by Nora Roberts
taken that long for the shock to completely wear off. “When it got to the point where I had to force myself to drive around that city, I knew I needed some distance.”
“You’ll have to go back,” Grant said flatly, “and face it.”
“I already have.” She waited while he pushed open the door. “Faced it—yes, though I still miss her dreadfully. New Orleans will only be that much more special because I had so much of her there. Places can hold us, I suppose.” As they stepped inside she smiled at him. “This one holds you.”
“Yes.” He thought he could feel winter creeping closer, and drew her against him. “It gives me what I need.”
Her lashes lowered so that her eyes were only slits with the green light and glowing. “Do I?”
He crushed his mouth to hers so desperately she was shaken—not by the force, but by the emotion that seemed to explode from him without warning. She yielded because it seemed to be the way for both of them. And when she did, he drew back, struggling for control. She was so small—it was difficult to remember that when she was in his arms. He was cold. And God, he needed her.
“Come upstairs,” he murmured.
She went silently, aware that while his touch and his voice were gentle, his mood was volatile. It both intrigued and excited her. The tension in him seemed to grow by leaps and bounds as they climbed toward the bedroom. It’s like the first time, she thought, trembling once in anticipation. Or the last.
“Grant …”
“Don’t talk.” He nudged her onto the bed, then slipped off her shoes. When his hands wanted to rush, to take, he forced them to be slow and easy. Sitting beside her, Grant put them on her shoulders, then ran them down her arms as he touched his mouth to hers.
The kiss was light, almost teasing, but Gennie could feel the rushing, pulsing passion beneath it. His body was tense even as he nibbled, drawing her bottom lip into his mouth, stroking his thumb over her wrists. He wasn’t in a gentle mood, yet he strove to be gentle. She could smell the sea on him, and it brought back memories of that first, tumultuous lovemaking on the grass with lightning and thunder. That’s what he needed now. And she discovered, as her pulse began to thud under his thumbs, it was what she needed.
Her body didn’t melt, but coiled. The sound wasn’t a sigh but a moan as she dragged him against her and pressed her open mouth aggressively against his.
Then he was like the lightning, white heat, cold fury as he crushed her beneath him on the bed. His hands went wild, seeking, finding, tugging at her clothes as though he couldn’t touch her quickly enough. His control snapped, and in a chain reaction hers followed, until they were tangled together in an embrace that spoke of love’s violence.
Demand after unrelenting demand they placed on each other. Fingers pressed, mouths ravaged. Clothes were yanked away in a fury of impatience to possess hot, damp skin. It wasn’t enough to touch, they hurried to taste what was smooth and moist and salty from the sea and their mutual passion.
Dark, driving needs, an inferno of wanting; they gave over to both and took from each other. And what was taken was replenished, over and over as they loved with the boundless energy that springs from desperation. Urgent fingers possessed her. An avid mouth conquered him. The command belonged to neither, but to the primitive urges that pounded through them.
Shallow, gasping breaths, skin that trembled to the touch, flavors dark and heated, the scent of the sea and desire—these clouded their minds to leave them victims as well as conquerers. Their eyes met once, and each saw themselves trapped in the other’s mind. Then they were moving together, racing toward delirium.
* * *
It was barely dawn when she woke. The light was rosy and warm, but there was a faint skim of frost on the window. Gennie knew immediately she was alone; touching the sheets beside her, she found them cold. Her body was sated from a long night of loving but she sat up and called his name. The simple fact that he was up before her worried her—she always woke first.
Thinking of his mood the night before, she wasn’t certain whether to frown or smile. His urgency had never depleted. Time and time again he had turned to her, and their loving had retained that wild, desperate flavor. Once, when his hands and mouth had raced over her—everywhere—she thought he seemed bent on implanting all that she was onto his mind, as if he were going away and taking only the memory of her with him.
Shaking her head, Gennie got out of bed. She was being foolish; Grant wasn’t going anywhere. If he had gotten up early, it was because he couldn’t sleep and hadn’t wanted to disturb her. How she wished he had.
He’s only downstairs, she told herself as she stepped into the hall. He’s sitting at the kitchen table having coffee and waiting for me. But when she reached the stairwell, she heard the radio, low and indistinct. Puzzled, she glanced up. The sound was coming from above her, not below.
Odd, she thought, she hadn’t imagined he used the third floor. He’d never mentioned it. Drawn by her curiosity, Gennie began the circular climb. The radio grew louder as she approached, though the news broadcast was muted and sounded eerily out of place in the silent lighthouse. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how completely she had forgotten the outside world. But for that one weekend at the MacGregors, her summer had been insular, and bound up in Grant alone.
She stopped in the doorway of a sun-washed room. It was a studio. He’d cultivated the north light and space. Fleetingly, her gaze skimmed over the racks of newspapers and magazines, the television, and the one sagging couch. No easels, no canvases, but it was the den of an artist.
Grant’s back was to her as he sat at his drawing board. She smelled—ink, she realized, and perhaps a trace of glue. The glass-topped cabinet beside him held a variety of organized tools.
An architect? she wondered, confused. No, that didn’t fit and surely no architect would resist using his skills on that farmhouse so close at hand. He muttered to himself, hunched over his work. She might have smiled at that if she hadn’t been so puzzled. When he moved his hand she saw he held an artist’s brush—sable and expensive. And he held it with the ease of long practice.
But he’d said he didn’t paint, Gennie remembered, baffled. He didn’t appear to be—and what would a painter need with a compass and a T square? One wouldn’t paint facing a wall in any case, but … what was he doing?
Before she could speak, Grant lifted his head. In the mirror in front of him their eyes met.
He hadn’t been able to sleep. He hadn’t been able to lie beside her and not want her. Somehow during the night, he’d convinced himself that they had to go their separate ways. And that he could cope with it. She lived in another world, more than in another part of the country. Glamour was part of her life—glamour and crowds and recognition. Simplicity was part of his—simplicity and solitude and anonymity. There was no mixing them.
He’d gotten up in the dark, deluding himself that he could work. After nearly two hours of frustration, he was beginning to succeed. Now she was here, a part of that last portion of himself he’d been determined to keep separate. When she went away, he’d wanted to have at least one sanctuary.
Too intrigued to notice his annoyance, Gennie crossed the room. “What’re you doing?” He didn’t answer as she came beside him and frowned down at the paper attached to his board. It was crisscrossed with light blue lines and sectioned. Even when she saw the pen and ink drawings taking shape in the first section, she wasn’t certain what she was looking at.
Not a blueprint, surely, she mused. A mechanical … some kind of commercial art perhaps? Fascinated, she bent a bit closer to the first section. Then she recognized the figure.
“Oh! Cartoons.” Pleased with the discovery, she inched closer. “Why, I’ve seen this strip hundreds of times. I love it!” She laughed and pushed the hair back over her shoulder. “You’re a cartoonist.”
“That’s right.” He didn’t want her to be pleased or impressed. It was simply what he did, and no more. And he knew,
if he didn’t push her away then, today, he’d never be able to do it again. Deliberately, he set down his brush.
“So this is how you set one of these up,” she continued, caught up in the idea, enchanted with it. “These blue lines you’ve struck on the paper, are they for perspective? How do you come up with something like this seven days a week?” He didn’t want her to understand. If she understood, it would be nearly impossible to push her away. “It’s my job,” he said flatly. “I’m busy, Gennie. I work on deadline.”
“I’m sorry,” she began automatically, then caught the cool, remote look in his eye. It struck her suddenly that he’d kept this from her, this essential part of his life. He hadn’t told her—more, had made a point in not telling her. It hurt, she discovered as her initial pleasure faded. It hurt like hell. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He’d known she would ask, but was no longer certain he had the real answer. Instead, he shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”
“Didn’t come up,” she repeated quietly, staring at him. “No, I suppose you made certain it didn’t. Why?”
Could he explain that it was ingrained habit? Could he tell her the essential truth was that he’d grown so used to keeping it, and nearly everything else, to himself, he had done it without thinking? Then he had continued to do so in automatic defense. If he kept this to himself, he wouldn’t have given her everything—because to give her everything terrified him. No, it was too late for explanations. It was time he remembered his policy of not giving them to anyone.
“Why should I have told you?” he countered. “This is my job, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
The color drained dramatically from her face, but as he turned to get off the stool, Grant didn’t see. “Nothing to do with me,” Gennie echoed in a whisper. “Your work’s important to you, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is,” Grant snapped. “It’s what I do. What I am.”
“Yes, it would be.” She felt the cold flow over her until she was numb from it. “I shared your bed, but not this.”
Stung, he whirled back to her. The wounded look in her eyes was the hardest thing he’d ever faced. “What the hell does one have to do with the other? What difference does it make what I do for a living?”
“I wouldn’t have cared what you do. I wouldn’t have cared if you did nothing at all. You lied to me.”
“I never lied to you!” he shouted.
“Perhaps I don’t understand the fine line between deception and dishonesty.”
“Listen, my work is private. That’s the way I want it.” The explanation came tumbling out despite him, angry and hot. “I do this because I love to do it, not because I have to, not because I need recognition. Recognition’s the last thing I want,” he added while his eyes grew darker with temper. “I don’t do lectures or workshops or press interviews because I don’t want people breathing down my neck. I choose anonymity just as you choose exposure, because it’s what works for me. This is my art, this is my life. And I intend to keep it just that way.”
“I see.” She was stiff from the pain, shattered by the cold. Gennie understood grief well enough to know what she was feeling. “And telling me, sharing this with me, would’ve equaled exposure. The truth is you didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust me to keep your precious secret or to respect your precious lifestyle.”
“The truth is our lifestyles are completely opposite.” The hurt tore at him. He was pushing her away, he could feel it. And even as he pushed he ached to pull her back. “There’s no mixing what you need and what I need and coming out whole. It has nothing to do with trust.”
“It always has to do with trust,” she countered. He was looking at her now as he had that first time—the angry, remote stranger who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. She was the intruder here as she had been a lifetime ago in a storm. Then, at least, she hadn’t loved him.
“You should have understood the word love before you used it, Grant. Or perhaps we should have understood each other’s conception of the word.” Her voice was steady again, rock steady as it only was when she held herself under rigid control. “To me it means trust and compromise and need. Those things don’t apply for you.”
“Damn it, don’t tell me how I think. Compromise?” he tossed back, pacing the room. “What kind of compromise could we have made? Would you have married me and buried yourself here? Hell, we both know the press would have sniffed you out even if you could’ve stood it. Would you expect me to live in New Orleans until my work fell apart and I was half mad to get out?”
He whirled back to her, his back to the east window so that the rising sun shot in and shimmered all around him. “How long would it take before someone got curious enough to dig into my life? I have reasons for keeping to myself, damn it, and I don’t have to justify them.”
“No, you don’t.” She wouldn’t cry, she told herself, because once she began she’d never stop. “But you’ll never know the answer to any of those questions, will you? Because you never bothered to share them with me. You didn’t share them, and you didn’t share the reasons. I suppose that’s answer enough.”
She turned and walked from the room and down the long, winding stairs. She didn’t start to run until she was outside in the chill of the morning.
Chapter 12
Gennie looked at her cards and considered. A nine and an eight. She should play it safe with seventeen; another card would be a foolish risk. Life was full of them, she decided, and signaled the dealer. The four she drew made her smile ironically. Lucky at cards …
What was she doing sitting at a blackjack table at seven-fifteen on a Sunday morning? Well, she thought, it was certainly a convenient way to pass the time. More productive than pacing the floor or beating on a pillow. She’d already tried both of those. Yet somehow, the streak of luck she’d been enjoying for the past hour hadn’t lightened her mood. Perversely, she would have preferred it if she’d lost resoundingly. That way, she would have had some new hook to hang her depression on.
Restless, she cashed in her chips and stuffed the winnings in her bag. Maybe she could lose them at the dice table later.
There was only a handful of people in the casino now. A very small elderly lady sat on a stool at a slot machine and systematically fed in quarters. Occasionally Gennie would hear the jingle of coins spill into the tray. Later, the huge, rather elegant room would fill, then Gennie could lose herself in the smoke and noise. But for now, she wandered out to the wide glass wall and looked out at the sea.
Was this why she had come here instead of going home as she had intended? When she had tossed her suitcase and painting gear into the car, her only thought had been to get back to New Orleans and pick up her life again. She’d made the detour almost before she’d been aware of it. Yet now that she was here, had been here for over two weeks, she couldn’t bring herself to walk out on that beach. She could look at it, yes, and she could listen. But she couldn’t go to it.
Why was she tormenting herself like this? she wondered miserably. Why was she keeping herself within reach of what would always remind her of Grant? Because, she admitted, no matter how many times she’d told herself she had, she had yet to accept the final break. It was just as impossible for her to go back to him as it was for her to walk down to that blue-green water. He’d rejected her, and the hurt of it left her hollow.
I love you, but …
No, she couldn’t understand that. Love meant anything was possible. Love meant making anything possible. If his love had been real, he’d have understood that, too.
She’d have been better off resisting the urge to look up Macintosh in the paper. She wouldn’t have seen that ridiculous and poignant strip where Veronica had walked into his life. It had made her laugh, then remembering had made her cry. What right did he have to use her in his work when he wouldn’t share himself with her? And he’d used her again and again, in dozens of papers across the country where readers were following Macintosh’s growing ro
mance—his over-his-head, dazed-eyed involvement—with the sexy, alluring Veronica.
It was funny, and the touches of satire and cynicism made it funnier. It was human. He’d taken the foolishness and the pitfalls of falling in love and had given them the touch every man or woman who’d ever been there would understand. Each time she read the strip, Gennie could recognize something they’d done or something she’d said, though he had a way of tilting it to an odd angle. With his penchant for privacy, Grant still, vicariously, shared his own emotional roller coaster with the public.
It made her ache to read it day after day. Day after day, she read it.
“Up early, Gennie?”
As a hand touched her shoulder, she turned to Justin. “I’ve always been a morning person,” she evaded, then smiled at him. “I cleaned up at your tables.”
He returned the smile, while behind guarded eyes he assessed her. She was pale—still as pale as she had been when she’d so suddenly checked into the Comanche. The pallor only accented the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. She had a wounded look that he recognized because he, too, was deeply in love. Whatever had come between her and Grant had left its mark on her.
“How about some breakfast?” He slipped an arm over her shoulders before she could answer, and began leading her toward his office.
“I’m not really hungry, Justin,” she began.
“You haven’t really been hungry for two weeks.” He guided her through the outer office into his private one, then pushed the button on his elevator. “You’re the only cousin I have whom I care about, Genviève. I’m tired of watching you waste away in front of my eyes.”
“I’m not!” she said indignantly, then leaned her head against his arm. “There’s nothing worse than having someone moping around feeling sorry for themselves, is there?”
“A damned nuisance,” he agreed lightly as he drew her into the private car. “How much did you take me for in there?”
It took her a minute to realize he’d changed the subject. “Oh, I don’t know—five, six hundred.”
“I’ll put breakfast on your tab,” he said as the doors opened to his and Serena’s suite. Her laugh pleased him as much as the hug she gave him.
“Just like a man,” Serena stated as she came into the room. “Waltzing in with a beautiful woman at the crack of dawn while the wife stays home and changes the baby.” She held a gurgling Mac over her shoulder.
Justin grinned at her. “Nothing worse than a jealous woman.”
Lifting her elegant brows, Serena walked over and shifted the baby into his arms. “Your turn,” she said, smiling, then collapsed into an armchair. “Mac’s teething,” she told Gennie. “And not being a terribly good sport about it.”
“You are,” Justin told her as his son began to soothe sore gums on his shoulder.
Serena grinned, tucked up her feet, and yawned hugely. “I’m assured this, too, shall pass. Have you two eaten?”
“I’ve just invited Gennie to have some breakfast.”
Serena caught her husband’s dry look and understood it. Railroaded would have been a more apt word, she imagined. “Good,” she said simply, and picked up the phone. “One of the nicest things about living in a hotel is room service.”
While Serena ordered breakfast for three, Gennie wandered. She liked this suite of rooms—so full of warmth and color and personality. If it had ever held the aura of a hotel room, it had long since lost it. The baby cooed as Justin sat on the couch to play with him. Serena’s low, melodious voice spoke to the kitchen far below.
If you love enough, Gennie thought as she roamed to the window overlooking the beach, if you want enough, you can make a home anywhere. Rena and Justin had. Wherever they decided to live, and in whatever fashion, they were family. It was just that basic.
She knew they worked together to care for their child, to run the casino and hotel. They were a unit. There were rough spots, she was sure. There had to be in any relationship—particularly between two strong-willed personalities. But they got through them because each was willing to bend when it was necessary to bend.
Hadn’t she been? New Orleans would have become a place to visit—to see her family, to stir old memories if the need arose. She could have made her home on that rough coast of Maine—for him, with him. She’d have been willing to give so much if only he’d been willing to give in return. Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of his being willing. Perhaps Grant had simply not been able to give. That’s what she should accept. Once she did, she could finally close the door.
“The ocean’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Serena said from behind her.
“Yes.” Gennie turned her head. “I’ve gotten used to seeing it. Of course, I’ve always lived with the river.”
“Is that what you’re going back to?”
Gennie turned back to the window. “In the end I suppose.”
“It’s the wrong choice, Gennie.”
“Serena,” Justin said warningly, but she turned on him with her eyes flashing and her voice low with exasperation.
“Damn it, Justin, she’s miserable! There’s nothing like a stubborn, pig-headed man to make a woman miserable, is there, Gennie?”
With a half laugh, she dragged a hand through her hair. “No, I don’t guess there is.”
“That works both ways,” Justin reminded her.
“And if the man’s pig-headed enough,” Serena went on precisely, “it’s up to the woman to give him a push.”
“He didn’t want me,” Gennie said in a rush, then stopped. The words hurt, but she could say them. Maybe it was time she did. “Not really, or at any rate not enough. He simply wasn’t willing to believe that there were ways we could have worked out whatever problems we had. He won’t share—it’s as though he’s determined not to. It seemed we got close for that short amount of time in spite of him. He didn’t want to be in love with me, he doesn’t want to depend on anyone.”
While she spoke, Justin rose and took Mac into another room. The tinkling music of his mobile drifted out. “Gennie,” Justin began when he came back in, “do you know about Grant and Shelby’s father?”
She let out a long sigh before she sank into a chair. “I know he died when Grant was about seventeen.”
“Was assassinated,” Justin corrected, and watched the horror cloud in her eyes. “Senator Robert Campbell. You’d have been a child, but you might remember.”
She did, vaguely. The talk, the television coverage, the trial … and Grant had been there. Hadn’t Shelby said both she and Grant had been there when their father was killed? Murdered right in front of their eyes. “Oh, God, Justin, it must’ve been horrible for them.”
“Scars don’t always heal cleanly,” he murmured, touching an absent hand to his own side in a gesture his wife understood. “From what Alan’s told me, Shelby carried around that fear and that pain for a long time. I can’t imagine it would be any different for Grant. Sometimes …” His gaze drifted to Serena. “You’re
