Lovers' Reunion (Silhouette Treasury 90s)

by Anne Marie Winston

  “So we’ll take it slow, until you decide how you feel.” His voice was sincere. And complacent.

  Her fine dark brows drew into twin lines of annoyance. “You aren’t listening to me.”

  “Yes, I am.” He reached across the table and took her hand, carrying it to his lips. First he pressed a gentle kiss into her open palm. Then, when she drew her fingers closed defensively, he turned over her fist and kissed each knuckle across the back of her hand. When he got to the end, he started back, but this time she felt his tongue, lightly probing the sensitive flesh between her fingers as his hot breath rushed over her hand. He looked up at her over their hands, and the heat burning in his gaze seared her senses and made her aware of every inch of her feminine form. And of his equally masculine one.

  Then he withdrew his mouth and carried their hands down to the table again. “I just don’t agree with what you said.”

  “My, oh, my.” A dark-haired woman in a trim business suit carrying a take-out bag fanned herself with her hand as she passed them on her way out the door. “I could feel the heat clear over here. You ever decide you don’t want him, honey, you just send him my way.”

  “Why don’t you just take him now?” Sophie muttered as the woman moved on.

  Marco sat back, his dimples flashing. “See? Most women consider me a prize.”

  “That,” she said, tossing down her napkin and rising, “is because the poor, misguided fools don’t know any better.”

  “There you go, hurting my feelings again.” He might have a damaged knee, but he still managed to reach the door and hold it open for her, then drape a hard, warm arm around her as they started down the street. “It’s a good thing I have a tough hide.”

  They walked the rest of the way back to her office in silence. She was very aware of his tall presence at her side, his muscled arm around her, the heat of his body where it brushed hers. He made her feel small and feminine and protected. All ridiculous, all totally inappropriate for a career woman of the nineties, used to taking care of herself. She should move away. The only reason she didn’t was because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was getting to her.

  The only reason.

  On the sidewalk in front of the clinic, he drew her to a halt and used the arm around her shoulders to reel her in lazily, turning her toward him until he had her body pressed against his torso, her breasts flattened against the side of his chest, with her hips almost straddling one long, firm thigh. “See you tonight,” he murmured as he kissed her hair.

  “Tonight?” She could barely think for the sensations charging through her, making her want to go with him right now to a dim, cool room with a big, warm bed. It drove her crazy that she couldn’t say no to him with any degree of success, but another part of her was stupidly glad that he still wanted her so much.

  “Tonight. Unless you have other plans. You can feed me dinner, and then I’ll show you the apartment I just signed a lease on.” He used his free hand to tilt her chin up and lowered his head until his mouth hovered an inch from hers. “Is it a date?”

  “I—yes.” She wanted that mouth, wanted to feel it moving on hers, wanted to feel him moving on her, within her, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But that thought led her inevitably back to the life she’d intended to have, her life with Kirk. Stiffening her limbs, she pushed at his heavy shoulders. “No. Stop it. We’re on a public street in front of my workplace.”

  He released her, but his dark eyes assessed her face as if he knew what battle was being fought within her. “I’ll bring wine and dessert.”

  “No. I don’t want you to come over.” She was calmer now that she could think again. “Just because we’re a good physical combination doesn’t mean I intend to start a relationship with you, Marco.”

  “A good physical combination?” His mouth kicked up at one corner while he tried to keep a straight face. “Quaint phrase. Are you trying to tell me you’re as hot and bothered right now as I am? Do you know what you do to me, Sophie? How hard I get just thinking about being with you?”

  She put her hand over his mouth, but was immediately sorry when he captured her wrist and held her hand there, drawing more of the secret sensual patterns in her palm with his tongue, watching her the whole time as she fought knees suddenly too weak to support her.

  Somehow she found the strength to tear her hand from his mouth, to turn and stand with her back to him, arms hugging herself as she gasped for breath. Fear put out the raging blaze in her system, an intense female wariness extinguishing desire. He’d hurt her once and she knew instinctively that he would do it again. “No,” she said quietly. “I do not want this, Marco.”

  There was a long silence behind her. Finally, equally quietly, he said, “All right.” His voice was dull, lifeless, and she turned back to see him standing with his hands in his pockets, studying the sidewalk. “I apologize for making a pest of myself. I just feel ... I don’t know, as if I’ve lost everything that made me who I am already. I didn’t want to lose you, too, when I saw the chance to have the kind of relationship we should have had years ago.” He put out his hand and squeezed her shoulder once, gently, before letting his hand drop again. “I’ll see you around.”

  “See you around.” She hurried inside, not waiting to see him drive away.

  For over an hour she managed to keep herself busy enough to forget about him. But the moment she sat down at the battered desk in her office, he was there in her head again, as if he’d never left.

  The expression on his face as he’d accepted her edict had been weary and accepting. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she had hurt him.

  It was the most desperate kind of manipulation, she told herself, playing on her sympathy, and the worst part about it was that she’d already fallen for it once since he’d landed back in her life. But she knew him well enough by now to realize that there were some grains of truth contained in his words.

  How would she feel in the same situation? Lost and alone. Very alone.

  And she knew what that was like.

  Still, she couldn’t let him manipulate her.

  Then the thought came to her. It was so daring, so completely out of character for her that she nearly dismissed it. But still...

  Why couldn’t she have a relationship with him—on her terms? Why deny herself? Life had cheated her once, and now she had nothing. She was an adult now; surely she could handle a casual relationship that included a sexual element. People did it all the time. And that probably would suit Marco far more than if she threw herself at him declaring undying love.

  As long as she kept in mind that he would leave again one day, she should be able to handle it.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached for the phone, dialing the familiar number of his parents’ home.

  “Hello?” The deep voice was Marco’s.

  She blew out a sigh of relief that she hadn’t had to speak to his folks. “Marco?”

  “Sophie?” His tone sharpened.

  “Yes, it’s me.” She rushed on. “I was thinking—maybe I was wrong—would you like to come over for dinner this evening?”

  The silence on the other end of the line stretched so long that she began to wonder if the connection had been broken. Then he said, “I’d like that very much.” His voice was quiet. “Did you have a time in mind?”

  She took a deep breath, deliberately shutting the door on her reservations. “How does seven o’clock sound? That’ll give me time to get something ready, a fast pasta, probably.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled, glad that he couldn’t see her because her lips were trembling. “See you at seven.”

  “Six. I’ll help you with it.”

  “Six, then.”

  “See you then, beautiful.” And he hung up.

  Before six o’clock she was going to have to do some serious soul searching, decide how much of herself she was willing to share w
ith Marco this time. Until he left again.

  She got home in plenty of time, and she took a quick shower and washed her hair before layering and baking a vegetable lasagna that was her mother’s recipe—and his mother’s, too, come to think of it. Her hair was still wet by the time she’d finished tossing a salad, and she got out her hair drier and blew it for a few minutes until the roots felt less damp. It was so thick and full that it took forever to dry. She’d cut it to shoulder length the summer before her wedding and had kept it the same ever since. She studied herself in the long mirror on the back of her bathroom door as she straightened from putting the drier away.

  A delicate woman with a heart-shaped face and masses of curly black hair studied her. It was still a shock, after more than three years, not to see the well-padded person she’d been. She hadn’t lost so much weight, less than twenty pounds. But what she had lost, she’d lost in all the right places. Still, she’d accepted the fact that even at this weight, her figure resembled the Venus de Milo more than Twiggy, and she rarely thought about it anymore.

  Until now. She wanted Marco to like what he saw. He’d called her beautiful. But then, he’d called her beautiful years before, too. At least that was one thing she never had to worry about with Marco. He’d known her first when she was what her father called “pleasingly plump,” and he’d liked what he’d seen, even then.

  The doorbell rang, and the woman in the mirror jumped. Her stomach leaped and bounded wildly, and she forced herself to take a deep breath. She knew she’d agreed to more than a simple friendship this afternoon. And after what had occurred between them the other evening at the party, she couldn’t pretend any longer that friendship was all there was between them.

  Exactly what it was wasn’t something she’d been able to label, though she’d worried at it all afternoon. The doorbell rang again and she turned and walked through her condo to the door. She opened it and met Marco’s eyes, dark, disturbing, blatantly examining her figure in the leggings and long sweater she’d worn. He looked down her body, and slowly back up, and she let him, simply standing there as if waiting for his approval.

  He wore black jeans and a short-sleeved black T-shirt. The combination emphasized the tough, strong lines of his body and turned him from a handsome, teasing man to a devastatingly rugged, sexually compelling, untamed male... a male who was looking at her as if she was a female in heat.

  The silence stretched between them a beat too long. But when she finally remembered to open her mouth to invite him in, he stepped forward before she could even get out a hello.

  His big hands spanned her waist and his face became a blur as he found her mouth with his, invading the tender depths with deep, penetrating strokes of his tongue that devastated her defenses. He pulled her against his body, and she whimpered as her hips met and recognized the growing demand of his. Her breasts pressed into him and her nipples came alive, sending heated messages down to her womb to ache and throb.

  Somewhere in the heated moment, she realized she was standing on her toes, straining against him, that she had put her arms around his neck and was kissing him back with the same desperate need he was showing her.

  Why had she thought this was so wrong? As long as she didn’t let herself pretend that there was any element of permanence in it, everything would be fine.

  She ran one hand up to comb through his silky black curls and flatten against his skull, pressing her body to his, and his hard, hot male frame pressed right back. He was solidly aroused now, and he groaned as his hands slid down to her hips, holding her in place so that he could grind the unyielding length of his erection against her.

  “Wait.” He tore his mouth away and held her at arm’s length.

  Sophie blinked, still caught in her responses to his overpowering sensuality. “What for?” she said in a teasing tone. She was seized by a longing, an urgent desire to see his body, to touch all the hard flesh that felt so wonderful against every inch of her, and she ran her fingers from the hollow at the base of his throat down his chest to press her palms against the packed musculature that defined his body. But she was unprepared for the naked surge of male hunger that hardened his dark features into a grim mask of need.

  “If you don’t stop that,” he said between his teeth, “I’m going to lay you down right here in this open doorway and tear every stitch of clothing off you. Then I’m going to make a place for myself right here—” his hand briefly slid down to press the plump folds between her legs and moved away again before she could do more than draw a startled breath “—and get inside you and make you want me as badly as I want you.” His voice was hoarse and almost angry sounding, and the rough words frightened her a little bit even as they thrilled her.

  The only other man she’d ever been with besides Marco was Kirk, and he’d been gentle and careful, never rough and urgent and wild. She tensed in his grip, sliding her hands away from him. “I do want you,” she admitted, “but I’m not ready for that.”

  She’d thought he might be petulant, mad at her withdrawal, so when he chuckled as he released her, she could only stare at him with a question in her eyes.

  “You could have fooled me.” He gently pushed her on into her apartment and closed the door. “Your definition of ready must have come from a different dictionary than mine.”

  She reached for dignity, decided she might as well forget it. “It’s exactly this kind of behavior that makes me think it’s a mistake to be seeing you,” she told him.

  “Why? You like it as much as I do.” He hefted the bag and walked past her into her kitchen.

  “I like ice cream, too, but I don’t have it for every meal,” she said, trailing after him.

  “Relax.” He shot her the grin that weakened her knees every time he used it. She suspected he’d practiced that expression on a lot of women in a lot of places with much the same effect. “You can have as much of me as you want without gaining a pound.”

  There was just no way to answer that. His words raised images better left unseen, and she hurried around the counter to find a corkscrew to open the wine bottle he withdrew from the sack. She should know better than to get into verbal games with Marco. He had the quickest brain she’d ever seen; it was rare for anyone, even in his own family, to best him.

  “So what did you do the rest of the afternoon?” he asked, his eyes gleaming. He knew exactly what effect his words had had on her, darn him! He took the corkscrew from her and opened the wine with a few deft, powerful twists, though he didn’t add anything else of a personal nature.

  She realized he was giving her the space she needed, and she gratefully seized the opportunity while she turned to get two glasses down from the cupboard. “Remember the baby I was keeping a few weeks ago?”

  He nodded, smiling. “Your baby.”

  “Yes.” She smiled, too, though a small pang squeezed her heart, and accepted the glass of wine he offered her. “I visited her mother today. She isn’t sure she wants Ana back.” The memory of the conversation clouded her eyes.

  “Why not?” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe her.

  “The mother is barely sixteen. She was abused by an uncle and she ran away from home when she met Ana’s father. They married when she got pregnant. Her family won’t take her back now, or the baby. And she’s afraid if she stays with her husband he’s going to harm her. Or worse, hurt Ana.”

  “But can’t you help her get on her feet and keep the baby?” He perched on a stool at the counter and watched her arrange spinach salad on two plates.

  “Yes. That’s what I do.” She shrugged. “But I can’t do anything unless the person wants help. She feels desperate, and afraid, and overwhelmed by the idea of caring for Ana alone.”

  “That’s sad.” He picked up his wineglass and she noticed the way his big hand cradled the fragile crystal. “I see people in desperate circumstances all the time in Third World countries.” He grimaced. “I did, I mean. And I’ve never gotten used to seeing the poverty, the
disease and malnutrition.... I know I should probably want Ana’s mother to keep her, but part of me says that little girl would be better off in an adoptive home.”

  Sophie nodded. “Possibly. But it would be a foster care placement for a while, and given what’s happened in the courts these days, a lot of people won’t touch it anymore.”

  “Foster care.” He grimaced. “If someone is willing to love and cherish a child whose own parents don’t want it or haven’t taken care of it, they should be allowed to adopt it. Some parents shouldn’t have any rights. I’d like to take the judges who make these decisions to the slums of Brazil or the streets of India, so they can see what’s happening to the children while they waste words and money and time. Having a little boy die in your arms tends to change your point of view pretty quickly.”

  He pulled out her chair and seated her, then sat down across from her, and the action distracted her for a moment. The easy power in his arms was always disconcerting. She knew his life until his accident had demanded that he stay fit and strong; he might have damaged his leg, but he certainly had kept himself in good condition.

  As he placed his napkin across his lap, she wondered about his last sentence. “Have you had a child die in your arms?”

  The idea horrified her, and she didn’t know why. She’d handled children who’d been horribly abused. But it was part of her job.

  Marco nodded. “I have.” He didn’t elaborate. The lights in his dark eyes had disappeared, and they were shadowed and unreadable. “And you know what the worst part is? Those little kids die from simple, preventable things, like influenzas and infections and dysentery.”

  “You must have seen a lot of that.”

  “Too much.” His strong lips were flat and grim. “I used to fantasize about getting those little kids out of there, bringing them home to my family. And then I realized there are just too damn many. After that, I started to think about helping the parents, to give people a chance to get out of the poverty they’ve known their whole lives, to learn and work—” He broke off, a smile creasing his cheeks and letting his dimples appear. “I should have studied social work with you.”