by Nora Roberts
“Oh, that’s the biggest pile of bull slop I’ve ever heard.” She was just angry enough not to notice that his cough disguised a chuckle. “The lot of you are so stubborn. Every gray hair I have is a result of Hathaway mule-headedness.”
He skimmed a glance over her neat cap of rich russet. “You don’t have any gray hair.”
“And I pay good money to keep it away.” She huffed out a breath. “Now you listen to me, Sam, and keep your ears open for once. I don’t care how old those three children are, they still need you. And it’s past time you gave them what you stopped giving them and yourself years ago. Compassion, attention, and affection. If Ginny pulling this awful stunt has brought this to a head, then I’m almost glad of it. And I’m not going to stand by and see the four of you walk away from each other again.”
She pushed off the stool, snagged her glass. “Now, I’m going to try to calm Lexy down, which should take me half the night. That gives you plenty of time to find your son and start mending fences with him.”
“Kate ...” When she paused at the door and turned those sparkling eyes back on him, nerves had him reaching for the bottle of Jim Beam, setting it aside again. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You idiot,” she said with such gentle affection that the heat rose up his neck a second time. “You already have.”
BRIAN knew exactly where he was going. He didn’t delude himself that he was just taking a long walk to cool off. He could have rounded the island on foot and his blood would still have been hot. He was furious with himself for losing his temper, for saying things it did no good to say. It ripped at him that he’d made both Lexy and Kate cry.
Life was simpler when you kept things inside, he decided, when you just lived with them and went about your business.
Wasn’t that what his father had done all these years?
Brian hunched his shoulders against the rain, annoyed that he’d come out without a jacket and was now soaked through. He could hear the sea pounding as he trudged along the soggy sand between the dunes. Lights glowed behind the windows of cottages, and he used them as a compass in the dark.
He heard a drift of classical music as he mounted Kirby’s stairs. He saw her through the rain-splattered glass of the door. She wore soft and baggy blue sweats, her feet bare. Her hair swung forward to curtain her face as she bent to poke inside the refrigerator, one dainty foot with sassy pink toenails tapping time to the music.
The quick punch of lust was very satisfying. He opened the door without knocking.
She straightened quickly and with a short, audible gasp. “Oh, Brian. I didn’t hear you.” Off guard, she balanced a hand on the open refrigerator door. “Is there word on Ginny?”
“ No.”
“Oh, I thought ...” Nerves drummed in her fingers as she raked them through her hair from brow to tip. His eyes were dark and direct, with something unquestionably dangerous smoldering in them. Her heart took a rabbit leap into her throat. “You’re soaked.”
“It’s raining,” he said and began to walk toward her.
“I, ah—” It didn’t matter how ridiculous she told herself it was, her knees were starting to shake. “I was about to have a glass of wine. Why don’t you pour some and I’ll get you a towel.”
“I don’t need a towel.”
“Okay.” She could smell the rain on him now, and the heat. “I’ll get the wine.”
“Later.” He reached out and shut the refrigerator door, then trapped her against it with his body and crushed his mouth to hers in a searing, greedy kiss.
Even as the moan strangled in her throat, his hands snaked under her shirt, closed possessively over her breasts. His teeth nipped at her tongue, shooting tiny thrills of pain and fear through her. Then his hands slid down, around her, cupping her bottom and lifting until she was inches off the floor, and wet, straining denim was pressed against the wicked ache between her thighs.
She managed to shudder out a breath when his lips fastened on her throat. “So much for small talk.” Hungrily, she attacked his ear. That quick bite of flesh stirred a craving for more. “The bedroom’s down the hall.”
“I don’t need a bed.” His smile sharp-edged and feral, he lifted his head and looked at her. “My way, remember. And I do my best work in the kitchen.”
Her feet hit the floor again before she could blink. He pulled her arms over her head, capturing her wrists in one hand as he pushed her back against the door. “Look at me,” he demanded, then slid his free hand under the elastic of her pants and plunged his fingers into her.
She gave one choked cry—shock and pleasure colliding in a brutal assault on the system that had her hips jerking against him, matching his ruthless rhythm in primal response. Her vision narrowed, her breath shortened, and she came in an explosive gush.
She’d already been wet. He’d found her slick and ready, and that alone had been brutally arousing. But when her eyes went blind and she flooded into his hand, fists of vicious need pounded at his body. His breath was a snarl as he yanked the shirt over her head, fastened his mouth to her breast.
She was small and firm and tasted of peaches. He wanted to devour her, to feed until he was sated or dead. His murmurs of approval mixed with threats neither of them could comprehend. Her hands were raking through his hair, tugging at his wet shirt, those always competent fingers fumbling in their haste. Her very lack of control was another layer of arousal for him.
“More,” he muttered, dragging her pants over her hips. “I want more.” When his mouth raced down, she gripped his shoulders and sobbed.
“You can’t—I can’t. Oh, God. What are you doing to me?”
“I’m having you.”
Then his mouth was on her, teeth and tongue relentlessly driving her beyond sanity. Her head fell back against the humming refrigerator door as heat swamped her, as it sucked her down, as it coated her skin with sweat. The force of the climax struck her like a runaway train speeding through the tunnel where he held her trapped and helpless.
Her body went limp, her head lolling back when he lifted her. Nothing shocked her now, not even when he laid her on the kitchen table like a main course he had skillfully prepared for his own appetite.
He stripped off his shirt, his eyes never leaving hers. Bracing one foot on the edge of the table, he pulled off one sneaker, then the other, tossing them both aside. He unbuttoned his jeans, dragged the zipper down.
Her eyes were clearing. Good, he thought. He wanted to watch them go blind again. As he stripped off his jeans, he let his gaze wander over her. Rosy, damp skin, delicate curves, her hair tumbled against dark wood. She was beautiful, breathtaking. When he was sure he could form words, he would tell her. Now he mounted her, and feeling her tremble beneath him, smiled.
“Say, Take me, Brian.”
She had to concentrate on pulling in enough air to survive, then let it out on a moan as his thumbs brushed over her nipples.
“Say it.”
Mindlessly, she arched for him. “Take me, Brian. For God’s sake.”
He drove inside her in one fast, hard stroke, holding them both on the edge as he watched those mermaid eyes glaze. “Now, take me, Kirby.”
“Yes.” She lifted a hand to his face, wrapped her legs around him, and gloried in the fast, dark ride.
He was breathless when he collapsed on her, and for the first time in days both his body and his mind were relaxed. He could feel her still quivering lightly beneath him, the solid aftershocks of good, hard sex.
He rubbed his face in her hair, enjoying the scent of it. “That was just to whet the appetite.”
“Oh, my God.”
He chuckled, and pushing himself up, was delighted to see her smiling at him. “You tasted like peaches.”
“I’d just had a bubble bath before you came around to ravish me.”
“Good timing on my part.”
She reached up to brush the hair back from his face—a casually affectionate gesture that intrigued them b
oth. “As it turned out, I suppose it was. You looked very dangerous and exciting when you walked in here.”
“I was feeling dangerous. We had a family scene at Sanctuary.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your problem. I could use that wine now.” He shifted, slid off the table, and went to the refrigerator.
Kirby allowed herself to enjoy the view. As a doctor she could give him high marks for keeping in shape. As his lover, she could be grateful for that long, hard body. “Wineglasses are in the second cabinet to the left,” she told him. “I’ll get a robe.”
“Don’t bother,” he said as she hitched herself off the table.
“I’m not going to stand around the kitchen naked.”
“Yes, you are.” He poured two generous glasses before his gaze slid in her direction, roamed over her. “And you won’t be standing for all that long, anyway.”
Amused, she arched a brow. “I won’t?”
“No.” He turned, handed her a glass, then tapped his against it. “I figure the counter there will put you at about the right height.”
She was grateful she’d yet to sip her wine. “The kitchen counter?”
“Yeah. Then there’s the floor.”
Kirby looked down at the shiny white linoleum her grandmother had been proud to have installed three years before. “The floor.”
“I figure we might make it to the bed—if you’re set on being traditional—in a couple, three hours.” He glanced at the clock on the stove. “Plenty of time. We don’t serve breakfast until eight.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or gulp. “Awfully confident of your staying power, aren’t you?”
“Confident enough. How’s yours?”
The thrill of challenge made her smile. “I’ll match you, Brian—and more, I’ll make sure we live through it.” Her eyes laughed at his over the rim of her glass. “After all, I’m a doctor.”
“Well, then.” He set his glass aside. She squealed when he nipped her around the waist—then yelped when her butt hit the Formica. “Hey, it’s cold.”
“So’s this.” Brian dipped a finger into his wine, then let it drip onto her nipple. He bent forward, licked it delicately away. “We’ll just have to warm things up.”
FIFTEEN
SAM supposed it was a bad sign when a man had to pump up his courage just to speak to his own son. And it was worse when you’d worked yourself up to it, then couldn’t find the boy.
The kitchen was empty, with no sign of coffee on the brew or biscuits on the rise. Sam stood there a moment, feeling outsized and awkward, as he always did in what he persisted in thinking of as a woman’s area.
He knew Brian habitually took a walk in the morning, but he also knew Brian just as habitually started the coffee and the biscuit or fancy bread dough first. In any case, Brian was usually back by this time. Another half hour, forty minutes, people would be wandering into the dining room and wanting their grits.
Just because Sam didn’t spend much time around the house, and as little as possible around the guests, didn’t mean he didn’t know what went on there.
Sam ran his cap around in his hands, hating the fact that worry was beginning to stir in his gut. He’d woken up on another morning and found a member of his family gone. No preparation then, either. No warning. Just no coffee brewing in the pot and no biscuit dough rising in the big blue bowl under a thick white cloth.
Had he driven the boy off? And would he have more years now to wonder if he was responsible for pushing another out of Sanctuary and away from himself?
He closed his eyes a moment until he could tuck that ugly guilt away. Damned if he’d hang himself for it. Brian was a full-grown man just as Annabelle had been a full-grown woman. The decisions they made were their own. He tugged his cap onto his head, started toward the door.
And felt twin trickles of relief and anxiety when he heard the whistling heading down the garden path.
Brian stopped whistling—and stopped walking—when he saw his father step through the door on the screened porch. He resented having his mood shoved so abruptly from light to dismal, resented having his last few moments of solitude interrupted.
Brian nodded briefly, then moved past Sam into the kitchen. Sam stood where he was for a minute, debating. It wasn’t hard for one man to spot when another had spent the night rolling around with a woman on hot, tangled sheets. Seeing that relaxed, satisfied look on his son’s face had made him feel foolish—and envious. And he thought of how much easier it would be all around for him to keep walking and just leave things where they lay.
With a grunt, he pulled off his cap again and went back inside.
“Need to have a word with you.”
Brian glanced over. He’d already donned a butcher’s apron and was pouring coffee beans into the grinder. “I’m busy here.”
Sam planted his feet. “I need a word with you just the same.”
“Then you’ll have to talk while I work.” Brian flicked the switch on the grinder and filled the kitchen with noise and scent. “I’m running a little behind this morning.”
“Uh-huh.” Sam twisted his cap in his hands and decided to wait until the grinder was finished rather than trying to talk over it. He watched Brian measure out coffee, measure out water, then set the big Bunn Omatic on to brew. “I, ah, was surprised you weren’t already in here at this.”
Brian took out a large bowl and began to gather the basics for his biscuits. “I don’t punch a time clock for anybody but myself.”
“No, no, you don’t.” He hadn’t meant it that way, and wished to God he knew how to talk to a man wearing an apron and scooping into flour and lard. “What I wanted to say was about yesterday—last night.”
Brian poured milk, eyeballing the amount. “I said all I had to say, and I don’t see the point in rehashing it.”
“So, you figure you can say your piece, but I’m not entitled to say mine.”
Brian snatched up a wooden spoon, cradled the bowl in his arm out of habit and began to beat. The dreamy afterglow of all-night sex had dulled to lead. “What I figure is you’ve had a lifetime to say yours, and I’ve got work to do.”
“You’re a hard man, Brian.”
“I learned by example.”
It was a neat and well-aimed little dart. Sam acknowledged it, accepted it. Then, weary of playing the supplicant, he tossed his cap aside. “You’ll listen to what I have to say, then we’ll be done with it.”
“Say it, then.” He dumped the dough on a floured board and plunged his hands into it to knead violently. “And let’s be done with it.”
“You were right.” Sam felt the click in his throat and swallowed it. “Everything you said was right, and true.”
Wrist-deep in biscuit dough, Brian turned his head and stared. “What?”
“And I respect you for having the courage to say it.”
“What?”
“You got flour in your ears?” Sam said impatiently. “I said you were right, and you were right to say it. How long does it take that goddamn contraption to make a goddamn cup of coffee?” he muttered, staring accusingly at the machine.
Slowly, Brian began to knead again, but he kept his eyes on Sam. “You could squeeze off a cup if you need one.”
“Well, I do.” He opened a cupboard door, then scowled at the glasses and stemware.
“Coffee cups and mugs haven’t been kept there for eight years,” Brian said mildly. “Two cupboards down to the left—right over the coffee beverage area.”
“Coffee beverage area,” Sam murmured. “Fancy names for fancy drinks when all a man wants is a cup of black coffee.”
“Our cappuccino and lattes are very popular.”
Sam knew what cappuccino was, right enough—or was mostly sure. But lattes baffled him. He grunted, then carefully slid the glass carafe out to pour coffee into his mug. He sipped, felt a little better, and sipped again. “It’s good coffee.”
“It’s all in the beans.”
“I guess grinding them fresh makes some difference.”
“All the difference in the world.” Brian dropped the dough in the bowl, covered it, then walked to the sink to wash up. “Now, I believe we have what could pass as an actual conversation for the first time in, oh, most of my life.”
“I haven’t done right by you.” Sam stared down into the rich