The Wedding Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  So he stayed silent, and felt the hunger in his body growing as he gave up even thinking about conversation, or argument, or decision-making. This was a chance moment stolen from time itself, and Wiley was already halfimmersed in it.

  He lowered his head slowly, barely touching her mouth with his, waiting for her response as he’d waited for her embrace on the sofa. He was already hard and aroused—had been since he’d put his arms around her in the living room. But it was worth the effort of reining himself in to feel her kissing him, softly, almost tentatively, as though for all the times they’d made love, this one was something new and she was determined not to rush through it.

  The teasing exploration of her lips and tongue took care of any lingering desire on Wiley’s part to go on thinking rationally, or at all. He was completely lost in the moment, lost in the way Rae-Anne was feathering tiny kisses along his lower lip. He’d never been so minutely aware of how soft and moist the inner reaches of her mouth were, or how tantalizing it could be to hold back this way, reining in his desire to plunge deeper, to taste her more fully.

  Rae-Anne’s faint moan seemed to connect with the very root of Wiley’s body, turning him to liquid inside. He could feel her trembling as he slid his free arm around her. The realization that she was having to work hard at holding back, too, affected him like a shot of pure, hundred-proof moonshine.

  He deepened their kiss slowly, still exploring rather than demanding, despite the bone-racking effort it cost him. But it was worth it when he heard another slow moan from deep in Rae-Anne’s throat, and felt her mouth open wider to him, welcoming him into that hidden pool of warmth and sensation.

  Wiley’s libido was clamoring wildly to speed things up, to claim Rae-Anne’s whole body as his own, to push them both over the edge of the chasm he knew they were headed toward. But the slow seduction they’d started seemed to be dictating a pace of its own.

  And the sheer pleasure of it was unlike anything Wiley had ever experienced.

  He’d never known how exquisite it could feel just to lie next to a woman without moving, feeling the long line of contact between their two bodies igniting a chain reaction in his nervous system that left him light-headed and aching to do away with the clothing that came between them. He slid his hands slowly over Rae-Anne’s upper body, over the warm swell of her breasts and the indrawn curve of her waist, and finally slipped his palms under the edge of the loose T-shirt he’d lent her and pushed it upward.

  She raised both hands to his face, sustaining their slow kiss even while she was arching her back to help him ease the T-shirt off. When she finally broke the contact of their mouths, Wiley felt as though he was suddenly gasping for air, bereft of a nourishment he needed for life itself.

  The creamy expanse of her body was enough to make him feel more than alive again. She sat up to pull the T-shirt all the way off, and as she tossed it over the edge of the bed, Wiley started to rise, too, eager to be rid of his sweatpants and shirt.

  But Rae-Anne held him where he was, her hands gentle but strong. “Let me do it,” she said.

  Her voice blended with the soft spattering of the rain against the windows, and Wiley felt irrationally as though the rain was another kind of caress, mixed in with the unimaginable delight of Rae-Anne’s fingers tracing a slow line down over his torso and arriving finally at the drawstring at his waist.

  She untied it quickly, deftly, and once again captured his wrists when he made a move to slide himself free of the pants. She seemed intent on studying him, on bringing his arousal—and hers, too, if her flushed cheeks and quickened breathing were any indication—to a slow, rolling boil.

  She shifted her position slightly among the rumpled sheets as she pulled his sweatpants free. Wiley stroked one hand over the silky expanse of her inner leg and heard her long, shuddering sigh as his fingertips glanced across the sensitive spot at the juncture of her thighs.

  The thought of the sweet dampness within was driving him crazy. But this deliberate rhythm of enticement had him in its grip, and he couldn’t have rushed things if he’d wanted to. He rolled onto his back as Rae-Anne grasped the lower edges of his T-shirt, and looked at her as she helped him out of it.

  He thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  Her eyes glowed with a light that told Wiley she was feeling the same slow rhythm that was pulsing through his body. Her lips were parted slightly, reddened by their slow kisses, and she looked excited and confident and radiant in a way Wiley hadn’t seen in far, far too long.

  She was still sitting as she jettisoned his T-shirt, and Wiley took advantage of her position, maneuvering himself so that his head lay in her lap. Somehow, suddenly, desperately, he wanted to be at the sweet core of her, surrounded by that feminine strength and warmth and circled by Rae-Anne’s arms.

  Finding himself there was even more astonishing than he’d known it would be. He breathed in the perfume of her skin and caught the faint scent of the moistness in the center of her body as he did. His arousal was nearly unbearable now, but he was far beyond even thinking of hurrying this moment of peace in the midst of temptation.

  What held him in silent amazement as he closed his arms around her waist was the thought of the child she was carrying inside her. Suddenly it seemed irrelevant that the baby’s father was a criminal whom Wiley had done his best to condemn.

  Here, in the tender circle of Rae-Anne’s arms, with his face pressed against her belly and her pulse resonating in his bloodstream, he had a sense of how right it was that Rae-Anne should be carrying this child, that she should have a new life to lavish her strength on, that after so many years of stubborn solitude she would not be alone anymore.

  “Wiley—”

  He didn’t lift his head at her breathless cry. He was so certain of the bond between them at this moment that he knew why she’d spoken, and knew it wasn’t a protest or a question. Her voice had hovered halfway between satisfaction and sadness, and as she wrapped her arms more securely around him, holding him to the core of her for one long, heavenly moment, Wiley knew he was sharing everything she was feeling, the confusion and the longing and the gladness, too, that she was still alive and strong and eager for the motherhood that lay ahead of her.

  He wasn’t sure what ended the moment. It might have been a suddenly unendurable spasm of need from his body, or it might have been the way Rae-Anne shifted against him, leaving him awash all over again in the unmistakable scent of her arousal.

  Whatever the reason, Wiley couldn’t wait any longer to push toward the satisfaction he knew they both wanted so fiercely. He slid one hand between Rae-Anne’s legs again and let out a groan of raw need at the realization of how wet and ready she was for him. She was gasping, touching him with that combination of discovery and experience that never failed to set off fireworks throughout his body.

  Their coming together held none of the slow patience of the prelude to their lovemaking. It was almost as if, in that silent, empathetic embrace, they had each reached for the core of the other and found it, and there were no more layers to strip away between them now.

  That was how it felt as Wiley plunged into the body of the woman he loved—had always loved, more than he’d imagined possible. They were meant to be together like this—it was meant to be.

  They moved together as though they really had merged and become a single being. And the light that burst in Wiley’s consciousness at the moment of climax was partly vision, partly the sound of Rae-Anne’s euphoric cry, partly the swell of certainty in his heart that he belonged with this woman as he had never belonged anywhere else on earth.

  The damn baby was crying. Wiley could hear it.

  It had never cried before. Usually it just sat there on the sand, playing contentedly. But now he could hear the unhappy wails coming across the water, rising and falling with the wind.

  “Damn.”

  He shaded his eyes with one hand and squinted across the lake. Maybe if he swam fast, he thought. It wasn’t rea
lly that far, now that he thought about it. And he was a good swimmer. He didn’t know why he’d never been able to plunge in before now, but somehow things seemed to have changed since the last time he’d had this dream.

  The water might feel good, anyway. And he hated standing here listening to the child’s panicky wailing. The sound kept catching in its throat, as though its heart was breaking.

  He was in the water without being aware of getting there. It felt colder than he’d thought, but he kept his arms and legs moving quickly and cut through the icy lake without feeling tired or chilled.

  “I’m coming,” he called, when he was about halfway across. “Hold on. I’m coming.”

  The noise seemed to get fainter once he touched the shore. Don’t fade out on me now, he thought. He was aware that this was just a dream and that he’d been chasing this particular child for what felt like his whole life. Yet at the same time he felt urgently that he had to hurry, that it was vitally important to reach the baby at last.

  He sprinted across the sand beach to the spot where the child sat. He could see the sand castle now, and the little green plastic pail, bright against the drab tan of the beach.

  And finally he could reach for the child, whose sobs had diminished to almost nothing.

  As his hands closed around the little form, he understood why the sound had stopped. It wasn’t a real baby he was holding, but one made from sand, just like the brave little castle with its waving paper flags. Wiley grasped at the memory of the crying child, but it was gone.

  He was left at the shore of the silent lake with his hands empty and his heart telling him over and over that he was too late, too late, too late….

  “Wiley.” Rae-Anne leaned one knee on the bed and shook him. “Wiley, Jack’s on the phone. Wake up.”

  He seemed to wake up all at once, looking dazed and hostile. “What—” was all he could manage to say as he squinted at her.

  The rain was pelting harder against the bedroom windows, and Rae-Anne had clicked on one of the bedside lamps when she’d come into the room with the cordless phone. “It’s Jack,” she said again, “and I wouldn’t have answered it except that it rang so long I thought it might be an emergency or something.”

  “Right. An emergency.”

  He sank down onto the badly wrinkled bed, pressing one hand over his face for a moment. He’d looked wild-eyed when she’d shaken his shoulder, Rae-Anne thought, as though she’d caught him in the middle of a nightmare.

  She held the phone toward him, prodding him with her knee, and he finally reached out and took it.

  “Jack.” His voice sounded husky. “What’s up?”

  How could a man look so disheveled and still be so beautiful? she wondered. The dark hair that masked his forehead seemed blacker than ever against his tanned skin, and the length of him—his thighs and torso under the light blanket he’d pulled over the two of them—was making RaeAnne’s body quiver with a longing that should have been slaked by now.

  The beginnings of the dark bruises scattered over that magnificent chest should have been more than enough to sober her, to counteract everything Wiley made her feel. But there was something about him that found its way into her bloodstream even when he slept, even when that larger-thanlife personality of his wasn’t in force.

  She’d always loved to watch him sleep. There was something unexpectedly vulnerable about his closed eyelids, something childlike in the curve of his dark lashes under the wide slash of his brows. When he was asleep, it was possible to imagine that Wiley Cotter had once been a child, as confused and lonely as she’d been herself.

  Usually, though, he woke up with a little more grace than this.

  “I said I would call. For crying out loud, Jack, it’s barely nine o’clock,” he was snarling into the phone. Rae-Anne was surprised to see that he was right. She had no idea what time they’d awakened before, but it had obviously been very early.

  “No. He doesn’t know where she is.” That probably meant herself, Rae-Anne thought. And “he” was probably Rodney, who might be tipped off that something was wrong now that Rae-Anne had walked out on him a second time.

  There was a pause, and then Wiley said, “Yeah, I know. I’ve got them here. You want to collect them yourself, or wait for me to deliver them?”

  Rae-Anne’s guess about the answer to that turned out to be correct. “Jack’s on his way over,” Wiley said, as he pushed the button to disconnect the phone. “Sorry about the rush, honey. But he wants to get the pictures and the tape and put a lid on Rodney as soon as he can. I guess we better get dressed.”

  He didn’t move right away, though he draped one long arm over the side of the bed and reached for his discarded sweatpants. Rae-Anne had already gotten into her bra and panties while he was on the phone, but she hesitated before pulling her white Indian cotton dress over her head.

  “What did I wake you from?” she asked slowly. “Were you dreaming?”

  He’d always scoffed at her interest in his dreams, but his scorn on the subject had only convinced Rae-Anne that her questions had touched some place in him that he didn’t want to expose.

  And he wasn’t scoffing now, just lying there with one arm across his forehead, looking at the ceiling with eyes that she suddenly couldn’t read. She didn’t like the way he seemed so distant all of a sudden, and she pressed the point, adding, “It seemed like I interrupted something when I shook you awake.”

  He sighed deeply, then rolled over and grabbed his sweatpants. As he stood up to step into them, Rae-Anne caught her breath at the male hardness of his thigh muscles and the rock-hard ridges of his belly. She couldn’t forget the way she’d been consumed by that body of his only a little while before, and she hated the thought that he might be retreating into the tough-edged, lonely world he’d let himself be coaxed out of so briefly, so exhilaratingly, this morning.

  “It’s nothing much,” he said. “Just this dream I don’t seem to be able to get rid of.”

  Nothing much? she wanted to say. Wiley was smart enough to’ know that recurring dreams were the ones with the most urgent things to say. But he was shrugging the whole thing off as he continued.

  “All my life I’ve had this dream about being stuck on the shore of a lake. And there’s somebody on the other side that I have to get to, only I can’t.”

  “Who’s on the other side of the lake?” Rae-Anne asked, letting her dress fall over her head and reaching for the ends of the belt.

  “A kid.” Wiley gave a half laugh, as though he expected her to find this silly and wanted to chuckle at it before she did. When she stayed silent, waiting, he shrugged and said, “It’s a baby, actually. Sitting on the beach, playing in the sand.”

  “Do you have any idea who the child is?”

  He shook his head at her. “You’ve been a bartender too long,” he told her. “You’re starting to sound like a shrink.”

  “You’re not answering my question,” she persisted, in spite of the way his brows had lowered.

  “No, I don’t have any idea who the child is.” He paused. “Unless-”

  Rae-Anne waited.

  “I guess it might be Sam,” he said finally. “When he was little.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  He sighed and pulled his T-shirt impatiently over his head, then pushed his hair back with one broad hand. “The night my mother kicked my father out of the house, I saw Sam go with him,” he said.

  She felt the quick flicker of interest that Wiley’s past always set off inside her. “Your father took a child of—what, seven years old?”

  “My father didn’t exactly take him. Sam stowed away. He adored my dad. I guess he figured if the family was going to split up, he was going to choose the parent he preferred.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “You said you saw him leaving,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Meaning-”

  He dragged the covers over the bed quickly, efficiently, smoothing away
the scene of their loving with a few motions. “I don’t know what it means, Rae-Anne,” he said. “It’s just the only explanation I can think of for the damn dream, that’s all.”

  He gave the blanket a final tug and stood up straight, looking hard at her. “Either that or I’m just short on sleep, or some damn thing. Or maybe it’s from eating Rodney’s hamburgers last night. Your boyfriend’s no four-star chef, honey.”

  Rae-Anne felt something clench up inside her as she watched him, something that threatened the fragile sense of hope she’d felt as she’d looked into Wiley’s sleeping face.

  She didn’t have to ask why he was doing this, why he was saying your boyfriend in that harsh tone of voice when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was through with Rodney Dietrich. She had touched something deep inside him, maybe with her questions, maybe in that impossibly secret moment when they’d held each other so close, not speaking, just silently confirming the strength of the connection between them.

  The way he was reacting told her he hadn’t wanted to be touched so deeply, and he was retreating at full speed. She followed Wiley into the living room and watched while he poured himself a cup of coffee and collected the black-and-white photographs into an envelope.

  “You wouldn’t be so tight-lipped about this if it wasn’t important,” she told him.

  It worked. He paused, then frowned at her. “Important to who?” he wanted to know.

  “To me. To us.”

  This time he didn’t answer. And despite her confidence that she was onto something, Rae-Anne felt a hint of fear fluttering in her chest. Even in their wildest nights of passion ten years earlier, she’d never felt anything as intimate, as tender, as that moment with Wiley just now. She’d never been so sure she was touching the real Wiley Cotter, reaching beyond all the defenses he’d built for himself to the lonely but loving man within. But he was digging in, alarmed, maybe—or maybe scared—by what the tenderness of that moment might mean in their relationship.