He had stripped her soul bare last night. Now, tonight, she stood before him, her soul still exposed, wanting him. Loving him.
The fabric of his shirt shifted as he breathed; his fingers clutched his pajamas. As a minute ticked by in silence, it dawned on Shelley that perhaps Kip didn’t want her, that spending last night in her bed had meant nothing to him, that he could desire her only when he was in mourning for another woman.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She lowered her eyes. “Not really.”
He tossed his pajamas onto a chair and reached for her. “I’m sure enough for both of us,” he whispered before pulling her into his arms and covering her mouth with his.
The hunger of his kiss told her he did want her, as much as she wanted him. The force of his tongue filling her mouth, stroking and teasing and bathing her with the heat of his need told her that last night had been as difficult for him as it had been for her. The nearly desperate strength of his arms binding her to him, his hands flat against her hips as his hardness found the crevice between her thighs, told her that no conversation, no confession or explanation or expression of gratitude was as important as this.
With a hushed groan, he ended the kiss and moved to the door to close it. “If Jamie needs us he’ll shout,” he said before Shelley could protest, and she knew he was right. As he returned to her, she lifted her hands to the buttons of his shirt.
They undressed each other hastily, carelessly. The bedside lamp spread an amber glow through the room, giving Shelley a view of Kip’s body she hadn’t had the last time, when they’d made love in the dark. It gave Kip a better view of her body, too—and pregnancy had left her body less young and firm than it used to be. She modestly crossed her arms over her breasts.
Kip took her hands in his and eased them away. “You’re beautiful,” he said, easily comprehending her bashfulness. “Don’t hide.”
“Maybe I’ll look better without these,” she remarked, pulling off his eyeglasses and turning to place them on the night table. He glided behind her, slipping his arms around her and filling his hands with her breasts. He cupped his palms beneath their womanly weight, then arched his fingers upward to touch her nipples, fondling them until they were taut and burning.
His caress sent waves of heat down into her hips, causing her legs to weaken. His lips found the sensitive skin below her ear and she moaned. “Kip...”
He spun her around and pressed her down onto the bed, then dove down beside her. He kissed her throat once more, exploring the smooth underside of her jaw with his lips and tongue, nibbling to her collarbone and then downward. “Oh, Shelley—I’ve been waiting so long...” He captured one swollen nipple with his mouth and sucked. “I’ve wanted this for so long...”
“One night?” she asked, bewildered. Before last night, neither of them had dared to breach the hallway that separated their rooms, their beds.
“Weeks,” he whispered. “Years.”
Before she could question him further he closed his mouth over her other breast, drawing the swollen nipple deep into his mouth. She clung to him, overwhelmed by the continuing surges of heat within her, the seething, building tension rippling down from her breasts to her belly, to her hips and thighs, making some parts of her tighten and other parts melt into liquid softness. She loved him, not because he’d forced her to deal with her father, not because he’d fathered her child, not even because he was kissing her so sublimely. She loved him because he was Kip—because she’d always loved him, because, as frightening as it was to admit, she needed him.
At that moment, he needed her just as much. She hugged him, caressed him, raked her fingers through the hair of his chest and down, brushing lightly over his aroused flesh. She reveled in the clenching of his abdomen, in his breathless groan of encouragement as she wrapped her fingers around him. He lifted his mouth from her breast and closed his eyes for an instant, flexing his hips in response to her touch. Then he reciprocated, sliding his hand down her body to find her, to arouse her fully, to stroke and tantalize and feed her yearning for him until her body ached for more.
“I have—” She gasped, her hips writhing from the erotic cadence of his fingers on her. “Kip...” She struggled to clear her mind. “In the drawer. I have something, I thought...” Her voice dissolved into another broken moan as his thumb traced a thrilling circle over her tender flesh, sending a spasm of sensation deep into her.
He bowed to kiss her lips, an unbearably sweet, gentle kiss. “What?”
“Protection. There’s a box in the drawer—”
He kissed her again, his tongue silencing her with a swift, demoralizing lunge. “No.” His lips moved against hers as he shaped the words. “Let’s make another baby.”
She should have been shocked. She should have brought things to a halt, sat up and demanded a serious discussion of the subject. This wasn’t the sort of decision to be made when her mind could accommodate nothing but love and longing. She should have stopped Kip, pulled herself together, made room in her heart for reality.
But she didn’t. Perhaps she was too aroused to act sensibly, too eager to pull back and analyze the pros and cons of having another child. Or perhaps she was unable to object because there was something irrefutably right in Kip’s suggestion, something crazy and impetuous but overwhelmingly optimistic about it, something as glorious as the act of making love itself.
Without a word, she drew him back to her, urging him onto her, welcoming his weight, his hard male strength. He locked himself to her in a deep, conquering thrust that brought a moan to her lips, a prayer, a sigh of blissful surrender.
She had experienced something this profound only twice before: the night Jamie was conceived, and the night she and Kip had first kissed. He was skillful and sensitive, an astonishing combination of patience and impatience, ardor and control, savage power and exquisite tenderness. But Shelley responded to him not only because of his talent as a lover.
She responded to him because she trusted him.
She trusted him to feel the changes in her body, to adopt her rhythm, to move at the right angle, with the right pressure. She trusted him to watch and listen, to wait when he had to and surge faster, harder when her body arched in frantic need. She trusted him to deliver her to ecstasy, to follow close behind her, to be there to protect her when the thundering beauty of it stormed through her.
She felt him go rigid as she peaked, her flesh pulsing in stunning undulations of pleasure and her breath escaping her in a faint, ragged cry. Only then did he give in to his own release, his body wrenching in a final burst of energy, spilling his essence into her.
He sank down beside her, his skin damp, his respiration shallow. When she started to shift away he reached out and gathered her to himself, holding her in an unbreakable embrace. “Don’t move,” he whispered, his voice muffled by her hair as he brushed his lips over her temple. “Just stay here. I need you. Just stay.”
She did. Long after his breathing grew deep and regular, long after his body became motionless and his arm felt like a dead weight across her ribs, long after she’d turned off the light and settled back into the pillow and drew the blanket up over them, she stayed.
Kip slept, and she thought. About her father, about her son, about bearing another child. About keeping her history in the past, and facing the future.
About why Block Island and Jamie, security and tranquility and the first glimmerings of a rapprochement with her father weren’t enough to satisfy her. About why Kip’s friendship wasn’t enough.
Even the intimacy they’d just shared wasn’t enough. Kip had wanted their lovemaking; Shelley wanted his love. She wanted him to love her as much as he’d loved Amanda, so much that Shelley would always be with him, permanently lodged in his soul, an eternal, indelible part of him, something he could never escape—and would never wish to escape.
She used to believe that even though he would never love her that way, she could be content. She still believed he wou
ld never love her that way.
But she could no longer convince herself that what she had was enough.
***
He dreamed she was slipping away from him, obscured by the mist. He struggled to see her, searching through the swirling haze for her black curls, her pale heart-shaped face, her Cupid’s-bow mouth. But there had been no haze on Geary Street that evening, and just before the fog swallowed the woman forever he glimpsed dark blond hair and dazzling gray eyes.
A voice filled his head, a hoarse rasp of sound: Let her know before it’s too late.
He bolted upright in the bed, gasping for breath, his skin covered by a film of perspiration and his pulse pounding in his temples. He was alone.
Throwing off the cover, he reached for his jeans and tugged them on. Then he hurried down the hall, moving instinctively to the small bedroom, to the attic stairs, through the attic to the ladder.
The trap door was open. Maybe she’d left it that way in order to hear if Jamie awakened, but Kip wanted to believe she’d left it open for him.
He found her kneeling on the floor of the cupola, clad in her bathrobe, her elbows resting on the window sill and her chin balanced on her arms. Wisps of fog blurred the stark brilliance of the moonlight, giving it an ethereal glow.
At the sound of his footsteps she turned her head. An enigmatic smile crossed her lips.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose. “About what?”
He approached her, kneeled beside her, tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Her cheek was soft and warm. He wanted to keep touching her, caressing the lobe of her ear. He wanted to kiss her. To know she was still with him, where he needed her to be.
“What I did to you.” He grappled with his vague, enveloping fear. “Downstairs. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Make love with me, you mean?”
“Without protection.” His voice was low, halting. “I shouldn’t have just tossed the idea at you the way I did. It’s such a serious decision, having another child. I should have given you some time—”
“I didn’t need time,” she said, her smile widening slightly. “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“Even so, I shouldn’t have railroaded you like that, when we were both—”
She brushed her index finger over his mouth to silence him. “At least we talked about it first. With Jamie we didn’t even do that much. And look what happened.”
What happened was a miracle. What happened was that Kip and Shelley both learned how much love they had to give.
“I want another child,” she assured him, her eyes luminous and her voice calm.
“This time it will be easier,” he promised. “I’ll be with you the whole time, and—”
“You don’t have to talk me into it.” Her gaze was constant and certain. “I’ve cleared a lot of stuff out of my heart, Kip. A lot of anger and resentment. I’ve cleared it out, and now there’s this space just waiting to be filled.”
He knew what “stuff” she was referring to. There would be time later to ask her how she’d rid herself of it, why she had finally decided to make peace with her father. If Kip had helped in any way, he was glad. But what mattered was that she’d done it.
What mattered even more was that she cared enough about Kip to be willing to have another child with him.
It took all his willpower not to take her in his arms and crush her to himself. He hadn’t completely recovered from his nightmare; he hadn’t yet convinced himself that she would never vanish in the fog. “It might take more than one try,” he pointed out.
She erupted in a hushed, throaty laugh. “Meaning, you want to spend more time in my bed?”
“Meaning, I want to think of it as our bed. I want to marry you, Shelley.”
Her smile ebbed and she turned away, gazing through the window at the hazy moon. For a long moment Kip heard nothing but the distant chorus of crickets, the faint rustle of leaves, the constant rhythm of his breath and hers. She smelled of baby shampoo and talcum powder, of heat and sex. He longed to run his hand through her hair, to pull back the lapel of her robe, to bare her throat and breasts, to touch her, to love her.
Her silence closed around his heart, cold as stone.
“I love you,” he said.
“Not the way you loved Amanda,” she whispered. There was no jealousy in her voice, no reproach. She stated the words as if they were a simple, irrefutable truth.
He shut his eyes and waited. Amanda appeared in his mind, young, full of hope and promise, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks stretched by her smile as she stood at the corner and waved at Kip. But instead of stepping into the street, she kept smiling, kept waving, her outlines receding as fog rolled in.
Block Island fog.
And suddenly he realized she was waving good-bye.
“You’re right,” he said, opening his eyes and taking in the magnificent vastness of the night sky, the symphony of island sounds, the delicate caress of the wind. “I don’t love you the way I loved her. The way I loved her was like a sunset, one of those gorgeous sunsets at the cove, when the sun sinks below the water and drags the daylight down behind it. It ended in darkness, Shelley. It was beautiful, but it ended in darkness.”
He curved his arm around her shoulders, needing to feel her against him, to hold onto her so she wouldn’t flee. “The way I love you is different. It’s more...like a sunrise. It’s warm and clear, and it fills the world with light. It makes me want to wake up and live. That’s how I love you.”
She rotated in his arm and gazed at him. Her eyes shimmered with tears. “I don’t know, Kip...”
“Is it that you don’t love me?” he asked apprehensively.
She laughed. “Oh, Kip—I’ve loved you since...probably since the day you showed me that dead snake at Scotch Beach.”
“Really?”
“In different ways at different times, but yes. I love you.” Her smile waned. “I promised myself I’d never get married.”
“Some promises are meant to be broken.”
“I promised myself I would never become dependent on a man—”
“And some promises can’t be kept, no matter how hard you try. It works both ways, Shelley. I’m dependent on you, too.”
“Because I helped you get over Amanda.”
“Because I love you,” he corrected her. She had helped him recover from his grief, she had helped him to pull himself out of his depression. But that was behind him now, and he still needed Shelley, still depended on her. They anchored each other, relied on each other, understood each other. Trusted each other—he hoped.
“You do trust me, don’t you?”
A tear skittered down her cheek, but she didn’t avert her face. “Once, when we were up here,” she reminisced, “when we were fifteen years old, you kissed me.”
He smiled. “I remember.”
“Afterwards, you said you would never do anything bad to me.” She swallowed, then took his hand in hers, holding tight. “You never have. I’ve always trusted you. Even when I was angry or scared, I’ve always trusted you.”
“Then marry me.”
She leaned toward him and touched her lips to his. “I’ll marry you.”
He closed his arms around her, drew her back to him and kissed her deeply. He remembered that first wonderful kiss, so many, many years ago. He remembered how excited they’d both been, and how frightened. He remembered how Shelley had broken from him in panic, how she’d trembled in his arms, terrified by how close she had come to being swept away.
She was no longer trembling, no longer afraid. Her hands cupped his cheeks and she held him to her, matching his passion, his confidence, his love.
An eternity seemed to pass before they drew back, breathless. He searched her face and saw joy there, and serenity. He didn’t know whether they had conceived another child that night, but he knew that something had come to life inside them both. It was flourishing, blossoming, spreading its leaves and
sheltering them. It was part friendship, part trust, part understanding. Part need and part choice, and it was love.
In the moonlit cupola, high above the island, above Old Harbor and New Harbor and the ocean beyond, Kip held Shelley and felt the seeds of his new life take root and grow.
###
About the Author
Judith Arnold is the award-winning, bestselling author of more than eighty-five published novels. An New York native, she currently lives in New England, where she indulges in her passions for jogging, dark chocolate, good music and good books. She is married and the mother of two sons.
Judith is thrilled that her out-of-print books are now available to new generations of readers.
For more information about Judith, or to contact her, please visit her website: www.juditharnold.com.
Here’s a list Judith’s e-book reissues, all available for sale:
Cry Uncle
Barefoot in the Grass
Safe Harbor
Found: One Wife
Change of Life
One Whiff of Scandal
A> Loverboy
Father Christmas
Father of Two
Safe Harbor Page 23
