Cursed by Love

by Jacie Floyd

  It took him several seconds to answer. “I had breakfast with Molly today.”

  That, at least, was neutral ground. “I hope you two didn’t get into it. She’s seemed unsettled since her house was broken into. How did she seem to you?”

  “Same old Molly. The cock-eyed optimist. Always looking at things from a different perspective than everyone else.” He abandoned the weeds to turn toward her. “She’s determined to get us back together, you know.”

  Ellen’s hands stilled. She shook her head, but let a little grin curve her lips. “I guess she told you about ‘The Curse’.”

  He chuckled and nodded. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

  “Not any crazier than any of her other superstitions.” Ellen dug down deep to root out a dandelion. “Of course, this one does come with a little more credibility than some of the others. Legend. Provenance, whatever you want to call it.”

  “That it does. I told her I’d think about what she said and I have been, but she called me a couple of hours ago and asked me to loan her the money to buy Gabe’s half of the piece.”

  Ellen mulled that over. “She cares about him more than she admits, and she’s worried about his situation.”

  “And she’s worried about us, too.” He hesitated. “She thinks uniting the Sleeping Lotus will...” He dropped his voice, as if afraid to say his next words too loud, “... get the two of us back together.”

  The two of us back together. Ellen mentally stumbled over the thought, one she’d been avoiding for so long. There it was right in front of her. He’d said it so quietly she had to strain to hear him, but she’d definitely heard him give voice to her dearest dream. “I told her it was silly to blame our problems on two inanimate pieces of jade.”

  “Sure, right.” He nodded, then stopped. “But have you thought about it? The timing fits.”

  “Uh huh.” She kept her head down, not wanting him to see the longing on her face. “I haven’t been thinking about anything else for days.” But knowing this was too important to shy away from, she had to look into his eyes. “And I’ve been wondering whose idea it was for you to leave.”

  “Molly asked me the same thing.” His confusion seemed to match hers. “It just kind of happened, didn’t it? After your mom died, we started arguing a lot, bickering really, which wasn’t like us. And one day I mentioned I was feeling a little boxed in, or bored, or something. The next day, instead of talking about it and working things out, you’d packed my bags. You, the one who had never made a snap decision in her life.”

  He spoke the truth. She rarely bought new shoes without a three-day waiting period, and she’d discarded their marriage in the blink of an eye. “I remember thinking that I didn’t want you to stay if I had to talk you into it. I thought I deserved better than that. And you so clearly wanted to go.” She chewed her bottom lip, remembering the heartache. “Didn’t you?”

  He raised his hand and shrugged, as if at a loss to explain his feelings. “I thought I did, but now I’m not sure.”

  While they were clearing the air, she wanted to clear every bit of it, with no nagging issues hanging out there to sabotage them in the future. “What about Rhonda?”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed a temple, his classic pondering gesture. “What about her?”

  What had she thought about Rhonda? She’d never really believed he’d been unfaithful, simply that he was heading that way. Making him leave had almost been a preemptive strike on her part. Hurt him before he hurts me. Force him to prove his loyalty by refusing to leave. “I thought she’d caught your eye.”

  “I told you there wasn’t anything going on there.” His earnestness seemed so authentic that she was almost embarrassed to have doubted him. “Did you think I would lie?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “I never lied to you.” He looked affronted, and she laughed. “About anything.”

  “Nothing personal, but what man would tell the truth about wanting to sleep with another woman? Lying comes with the territory. Once I believed you wanted to be unfaithful, deceit didn’t seem out of the question. And you were attracted to her. I could see it. I thought if you hadn’t slept with her, it was only a matter of time.

  “And yet it’s been months and it hasn’t happened.”

  Her head and her heart twirled together in a happy pirouette. “Why not?”

  He scooted closer, put his finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look at him. “I compared her to you and lost whatever spark of interest I might have had for her.”

  Oh, the relief. But still. Some doubt. “Really?”

  “Really.” He looked deep into her eyes and she felt their connection for the first time in a long time. The one she’d thought they’d lost. “What about you? Are there other men in your life?”

  The sun beat down on her. A robin chirped in the linden pear tree they’d planted the year they’d bought the house. A car roared by too fast on the street. But in her heart, it was just like the first time they’d met. Ellen looked into her husband’s eyes and felt like she was drowning in her love for him. Only he could reach out and save her from the enormity of her feelings.

  “You’ve always been the only one for me.” He brushed the dirt off his fingers before stroking them through her hair. Then keeping his eyes focused on hers, he leaned over to kiss her.

  She lifted her hand to caress his cheek, but laughed when it was her rough work glove that met his skin. He pulled it from her hand, then helped her stand.

  “Let’s go inside.” He dropped another kiss on her mouth. “I have some groveling to do.”

  “We’ll grovel together. And make up for lost time.”

  As they hurried into the house together, Ellen smiled to herself. Gabe had left the stem of the Sleeping Lotus with her earlier. Admiring its beauty, she’d twisted the pieces together and set the statuary on the dresser in her bedroom.

  For now, the curse was broken.

  Time to test the validity about endurance.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gabe scanned the cozy dining room mostly restored to its prebreak-in state. Everything about the house suited Molly’s bright, sunny nature. Colorful and compact. Whimsical and intriguing. Very much like Molly.

  Houdini curled up in his lap and purred as he stroked the black fur. Molly placed a pan of lasagna in the center of the table and took the seat across from him.

  “Did you figure out everything that happened today?” he asked her, hoping she hadn’t heard about his talk with her mother.

  “Most of it. Your Uncle Harold was both the culprit and the rescuer, right?” She looked at him accusingly. “You should have told me what was going on this morning at breakfast. I knew you were upset.”

  He dug into his salad and nodded. “Yeah, I should have, but I have a bad habit of trying to handle things alone. And I thought I’d lost everything. I didn’t want to admit to you that I had failed. Or to disclose family failings. I was scrambling to find a way to fix everything, before anyone found out the truth.”

  “I know. You’re the ‘fixer’ in your family, just like I am in mine.” The thought didn’t seem to please her.

  “Sierra said you showed up at the office looking for me this afternoon, but she didn’t know if you needed anything special.”

  “I wanted to borrow your half of the Sleeping Lotus.” She sighed. “I thought it might be a good idea to put the pieces together, even temporarily, to see if that would reunite my parents.” The candlelight flickered between them for a few seconds. “I’d talked to my dad about loaning me the money to buy your half.

  Gabe choked on his wine and set his glass on the table. Good God, that would be the end of his financial troubles, but he couldn’t let her make such a sacrifice. “Molly.”

  “If putting the pieces together got the two of them back together, it would be worth buying the stupid thing from you. If it didn’t, we may as well go ahead and sell it. It’s already caused so much trouble, I don’t even want it anymo
re.”

  He didn’t know what to say.

  “Dad agreed to buy it from you, but he also said the investment seemed unnecessary.”

  “Because he doesn’t believe in the curse?”

  “He seems open to the possibility now. But he didn’t think it mattered who owned both pieces, just that they be joined together. If I want to own both pieces, for the sake of family history, he said he’d arrange it. But if we sell both of them together, it would serve the same purpose.”

  “Maybe.” Gabe watched a panorama of emotions march across her face. He could see she wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of selling the Sleeping Lotus yet. He didn’t want to say too much and jinx the whole thing.

  “Before I met your family, I thought you were just a workaholic determined to make a lot of money, no matter what. But now I know you’re doing this for a greater purpose. And even though your family has some, uh, idiosyncrasies, whose family doesn’t?”

  “You mean other people have weird families, too?”

  “Dad says everyone’s family is weird. Most families look normal on the surface, but outsiders don’t know what goes on beneath the surface.”

  Gabe laughed. “He’s probably right.”

  “So what would you rather do?”

  “Kiss you.” He pulled her from her chair onto his lap. As his lips assaulted hers, she tasted like wine, so delicious he could have devoured her on the spot.

  He traced his fingers across her face, memorizing her by touch. The smooth texture of her cheek. The small tilt of her nose. The silky lashes fluttering against his fingertips. The pulse beating rapidly at the base of her neck.

  With her usual impatience, she leaned in and kissed him, sealing her mouth against his, teasing him with her tongue, and drugging him into a sensual haze where every sensation heightened his awareness of her. Immediately, he was lost in the warmth of her mouth, a contradiction of sweetness, softness and heady eroticism. She shifted on his lap. His cock went rigid beneath her.

  He’d craved her since the day they’d met. But he hadn’t believed having her was possible.

  Besides being too great a distraction from his work and his responsibilities, she was everything that was beyond his reach. Smart, gorgeous, generous, and enthusiastic. Just seeing her smile made him happy. Her kiss turned him inside out. The way she accepted his family, her positive attitude, her sense of wonder, her belief in all good things made him burn to have her in his life. Permanently. Fiercely.

  He wanted it all. He wanted to have all of her. He wanted it so much he could taste it.

  He unfastened the buttons of her blouse, kissing each exposed inch. Finally, he shoved the material aside, baring her to his gaze. A delicate lace bra enhanced her breasts, full and ripe, just the way he remembered, eager for his touch. He circled them with his fingertips, teasing the nipples into taut beads. Bending forward, he traced his tongue into the sweet valley between them. He took a lace-covered nipple between his teeth and tugged.

  Groaning with desire, Molly moved her hand down between them. The stroke of her hand on his erection nearly sent him over the edge. She was everything he wanted in his life, for now and forever. Was he what she wanted, too?

  He returned to her mouth, hot and insistent. Molly rubbed against him.

  She broke away and led him to her big, overstuffed couch, almost too pristine to be used for the things he had in mind. “I want space to spread out everywhere, to see you and touch you all over. Any objections?”

  “Your couch, your choice.” He’d do her on the roof if that was what she wanted. “As long as I get to be inside you really, really soon.” He bent and licked her stomach and she stopped talking. Instinctive, elemental. He stopped thinking.

  Touching her, kissing her, tasting her was as natural as rain, as magnificent as fire. When he slipped inside her hot, wet heat, feeling her around him, thrusting hard and deep, their joining escalated into a chorus of Yes!-Yes!-Yes! First her, then him, then her again. He was pretty sure that was the sequence.

  But it didn’t really matter. They were in agreement all around, free-floating to a safe landing in one another’s arms.

  He lowered his eyelids to a definite doze when he felt her fingers tap against his shoulder. “Hmmm?” he asked, groggily.

  “Tag,” she said. “You’re definitely it.”

  God, he hoped so.

  Molly jerked awake, bathed in sunlight, happy, content, and ready to go again with Gabe’s oh so, marvelous, sinful hands doing magical things to her body. She snuggled in closer, turning toward his warmth.

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  She swiveled her head to check the time. Oh, no, time to get up. She needed to get to school even if this was the happiest she’d ever been. And the most exhausted.

  “Not good.” She grimaced. “It’s Monday. I have to go to work.”

  Pulling herself away, she jumped up and raced for the shower. After throwing him a teasing glance over her shoulder, she wasn’t the least bit surprised when he joined her, doing wicked things with soapy fingers that slicked over her and left her at his mercy. After repaying him with her mouth on his most sensitive parts, he lifted her against the tiled wall and wrapped her legs around him. He pushed inside her, driving into her until the ripples of her release pulled him over the edge with her.

  Out of the shower, she realized she was hopelessly late. She called in a personal day. Gabe stayed for breakfast, but eventually, reluctantly, left, sighting the pressures of work. He made delicious promises for the evening to come. As the Harley pulled out of the driveway, she remembered they hadn’t reached a decision about the Sleeping Lotus.

  Too bubbly from the night’s activities to sit still, she called her mom to bring her up to speed on the recent turn of events. But the Elmwood administrative assistant said that Ellen had called in a personal day, too.

  Worried that her mom might be ill, or even worse, had a showdown with her dad, Molly called her mom’s number.

  “Hello,” a deep voice answered—her father’s deep voice to be exact.

  Confused, Molly looked at the phone in her hand. Had she pressed the wrong contact?

  “Dad? I thought I called Mom.” An awkward moment crackled between them. Molly heard a piano in the background. It sounded like her mom playing and singing a Carole King song, one of Mom’s favorites. Molly cleared her throat. “Marsha said Mom had called in a personal day. I was worried.”

  “Are you calling from school? Is there a problem?”

  He couldn’t see her, but her cheeks reddened all the same. “No, I called in some personal time, too. But come to think of it, why aren’t you at work at ten-o’clock on a Monday morning?”

  “Probably the first time all three of the Webbers missed school on the same day, but I called in too.” He sounded disgustingly healthy and happy. Chipper, in fact. “I’m at your mother’s house this morning, I mean, my house—our house, dammit.”

  Molly nearly dropped the phone. “You’re at home with Mom? And you both ditched school?”

  “Don’t make it sound like we’re sixteen and playing hooky. We had some personal time coming, and we’re putting it to good use.”

  “Did you go over there for breakfast?”

  “No, I stayed for breakfast, if you must know. Satisfied, now?”

  “Oh, I am, Dad, more than satisfied if this means what I think.”

  “It means we’re going to work on our differences.”

  Molly let out a whoop. “That’s great. You two belong together.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. We just lost our way for a little while.”

  “About that, Dad—“

  “You mean, about the Sleeping Lotus?”

  Molly bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “I’ll let your mom tell you.”

  Ellen hummed about the earth moving under her feet as she approached the phone. “Hello, dear. Isn’t this a beautiful morning?”

  “Yes, Mom, it is.” Not just be
cause of her Mom and Dad, although that, in and of itself was wonderful, but Molly had her own reasons to be happy.

  “I’m not saying we believe in the power of the Sleeping Lotus, but we think we’d just as soon not have that curse hanging over our heads any longer.”

  “How are you going to prevent it?”

  “Well, Dad told me you’d asked for the money to buy it, and Gabe came and asked me if I wanted to sell my half with his—”

  “He did what?” She battled a feeling of betrayal. Why would he do such a thing? Oh, yeah, to go behind her back and sell the Sleeping Lotus without her agreement. A chill swept down her spine. And what if he’d slept with her for the same reason? It was possible. Because he wanted the money the damn Sleeping Lotus could bring him, not because he loved and wanted Molly.

  She should have realized it was all about the money to him, even if he did want the money for a good cause. She clearly didn’t mean as much to him as the money did. She didn’t mean as much to him as his family did. Oh, all right, it wasn’t as cut and dried as that. Still, some of her earlier glow faded.

  “Well, your dad and I decided that we don’t want any part of it. We’d like to see it out of our house, just in case there is any truth to this curse business.”

  “Of course there’s truth in it. How much more proof do you people need?”

  “The evidence seems overwhelming, so we’ve decided to give it to you.”

  “You want to hand over an object to me that’s cursed and of great value? Thanks a lot.” Molly fingered through the good luck charms on her bracelet. She’d polished up the new penny and attached it to the bracelet earlier. It outshined all the rest.

  “You’re missing the obvious, dear. You’ll have half, Gabe will have half. Do whatever you want to with it. But honestly, if two healthy, young people who are at least halfway in love already don’t know what to do with two halves of an erotic ancient fertility symbol, than some counseling may be in order.”