Redemption's Touch (Kimani Romance)

by Ann Christopher

  Joshua stepped back, and then he wheeled around and retraced Carter’s steps, out of the room and away from her.

  “You’ve been drinking,” Arianna said.

  After giving Joshua a wide berth for several hours, avoiding him during dinner and waiting until the rest of the household went to bed, she’d tracked him here to the study, a room she usually avoided. Like the library, it was full of books. Unlike the library, it was heavy with oppressive wood molding and furniture, leather chairs and sofas and, yes, the obligatory stuffed animal heads—water buffalo, zebra and lioness—on the walls. Old Reynolds Warner had probably meant this room to be a bastion of masculinity back in the day, but the ambience was of unrelenting gloom, especially now.

  Although it was dark outside, it seemed darker in here somehow, and the dim light of a single lamp in the corner intensified the effect. It threw harsh shadows onto Joshua’s face as he sat in a wingback chair, making him appear more dangerous, which was saying a lot. His eyes were moody, his face grim. A snifter of brandy was gripped loosely in his hand, and he had his arm draped over the arm of the chair.

  Staring at her where she hovered in the doorway, he raised his glass and drank. Deeply. She could almost feel the burn in her own throat and the rush to her head. Virtual brandy wouldn’t be enough to get her through this conversation, though, and she wished she had a real one. About ten ounces should do it.

  The drink cart sat right next to Joshua, heavy with a glittering array of crystal decanters and bottles. If she had a little more courage, she’d march over there and pour herself a stiff one, but doing that would put her too close to him, and the look in his eyes was lethal enough from here, thanks.

  The wounded bear was in full effect tonight, and she’d waltzed right into his cave with a steak strapped to her chest. Maybe a smarter woman would’ve left him alone to lick his injuries for a little while longer, but of course if she’d been smart she’d’ve told him about Carter the night they met instead of letting the information swell to Titanic-sized proportions.

  His glass drained, Joshua leaned over to the cart for a refill, his lips stretching in a crooked smile devoid of humor. “Well, you see, Mrs. Smith—”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “—I needed a drink tonight. Know why?”

  “Joshua—”

  “It’s because the one person in the world I thought would never betray me, the woman I—”

  He caught himself, his words screeching to a halt.

  Oh, God. The need to hear that sentence from his lips ate her up inside, as though she’d swallowed a school of piranha and their cruel little teeth were slicing away at her guts. “Say it, Joshua. The woman you what? Love?”

  That terrible smile widened until the ugliness of it threatened to consume his face. “First of all, I don’t believe in love, Mrs. Smith—”

  “Bull.”

  “—and second, falling in love with a woman who just got divorced ten minutes ago is pretty stupid, don’t you think?”

  This was all bravado. She knew it, but that didn’t help any more than an aspirin would help with a broken femur. “You’re mad.” She paused but, hell, she’d come this far—why punk out now? “And hurt. I’m sorry.”

  He raised his glass in an ironic and insulting toast. “You don’t have the power to hurt me, beautiful little lying Arianna. No one does.”

  Okay. That did it.

  Stalking into the room at last, she slammed the door behind her—no need for the whole household to hear this—and crossed over to him in three long strides. That glass was one inch from his lips when she snatched it away and, without pausing to think, hurled it at that freaking ugly lion’s head on the wall, which she hated as much as she currently hated Joshua. Bingo. It shattered in a spectacular shower of flying glass and brandy that made her feel much better.

  “Bullshit,” she told him calmly. “Everything you just said is bullshit.”

  He went utterly still, explosively quiet. For two or three long seconds, that hostile gaze pounded her the way the waves at the Cape of Good Hope pound hapless ships. When he spoke again, his low, accusatory voice crawled up her spine, making her want to squirm.

  “You know what I think is bullshit? Screwing me and not mentioning—not even once—that you had a husband.”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  “You see?” That crooked smile again. “Bullshit.”

  Taking all the time in the world, he reached for a fresh glass, and that was more than she could take. She started to snatch this one, too, but he was too quick for her this time and their hands scrabbled together, locked on the glass. With a final wrench, he tore it out of her grip and clamped down on her wrist with his free hand.

  “You’re trying my patience, princess.”

  The maneuvering had culminated with her leaning over him in the chair, their faces a breathless inch apart. Her wrist might have been on the receiving end of his anger, but he wanted her, too. Maybe more than he hated her right now, he wanted her. It was in the tension thrumming through his muscles and the hard glitter in his eyes, and that want shivered through her, forcing her own body to respond with heat.

  She reined herself in, hard. They’d spent too much time having sex when they should have been talking. That was about to change.

  “I got married my junior year in college—”

  All that vibrating passion and rage made his body jerk, but she refused to let that scare her into backing down.

  “—and I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was. I thought I was in love—”

  “The way you currently think you’re in love with me? Like that?”

  “—but really I gave more thought to the wedding dress than I did to the man or the marriage. We tried to make it work, but we’re too different, and he talked a good game but never followed through on his promises and never let me become part of his life. We should never’ve gotten married in the first place.”

  “Oh,” he said with exaggerated understanding. “So it was a starter marriage.”

  She winced. He had a real talent for putting the worst possible spin on things. “I never viewed my marriage as temporary or disposable—”

  “Well, that’s not strictly true, is it, seeing how you’re divorced?”

  “—but I’m not going to spend the rest of my life with the wrong man because I made a mistake when I was twenty-one.”

  “How fascinating.” He twiddled his fingers on the arm of his chair with obvious impatience. “Tell me, just out of curiosity, what does your loving ex-husband do? Obviously you met at Stanford, right, but what does he do now?”

  And the hits just kept on coming. Man, she hated to tell him, knowing what he’d do with the information. “He graduated from Yale Med. He’s a surgical resident.”

  Aaannnd there it was: the hardening of Joshua’s features, the palpable crashing of his ego. It was amazing how well she could read him. Truly a gift.

  “Right.” That horrible crooked smile stretched his lips again. “He probably doesn’t have a prison record or a tattoo on his neck, does he?”

  “What can I do?” she asked helplessly, sinking to her knees in front of him and holding the unforgiving hardness of his thighs. It was a dangerous move, she knew; he could snarl and lash out and she could draw back two stumps where her arms used to be. But fearsome as he was, she couldn’t resist reaching out after they’d come so far together. She wasn’t going to lose him now. “I don’t want him. You know how I feel about you.”

  “That’s the thing, sweet Arianna.” Underneath all that anger, something in his expression softened, just a hair. Cupping her face, he stroked her cheek with his thumb. Gently at first, and then harder, stretching her flesh so that her lips peeled back from her teeth. She didn’t even care—she was that desperate. “That’s the thing. I don’t know anything. I’ve never known anything. I’ve never gotten it right. I knew Bishop was my father, but he wasn’t. I knew Reynolds Warner was just my father’s bos
s, but he wasn’t. I knew Andrew was just my friend, but he wasn’t.” Here his fingers tightened even further, digging into her face. “I knew you were sweet and honest, but you weren’t.”

  Her heart turned over, dropping like a stone through a layer of tissue paper.

  “I knew you could be everything to me.” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip with such unspeakable tenderness that her longing tightened and coiled, settling finally in the clenching inner muscles between her thighs. But then a light switched off behind his eyes, sending an Arctic wind through the room. “But you can’t.”

  Shoving her face away, he let her go and surged to his feet.

  No. They wouldn’t throw this away. “Joshua—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he roared, wheeling back around. “Do you think it’s okay to blindside me the way everyone else in my life always has? Do you think I can trust you now? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  A sapling had a better chance of bearing up under a level 5 tornado than she did before Joshua’s rage, but she had to try. “I didn’t want to tell you the first night—”

  “Yeah? And what about every goddamned night since then?”

  “There was so much going on, with Bishop’s emergency—”

  “That was weeks ago, precious. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “I know it sounds lame,” she said, her rising frustration and desperation making her flounder. How could she explain the most stupid thing she’d ever done in her life, outside of getting married so young? “I’m not proud of it. But the longer I didn’t tell you, the bigger the secret got. And I knew you had problems with secrets—”

  “How insightful. Guess that Yale education paid off for you, eh?”

  “—and I didn’t expect to fall this hard for you so fast—”

  “Do you get how ridiculous this sounds?”

  How could she deny it? “Yes.”

  “You know the weird thing, Arianna? I was getting funny thoughts up here—” he jabbed two fingers against his temple “—and I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but here it is: I was thinking about marrying you.”

  “Oh, God,” she breathed.

  “But I thought I’d be your first husband. Not your current husband.”

  All her pride did a spectacular swan dive out the window. Throwing herself at him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down so she could kiss his throbbing jaw.

  “Please forgive me,” she whispered between kisses. “I’ll do anything.”

  To her agonized astonishment, he grabbed her up the way a drowning man would latch on to a buoy. One burst of movement had her in his arms and nearly bent double with the force of his passion. He rained biting kisses all over her face and into her mouth, and his chest vibrated with animalistic growls.

  Joyous relief swelled out of her on a laugh, and she held him closer, digging her fingers into that cottony nest of hair at his nape.

  His hands went to her butt, pressing her up against a rigid erection and rubbing her sweet spot there, just there, until sharp sparks of pleasure fanned out from her sex. Unsatisfied, he gathered up the back of her dress, baring her to the waist, and slid his hands underneath her panties, palming her, hard. Those sparks intensified and she cried out, teetering on a razor’s edge.

  “I’m always happy to screw you whenever you want, Ari.” His warm palms kneaded her again. “That doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

  All her hopes and passion went up in an incinerating burst of light. Could love swing around to hate this quickly? Because, just that quick, she despised him.

  She smacked her hands against his chest in a silent demand. When he let her go, she smoothed her dress and embraced the cool anger that was so much better than tears. Taking a minute, just to see, just to be sure, she looked into his eyes and was gratified to discover that, under the thick layer of his bravado, his wounds were throbbing and inflamed. Bleeding. The poor man hadn’t yet discovered that he couldn’t hurt her without hurting himself worse.

  “You know, Dawson,” she began.

  “Back to Dawson now, are we?”

  “Yeah.” She ignored that sardonic raised brow and concentrated instead on the telltale harshness of his breath and the color in his cheeks. “This dark, unforgiving, vengeful side of you is Dawson all the way. And the thing is, Dawson, this isn’t about my mistake in not telling you.”

  “Really?” That damned brow of his inched higher.

  “It’s about you licking your wounds, again. It’s about you being your favorite thing—a victim.”

  A warning rumble radiated out from his chest.

  “It’s about you being the perfect one and the only one who’s ever allowed to make mistakes. It’s about you being the judge and jury for everyone else.”

  His fists clenched. In his face, meanwhile, both brows had dropped to a single menacing black slash above his eyes, and his lips had all but disappeared.

  “It’s about you being all talk and no action despite your yammering about new beginnings. Which is sad, really. Because we’ve got something here, and I know that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me—”

  He blinked.

  “—but you’re too bitter—or maybe stupid—to admit that I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  They stared at each other. She felt his anguish, but since her heart was currently a pile of rubble, she didn’t much care at the moment. After a few seconds, the tears burning in her throat demanded to make an appearance. Since she’d be tarred and feathered in the nearest town square before she cried in front of him, it was probably a good time to go.

  “If you ever decide to get rid of Dawson once and for all,” she told him as she walked out, “you let me know.”

  Chapter 14

  Joshua banged into the kitchen two mornings later, still mad at the world and hung over from a second night of drinking, which was funny considering how, during his party years, he’d been able to drink his way through a six-pack and a fifth of Jack without blinking an eye. Seeing Bishop and Arnetta already there, sitting at the banquette, didn’t help his mood, especially when they caught sight of him and their delighted little grins evaporated. Bishop, he realized, had just successfully spooned another bite of grits into his mouth and was now chewing. That was probably what all the happy-happy was about, and he shouldn’t ruin it by being a punk.

  “Hey.” He tried to smile because he was thrilled with this progress even if his own personal life was in the toilet. “Great job, Pop.”

  “Your father will be eating us out of house and home if he keeps up like this,” Arnetta announced, beaming. “This is his third bowl.”

  “Yeah?” Joshua grabbed a coffee mug; a nice shot of caffeine would help flush some of last night’s alcohol out of his system, right? “That’s good news.”

  Bishop swallowed, frowned and, with painstaking care, raised his napkin to wipe his mouth. “What’s wrong, Josh-a?”

  “Nothing.” Filling his cup, Joshua took a scalding sip and cursed. “I’m great.”

  “You lie.” Bishop’s wizened eyes narrowed. “Ari pr-problem?”

  Arnetta, who’d been sipping from a cup of tea, clanked it back down, looked between the two men and spluttered, “Arianna? What’s Arianna got to do with—” Joshua’s misery plus his burning face were apparently dead giveaways, because her eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Oh, my heavens. You and Arianna? Oh, my.”

  Bishop ignored this distraction and focused all his attention on Joshua. “Tell me, son.”

  The use of the S word grated on Joshua’s nerves because, seriously, did the old guy think he was his shrink now? They’d been getting along pretty well, yeah, and trying again and all that, but he was a grown man who didn’t need to explain this latest stunning betrayal and corresponding hurt to anybody.

  “I need a little space.” Abandoning the coffee idea, he decided to just leave before things got worse. “Pop.”

  Bishop di
dn’t have the sense to leave well enough alone. Maybe that had been a casualty of the stroke. Whatever it was, he plowed right ahead, calling after Joshua as he headed for the door. “I help you.”

  That was it.

  Joshua wheeled back around and headed for the banquette, banging the wall with his fist as he went. Then he planted his hands on the table and leaned down in Bishop’s face.

  “Great. You want to help?” Yeah, he was doing a spectacular swan dive off the deep end here, but he felt like he’d earned the right. “Well maybe, Dad, you can tell me why no one in my life has ever been who he or she was supposed to be. You got an answer for that? Can you explain why I’m surrounded by people with secrets and hidden agendas? Huh? Or maybe you can help by telling me who I can trust and who I can’t trust. How about that?”

  Bishop didn’t blink an eye before all this unvarnished fury. “Ari hurt you.”

  “Ari’s married,” Joshua roared.

  “Divorced.”

  Arnetta’s calm clarification only made him more manic. “Divorced. Thanks so much. Maybe you can tell me why everyone knew that but me. Anyone have an answer for that? Anyone?”

  Bishop smiled with such infinite understanding and wisdom that Joshua almost couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. “You ask questions wrong.” Bishop scrunched up his face and rearranged his words. “You ask wrong questions. Ari did her best. I did my best. We messed up. Question is, why can’t you—” he pointed a gnarled index finger at Joshua’s nose “—forgive people for mistakes?”

  With that, a lightning bolt of sudden clarity—about five million volts’ worth—struck Joshua on the head, nearly knocking him out. He was still reeling when Bishop stood, grabbed Joshua’s face in his hand, planted a kiss on his cheek and left the kitchen with Arnetta.

  Another Saturday night at Heather Hill, another charity shindig.

  Oh, joy.

  This was a small gala, if a gala could be small. It was either for cancer research or the local arts association— Arianna couldn’t remember which, and if she could remember, she wouldn’t care.