“Oscar and I never shared a bed. Our marriage was in name only.”
Anchoring his hand under her chin, he raised her face to his. “Why couldn’t you have told me that?”
A slight frown furrowed her smooth forehead. “I told you everything I wanted you to know. What did or did not occur between Oscar and me in the bedroom was of too personal a nature to discuss with anyone. Even you.”
“You’re right—as usual,” he conceded.
Curving her arms around his neck, she pressed her breasts against the solid wall of his broad chest, smiling when he gasped audibly.
“I’m going back to my bedroom to shower,” she said quietly. “I’ll see you later.”
Aaron wanted to beg her to stay, stay with him until thirst, hunger, or the need to relieve himself drove him from her scented arms, but didn’t. He knew it would be several days before they would make love again. He would wait for her tender flesh to heal before losing himself once again in the passion she evoked just by them sharing the same space.
Three weeks sped by as quickly as in a blink of the eye for Regina.
She and Aaron waited two nights after their initial passionate joining before sharing a bed again, while at the same time dreading the moment when they would be forced to part.
The courier her father had promised to send arrived in Mexico and escorted the fourteen paintings back to the States for safekeeping within days of their telephone conversation; the documents setting up the accounts for the Oscar and Arlene Spencer Foundation for Medical Research and El Cielo’s employees were finalized; all of her valuables and personal heirloom pieces were packed and shipped to her parents’ home to await her arrival.
She spent her last night in Mexico in her garden, sitting on the stone bench facing Oscar’s grave. Closing her eyes, she fought back tears. She was leaving her husband, not knowing when or if she would ever return.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning, Oscar,” she whispered. “I’m finally going home.” Biting down on her lower lip, she forced a trembling smile. I love you, she added silently. She loved him, and she also had fallen in love with his son, and she was mature enough to realize her love for Aaron had nothing to do with their sexual encounters.
The days and nights when they did not make love offered her a modicum of objectivity. She craved his passion, that she would not deny, but she also treasured his companionship. But even more than passion or companionship, it was his protection she desired. She was able to sleep alongside him in an unlit room without waking up drenched in sweat or with tortured screams exploding from the back of her throat. The few times she whimpered in her sleep, he woke her with a gentle caress and whispered soothing, gentle words to reassure her that she had nothing to fear.
She would leave Mexico in the morning, reunite with her family, remain in Florida through the end of the year, and then perhaps take Aaron up on his offer to visit with him in Brazil.
* * *
Aaron stood on the second-story veranda outside his bedroom, staring down at the slender figure sitting by his father’s grave. It was a sight he had grown accustomed to since he had come to El Cielo, and it was a sight that wrang a gamut of emotions from him. It saddened him to know he would never see, touch, or speak to Oscar again. The sight also rankled him, because for the second time in his life a woman he had fallen in love with also loved his father.
He lost track of time as he rested his arms on the wrought-iron railing, reliving the events of the past month. The past five weeks had changed him. Since he had become involved with the São Tomé Instituto de Médico Pesquisa he had never been away from his research for more than three weeks. Since becoming the director he had found himself traveling throughout the world at least twice each year to attend medical symposiums to share the institute’s theories with others in his field of study. Medical research had been his passion for more than twelve years—until now.
Now his passion was Regina Spencer.
Regina said her final goodbye to Oscar and returned to the house to prepare for her last night on Mexican soil. The household was quiet, and all of the permanent household staff conspicuously absent. They had said their final farewells after the evening meal. The driver was scheduled to drive her and Aaron to the airport in Mexico City. He would board an early morning flight for Salvador, Brazil, while she awaited the arrival of the ColeDiz Gulfstream jet from the West Palm Beach airport.
Her footsteps were slow and sure as she climbed the staircase. She felt a heaviness in her chest which would not permit her to breathe normally. Swallowing back a wave of anxiety, she drew herself up straighter and visually examined everything around her, committing it to memory.
She would miss El Cielo, her garden, and the employees who had become her extended family. She refused to think of missing Aaron, because she had become too dependent on him. They had agreed not to spend their last night together.
Pushing open the door to her bedroom, she walked in and stopped abruptly as Aaron rose from the chair beside her bed. Her eyes widened when she saw an emotion in his dark gaze that was indefinable.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was a low, breathless whisper. “We agreed not to see each other until—”
“You agreed,” he interrupted, visibly annoyed that he had gone along with her plea. “Do you think it would make it any easier to say goodbye at the airport?”
“Yes, Aaron, it would.” She threw up her hands in a gesture signaling hopelessness. “Why do you think I suggested it?”
His gaze narrowed as he moved toward her with the slow, stalking walk she had come to love. There were so many things about Aaron that she loved that she had lost count.
Reaching for her, he held her upper arms and pulled her to his chest. “I think you suggested it because you want to avoid what is going to happen right now.”
She tilted her chin, giving him a direct stare. “And that is?”
“Not wanting to hear the truth.”
“And what is the truth, Aaron?”
He studied her thoughtfully, his eyes betraying his innermost feelings and telling her what she knew before he uttered the words. “I love you.”
Closing her eyes, she swayed slightly at the same time he tightened his grip. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t love you? I’m sorry, Princesa, but I can’t turn my feelings on and off the way you’re able to.”
She opened her eyes and glared at him. “Go away! Please,” she continued in a softer tone.
He shook his head slowly. “No, Regina. Any other time I would oblige you, but not tonight.”
Pulling out of his loose grip, she turned and walked out of the bedroom. She hadn’t gone more than ten feet when he caught up with her.
“Why are you running away?”
She turned to face him. “I’m not running away. I just need to be alone.”
The flash of anger in his dark eyes vanished, replaced by a tenderness that twisted her insides into knots. He loved her, while she was too much of a coward to let him know that she loved him.
She laid her hand alongside his jaw, feeling the throbbing muscles under her fingertips. “I’ll come to you later.”
Grasping her hand, he brought it to his lips and kissed each finger, his gaze never leaving hers. Bending over, he brushed his lips over hers. “I’ll be waiting.”
He released her hand, turning and walking down the hallway in the direction of his bedroom.
Aaron lay on the bed, arms folded under his head. He hadn’t turned on the lamp because the eerie, silvered light of a full moon lit up the bedroom. He had told Regina he would wait for her, and now he had lost track of time, and still she had not come.
Closing his eyes, he felt a lump form in his throat. He had told her he loved her, and she recoiled as if he had struck her. Fool! He had been a fool to let her know how he felt. What was the matter with him when it came to affairs of the heart? Why was it he couldn’t select a woman who would love him as much as he loved
her? The whys attacked him relentlessly until he relaxed enough to fall asleep.
Within seconds something shook him into awareness. He detected the familiar, rain-washed fragrance, then the silken touch of her body as she moved beside him on the bed. Regina had come to him, as promised. She would spend the night with him.
“Please love me, Aaron.” Her husky plea broke the pregnant silence.
And he would love her. He would make their last night together special. Moving over her naked form and supporting his greater weight on his arms, he cradled her face between his hands.
“This is not goodbye,” he crooned seconds before he covered her mouth in a hungry, soul-searching kiss that indicated they would not be satisfied with a prolonged session of foreplay.
Aaron was relentless when he branded her throat, breasts, and her inner thighs with a passion which would linger in her memory during their separation. His rapacious mouth charted a path from her lips to her feet. Just when she recovered from one shock, she was assailed with another.
Her soft moans of pleasure escalated into long, surrendering groans, with a rising heat rippling under her skin. Her whole being was flooded with a desire that sucked her into an abyss of abandoned ecstasy.
She reached for him, hoping to capture the source which would end her erotic torment. She wanted his hardness in her; she needed him to relieve the burning ache which threatened to shatter her into pieces so that she would never be whole again.
Aaron felt her fingers close around his engorged sex, and groaned aloud. Pulling away from her, he picked up the packet on the bedside table. Making certain to protect her, he eased himself into her wet, hot body.
It became a battle of wills, neither willing to succumb to the explosive passion sweeping them beyond themselves. Tightening his grip on her waist, he reversed their positions, hoping to prolong his ecstasy. But it was not to be. The caress of her distended nipples on his chest, and the vision of her perfectly formed breasts in the full moonlight weakened his resolve, and he surrendered to the explosive passions sweeping him to a place where he had never been.
The triumphant growl of fulfillment floating up from Aaron’s throat sent a shiver of chills down Regina’s spine, and within seconds she, too, gave in to the hot tide of passion buffeting her up, down, and around until she collapsed on his body, weeping uncontrollably.
He reversed their positions again, withdrawing from her trembling body. Gathering her to his chest, he held her until her sobs subsided, then buried his face in her hair. A pain he had never known assailed him when he realized he had deluded himself. He could not leave her; he would not leave her.
Aaron woke up two hours before dawn reaching for Regina, but encountered an empty space where she had been. Sitting up, he reached for the lamp. Light flooded the room, revealing an envelope on the pillow where her head had lain only hours before. His hand was steady when he picked up the envelope and withdrew its contents. A check for his research institute was nestled between the folds of a single sheet of pale-blue parchment stationery.
He ignored the check as his gaze raced quickly over the neatly slanting script on the page embossed with her monogram. Do not try to contact me. Please be patient. I will come to you. Regina.
Closing his eyes, he slumped back against the pillows cradling his broad shoulders. She had ended it with three sentences, and her name. He opened his eyes, and the lethal calmness flowing from their depths matched the hardness of his unreadable expression.
He would not contact her. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter 14
Regina walked onto the tarmac of the private airstrip at the Mexico City airport, smiling broadly when she saw her father alight from the sleek corporate jet. He had come to take her back.
Racing into his outstretched arms, she flung herself against his solid body, reveling in his protective embrace. “Daddy, Daddy,” she murmured over and over as she placed tiny kisses on his chin and jaw.
Martin Cole tightened his grip on his daughter’s narrow waist, swinging her up into his arms and carrying her up the steps into the jet. He struggled to control his own emotions when he realized he finally was going to get his firstborn back after a ten-year absence. She was only twenty-seven, but it seemed as if they had been separated more than they had been together.
She had called him crying uncontrollably at 2:00 a.m. Eastern Time, begging him to come and get her. He couldn’t understand her need to leave Mexico at that time, when the ColeDiz pilot was scheduled to meet her later that afternoon. He called the pilot, apologizing profusely for waking the man, then called the airstrip to have the jet fueled and ready for their departure within the hour.
They were now seated and belted inside the luxury aircraft. The pilot’s voice came through the speakers. “Mr. Cole, I’ve been cleared for takeoff.”
Regina held her father’s hand, sharing a dimpled smile with him. A casually dressed Martin Cole was breathtakingly handsome at fifty-seven. His close-cropped curly hair was a luminous silver, complementing his sun-browned, olive skin. Perusing his features reminded her that she was truly her father’s child, because she had inherited his coloring, dimpled smile, curly hair, large dark eyes, sweeping black eyebrows, high cheekbones, thin delicate nose, and full sensual mouth. Her father was in the full throes of middle age, claiming a network of attractive lines at the corners of his expressive eyes whenever he smiled.
Shifting an eyebrow, he stared at her. “Why the nine-one-one phone call in the middle of the night, Cupcake?”
Pressing her head back against the plush seat, she closed her eyes. “The closer I came to leaving the more I panicked.”
What she did not say was that if she had not left when she did, she would not have returned to Florida as promised. Her dependence on Aaron had grown so that she feared not being able to leave him.
“Are you saying you did not want to leave Mexico?”
She hesitated, holding her breath as the plane taxied down the runway before increasing its speed for a liftoff. “Is it ever easy to leave home?”
Martin frowned. “Florida is your home.”
She opened her eyes and shook her head. “Florida was my home, Daddy. Why do you find it so difficult to accept that I’m an adult now? I was a wife for eight years, and ran my own household in a country I had come to regard as home.”
Martin bit back the sharp retort poised on his tongue, leaning over and kissing her forehead. His daughter had experienced what most women twice her age hadn’t had to undergo—caring for a sick, elderly husband. She was back, and he did not want to do or say anything that would force her to leave—at least, not for a while. He wanted to hold on to her, knowing instinctively that even though Regina had decided to return to Florida her stay would not be a permanent one.
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep? You’re going to need it, because I doubt whether you’ll get much once everyone realizes you’re back.”
She closed her eyes, but did not sleep. She did not know why it had taken her ten years to realize home was not a country or a structure, but the people you loved. She loved her family, Oscar, and she had also fallen in love with Aaron.
Aaron was everything his father had been—gentle, considerate, protective, and more. The more was the passion he offered her—a passion that transported her beyond herself, where she felt free to exist without her childhood fears tormenting her.
A wry smile touched her mouth. She would wait until the new year, then travel to Bahia in time for Carnival.
Regina felt a swell of emotion fill her chest at the same time her father maneuvered his favored Jaguar sports coupe into the circular driveway of the sprawling Fort Lauderdale structure that claimed the Atlantic Ocean as its backyard.
She was out of the car before he turned off the ignition, rushing to the entrance to meet her younger sister. Arianna had grown at least another inch since she last saw her. Her parents, brother, and sister had come to visit her in Mexico for her twenty-seventh birthday in Ju
ly, and while it hadn’t been three months, the change in Arianna was startling. It was as if she had grown up overnight.
“Ari! Baby sister,” Regina whispered, hugging her tightly and kissing her cheek.
Arianna sobbed softly, clinging to Regina as if she were her lifeline. “If you go away and leave me again, I’ll kill myself.”
Pulling back, Regina examined her sister’s pained expression. Fourteen-year-old Arianna had inherited her parents’ best features: towering height, slimness, rich, deep, golden-brown coloring, her mother’s green-flecked brown eyes and her mouth, and her father’s curly black hair, which she wore in a flattering short style. At five-eight, she hinted of a sensuality which was certain to short-circuit any teenage boy’s nervous system.
“I don’t want to hear you talk about killing yourself,” she admonished softly. “I just buried my husband, Ari. I came back here to reconnect with my family, not bury my only sister.”
Arianna nodded quickly, forcing a tearful s mile. “I’m sorry.”
“Where’re Mommy and Tyler?”
“Tyler went out for a little while, and Mommy’s in the house.”
Martin Cole walked up to his daughters, his dark eyes shining with pride and happiness. He extended his arms at his sides. “May I escort my lovely princesses into the castle?”
Regina went completely still, staring at her father. Princesa. That was what Aaron had called her. She was thousands of miles from him, and still he haunted her.
“Is there something wrong?” Martin questioned.
Shaking her head quickly, she flashed a smile. “No. Not at all.” Looping her arm through her father’s, she walked into the home filled with both good and bad memories.
Parris Simmons-Cole lay on a chaise beside Regina, holding her hand tightly as they stared at the foam-flecked incoming tide. It had been a long time since she had all of her children together at the same time.
“You’ve aged me, Angel.”
Regina stared at her mother, her mouth gaping. “You look beautiful. No one would take you for fifty.”
Harvest Moon Page 13
