by Donna Ball
He touched her arm lightly in a casual gesture of good night, and then hesitated. He looked into her eyes then, and she thought she knew why he had avoided doing so all evening. Behind the tenderness was, just for a moment, the glimpse of a shadow, a dark ache that reminded her of the one she had glimpsed so briefly there before, in the chapel ruins. Almost before she could define it the shadow was gone, but the memory of it lingered, and made her afraid.
He said, “I like your haircut.” He playfully brushed her fringe with the backs of knuckles, and turned to go.
She caught his arm. “What’s wrong?”
He turned back to her, a furrow between his brows, and she thought he would return a sharp answer. But then his eyes moved over her face, slowly, her cheeks and her temples and her chin and her nose and her lips and her jaw and her throat, as though memorizing the contours, or caressing them. And finally, he met her eyes, and the pain she saw there was the ache of wanting, and regret. She knew that, because the ache was mirrored in her own chest.
“I thought I could do this,” he said lowly. “I thought I could come here for the weekend, and be with you, and talk to you, and enjoy you, and that everything could be between us as it was when we first met. But I can’t. And it can’t. So.” A breath. “I’ll leave in the morning.”
She placed her hand on his chest to stop him from moving past her. Cotton as soft as silk. Muscles strong and hot. The hard, heavy heartbeat beneath her fingers felt like her own, and she stood there with breath suspended for a moment, trying to tell him that with her eyes, and listening with her fingertips. She made an effort to keep her voice even and without implication.
“Dixie called,” she said. “She told me . . . what you did.” She stopped, and swallowed to clear her throat. The effort to hold his gaze was tremendous, and her fingers pressed into his heartbeat. “What I didn’t have the courage to do. I’ve been thinking about what you said. And you might be right. Maybe, this time, you are the good guy.”
He dropped his eyes, almost as if to draw a curtain on the pain that grew darker, and clearer, with every word she spoke. He wrapped his fingers about hers where they lay on his chest.
“I’ve given this some thought,” he said in a low tone, looking at their enmeshed fingers, and not at her eyes, “and I’ve come to see that I’ve pursued you unfairly. You’re very lovely, very . . . enchanting, and I hope you won’t blame me if I’ve been quite swept away by you.” His lips tried to smile, and his tone tried to sound light, and neither quite succeeded. He glanced at her briefly, and then, with a slight knitting of his brows, at the hand he still held. “I know how difficult things have been for you, and I may have taken advantage of that. You’re a recent widow. This isn’t the time for you to have to fend off another romantic entanglement. And so I’ve been a bit of a cad. I apologize. Perhaps we can both move on from here.”
She said, feeling stunned, “Ash, that’s not . . .”
Now he met her eyes. His own were dark with firm resolve, and turmoil just beneath the surface. “Your family was very courteous to me,” he said quietly. “I’m glad I got to meet them. But I went to North Carolina for myself, not for you.” His fingers tightened then, squeezing hers almost to the point of pain, and then abruptly, he dropped her hand. “And there’s no such thing as a good guy.”
He looked at her then, his jaw knotted and his eyes as bleak as an empty sea. “You deserve better,” he said.
And he left without another word.
Sara made her way down the corridor in the dark, guided only by the light that spilled beneath his door. She knocked, but did not wait for him to answer before pushing open the door.
He was propped up against the pillows atop the rumpled bed wearing dark-framed reading glasses and a blue silk robe that was open to the waist over his bare chest. Papers were scattered around him and he was working on a mini-laptop, which he closed slowly and put aside when he saw her.
She said, “Why don’t you let me decide what I deserve?”
A cool, damp breeze came from the open casement window, and Sara, whose bare feet were already cold from the long walk down marble floors, started to shiver. She was wearing a knee-length sleeveless cotton nightgown that tied at the shoulders with ribbons and was trimmed with delicate rows of crocheted lace that she had bought in Paris because it was frivolous and it made her feel pretty. Now she wished she had thought to grab a robe before impulsively striding out of the relatively cozy apartment but, after tossing and turning in bed for twenty minutes, she had been afraid that if she hesitated for even another moment, she would lose her nerve.
“You know,” she said forcefully, “I spent forty years working hard and playing it safe to make sure I got what I deserved, and when I finally decided to take a chance, yes, it broke my heart. Yes, it brought me pain. But . . .” She dug her fingers into her arms, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “It also brought me love, even if only for a little while. And it brought me here.”
She blew out a breath, calming herself. “So maybe this is what I deserve. Maybe I deserve to take just one more chance. Maybe I deserve to figure it out for myself. I just wish . . . you wouldn’t tell me what I deserve.” It was only when the words were out that she realized she had not been shivering from cold at all. Her hands dropped to her sides and the gooseflesh on her arms disappeared. “That’s all I wanted to say.”
He removed his glasses. “Come here,” he said softly.
A breeze rustled the leaves outside his window and sent a shower of raindrops splashing onto the deep sill. Sara grasped her arms again against another bout of nerves. “There’s one more thing,” she said tightly. “I think you should know . . . I finally figured out that hating Daniel was keeping him here as much as loving him. So . . . no more ghosts.”
Ash extended his hand to her. “Come here.”
She did, and he pulled her down into the circle of his arms and legs and he covered her mouth with his and the shivering stopped and the heat began, warm and smooth velvety, from the inside out. He turned her into the curve of his arm, his leg over her hip, holding her against his chest, and he stroked her cheek, and the curve of her eyebrow, with his fingertip. His eyes were the color of a deep ocean when storms lurk hundreds of feet below, and they filled her world.
“Don’t think I don’t want you,” he said, hoarsely, against her mouth. “It’s gone far beyond wanting you. I’m really quite obsessed with you, I’m afraid. I don’t quite know how it happened.”
Sara whispered, “Me either.”
“I’m going to be very bad for you.” His voice soft and rough, his fingers cupping her cheek, threading through her hair. “There are things about me, parts of me, you don’t know. I don’t want you to be hurt again. I don’t want to be the one to do that.”
She said, “Then don’t.”
“I can’t help who I am.”
Sara turned her face into the caress of his hand, a sign of gentle surrender. “Oh, Ash,” she said, and let herself sink into him. “Do you know who you’re talking to? Do you think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t want to be responsible for . . .”
She laid her fingers across his lips. “This isn’t a contract negotiation.”
He kissed her fingertips, his eyes dark with a gentle ferocity. “Please don’t regret this.”
Sara said, “Have you done something that you could go to prison for?”
That surprised him. “I don’t think so.”
“Is there another woman?”
“God, no.” He whispered that against her throat, his breath like fire, and she shivered with pleasure.
“Any transmittable diseases?”
He laughed softly. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Then what else matters?”
“Darling, I think you should raise your standards.” But when he lifted his face to hers, he was smiling, and his gaze was filled with longing. “There is one thing you really should know, however.” He pushed his fingers li
ghtly through her hair, caressing it away from her face, exposing her eyes and all the vulnerability there. When he looked into her eyes, it was with a kind of thirst, as though he could drink her in with his wanting. He said softly, “I’m afraid I’ve fallen quite in love with you.”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she whispered, draping her arms around his neck, lifting her face to his. “I was afraid I was the only one.”
She kissed his lips, and the corner of his mouth, and the coarseness of his chin. She tasted salt and citrus, and the sharp, tangy essence that was simply him. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to. I shouldn’t have. But I love you. And it scares me.”
He slipped his arms around her back, pressing her to him, holding her tightly, just holding her. His heart was like thunder against her breast. And he said, “I know.”
“Do you believe in second chances?” she whispered, desperately, against his ear.
“Yes,” he said, fiercely. And then relaxing against her, kissing her jaw, and her cheekbone, and the corner of her eye, he repeated gently, “Yes.”
He smiled then, and took her fingers in his, tasting each tip with his tongue, traveling down the center of her palm to her wrist. She shivered, and the pleasure went straight down to her core. He said, softly, “I wanted to call you. Every day. But I couldn’t bear to hear your voice. Or even worse, to not hear it.”
Sara thought about all the times she had played back his messages on her voice mail, just to hear the sound of his voice. And she caught her breath as his lips traveled upward, delicately, to her shoulder, to her neck. “I would have answered the phone this time,” she whispered.
His hands caressed the fine material of her nightgown, dipping ever so slightly toward the cleavage, tracing the lace that trimmed the underarms. His breath was against her shoulder. “Did you get this in Paris?”
She managed an incoherent “Hmmm.”
“It’s very pretty.” His fingers tugged at the shoulder ribbon. “I’m going to take it off now.”
She whispered, “Okay.”
And then she caught his hand. He looked at her, puzzled, and she said, “Ash—did you . . . Are you . . . What I mean is, I’ve learned a lot of things since I’ve been here, but how to buy condoms in France isn’t one of them.”
He started to laugh, softly, against her neck. “This is why I adore you.” He swept away the papers beneath them and lowered her back against the pillows, poised above her with his hands on either side of her face, his eyes filled with tenderness and mirth. “You have nothing to hide. You make me wish . . .” And slowly the mirth faded as he lowered her face to his, and kissed her lips gently, and all too briefly. “That I didn’t either.”
He looked at her again, brushing her bangs with his fingertips, and he smiled. “The answer to your question,” he said softly, “is yes. So now may I . . . ?”
Fingertips toyed again with the ribbon of her nightgown and she answered his question by slipping her hands between their bodies and deftly untying the sash of his robe. “Yes,” she whispered, when her fingers met his skin. “Oh, yes . . .”
They came together greedily at first, with heat that built too quickly between them, hungry for the sensation of him inside her, of her wrapped around him, mouths drinking, hands grasping, letting that final aching, cascading burst of pain and pleasure seize and transport them, separately and together and then, on a dizzying tide of gasping breaths and shattering heartbeats, release them again to touch, to warmth, to holding.
And then, inevitably, they flowed into each other once again, fingers tracing familiar contours, tongues gathering the perspiration from each other’s skin, tasting what was him and what was her, and what was theirs together. They discovered each other with movements that were long and slow and quick and hot, sometimes with wanton abandon and sometimes with breaths suspended, drawing each sensation to its most exquisite, most attenuated expression of pleasure. There was greedy impatience and then there were long sweet moments of slow and sensual delight. There should have been awkwardness, moments of uncertainty, even small disappointments. But it was as though they had been doing this together for all of their lives.
They slept, and they made love, and they awoke in each other’s arms and made love again. As a soft pink light began to creep across the sill of the casement, Ash kissed her hair and murmured, “Why do people always think sex will end an obsession? The more I have of you, the more I want.”
Sara, curled into the curve of his arm with her fingers spread flat across his abdomen, said sleepily, “I didn’t know people thought that.”
“Men do. All the time.” He bent now and kissed her lips. She could taste herself on him, a deeply erotic mixture of tangy perfume and salty sweat and sex, and she responded in kind.
“That explains it, then.” She let her fingers slide upward, exploring again the slick contours of his chest, the tendons of his throat. “I think we’re shameless.”
“You make me feel sixteen.”
“You make me feel like Superwoman.”
He laughed softly, kissing her neck.
“I should go.” And yet she turned her head, exposing more of her throat to his kisses, and she couldn’t stop her hands from caressing his shoulders, and his back, and that sensitive area she had discovered just beneath his arm, not far from his heart. “It’s almost morning.”
“Where will you go, love?” he murmured, hands gently cupping her breasts, kissing them each, tenderly, one by one. “You live here.”
“You know what I mean.” And she made no move to rise.
“Sara.” He lifted his face to hers, his hands cradling her head, his eyes suddenly and surprisingly intense. “Come with me to London.”
At first she thought he was joking. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”And that was when she began to suspect he might be serious.
“What about Alyssa?”
“You don’t trust my mother?”
“I can’t ask her to—”
“I can.” His fingers tightened in her hair. “Or we’ll send for her. Or we’ll take her with us. We’ll take her to the zoo and the museum and the park on Sunday. My place is huge, mammoth, really. There’s plenty of room. We’ll even bring my mother if you insist, but I’d rather not.”
She started to laugh, but he stopped her with a kiss, deep and long and hungry. That was when she knew he wasn’t kidding. “Come with me to London,” he said, lowly, a little breathlessly. “I want you to see my flat. It’s all black and white; you’ll hate it. I want to take you to dinner and dress up for the theater and hail a taxi for two. I want to take you to my office and show you how important I am. I’ll even introduce you to the ridiculously handsome Mr. Winkle.”
She started to giggle, her fingers playing over his collarbone. “Is he handsome?”
“Unfairly so.” His thumbs traced the shape of her eyebrows while his lips kissed her cheeks, and her nose, and the corner of her mouth. “I want to make love to you for twenty-four hours without stopping for breath,” he whispered. “I want the scent of you on my pillows. I want . . .” and he moved above her, his eyes deep and solemn and rich with need. “I want you out of Daniel’s house,” he said softly. “I want to know if you’re real.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself into him and she whispered her answer into his ear.
Because she wanted to know, too.
SEVENTEEN
In all of the best fairy tales, the downfall of the hero begins with greed. The beautiful princess is not enough; he must also have the bag of gold. Escaping the wrath of a giant means nothing; he has to go back for the golden goose. Ash should have been satisfied with simply loving Sara, even if it meant she was locked away in a castle. Even if he had to share her with Daniel. But he wanted her all to himself.
The first few days were glorious. She made fun of his stark, cold, hospital-clean flat, and then they made love in every room of it. He took her out to brunch at
the Dorchester, because there was never any food in his house, and later they went shopping and he pretended to hate the red cushions she bought for his white leather sofa. But on the way home, he scooped up two armfuls of red roses from a flower stall to complement the cushions and later, as they lay tangled in a cashmere throw on the floor with red cushions scattered all around, he knew he would always adore those cushions because they smelled of her.
“Do you think we’ll ever get tired of this?” she murmured, lying soft against his shoulder.
“God, I hope so.” He stroked her hair. “Because I really am exhausted.”
She laughed and he looked at her with the most amazing sense of wonder. “You belong here,” he said. And his brows drew together because even as he said it he could hardly believe it was true. “I didn’t think you would. I thought it would feel strange—exciting, of course, but strange—having you here. It simply feels natural.”
She wound her fingers between his. “Do you know how you meet someone on vacation or on a business trip and have a fling?”
“I’ve never done such a thing,” he assured her soberly, rubbing their entwined fingers against the faint stubble of his chin.
“And then you get home and you try to keep in touch, try to pick up where you left off . . . and it’s, like, who is this person?”
“I swear, I’ve never—”
She picked up one of the red cushions and bounced it off his shoulder, and he smothered his laughter in her hair.
She said, seriously now, “Do you think it will be like that with us when the passion fades?”
He took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes and said simply, “No. I’ve made those kinds of silly mistakes, Sara, and so have you. We can take a few days to act like teenagers but in the end I think we both know what we want. And whatever surprises are waiting for us along the way we’ll just learn to manage.”
She smiled. “Spoken like a man who always gets what he wants.”
