“Oh, Colin, I don’t think—”
“Good. Thinking makes you tense.”
At first she couldn’t relax, but after a few minutes, under the influence of his fingers and his humor, her tension drained away, replaced by sheer animal pleasure.
His fingers slid up her neck and through her hair, soothing the headache she’d battled all day. Cleo sighed.
Then he leaned closer. His lips grazed her throat just at that tender juncture of neck and shoulder.
And more than mere pleasure flooded through her.
He curled his fingers around hers and lifted them to his mouth.
Cleo’s breath caught. Here was refuge. Kindness. More.
His fingers trailed down her arms, then back up the sides of her breasts. Faint feathering…slow, liquid heat. With exquisite care, he built the fire. Tended her with a gentleness that soothed the pain.
Alone. So alone. So cold, and here was warmth. Strength. Hope in a world that made no sense.
Colin slid his mouth along her throat with lazy, wet kisses that were a match to jet fuel. “Sweet…so sweet…”
She arched her back in unspoken invitation, alive again with the hunger of five long and lonely years without a man’s touch. “Oh, Colin…”
He settled beside her. A kiss on her brow. Her eyes. Her nose. Cool air washed her midriff, chased away by the brush of hair, the wet heat of a mouth on her breast.
Cleo’s eyes flew open, to see Colin’s smiling with mischief. Her blouse was partly unfastened, her skirt halfway up her thighs.
Oh, God. She wasn’t ready for him to see her naked.
She was torn between longing and reality, and her voice was harsher than she intended. “Don’t.” She pushed at his shoulders, jerked her blouse back together.
He was too beautiful. She was too old.
“Look at yourself through my eyes, Cleo. Don’t run from this.”
But she rose. Escaped. In the mirror on the wall, she caught a glimpse of herself and was shocked to her marrow.
She was a creature she’d forgotten, an earthy gypsy whose black hair tumbled over her shoulders, her mouth red and soft.
He stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. “Do you see her, Cleo? The woman who lives in your soul?” His fingers parted her blouse again, drawing it wide-open, revealing taut dark nipples, pale breasts ripe and swollen.
Cleo lifted her hands to cover herself, but he stopped her. “No. Look at what’s real.”
Once she had been proud of her body, had preened and pranced before Malcolm naked without a thought but to incite him.
Malcolm. Oh, God.
She yanked her blouse closed. Tucked it inside her skirt, focused on the floor. Sorting through violently seesawing emotions, she glanced to the side wall and saw the clock. “Oh, dear. I have to call Aunt Cammie.”
She heard his quiet oath as she picked up the phone and dialed. Her aunt answered on the first ring.
“Aunt Cammie?”
“Cleo, are you all right?”
“Y-yes,” she stammered. “I—I had paperwork to do. I’ll be home soon.”
“Did Betsey find you?”
The day crowded back in, suffocating the last traces of ecstasy. In its place burned shame. A trace of anger that the ecstasy had been so brief. “Yes, Betsey called me. And Malcolm came by.”
Too many people stood in this room, in her head—Malcolm, Ria, Betsey, Benjy…
Colin and she were no longer alone.
“What?” She’d missed the question and Aunt Cammie repeated it. “Oh—no, I haven’t eaten yet. But I’m not very hungry.”
Except for what she couldn’t have.
Then she frowned because she couldn’t feel him in the room anymore. Cleo turned.
Colin was gone. Those moments might never have happened.
But they had. For a brief, bright flare, she had been someone she’d forgotten.
And she had felt beautiful, just as he’d said.
Her throat tightened and tears clouded her vision.
“I’ll be there soon, I promise. Don’t wait up for me. I know you’ve had a long day. Sleep well. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“You, too, dear.”
She paused. Blinked rapidly, rubbing at her chest. “Aunt Cammie?” Cleo wanted to reach out to someone who would care that her heart hurt.
But her aunt had already hung up. And Cleo was alone.
Again.
Chapter Eight
Malcolm sat in his darkened living room, staring out across the hills speckled with the twinkling lights of other homes…other lives…
Other families. Like he’d once had.
Like he’d given up when he walked away from the carnage of what had once been so full, so rich.
Cleo had gone on without him, had somehow surmounted the agony and built a new life. The woman who had once been the beat of his heart now marched only to the rhythm of her own. Betsey had grown up…David was no more…all of the bounty he had taken for granted had evaporated like mist.
Except Vic—Ria. Once again, he felt her tremble in his embrace, saw how shaky she was, how much her defiance covered fear.
Thought about her child. Remembered a tree house. Another dark-haired boy.
Malcolm smiled at a sudden memory. He’d been raking leaves in the backyard when he’d heard his son’s voice.
“Daddy, Ria, watch this!”
“No, David, don’t—” Victoria called out.
Malcolm looked up from raking just in time to see David leap from the tree branch into the pile of leaves below, easily six feet.
Fifteen-year-old Victoria got there before he could, tearing into the mound, her voice high and thin. “David, are you all right? Davey, talk to me!”
Malcolm skidded to a stop, his heart thudding. “Don’t touch him—” he shouted.
She recoiled, but her feelings were the last thing on his mind just then. He brushed past her and fell to his knees, scanning the sturdy little body for injuries. “Can you talk to me, son?”
David’s eyes fluttered, then opened in panic. He didn’t speak, and it was a moment before Malcolm realized that he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
Cleo raced across the yard. “What happened? Is he all right?”
Just then, David sucked in a shuddery inhalation, followed by another, deeper one. He started to sit up, but Malcolm restrained him with one hand on his chest, then passed his hands over David’s limbs. “Anything hurt?”
“I don’t know—” He took another unsteady breath. “Wow, Dad, did you see that?”
Cleo was beside them now, anxious gaze on David, hands touching his face. “What happened?”
“Your son decided to find out if he could fly.” The calm in his own voice surprised Malcolm.
“Oh, sweetie, tell me where you’re hurt. No, don’t move—”
Malcolm placed one hand on her arm. “Just let him rest a minute. I think he’s okay. Nothing seems to be broken. Just got the breath knocked out of him. Right, son?”
David grinned. Malcolm wondered if Cleo saw the resemblance to the daredevil smile Vic had once sported.
Vic. He didn’t see her. “Where’s Victoria?”
Cleo barely spared a glance, her focus on the boy lying on a bed of leaves that had saved him from serious injury. “She ran into the house, crying.”
Malcolm sighed. A difficult childhood had become a worse adolescence. He reviewed his words to her with chagrin. He’d only meant that she shouldn’t move David, but with that hair-trigger sensitivity of hers, she’d been ready as always to take offense.
David sat up, brushing leaves from his hair. “Wow, that was kinda cool! I bet Ria never did that, did she, Daddy?”
None of them understood David’s hero worship of his oldest sister, but he’d been stuck to her like a cocklebur since he could crawl. His life was a quest to impress, to coax from her the attention everyone else in the family lavished upon him.
Malcolm’
s temper frayed. “No, she was smarter than that. Do you understand that you could have broken your neck with that stunt?”
David was shocked, his eyes, so like Malcolm’s own, grown huge and glistening with hurt. His mop of black hair stirred in the breeze.
“Your father’s right. You scared us to death,” Cleo said. “Don’t ever do that again.”
His lower lip trembled, all thrill of triumph gone from his face. “The pile was big, like my bed. I thought it would be like jumping on my mattress. But it wasn’t. It didn’t feel so good.”
Cleo pulled him close, stroking his hair, her voice tangled between tears and laughter. “I guess not.” She peered over his head at Malcolm, shrugging as if to ask what to do next.
Malcolm wanted to crush his son into his own arms, but better to make this a lesson the boy would remember. He had far too little sense of his own limits. “David, go to your room now. What you did was foolish and dangerous. I want you to stay there for an hour and think about what you did, the way you should have considered beforehand.”
His son’s expression was one of hurt. The boy was seldom punished for anything. His basic nature was easygoing, and there ran a bone-deep goodness within him. He was a child who loved to roughhouse with Malcolm, who played soccer with such abandon that he thrilled the coach and terrified his parents. But he also was forever bringing home strays: dogs, cats, birds, even humans. He had a heart as big as all outdoors, and he generally went out of his way to be thoughtful to everyone he met.
But the very similarity to Vic’s recklessness worried Malcolm and, he was sure, Cleo, too. And the streak of rebellion he saw before him made him doubly intent to quash those tendencies now. One Victoria in the family was quite enough.
“But, Daddy—”
It didn’t help that Cleo also seemed torn, but she rallied to his cause. They’d always promised to back each other up and argue about it later if they disagreed. A solid front was essential with children.
“Your father’s right, David. You’re not to play with any toys. Lie down on your bed and reflect on this mistake.”
David walked away with a heavy step.
“Look at him,” Malcolm said.
Cleo turned into his side and slipped her arms around his waist. “Meanie,” she teased.
Malcolm glanced down at her, his heart lifting at her tone. “He scared the hell out of me.”
“Me, too.” Then she giggled, covering her mouth. “What a dumb, dumb thing to do. What was he thinking?”
“That’s the problem. He wasn’t.” Then he chuckled, sharing her relief from terror.
“I don’t want him to hear me,” Cleo laughed, pressing her face into Malcolm’s chest.
He held her shaking shoulders, biting down on his own mirth as the small body dejectedly opened the back door. “Just a minute longer.” He watched David’s figure disappear into the house and the door close. “Okay, we’re safe.”
Cleo’s beautiful green eyes glistened, her husky laughter going, as always, straight to his gut. As she caught his expression, her amusement faded. Her arms slid around his neck. “What’s on your mind, Malcolm?”
As if she didn’t know. “Just wondering exactly how soft those leaves are.”
One delicate eyebrow arched. “Want to see?”
He played hard to get. “Probably scratchy.” But he drew her behind the wide tree trunk.
Her tongue traced a glistening path around her lips. “Might get all dirty.”
He lowered his mouth to hers. “Dirty is bad.”
Slowly, she licked his lips now. “Tragic.” Her hands slid beneath his sweatshirt, stroking his back, then around to his belly.
The fire that had never died shot through his veins. “Where’s Betsey?”
“In her room, on the telephone as usual.”
“Good.” His hands slid beneath her sweatshirt, going suddenly still. “No bra?” he croaked.
Cleo’s smile was wicked. “Makes it simple, doesn’t it?”
Her breasts were plump, her nipples tight against his palms. Malcolm wanted to drop to his knees and taste them, but he wasn’t sure he and Cleo were hidden quite enough. “How I want you. Why isn’t it night? Why did we decide we needed kids? They’re always awake.”
Cleo arched her back and rubbed her breasts against his hands, her breath catching. “Don’t know.” Her eyelids fluttered downward.
Dropping the hem of her sweatshirt, he boosted her up to his shoulder. “You remember how to climb a tree, right?”
“Malcolm, what are you—?” Her green eyes danced. “In the tree house?”
“You got a better idea? Go on, climb.”
She lost her hold once because she was giggling. “Aren’t we too old for this?”
“God, I hope not.”
“It would be easier if we used the ladder.”
“You want to explain to the kids why we’re playing in their tree house?”
She shinnied up another branch and into the window on the back side. “You’ll never make it through here. You’re too big.”
“That stray dog was too large to make it through the gap in the fence when the neighbor’s female was in heat, too.” Malcolm scaled the limbs quickly, smiling at her through the window. With some wiggling, he fell inside, landing with a grunt. “Love can move mountains.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Lust, you mean.” But she was already pulling off her sweatshirt.
“My dear Mrs. Channing, with you, the two are indistinguishable. I love you and I lust for you. So sue me.”
Instead, she helped him undress.
But Cleo desired him no more, loved him no longer. What kind of insanity had gripped him that he could have made sense of the steps that led him to this moment, to this sterile cuckoo’s nest existence?
Ria needed him, though. Her child did, too. He had lost a family most would have called perfect—except for the daughter who wouldn’t behave, wouldn’t heal.
Now he had another chance.
The front door swung open, and Joanna entered. In the moonlight slanting through the window, he caught her expression when she thought she was alone.
Pinched. Unhappy. Weary.
And, he reminded himself, pregnant with his child.
She was almost upon him before she realized she had company. “Oh—you frightened me.” Her elegant forehead creased in a frown. “What are you doing, sitting in the dark?”
Malcolm reached for her hand and drew her closer, patting his lap. “Come here. Sit down and let me hold you.”
He felt the moment of hesitation, as her native reserve warred with surprise.
“I don’t—I’d like to change my clothes. It’s been a long day.”
With one quick tug, he could have her tumbling right into his lap. He’d like to hear about her day. Tell her about everything that rolled around inside him. Let her keen sense of detachment help him put it in perspective.
But the pinched expression had deepened, and she held herself very stiff, though she didn’t retract her hand from his.
“Are you all right?”
She seemed startled. “What? Oh, yes. Fine.”
“Joanna, talk to me. I know you too well.”
The gray eyes were cool now. “Do you, Malcolm?”
“What does that mean?”
“Do you really have any idea what I want from my life? How hard I’ve worked to get where I am?”
Malcolm let her fingers slip away and faced the windows, wondering what was the right thing to say.
“Malcolm? Are you listening?”
He turned back. “Yes.”
“I can’t take a sabbatical right now. There are two critical pieces of legislation that I must get through in the next session. I have a lot of work ahead of me, and I don’t have time to be sick.”
She had his full attention now. “What’s wrong, babe? Have you been to the doctor?”
“No. And I’m not going. I cannot have this child, Malcolm. It’s not—”
She glanced away, her body tensed for attack.
“What are your symptoms? I’ll call Dan Shapiro. He and I have played golf for years.”
“Damn you, you’re not listening to me. I cannot do this. I’m sick to my stomach all the time, I’m tired, I can’t sleep.”
He grasped her arms and pulled her into his chest. “Oh, babe, I understand that it’s rough. Cleo didn’t have many problems with the first, but with Betsey, she was—”
“Stop it!” She shoved at his chest. “I don’t want to hear about Earth Mother Cleo. I’m not her, Malcolm. I can do more than have babies. I hate this baby. I—”
She looked stricken, and he could see the toll her emotions were taking on her.
Then big, silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and she crumpled against him. The tall, cool, untouchable blonde collapsed into a doll with no stuffing. “I’m afraid, Malcolm,” she whispered. “I have no idea how to do this. I feel so bad all the time, and I—” Her voice broke on a sob.
Malcolm did what he’d intended earlier; only, he didn’t spill out his day. Instead, he sat in the big overstuffed chair with Joanna on his lap, rubbing circles on her back while she cried.
And he thought about Ria, pregnant so far away from home, and hoped that someone, somewhere, had held her.
He murmured soothing words to Joanna, unsure how many she heard. The same words he might have once murmured to Cleo.
For a moment, the elegant blonde transformed into a tiny brunette, and Malcolm was back in the house he missed so much, sitting on their sunporch and watching the trees. Telling the woman he loved that everything would be all right, thanking her for the beautiful baby he knew they would have.
He’d just gotten a child back, and a grandson to boot. Was he asking for too much to wish for this one, too? Especially since he would never love this child’s mother as he should?
Malcolm tried to think of a way that he could give Joanna his blessing to do what she wanted, to destroy the child they had made.
But he couldn’t. Even if he were certain right now that it would lead to the worst pain a parent can experience, he could not spare himself. If he had to endure David’s death a thousand times more, it would be worth it for the memories he had, for the feel of those small arms around him, for the pride as his son had shot upward to the promise of Malcolm’s height.
The House That Love Built Page 8