An almost imperceptible twinkle entered Mac’s eyes. “Even when you were sleeping?”
Definitely Ben material. There’d been a great deal about his brother that had been lovable, Shayne remembered. “They’re called dreams, then, wiseguy.” Shayne laughed, tousling the boy’s hair.
Mac grinned. “I dreamed about you, too. Lots of times.”
Shayne doubted very much if Mac could have said anything that would have meant more to him than what he’d just said.
Shayne spent a long time in the den with Mac, poring over photographs, talking. Discovering. The exhaustion he’d felt earlier when he’d arrived home peeled away from him like an outer covering that was no longer pertinent or in vogue.
He knew he had Sydney to thank for this. But how did he thank someone for invading his space, his privacy?
Nothing about the woman was simple.
Leaving Mac to return the photographs to the box, Shayne walked out of the den, looking for Sydney. He had to admit that it surprised him that she had left the two of them alone for so long. He’d half expected her to come in, ready to mediate or just place herself in the center of what was going on.
The woman was a complete enigma to him. He didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her. Or both. No matter what he was doing, Sydney somehow managed to inspire such diametrically opposed emotions within him, it set his head spinning.
He wondered if she did that on purpose.
The strains of chords being slowly picked out on the piano came to him almost as soon as he opened the door. Shayne followed the sound to the living room.
Which was where he found her.
Sydney was sitting at the piano, sharing the bench with Sara. With a look of total concentration, Sara was trying to mimic Sydney’s fingering on the keyboard.
Sydney looked up the moment he entered the room though he made no sound. It was as if she were some how aware of his every movement. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she were.
Sydney tried to read his expression. He didn’t look annoyed. At least that was a good sign. “So, how did it go?”
“Well,” he said slowly.
Maybe it was small of him, but he couldn’t let her invasion pass lightly. If he did, he had a feeling that the incident would only repeat itself and mushroom to unmanageable proportions. And he didn’t want her entrenched in his life any more than she already was.
As it was, she’d already upheaved the life he thought he’d made for himself.
Shayne crossed to the piano, to Sydney’s side of the bench. He lowered his voice to keep from distracting Sara. “That still doesn’t tell me what you were doing, going through my things.”
The words stung, even though Sydney told herself it was just his way. It didn’t have to be his way. He chose it to be.
“I wasn’t going through your things,” she replied tersely. “I was looking for paper.”
He wanted to believe her, but Barbara had taught him that relationships were filled with lies. “Big difference between photographs and paper.”
She knew what he was saying. That she should have just left the photographs alone when she’d seen them.
“I got curious,” she admitted. Wasn’t he human? Didn’t he ever get curious about anything? About anyone? “I figured I wasn’t intruding on national security, or your secret identity, so I looked.”
Sara stopped playing. Her mouth fell open. “You have a secret identity?”
Shayne slanted an annoyed look at Sydney. Trust her to fuel a misunderstanding. “No, I—”
Mac had walked in on his sister’s question. He was clearly impressed. “Like Batman?”
“No, not like Batman,” Shayne denied patiently. “And I don’t have a secret identity. That’s just Sydney talking.” Sydney, he thought, was always talking.
Making use of the diversion, Sydney got up and indicated a corner of the room. “I thought you could put the tree there.”
Maybe solitude had gotten the better of him, relegating his mind into a slower mode. Whatever the reason, he was having a really difficult time keeping up with her. As usual, he had no idea what she was talking about.
He followed her over to the corner. “What tree?”
Sara was quick to join them. “The Christmas tree, Daddy,” she informed him. Sara gave him a pitying look, as if he’d just taken his first giant step into senility.
That, too, he figured, was Sydney’s fault.
Most everything these days was Sydney’s fault.
Sydney saw the look on his face and retreated a little. All right, so he didn’t like her redecorating his house. She could understand that.
“Maybe I’m taking too much on myself…” she began.
He didn’t let her finish. Instead, he stared at her incredulously. “Maybe?” How could she possibly think otherwise? With every breath she took, she pushed further and further into his life, changing things, disorienting him.
She did not take offense at his tone. “Okay, where do you usually put the tree?”
“I don’t put it anywhere. I don’t have a tree in the house.” It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized how scroogelike that had to sound to his children.
Sara stared at him in alarm. “Doesn’t Christmas come here?”
Mac gave her a disgusted big brother look. Didn’t she know anything? “Sure it does. Christmas comes everywhere.” He stole a glance at Sydney for confirmation. “Doesn’t it?”
“That it does,” she agreed quickly before Shayne could say anything else to make things worse. “And to prove it, your dad’s going to put up the prettiest tree you ever saw. Right, ‘Dad’?” Sydney looked at him expectantly.
It felt really strange, hearing her address him that way. As if they were a family. Which they weren’t. And couldn’t be.
When he looked at his children, two sets of eyes were staring back at him with expectations and hopes he couldn’t bring himself to dash.
“Right,” he agreed as he took Sydney’s arm. “Could I have a word with you?”
“Always.” With a fluid movement, she disengaged herself from him. “But it’s going to have to wait until I get a couple of kids off to bed.” It was late and past their bedtime. She looked at Sara and Mac, a warm, coaxing smile on her lips. “Right?”
Neither child looked very happy about the prospect of going off to bed Sydney thought, but they both reluctantly agreed and chorused a halfhearted, “Right.” Both seemed to know that it was far too close to Christmas to put up any sort of a real fuss.
With his chess piece in check on the board, Shayne had no choice but to wait until after his children were asleep before he could talk to Sydney. Maybe it was better that way. It’d give him time to pull his thoughts about her together.
As if there was that much time in the world.
“All right, you can yell at me now.”
Coming into his room, Sydney eased the door closed behind her. She didn’t want him waking up the children after she’d spent so much effort getting them to sleep.
Surprised, Shayne looked up from the book he was reading. Unable to collect his thoughts, he’d felt it appropriate to peruse the pages of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. After a while, he’d given up waiting for her to get back to him and just lost himself in the play.
He’d gained very little insight, but at least he’d been entertained.
Shayne sat up on the bed, swinging his legs over the side. The thick green cover joined the gold-edged pages, losing his place for him. “What makes you think I’m going to yell at you?”
He probably resented the image. “All right, not yell. Speak sternly,” she amended, crossing to him. “Isn’t that what you intended to do earlier? Put me in my place?”
He was no longer sure what he’d intended earlier. She could make him lose his train of thought faster than anything he’d ever known. “Maybe I would, if I knew where that was.”
She looked down at him uncertainly. “Meaning?”
She would ask him to explain. “Meaning I know where I should put you, but I don’t know if I want to put you there. And even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could.” She was grinning broadly at him. He stopped talking. “What?”
“Don’t look now, but you’re beginning to sound like me.” She thought it was adorable.
He sighed, dragging his hand through his hair. “Oh, God, it’s worse than I thought.”
“Is it?” Her grin melted into a soft smile. “Define ‘worse.’”
That wasn’t going to be easy, not where she was concerned. He rose from the bed to face her. “Look, after Barbara left, I finally made peace with the way my life was going to be.”
Sydney doubted if peace was the word he was looking for. It was more as if he’d withdrawn from life altogether. But she let him talk. “And that was?”
“Solitary.”
If that were true, he would have abandoned his practice and become a hermit. “Makes being a doctor difficult.”
Shayne was determined to prove her wrong, at least about something. “Not really. You minister to their bodies and go on.”
That’s not the kind of doctor he was, no matter what he wanted to believe. She’d seen him with patients. Parts of him, of his compassion, came through in their care, no matter what he was trying to convince himself of.
“You’re talking about assembling cars on a conveyor belt. People need more than that. People need to be comforted, to know that they’re cared about as well as cared for.” She saw that he was about to disagree, and retreated. It was enough that she’d made her point. “But I digress. You were talking about your life’s plan. Go on.”
For two cents, Shayne would wipe that smug look off her face. For less than that…
He felt himself getting stirred again. He tried to ignore the effect she had on him.
“Yeah, well, the plan I’d settled on was being alone. Then Barbara died and I got my kids back. Kids I didn’t know what to do with.”
Didn’t he realize that he’d gone beyond that stage? “You’re doing all right now.”
He looked at her. Shayne was very aware of the debt he owed her. She’d been the one who’d turned Sara around. And Mac after that. Without her, who knew how long it would have taken them to come about, if at all?
“That was your doing.”
“Not really.” She didn’t want him to minimize his effect on the children. They loved him very much. “Sometimes you need a catalyst, that’s all. I got elected.”
A catalyst. What a strange way to think of herself. Had she affected everything around her—his life—without being affected herself? Was that what she was telling him? Damn, when did life get so complicated?
He knew when. The moment she’d stepped off the plane and into his life. “That’s just my problem. I don’t know what to make of my catalyst.”
The smile on her lips curled right through him, going from his gut straight to his toes.
“Maybe you don’t have to make something of her.” She moved closer to him. Or was that him, moving toward her? He wasn’t clear on that. Wasn’t clear on very much, except that he wanted her. “Maybe you just have to let her be. As in exist, not as in alone,” she clarified, lest he misunderstand.
He seized the word. “It’d be best if I could leave her alone.” He threaded his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. Feeling the heat begin to flare. “But I don’t think I can.”
She settled against him. “Are you coming on to me, Doctor?”
He wasn’t sure he knew how to come on to a woman. That was something he’d never taken the time to pick up from Ben. “Clumsily.”
Is that what he thought? Her eyes on his, Sydney moved her head from side to side. “You underestimate yourself, Shayne. There isn’t a single clumsy thing about you.”
Then why did he feel like a clumsy adolescent instead of a skilled physician who’d done more than his share of intricate surgery?
His hands were steady, his nerves were not. Shayne slowly began coaxing the first button of her blouse from its hole with the tips of his fingers when he stopped and looked toward the door.
She read his mind. “They’re sound asleep.” But, she knew, children were known to wake up at the worst possible moments. “And you have a lock.”
It was better to be safe than sorry. Shayne crossed to the door and flipped the lock into place, then returned to her. She could think clearly when he couldn’t. “You’re always one step ahead of me.”
She sincerely doubted it. Right now, she just wanted to be in sync with him. “I’ll try to watch that,” she promised softly.
His fingers occupied with the next button, Shayne pressed a kiss to her throat, sending the pulse there throbbing. He smiled to himself. “I’d appreciate it.”
With his every touch, desire skittered along her body like tiny fireflies released from their prison and escaping toward freedom. He made her skin tingle and her pulse throb. Most of all, he made her want. Want with every fiber of her being that wondrous feeling that only came when he kissed her.
She shivered as he slowly removed the blouse from her shoulders, felt her loins tightening as the sleeves slid from her arms. The blouse fell to the floor as he toyed with the button on her jeans.
Heart pounding, she found his mouth and lost herself in his kiss.
Her moan served only to send Shayne over the brink that he’d been tottering on so precariously. He knew there was no use trying to hang on to his common sense; this time, he didn’t waste the effort in trying. It was far more pleasurable using that energy in other ways.
In making love with her.
He hurried her out of the remainder of her clothes, his breath catching as she did the same. Each eager to find their way into the paradise they’d unwittingly stumbled into before.
Possessively, he skimmed his hands along her body, over and over again, until he could have recreated every curve, every nuance, that was Sydney with his eyes closed.
It wasn’t enough.
He wanted more.
A starving man, he’d taken a morsel and found himself hopelessly craving more. Even if it meant his undoing.
Tumbling onto his bed, they feasted on one another, exploring not only each other’s bodies, but the sensations that being together created. Sensations that were not entirely grounded in the physical act of lovemaking but in the feelings created by the act itself.
Lips sealed to hers, Shayne rolled over to gather her closer to him. He caught his breath as a fresh, different heat flared from his side, rivaling the flame that was consuming him.
She felt his gasp play along her lips and pulled back, searching his face. He looked paler, stunned. “What’s the matter?”
The pain he’d felt had settled down, the way it had all the other times in the past few days. Shayne dismissed it instantly. His body looming over hers, he framed her face with his hands.
“The matter is—” he grazed her mouth, once, twice and again “—you talk too much.”
He was obliterating her thoughts. She struggled to protest. “But—”
He wouldn’t let her get the words out. He didn’t want to discuss the strange pain that intermittently brandished his side like a hot sword.
Right now, all he wanted to do was make love with her. Everything else could be dealt with later. Much, much later.
Shayne kissed her protest away. Kissed away everything but the need she had to feel his body joined with hers.
Shayne made love to her with every part of his body. He melted her with his kisses, inflamed her with his caresses, and drove her to the edge of madness with hands that were far more skilled than any surgeon’s.
He made love with her as if he were on fire. When she could still think, she wondered what had come over him, but the speed, the tempo, the mood he’d struck fed her own desire, her own passions. She forgot about the promises she’d made to herself in the wee hours of the night, when disappointment loomed large and happiness was s
omething that seemed light-years removed.
Forgot everything but Shayne.
He was making her crazy and she knew that she had to have him, had to feel his hands on her body, his lips skimming lightly, teasingly, maddeningly over every part of her.
She was light and air, sea and sun. She was all things wondrous and pure, and he felt almost humbled with the gift she was giving him. Had he had just a little of his mind, he would have said the burden of that gift was far too great for him to bear. But those were the feelings of a thinking man, a man who’d loved and lost and sworn never to be hurt again.
He had no thoughts, only desires that gave him no peace with their demands. He had to have her, for she was his salvation. She was the light at the end of the lonely tunnel he’d been traveling in all these long, solitary years.
He wanted to tell her, wanted her to know what she meant to him, what she did for him. The words burned in his throat, on his lips, but somehow he couldn’t release them. Even now, in the midst of the madness that seized him, something held him back.
So instead, he lost himself in the passion, in the throes of desire, and gave her a night that he prayed would be burned into her very soul.
Eyes on hers, he sheathed himself within her, feeling her breath on his face as she gasped his name. He laced his fingers with hers and began to move his hips slowly, then more and more intensely. He meant to watch her, meant to see her reaction as rapture came to claim them both. Meant to. But the feeling swept him up, as well.
Shayne could only hang on as it swallowed him up and took him for its own.
Chapter Fifteen
Sydney knew the moment Shayne withdrew from her. Even before he physically moved aside. Knew by the emptiness, chilling and distant, that encroached over her, seizing her in its grip.
She wanted to reach for him, to assure herself she was wrong, to banish the feeling from her that was so awful. Pride kept her still.
What was he thinking? Shayne upbraided himself. He wasn’t Ben. He was supposed to keep a tight rein over his feelings, his yearnings.
Supposed to.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Wishing he didn’t want her as much as he did. Wishing that having her didn’t breed a desire to have her again and again. He knew what happened when he allowed himself to become dependent on someone.
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