Love Everlasting

by Tracey Alvarez

  “God.” MacKenna winced, leaning her head on Joe’s shoulder. “Remind me never to complain when you get handsy at night while we’re spooning.”

  “Good thing you’re married to a doctor.” Joe turned his face to kiss MacKenna’s head then looked back at Darby. “Good thing you had a caring boyfriend to support you during your treatments.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She gulped her wine as if it were water.

  “He did support you through your treatments, didn’t he?” There was an edge in Reid’s voice that could’ve sliced through the T-bone steak she spotted their server carrying to their table.

  Three sets of eyes suddenly swiveled toward her, and the clink her wineglass made as she set it down on the table sounded like a gunshot.

  “Yum—here’s lunch and it looks amazing.” Her mouth nearly split at the corners with the width of her smile as the steak was set in front of her. “I have food envy from everyone else’s choices. Wish I’d ordered one of each.”

  Distracted by lunch arriving, MacKenna offered to swap some of her fish of the day with Darby’s steak, and conversation took a satisfactory swerve into a discussion of who’d been eliminated in that week’s MasterChef. Reid joined the debate, but Darby didn’t believe for a minute that he wouldn’t want an answer to his question before this sunny Saturday afternoon was over.

  “You knew she had cancer?” Mac accused two hours later when she accosted Reid with an expression on her face that threatened disembowelment.

  After lunch the four of them had walked back to Mac and Joe’s little cottage behind the medical center. Leaving Joe and Darby in the living room discussing the possibility of a mobile vet clinic visiting Oban, Reid and Mac shut themselves in the cottage’s spare room turned workroom, ostensibly to look at the leftover fabric she was donating.

  Mac leaned against the door, arms folded like a bouncer as if to body block him.

  Her bedroom-sized workspace was crammed with bolts of fabric, Mac’s sewing machine, and floor-to-ceiling shelves containing every description of trims, buttons, zips, and sewing paraphernalia. It was easier to mentally take inventory of her supplies than think about what Darby had told them at lunch.

  “Yeah, but I only just found out. Saw her port scar, which she usually keeps covered up.” He spotted the leftover roll of midnight-blue chiffon and crossed over to rub the smooth fabric between his fingers. His fingers stilled at the little throaty hum from Mac. Damn—

  “And tell me, how is it you managed to see something she usually covers up?” Her voice was syrupy sweet, but the curious dig in it was unmistakable.

  Reid shot her a quelling glance. “She wasn’t flashing her boobs at me, if that’s what you’re asking. It was the top she was wearing that day.”

  Her eyes slitted, mouth thinning to a tense pucker. “There’s sooo much more here you’re not telling me. I saw the way you looked at her over lunch, or should I say the way you were deliberately not looking at her when she was talking about cancer.”

  “I’d heard it before. And I was hungry.” He aimed for casual but suspected he’d totally missed the mark.

  “Oh dear God, you’re really into her, aren’t you?” she demanded. “Like not just superficially wanting to screw her socks off and walk away, but you already care about her.”

  Ice punched into his diaphragm, flash-freezing the breath in his lungs. He stood mute while Mac stared at him with huge eyes. If it’d been anyone else—one of the group of guys with whom he played squash or met for a beer, or even Laura and Kaitlyn—he’d have found his voice and vehemently denied it. But Mac had sat with him hour after hour at the hospice while his mother lay dying in increments. Mac had held him while he cried after she slipped away, made the phone calls he couldn’t bear to, and kept on his case for months afterward to make sure he was doing okay. In the words of that dreadful medical soap drama that Laura weepily watched endless reruns of, Mac was his person. And lying to her would’ve been like lying to himself.

  So instead of denying it, Reid huffed out a sigh and swore under his breath.

  Mac’s gaze softened and she slid down the door to sit on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees. “’Fraid so. Could you have picked a worse woman to get the hots for?”

  “Yep.” He tried to lighten the mood by dropping into the swivel chair by the sewing machine and taking it for a 360-degree spin. “I could develop a late-blooming crush on you and risk Dr. Joe out there turning into Dr. Death.”

  She snorted, then the calculating expression returned to her face. “In all seriousness, you need to pull the plug on this now.”

  “There isn’t anything to pull the plug on.”

  “Have you gotten physical?”

  “Yes. I kissed her. And yes, she kissed me back. But that’s it.”

  So far.

  Until he couldn’t keep his hands and mouth off her again, and God help him, he suspected his willpower wasn’t up to the task for much longer.

  “And this kissing, did it occur before or after she told you about her breast cancer?” Mac was as relentless as a dog playing tug-of-war once she set her sights on uncovering the truth.

  He opened his mouth then realized he’d inadvertently walked into the female version of a bear trap. Its metaphorical teeth snapped onto his ankle as Mac’s mouth pinched and she gave a slow nod.

  “After, huh?” she said. “You started something with Darby even after you knew how much getting involved with her could cost you.”

  His heart beat relentlessly against his throat and he dropped his head back to glare at the ceiling. “I’m an idiot.”

  “You are.” Mac scrambled to her feet and walked over to hoist the roll of chiffon out of the bin it stood in. “And we both know you’re in some serious trouble if you don’t back the hell off. But, for the record”—she leaned toward him with a sad fellow-conspirator smile—“I really like her.”

  Not that attraction could be deferred with someone’s disapproval, but Mac liking Darby just made things a hundred times more difficult.

  “That doesn’t help.” He stood up and took the roll out of her hands.

  “I know, mate. Sucks to be you.”

  On the trip back to the mainland, Reid took the whole strong-and-silent type to a new level. As pensive as freaking Heathcliff, he stood beside Darby at the ferry’s stern and stared out at the wake parting the choppy waves.

  Her stomach gave a sickening sideways lurch, and she gripped the handrail so tightly her knuckles went white. She wasn’t sure if it was the rocking motion or the distance she sensed widening the invisible gap between her and Reid. Something had gone on between him and Mac while they’d been away sorting through fabrics. That much she was sure of.

  Something that caused Mac and Reid’s gaze to continually skip away from hers. Something that made Reid’s chuckle sound brittle at her initial attempts to keep the conversation light with Mac and Joe. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess Mac was onto their not just friends vibe and had expressed her dislike of Darby. Which, ouch, kinda stung. Under different circumstances she thought they could’ve been friends.

  But the circumstances weren’t different, and as much as it needled, she understood that Mac was just looking out for Reid. You’re not alone in wanting to protect him, Mac. She watched Stewart Island grow smaller and smaller. But neither of us is stupid enough to risk falling in love.

  The boat dipped to one side, taking her fragile stomach with it. Willpower alone kept her from losing her lunch over the side. The whimpering sound she made must’ve been louder than she thought, as Reid was suddenly right beside her, his elbow accidentally bumping her arm.

  “Fixing your gaze on the horizon sometimes works,” he said.

  “Not this time.” She sealed her lips together. “I’ve been staring at the horizon since we left Oban.”

  “Did you take the motion-sickness pills Joe gave you?”

  “Yep. Two. Not helping.”

  “You’ve gone all pale and sweaty
.”

  “Also not helping.” Her eyelids slipped shut, then popped open again when her stomach gave another protesting wobble.

  “How about distraction?” Reid gripped the handrail, his fists only an inch or two from hers.

  Yeah, she had to admit his deep voice was pretty distracting—as was his bulk shielding her from the worst of the wind and the occasional whiff of sun-warmed male skin that took turns with the salt spray assaulting her nose.

  “Tell me a story,” he said. “Like the one about this ex-boyfriend of yours.”

  “That story doesn’t have a happy ending.” Then again, she’d come out of the forest without being eaten alive by the big bad wolf. So maybe it did.

  “Not every story does. Works for Nicholas Sparks, though.”

  The ferry dipped again, and she swayed into his side. For a moment she thought he was going to wrap an arm around her. But no—he steadied her with a palm to the small of her back, then let go. Breathing in, breathing out, definitely not reading too much into his apparent concern, she continued to stare at the horizon.

  “I won’t even ask how you know about Nicholas Sparks,” she muttered.

  “Wise. Now quit stalling and circle back to the ex.”

  She flicked her chin sideways and caught the flash of his smile. “It’s cute how you think telling that story’ll stop me puking my guts out.”

  His smile grew wider.

  “Shut up,” she ordered, averting her gaze. “Fine. Once upon a time there was a woman who lived a good life. A happy, carefree life, near her parents and two older siblings. She studied hard to follow her dreams of working with animals, and one day a handsome man walked into the clinic with a Newfoundland with a seed stuck up his nose. The woman fell instantly in love with the dog, then after three months of dating the dog’s owner, she realized she’d fallen in love with him, too.”

  “You fell for the dog first?” Reid asked.

  Darby sniffed. “You’ve obviously never cuddled a hundred and thirty pound dog on your lap because he was terrified of his own farts. Wookie was adorable. I didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Well, that’s got to hurt a guy’s ego. Carry on.”

  It hadn’t hurt Richard’s ego since he was the new vet starting at the clinic and loved animals as much as she did. She’d thought they were a match made in heaven—became convinced of it when even her sometimes snooty Siamese claimed Richard’s lap as her own the first time he’d come over.

  “The woman shifted into his castle.” She paused while doing an internal stomach check. A little better. Her fingers loosened on the rail. “Scratch the third person storytelling,” she added flatly. This story really wasn’t any kind of fairy tale. “I gave up my apartment and moved into Richard’s. We were happy, Wookie and Maddie were happy, our friends and family were happy for us…until Richard found the lump in my breast.” She sucked in a breath of air so crisp, so heavy with salt that she felt the weight of it settle like lead into her lungs.

  “He was brilliant at first, holding my hand through all the tests and specialist appointments, researching treatment options online into the wee hours of the morning like a man possessed. ‘We’ll beat this bloody thing together,’ he used to tell me. But in the early days it was all hypothetical—the image he created of bravely supporting his girlfriend through cancer. But being the hero of his own story was just fiction. Maybe the energy he channeled into saving me burned him out too quickly, or maybe the reality of never-ending appointment after appointment became far too real. Giving up my job at the clinic where we both worked was the straw that broke us, so I moved back in with my parents halfway through my first course of chemo.”

  “When the going gets tough, the weak get gone.” He half turned toward her at the rail, leaning a hip against it.

  “You stayed. Even when it got really bad.”

  “I loved her.”

  His declaration made her chest suddenly squeeze tight. Richard’s outrageous assurances that he’d never leave her, that he had this, that she wouldn’t go through this fight alone, meant nothing in the face of Reid’s simple words. He’d loved his mother, so he’d stayed. Who he was at the core of him made selfishness impossible.

  And that was scary as hell.

  “I don’t think Richard loved me enough.” She couldn’t quite meet Reid’s eyes as she admitted it.

  She focused instead on the corded muscles of his throat flexing as his Adam’s apple bobbed. Her eyes widened as his throat suddenly got a whole lot closer. Strong arms slipped around her, pulling her off balance with the rocking of the ferry, so she kind of collapsed into him. She may’ve made a little groan as her nose and cheek pressed against the shoulder of Reid’s crisp cotton shirt and the warm pheromone-infused scent of his skin that permeated it. He held her tight, and her body developed nerve endings in places it never had before, all of them super-attuned to every inch of his hard frame cradling her so gently. Her eyelids fluttered shut. Boats and seasickness and boyfriends who didn’t last the distance disappeared like lifting fog.

  Reid ran a palm over her hair, his stroking fingertips sending all sorts of delicious tingles running through those new nerve endings.

  “Honey.” His voice was just audible above the engine’s grumble and the hiss and splash of waves. “He can’t have loved you at all.”

  She stiffened—not that Reid had told her anything she didn’t know deep down—then melted back into him as his fingers continued to trace soothing circles on her skin.

  “Not in the biblical sense,” he added.

  That surprised a laugh from her and she pulled back to see if he was teasing. He wasn’t.

  His gray-blue eyes were serious, though a small smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “The verse they read at weddings.”

  “Love is patient, love is kind?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She couldn’t look away, her whole focus him, and okay, his truly kissable mouth.

  “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,” he said.

  Darby’s hands, which had somehow made their way to the broad expanse of his chest, felt the steady, reassuring thud of his heartbeat.

  “And always perseveres.”

  That kind of love sounded like a unicorn in a fairy tale. She couldn’t allow herself to want it. Not from Reid, anyway. She couldn’t allow herself to want his love, but she also couldn’t prevent herself from giving in to temptation. She wasn’t one of those women who could pass up a slice of rich chocolate gateau for a celery stick, just because the celery stick was better for her.

  She looped her hands around his neck, rising on her toes so their mouths were almost level. She was tall, he was taller, and by God, they fit together like one of Reid’s dress zippers. That thought made her smile as she pressed her lips to his jaw. He hadn’t shaved that morning and the soft prickle of his whiskers drove any resistance right out of her mind.

  She fitted her lips to his with a sigh that turned to a hum of approval at the jolt, like static electricity only pleasurable, sizzling directly to a spot deep in her belly. His mouth moved against hers in tentative exploration, as if he were about to pull away at any moment. She couldn’t let that happen. She needed the heat of this one last kiss to burn out the unquenchable need for him. Flicking the tip of her tongue along the seam of his mouth, she tested the walls of his restraint, searching for weakness, eroding his resistance until he gripped her hips and pulled her even tighter against him.

  He murmured her name and she heard both longing and resistance in the raggedness of his tone. Resistance must have been winning the battle inside him, because he gently peeled his mouth from hers. The tiny rejection stung and she dealt with it the only way she knew how. Humor made a kick-ass bulletproof shield around one’s heart.

  She forced a flirtatious smile on her face. “Either keep my mouth entertained until we reach the mainland or feel the wrath of my seasickness.”

  “Continuing to kiss you is a dangerous idea.” />
  The part of his anatomy pressing against her stomach didn’t seem to think so, but, hey, a girl had to have some pride if the man she wanted to kiss her until she couldn’t remember her own name didn’t want to cooperate. Her fingers unclenched from around his neck.

  “Then I’ve gotta make a run to the head.”

  When he continued to devour her with the restrained hunger in his gaze, she squirmed, trying to wriggle out of his arms. He wouldn’t let her go, keeping her trapped within the confines of his hard, very aroused body.

  “Dammit, Reid. I’m going to puke.”

  “No, you’re not.” He dipped his head, brushing his lips over the curve of her ear.

  She shivered, her womb giving a low, forceful squeeze as he bumped his erection into the cradle of her stomach again.

  “I said kissing you was a dangerous idea, not a bad one.”

  Her eyelids slid shut as his lips closed gently over the fleshy part of her lobe and tugged. While she was melting into a puddle of bliss, he swept her around until her back was pressed into the handrail. His height and the width of his broad shoulders blocked her view of the ferry’s inside passengers, affording them a tiny bubble of privacy. His fists, braced either side on the handrail, bumped against her ribs as the ferry continued to roll toward the mainland. Above Reid’s hands, her nipples budded and rubbed against her bra, aching for his touch.

  “How dangerous can it be when we’re on a boat in the middle of the Foveaux Strait?” she asked, more breathlessly than she’d have liked. “Unless we fall overboard.” She laughed nervously because, the way Reid looked at her, dangerous was the very adjective that came to mind. The feelings he stirred inside her were way more dangerous than the icy temperature, the strong currents, and the population of great white sharks that were reputed to patrol these waters.

  “I won’t let you fall.” He dipped his head until their mouths were once more aligned.

  He kissed her then, a kiss that curled her toes and did indeed make her forget her own name. But before his mouth claimed hers, she could’ve sworn he whispered something else.