All The Possibilities

by Nora Roberts

  his chest to his belt.

  Slowly Alan slid the blouse from her shoulders, allowing himself a lengthy look at her before he reached to the shelf behind him for towels. She was pale, slender—alluring and challenging—and his. Keeping her eyes on his, Shelby draped the towel saronglike around her.

  Dry heat rushed over her when Alan opened the door to the small room. Shelby stood still a moment, absorbing it, before she moved to a bench. “I haven’t done this in months,” she murmured, then shut her eyes and leaned back. “It’s wonderful.”

  “I’m told my father cemented a number of profitable deals in this room.” Alan eased down beside her.

  Shelby opened her eyes to slits. “I imagine he did. By the time he was through, he could’ve reduced most normally built men to puddles.” Idly she trailed a fingertip down Alan’s thigh. “Do you ever use saunas for vital government intrigue, Senator?”

  “I’m inclined to think of other things in small hot rooms.” Bending, he brushed his lips over her bare shoulder—the touch of a tongue, the quick pressure of teeth. “Vital, certainly, but more personal.”

  “Mmm.” Shelby tilted her head as he trailed his lips closer to her throat. “How personal?”

  “Highly confidential.” Alan drew her into his lap and began those slow nibbling kisses that always drugged her. Her mouth moved against his with lazy heat-soaked passion. “Your body fascinates me, Shelby. Slender, smooth, agile.” His lips trailed down farther, to linger just above the loose knot in the towel. “And your mind—that’s agile, too, and as clever as your hands. I’ve never been clear which attracted me first. Perhaps it was both at once.”

  She was content to lie back and let him make love to her with words and with the gentle brush of lips. Her muscles were lax from the heat, her skin soft and damp. When his lips came back to hers, she found she hardly had the strength to lift her arm around his neck and bring him closer. But her mouth could move, to slant against his, to open, to invite, to entice. She concentrated all her power there as her body seemed to melt from the heat and the longing.

  While he kissed her, slowly, deeply, his fingertip nudged the knot of the towel until it loosened, leaving her vulnerable to him.

  He felt her moan once against his mouth, tasted the trembling breath as it merged with his own. Her scent, always exciting, seemed to fill the tiny room until there was nothing else. So he touched her, first with lazy possession, seeing each sensitive curve in his mind’s eye as his fingertips glided.

  With his arm hooked around her back, he drew her closer. Skin, slick from the heat, seemed to fuse together. Their lips, still hungry, drew more and more in a kiss that hinted of forever. There was response wherever he touched, response that became more frantic as his hands sought less patiently. When she began to shudder, he felt a fresh thrill rip through him. Now, it demanded. Take her now, here and now. On an unsteady breath, he forced the need aside and pleasured himself by shattering her sanity.

  He found her hot and moist. When she arched against his hand, he felt her passion build, then explode. Mindlessly she moaned his name, and only his name. It was all he wanted to hear. Then she was pliant again, limp and soft. He could have held her just so for hours. Gathering her closer, he stood.

  “It’s dangerous to stay in here too long.” Briefly he rubbed his mouth against hers. “We’ll cool off.”

  “Impossible,” Shelby murmured and lay back against his shoulder. “Absolutely impossible.” They left the towels behind.

  “The water’s cool … almost as soft as your skin.”

  With a half sigh, she turned to glance at the still surface of the pool. “I can take it if you can.” She hooked her arms more securely around his neck. “But I don’t think I even have the strength to tread water.”

  “We’ll use the buddy system,” Alan suggested, then shifting her weight slightly, jumped in with her.

  Shelby gave a quick gasp at the shock of cold, then surfaced, drawing in air and tangling with Alan. “It’s freezing!”

  “No, actually it’s kept at around seventy-six degrees. It’s just the abrupt change in temperature.”

  Shelby narrowed her eyes and splashed water into his face before she broke away to skim along the bottom of the pool. Her muscles felt limber, ready to flex and stretch. When she reached the other end of the pool, Alan was waiting for her.

  “Show-off,” she accused, tossing wet hair out of her eyes. Then, with her tongue caught between her teeth, she let her gaze roam slowly down him from where the water dripped from his hair to where it lapped gently just below his waist. It didn’t matter how many times she saw him, how often she touched, his body would always excite her.

  “You look great, Senator. I think I could get used to seeing you wet and naked.” Lazily she dipped back to float. “If you ever decide to ditch politics, I imagine you could have a successful career as a lifeguard at a nude beach.”

  “It’s always good to have something to fall back on.” He watched her a moment, her body white and smooth against the darker water. Moonlight poured through the windows and shivered on the surface. The desire he’d felt only moments before came back in full force. In one stroke, he was beside her, an arm hooked around her waist. Shelby gripped his shoulders for balance while her head tilted back, her hair streaming into the water. He saw it in her eyes, the excitement, the mutual need. Then her mouth rushed to meet his, and he saw nothing.

  She knew there’d be no lazy, patient loving now. His mouth crushed hers, and she tasted the hints of savagery and desperation. The hand at her hip molded her to him. Shelby hadn’t known her passion could rise again so swiftly, but it sprang up in her as ripe and hot as before. Desire came in waves, fast, each higher than the one before until she was submerged in it and struggling for air. Their bodies pressed together, wet and urgent. She dove her fingers into his hair, murmuring a thousand promises, a thousand demands.

  The water slowed their movements, seeming to tease them when they both would have hurried. Neither had the patience for the dreamlike or the languid now when hunger was so sharp and consuming. She felt the water lap over her shoulders, cool and sensual, while Alan’s mouth heated and became more firm, more greedy, on hers. She could smell it on his skin, taste it as her lips trailed over him—that faint trace of chlorine vying with the scent and flavor she had grown so used to. It alone reminded her that they were in a pool and not some sheltered lagoon a thousand miles away.

  But when he took her in a frenzy of passion, they might have been anywhere at all.

  Chapter 11

  “Hi.”

  Shelby stifled a yawn as she rounded the last bend in the stairs and caught sight of Serena. “Hi.”

  “It looks like you and I are the only ones not already involved with some disgustingly productive activity this morning. Had breakfast?”

  “Uh-uh.” Shelby dropped her hand to her stomach. “I’m starving.”

  “Good. We usually eat breakfast in a room off the kitchen, as all of us have different hours. Caine,” Serena continued as they started down the hall, “is always up at the crack of dawn—a habit I always wanted to strangle him for as a child. Alan and my parents are hardly better. Diana considers 8:00 A.M. late enough for anyone, and Justin runs on a clock I’ve yet to understand. Anyway, I’ve got this for an excuse now.” She patted her well-rounded stomach.

  Shelby grinned. “I don’t use any.”

  “More power to you.”

  Serena swept into a sun-filled breakfast room that would have been considered large and formal by anything but Daniel MacGregor’s standards. Rich royal-blue drapes were tied back from high windows with thick tassels. The carpet was Aubusson in faded blues and golds.

  “I can’t get over this place.” Shelby wandered to a Chippendale server to study a collection of New England pewter.

  “Neither can I,” Serena said with a laugh. “How do you feel about waffles?”

  Shelby grinned over her shoulder. “I have very warm, friend
ly feelings about waffles.”

  “I knew I liked you,” Serena said with a nod. “Be right back.” She disappeared through a side door.

  Alone, Shelby wandered, studying a muted French landscape, sniffing fresh flowers in a crystal basket. It would take her all weekend to see every room, she decided. And a lifetime to really appreciate everything in them. Yet she felt at home here, she realized while she stared out the window overlooking the south lawn. She was as comfortable with Alan’s family as she was with her own. It should all be so simple for them to love, to marry, to have children…. With a sigh, she rested her forehead against the glass. If it were only so simple for them.

  “Shelby?”

  Straightening, she turned to see Serena quietly studying her. “I’ve brought in some coffee,” she said after a brief hesitation. She hadn’t expected to see those candid gray eyes troubled. “The waffles’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Thanks.” Shelby took a seat at the table while Serena poured. “Alan tells me you run a casino in Atlantic City.”

  “Yes. Justin and I are partners there, and in several other hotels. The rest,” she added as she lifted her cup, “he owns alone … for now.”

  Shelby grinned, liking her. “You’ll convince him he needs a partner in the others as well.”

  “One at a time. I’ve learned how to handle him rather well the last year or so—especially since he lost the bet and had to marry me.”

  “You’re going to have to clear that one up.”

  “He’s a gambler. So am I. We settled on a flip of a coin.” She smiled, remembering. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”

  Laughing, Shelby set down her cup. “Your coin, I take it.”

  “You bet your life. Of course he knew, but in all this time, I’ve never let him see that quarter.” In an unconscious gesture, she rested a hand on her stomach. “Keeps him on his toes.”

  “He’s crazy about you,” Shelby murmured. “You can see it in the way he looks at you when you walk into a room.”

  “We’ve been through a lot, Justin and I.” She lapsed into silence a moment, thinking back over the first stormy months after they met, the love that grew despite them, and the fear of making that final commitment. “Caine and Diana too,” she went on. “Justin and Diana had a difficult childhood. That made it hard for them to give themselves to a relationship. Strange, I think I loved Justin almost from the start, though I didn’t realize it. It was the same for Caine with Diana.” She paused, with her warm, candid eyes on Shelby’s.

  “You MacGregors know your minds quickly.”

  “I wondered if Alan would ever love anyone, until I saw him with you.” She reached across the table to touch Shelby’s hand. “I was so glad when I saw you weren’t the kind of woman I’d been afraid he’d fall for.”

  “What kind was that?” Shelby asked with a half smile.

  “Cool, smooth, a sleek blonde perhaps with soft hands and impeccably boring manners.” Her eyes lit with humor. “Someone I couldn’t bear to have coffee with in the morning.”

  Though Shelby laughed, she shook her head as she sipped again. “She sounds like someone very suited for Senator Alan MacGregor to me.”

  “Suited to the title,” Serena countered, “not the man. And the man’s my brother. He tends to be too serious at times, to work too hard—to care too much. He needs someone to help him remember to relax and to laugh.”

  “I wish that were all he needed,” Shelby said quietly.

  Seeing the trouble shadow Shelby’s eyes again, Serena felt an instant flood of sympathy. With difficulty, she harnessed it, knowing sympathy too often led to interference. “Shelby, I’m not prying—well, maybe just a bit. I really just wanted you to know how I felt. I love Alan very much.”

  Shelby stared into her empty cup before lifting her gaze to Serena’s. “So do I.”

  Serena sat back, wishing she could say something wise. “It’s never just that easy, is it?”

  Shelby shook her head again. “No, no, it’s not.”

  “So, you decided to get up after all.” Alan broke the silence as he came through the doorway. Though he noticed something pass between Shelby and his sister, he didn’t comment.

  “It’s barely ten,” Shelby stated, tilting back her head for the kiss. “Have you eaten?”

  “Hours ago. Any more coffee?”

  “Plenty,” Serena told him. “Just get a cup from the buffet. Have you seen Justin?”

  “Upstairs with Dad.”

  “Ah, plotting some new brilliant financial scheme.”

  “Stud poker,” Alan corrected as he poured coffee. “Dad’s down about five hundred.”

  “Caine?”

  “Down about three.”

  Serena tried to look disapproving and failed. “I don’t know what to do about Justin continuing to fleece my family. How much did you lose?”

  Alan shrugged and sipped. “About one seventy-five.” Catching Shelby’s eye, he grinned. “I only play with Justin for diplomatic reasons.” As she continued to stare he leaned back against the buffet. “And, dammit, one day I’m going to beat him.”

  “I don’t believe gambling’s legal in this state,” Shelby mused, glancing over as the waffles were brought in. “I imagine the fine’s rather hefty.”

  Ignoring her, Alan eyed her plate. “Are you going to eat all those?”

  “Yes.” Shelby picked up the syrup and used it generously. “Since men’s-only clubs are archaic, chauvinistic, and unconstitutional, I suppose I could sit in on a game.”

  Alan watched the waffles disappear. “None of us has ever considered money has a gender.” He twirled one of her curls around his finger. “Are you prepared to lose?”

  Shelby smiled as she slipped the fork between her lips. “I don’t make a habit of it.”

  “I believe I’ll watch for a bit,” Serena considered. “Where are Mom and Diana?”

  “In the gardens,” Alan told her. “Diana wanted a few tips for the house she and Caine just bought.”

  “That should give us an hour or two,” Serena said with a nod as she rose.

  “Doesn’t your mother approve of cards?”

  “My father’s cigars,” Serena corrected as they left the room. “He hides them from her—or she lets him think he does.”

  Remembering Anna’s calmly observant eyes, Shelby decided it was probably the latter. Anna, like Alan, would miss little.

  As they started up the tower steps Daniel’s voice boomed down to them. “Damn your eyes, Justin Blade; you’ve the luck of the devil.”

  “Sore losers, those MacGregors,” Shelby sighed, sliding her gaze to Alan’s.

  “We’ll see if the Campbells can do any better. New blood,” Alan announced from the doorway.

  Smoke hung in the air, the rich, fragrant sting of expensive tobacco. They were using Daniel’s huge old desk as a table, with chairs pulled up to it. The three men looked over as Shelby and Serena walked in.

  “I don’t like taking my wife’s money,” Justin commented, sending her a grin as he clamped a cigar between his teeth.

  “You won’t have the opportunity of trying.” Serena lowered herself to the arm of his chair with a quiet sigh. “Shelby’d like a game or two.”

  “A Campbell!” Daniel rubbed his hands together. “Aye then, we’ll see how the wind blows now. Have a chair, lass. Three raise, ten-dollar limit, jacks or better to open.”

  “If you think you’re going to make up your losses on me, MacGregor,” Shelby said mildly as she took her seat, “you’re mistaken.”

  Daniel made a sound of appreciation. “Deal the cards, boy,” he ordered Caine. “Deal the cards.”

  It took less than ten minutes for Shelby to discover that Justin Blade was the best she’d ever come across. And she’d sat at her share of tables—elegant and not so elegant. Daniel played defiantly, Caine with a combination of impulse and skill, but Justin simply played. And won. Because she knew she was up against a more clever gambler than she, Shelby
fell back on what she considered her best asset. Blind luck.

  Standing idly behind her, Alan watched her discard two hearts, choosing to draw for an inside straight. With a shake of his head, he walked over to the table in the corner to pour himself yet another cup of coffee.

  He liked the way she looked, nearly elbow-to-elbow with his father, their fiery heads bent a bit as they studied their cards. It was strange how easily she had slipped into his life, making a quiet splash that promised endless, fascinating ripples. She fit here, in the odd tower room, playing poker with smoke clogging the air and coffee growing cold and bitter in the cups. And she would fit in an elegant Washington function in a room that shone with light and glitter, sipping champagne from a tulip glass.

  She fit in his arms at night the way no woman ever had, or would, fit again. Alan needed her in his life as much as he needed food, water, and air.

  “A pair of aces,” Daniel said with a fierce look in his eye.

  Justin set his cards down quietly and faceup. “Two pair. Jacks and sevens.” He sat back as Caine swore in disgust.

  “You son of—” In frustration, Daniel broke off, shifting his eyes from his daughter to Shelby. “The devil take you, Justin Blade.”

  “You’re sending him off prematurely,” Shelby commented, spreading her cards. “A straight, from the five to the nine.”

  Alan walked over to look at her cards. “I’ll be damned, she drew the six and seven.”

  “No one but a bloody witch draws an inside straight,” Daniel boomed, glaring at her.

  “Or a bloody Campbell,” Shelby said easily.

  His eyes narrowed. “Deal the cards.”

  Justin grinned at her as Shelby scooped in chips. “Welcome aboard,” he said quietly and began to shuffle.

  They played for an hour, with Shelby sticking to a system of illogic that kept her head above water. Normally she wouldn’t have labeled a twenty-five-dollar take impressive, but considering her competition, she was well pleased. Whether they would have played into the afternoon became academic the minute Daniel heard his wife’s voice drifting up the stairs. Immediately he stubbed out the better part of a seven-dollar cigar, then shoved it and an ashtray under his desk.

  “I’ll raise you five,” he said, leaning on his desk again.

  “You haven’t opened yet,” Shelby reminded him sweetly. Plucking a peppermint from the bowl on his desk, she popped it into his mouth. “Gotta cover all your tracks, MacGregor.”

  Daniel grinned and tousled her hair. “A good lass, Campbell or not.”

  “We should have known they’d be busy losing their money to Justin,” Anna stated as she stepped inside the room with Diana beside her.

  “Lost a trick to the new kid on the block too.” Caine held out a hand for his wife’s.

  “About time Justin had some competition.” Hooking her arms around Caine’s neck, Diana rested her chin on the top of his head. “Anna and I were thinking about a swim before lunch. Anyone interested?”

  “Fine idea.” Daniel eased the ashtray a bit farther under his desk with his foot. “Do you swim, girl?”

  “Yes.” Shelby set down her cards. “But I didn’t bring a suit.”

  “There’s a closetful in the bathhouse,” Serena told her. “You won’t have any trouble finding one to fit.”

  “Really?” She shot Alan a look. “Isn’t that handy? A closetful of suits.”

  He gave her an easy smile. “Didn’t I mention it? A swim sounds good,” he added as he dropped his hands to her shoulders. “I’ve never seen Shelby in a bathing suit.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later Alan found himself in the relaxing heat of the sauna. Instead of Shelby, he was joined by his brother and Justin. Leaning back, letting his muscles relax, he remembered the damp, soft sheen on her skin and the flush of pink that had covered her when he’d held her.

  “I like your taste,” Caine commented and rested his shoulders against the side wall. “Even though it surprised me.”

  Alan opened his eyes enough to bring Caine into focus. “Did it?”

  “Your Shelby isn’t anything like the classy blonde with the, uh, interesting body you were dating a few months ago.” Caine brought up one knee to settle more comfortably. “She wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with Dad.”

  “Shelby isn’t like anyone.”

  “I have to respect someone who draws to an inside straight,” Justin added, stretching out on his back on the bench above Alan. “Serena tells me she suits you.”