Don't Stop Me

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  “And the business with the story?” she said as she looked up to him. The shyness in her expression had his heart melting a little more.

  “Taken care of, just like I said.” He reached out and slid his other arm around John. “So let’s say we have Nora whip us up a celebratory lunch,” he said, and he walked out of his office with his family, one he’d never expected to have.

  Chapter 28

  The Elusive McCabes

  “I’m going home,” Fiona tossed out over her shoulder as the water ran down her back.

  “We’ve already decided this,” Vic said. “You are home.”

  His heart squeezed. He couldn’t stop himself from pushing even though he knew Fiona was not a woman who could be pushed. He continued, though, running the soap over her back in the shower they were sharing.

  “Vic, I had a moment of weakness. I still have a business in Bellevue, and while it may not be on your scale, it’s something I’ve worked hard for, it took me years to build it, and it’s mine.” She rinsed off in the water and then stepped around him, patting her hand on his stomach before stepping out the glass door of the huge shower that made up part of his en suite.

  He fisted his hand and then had to let it go. Fiona was so unbending, and he couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t just be happy here with him. He had so much, and he wanted to provide for her and John. He turned off the shower and stepped out, seeing Fiona with a white bath towel wrapped around her and tucked over her breasts. She was wiping the steam from the mirror with her hand.

  “John is starting that private school tomorrow and you’re going to just up and leave?” he said, but as soon as he did so he could see how Fiona stilled.

  “John can finish out the year at home. I’m sure the private school is great, but he has friends in Bellevue, and he knows his teachers…” She had turned around and was resting against the edge of the sink, looking down. What was going through her head?

  He was at a loss for words. She wasn’t someone he could order around and tell what to do. She was far from an ordinary woman.

  She said nothing as she pushed away from the counter and walked into his bedroom, where he’d asked his housekeeper to move her clothes. He reached for a towel and ran it over his head as he followed her out, the tile warm on his feet. He wrapped a towel around his hips and could feel water beading down his back.

  He just stood there, watching as she pulled on clean underwear, a bra, a peach shirt, and jeans. She sat with her back to him on the edge of the bed, which was rumpled from him having just spent the last hour making love to her. He was rediscovering every nuance of her body, and he could say now that he knew so many things about what made Fiona so distinct, so damn interesting. He was at a loss now to explain how she could have gone from so hot to so cold and indifferent. Was something up?

  “Are you going to stand there and stare at me all night?” She lifted her head as she pulled on socks, but she didn’t turn to look at him.

  “Let me get this straight. You’ve suddenly decided you’re not living here. You plan to just leave with John. And us, what is this?” No woman had ever turned him upside down like Fiona had, and she was mixed with so much of Badra that he wondered whether she even knew that the girl she’d tried to bury was still in there. He knew her so well, but all those missing years had changed a piece of her. He wondered whether he’d ever be able to reach her again.

  She was still on the bed, sitting with her back to him, and he could see how she was reacting to him just watching her. What was she holding on to? Something, he was sure of that much now. Had something changed in the hour since he’d buried himself inside her, allowing himself to feel her? He knew damn well that she wasn’t immune to him. She wasn’t that practiced. That was the only time she couldn’t pretend with him.

  He waited and expected her to turn to him. That was what women did, but he should have known Fiona wasn’t like any other woman. He’d be waiting a long time before she slid into that predictable mold. Forced to cave, dammit, he took a step to the bed, seeing her tense again and then slide around as he came to stand in front of her. He was tired of her back and wanted to see what she was hiding. Her expression showed everything.

  “Fiona, what is this? Don’t you think I deserve more from you? I hardly think you’re the type of woman who changes her mind every five minutes.”

  “What would you know? Seriously, if we’re being honest with each other, a lot of years have passed since we were together, and a lot has happened, molding us into different people. You don’t know me, though you may think you do.” She stood up, and her expression was odd. She held on to every thought and feeling, sharing with no one.

  “I know you’ve had to hide who you are. You have no close friends because you would have had to share a little about yourself, and you’re terrified. You’ve been hiding for so long that you don’t even realize how you’ve isolated yourself. You don’t trust people. I can see the tug of war happening inside here.” He touched her head, and her eyes widened. She looked away even though he’d seen her moment of panic. Didn’t she realize her mistake?

  “You think you’re so smart, that you can read me?” she said. “Well, read this. I’m not someone to blindly go along with anything or anyone. My joyriding days are over. I’m not going to kick all my good sense out the door or rely on you or anyone or tell myself that you might know better, that I can just sit back and let you make decisions for me, for John. I’m not a fool, Vic. I was then, all those years ago, and maybe for a moment I allowed myself to get caught up in being with you…” She stopped talking. With her, it was like one step forward and two back.

  “I don’t understand, Fiona. You’re saying you don’t trust me? I did just what I said. I buried the story and you and John are safe. John is my son. We’re a family.”

  She stepped around him, and it wasn’t lost on him how careful she was not to touch him when even moments ago in the shower her hands had run freely over him, feeling, enjoying, taking. He knew when someone was evading him.

  “Fiona.” He reached out and touched her arm, holding her so she couldn’t take another step away, and her eyes went sharply to his hand as she stiffened. He lifted his hand away and held both up. “What’s going through that head of yours? There are some things you can’t lie about.”

  The way she responded to him, her body leaning closer to him… She did so more and more every time they were together. It was something she couldn’t hide. She couldn’t stop her body from needing his touch.

  “We’re not a family. You’ve protected my secret, and I’m grateful to you, but we’ll be okay.” When she looked over to him, he could see she was trying to convince herself of this. Damn, she was stubborn. What the hell?

  “So you’re expecting to just walk out of here, to go back to Bellevue and run your shop. John will return to the school there, and I’m supposed to, what, fuck right off out of your life?” He shrugged, resting his hand on his hip, touching the towel.

  “Now you’re being an ass. I’m not standing here justifying—”

  He ripped off the towel and tossed it on the bed, and she was now looking anywhere except at him as the color rose in her cheeks. “I want you,” he said. “I’ve never begged for any woman ever, and me wanting you and wanting to have a life with you isn’t something I’m doing lightly. We have a past and a future.”

  “Tell me, Vic, how many women do you have in your life right now that are your future?” She was looking right at him, confident and pissed. Seriously, what the hell?

  “No one, just you.”

  Something was off. She strode to the bedside table, digging into each step. She yanked it open and lifted out a lacy black thong, holding it up and out as if she despised it. “Then tell me who this belongs to.”

  As he took in the expression on her face, her eyes sparking with a fire he’d come to love in her, he didn’t have a clue what to say.

  Chapter 29

  Instead of answering her, Vic
seemed to close down as he turned away, reached for a black robe tossed over a side chair, and shrugged it on. It wasn’t until he’d belted the robe and seemed to roll his shoulders, taking a step to her, that she realized he was considering what to say, and her heart sank a little more.

  She was still holding the lacy black thong, wondering how a woman could wear such a thing, and she finally dropped it onto the bed, wanting her hands off some stranger’s intimates. “So you’re not going to answer me?” She gritted her teeth until her jaw ached. Why was she so angry?

  He looked over to her, and he wasn’t acting embarrassed or awkward, but then she didn’t think Vic McCabe could ever behave in such a way. He was so deliberate in everything he did and said, and of course now she wanted to slug him.

  “I see what this is.” He actually smiled and gestured toward the thong. “You think there’s someone else.” He was still walking toward her, and he stopped only to reach down, take the underwear, and then walk over and dump it in the trash. “Then let me put your mind at ease: There’s no one.”

  He said it so matter of factly, as if this would be the end of it, as if he simply expected Fiona to drop it and everything would be just fine.

  “I’m sorry, I find a woman’s thong under your bed and I’m supposed to just let it go because you say so? No!” she said, still bothered at having found it under the bed in the first place—not that she’d gone looking for it. It was ridiculous, really. She’d been on her knees, gathering up the clothes they’d tossed on the floor before landing in bed the night before. It was something she didn’t want the housekeeper, Nora, doing. It was too personal, and she couldn’t have explained the feeling to anyone. “Who was she?”

  It was so instant, the fire that filled his expression. She knew he had a temper from before, and now it was so much a part of him that she wondered how many people he’d scared with it. He was naturally intimidating, but this made him seem like someone she’d be a fool to mess with, except she wasn’t buying it. As he stood there, not saying a word, his entire expression was screaming for her to drop it.

  So she stood there and crossed her arms. “I’ve seen this tactic you use. It won’t work on me. I asked you who she is.”

  “She’s no one.” He looked away.

  “Of course she isn’t. She left her intimates here, and probably not long ago, because from what I’ve seen of Nora, this isn’t something that would go unnoticed. There’s no dust under your bed.”

  “What the fuck does dust have to do with anything?”

  Didn’t he get it? His room was clean, spotless. The underwear would have been picked up when the floor was cleaned. “You have a housekeeper on top of things, unless it’s…” She couldn’t picture Nora in a thong. “Nora?”

  Vic gave her a look as if she’d lost her mind. “Seriously, you now think I’m banging my housekeeper?”

  Of course, as she took in Vic and thought of Nora, it didn’t fit. “No, I guess not, but I’m serious, Vic. You say there’s no one, but evidence doesn’t lie.”

  “You’re not going to drop this, are you?” he said, stepping into his huge walk-in closet and dropping his housecoat. He stepped into black briefs before pulling on jeans that made his ass look even better—and naked, the man was a work of art. Then it dawned on her.

  “You don’t know her name? Seriously?”

  He wasn’t looking at her, but she could see his face and the expression he couldn’t hide.

  “I told you she was no one.” He had his back to her, and she took in the scars there from when he’d gone through a plate glass window, or so he’d said. She wanted more, and his body was telling her a story. There was so much she didn’t know about this elusive McCabe and the secrets he was holding on to.

  “To herself she isn’t,” Fiona said. “I can tell you that.”

  He was holding white socks now and sitting on a padded bench at the foot of the bed. “They knew the rules.”

  “Rules, what rules?” This was sounding strange, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he was mixed up in.

  “I’m not involved with another woman, but fucking one and never seeing her again isn’t being involved, it’s just sex. Is that what you want to know, that I picked up a woman, screwed her, never asked her name, and she didn’t know mine? No commitment, nothing personal.”

  It was so cold. She’d never heard him speak so impersonally of someone, as if this woman didn’t matter—or women, was it? “So you slept with her…”

  “I fucked her, them. I slept with you. There’s a difference,” he added as if making a valid point, but to her it wasn’t.

  “Them. How many?” Good Lord, did this man have a harem?

  He was shaking his head, and the exasperation in his expression wasn’t lost on her. He wanted this conversation to end. “So this whole thing of you wanting to go home is because of some woman’s…underwear?”

  “It’s about sharing everything about yourself. I seemed to fall into this false sense that everything was going to be sunshine and butterflies. Jesus, what the hell was I thinking? You were trouble when I was young. Now…”

  His expression was unforgiving, and she regretted what she’d said the moment it was out of her mouth. “Really, I’m what? Say it!” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.” She shut her eyes a second just to ground herself. When she opened them, he was still there, watching, waiting, and he had no intention of making this easy. “Yes, it’s because I realized there’s someone else.”

  He was shaking his head, his back to her again, reaching for the damp towel on the bed. He ran it over his wet hair and tossed it in a hamper over by the bathroom, and she took in his naked back, the scars. She needed to know so much.

  “You hide yourself,” she said.

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a navy shirt. “So do you. You think I have a corner on keeping myself hidden? You’re still doing it. You were ready to run out the door.”

  “No, I’m going home.” She had to interrupt him, because he didn’t get the fact that she had a business that was being looked after by staff she couldn’t depend on forever. She had things to do, she had a home and a whole life, and John had a life, too. She had to remind herself this escape into Vic’s world was a fairy tale, that it couldn’t be real.

  “There’s no one in my life but you. Those women meant nothing. What, you don’t believe me?” He was holding his shirt, standing in front of her as he rested his hand under her jaw and lifted. He had the most amazing deep brown eyes. His dark hair was damp and curling at the ends, and she couldn’t stop her hands from resting on his chest, running over his pecs, feeling his reaction for her. His hand rested over hers.

  “Fiona?” He traced his finger over her jaw and around her cheek to her own damp hair, which she’d yet to brush.

  “I do believe you, but it pisses me off,” she said. “I mean, how many women have you had here?”

  He lifted his gaze to the ceiling and groaned.

  “Seriously, you don’t know?” she said.

  “I told you it was just sex, nothing more. I’m a guy. I didn’t count.” He wasn’t answering, and she wondered if he had any idea how bad that was. To women, it was never just sex. “Are you going to let it go?” he finally asked as he squeezed the shirt and tossed it on the bed, and she ran her hands over his shoulders. She loved touching him. It did something to her that made her feel like a woman, one who was wanted.

  “Are you still seeing any of them?”

  “No. I never saw them to begin with. I told you it’s only you.” Some men would lie about something like this, but not Vic. He really didn’t care about them. It was in his voice, the coldness, as if he didn’t even see them as people. It was troubling, and it should have bothered her, but she knew he was telling the truth, and that meant more.

  She rose up on her tiptoes as his hands slid over her ass, pulling her to him, touching her lips to his. “What about the scars on your back?” she said as s
he pulled away, her arms looped over his shoulders.

  This time he rested his hands over her hips and set her down, moving away from her as he reached for his shirt and pulled it on. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. “Told you it was an accident. Went through a window. Nothing more.”

  The way he’d suddenly dismissed her and put distance between them, covering up those tiny marks, was troubling. There was a lot more to the story, and it was something Vic wasn’t comfortable sharing.

  Chapter 30

  The private school wasn’t some fancy building. It was an older former public elementary school that the state had sold off, and it had been transformed into the Hartford Center. With a tuition of sixty grand a year, it was nothing to sneeze at, but for Vic that was a drop in the bucket.

  He pulled into an empty spot in the full parking lot and took in a very quiet John in the back. Fiona was staring straight ahead, saying nothing. “Well, we’re here. Let’s go in, take a look.”

  No one said anything, but John was frowning, staring out the window at all the kids being dropped off by all manner of cars and trucks. Every one of the kids was wearing a dark blue blazer, the girls in skirts, the boys in dress pants.

  “They’re wearing uniforms.” John was still staring out the window, and Fiona had no expression on her face at all.

  “It’ll be fine. Besides, I’m sure you’ll look great. You’ll never have to figure out what you want to wear.” He opened his door and then realized neither Fiona nor John was moving. “Seriously, you two, come on.”

  They both climbed out, and Vic watched as mother and son seemed to take in the preppy kids gathering in groups as they walked into the school.

  “This is the best school in the state,” Vic said. “Just give it a chance.” He’d paid a hefty donation to ensure they created a spot for John mid-semester.