She came without warning, gasping out loud, her thighs tightening, but he didn’t stop. He slowed down, licking her softly, but he kept at it until she was sure one orgasm was rushing into the other, waves of incredible pleasure rippling through her over and over.
When he finally lifted his head away from her, she was weak, panting, and his mouth glistened in the soft lamplight. Then he was getting up, stripping off his tie and his shirt, unbuckling his pants and letting them drop before sliding his briefs off. He was already hard, gloriously so, but she didn’t have time to admire it—he was climbing on top of her and sliding inside.
He grunted, and she wound her arms around him, holding him tight, hanging on as he thrust in and out, harder and faster than he ever had before. His urgency was exciting—her fingers dug into the muscles of his shoulders, and she tilted her pelvis up, seating him even deeper.
“So good,” he murmured. “You’re so good, so beautiful…”
She answered him with her body, straining as his cock thrust home, tightening around him, those fierce interior muscles milking him. He raised above her on locked arms, his eyes dark with abandon as he stared down at her.
She met him thrust for thrust, that sweet spot far inside throbbing with the delicious sensation. He filled her so completely, she whimpered when he pulled out, and sighed when he slid inside again, slowly, the gorgeous friction igniting her arousal all over again.
And then he sped up again, plunging, and she hung on, eyes fixed on his face. He was still watching her, and she knew he saw it when she broke, her mouth opening in a startledO of pleasure. He followed, spilling inside her with a hoarse cry, sliding a hand under her ass to keep him as deep inside her as he could go.
A moment later he collapsed, falling to one side and rolling her with him. She curled into his damp chest, still panting.
In the comfortable silence that followed, his gruff voice was a surprise. “It’s good between us, isn’t it?” he murmured. “Perfect?”
She never could have imagined anything as good as what they shared. Perfect? Hell, yes. At least in bed.
“Of course it is,” she whispered, angling her head up to look at him. His face was shadowed, his eyes dark in the dim light. “It’s wonderful.”
He hugged her tight, dropping a light kiss on the top of her head. “Good.”
There wasn’t anything more to say. But as she dropped off to sleep in his arms, she remembered what he’d said when he’d taken the camera out.I want to remember you this way.
She was right here. Why would he need to remember her?
Nine
Four days later, Mackenzie was seated at an outdoor café she and Susannah liked, the sun on her face and the air sweet with the scent of roses, waiting for her friend to arrive.
If only the rest of her life was as picturesque, she thought with a moody swat at a fly determined to share her iced tea. Ever since Saturday night after the wedding, she’d seen less and less of Leo. He was…well, fading out. Taking himself away from her in bits and pieces, little by little, especially as the studio neared completion.
Sunday he’d claimed laundry and chores at his house, leaving her place by noon and not returning until the next morning. Monday and Tuesday he’d been busy with the subcontractors who were installing the plumbing and electricity, and she’d had appointments with clients, anyway. This morning he’d called to say he had a few appointments with prospective clients and not to expect him until tomorrow, and when she’d wandered into the studio before leaving the house, she knew it was only a very brief matter of time before he would be finished with the shed completely.
The basic shell had been refurbished and shored up, with a new roof and a new door, and the larger window she’d wanted. The Pergo floor was down, the cabinets installed, the darkroom sink was working, and her countertop desk was waiting to be assembled and installed. Once that was done and the sheetrock was painted, including the trim, the studio would be finished.
A dream come true, actually. Gorgeous, functional, and all hers.
Except for the fact that she didn’t give a damn about the studio anymore, not if it meant that Leo would be gone.
“I’m here,” Susannah said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bitch.”
Mackenzie made a vague noise of understanding and handed her friend a menu. “No problem,” she said.
“What’s wrong? You look like you lost your best friend, and that’s not possible because I’m right here.” Susannah waved the laminated menu at her, her bracelets rattling as she did. “Spill. What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Mackenzie said, bending her head toward her own menu and trying to focus on the selection. “I’m thinking about chicken salad. What are you going to get?”
“I’m going to get annoyed if you don’t tell me why you look like you’re about to burst into tears.” She reached across the table and laid a gentle hand on Mackenzie’s arm. “Is it your hunky carpenter?”
Of course it was. Although part of the problem was whether or not he was really hers.
She started with the wedding and went on from there, explaining everything—without mentioning the naked pictures, of course. “It’s just that I don’t know where this is going,” she said as Susannah waved the waiter away, hissing at him to come back later. “We weren’t supposed to get involved in the first place! I didn’t think it was a good idea to sleep with someone who was working for me, and he apparently doesn’t usually sleep with clients, and, well, he’s not even my type! I thought, hey, loads of sexual attraction, this could be a fling, but it’s so much more than that now, and I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t know what he wants, or what he’s hiding, and—”
“Whoa! Slow down, babe,” Susannah said, biting back a grin. “Take a breath. I’ll wait.”
“I know,” Mackenzie said miserably, sighing. “I’m a mess. I’m panicking. And I’m not supposed to do that. Idon’t usually do that! But this thing with Leo is sodifferent .”
And why was it different, she asked herself as Susannah gave in to the impatient waiter and ordered their lunch. Because Leo had shown her that maybe the life she’d always envisioned for herself was a little bit lacking. All these years she’d been picturing a nice guy, but he was, she saw now, boring. Faceless, in fact. A piece of the puzzle, and not necessarily the most important one.
How awful. It was like the Christmas sweaters her grandmother gave her every year. She didn’t want another red—or blue or pink—cashmere cardigan, but she knew she’d get one. And she’d actually begun to plan her wardrobe around them. She might have secretly wanted a black leather miniskirt or a vintage denim jacket, but cashmere wasn’t bad. It didn’t suck.
Every year, she’d settled. And somewhere along the line she’d settled for a life that was likely. A life that was normal, if not spectacular or unique or what she truly wanted. And she didn’t even have it yet. She’d settled in her imagination for a guy who was nice enough, unthreatening, a bit bland. How pathetic was that?
What was worse was the fact that she didn’t have any idea how Leo felt. Did he want them to be together? Did he want children? Did he want children withher ?
And how ridiculous was it to worry about any of that when he seemed to be easing his way out of her life, step by step? When she’d never even been to his house, or knew anything about his family, and certainly not the secrets he seemed so determined to keep?
“You’re going to have to fight for him, if you want him,” Susannah said, squeezing lemon into her diet soda. “Maybe he’s just scared. Maybe it’s that whole commitment thing.”
“I know,” Mackenzie said, smiling at the waiter when he set down her plate of walnut chicken salad. “And I intend to.”
She pulled into the driveway at home a little after three, determined to rope Leo into a conversation if necessary. Except he wasn’t there.
The weight of disappointment was palpable, but it didn’t matter. He’d be back at some
point. If she had to, she’d track him down. She could show up at his house, even.
Or she would if she knew where he lived.
Inside, she kicked off her shoes and decided to catch up on everything she’d let fall by the wayside over the last two weeks. She’d never missed an appointment, but she hadn’t been scrupulous about keeping up with e-mail, or with the mail. She had bills to pay and bills to collect from clients, she was sure, not to mention a mountain of developing to do in the makeshift darkroom she’d set up in the spare bedroom.
She opened her laptop and booted up, horrified to see nearly twenty e-mails waiting to be read, not counting spam. Those she axed immediately, and then scanned through the others trying to decide which was the most important. A message from Bree’s husband caught her eye—wasn’t he on his honeymoon?
She clicked it open, her heart sinking as she read the message. “Check out this link,” it read. “There’s some interesting stuff about your new boyfriend here.” The URL was www.joesgaragefans.com.
Joe’s Garage? They’d been a band a few years back, she thought, although she’d never kept up with new music. Her heart was with U2 and Dave Matthews, and she could never keep track of every must-hear song on the radio. What did Leo have to do with the band?
She clicked it anyway, and her mouth dropped open when the home page revealed photos of the band. There was Leo, front and center, a guitar strapped across his chest, his hair a bit longer, his earring a bit more prominent, in a scruffy gray T-shirt and black jeans, a sexy scowl on his face.
The sexy scowl she knew and, she had to admit, loved.
Leo had been a member of Joe’s Garage?
She clicked through the site, her heart pounding like a drumbeat in her chest. She remembered this now—even someone as uninterested in the music scene as she was knew what had happened to the band in its final days, a year after the release of their second CD. They’d been the big new thing, and the press had followed their tour because the stories of their outrageous partying had been legendary. And then the lead singer, someone named Mike Ruggierio, had OD’d, and the band had fallen apart.
It was all on the Web site, in black and white, with pictures and anecdotes and links to news stories. This was what Leo had been hiding. This was why he didn’t want her taking his picture and publishing it anywhere. The Web site even spelled it out: “Leo Dawson, former guitarist for the band, has disappeared from public life. Attempts to track him down have been met with hostility. Please leave the guy alone—he deserves his privacy and the peace and quiet of his new life.”
She stared at the screen, aware that she’d slumped back in her desk chair, her mouth literally hanging open.
He hadn’t told her. Not once in all the intimate moments they’d shared. Hadn’t trusted her enough to keep his identity, and his privacy, to herself.
And no matter how much she cared about him, she couldn’t love someone who didn’t trust her. Not when she’d given him every reason to believe in her. She hadn’t pushed, hadn’t pressed, hadn’t asked for an explanation when he admitted that he was an alcoholic.
She pushed away from the desk, pacing the living room, trying to ignore the tears sliding down her cheeks. Everywhere she looked, Leo was there. Here in the living room, where he’d helped her move boxes. In the kitchen, where he painted her cabinets and flirted with her. In the bedroom—God, the bedroom, where he’d almost kissed her that first day, and where he’d made love to her as if his life depended on it just the other night. She could picture him in the shower, wet and soapy and flashing that come-here-baby smile, and frying bacon at the stove, explaining patiently that her arteries, and her waistline, could take it. The house alone would always carry memories of him.
She’d opened herself up to him, body and soul. And right now, imagining losing him, imagining the things she’d want to say when she saw him again, it seemed like the biggest mistake she’d ever made.
Pulling out of the Home Depot parking lot at seven that evening, the bed stacked with lumber, Leo turned off the radio in the truck. Joe’s Garage, again. What was it about that fucking song this week?
He didn’t want to hear it. Hell, he barely listened to any post-1985 music anymore. Too many memories. Of the band he and Mike had wanted to form, all those years ago in that Philadelphia suburb, of their rock idols, of the people he’d met when Joe’s Garage started to play seriously. He remembered when the music was all that mattered, writing it, playing it, letting it weave its spell over him and the others, and their audience. And he’d shot that all to hell.
Some days it seemed like he was going to have to find a dark cave somewhere if he wanted to avoid the fallout from that time in his life forever.
Maybe that would prevent him from creating new fallout, too. Like the fallout he knew was coming with Mackenzie. It was like smelling a coming storm in the air, the faint scent of electricity and the gathering damp. It was coming, all right, and he was pretty sure it was going to be a category five.
He was also pretty sure Mackenzie wouldn’t want to live in a cave with him. It would make him, and possibly stalactites, her only photography subjects, for one.
He braked at the stoplight, staring out toward the ocean. Dusk was falling, and the sun was a pink-gold smear on the horizon. It was a perfect day. Except for the fact that he hadn’t seen Mackenzie at all. He was going to have to get used to that, and soon.
When the light changed, he turned onto Lumina and then onto his own street, the faint jingle of an ice cream truck somewhere close by. He smiled. He and his brother had raced the truck in their neighborhood every night in the summer, hoarding sofa-cushion dimes all day to pay for their rocket pops and creamsicles. There was a memory he didn’t have to hide from, at least.
But his smile faded as he neared his house. Because there in the driveway was Mackenzie’s Jeep. And there on the porch steps was Mackenzie herself, arms folded over her chest, her hair scooped back in a no-nonsense ponytail, her brow, he saw as he drove closer, furrowed in a frown.
Shit.Well, that storm certainly came up faster than he’d expected.
He pulled into his driveway, parking behind her Jeep, and climbed out. Here it was. The end.Fuck. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to make love to her one last time, imprint her scent and the feel of her body and the sound of her voice in his brain.
Wasn’t going to happen, he knew. Not when her expression was made entirely of thunderclouds. So he asked the first question that came to mind. “How’d you find me?”
“You left an invoice in the studio, and it had your billing address on it,” she said simply, her voice flat and tired. “I wasn’t above snooping. Especially after I discovered just what you’ve been keeping from me.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.So much for telling her himself. As if he hadn’t had a million opportunities he’d been too chicken to take.
“Do you want to come in?” he asked, stepping around her and fitting the key in the door, trying to keep his voice level. “I’d like it, if you would. If you’ll let me explain.”
She followed him without a word, and stood inside the dark front room of the house as he closed the door behind her, taking in the big nothing he’d done with the place. An old black leather sofa rested against one wall. A huge TV was set up opposite it on a cheap entertainment center he’d picked up at discount place, and an old trunk served as the coffee table. One lonely floor lamp stood in the corner.
It was embarrassing, now that he saw it through her eyes. It wasn’t a home, itwas a cave. If she saw the empty field of the mattress in his bedroom, the only furniture there, she’d probably pity him.
“I don’t know what there is to say, Leo.” She sat down suddenly, and when he looked at her he saw her eyes were full of tears. “I thought…well, I guess I thought you trusted me. I don’t know why you couldn’t tell me what had happened to you. I still don’t know why you’re hiding it.”
He tossed his keys on the trunk, and sat down next to her. He couldn�
�t touch her—she was holding herself rigid, protecting against some kind of blow, even if it was only an emotional one.
He opened his mouth to speak, although he had no idea what he was going to say, but she beat him to it, the words rushing out through her tears. “I know you didn’t plan this. I know I didn’t. I know what happened between us was a surprise. But I can’t help thinking that you knew all along it wasn’t going to last, that when you took those pictures and talked about remembering me, you knew it would end. And I don’t knowwhy. Why, Leo? Why couldn’t you trust me with this?”
Fuck it, he was holding her now, even if she fought him off with a stick. Sliding closer, he hauled her against him, murmuring into her hair. “You’ve got it all wrong, Mackenzie. I do trust you. I was ashamed. I’m not what you want. I don’t fit into the life you’re trying so hard to build for yourself. Do you want some fucked-up ex-rocker with an alcohol problem standing beside you in a church, saying ‘I do?’ Raising your children? Hiding from the press in case someone wants to revisit the crash-and-burn of Joe’s Garage on a slow news day?”
She wrestled away from him until she could look him in the eye. The disbelief in her expression nearly killed him.
“That’s not who you are, Leo.” He’d never heard her voice quite so fierce before. “Those are things you did, things that happened to you. The man I know is no one who should be ashamed of himself. He’s a hard worker, and he’s kind, and he’s loving and imaginative and generous—”
He cut her off with a barking laugh, and got up from the couch to pace the length of the room. She didn’t see, she didn’t want to. She was so much more than he deserved, because her heart was the generous one.
“You don’t want to know how much of those stories are true, Mackenzie,” he said, his back to her. “You really don’t. I drank, I used drugs, I was out of control. High on the celebrity thing, fulfilling every stupid expectation of a rocker I’d ever heard. I cheated on every girlfriend I ever had, because I had hot-and-cold-running women every day. I made my mother cry, for God’s sake. I made her terrified that I would OD. I crashed my car, I broke promises. I fucking self-destructed, okay?”
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