Marcie had gone snooping in Monica’s bedroom. There was still a lot of her sister’s stuff stored there from high school, things that Marcie had missed out on like cheerleading costumes and a prom dress—one that Marcie would never have been able to afford.
Sure, Marcie was creative, but it was hard to make a homemade gown look like a one-of-a-kind designer dress.
Monica had lived the ideal childhood in the ideal house in a perfect town. She had everything and now she also had a man who adored her, judging by the way Noah looked at her.
It made Marcie’s chest hurt. She wanted someone special in her life, a great guy, someone good-looking like Noah to whom everyone in town gave respect.
John Spade didn’t count. He just wanted sex.
Noah desired Monica, but he also cared for her. It had been written all over his face. With one fierce, repressive look, he’d all but dared Marcie to spread dirty gossip about what she’d seen. As if.
Yep. No doubt whatsoever—that man was crazy about Monica.
Marcie had nothing but a father who treated her like gold only because he felt guilty. She had no permanence, no official standing in this town outside of being the rag-mag story of the week. There wasn’t one person alive who loved her for who she was.
Marcie wanted everything Monica had.
At her father’s house, she found her sister already ensconced on the sofa while their dad sat in his favorite armchair.
He gestured for Marcie to join Monica on the sofa. “Would either of you like coffee or tea?”
“No, thank you.” Monica sounded composed.
Marcie shook her head to the offer of a drink.
“Let’s get down to it.” Her dad was a handsome man. No wonder their mother had fallen for him. But then, she hadn’t, had she? She’d been in love with Donna.
Marcie could only think Donna must have been a better person, less bitter and happier, before Karen died.
She steered her mind away from bad memories.
“I’ve been talking to my lawyer. As you can guess, Marcie’s arrival changes everything in the family dynamic. Monica, I’m sure you must know that I would have wanted Marcie here all along. Marcie knows that I tried to find her.”
He stopped and cleared his throat. He sounded on the verge of becoming emotional. It had been like this often since she’d arrived in to town, often triggering emotion in her, too.
If only she could believe that he loved her and didn’t just feel guilty.
“I’ve changed my will. Monica, you will no longer be my sole heir. Everything will be split fifty-fifty between the two of you.”
Marcie sensed Monica nodding beside her.
“I expected as much, Dad.”
Saint Monica. Did the woman never have a negative, faulty, unsaintly thought? She made Marcie feel inadequate and too...too less than.
Marcie was getting money. Someday she’d be so well-off that she would never have to worry about security, or where her next meal was coming from again. So why did she feel hollow? Where was the elation she’d expected?
Why, at this moment, did she miss Donna, the only mother she’d ever known? Why, at this moment, when her father was giving her so much, did she wonder if he loved her?
Her father raised one finger. “I have one condition.”
Okay, here they come, all of the hoops he wanted her to jump through to earn the right to the money. Marcie waited like an insect suspended in amber. This had all been too good to be true. She should have known it couldn’t be true. Story of her life.
I want.
“This house isn’t to be sold. It’s been in the family for generations and I want it to stay in the family.” His glance took in the crown moldings and leaded-glass windows. “My great-great-grandfather built Accord House, but my great-grandfather wanted a place of his own and built this. I love it. I want it handed down in the family.”
He waggled one finger. It should have looked silly. It didn’t. He was serious and severe. “I don’t want any fighting about this. I want the two of you working out who will live here equitably.”
I will. With a fierce stroke of desire that knocked her senseless, Marcie wanted this house and everything in it.
Monica stood. “We’ll work it out, Dad. I promise.”
How? Was Monica going to hand it over to Marcie without a whimper? Or did Monica think that she would automatically live here just because she’d grown up here?
The thought made Marcie crazy.
I want.
Monica kissed her dad on the cheek then left the room.
* * *
NOAH RACED THROUGH cooking dinner. He was making spaghetti. Monica would probably have made something gourmet, but he just wasn’t that kind of cook. He didn’t know how to do anything fancy.
Anyway, the food wasn’t the point. What he was certain would come later was the entire point of the night.
The food was secondary. It—
He heard a noise at the front door and stepped from the kitchen into the hallway.
Monica stood in the open doorway. She was here. She looked good. He liked her flowery dress.
Now that the moment had come, he felt gauche, like that young boy who had adored Monica from afar for years.
This morning, rolling around in the dirt, he could have made love to her without worry, but now he’d had the day to anticipate it. It all seemed too planned, too different from this morning’s spontaneous combustion.
“You’re early,” he blurted. He’d wanted the house to be perfect for her. He scrambled to straighten the magazines scattered across the battered coffee table.
For the first time in his life, he wished he had a nicer place to offer her.
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed. “Do you want to start with wine?”
“No.”
“Okay, just with dinner?”
“I’m not hungry, Noah. Not for food.”
Slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted to, but hoping like heck she wouldn’t, he pressed his lips against hers. Softly. They parted with the sweetness of a bud opening to the sun.
He fell into the nectar of her kiss. Into the tenderness and unexpected vulnerability of Monica.
When he pulled away and looked into her eyes, he whispered, “You make me wish I was a poet.”
She smiled and wrapped her long, cool fingers around the back of his neck, bringing him closer and opening his lips with her tongue. She tasted like chocolate and cinnamon and a touch of pepper. She smelled like citrus.
When she finished having her way with him, he whispered, “Orange.”
“Tangerine.”
Ah. He’d gotten the bouquet wrong. No wonder. The woman confounded his senses even as everything around him—the air that cooled his lungs, the heat of sunlight through the doorway and the solidness of the wall—became hyper-real, puissant and sharp.
He didn’t even realize he’d fallen against the wall for support and had taken her with him.
Her soft body melded against his. Her long legs fit perfectly between his thick thighs. The long evening rays of the sun turned her hair to gold. Her lips traveled his neck, his collarbone, leaving a damp trail. She murmured sweetly, humming low in her throat.
All of these years later, after falling into hopeless infatuation with her more than twenty years ago, she still left him speechless.
She pulled away, leaning back against his arm around her slim waist. The fingers of his broken arm feathered her hip through the cotton of her dress. “How could you get tangerine wrong? I depend on you to know these things.” Her smile, a thing of playfulness and joy, warmed him through and through.
He touched his nose to hers. “Close enough.”
What pure pleasure to find this childlike qualit
y of wanting to have fun inside sophisticated Monica. Yet again, she delighted him.
“Come to bed with me.” Air hissed between his teeth. He wanted her more than ever. “Upstairs. Before dinner.”
Her eyes changed, became more intense and focused. “Yes.”
She strode to the kitchen, flicked off the burners under the pots and rushed back to him.
The delight of knowing she was as anxious as he was, as attracted to him as he was to her, lifted him onto another plane. A laugh burst out of him, loud and boisterous.
As horny as a teenager, but grown-up now and sure of the outcome, he pulled her up the stairs, but stopped on the landing.
Her laugh was swallowed in his devouring kiss. God, if only he could take her inside of him. If only he could make her a part of him.
He kissed her until he was dizzy with lust. She returned his aggression drop for drop.
When he stopped, his heavy breathing fanning the hair around her face, he promised, “I’m going to love the ever-living daylights out of you. If we’re not careful, I’ll do it here on the floor.”
She took his hand and headed for toward the bedroom. “Bed, Noah. Now.”
Just inside the door, she came to an abrupt halt and turned to him with a beatific smile. This was the essence of Monica, sexy and sweet at the same time.
“You made the bed.” Her breathy voice turned the room from a simple place for sleep into a cathedral. A place to worship her body. “For me?”
“Yeah. For you.”
She opened the tiny purse she’d carried in with her and dumped the contents onto the freshly made bed. The only things that fell out were foil packages.
“Condoms.” He looked at her admiringly. “Smart woman. Um, I don’t think we’ll need a dozen of them.”
“I’m an optimist.”
Her eyes burned brightly while her fingers undid the buttons of her dress. For the first time, he noticed that she’d left the power dressing behind. Her body was draped in swirling fabric that covered her to midcalf in tiny flowers. She wore small tasteful jewelry.
When she finished the long series of buttons, the fabric whispered from her shoulders to the floor.
Noah swallowed because, hell’s freaking bells, she wore nothing else.
Perfection had always been an ideal to which he aspired, but here she stood in the flesh, gilded by the setting sun streaming through the window. Thank God they weren’t starting this in the dark. She would look amazing lit by candlelight, but the sun paid loving homage to the goddess.
“Noah?” She giggled.
“Yeah?”
“You’re wearing too much clothing.”
The slow blossoming of his smile sent a visible shiver through her. He adored Monica’s shivers, loved that he had the power to extract them from her.
As he shed his clothes without finesse, ripping a couple of buttons from his shirt in his haste, she lay back on the bed and watched. “I like the way you do that, Noah.”
Momentarily slowed down by his zipper because he was already hard for her, his pants took longer to take off than his shirt.
Her glance took him in. “I like that, too. I want it.” She beckoned with her fingers.
Earthiness? From Monica? A slow smile built, not just on his face, but also in his heart. She just kept getting better.
Naked, he climbed into bed and loomed over her, one knee on the mattress and the other leg between hers, opening her to him.
She grasped him. Sweet...radishes! There were no words for the pure, pleasure-filled pain of icy, collected Monica embracing him with heat and ardor.
She splayed her fingers over him like cool water rushing down a riverbed, but it was hot instead of cooling, and riling instead of calming.
He kissed her long and hard then grasped her hand because she was playing him almost to the exquisite point of no return.
He took his turn adoring her.
His lips devoured everything they touched—God, her nipples! Lavender-dusky, pebbly hard, beauteously erect. Her stomach, the dimple of her navel where the tip of his tongue fit perfectly, her soft perfect lips that opened to him when she spread her legs.
She tasted like a savory picnic on a warm day—like lightness and darkness, earthy and divine. He sucked, licked and prodded, inflamed by her sexy murmurs and dirty epithets. She came with a joyful cry.
He lunged up to hold her, to become part of the shivers wracking her body. She nestled against him until she settled.
He lifted his head. “Where is it?” he murmured.
She understood him without question and rolled over in his arms.
Tracing her spine with his mouth, and her curves with his fingers, he found it near the base of her spine. She’d dabbed her perfume onto the two dimples just above her cheeks.
“Bergamot, tangerine, lemon balm,” he whispered. “Sage.”
“You sure know how to talk dirty, Noah,” Monica murmured, voice shaky with renewed desire. Using the f-word, she urged him to make love to her. The naughtiness of the word broke him. He’d meant to go real slow their first time together, but he had her on her back and was inside of her silky, sopping wet heat before she could utter another syllable.
He’d imagined so much, everything, time and again, but Monica’s reality was stellar, outstripping even his active imagination—fragrant, dripping, noisy, hot. Wild and beautiful.
He loved her hard and fast, and she rose to meet him with more gusto than he’d thought Monica possessed. They made made love, both of them quivering, sound receding, reality a mere backdrop to nirvana.
When he came, he pressed his finger against her sweet clitoris so they came together.
For a long, long time, he lay with her, heart pounding, body sweaty.
He’d known it would be good. He hadn’t known it would be the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him.
He’d obsessed about her beauty and her body for so many years, he’d thought only about having sex with Monica—but this had been lovemaking with a capital L.
With the added depth of emotion that had built in him all summer, the act had been a holy thing. Lying in the sweaty, aromatic aftermath of their lovemaking, Noah could admit that while it had been earthy and real and lusty, it had been exalted, too, ennobled by the dignifying glory of love.
That was new, unique. In his life to this point, he had been merely infatuated with women. Nothing could have prepared him for this.
For love.
Against his chest, her heart beat in response to his, the hippie and the socialite united by a profound need. “Who would’ve ever thought we’d fit so well together.”
She stirred in his arms, her lithe body stretching while she all but purred. “That was so good. So perfect.”
“Yeah, it was perfect, wasn’t it?” It had been worth waiting for, worth all of the magnificent foreplay. “You’re pretty spectacular, Monica Accord.”
She ran her hand over his chest, his collarbone, his shoulders. “So are you, Noah Cameron. I like your body. I like your face.” She grasped a small handful of his beard and shook his head, gently. “What I can see of it.” She softened the rebuke with a smile.
“I like this.” She grasped him again, limp now, but not for long if she kept touching him. “I want to do more. Can we shower together?”
She wanted to do more. Thank you, God or Yahweh or Buddha or whoever had created this woman.
He jumped out of bed, grasping her about the waist with his one good, strong arm and lifting her onto her feet.
She squealed. “I love how strong you are, Noah. Strong, but gentle, too.”
“I’m learning that you’re a pretty awesome mix of contradictions, yourself.” He cocked his head to one side. “You surprise me. You like to talk dirty.”
“Me, too. Let’s go get clean together and come back here and get dirty again.”
“You’re on.” She ran from the room in a delightful streak of jiggles.
Man, he loved women’s bodies. This one’s in particular.
Their shower took longer than he expected because Monica wouldn’t let him touch her. She soaped her hands and washed him thoroughly.
“I’ve wanted to touch you for a long time, Noah. I won’t be shortchanged. Lean back against the shower wall. Yes, just like that. No, don’t touch me. Keep your hands to yourself. Let me do my thing. Enjoy.”
And so he did. If he enjoyed it any more, he’d die of ecstasy.
She was thorough, he’d give the woman that, stroking and petting him until he was blind with need, his fist clenched until his nails dug into his palm.
In the end, they didn’t make it back to the bedroom, but made love against the shower wall.
Wrapped in a pair of towels, they ate dinner by candlelight. He’d been right in that the glow of the flames did amazing things for her skin.
They sat side by side, talking quietly, murmuring, whispering secrets both profound and mundane until they finished dinner and Monica excused herself.
She came back moments later, saying, “I brought my perfume with me. I put it on again.”
“Where?”
“You have to find it.”
Noah spread a couple of thick quilts on the living room floor, lay down with Monica and went treasure hunting.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY LAY IN the sultry aftermath of another bout of lovemaking, this time back in his bed, with a soft breeze streaming through Noah’s open window and drying the beads of sweat that dotted their naked bodies.
Monica ran her hand down Noah’s beard.
“Noah, will you do something for me?”
“Anything. Climb a mountain to bring back a sprig of edelweiss? Dive to the bottom of the ocean for the world’s largest pearl? What, my sweet?”
She laughed, the feminine sound so rare in his home he was charmed by her yet again.
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