Claim

by Janet Nissenson

  He smiled at her fondly. “Of course we can,” he assured her. “And I admit to intentionally not keeping in touch, for the exact reasons you just stated. But as long as your fiancé doesn’t mind, then I’d like to email and such more often.”

  Tessa gave him a hug. “He won’t mind at all,” she replied confidently. “Ian trusts me. Not to mention,” she added with a wink, “he spoils me rotten and gives me everything I want.”

  She was still smiling during the cab ride home, the pleasure she felt from having seen Peter and how well and happy he was doing making her feel warm all over. She was so absorbed in her thoughts, in fact, that she didn’t notice the front door of the house opening until she’d paid off the driver and began walking up the path.

  “Ian.”

  Tessa blinked in surprise to see him standing in the doorway. It was just past four in the afternoon, and she certainly hadn’t expected him home this early. He was still wearing his suit and tie, and she stood back for an extra moment or two simply for the pleasure of seeing how gorgeous he looked in his business attire. On the days they weren’t traveling together, she missed him something fierce during the hours they were apart, one of the reasons she strived to keep as busy as possible with school, workouts, errands, and chores, so that the time would pass a bit more quickly until he was home with her again.

  She quickened her pace then, until she was practically jogging towards him, and threw herself into his arms as she reached the front doorstep. Ian’s arms automatically went around her, hugging her so tight that she struggled to breathe for a moment or two. And when he kept on holding her, his face buried against the side of her neck, she touched his arm in concern.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked worriedly. “And why are you home from work so early? You’re not sick, are you?”

  Ian shook his head as she placed a palm over his forehead. “No, nothing like that. I’m fine. My meeting wrapped up earlier than expected, and a late afternoon appointment got cancelled, so I thought I’d surprise you by getting home early.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tessa replied, looping her arm through his as they walked inside the house. “I didn’t expect my lunch with Peter to take quite so long. When did you get home?”

  “Just a few minutes ago. How was your lunch? I, ah, didn’t realize Peter was going to be in San Francisco,” he commented, his tone deceptively low-key.

  But Tessa knew her fiancé well enough by now to recognize when something was bothering him. And he was definitely off, no question about it. Between arriving home unexpectedly early, the fierce manner in which he’d just embraced her, and the rather closed-off expression on his handsome face, it was very obvious that he was upset about something.

  “Neither did I until a few hours ago.” She quickly explained about the surprise phone call, and Peter’s reason for being in town. “I was going to call you instead of sending that text,” she continued, “but I knew you were at a lunch meeting today and didn’t want to disturb you. Ian, are you upset that I had lunch with him? Because I can’t come up with any other explanation for why you seem so out of sorts right now.”

  Ian gave what he probably thought was a casual shrug, but Tessa knew it was anything but. “I’m not upset,” he assured her in a flat voice. “Why would I be? I trust you, Tessa, and it was just lunch, after all. How long will Peter be in town anyway?”

  Tessa frowned, following Ian as he strode into his home office. Despite his repeated assurances to the contrary, she knew damned well that everything was not fine. “A few days. I think he’s flying to New York on Friday. He’s supposed to let me know his schedule.”

  “I see.” He opened up his laptop case and began to extract several files and reports. “Will you be seeing him again during his visit?”

  “I’d like to,” she replied quietly. “But not if you’re going to have a problem with it. Like you are right now. And don’t deny it, Ian. It’s very obvious that you’re not happy about the situation, so can we please discuss it?”

  She walked around the side of his desk and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. She felt the unfamiliar stiffness of his body, how he held himself aloof, and how it took long seconds before his own arms closed around her.

  “Tessa, it’s truly not a problem,” he assured her, but he sounded anything but convinced of his own words. “I realize that you and Peter were together for a long time, that you must have a great deal to catch up on. He was your husband, after all, someone that you loved. I’d have to be a total arsehole to be upset over the two of you having lunch.”

  “And yet, you are upset,” she insisted. “And I never, ever want to upset you, Ian. Or displease you. So can’t we please just sit for a few minutes and discuss this rationally? Please?”

  He sighed and gave a curt nod. “All right. Though it’s truly nothing. You shouldn’t be concerned about -”

  Whatever he’d been about to say was abruptly cut off by Tessa’s lips upon his, as she pulled his head down to hers for a long, deeply passionate kiss. He groaned in mingled frustration and surrender, but didn’t resist as she gave him a little push until he was sitting in his desk chair. She didn’t hesitate to climb onto his lap, snuggling against him as she so often did when they were alone this way.

  “I love you, Ian,” she told him, caressing his cheek softly. “You told me once that you hadn’t known what it felt like to love a woman until you met me. Well, it’s exactly the same for me, you know. I might have loved Peter like the best friend he was to me, maybe even like the brother I never had. But whatever I felt for him, whatever sort of friendship or relationship we had, it’s nothing - nothing - like what I feel for you, or what we have together. So please don’t be upset that I had a very innocent lunch with him today. Or that I’d like to spend some more time with him while he’s in town. Because he might have been my first husband, but you are my first love. My first and only love.”

  Tessa was startled to see the glimmer of tears in his eyes, astonished that her impassioned words could really touch him so deeply. But her little speech seemed to have done the trick, because when he smiled up at her it was with his usual tenderness, his hazel eyes warm and filled with emotion.

  “Thank you for saying that, darling,” he murmured, taking her hand in his and pressing a kiss to the palm. “And you’re right. I was upset, stupidly so, when I got that text from you earlier today, rather casually announcing that you were meeting your ex for lunch. I knew damned well that the two of you had really never been much more than friends, knew that you loved me in a way you had never come close to loving him. But, well, I suppose I’d be jealous of any man who had been such an important part of your life. Especially a man who had been there to look out for you when you were at such a vulnerable point in your life. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I had been the one to save you, Tessa, the one who’d taken care of you and made sure you were safe.”

  “But you’ve done all of that and so much more!” she declared passionately, wiggling around until she was straddling his lap. She took his face between her palms and stared resolutely into his eyes. “The first time you kissed me, Ian, that evening in your office - I finally knew what it felt like to be alive. I think until then I’d only been merely existing. Since then you’ve given me everything - and I’m not talking about all of the material things.” She placed a soft, sweet kiss on his lips. “What you’ve given me is priceless - love, security, confidence, self-esteem. Before you and I were together, I felt worthless, unimportant, insignificant. And now, well, I feel like - yours.“

  “Christ.” He shook his head, at a rare loss for words as he eased her head back onto his shoulder and held her close. “And I feel like the luckiest man in the entire world every single minute of every single day. When you first told me about Peter, about the abuse he’d suffered and the impact it had on your marriage, I felt deep sorrow for him. As well as tremendous gratitude for how he’d helped you. But I was also a selfish
enough bastard to feel overjoyed at knowing I’d be the one to awaken you sexually. To transform you from a shy girl into a passionate woman. So why am I acting like a spoiled adolescent now just because you had a friendly lunch with your ex-husband?”

  Tessa laughed, and gave his tie a playful little tug. “Well, if the shoe had been on the other foot, and I’d found out you’d had lunch with Davina, my face would be bright green with jealousy by now. So I would say it’s perfectly normal for us to be jealous of other people who were in our lives at some point in the past. But the important thing to remember is that it was in the past. Peter and I are just friends, and that’s all we’ll ever be again. Besides, he knows how happy I am with you, and knows he could never give me any of the things that you do.”

  Ian gave her a wry smile. “You mean like diamonds and luxury cars and exotic vacations?”

  She shook her head as she gave his earlobe a sharp nip. “No, you silly man,” she whispered naughtily. “I mean like lots and lots of really spectacular sex. In fact,” she added in a very suggestive tone, “it would be a real pity to waste your getting home from work so early. Unless, of course, you really need to look over all of those boring reports before dinner.”

  He stood, lifting her high up into his arms in one fluid motion. “What reports?” he murmured as he began to carry her out of the room.

  Ian very seldom questioned any of the decisions he’d made thus far in his life, usually because he was the sort of man who always thought things out carefully. He was rarely if ever impulsive, and never allowed himself to get badgered or pressured into doing things he didn’t deem prudent.

  But as he and Tessa walked inside of the cozy Mediterranean café, he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking of when he had agreed to go to dinner with her and her ex-husband.

  He grimaced as he acknowledged that he hadn’t precisely been thinking at the time she’d rather excitedly suggested the idea. Or at least he hadn’t been thinking with his brain. Tessa had brought up the idea after their third - or had it been their fourth - round of lovemaking, and at a time when he’d barely been able to remember his own name.

  She had put together a tray of bread, cheese, fruit, and a bottle of wine, and carried it up to the bedroom. Ian had protested that he didn’t want her waiting on him, but she had only laughed and given him a kiss, insisting that taking care of him was one of her greatest pleasures. And because he had already known that to be the truth, had been witness to the many little things she did every day to spoil him and give him pleasure, he hadn’t been suspicious of her motives in pouring him a glass of perfectly chilled Chardonnay, or popping grapes into his mouth teasingly. Otherwise, if Tessa didn’t normally pamper him in such a manner, he might have thought that she was trying to reassure him of her love and devotion, to convince him that her lunch with Peter earlier in the day had simply been to catch up with an old and dear friend.

  But one of the many things he’d learned about his fiancée over the past year was that she didn’t have a devious or manipulative bone in her body. There was no pretense with Tessa, no game playing or dishonesty, and she would never dream of using sex in exchange for a favor or something else she wanted. Ian honestly didn’t know if she was even capable of that sort of cunning behavior, and especially not with him.

  She had, however, caught him completely off guard when she’d suggested that he join her and Peter when they met up for dinner later that week.

  “I think it would be nice for the two of you to get to know each other a little,” she’d pointed out. “And this way you could see for yourself that you have nothing to worry about. Peter and I - well, you already know how complicated our relationship was, how nothing about it was really normal. And now that we’re divorced, now that I’m with you and he knows how happy I am, he and I can truly just be friends. Like we were when we first met.”

  “I trust you implicitly, Tessa,” he’d told her quietly. “The way you love me, how passionate you are, I know that you could never be that way with anyone else. I don’t need to be a third wheel at your dinner with a friend just to ease my ridiculous insecurities.”

  She’d given him a look of amusement. “You? Insecure? Ian, my darling, I don’t think that word is even in your vocabulary. I can’t imagine anyone being more secure and sure of himself than you are.”

  He had plucked a strawberry dipped in white chocolate - a dessert she’d prepared earlier that day - and popped it in her mouth. “Until I met you, I would have been in complete agreement. Not only was I a very confident man, probably too confident and cocky for my own good at times, but I’d never been denied anything I wanted. Things had always gone my way practically from the time I could walk and talk. And not because I kicked up a fuss or bullied or threatened people. It was simply because I had always taken the time to figure out the best way to go about things to achieve the result I desired.”

  He had paused briefly to refill their wine glasses and take a long drink from his before continuing. “You were the one thing I wanted that I couldn’t have, couldn’t figure out a way to make you mine. Not when you already belonged to someone else. I thought more than once about trying to seduce you away from Peter, but knew that you’d never allow that to happen, no matter how much you might have been attracted to me. And when push came to shove, I knew I’d never be able to go through with the idea. It was especially hard for me to accept the fact that you were out of my reach, because I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted you.”

  Tessa had bent down and kissed him, her lips cool from the wine. “You should have told me,” she’d whispered. “Peter wanted me to find someone else, would have gladly given me a divorce if he’d known. And as I’ve told you, he pushed me in that direction over and over.”

  Ian had given a firm shake of his head. “And I’ve told you, love, that it had to happen this way between us. You had to come to me of your own free will, because it was what you wanted. You were so shy and innocent back then it would have taken very little to try and seduce you. But that’s not the way I wanted you, Tessa. So everything unfolded exactly the way it was meant to. However, when I learned that you were having lunch with your ex-husband today, it brought all of those old feelings of mine back - the desperation, the hopelessness. In my mind, Peter was always the one thing standing in the way of you and I being together. Having him back in town, even temporarily, is a reminder of those two very long years I longed for you in silence.”

  “But I’m yours now,” she’d reminded him, flashing her engagement ring. “Even without this ring or any sort of vows or promises, I’d be yours. Peter will never, ever be any sort of threat, will never come between us. And he’s only here for three more days, Ian, before he heads back to Bahrain. It would make me very, very happy if you’d agree to join us for dinner. Please?”

  He’d set his wine glass down before pulling her close and tumbling her back onto the pillows. Teasingly, he had run a finger down the bridge of her nose before giving it a playful little pinch.

  “You know I can never say no to you,” he’d admitted. “And especially when you ask so sweetly. So, yes, I’ll go along. Provided that Peter is okay with it.”

  Tessa had nodded happily. “I’ll check with him, but I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t agree. Thank you, Ian. This means a lot to me.”

  He’d dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Anything to make you happy, love.”

  She had smiled up at him, her hands running caressingly up and down his arms and shoulders. “You make me happy. Just by being close. And especially being this close.” A more sober expression had crossed her lovely face then. “You know, I doubt I would have been even half as understanding or accepting as you’ve been about Peter if the situation was reversed. You’ve explained about your relationship with Davina to me, but when I met her in London last month it was pretty obvious that she still cares for you. I would have been a raving jealous witch if you’d had lunch with her.”

  He had cupped her cheek i
n his hand tenderly. “That wouldn’t have happened,” he’d assured her. “Unlike you and Peter, Davina and I most certainly did not part as friends. I doubt she’d understand the concept of being friends with a former fiancé, or with a man in general. And you have no cause at all to be jealous of her, not for any reason. My relationship with her was so completely different than what you and I have it doesn’t even warrant a comparison.”

  Tessa had covered his hand with her own, nibbling on her bottom lip the way she did when something was troubling her. “But you did have a - a physical relationship with her, didn’t you? A sexual one?”

  Ian had sighed, falling back onto the pillows beside her. “A very bland, very infrequent, and very unsatisfying one, yes. At times it felt more like I was fulfilling an obligation, going through the motions because it was expected, or because the occasion called for it. I certainly never spent entire afternoons and evenings in bed with her, the way you and I have. The way we’ve been doing – good Lord, is it really that late? I never craved Davina so badly that I felt like I’d go out of mind if I didn’t have her right then and there. And I never, ever loved her or cherished her or wanted her the way I do you, Tessa. You are my one and only, darling. The only one I’ve ever obsessed over, and the only one I’ll ever love this way.”

  She’d flung herself into his arms then, twining her limbs about his the way she liked to do. “Good,” she’d murmured huskily. “Because if I knew another woman had experienced the same sort of things with you that I have, I’d be tempted to wring her neck. Or pull her hair out by the roots. Or - or push her into a swamp filled with hungry alligators or something.”

  He had chuckled, his own legs and arms intertwined with hers until they were so tightly joined it was like they shared one body. “Well, then. I suppose it’s a very good thing that you are my one and only, isn’t it? This way I won’t ever have to worry about bailing you out of jail for inflicting grievous bodily harm on some helpless female.”