“If you insist.” Jason sighed with mock disappointment.
His arms fell away and Amanda took a step back. She extended her hand and Jason’s warm palm slid into hers. They walked together, slowly, in no hurry at all, the sand warm under their bare feet and infinitely soft. The breeze blew off the never ending water, cooling the sweat on her brow and the nape of her neck. The smell of salt water hung heavy in the breeze. She couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place on earth.
This was her version of heaven, the beauty of nature all around her, her mother and her son at the resort, the man she loved more than anything on earth by her side.
“If we remember the past, this becomes even prettier and more wonderful. For almost not having it.” She glanced askance at Jason, who slowed his pace further.
He cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re right.”
“I know you still dream about it.”
“I never can hide anything from you.”
“You don’t need to. You know that you can share anything with me. You can tell me anything. Bare your heart and soul and I’ll always be by your side, walking through it with you, holding your hand. We’ll always be together. We were made for each other.”
“Do you believe in that? Being made for someone?”
“Like fate or destiny?”
“I guess so.”
“Before all this, before I even met you, I would probably have said that I didn’t. But that’s because I wasn’t with you. I didn’t know how amazing being with the right person feels. I didn’t know what it was like for the sun to rise and set on that person. If you weren’t in my world, my entire life would be black and white. Not color. You’re the vibrancy of my soul. You’re everything to me.”
Jason’s voice was choked with emotion when he finally spoke. His fingers tightened around hers. “That was a very kind thing to say.”
“And completely true.”
“And completely true.” He stopped walking and used her hand to guide her in front of him, so she faced him again. “I love you, wife. You and you alone. My life wouldn’t be a life without you. You saved me time and again. You save me every single day. Without you, I would be nothing.”
Amanda’s smile was so wide it could have cracked her face. “Hopefully you’ll be happy with my news then. I know how hard it is for you to share me.”
Jason’s smile faded and his eyes grew round with surprise. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’m sure. One month along. Ross is going to have a baby brother or sister.”
She waited for her news to sink in, for the shock to wear off. She wasn’t disappointed when it did. Jason’s smile was so wide it lit up the entire beach. He was brighter than the sun itself. “You’ve truly made me the happiest man in the world. Every day you do something that surprises me. I don’t honestly mind sharing you that much, if it’s with our children.”
Jason’s eyes twinkled and she had the strangest feeling he was keeping something from her. “What is it?”
He shrugged. “Well, I was going to save this as a surprise for when we got back from our honeymoon, but in light of your news, I think I should tell you now.”
He knew full well that she couldn’t stand the suspense of a surprise. “What is it?” She gasped, clasping his hands tightly. “You have to tell me now.”
A throaty, rich chuckle rose up in the air as Jason’s grin grew wider yet. “My darling, I’ve found us the perfect house on the most beautiful property in the world. It reminds me a little of paradise. The house is amazing. Three bedrooms, one for each of our children now. There is a smaller guest house for your mom, a chicken coop, a huge garden, fruit trees… it’s away from the city in a quiet area but not so remote that we can’t still get groceries or medical care. It really is the most amazing opportunity.”
“And you went ahead and bought it? Without my even saying so or seeing it?” Amanda huffed.
“Of course.” Jason’s chuckle turned into an outright laugh. “Of course, my love, because I know what you desire most in the world.”
“What I desire most in the world, is you,” Amanda whispered, for his ears alone. “You’re right. I could never be mad. Not only do I trust you with my life, I trust you with my heart. I know that the place you would move us to would be the place where we can grow and love as a family. Everything else, all the details, are just secondary.”
“I seem to remember a few items on your checklist. Indoor plumbing. Running water.”
He ducked when she sent a mock slap his way. Her hand fell uselessly, landing on his upper arm.
“That’s hardly a list at all!”
The truth was, she couldn’t wait to see their new home and Jason knew it. She knew full well he’d been looking and she did trust him. “The only item on my list is that we are all together and healthy and that you love me.”
“This is the start of our forever, Amanda. From this day, truly, for the rest of our lives we will have peace and happiness and love. I promise.” Eyes liquid with simmering heat and passionate desire, Jason bent his head and claimed Amanda’s lips.
Her heart rate accelerated, blood sang through her veins and that heavy pooling of desire unfurled in her stomach. She tasted the promise in Jason’s kiss. The anticipation. It was beautiful. Every second of their life together was utter utopia.
“You know,” she panted when he pulled away. “I think I wouldn’t mind going back to our room after all.”
His grin was all the answer she needed. She threaded her hand through his once more and let him lead her towards the lifetime of love and happiness they would share.
The End
COMING UP NEXT
a sample of the series
FORBIDDEN PASSION
from the first book
Cuffed & Dominated
co-written by
Melissa Devenport and Camille Crosby
Chapter 1
The Funeral
Charlene Penticton raised her head and stared at the shiny, somber black box at the front of the church. Her father, Charles Albert Ray Penticton had been the last family member she had left. At twenty-six she was unprepared to face the world totally alone.
The huge church was packed. Charles had been a good, fair man and people loved him. Business associates, old and new friends and those he had mentored and befriended throughout his too short life packed the church almost full.
The rows of pews with the somber faced, tear filled eyes were so orderly that Charlene wanted to scream. She kept her back carefully turned to them, kept her eyes glued to the front. A strange numbness settled over her. She blinked, trying to dispel the wild, detached feeling. It was like she was standing somewhere else, on the roof perhaps, if such a feat were possible, staring down at the rest of the people gathered there.
“We commit this soul to god,” the pastor’s deep voice boomed out over the people assembled.
Charlene barely heard it. She imagined herself, long blonde hair curled and pinned up, not a tendril out of place. Her neck was bent, exposing the strand of pearls that had been her sweet sixteen birthday gift from her father. Her black dress was expensive silk, the best she owned. It fit her well but hid the lush, womanly curves that lay below. It was a chaste dress. She’d picked it in Paris when her father took her with him on a business trip just short of her twentieth birthday.
He had always urged her to choose her purchases with care. To create an image that reflected her personality. She’d picked the dress because she saw it as something that was classy and tasteful. Because it was black, with a tight fitting waist, flared skirt that fell to the knee and a sheer, lace pane in the back by her shoulders, it was feminine and dainty.
Her father had loved that dress. She remembered trying it on for him, spinning around, feeling like a dark fairy. The shine of love in his eyes had been unmistakable. He’d proudly escorted her to dinner, a small place with tables that spilled into the cobbled street.
Charlene felt
the sting of tears well at the corners of her eyes. Her throat closed painfully, the fire of grief burning its way up her throat and flooding her mouth. She blinked rapidly and forced herself to take deep, steadying breaths.
She raised her head again when she was able, slamming back down into her body. The sense of detachment was gone. She knew that in a few hours, her father would be laid to rest under layers of black soil. She would never see him again.
“Daddy,” she breathed out, the world inaudible to anyone around her. The cancer had come so quickly for him, reducing him to a shell of the man he once was. His suffering had thankfully been brief. In less than three months it was all over. A promising, beautiful flame snuffed out, plunging Charlene’s world into darkness.
The aged pastor droned on. This had been part of her father’s last wishes. To have a proper church burial though to the best of her knowledge, he hadn’t been religious.
Charlene had gone through the motions of death and grief woodenly. She chose a casket with care. Drained the last of her savings account so her father could have the best in death as he’d given her in life. Throughout the last months of her father’s illness she’d nursed him. She had that consolation at least. That ironically, her profession should have been so apt. She’d quit her job at the hospital, giving up her coveted nursing position so she could be at Charles’s side day and night.
She just hoped the will would be sorted out soon. She didn’t know how she was going to scrape together enough money to make her mortgage after all the expenses. She had enough left for one month. Enough to see her through.
Panic welled in up Charlene’s chest as she thought of returning to her house, the cold, empty rooms providing no solace for her pent up grief and wild rage.
The house wasn’t a mansion but it had been the one she’d been raised in since the time she was a small baby. Her mother had left them when Charlene was four years old. She hardly recalled what Clair Penticton even looked like. She didn’t even know fully why she’d left. All her father ever told Charlene over the years was that he never had any doubts her mother loved her. He shouldered the blame and never spoke ill of the woman he had loved and married, who had born his child and vanished.
Their home had always felt like a home. Would it now be little more than a cage of memories? Charles Penticton worked hard. He traveled for business and Charlene had seen much of the world on his trips. He’d moved heaven and earth to be both father and mother to her.
And now she had neither.
A sudden burst of piano music brought Charlene out of her dazed memories. She struggled to tear herself away from the pit of anxious worries, of cold, hard grief that threatened to consume her. There was an elderly woman at the piano. She had a kindly face. She closed her eyes when she played.
Charlene imagined the woman’s arms, soft and warm and grandmotherly. What would she give right now for a kind touch? For a few words of encouragement that would help her go on living.
Soon it was all over. The pallbearers lifted the coffin and filed slowly past Charlene’s front row pew. She felt as though if she wanted to cry it would be acceptable in that moment. Ironically enough, the tears refused to come.
She turned to watch the six men bear her father down the aisle to his final resting place, the tiny grave yard outside. It seemed perfectly suited to the man that he had been in his life, the man who valued love and family over anything else, that he should choose this quaint little Williamsburg church with the tiny plot of land beside it. In all of Virginia-no, in all of the world, nothing seemed more fitting.
Charlene’s gaze followed the stoic, broad backs of the last two men, friends of her father. They had discussed all this when he’d found out he was ill. It was like he knew it was his time. She’d been so shocked that he arranged everything so quickly in order to spare her. He had even contacted the men who were bearing him away now, personally, before his illness had him in the grips of pain so intense it was madness.
The church doors were opened and the bearers moved through the day lit portal. Sunbeams spilled onto the red carpet of the little church. Charlene wondered if they would ever feel warm on her skin again. Was grief always that way? Like a hard ball of ice freezing the insides so the outer layers felt no warmth?
She copied the rest of the people assembled and rose from the pew woodenly. Her actions were guided by the masses. Her eyes fell on the last pew, the one closest to the door as she began the long, torturous journey down that same aisle her father had been borne.
Charlene blinked when she saw him. Once. Twice. Her long, honeyed lashes framing shockingly emerald eyes. She stopped walking, shock gripping and squeezing her lungs so that they refused to take another breath. Chest on fire, she waited. He saw her and he stopped to. Their eyes met and the world closed in around them.
He looked exactly as she remembered him.
She was relieved when he turned his back and filed out ahead of her, into the open air. The rushing blackness rushing at the corners of her vision faded away. Her burning lungs inflated with life giving oxygen.
Ten years. It had been ten years since she’d last seen her father’s closest friend, Clayton Ellison. Now that her father was dead he could not have prevented the man’s coming. They had broken years ago, their friendship in ruins. Had he come to pay his last respects, wish the man who was once a brother to him, a final farewell or had he come for something more?
“Clayton,” Charlene whispered, her words evaporating in the church like the fog of breath on a cold winter morning.
Charlene squared her shoulders and forced her wooden legs to take the required amount of steps to propel her into the heat of the mid July day. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. A tiny spark of hope bloomed. Perhaps she wasn’t as alone as she had thought.
Chapter 2
Clayton
Clayton Ellison was aware of the people milling around the graveyard. Sober, black clad, their grief hanging in the air, suspended about them. His own chest felt curiously compressed. The hard bands of grief that clenched his heart told him that his college friend was dead yet he refused to believe it. Charles couldn’t be gone. Not yet. They had never officially made amends.
The coffin was in the ground, the fresh mound of earth still standing beside the open hole. He had watched from the sidelines, hidden from view by the towering trees surrounding the graveyard and church, as Charlene Penticton threw a handful of earth on the coffin. There had been crying and handshakes, hugs and well wishes from the mourners.
It went on for what seemed like hours until finally the last straggler paid their respects, got in their car and left.
Only Charlene remained. She knelt at the base of the headstone, staring down at the gaping hole in the earth. She held herself perfectly still, her back erect, her bearing regal. Her honeyed hair was done up in a tight bun above her head. Her body was that of a woman now, not the girl Clayton once knew. He’d only glimpsed her face in the church and then from a distance but he could tell that she’d become the great beauty she had always promised to be.
Stepping out from behind the towering tree that sheltered him, Clayton approached the grave and the still woman beside it. She didn’t glance up, lost in her own private world of grief and memory.
“Charlene.” Clayton whispered her name and her face turned, her green eyes widening in surprise. Her full, lush lips parted in shock.
“Clayton.” His name held so much, the weight of it settling between them. He stood rigidly, unsure of how to proceed. It was Charlene who broke the tense silence. “It’s been a long time.”
He nodded, his hands at his sides. “Ten years I believe.”
“Yes. Ten years.”
Charlene rose from her place in the grass. The crumpled blades, flattened to the earth, began to spring back. She was a picture of grace and beauty. Tall and shapely, the lush curves of a woman so different from the girl he had once known.
Clayton’s mouth went uncharacteristically dry. His wor
ds lodged in his throat and Charlene stared at him expectantly. “I suppose you are going to ask why I’m here,” Clayton finally choked out. His palms, flattened against his black pants, grew moist.
Eyes flashing with undefined emotion, Charlene shook her head slowly. “Not at all. You were once my father’s closest friend. It’s only right that you’re here now.”
Clayton stared into Charlene’s eyes and she held his gaze. She took another step forward, until little more than a few feet remained between them.
“We could go somewhere. To talk if you want.” He extended the invitation, sure she would refuse. He was shocked when she nodded.
“I guess this isn’t the best place to discuss things.” Her eyes roved furtively over the headstone, glancing down once more to the open pit in the earth. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.” A single tear dripped from her blonde lashes and made its way down high cheek bones and splashed from the edge of her jaw. The silvery streak on her alabaster skin remained even after the tear was gone.
“I have a hotel.” Clayton cursed himself when he saw the shock on her face. “I mean I have a room here for a couple days. I don’t have to rush off anywhere. Choose the place and I’ll meet you there.”
Charlene’s perfect brow furrowed in thought. It wasn’t a stretch for Clayton to imagine that same expression brought on by the throes of pleasure. He blinked and quickly looked away. What was it about Charlene that could snap his careful control so easily?
“There’s this man-made lake? Easton Park. It has walking paths and a fountain in the middle. We could take a walk there. I want to talk where no one is going to listen in. I can’t imagine forcing myself to go to a restaurant or something like that right now.”
“I could wait. Like I said, I’m in town for a couple days.”
“No. We could go now. If you’ll give me a ride? I just… I don’t want to go back to the house yet, even to change. I’m afraid I’ll see him everywhere.”
Clayton softened. Charlene had been a sweet, sensitive girl. She was always so caring, even as a child. When he’d heard she became a nurse he figured that it was the perfect profession for her. Even as a woman she had the same tender heart that she’d always possessed.
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