.”
He’d actually reached down to flip back the sheets before she found her voice. “Are you out of your mind?” She scrambled awkwardly to a kneeling position, stiff with disbelief. “You even try to get in this bed with me, McQueen, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Even as the outraged question left her lips she knew the answer. She felt the breath leave her body in a rush.
“You think the rules have changed, don’t you? You think if I’d do it once, what’s the harm in seeing if I’ll do it again, this time with you. You total bastard!”
He was frowning at her.
“That wasn’t me, do you understand?” She brought her face closer. “That’s why it tore me apart—why it still tears me apart! What I did that night has nothing to do with who I am, with what I am, McQueen. I don’t even know the woman who slept with that stranger.”
“It’s not the woman who slept with him you don’t want to know, honey.” Slowly he locked his gaze with hers. In the light from the hall it was possible to see the dark glitter behind his eyes. “It’s the woman who still thinks of that night, the woman who loved what he did to her, what she did to him. And that woman’s you, whether you admit it or not.”
Until this moment, she’d never raised her hand to anyone in her life. Blindly she brought it up, but he caught her wrist just as her palm reached his face. He shook his head.
“I won’t be your whipping boy, Tam. I’ll let you use me just about any other way you want, but I won’t be that.” The muscle in his forearm flexed as she tried to pull her wrist away from his grasp. Instead of releasing her, lightly he dragged her hand along the unshaven line of his jaw. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t come in here for the reason you think. I came because I couldn’t make myself stay away any longer. I came because I just wanted to hold you.”
His breath was warm on her skin. He bent his head, and for an instant she felt his mouth against her palm.
He curled her fingers into her hand and released his grip. Swiftly she pulled away from him, the words spilling from her.
“You let me walk away from you in the kitchen. You didn’t say a damn thing, McQueen.” She heard the raw edge in her voice. “Now you tell me I’m exactly the woman I don’t want to be, as if you’re bestowing some kind of accolade on me. Is this how you make it all go away for me? Because as far as I’m concerned, you’ve only made things worse.”
“That’s why I let you walk away.” His tone hardened. “Dammit, I know you. The possibility that you might not really be that closed-off Tamara King sitting alone in her car with her little packets of tissues is something you just can’t face. As for the other…”
His words trailed off. He straightened to his full height and with an impatient gesture raked his hand through his hair.
“I can make it all go away, all right. Hell, I can make
you forget everything, and you know it. I’m down the hall if you decide you want me to.”
She’d been expecting comfort from Stone McQueen? Tamara asked herself in incredulous fury. She’d been insane. He’d prowled in here with all the battered arrogance of some back-alley tomcat, he’d flashed an acre of tanned skin and hard muscle at her, and after proving he’d lost none of his trademark abrasiveness he’d as much as offered himself as stud to her.
And now he was walking away from the wreckage. In one blurred movement she threw back the sheets and swung her feet to the floor. Before he’d gotten halfway to the door she was right behind him, her hand on his arm, roughly spinning him around to face her.
“Go ahead, then,” she said tightly. “Show me your moves, McQueen.”
“What?” That wayward strand of dark brown hair had fallen into his eyes again, and he shook it aside. “What do you mean, my moves?”
“Drop it,” she snapped. “You can’t carry off dumb and innocent, so don’t try. You know what I mean, Stone. You keep telling me you can make me forget what I did with another man. Prove it.”
“For crying out—” He sounded nonplussed. “Right here? Right now? Just like this?”
“I take it back, you can carry it off.” She gave him a hard look. “The first part, anyway. Yeah, right here and now, McQueen.”
She felt his arm tense under her hand. He narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t think so, honey,” he said slowly. “I don’t think you really want anything I could give you tonight. That’s not what you’re looking for here.”
“Then make me want it.” As he started to turn away she tightened her grip on him. “Unless you’re backing down, of course,” she added. “Was it all just talk, McQueen?”
He stared at her. Then he gave a short laugh. “It isn’t fair,” he said evenly. “I get the rep for being so damned insensitive, and all the while you’ve got me beat hands down. What’s this about, Tam?”
“You just said it—your reputation.” She smiled thinly at him. “You look good. You’ve made my heart beat a little faster once or twice. But can you make me forget?” She tipped her head to one side. “Nah, I don’t think so. Whoever he was, he was a son of a bitch, but he was fabulous, McQueen. And the woman you say I am went crazy in his arms that night.”
Her flow of words stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and in the abrupt silence that fell between them Tamara thought she could hear her heart crashing in her chest. All at once it seemed as if the only thing keeping her upright was her hold on his arm.
He’d wanted her to open up to him. He’d wanted her to share her emotions. She’d known it was a bad idea, known she didn’t do touchy-feely well, and yet she’d let him talk her into it.
This was the result. He’d forced her to face the woman in the mirror. He’d forced her to admit that woman had been a part of her—was still a part of her.
This time his destructiveness had gone too far, she thought dully. This time he had to know what he’d done.
“For years the only way I’ve been able to handle the memories is by telling myself there was no way I could act like that again.” She realized she was still clutching his arm, and she let her hand slip away. “I think the most I’d ever had to drink in my life before then was a white wine spritzer or two, and I’d been putting away the champagne like it was water since I’d arrived at my so-called reception. So I told myself it had been the alcohol and the pain that had made me behave so out of character. That was true, up to a point.”
She shook her head, her eyes squeezing shut. “I never even got a good look at his face. Some time during the evening I went to the ladies room and on the way back I took a wrong turn. I ended up in one of the hotel’s bars—a dark cave of a room—and by then I was drunk enough to decide I preferred to pass out there so I plopped myself down at a secluded table in the corner. I must have stood out like a beacon, of course. I was still in my wedding dress. But it wasn’t until I heard someone ask me what I was drinking that I realized there was another person at the table with me. By that time the room was already going round and round.”
She opened her eyes. If she simply stared straight ahead she could focus on his chest. It looked solid. Just enough light filtered in from the hallway to delineate the slabs of muscle beneath that expanse of hide, and there were just enough shadows in her bedroom to turn the sprinkling of hair arrowing down to the fly of his chinos into a dark, mysterious tangle.
She blinked. She went on, her tone low.
“I told him I wanted more champagne. I told him I’d never been drunk before but that I liked being drunk, if being drunk meant you felt kind of numb and floaty. He said he liked it, too, but that maybe I’d better be getting back to my husband. When he said that I fell completely apart.”
“You told him what had happened.” McQueen’s voice was emotionless. She nodded.
“I think it was what’s commonly called a crying jag. That’s when he offered to get me up to my room. The next thing I remember I was lying on an enormous white satin bed, and he was standing in the doorway, about to leave.”
“What a freakin’ hero.” Now there was some emotion in Stone’s voice. It took a moment for her to identify it as cold rage. “Obviously he didn’t follow through on his noble impulse.”
“Because I wouldn’t let him,” Tamara said gratingly. “I told him I’d already been rejected by one man that day, and I didn’t think I could stand it if a second one walked away from me. I asked him what it was about me that made me so undesirable that no one seemed to want me. Then I started crying again. I didn’t stop until he put his arms around me and kissed me in the dark. As soon as he did it was just—”
She stopped. She heard him take in a tense breath.
“It was just what?”
“It was just like he set me on fire,” she rasped. “God help me, McQueen, he did things to me I’d never even let myself imagine before, and I was a more than willing participant. I fell asleep in the end in his arms, completely satiated. It would have been just before dawn that I woke up, because it was still dark. I remember being thankful it was.”
She remembered more than that, Tamara thought. She remembered the soft darkness pressing in on her, the unfamiliar weight of a man’s leg thrown over hers, his heartbeat under her palm. She’d never woken up in a man’s embrace before. She’d never felt so totally and absolutely secure, so completely safe. She’d felt his hand spread wide against the back of her head under the unbound fall of her hair, snugging her into the hollow of his neck, and with a little sigh she’d closed her eyes again and breathed in the warmth of his skin.
And then her eyes had flown open in shock. In the darkness she could just make out the white glimmer of yards of crumpled satin spilled across the floor, and everything had come rushing back—Claudia’s note, the travesty of a reception she’d fled from, the stranger she’d fled to. With stark clarity every erotic moment of the past few hours had tumbled through her mind, and a wave of incredible shame had washed over her.
She’d heard herself moaning in incoherent denial, felt herself struggling against the strong arms holding her, and for a second those arms had tightened. She’d thought she felt the hand cradling the back of her head stroke gently down the length of her hair and for the space of one heartbeat, perhaps two, her panic had halted. Then it had come back in full force and her moans had become a jumble of desperate phrases, guilt-ridden self-accusations.
She couldn’t remember everything she’d said, she thought now, her burning gaze fixed on the vee of coarse hair bisecting the solid chest in front of her. She could recall pleading hysterically with him to go—to just go—and entreating him over and over again never to tell anyone, never even to mention what had happened between them to a living soul. She’d told him she didn’t think she could live with herself if anyone else ever learned how shamefully she’d behaved, that she wished she could erase her own memories of the past few hours.
He’d said nothing. In t
he middle of her torrent of words she’d felt his hand lightly against her lips, cutting off the desperate flow. In silence he’d risen from the bed, and just as silently he’d gotten dressed in the darkness. She’d felt his fingers gently touch her eyelids, and even more gently close them.
Then he’d uttered the only words she could clearly remember him saying throughout that whole night. They’d come out in a low whisper, as if he were speaking more to himself than her.
“He was a goddamned fool. But I’m a bigger one.”
An hour or so after he’d left she’d gotten up from the bed. Averting her gaze from the dress on the floor, she’d stumbled to the shower, turned on the water as hot as she could stand it and had stayed there until her sobs had finally subsided.
“So you see why I don’t think you can make me forget, McQueen,” she whispered. She raised her hand, and with one finger she traced the arrow of hair between his pectorals down to the bottom of his rib cage. She heard him inhale sharply, and she looked up into his face. His features seemed carved into immobility. “But you made me remember. And for that I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”
His lips hardly moved as he spoke. “I already knew that.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer. McQueen was McQueen, she told herself. He couldn’t help it that he wasn’t the man she’d imagined him to be for a few foolish hours today. Looking for healing from a man whose own scars ran so deep had been her mistake.
She wouldn’t make it again. Turning away from him, she walked over to her bed.
“It’s late, and this conversation is over.”
“But that wasn’t the deal. You’re right. If I don’t at least give it a shot then it was all just talk, Tam.”
“What deal are you—oh, for God’s sake.” Incredulity sharpened her voice. “You’ve got to be joking.”
His eyebrows drew together. “I’m no good at jokes, honey. I suppose that’s another of my limitations. I’m not that funny, I’m a washout in social situations and my cooking skills seem to have gone downhill. On top of that, like you said, I’m probably a lousy lay.” He walked over to her with a shrug. “So there’s a good chance you might get to kick me out of here in three or four minutes, max.”
