by Vicki Hinze
He guffawed. “You never believed she’d been kidnaped, Bess. You sided with the FBI, remember? Convinced she’d eloped.”
“I’m not sure I believe she was kidnaped now. But I didn’t know it for a fact, Jonathan. And when you don’t know for fact, you worry your beliefs are wrong. I worried myself sick over you. Do you know how long three days can be when you’re worried someone you—?” Nearly saying someone you love, she stopped cold. A slip of the tongue. A momentary lapse of memory that things were different now. “I was worried sick.”
He cupped her face in his big hands. They were strong, good hands, and not quite steady. “I believed she’d been kidnaped. Why couldn’t you believe me?”
“Because the evidence was shaky at best. It wasn’t anything personal, John.”
“Nothing personal? For a wife to not have faith in her husband?”
Genuinely surprised, she grunted. “This didn’t have anything to do with faith in you. That’s absurd.”
“It did from where I stood.”
She’d hurt him? She didn’t want to answer him. Didn’t know how to answer him. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.” His fingertips stroked her jaw, the sides of her nose, her lips. “Why, Bess?”
“I was afraid you were dead.” Her voice cracked and a tear slid down her cheek and onto his fingertip. “I was afraid I’d lost you forever, and—.” A sob swelled in her throat. She couldn’t go on.
“So you left me.” He tilted her face into the silvery moonlight.
Praying it wasn’t a mistake, she let him see the anguish he’d put in her eyes. “I loved you then, Jonathan.”
He swallowed hard. “I loved you then too, Doc.”
He was shaking. So was she. Their gazes locked and he leaned toward her. The truth, sadness, and regret tortured his eyes, and that urge to nurture, to heal, struck her hard. It would be so easy. So easy to move those scant inches, to lean to him and to kiss him. To let her body tell and show him all the turmoil she was feeling inside. But she couldn’t do it. They were divorcing. They weren’t the same people now they’d been then.
And they couldn’t go back.
“But that was then, wasn’t it?” she asked. “It isn’t now. We don’t love each other now.”
He let his hands slide down her neck, round her shoulders, the sides of her bra-clad breasts, then down her ribs to her waist. “Come here, Bess.” The gentle pressure of his urging hands, the smell of the sea and him, so familiar and so long missed, conspired and proved far stronger than her will. “I want to kiss you.”
Her heart skipped a pounding beat then nearly careened out of her chest. “That’s not a good idea. In fact, it’s a lousy idea.”
“I know. But I’m going to do it anyway.”
Knowing the magic was still there between them physically, she’d be a fool to do it. She’d be forty kinds of fool. All that pain. That emptiness. That desolation of losing what they’d had. The disillusionment on again realizing they’d had nothing more than a mirage. “Please, don’t.”
“Tell me you don’t want to know what it’d be like, Bess. Tell me that after all this time, you haven’t once thought of it or wondered, or dreamed about us being together again.”
She couldn’t. Her body throbbed, remembering too well exactly how it’d been between them. But that was physical. It wasn’t love or any basis for a strong, enduring marriage. It was lust with a kick. No less, but no more. “No.”
He bent low and whispered close to the shell of her ear. “Liar.”
“Okay, I’ve wondered, I’ve dreamed, I’ve even fantasized,” she confessed. “But I don’t want to know enough to find out.” The costs were too high.
He laughed, low and husky, his broad chest rumbling. “You never could lie.”
She couldn’t, not to him. And it only made her look more foolish to try now. Though in the shadowy darkness he likely wouldn’t see it, she gave him a solid frown. “You should have gotten slouchy, Jonathan. If you had a single compassionate bone in your body, you’d have become a real pig.”
He slid her a wicked smile and clipped his chin, descending closer to her mouth. “Sorry, darling. My wife has a strong aversion to sloppy men.”
“Sorry, indeed.” The man was too charming for his own good—and definitely for hers. But the temptation, hearing him again refer to her as his wife; she couldn’t resist him any more now than when they’d first met. Even less now because she knew what she was missing: the magic.
He touched their lips, his voice a throaty whisper that had her quivering. “I have to feel you again, Bess. Just . . . once.”
He looked so good; felt and smelled and sounded so good. “Just once,” she swore, unsure if it was a promise to him or to herself. Not caring at the moment which it proved to be, only wanting to again feel all she’d once felt when in his embrace. Safe. Secure. Loved . . .
He rubbed his lips to hers, gently, teasingly, with little pressure, and yet the impact was potent, powerful, stunning. She stiffened, certain she had trodden too far into a place that could bring her pleasure but even more pain. Once his mouth left hers, once his arms no longer cradled her and she could no longer feel his warmth, she’d ache for him. She didn’t want to acutely remember those early months of their separation, to have those memories sharpened by rediscovery. She didn’t want . . .
Oh, God help her, he tasted good too. A little groan of submission vibrated in her throat and she glided her hands up his thighs to his narrow waist, then finally circled them around his back. “Damn you, Jonathan.” She tunneled her hands through his thick hair—longer, more luxurious, more tempting—then settled into the kiss.
His fingers danced up the vertebrae of her spine, caressing her skin, taunting, tantalizing, his hold loose and undemanding, enticing; his lips sipping and tasting, inciting but not quenching. She pressed firmly against his scalp, urging him to deepen the kiss. Lost was lost and, in this, she managed grace. She submitted to defeat.
With a totally masculine growl, he bore down on her mouth, a tangle of teeth and lips and tongues, all eager and searching. A shudder rocked through his body, shimmied through her fingertips, and arrowed a shiver of sheer joy to her woman’s heart. He tightened his hold, crushing her to him, her breasts flattening against his hard chest, his arousal pressing firmly against her hip. He wanted her. He still wanted her.
The knowing pulsed through her and, heady at her feminine prowess, at the frantic drummer’s beats of his heart, she swore that if he let her go, she might just float. They were divorcing, but the magic . . . the magic was definitely still there.
God help them both.
He left her lips, blazed a trail of hot kisses to her jaw, to the soft underside of her chin, to the shell of her ear. “Bess,” he whispered, raking her lobe with his teeth.
Awash in a sea of remembered sensations, she couldn’t think, just let her head loll back, and let the tide of reawakened passion take her. “Hmmm?”
“It’s storming.” He kissed his way down the column of her throat to the soft hollow, then laved it with his tongue. “We used to make love on the veranda during storms.” He caressed her side, waist to breast, then cupped her fullness and rubbed its turgid center with the pad of his thumb. “Remember?”
Her back arched, straining to the warmth of his hand. A ripple of heat spawned to a wave that flowed through her, rushing to her core. She relished it. Savored it. It’d been so long since she’d felt all these wonderful feelings. So . . . long. “I remember.”
He buried his nose at her neck, inhaled her scent and nipped at her skin, supping. “We could do that again. The Shell Room has a deck. That’s nearly a veranda.”
Yes. Oh, yes. She opened her mouth to agree.
Lightning flashed. An angry clap of thunder boomed, shaking the house and, Bess swore, her teeth.
The electricity came back on as abruptly as it had gone out. Light flooded the room. Every light turned on—the overhead, the lamps
on either side of the bed, the banker’s light on the desk—even those that hadn’t been on when the power had been interrupted—and the alarm clock’s red LCD flashed 12:00 and its alarm shrieked a steady, deafening blast.
What was she doing?
She pulled out of John’s embrace, scrambled to her feet, then grabbed her robe. When she’d shoved it on and tightened its belt so hard she could barely breathe—a firm reminder to keep the blooming thing on—she looked at him, sitting there on the floor, one knee on the rug, one bent and on the bare floor, smiling up at her. “Wicked, Jonathan.”
The devil danced in his eyes, right alongside desire. “Who?”
“You!” Even hazed with those emotions, the sadness remained. Grieving, Tony had said. She didn’t feel brave enough to ask John what he grieved. Whatever it was hurt him so badly that even in her arms he couldn’t forget the grief for a moment’s time. That was a forceful blow to her ego and a solid reminder that she had caught him but had failed to hold him.
Digging deep, she schooled her emotions, then turned off the alarm. When the room went silent, she let her teeth sink into her lower lip, determined not to stew on this kissing business or to make too much of it. They’d both been curious. No more than that. “This was a bad idea.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “People who are divorcing don’t kiss as we did and they certainly don’t make love.”
His hair mussed from her fingertips, he cocked his head, looking darling, dangerous . . . and very tempting. “Do they have sex?”
Wicked and cute, the rotten grub. Her palms itched to touch him. She stuffed her fists into the pockets of her robe. “Definitely not.”
“Oh.” He hauled himself to his feet, then stared at her, caressing every curve, every plane of her body, from head to heel. When his gaze returned to hers, desire burned in his eyes, yet the sadness remained. “A shame. We might have been lousy together at times, Bess, but in bed wasn’t one of them.”
Boy, was he right about that. “I don’t suppose that much matters anymore, either.” She forced herself to hold his gaze, locked her knees to stay upright, and ordered her feet to stay still. Every acutely honed instinct in her body shouted at her to cross the floor and take him to bed.
“No, I don’t guess it does matter anymore.” He walked over to the dresser, then dragged a blunt fingertip down the spine of a silver-edged comb on a little oval tray. “Unless . . .”
What was he thinking? She frowned at his broad back. Sinful what the man did to a pair of jeans. And to her blood pressure. “Unless?”
He turned to face her, leaning a hip against the dresser, stretching out his long legs and crossing one foot over the other, his arms over his chest. “Unless you want to compromise.”
She walked around the side of the bed to the little bench at its foot then plopped down. Her robe spilled open, exposing a healthy expanse of bare legs. She grabbed the fabric edges and clamped them together. “I know I’m going to regret this, but tell me what’s working in that twisted mind of yours.”
“I’m not going through with this divorce unless you accept your half of our assets.”
She frowned, holding no illusions. He was dead serious. “And, according to Francine, not without half of my dog.”
“That’s the part that’s negotiable.”
“Uh-huh.” Bess eyed him warily. He looked a little too cocky for her comfort, and she recognized only too well that half-smirk of his for the signal it was. He was about to drop a bomb. Right on her head. “Negotiable. As in . . . ?”
“I’ll forget the visitation rights and joint custody of Silk,” he said.
“If I do what?”
“Give me two weeks with all of you. No mention of the divorce whatsoever. Just you and me and—”
“Sex.”
He shrugged. “I prefer making love, but if you can’t bring yourself to it, then, yes, sex will do.”
Good God! She stood up. “You’re propositioning me?”
“No, I’m not.”
She propped her hands on her hips and stared him down.
“Okay, I am, I suppose—if you choose to look at it that way.” He thumped a fingertip to his chest. “I didn’t choose to, by the way.”
“Just how did you look at it, Jonathan?” Her teeth ached from holding her jaw so tight.
His eyes gleamed, the look in them heated. “Differently.”
“Why do you want to do this?” He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t really expect her to be a wife to him again for two weeks over a dog. Not that she didn’t love Silk, but this was absurd. Ridiculous.
“Why not?”
Evasion. Clear and simple. “I can think of a dozen good reasons right off the bat. The best is that I don’t sell myself—not even for Silk.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And if you did, you wouldn’t sell yourself to me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She’d be an idiot to do that knowing he could hurt her. And damn him for adding insult to injury. In less than a minute, he’d taken her from proposition to prostitute. What was left?
He stepped closer. “Nothing of mine. No part of me. Right?”
He was angry. The white slash of his jaw tightened. Didn’t he see that any part of him would only have her doing anything for a glimpse of the rest of him? All or nothing. That’s how it had to be between them. It couldn’t be all. They’d tried that and Bess had ranked a sorry second. That left only one option: nothing. “No, John,” she said softly, a sad tremor shaking her voice. “No part of you.”
An ice-hard look clouded his eyes. “Regrettable.” He walked to the door. “I’ll take odd weekends with Silk. You and Santos can have even ones.” Out in the hallway, John softly closed the door.
Santos? Now why would John think Miguel—
Okay, Bess. Give over.
Bess nearly jumped out of her skin. Tony, would you stop that? You scared the heck out of me.
Why did you turn him down?
“Good grief.” Avoiding the braided rug culprit that had started all this, she walked to the turret window, propped her knee on the window seat’s soft cushion, and stared out into the night. The rain had started. Strong winds gusted through the trees, whistling. It was going to be a bad one. “I thought you’d gone, Tony.”
You’re avoiding my question. Why did you refuse his offer? I know you want those two weeks as badly as he does.
“I don’t.”
Tony sighed. You’re doing it again, Doc.
Lying. Inwardly she sighed. Having a man inside her thoughts was getting to be a royal pain in the posterior. She leaned farther out the window, searched the gloomy sky. “The only thing I’m doing is seeing if there’s a full moon tonight.”
What?
“There’s got to be some reason you men are all talking crazy.”
Nice try, but it won’t work. I recognize avoidance as well as you do, and I’m not going to let you lie to yourself, or to me.
“I’ve already admitted the magic’s still there.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “What more do you want?”
The truth.
Shutting the window, she frowned. She sank down onto the cushion, folded her arms and rested them on the window ledge, then dropped her chin atop her knuckles. Her breath fogged the glass panes. “The truth is I’m going to lose him. And my job. And likely full custody of my dog. I can’t risk losing any more.” Like she’d told Sal, she’d lost all she intended to lose willingly.
And two weeks with Jonathan will put more at risk?
She grunted. “Two minutes with him puts more at risk.” Lord, how she resented that. “I’ll just get hurt again. I don’t need a refresher course on what he can do to me, Tony. I remember too well.”
He needs you. He can’t admit it, but he needs you more right now than he ever has needed anyone in his life.
“Lord, you’ve got an imagination. That man has never needed me. He’s wanted me, and, yes, I know he wants me again—for two weeks—but need?” She shoo
k her head. “No, Tony. I needed John, but he’s never needed me.”
He does, Doc. Why else would he make such an outrageous proposition now? Why not five years ago? Three years ago? Why now?
“You tell me.”
I have. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. You’re hearing, but not listening.
She gulped in a big breath of air. The rain pattered on the roof of the porch below her window and the answer came to her. “He’s grieving.”
Yes! Grieving.
“Do you know why?”
Elise died, Bess.
Her chest went tight. She bit down on her lip. Elise died, and he hadn’t told his wife. “I’m sorry.”
Tell him. Don’t you understand, Doc? Because he didn’t find her daughter for her—
“He feels he failed her.” Bess stared at a limb on the nearest fir, her heart aching. “Miss Hattie knows, doesn’t she? That’s what was behind her treat-each-other-kindly lecture earlier.”
Hattie knows, but that isn’t what’s important.
So John had told Miss Hattie, but not his wife. Second . . . again. But, in an odd way, it made sense. Miss Hattie invited confidences and exuded motherly nurturing. And she wasn’t divorcing him. “What is your point, Tony?”
My point is that John needs you. Elise meant a lot to him. He’s hurting, Bess.
No one had to tell her how much Elise meant to John. Bess had lived with it. “Of course, he’s hurting.” And Elise’s death, and not their divorce, had put the sadness in his eyes. “She came first with him.” Bitterness crept into Bess’s voice.
Have you ever asked him why?
“That would be absurd. I’d look like an idiot.”
Well, maybe you should risk it, Doc.
Tony, sarcastic? Yet she suffered the shudder that had become all too familiar lately. A significant message had just passed between them. “Maybe I will.”
Now would be a good time.
“God, but you’re pushy.”
If that’s what it takes.
