She sagged, understanding how a woman like Annabelle might believe something like that.
“And she could be really persuasive. So all of us promised.”
“And then she died,” Jennifer said.
“And then she died and I decided that I couldn’t keep this promise forever. If she wasn’t here to see it, then my part of the deal was over.”
“But you’ve caused so much scandal,” she said, wondering about his motives. “The past few years you’ve done nothing but heap gossip and speculation on yourself and your family…your mother.”
He laughed humorlessly, his head tipped back. His throat exposed, his eyes closed. He sat that way for a second as if turning his face to the sun for warmth and peace. But it was the moon and there was no peace in him. She could feel the tension radiating off him like cold from ice.
“I wanted to hurt him,” he finally admitted. “I wanted to shame him and scar him and drag his name and his legacy through the mud. I wanted the name Greer to be associated with disgusting things.”
Oh. She bit her lip. It all made sense. Sick, sick sense.
“That couldn’t have been easy,” she finally whispered.
He shrugged. “I hung out with the wrong kind of people. I drank too much until I got sober.” Again that disarming smile, again the pulse of her reaction. “Believe it or not until I showed up on your doorstep, I hadn’t had so much as a sip in years.”
“All those events you showed up at?” she asked, wondering how complex this ruse could get. How deep this public persona. “The press conferences when you seemed so drunk? So—”
“Fake,” he said. “Toward the end I barely had to pretend the press was so eager to believe the worst about me.”
And they still would. She thought about the uphill climb Ian would have to make people believe this story.
“So, everything—the parties and the women, the sexiest man alive stuff—”
“Not real. Well, the magazine was real, but the interview in it I pretty much made up.”
“So, what is real?”
The question seemed to take him off stride and he blinked at her, frowning slightly. “It’s hard to say anymore. You do something long enough and well enough it becomes the truth. I never believed in what I was doing but I did believe in why I was doing it.”
“Your father.”
He nodded.
She noticed he didn’t answer her question and she wondered if maybe, after all these years, he simply didn’t know who he was anymore.
“And no one knows the truth?” she asked, stunned that he’d duped so many people, including himself.
“You did,” he said. “That first morning you asked why I let the world believe the worst of me. You knew I was lying.”
She wanted to deny it. Wanted to pretend that she didn’t know him at all, but she couldn’t. An electrical current flowed through her and she nearly stood to leave she was so flustered.
“But you are a lawyer, right?”
“I am. I am a lawyer and Andille has advanced degrees in international finance. Between the two of us we try to keep our karmic balance in line.”
It was so close to what she’d thought about him just a few days ago that she laughed. Unbelievable that she could be so wrong about the man and so right at the same time.
“Anyway,” Ian said, “all of it—the lies, the press, the drinking—was far easier than what my mother went through.”
Right. The real story. Ian, as compelling as he was, was not why she was out here.
“What did she go through?” she asked. “Exactly.”
“Exactly?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I could tell you. They were very private and she never talked about it. Even when it was obvious. When she was bleeding or in so much pain we had to take her to Dr. Engle. Even then the only thing she would talk about was our promise not to tell anyone.”
“You need more than that,” she told him, confronting him with the facts of what he was up against. “You’ve got media that aren’t going to take this seriously and a lot of public perception stacked against you. And you’re going to need some cold hard facts to make the story. Otherwise it just looks like another one of your efforts to embarrass your dad.”
She watched his jaw tighten, the muscles clench and relax all along his cheek, into his hairline. She could see his pulse pounding in his throat and could feel the reluctance in him. He wasn’t sure about telling her.
“You have to trust me, Ian,” she said. “You’ve come this far.” He glanced at her with a knowing smile.
“Trusting you isn’t the problem,” he said, watching her, studying her. “I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone but Andille for years.” Their gazes clung and the warm Carolina night got hotter. She didn’t know what to do with that information, where to file it. She had a story, a husband she missed so much she couldn’t think about him and a desire for Ian Greer that could burn down mountains.
“I’ve never told anyone any of this. Even Andille,” he said, after clearing his throat and breaking the moment. “Ever. But if I tell you—” he licked his lips “—these stories, I have to know you trust me. I have to know you believe me. That you’ll tell my story.”
Oh, man, the guy was smart. Smarter than she’d given him credit for. He wasn’t going to give her all the marbles without knowing where she stood. And, oddly enough, just the fact that he was so careful with this story—with his mother’s legacy and truth—sealed the deal for Jennifer.
“I believe you,” she said. “And I will do everything in my power to tell this story in a way that it is truthful and respectful of your mother.”
His eyes glistened in the moonlight and his emotion touched her. She forced herself not to reach between them and touch his hand. Not that touching his hand in and of itself would be unprofessional. No, it was the way she felt about that touch that made it wrong. Where she wanted that touch to go, what she wanted it to lead to.
She’d committed to this story and there was no room between them for desire.
“Please,” she said, tucking her hands under her thighs. “Tell me your story.”
“I would hear them at night,” he said, looking out over the water. “For as long as I could remember, I could hear the muffled sounds of yelling and things getting thrown. And then—” he swallowed “—I didn’t know it at the time, but I heard them having sex.”
Jennifer’s throat tightened to the point that she couldn’t breathe. She tilted her head up and sipped at the air, dreading the worst of what was going to come out of his mouth.
“One morning, when Mom called Suzette to her room, I snuck down the hallway and sat at the doorway, so scared. So—” His voice shook and her heart broke for the boy in that hallway and this man in the starlight. “So scared for my mom. Suzette asked Mom if he’d raped her and mom said—” He faced her, his eyes burning brighter than the moon. Brighter than anything she’d ever seen and she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t resist the pull of him. “It’s not rape if it’s your husband.”
“Oh, my God.” The words fell out of her mouth.
“Suzette could tell you more,” he said. “I was a kid and she sent me away once I started trying to defend her or get between them.”
They sat in silence, all of her questions blown apart. Her determination to stay professional in jeopardy of tumbling to ruin around her. She wanted to touch him. Comfort him. Press her lips to the heartbreaking line of his.
“That must have hurt so much,” she said.
“The rape?”
“Your mother sending you away.”
He blinked, his face blank, and she wondered what was happening behind his eyes, what he wasn’t telling her. “I hardly think about it, to be honest,” he said with a shrug.
She couldn’t believe it. No one recovered from that kind of childhood betrayal without some serious scars. She opened her mouth to press further, but he interrupted.
“Do you think that’s enough?” he asked, genuinely uns
ure, and she nodded, clenching her hands and her heart against the urge to reach for him.
“I’ll need to talk to Suzette. Otherwise it’s just your word against your father’s.”
“Right.” He laughed bitterly. “And that’s gone so well for me.”
She smiled in sad sympathy. After a moment she stood and he looked up at her.
“Let’s talk more tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll need to get in touch with Suzette, but we’ve had enough tonight, I think.”
He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. His eyes were locked on hers until the world fell away. The past, future, her son, his mother, everything vanished and it was just them and the hushed quiet and warm air that cocooned them.
She felt him sitting there like he was the moon calling to her and she was a wave looking for a beach to crash upon. As much as she wanted, needed to walk away, she couldn’t. Finally, equally scared by him and her reaction to him, she turned, needing to be free of the magnetic push-pull he had over her.
Ian grabbed her hand and the rough abrasion of his palm against hers drove the air from her lungs, the thoughts from her head, and he slowly tugged her back around.
Resist, she told herself to no avail. You know no good will come of this. Remember the story. But the truth was she didn’t care. She didn’t care at all. Right now a fever gripped her.
His hand brushed from her palm to the fragile sensitive skin of her wrist and her body bloomed with a humid heat. A sudden desire.
His gaze was so hot and everywhere it touched—her face, her lips, her neck—she burned. This wasn’t right. This feeling. This moment. Nothing about this was as it should be.
But she couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t even figure out how to try.
His thumb stroked her pulse point and he stepped closer. Then closer still. His hand touched her face and her eyelids fluttered, her breath broke on a gasp, her nipples hardened in a wild rush of need.
Please, please kiss me, she nearly whimpered.
And then he did.
His lips were dry. Warm. Reverent, almost. As if unsure. And she wondered if this was it. The sexiest man alive kissed like a monk.
But he pulled her closer, her body cupped lightly by the sway and heat of his. His hand caressed her waist, scalding her through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. His breath was sweet, his lips sweeter, and she hung suspended between frustration and bliss.
The kiss was chaste and she didn’t want chaste. She didn’t need chaste. Chaste allowed her to think. She needed mindless. She needed heat and sweat and sex and feeling.
She opened her mouth, invited him in. And with a groan, as if giving in, he took her up on her offer. In spades. They gripped each other, fists in shirts, fingers curled against sensitive flesh like two survivors of a terrible storm.
So long. So, so long since she’d felt this hot bite, this ache and pulse. Dams inside her broke, shattered, and longing she couldn’t fight pounded through her.
Someone moaned slightly and his grip changed and she stepped closer, needing more. Wanting him. She was ravenous, starving from years of subsisting on memories and fantasy. And now this man, this wild sexy man whose very touch promised things she’d forgotten, was here. In her arms.
Hot and wet the kisses grew, multiplied, one kiss into a thousand. Circling her arms around the wide muscles of his back, she crushed herself against him. His tongue stroked hers and she stroked him back, closing her teeth on his lip, pulling his hips hard against hers. Needing pressure, needing pleasure so badly it was a pain in the heart of her.
His laughter ruffled over her nerve endings and he leaned down to kiss and bite her neck. He shifted a knee between her legs, hard and high where she hurt the most. Groaning, she leaned back, letting him hold her up.
A cool breeze drifted between them, lifting her hair, blowing across her skin, down her shirt.
The cool breeze shattered the moment.
It gave her a second and that was all her mind needed. Her better sense, anesthetized by craving, leaped into action.
She blinked. Jerked. And realized the groan against her chest was a shade too deep. A shade too rough. The hands at her back were too big. Too hard.
The hair on this man’s head was too light.
Doug.
This was not Doug.
And this was wrong in about twenty different ways.
She shoved away, trembling and horrified. He fought her for a moment, obviously not reading her struggles, but when he looked up into her eyes he released her.
What he saw there she didn’t know. Couldn’t even guess at. But he looked horrified.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I thought—”
She was willing? She had been. She was. She would probably continue to be every time she saw him. Oh, God. Oh, lord, what had she done? What was she doing? Her body ached and her hand shook and all she could think was Doug.
“My husband—” she breathed then stopped, unsure of what she’d been about to say.
“I thought he died.”
Oh, that he would think Doug’s death made what they’d just done right made it worse. And that she thought the same made her sick.
“Jennifer?” He held out a hand for her and she retreated. His face, all that naked need and appreciation, turned to stone.
“I’m sorry,” he said and because she was a coward and couldn’t figure out the right words to say, she turned.
And ran.
10
Morning, Deb thought, opening one eye, comes too soon. It wasn’t always the case, but having spent the night in bed with two little girls who alternately curled against her and kicked at her in their sleep, the morning light cutting across her face like a laser beam was a cruel joke.
“Mommy?” Shonny stood beside the single bed where she was sandwiched between the girls.
“Hi, honey,” she whispered, smiling at her boy and his afro.
“What are you doing?”
“Well—” she sighed “—I guess I’m getting up.”
“What are you doing with them?” he asked, pointing at the rumpled blond heads next to hers.
“They couldn’t sleep, honey,” she said. “You know how sometimes you like me to lay down beside you when you have nightmares?”
Shonny nodded. “Did they have nightmares?”
“They did,” she said. She didn’t tell her son that part of her wanted to be in here with them, because she knew all too well what those nightmares could be like. And how lonely and scary a place like Serenity could seem in the middle of the night.
“Why doesn’t their mommy sleep with them?” Shonny asked.
Deb flopped her head back down on the pillow, conceding to the Good Lord that sometimes being a good mommy and a good Christian required three more hours of sleep and a pot of coffee.
And honest answers to the tough questions were just going to have to wait.
“She’s busy,” she said and began to ease out of the bed, no easy trick with the casts. “Let’s get some breakfast going.”
“Andille’s already doing that,” he said and she paused, crouched over Angelina.
“He is?” she asked, like an idiot.
Shonny nodded and leaned down to the floor. “He told me to bring you this.”
Her little boy straightened with a steaming mug of coffee. Sent to her by Andille.
Her heart practically stopped.
She told herself it was just kindness. It was just empathy and generosity from a place she didn’t expect it and that there was no reason for her to feel so silly about it all. Like the coffee was roses or something.
But it felt like it. Oh, dear God, it felt like it.
“Well,” she said, “let’s go thank him.”
She made it out of the bed with barely any noise and was, quite frankly, pretty amazed by that. But when she turned back to the bed, two little girls were blinking their green eyes at her.
“I’m hungry,” Angelina said.
“Me, too,” whispe
red Madison.
Deb smiled at them, stroked their cheeks. “Then let’s go eat.”
“Can we see our mom today?” Angelina asked and again, Deb told God she was sorry and she’d try better later before she said, “I’m not sure. We’ll have to see what happens. Why don’t we go see what Andille is cooking for break—”
She jumped out of the way as the girls hurtled themselves from bed at the mention of Andille’s name. They raced out the door and moments later she heard from the kitchen the deep rumble of Andille’s laugh.
“Well, Shonny, should we—” She looked down and realized Shonny was gone, too. All that was left was the cup of coffee steaming at her ankles.
I guess that just leaves me, she thought, leaning down to pick up the mug with both hands, balancing it between her casts.
She stepped into the hallway and took a sip of coffee, expecting the bitter bite of black coffee and was stunned to taste the sugar. Lots of it.
He’d known, somehow, how she liked her coffee.
And that really was roses.
Deb walked into the kitchen just as Andille filled the coffeepot at the kitchen sink.
“It’s fixed?” she asked, thrilled.
“It is,” he said, “And—” he stepped over to a box on the wall that hadn’t been there last night “—Bob finished the central air this morning.”
“It’s ready?” Deb could have cried. Seriously. Central air where there hadn’t been any before. She nearly sprinted to the box and, throwing caution and bills to the wind, she cranked that sucker up.
It was time to get cool.
Andille laughed at her and she sent him an arch look, but grinned a little herself. This was turning into quite a day.
Andille made scrambled eggs with bacon and salsa and tortillas and he showed the kids how to make burritos.
They were making a mess, but the girls were laughing and Spence, who’d stumbled into the kitchen not long after Deb, was smiling, too.
It was, Deb thought as she leaned back and enjoyed her second cup of coffee, worth a mess just for these kids to have a good time.
“You don’t like burritos?” Andille asked, his voice behind her ear and she jumped, sloshing coffee down the front of her T-shirt.
And Then There Was You (Serenity House Book 2) Page 10