It helped that he was only in town temporarily. She didn’t have to worry about long-term consequences. About the secrets she couldn’t ever share.
There’d be no need. He was going to be a lover—she hoped—not a life partner. Or even a lifelong friend.
And if, in the throes of passion, she let something slip from her old self—like she’d admitted that night that she’d never eaten out in such a nice place—then she had to trust herself to find a way out of it. To explain. To cover.
Just as she’d been doing since she’d signed Dana O’Connor out of existence. She knew how to do it.
Had become quite adept.
She could be a grain of sand. A speck of dust in the wind. For a little while. Her son was safe. For the first time since she’d run with him, she had an entire night ahead of her, a night without having to listen for him, to know that it was up to her to keep him safe if anyone broke in...
Tad walked her to the door and hesitated behind her, almost as though he wasn’t going to follow her in.
“You want a fresh glass of wine?” she asked him. “You want to come in?” would probably have been better. She wasn’t going to drink much more. An occasional glass of wine was it for her.
Her father had never raised a hand to her until he started drinking after her mother died.
Not on the job, though. No, he only drank at home. On his days off. When Miranda was trapped there with him, taking the brunt of his anger. All the bitterness at the death of his wife...and for years Miranda had been the recipient of that rage.
Tad nodded and followed her inside. She didn’t ask about the wine again. She just poured some for both of them. But didn’t drink.
She watched him take a sip, knowing, somehow, that he didn’t really want the alcohol any more than she did.
They could sit on the couch. Or go to her room. She had nightstands. They could set their wine down...
She wasn’t all that up on seduction technique.
“It’s nice here,” Tad said, walking barefoot in his suit to the living room, taking a seat on the couch. “You’ve made it comfortable. Peaceful.”
Smiling, she hesitated a second before sitting next to him, curling her feet up on the couch as she turned to him. If she acted all virginal, she might give him the wrong impression.
“My goal is for Ethan to grow up in a healthy happy space. Apart from the rest of the world. Which is why I have so few visitors.”
As soon as the words were out, she knew they were wrong. Gave away too much. Freezing, she started to slide backward in her thinking. To...
“You’ve only been here for what, a year? Since you finished school?”
She’d told him during one of their coffee shop visits that she’d been a PA for a year. That she and Ethan had lived in an apartment building close to his school during the time she’d been in PA school, moving into their current home in Santa Raquel last year. All her hands-on clinical work had been done at the new children’s hospital in Santa Raquel. The story that she’d had help creating for herself, and that she’d given to Tad early on, was that she’d gone to high school in Portland, Oregon—a place she’d visited, so she could speak of it believably—and that she’d dropped out of school to have Ethan. After that, she’d told him, she’d moved to Santa Raquel because of the study program that allowed her to do much of her work online, since the Santa Raquel children’s hospital worked in coordination with an online PA degree program.
The truth was, she’d chosen to become a PA because she’d been in Santa Raquel due to The Lemonade Stand, though she’d never been a resident at the shelter. Then she’d heard of the PA program. With a nursing degree she couldn’t use, needing a new career, the situation had been ideal for her.
That was another time the universe had provided for her after she’d done all she could.
“Yeah we moved in last year during spring break, and most of the stuff is secondhand,” she admitted. “I’m slowly buying new as I can afford it.”
She made good money now. More than she’d ever have made as a nurse. But she put a lot of it away. Some in a bank. Some not.
If she ever had to run again, she wouldn’t be doing it destitute. She’d make it an adventure for Ethan. Taking him someplace decent. Telling him they were on vacation.
Maybe it wouldn’t ever happen. She hoped... Maybe she worried for nothing. But with her father, a man who never gave up, she had to be on alert.
“It doesn’t look secondhand...” He was holding his glass, watching her, not studying her belongings.
His gaze, so warm and intimate, fired her blood, made her wet with wanting, and...he didn’t move. Didn’t lean in as he had at the beach. They weren’t even touching.
He took a sip of wine, breaking eye contact. She sipped, too, a little taste, and when she saw how much her hand was shaking, put her glass down.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked. It was late. They were alone with wine. Wearing sexy clothes.
“What?” His wide-eyed glance might have been comical if she hadn’t been starting to panic. In a way that was wholly new to her. “Something wrong with you? No! Of course not.” And then, in that soft voice of his that made her feel...wanted all over again, he murmured, “Why do you ask?”
“You said you wanted to ask me out. Or you were hinting that you did. We’re...you’re...you and I, you and Ethan. You said you wanted all three of us.”
“I do.” He set his glass down, too. And somehow managed to move a little farther away as he turned toward her and took her hand. “I really do.”
“So? Why is nothing...happening?”
He didn’t say anything. Just studied her. Like he was reading a book or something.
“Ethan’s usually around.” His answer, when it came, was a huge disappointment. And a relief, too.
Only because he was confirming an excuse she’d already come up with. A reality she’d already created.
“But he isn’t here tonight.”
Her father had not taught her to be a woman who threw herself at men. On the contrary, he’d beaten her bloody the first time a boy had kissed her on her front step after a summer dance hosted by their high school—and the great chief had witnessed the unremarkable occurrence.
Buzzkill. Maybe this evening wasn’t a good idea, after all.
“I’m afraid that if I touch you, I won’t stop.”
Tad’s words brought her head up. She saw the truth in the light in his eyes. In the way his jaw clenched. And when she dared to glance lower.
“Who says you have to stop?” she whispered, aware only of him again. Sand. Dust. All would be well.
“Sex complicates things. I don’t want to lose you.”
I don’t want to lose you. She’d dreamed those words. Back when she used to fantasize about meeting a good man, having a husband who’d cherish her as much as she did him.
I don’t want to lose you, she’d cried in Jeff’s arms when she’d finally accepted what he’d known—that he wouldn’t live long enough to see the birth of their son.
“You aren’t going to be around forever,” she reminded Tad.
“Like I said, it’s complicated.”
But not impossible.
He wanted her. And she needed him. To help her get to that normal life she was supposed to live.
She was a woman who didn’t trust, but she trusted Tad. Enough to have him in her home. To give him time with Ethan. To want to share her body with him.
She was horny as hell and maybe she wasn’t thinking straight, but it felt so...good. So right.
“I’ve never felt anything like this before. Been turned on like this.” She couldn’t keep it to herself anymore. “It’s making me crazy. I think about you all the time, about how you looked that day in the examining room with your pants down around your ankles...”
Just saying the words made her heat up. She reached for her wine, took another sip. So yeah, usually one glass was her limit, but there was nothing usual about this night.
“Surely you must’ve been attracted to Ethan Sr.,” Tad said. He had a look in his eye, a wanting, that reached right inside her.
She didn’t want the wine anymore. She wanted Tad. For real. Needing him to know her in ways no one else had.
“I...wasn’t attracted to him,” she said slowly. “Not sexually, at any rate.” She was attracted to his heart. To his friendship.
And could tell this part of the story. There’d be no way to trace what had happened between her and Jeff.
They’d never dated. No one had suspected.
“You had a child with a man you weren’t sexually attracted to?” His frown showed concern, but the edge in his voice sounded suspicious, and he seemed more like a detective sensing something criminal. “Did he rape you?”
She might have seen that coming if she’d been herself.
“No!” Oh, God, no. While the lie might be a good cover, she couldn’t let it stand. “I’d just...never...” She faltered. “He was a friend. A close friend. I wasn’t into partying and drinking, and sometimes he’d stay back and hang out with me. Mostly we talked. Trusted each other with things we never told anyone else. We’d both grown up in foster homes and it bonded us.” Her father’s abuse, his birth mother and then foster father’s abuse, that was what had bonded them.
“The car accident I told you about, that killed him...” The football game. She’d been there, standing on the sidelines, cheering for his fraternity. “He didn’t die immediately.” He’d had long enough to find his long-lost brother, contact him. The guy had offered insincere commiseration, asked for money and then moved on.
“But he knew he was going to die,” she went on. “The one thing he wanted was to have a child, a legacy, part of himself to continue on in the world. He wanted that with me. And he wanted his child to be connected to me. Someone who would give me unconditional love. When he first talked to me about it, I didn’t think he was serious. But he wouldn’t let go of the idea. And the more he talked about it, the more I saw that if I did as he asked, he’d be able to die peacefully. I had to give that to him. I knew I wanted children someday, and if that day came sooner...”
Her biggest concern had been her father. He’d gone nuts when she’d just kissed a guy. The second she’d come in the house and shut the door. As far as she knew, he’d only taken it out on her, not the boy she’d gone out with. The date had been during the summer between her junior and senior years of high school, and she’d stayed home until she healed. But the guy had never called her again—not that their date, or the kiss, had been that great. And not one guy had asked her out in her senior year, either.
If that kind of reaction had happened after just a kiss, no telling what he’d do to her, or Jeff, if she turned up pregnant without a husband or full-time job. She’d been going home less and less since leaving for college and hadn’t gone at all during the months her pregnancy was showing. She’d been petrified of what he’d do.
And had known that eventually she’d have to tell him. He was her father. He still insisted on birthdays and holidays together.
“You’re saying Ethan was conceived on purpose with someone with whom you’d had no sexual relationship?”
She nodded. “And it wasn’t all that terrific for either of us,” she admitted. “The sex, I mean.” Jeff had struggled to even make it happen. They were so close emotionally, and physically it had been so awkward...
“Was he your first?”
She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask that. But nodded.
“And since Ethan...there’s been no one?”
More to the point, “I haven’t felt even a hint of wanting someone.” She’d never been fully turned on in her life, until him.
Having endured beatings that escalated over time from a man she’d loved and trusted sometimes did that to a girl. Squelched her ability to feel attractive to men. To be turned on by them. Or so she’d been told in counseling. She’d only been eleven the first time he’d hit her. He’d apologized almost immediately and then gently explained how it had been her fault for clinging to him and crying, for reaching for him over and over, after her mother’s funeral. With it being her fault, she’d been loath to mention her bad, clingy, needy behavior to anyone else.
He’d been smart, too. Always hitting her where it wouldn’t show.
“And you weren’t molested?” His gaze was intent.
“No.” From what she’d learned since she’d reinvented herself, she was lucky on that score. She looked him straight in the eye as she answered him.
After a long moment of studying her, he asked, “So, why me?”
His question was fair.
“I have absolutely no idea.” It was the truth. “I just know that if you don’t kiss me, I’m going to cry myself to sleep tonight.” Being honest was one thing; too much information was another. It felt as if once she’d opened her well of secrets, anything that could slip out by chance did so.
“Well, we can’t have that...” His voice had dropped to almost a whisper, a guttural one, as he moved slowly forward, sliding his arm behind her, and pulled her closer to him. She ended up with her breasts against his chest. The contact sent immediate electric shards of warmth down to her crotch.
His lips touched hers and all thought fled. There was only sensation. Incredible, delicious, delightful sensation. She opened her mouth at his probing, eager for whatever he had to give her. To show her.
Eager to learn. To do.
To know what being with him would be like.
He moved lower, kissing her jaw, her neck. He smelled like some kind of musky man something and as his day’s growth of stubble rubbed against her sensitive skin, she shivered with a need for more.
Her hands moved over him, exploring the muscles in his chest, his arms. Exploring his back. Noticing the differences between his body and hers. Getting turned on by those differences.
And from knowing those were Tad’s hands on her. That it was him she was touching.
“Are you okay?” he asked, drawing her attention to the fact that she’d stopped moving.
“Better than okay,” she told him. She could stare into his brown eyes all night. She ran her fingers through his hair. “I just like having the privilege of touching you.”
Maybe she was odd. And no good at love talk. But she had to be herself. Her deep-down true self. The one without a name who lived both lives within her.
“I hereby grant you that privilege anytime you want it,” he said, groaning as he drew her even closer, lying down on the couch with her mostly on top of him.
“We could go to my bedroom,” she offered, playing with a button on his shirt, wanting to unfasten it. To feel his skin against her fingers.
His hands were still touching her back but not holding on.
“I know,” she added, “it’s complicated. No strings attached, Tad. Just come to bed with me. Please?”
She’d probably die remembering these moments in the morning, but she was a woman who’d awakened from a hellacious nightmare and had this opportunity. He’d be gone soon, back to his own life.
She would come to her senses; she already knew she couldn’t be part of a long-term, committed relationship because she couldn’t lie to her partner, even by omission.
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” he told her.
She might have laughed at the irony of that statement, but was too far gone, desperate to get naked next to him while she could. Moving her pelvis against his rigid penis, she said, “It seems like you want this as much as I do.”
It didn’t take a lot of experience to know some things.
He kissed her. Long and deep. Then looked her in the eye again. “I’ve ne
ver wanted a woman more than I want you right now.”
That was all she needed to know. Standing, she held out a hand to him. He took it. Stood up and then, when she would’ve walked down the hall with him, he scooped her up and carried her.
Chapter 17
Tad was pretty sure he wasn’t thinking straight—or thinking with his brain at all—as he fell down onto Miranda’s double bed with her still in his arms. He just knew there was no way he was sending this woman off to cry herself to sleep. To believe she wasn’t enough. Or desired.
This whole situation was beyond rationalizing, in a sphere where right and wrong didn’t exist. The need was devastating. And mutual. It had to happen.
So he quit fighting the inevitable.
“Tell me what you want,” he said as he pulled his lips from hers and saw her looking up at him, those big blue eyes wide. Her blinds were closed, but she had some kind of night-light in the adjoining bathroom and it spread soft, subtle light over portions of the bed.
“I want to unbutton your shirt.”
Slipping off his jacket and tie, he tossed them toward the end of the bed, then lay back against the pillows. She had them stacked two deep and he sank into them with pleasure. “Have at it,” he said, smiling at her.
Slowly, she tended to his shirt. With each button, he could feel the soft brush of her fingers against his skin, first his chest and then lower. He could feel the passion fueling his body’s need for release growing more and more intense, too. Her movements were mind-blowingly hot and excruciating, but he didn’t stop her. When she finally reached the bottom of his shirt, he waited—partially to give himself time to recover enough so he could continue without ending things prematurely, and partially out of curiosity.
What would she do next, this glorious feminine mixture of knowing and innocence? Of strength and vulnerability. The cleavage that had been teasing him all night was above him, a temptation he was savoring. But he willed himself enough control to be able to uncover her gifts slowly, to touch and taste and know them thoroughly.
Pulling wide the edges of his shirt, she put both hands on his lower belly, and his hips thrust upward with the force of his reaction. Seeming not to notice, she slowly moved both palms upward, fingers splayed, covering every inch of skin on his abdomen, his ribs, then his chest. She rubbed her face in the hair and flicked her tongue against his nipples before taking them between her fingers, touching softly.
Her Detective's Secret Intent Page 13