In mindless strokes, she sat at the vanity and brushed her hair. When the water turned off in the bathroom, she ambled to the bed without making eye contact with me. Climbing under the covers, she scooted to the middle and faced away from me.
I took an unsteady breath. This was not how I imagined my first night holding her would play out. Sinking into the feather mattress, I slid close to Allie.
Normally, she would have melted against me, but she was rigid.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. Pressing my body against her and draping my arm over her side, I tried to get comfortable but not too comfortable. It was only then that I could feel her body quivering. Letting out little whimpers, she turned her face into her pillow.
That was the instant cold shower I needed.
There was nothing I could say to lessen her pain, so I was silent.
A few minutes later, her frustration wilted, and she sank back against me. “I hate her for ruining every tender moment we could have.”
Stroking her arm, I buried my face in her hair. In case the scent became too provocative, I pulled away. “I’ll never stop trying to make you happy. I will see to it that she is destroyed and that you get your happily ever after.”
“What if she never goes away? You’ll spend your life fighting with her. That’s what she wants. All your attention on her.” Allie went rigid and stared toward the long ray of moonlight falling into the room. “I’m jealous. It’s dumb to admit. But I am. I hate her. She gets to remember. She gets to spend more time with you. She knows what it feels like to hold you, to make love to you. It’s not fair.”
So that’s what this was about. Grace had raped me, but Allie still saw that as Grace being closer to me than she had ever been allowed to be. Grace having the upper hand.
“Come here.” My voice was low.
She rolled to face me. Her gorgeous eyelashes were still damp with tears, and her long tresses spread across the pillow. Her legs touched mine, sending heat up my thighs. I inhaled sharply, but repressed impure thoughts.
“She may have had my body, but you have my soul.” I kissed her eyes, then her flushed cheeks.
I also wouldn’t allow myself to touch her too much. It would be deceptive to pretend I hadn’t somewhat wronged her.
She was still, her eyes wide and hopeful. Her fingers traced my lips, and with their touch, my normally irreversible shuddering began.
No.
I wouldn’t allow him out.
Allie wrapped one leg around mine and pulled her body closer to me so our stomachs touched. Allie’s full, pink lips trembled. As if she’d acquired mind-reading skills while I was away, she said, “I know you. You feel guilty about something. You’ve got that look. I don’t care what you did. I just want to be the only thing you think about. I don’t want to share you with anyone.”
“There’ll never be anyone else,” I said.
With the twinkle I remembered from a hundred years ago alive in her eyes, she whispered, “I want all of you.”
My sanity and control tottered on the edge. Principles and standards forgotten, I scooped Allie against me. A hundred years of pent-up frustration landed on her lips.
She wriggled closer and her lips went to my neck. Her hand shoved my shirt up. A bolt of lightning shot through me when her fingers grazed the taut skin at my waistline. I growled and rolled onto my back. In seconds, she had me pinned, straddling me.
Moonlight sparkled through her hair and glistened down her arms as her hands splayed out on my chest. She shoved my dress shirt open and stared down at the skin she’d bared.
“Don’t tell me no.” Her voice was low and sure.
There’s a certain spot on the back of a cat’s neck a human can grip to cause paralysis. The vision of her shirt sliding over her head and landing on the bed felt just as if she had caught me by my soul and hurled me into oblivion.
Her touch was liquid silk, her eyes wild fire.
Allie gripped handfuls of my shirt and snatched it off me.
My breath turned to molten lava in my chest, burning and hard to dispel. Heat traveled down my chest and stopped deep in the pit of my stomach, producing a craving unlike any I’d ever felt. Even shifting wasn’t as distressing.
I thought only one thing would relieve the ache, until a flash of Allie lying in the flower bed beside her dead sister, twisted with wide-eyed vacancy thrashed me back to reality. With a gentle grip, I captured Allie’s wandering hands.
The light in Allie’s eyes dimmed.
“I can’t. Not yet. The fantasies I used to practice with were nowhere near close to feeling like this.”
Her gaze dropped.
I pulled her hands together and placed them flat on my chest. “Don’t hate me. I have to stop. There’s only one thing I want more in this life than to ravish you for hours. Your safety. I promise I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”
She sighed. “I’ll play nice if you promise not to leave me here alone.”
My brow jerked up. “How do you propose I keep my hands off you a whole night?”
“Well, considering I really don’t want you to, maybe if you stay, I can take advantage of you while you’re sleeping.” Playfully, she flopped on the bed beside me.
“One thing I know you’re going to have to do is put that top back on.” My gaze deceived my intentions by landing on the top of her milky white breasts. I groaned.
“If I must.” She pulled the pajama shirt back over her head, propped her elbow on the pillow and her head on her hand to stare at me. “You owe me big.”
All the things my hormone overloaded brain thought to say were inappropriate, so I just said, “Yes. I know.”
After a short, agonizing conversation about what she wanted me to do to her when we were married and me trying to shut her up to ease my male suffering, she finally stopped fighting exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep. Once I was sure she was out completely, I put the sheet, blanket, and two pillows between us. Like that would help. It was a wasted attempt, considering my dreams were filled with her and me in some of the most sensual situations I could hope to find myself.
Needless to say, it was a night of fitful sleep.
Chapter 4
Instead of a morning of Allie testing my capacity for saying no to her, I answered a knock at her door.
“My apologies, Mr. Kinsley, but there’s someone asking for you at the front entrance. I hate to interrupt your sleep, but she was quite insistent,” one of the housekeepers said.
At the bottom of the stairs, a girl I could have gone two lifetimes and not seen again stood waiting. Sage, the waitress from the hole-in-the-wall restaurant, gazed at the fifteenth century tapestries adorning the vestibule walls as I strode down the stairs.
Would she want money? A place beside me she could never have?
I couldn’t imagine why else she’d be standing in the Rollins Mansion.
As I scaled the last two steps, she turned with a sinister grin. “So good to see you again. I’m here for the job opening listed in the local paper.”
“You know good and well that’s not why you’re here.”
“Why else would I show up at the home of you and your wife?” she looked behind me, up the stairs.
“Money I would suppose.” I entertained the probability that a crater barreling through space could have chosen this house to land on before this waitress would have shown up on Allie’s doorstep.
“I don’t know. Money has never been a real interest to me, but that look on your face is of utmost curiosity.” Sage sauntered past me and looked around at the decoration of the vestibule. She touched vases, fingered flowers, flicked glass that encased priceless artifacts. She turned on her heel. “You like my suit? I bought it at a second hand store down the road from the Greasy Spoon. It matches my eyes.”
“What’s the real reason you’re here?” I glanced nervously toward the first room at the top of the staircase where Allie co
uld appear any second.
“That’s for me to know and you to…” She made three dots with her fingers in the air, her green eyes sparkling a particularly evil shade of green. And the suit did match them. It was hideous. It looked just like something Ava would have worn to one of her business meetings. Complete with a dragon broach.
“You can’t be here,” I told her as the worst thing imaginable could happen.
“Who’s this?” With a tinge of last night’s left over insecurity in her voice, Allie padded down the stairs.
I gritted my teeth.
“So nice to meet you. I’m Sage. I saw your help wanted ad and thought I’d get here before anyone else nabbed the job from under my nose.” Sage held out her hand.
Allie poked her hand out, ease replacing her suspicious look.
I threw my hand out, almost slapping Sage’s away from Allie, but I recovered by intercepting the handshake.
“It’s great to meet you.” I dropped her hand and pressed it away from us with just enough pressure that Allie wouldn’t notice the gesture and that Sage would catch my hint. “But we just don’t have any openings right now—”
“Actually, I did put an ad in the paper for some more help. This place needs major overhauling. I’m tired of the gloomy look.” Allie’s eyes lit up as she stepped closer to me.
Sage turned a sweet, acid filled smile to me. “Well, then, it sounds like I’m hired.”
“Don’t you want to discuss pay?” Allie’s face drew to a pinch.
“Who do we have here?” Shelby called from behind us.
Thank God.
“Shelby, this is Sage…” I turned back to Sage. “What’s your last name?”
“Rollins, but I’m no immediate relation to the previous owner,” Sage said to Allie. “I’m simply a college student needing a job to put me through school.”
Allie looked stricken. “Rollins? Did you attend the funeral?”
“No, no. Like I said, I didn’t know the deceased well enough. She was my uncle’s great aunt by marriage. And let’s face it. She may have been a cunning business woman, but she wasn’t the greatest where public relations or family was concerned.” Sage’s voice was so syrupy, I couldn’t believe Allie didn’t notice something was off.
But then Annabeth had always been naïve. Too good-hearted for her own good.
Shelby stepped a little closer and looked into Sage’s eyes. “You bear a little family resemblance.”
“This is not some innocent girl looking for a job. She’s the naked waitress.” I nodded at Sage.
Shelby’s nostrils flared. She faced me. “What the hell is she doing here?”
Sage smiled at all of us and sighed, waiting.
Shelby’s voice shook midway through her sentence. “Allie, I think we should discuss any acquisitions of new help before we make a definite decision.”
Allie shot Shelby a look, but when her gaze fell on my face, she rolled her eyes. “This is crazy. I’m not going to live in fear and suspicion for the rest of my life. Why don’t you and I speak about your wages alone?”
Sage bubbled with a coy smile. “I guess I win, then.”
Allie turned back to Sage. “Let’s talk in the library. Right this way.”
Sage winked at me as Allie went ahead of her.
“Oh. My. God,” Shelby thought-spoke.
With every intention of following Allie and Sage, jerking Sage to the front door and throwing her out on her backside, I took three steps in their direction, but something pulled my muscles into tight cords and stopped me in my tracks. Unable to move, I shot a look at Shelby.
“This will be funny one day. I promise. Right now, we have to focus on damage control,” Shelby thought.
“I highly doubt I’ll ever find even a modicum of humor in this situation.”
“What do you want to do? If you pull her to the side and tell her now, we risk a chance in her losing her mind. She’s pretty fragile at the moment.”
I slammed my hand against the stone wall, then paced the floor.
“We don’t have time to waste on one of your rabid animal temper tantrums. Just go tell her. I don’t know any other way to keep Allie’s trust. At least if you’re truthful with her, she can’t hold that against you.” Shelby took my arm and shoved me in the direction the two women had gone.
At the library doors, I stood just outside.
“…and if you can start right away, that would be wonderful.” Allie’s voice was happy. It wouldn’t remain that way for long.
I stepped into the library.
Seemingly past our overprotective outburst from earlier, she slipped her arm around my waist.
I stiffened.
She noticed that time.
I couldn’t tell her it was because she just hired a stalker. At least not yet. I needed time to plan what to say to her about the motel room incident, because no doubt, Sage would fill her in as soon as she had time to plan the best way to do it. If she hadn’t already.
“We’re glad to have you. Just make yourself at home. The staff living quarters are on the third floor. You have my cell number. If you need anything, let me know.” Allie gave her a warm smile and ignored me completely. Yes. More like Annabeth every day.
My heart slammed all over my chest like a rabid squirrel, but Sage’s next statement crushed the squirrel into my rib cage.
“Personal assistant is even better than what I’d hoped for. Thank you.” Sage flicked a quick, mischievous sneer in my direction.
My tongue was set in cement.
“I haven’t been in town very long, and it’ll be great to have someone with the inside scoop on all the socialites.” Allie retracted her arm. “I have friends here, but a fresh take on the town is just what I need if I’m going to move forward with my plans.”
Plans? What plans?
“I guess I’m in need of a new wardrobe. I’d planned on a house staff position, but if I’m going to be a good assistant, I need to look the part. If you two will excuse me, I have some shopping to do with my sign-on bonus.” Sage took Allie’s hand this time, looking and sounding almost human. “I’ll see you in the morning, bright and early.”
God, she was good.
As Sage exited the library, Allie turned to me. “Don’t even start. I need some friends outside of this house. I know I have you and the twins, but I need a good outside eye’s view of things.”
I shook my head and took Allie’s hand. As stubborn as ever, she was. And just as blindly trusting too.
“You and I need to catch up on some much needed us time.” I grazed her fingers with my thumb.
Her hard gaze softened. “Why do I think you’re up to something?”
“Because you know me.” I pulled her hand.
She held firm and stood in the same spot. “As long as when we’re alone, and you don’t drone on and on about how dangerous everything around me is, we’ll be fine. I’m tired of the obsessing. I need some normal days. I’ve had enough of the freakiness.”
“No obsessing. Gotcha.” I would have to tread lightly, but I couldn’t back out. I’d learned from my past lessons.
With our hands still linked, Allie followed me through the library doors. “So, where are you taking me?”
“To the waterfall.” I kissed her fingers. “But I have a few things to take care of first. You get breakfast put in a basket for us, and I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”
* * * *
“Hey!” I caught Sage just as she got in a rickety old car in the driveway.
“With my new salary, I can definitely trade this rat box in for something a little classier.” She turned to me with an acid smile and pressed her long, brown hair over her shoulder.
I approached her and kept my voice low so no one would hear. “Whatever she promised you, I’ll double it if you leave right now.”
“It’s not about the money, honey. It’s about revenge. You rejected me. Now you have t
o pay. I’m sure you’re not going to tell her about us anytime soon. She looks too happy.”
I didn’t know what to say or do, so I stood in the July heat on the steaming sidewalk.
Sage went to the driver’s door of her car. “I’ll be back. Don’t lock the gate, or I’ll be forced to send word to Allie that you’ve been less than loyal to her.”
* * * *
With a basket in one hand and Allie’s hand in the other, we strolled down the path toward the waterfall in the woods. I didn’t talk a lot.
She was quiet too. And fairly happy.
When she was mad, I didn’t have access to her thoughts. I hadn’t let her in on that secret, but I would eventually. In an attempt to have as normal a relationship as possible, I would keep some things to myself. Until it served me to reveal them. We men were like that.
I was an open book these days.
I had to find some way to keep things exciting.
Right then, I could filter through her mind with ease until, at intervals, her mind went to a darker place where Grace haunted it.
The plans she’d made without me were staggering. Changes to the house. A new business. Wishes of a wedding that would never happen, even if she had time to plan one.
My mood darkened. I’d never wanted to be a source of her unhappiness.
“I’d hoped your time away would brighten your disposition, but you seem as angsty as ever.” Not an insult. Just Allie’s wise observation.
“I promised not to obsess. So I’m keeping it in. I don’t mean to be gloomy.” I tugged at the neck of my T-shirt. I was hotter by the second. The truth would have to come out soon, and it would have to be on my terms because if I didn’t soon tell Allie, Sage would.
She’d made it clear she didn’t want money.
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