Lacey tried to clear her sex-fogged mind. She knew what her body wanted. It had made it clear to both of them. But what did she want in her heart?
She wanted to feel alive again. She’d spent the last few years mourning not only her husband but the life she had planned to share with him. She wanted to feel desired as a woman. She wanted to make love and have a man make love to her. Was that too much to ask for?
No, it wasn’t. She was tired of fighting this thing between her and Scott.
She searched for the guilt that she had known she would feel if ever she decided to take a man into her bed who wasn’t Ben, but it wasn’t there. She knew she would have to take this one step at a time, but she would take that first step tonight.
She climbed out of Scott’s lap and saw the disappointment on his face.
“I want you Scott, but I don’t want to hurt you. Something died inside me the day I lost Ben. You know that. You saw me at my worst. I can never go back to that place again. Before we go any further, I want to make sure you understand that this—” she held her arms out to her sides “—sex, is all I have to give you. And I’m not even sure I know how to do that anymore.”
She waited, feeling foolish standing in front of Scott with half her clothes off, and then he stood and walked toward her, his face unreadable.
“Come...let me show you,” he said as he held out his hand to her.
She gave him her hand and let him lead her into her bedroom—the one room in her house that she felt sure he had never entered.
She hadn’t been kidding. She really couldn’t remember how this was supposed to go. Scott stepped behind her and unzipped her dress, letting it fall to the floor. She’d lost her stockings in the living room, and the molded top of her dress hadn’t allowed for a bra. Now she stood in only the lace of her panties and her garters. She felt awkward and self-conscious.
She wrapped her arms around herself as Scott turned her toward him. He ran his hands up her sides, then took her arms and wrapped them around his neck. Her breasts brushed against the fine blond hair of his chest, the friction causing her nipples to peak. Her body arched against his as he took her buttocks and ground himself against her as his lips found hers.
Her hands found his belt buckle and undid it. Then she tackled his pants button and zipper, pushing his pants down. She might not remember everything, but she was pretty sure more than just one of them needed to be undressed if this was going to work.
She moaned as Scott’s lips traveled down her neck to her breast, then made him answer her moan with his own when she reached for him and found him already thick and hard. He walked her backwards to the bed, then gave her a playful push onto the mattress that had her laughing. Yes, she remembered this now.
She caught two handfuls of his curls when he bent to her, and she took his lips with hers as she pulled him down. She felt him between her legs, then froze as she tried to prepare herself for the pain she felt sure would follow. She needed him inside her so badly, but it had been so long...
“It’s okay,” Scott said softly into her ear. “Relax.”
She forced herself to relax and open her thighs as Scott ran his hand up her leg. He parted her with his fingers, then inserted one finger slowly as another caressed her. She felt no pain as she relaxed her body and let the motion of Scott’s fingers give her pleasure. His fingers continued to pump into her, before withdrawing to circle the nub of her core, and her body bowed up off the bed as the orgasm built and then crashed over her.
Her body felt boneless as Scott moved his hand up to caress her breast, but she still wanted more. She reached down between them and guided the length of him, relaxing as his hips moved against hers. She looked up as he slowly entered her, with small shallow thrusts that went deeper every time until he was seated inside her. His face was beautifully strong and he held himself with such control.
“Are you okay?” he asked between clenched lips.
He was fighting for control, and while she knew he was only trying to be careful for her sake, she wanted him to move.
“Yes,” she said. “Now move.”
She wrapped her legs around him, opening herself up so he could go deeper, then began to move against him.
His lips slammed into hers and he took control of their lovemaking as he pumped harder and deeper. Her body tightened for a second time, and this time she couldn’t hold back the scream that escaped into his mouth as his own coarse moan joined hers in their climax.
* * *
Scott opened his eyes and found bright green eyes staring back at him. The night before had been more than he had ever dreamed he would have with Lacey. And, though he knew that she’d turn away from him this morning, he was thankful for the time he’d had with her.
“What do you want for breakfast? I’m starved,” she said as she rolled away from him and moved off the bed.
She’d slept in the nude and he enjoyed the view as she moved away from him and went into the adjoining bathroom.
Scott stared after her. He felt as if he had entered some twilight zone. Where was the Lacey he knew? Not that he didn’t like this one; she just wasn’t the one he had been expecting this morning.
He got up and looked around for his clothes. Pulling on his wrinkled pants and shirt, he moved to where Lacey had left the bathroom door open. He could see her nervousness now, though she tried to hide it.
He leaned against the doorjamb and watched her brush her hair. She’d changed into a pair of pants and a tee shirt that declared her a magical unicorn nurse—which made absolutely no sense to him. What did nursing and unicorns have to do with each other?
She’d always been a beautiful woman, with that deep red hair and those green eyes that had a magic all their own. He remembered the heat in those eyes at his first thrust inside her, and then, after they’d made love, the way they had blinked slowly up at him as he’d tucked her against him and told her to go to sleep.
He watched now as her eyes seemed to dance from the mirror where she stood and then back at him. Yes, she was nervous, but she hadn’t run away from him. Not yet. And nerves were something he could deal with.
It was a place to start on how he hoped their relationship would go from here—because, no matter what Lacey said, he knew she had more to give to their relationship than just sex.
Last night hadn’t been just about sex, even if she wanted to believe that. He understood her reservations about opening her heart to someone else after the loss of Ben. He was scared to share his own feelings with her too, feelings that he wasn’t even comfortable with himself.
“We could go by my place and let me change and then we could go out for breakfast,” he offered. “What time does Alston get back from his sleepover?”
Maybe she’d feel better if they were out in public. He didn’t want to scare her off, but he wasn’t going to settle for just one night with her. They both deserved more than that. He just had to figure out how to get Lacey to admit that was what she wanted too.
“If you keep that up you’re not going to have any hair left to brush,” he said as he watched her jerk the brush through her hair over and over.
“That sounds perfect,” she said, then put the brush down and turned toward him, giving him a lopsided smile. She really was trying to act like nothing had happened the night before, but she just couldn’t pull it off.
They stopped by his place and he left her while he changed clothes. He thought about taking a shower, but he still feared that Lacey would run the moment her brain connected the dots and she realized that everything between them had changed once more. Lacey was a woman who liked lists and detailed planning, and he knew his spending the night with her had not been anywhere in her plans.
As they got back into his car he caught himself humming one of the Louis Armstrong songs that he had played the night before. They had gone a lot farther than one kiss now.
That first kiss had changed everything between them, and last night would change them even more, but there was no going back now.
* * *
Lacey walked into the ER, dragging her feet. Alston had been home with a stomach bug, and for the last twenty-four hours she had been cleaning up after him. Single motherhood was such a glamorous job. She’d always sworn she’d never be a single mom, but she’d realized soon after Alston had been born that was exactly what she’d become. With Ben deployed, she’d been a single mom a lot of the time.
But now she needed to put a smile on her face and take care of other people’s children, because that was her job. She rolled back her aching shoulders and soldiered on. She’d make it through this twelve-hour shift and then she’d go home and crash.
She heard a commotion in the first trauma room she passed and rushed in to see if she could help. A man lay on the table as staff moved around the room, each with their own job to do. Stepping in, she grabbed a pair of gloves and helped the med techs remove his clothes.
“What do we have?” she asked as she tossed the torn and bloody clothes over into a corner as she peeled them off his body, while being careful not to move him any more than was necessary. She noted an open femur fracture as she worked her way up.
“Motorcycle and car collision,” answered the nurse across the room.
“Do we know who he is?” she asked Tess, the charge nurse she was supposed to relieve.
“Not yet. Paramedics called it in just minutes before they arrived,” Tess said.
She looked at the table where the man lay still. An endotracheal tube protruded out of his mouth and his blond hair was matted with blood, curled around a face that was covered in road rash and cuts.
Her hand went to her chest as her heart dropped a beat. She headed for the pile of dirty clothes she’d left in the corner and found the pair of jeans she had cut from the man, went through each pocket, finding nothing that would identify the man.
She looked back over to the trauma table and forced herself to think logically. Yes, there was some resemblance between the man and Scott, but this man’s build was stocky, where Scott was lean, with more defined muscles.
She took a calming breath. This man wasn’t Scott.
But it could have been.
Scott had told her earlier, when he’d called to check on Alston, that it was such a beautiful day outside he was planning on riding his motorcycle to work tonight.
An ice-cold shiver ran up her back. She’d lived with all the chances Scott had taken since he’d come home from Afghanistan. She’d worried every time he’d left the country, looking for the next big thrill, the next big mountain to climb, the next extreme hike across Alaska, the next extreme cave dive. She’d made him call her as soon as he’d finished his ice climbing challenge and she’d chewed her nails down to the quick while she’d waited for that phone call.
But that feeling as if her stomach had been turned inside out and her heart ripped from her body, that feeling of total devastation that she’d had for just a moment, when she had realized that it could be Scott lying on that trauma table, was more than she could survive.
She understood why he and the other vets felt the need to prove themselves, but she had never wanted any part of that life.
She moved back as the staff pushed the patient over to get a CAT scan, then headed to the locker room to stow her bag.
A case of nerves struck her as her mind lingered on the thought that she could lose Scott just the way she had lost Ben. She’d had problems after she had lost Ben—not only with depression but with anxiety too. She’d been shattered and broken and barely able to take care of her son. She wouldn’t do that to Alston again.
“Are you okay?” Scott asked as he came into the staff lounge. “Tess said you were looking a little pale. Did you catch Alston’s stomach bug?”
Lacey looked up at the very man who was causing her such anxiety. How could she tell him that she’d suddenly realized she couldn’t handle the chances he took? That she didn’t want to lie awake at night and wait for the phone to ring and someone to tell her that he’d been killed climbing some rock somewhere, or drowned in some cave in the middle of nowhere?
She’d buried her head as deeply as possible, but she could still see that Scott had hopes of a future with her. How could she take a step toward a future with Scott when it was too much to ask that he take a step back from that cliff-edge he seemed always to be running toward? Would it be fair of her to ask him to give up something that meant so much to him? Would it fair to her to live with the hidden fear that she’d someday have to bury Scott just as she’d buried Ben?
It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
“Lacey?” he said. “If you’re sick, go home. We’re not really busy right now, and I’m sure someone will come in and cover for you.”
Her gut churned, and she wondered if possibly all this worry was just a result of her feeling ill or of her lack of sleep. Maybe after some rest she’d be able to figure out what it was she really wanted and what she could actually live with.
“Yeah, I think I’ll go. I’ll let Tess know and she can turn things over to the relief charge.”
She walked right by him without another word.
Until she figured out what she was going to do it was better that she stayed away from Scott as much as possible.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SCOTT TRIED HARD to keep his mind on the conversation around him. He had picked Lieutenant Hines up at his assisted living facility, knowing that the group of veterans who usually attended his monthly meetings would enjoy hearing about the World War Two veteran’s experiences. Unfortunately his mind kept wandering away from the discussion in the room to the one he’d had with Lacey three days ago.
He’d called and checked on her the day after she’d left work early, and she’d assured him that she was feeling better, but then she’d turned down his invitation to go out the next day. She was pulling away from him again and he didn’t have a clue why. The only thing left for him to do was to confront her.
He looked at his watch. If the meeting didn’t go late tonight he’d stop by her house on his way home.
He turned as the door to the building they rented opened and the woman he’d just been worrying over walked in, followed by Katie. Everyone rushed to greet Katie, and then the conversation turned back to their visitor.
Scott moved over to where Lacey had taken a seat and sat beside her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
He’d always been attuned to the changes in Lacey’s moods and he had no doubt that she knew exactly what he was asking about.
“No,” she said.
He waited for her to say more. Okay, so she didn’t want to talk to him about what was bothering her. Still, she was talking to him, so it couldn’t be too bad.
“I’m surprised to see you here. What did Katie do to get you to come?” he asked.
“She didn’t do anything. I offered to bring her,” she said.
He let that roll around in his mind for a minute. Lacey had always limited her involvement in the Extreme Warrior program to just helping with the fundraisers they held, until she’d gone with them on their hike through the swamp. He’d tried to get her more involved over the years but she’d always resisted. It more than surprised him that she was willing to attend a meeting now. Maybe being out with the vets in the woods had helped her see how much it meant to them to have a challenge.
Scott had turned a lot of the administration duties he’d previously handled over to Dennis these last few months, and as Dennis now went through the minutes from the meeting the month before he knew he had chosen well.
He opened up a discussion on the next challenge they had planned, in Peru, and one of the younger vets brought up the possibility of volcano hiking in Hawaii the following year. Scott saw the incredulous l
ook Lacey gave the young man when he began to name the different hiking trails on the islands.
“Don’t worry. The volcanos aren’t active,” he said, and watched her relax back into her seat.
By the time Lieutenant Hines had finished answering more questions it was late and the group started to break up.
“There’s just one more thing we need to discuss.” Dennis raised his hand as some of the veterans groaned. “I know. This will just take a minute. I got a letter in the mail today that I want to share with everyone.”
It was common that when members moved away they wrote back to their friends as a group, and everyone always enjoyed listening to Dennis reading the letters. Everyone took their seats again.
“This letter is from the City of New Orleans. I read it earlier, and it’s about as dry as week-old bread.” Everyone laughed at Dennis’s corny attempt at humor. “Basically what it says is that our fearless leader, Scott, has gotten himself nominated for a Special Citizen award. He’s been invited to attend an awards dinner two weeks from now, where they will announce the winner.”
Shocked at this announcement, Scott sat up straight as the other veterans gave him a round of applause mixed in with some good-natured heckling. With all the good programs in the city, how had his gotten this type of recognition?
Most of the members came by to give him a pat on the back before they left, or in Katie’s case a kiss on the cheek.
He headed to the back of the hall to lock up the back door, then turned around to find Lacey standing behind him.
“I thought you’d left already,” he said.
He couldn’t help but reach out and push a tendril of hair off her face and behind her ear. He let his hand linger over the soft skin of her earlobe. He watched as she turned her face into his palm before pulling away from him.
“You love all this,” she said, and she indicated the room, where posters of planned trips and pictures from past challenges hung.
Stolen Kiss with the Single Mom Page 10