She wrapped her arms around herself. “At least be honest and tell me that you don’t approve, that you think I’m being petty or stupid or mean or egotistical.”
“No, you’re just being very human,” he said in a low voice.
“And that’s so bad?”
“In this context, it’s empty. It’s meaningless.”
“I didn’t tell you so you could judge me. It’s not up to you to judge me on anything.”
“Why did you tell me?”
God help her, she really did want his approval. She didn’t even know why not having it made her feel so shattered and unfocused. “You asked. You pushed me.”
“And you told me.”
She hadn’t told anyone else about her plans, except Roz, whom she’d instructed to send the committee running the ball a check, along with her approval to announce her name at the ceremony.”
And now she’d explained everything to Joe. And he wasn’t buying it, or at least, he wasn’t liking it. “Maybe I thought you’d understand,” she said with raw truth.
He touched her again, this time putting a finger under her chin to bring her face up to his and not allow her to close him out by shutting her eyes. She didn’t close her eyes.
“Oh, I think I do,” he said.
Lightning flashed, bathing the room in harsh light, then thunder followed on its heels. She flinched. “I…I hate thunder,” she whispered as lightning flashed through the room again.
She closed her eyes now and reverted to a childish coping mechanism. “One thousand one, one thousand two, one—” Thunder rolled.
“It’s close,” Joe said, obviously knowing what she was doing.
She was really shaking now, and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. That was when Joe cupped the nape of her neck with his hand. “Thunder is just sound produced by rapidly expanding air along the path of the electrical discharge of lightning.”
“Another definition,” she said. His fingers wove into her hair, and she could feel him easing her closer to him. She didn’t fight it. When thunder came again, she trembled, but this time the cause wasn’t only the thunder.
She stared up at Joe, the simple act of breathing beyond her. Before she could figure out how to keep taking in air and letting it out, he lowered his head to find her parted lips with his.
She felt his lips, his heat, the hardness of his body against hers, and the world grew gray around the edges, narrowing more and more until the only reality was this contact with him.
Almost of their own volition, her arms lifted and slipped around his neck. She moved closer to him, felt his heat and strength as his arms closed around her. In the next heartbeat, she experienced the insane sense of coming back to something. He’d said she had more reasons to be here than what she’d told him. She would have sworn he’d been wrong, but now she wasn’t so sure. It was very close to a feeling of home-coming, returning, but that made no sense, not any more than her next thought, that maybe he was the one she’d come back for.
Irrationally, that scared her, and she was going to push back. She was going to stop this. She was going to get away from Joe.
Instead, she did the opposite. When his tongue eased into her mouth, she opened herself to him. When he pulled her more tightly against him, letting her feel his desire for her, she didn’t fight it. She didn’t even think of fighting it. She got as close as she could, her fingers tangling in his damp hair, and the beginnings of a new beard bristled against her skin. His lips left hers, but didn’t break their contact. They trailed to her throat, to a spot by her ear, and fireworks seemed to be everywhere.
She arched back, exposing her throat to him, letting him taste her flushed skin. She felt him tugging her sweatshirt up and off. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nakedness was exposed. His hands were on her skin, and she heard a deep groan. It came from her, from her soul, and all the while the word homecoming was running through her mind. She moved frantically, not understanding the feelings, but knew she wanted to keep contact, and have more contact.
She tried to get his shirt up and out of the way. She pulled on it, heard buttons give, then the shirt was on the floor. She felt his heart beating under her palm, his slick heat against her, then she tasted him, skimming her tongue and lips across his hot skin. She brushed the suggestion of soft hair by his nipples, then the line of the same hair going down toward his flat stomach.
They were moving backward, at least she was, with Joe maneuvering her, and then she was on the couch, sitting. Joe was in front of her, dropping to his knees, pushing between her legs, and their eyes almost level with each other. Homecoming.
The fire in her was in him. She could see it burning in his gaze, then in the touch of his hands, framing her face. The kiss that came then was as urgent as any kiss in her life. It demanded things she couldn’t begin to define. He pressed closer, his mouth dipping to the nakedness of her breasts. Then his lips were on her nipple, and the tightening in her grew until it was almost unbearable.
There was another groan as his mouth shifted to her other nipple. She pulled him closer, exploring him with her hands, and Joe did the same with both his hands and his lips. She arched toward him, feeling him between her legs, pressing his hardness against her, and she lifted her hips.
Homecoming. She had come home. And she had this, here and now. On the island. With this man. She knew she wasn’t stopping. She knew she couldn’t and accepted that fact with resignation and excitement.
JOE WANTED NOTHING MORE than to make love to her. The desire overwhelmed him. He felt her yielding to him, her softness under his hands, her taste in his mouth, and the idea of not going any further never entered his mind.
Until the world shifted on its axis. A disembodied voice announced clearly from somewhere in the room, “You have mail.” It was just a voice, but it had the power to cut through him, and he stilled.
He looked down at Alegra under him on the couch, into her shadowed eyes heavy with desire, and it was all up to her. Either she ignored the voice and came to him, or she didn’t. It was her choice. The voice came again, announcing “incoming mail,” and when Alegra shifted to one side, away from him, he knew she’d made her choice.
Her getting to her feet was the equivalent of being doused by a bucket of cold water. The desire was still there—hell, he’d have to be blind not to see how sexy this woman was. But the common sense he’d used to change his life in the recent past came back full force. Sexy and desirable was one thing. Ruining a life he’d just started to rebuild by making the same mistakes he’d made with Jean was something else again.
He turned from her and the sight of her naked breasts as she reached for her sweatshirt. He didn’t want to see her tightened nipples, the flush to her skin. He reached for his own shirt, shrugged it on, felt the nubs of thread where the buttons had been and left it open and loose.
He turned back to Alegra, who was standing by the desk now, staring down at her laptop, but not touching the keys. The sweatshirt was covering her, but he still had to fight the vivid memory of her taste and feel. “So you’ve got mail,” he said.
She closed the computer and turned to him. A wall was up now, a barrier he didn’t know how to get past, even if he wanted to right then. She didn’t come closer as she spoke. “I’m sorry about…” She motioned vaguely around the room with her hands, then clasped them tightly together in front of her. “I mean, I shouldn’t have…”
“I guess neither one of us should have,” he said.
Color brightened her cheeks. “What I meant was, whatever I did, or whatever I said, or anything, I’m sorry.”
He’d had apologies in his day, but this one was as nonspecific as any he’d ever heard. “Sure, that makes two of us.”
Those amber eyes held his gaze, and although her lips might still look slightly swollen from the kisses, her mind was obviously back on why she was here in the first place. “Then I guess we’re even.”
“Yeah, and no story about your plans for…”
He met her eyes directly and finished, “Whatever.”
He saw her flinch. “Write whatever you want after I leave.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t preempt your strike.”
Color rose in her cheeks. “No, you don’t understand at all.”
Why did she make it sound as if he’d failed a huge, important test? He grabbed his coat off the chair and pulled it on, barely able to look at her now. “Thanks for the cognac,” he said, and headed for the door.
Before he could get to the exit, Alegra said, “Joe?”
He turned, casting her a slanted glance. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He opened the door and stepped out into the night. The rain had let up, but the mists and cold lingered on. He walked to his truck by the office and drove home. Some of his frustration and tension eased as simple reason came in to play.
If he had learned one thing in this life, it was that you don’t change people. You can only change yourself, and he had no intention of doing that. Alegra hated this place. She was leaving as soon as she’d done what she’d come to do. She wouldn’t look back. And he’d still be here. He’d still be doing his human-interest pieces and raising Alex and making a home.
Joe stepped into that home fifteen minutes later and made his way through the darkened rooms. He got to his bedroom when a voice came out of the darkness. “Joey?”
He turned and could barely make out his mother in the shadows at the end of the hallway. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. I was up.” She came closer. “I was just starting to worry about your being gone so long.” She was in a long blue bathrobe and holding a mug in her hand. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, just fine.”
“Good, good,” she murmured. “You had a call while you were gone. It was Jean.”
He felt his neck tense. “What did she want?”
“Seems she’s flying to Japan and won’t be able to get back in time for the holidays.”
He relaxed. “We’ll make out okay without her.”
“I know we will, but Alex is going to ask questions.”
She was right. His son seemed to have a knack for asking questions that had no answers. “I’ll talk to him.”
He was ready to go into his room when his mother asked another question. “Do you think Alegra could come to dinner tomorrow evening?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s got work.” He shrugged. “Nothing gets in the way of that.”
His mother clicked her tongue softly. “Oh, Joey, we all have to work.”
“Yeah, sure. Tell Alex that the next time he asks for his mother.”
“That’s different. Jean loves only her work.” She paused, then, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that she never loved you or Alex.”
“She loves Alex in her own way.” Loving him didn’t matter to him, because he knew now he’d never loved her. “But she’s made her priorities.”
“Yes, she has. But don’t you think Alegra is different? She seems so vulnerable, so…” She sighed. “I don’t know, lonely, don’t you think?”
Yes, he did. “You’re probably right, but it’s not our business.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Mom, just because she broke bread with us…It doesn’t mean anything except she was hungry.”
His mother patted his arm, said, “Good night,” then headed down the hallway to the room she shared with his father.
He went into his own room, closed the door, and without turning on any light, stripped out of all of his clothes except his briefs, then got under the covers. He welcomed the feel of the cool sheets against his skin. Rolling onto his side, he looked out the window and saw a hazy moon just showing itself in the blackness of the sky. He closed his eyes, but opened them immediately when an image of Alegra, naked, came to him with stunning brilliance. His body responded instantly.
He groaned and slipped out of bed, then padded to the bathroom, and stripped off his underwear. He turned on the shower, then stepped under the spray before it got warm. While the outward response of his body ceased, the images in his mind of what had happened with Alegra earlier did not. He uttered a curse that didn’t banish Alegra any more than the water did, and he faced the fact that when it came to women, he made bad choices. Very bad choices. But he was determined to stop that pattern right now, right here.
He awoke hours later in the early-morning light. The sky through the window was clear for once, no rain. Alex was curled up in bed with him. He vaguely remembered the boy coming into his room, saying he had a bad dream, and climbing under the covers with him. He raised himself on one elbow and looked down at his son. His fair hair was tousled from sleep, and his improbably long lashes lay curving against his smooth skin. Joe was looking at the very reason he was not going to repeat the past. Alex was everything to him, and the driving force behind changes Joe had made in his life. He wasn’t going to blow it all now.
He eased out of bed and pulled on his jeans, then carried the cordless phone on the nightstand into the bathroom and closed the door. He called information, got the number, then called the Snug Harbor Bed and Breakfast. It was answered on the second ring by someone who seemed awfully damned cheerful for such an early call.
“The Snug Harbor, good morning.”
“Connect me to Ms. Reynolds’s cottage.”
“Sorry. She’s not here.”
Joe’s hand tightened on the receiver. “Okay, I’ll call back later.”
“Sir, she left. She won’t be back, at least not today.”
“What do you mean, she left?”
“She called last night, asked for the ferry schedule and said she was leaving on the first ferry this morning,” the woman said.
He closed his eyes, stunned that Alegra had just walked away. He’d thought her passion for revenge would have at least kept her here, but something in him lifted to hear that she’d given up that notion.
“So she just left?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Thanks,” he murmured and would have hung up, but the woman spoke again.
“You can leave a message if you like.”
“I can?”
“She left, but she kept the cottage. She said she’ll be back for one night.” She named a date, and he recognized it as the night of the ball. She wasn’t going to walk away from her moment of glory, after all. His heart sank. “So I can give her a message when she returns.”
“No message,” he murmured, and hung up.
He stood there, his back against the cold wood of the door for a long moment. She’d left. She was gone, but she’d be back to do what she came here for in the first place. A knot settled in his stomach. Revenge would be hers.
He’d called to tell her that he was going to be really busy with things for the rest of her time here, and to wish her well. He’d had no intention of trying to talk her out of her plans. Now she was gone, and the decision was taken out of his hands. He wouldn’t see her again. He certainly wasn’t going to the ball. Funny how that left him with a peculiar emptiness.
“Daddy?” Alex called. Joe heard a knock on the bathroom door. “Daddy. I gotta go.”
Joe opened the door and his son scooted past him. He waited, and when the boy was hitching up his pajama bottoms, Joe crouched down in front of him. “What are you doing today?” he asked.
Alex grinned. “Mamaw’s gonna take us to see the pirate!”
He knew what the boy was talking about. There was a reenactment of Bartholomew’s homecomings from his raids, and now that the weather had cleared, it would go ahead as planned. Down on the beach, there’d be men in costume, people watching and cheering as a series of dinghies brought the “crew” to the shore with their bounty, and the cannon would be fired at imaginary enemies out in the sound.
“Sounds like fun,” he said, ruffling his son’s silky hair.
“You coming?” the boy asked.
He nodd
ed. “Sure, I’d love to come.”
“Great!” Alex squealed and ran past his dad, disappearing through the bedroom and out into the hallway. “Mamaw! Mamaw!” he called out to his grandmother.
Joe stood, caught his reflection in the mirror of the pedestal sink and winced. He looked like a mile of bad road, from the spiked hair, to the shadow of a beard and the dark smudges under his eyes. She was gone. He exhaled and crossed to the sink to shave. She was gone. “Just in time,” he said to himself, but the man facing him in the mirror didn’t nod in agreement. His frown just deepened.
Chapter Eleven
Alegra watched the ferry chug off into the mist over the sound and didn’t move until it was gone, lost from sight. Before she’d set foot on the island a few days ago, she’d been a woman of certainty who made decisions based on facts, who did not act on impulse. But all that had changed. She sank back in the car seat. She’d decided to leave the island on impulse, right after Joe had left her alone last night. She’d planned to get out of here and only come back for the ball, then leave again for good.
And yet, she’d pulled out of the lineup for the ferry and parked by the coffee stand. She’d watched the boat leave the dock, and then almost desperately wanted to be on it heading to the mainland. But reason had won out. Running away because she was unnerved and unsettled by the island, and the man she’d met on the island, was impulsive and unthinking.
She hit the steering wheel with the flat of her hand and muttered an oath, which did little to release her frustration. She reached for her cell phone and put in a call to Roz. The woman had been awakened in the early hours of the morning to be told about Alegra’s changed plans. Now she was calmly listening to her boss tell her to forget what she said, that the original plans were back in place. Good assistant that she was, she didn’t ask any questions.
Alegra hung up and wished she was as calm as Roz sounded. She turned the car to head back up the road to the highway, taking deep, even breaths, trying to get past her stupid actions of the morning. She wouldn’t run. She’d stick to her plans. She’d finish this and leave. That became her mantra.
Alegra's Homecoming Page 11
