The Promise of Lightning

by Linda Seed

  In the top drawer was a collection of random belongings: a pin from the Rotary Club. A sterling silver ring. A program from a school play Breanna had performed in. Some old prescription bottles, and a couple of greeting cards proclaiming happy birthday! and merry christmas!

  And tucked into a corner of the drawer, he found a stack of yellowed, worn envelopes bound with a rubber band.

  Drew pulled the bundle out of the drawer, pulled off the rubber band, and looked at the first envelope in the stack. The envelope was addressed to Isabelle McCray, Drew’s mother. It had been marked return to sender in writing Drew recognized as Isabelle’s. The envelope was still sealed.

  Drew carried the envelopes over to the bed and sat down. He felt certain that it would be wise to be sitting for this. His heart hammered as he carefully opened the first envelope.

  Inside was a check for six thousand dollars and a letter carefully written on a piece of white paper.

  Dear Isabelle,

  I understand why you don’t want to hear from me. I don’t want to hurt you or your family. But if you could send me news of our son, I would consider it a kindness. Please send a picture. Just one picture. He would be six months old by now, and I’ve never seen him. A father should know the look of his son.

  Redmond

  Drew’s breath had been taken from his lungs. He clutched the letter, staring at the words. He’d known that Redmond had written to Isabelle, but seeing the letter, seeing what he’d written in his own hand, felt real. It felt like Redmond, for this moment, was here with him.

  He’d assumed that Redmond hadn’t wanted him, that he’d simply impregnated Isabelle and walked away. Drew had felt so much anger over that, so much pain. But now, what he was seeing was challenging all that he’d assumed.

  His mother had been the one who had kept Drew from knowing Redmond. It had been Isabelle.

  He opened the other letters one by one. Each one contained much of the same. Usually, there was a check accompanied by a plea to see Drew, or at least to get news of him. A picture. Some indication that the boy was well, and that he was well loved.

  Drew didn’t even realize he was crying until a tear plunked down onto the letter in his hand, wetting the paper.

  He also didn’t realize that Sandra had returned and was standing in the doorway. How long had she been there, watching him?

  “Must have been hard, reading what’s in those letters,” she observed, her arms crossed over her body. He looked up, and she nodded once. “I don’t know what’s in them—never looked at ‘em, myself, even though I knew they were there.”

  Drew wiped his face with his hands, stacked the letters and the checks, and rewrapped them with the rubber band.

  “He wanted to see me,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s what all of the letters are. Him asking about me, asking to see me or at least get a picture. She never opened them. She couldn’t even bother to read them.”

  The focus of the anger that lived in him was shifting from Redmond to his mother. How could she leave him with so many questions, so much doubt?

  “I expect she did it to protect her family,” Sandra said. “Not saying it was right, but it was probably what she thought she had to do, for you and Julia.”

  “And for my dad,” Drew said. Andrew McCray, the man who’d raised Drew, the only dad he’d ever known, would have suffered a devastating blow if he’d learned that his son had been fathered by another man. And Isabelle no doubt would have faced an enormous amount of upheaval—divorce, shared custody of her children with a man who’d surely have been full of anger and resentment.

  “Sometimes you do what you’ve got to do to protect the people you love,” Sandra said. She came to sit on the bed beside Drew. “Even when it’s hard, even when part of you knows it’s wrong to keep a secret like that. You do the best you can at the time.”

  “I can see why she did it,” Drew said. “I can’t imagine what that would have been like—my parents divorced, me and Julia shuttling back and forth between parents.” He shook his head at the thought. “But she lied. For my whole life, she lied.”

  “Well, she did,” Sandra agreed. “I imagine that’s a conversation you’ll be having with her sooner or later.”

  “I didn’t get to know Redmond,” Drew said. “I never got to do that, and now I’m too late.”

  Sandra put her hand on his shoulder, and this simple, warm touch from her was so surprising and so comforting that he wondered if he’d simply willed it.

  “You can get to know us,” she said. “We’re not him, but we’re not bad.”

  He looked at her, and gave her a half grin. “I was, though. The last time I was here, I wasn’t exactly gracious to all of you.”

  “Hmph.” She slapped her hands onto her thighs and stood up. “Always time to change that, boy. Gonna take some work to make up for it. I expect you’ll manage, though.” Her face was arranged in her usual stern expression, but he thought he saw a hint of a smile there, too.

  “I’ll try.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Drew had meant it when he’d told Sandra he would try.

  And trying meant he needed to make a sincere effort to get along with all of the Delaneys—even Liam.

  Drew had been an asshole to the Delaneys in the past, and he didn’t want to be one any longer. And kissing Megan, or moving in on her in any other fashion, would certainly qualify as asshole behavior.

  He promised himself anew that he would let her be—at least for now. He knew that the best course of action would be to step away entirely, but he didn’t know if he could do that. So instead, he told himself he would keep her at a distance until she had completely resolved things with Liam.

  He told himself he would treat Liam the way he, himself, would want to be treated if he were the guy who was about to get his ass handed to him by a woman. It still wouldn’t be any fun for Liam, but at least Drew wouldn’t carry any of the blame for his heartache.

  Drew was feeling pretty good about his decision—until Megan texted him early that afternoon after everyone had returned from kayaking.

  I missed you today.

  And, ah, shit, there went his resolve.

  She missed him?

  The thought of her actively missing him made him nearly weak-kneed. Because he’d missed her, too. He’d thought about her out there on the water, her skin smooth and glowing in the sun.

  So many feelings—jealousy, lust, longing—warred within him, and he thought it would almost be worth all of the inner conflict just to be anywhere near her.

  He answered her text with his own:

  I had business to take care of.

  A moment or two later, his phone pinged:

  What kind of business?

  His response was one word:

  Redmond.

  Drew wanted to kiss her, wanted to do much more than kiss her. But he found that he also just wanted to talk to her, to be with her. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened today, and what he’d found when he’d looked through Redmond’s room.

  He knew that was a bad sign. Wanting to sleep with someone was one thing. Over the years, he’d wanted to sleep with any number of women. But when your emotions were churned up and all you wanted was to tell the person everything you were feeling, well, that meant you were in more trouble than mere sexual attraction could ever bring.

  Are you okay? she asked.

  That was an invitation, he knew. An invitation for him to let her in, to open up his heart to her. And he wanted to do it. God, how he wanted to do it.

  I’m not sure.

  He stared at his phone, waiting for what she would say to him now. Because whatever it was, it was going to set the tone for what happened next. Something distant and vaguely sympathetic, and it meant they would be dancing around each other for God knew how long. Something more intimate—more sincere—and it meant they would be hurling themselves into the abyss of whatever cataclysmic passion each of them was capable of.

>   Do you want to talk? I can come over.

  He stared at the text message with blood pounding in his ears.

  So, the abyss it was.

  God help him.

  They fell on each other the moment she arrived at the door of his hotel room. He opened the door, saw her, and pulled her to him, his mouth covering hers in a kiss that held all of his need, all of his hurt, all of his tentative, fragile dreams.

  He devoured her, tasting her, holding her to him as though his very life were at her mercy.

  Megan gave everything back to him, clinging to him, gathering fistfuls of his shirt in her grasping hands.

  He knew he shouldn’t do this—knew he should back away and send her home. But all of his good intentions about the Delaneys and Liam and not being part of the man’s heartache had vanished from his brain, annihilated in an explosion of chemistry and need.

  Right now, he wanted her no matter who it hurt, no matter what damage it might do, no matter whether the earth itself should vaporize as a result.

  “Megan.” He breathed her name. It wasn’t a question, wasn’t a plea. He said the word with the wonder of having discovered the answer to all of life’s mysteries.

  She took his face in her hands and kissed him with desperate urgency. He tasted her and touched her, claiming her with his hands on her body.

  Having realized that they were still standing in the open door of the hotel room, visible to any of the tourists who might be passing by on Moonstone Beach, she shoved him into the room and swung the door closed with her foot. Then he pushed her back against the closed door with a thump as he thrust his hands under her shirt and over her smooth skin.

  Her eyes closed and she gasped at the feel of his rough, urgent touch. He pulled down the cups of her bra and grasped her bare breasts in his hands, and she groaned, no longer thinking, no longer reasoning. The peaks of her nipples responded to his touch.

  She’d been thinking about him, wanting him, since the moment they’d met, and now, having his hands on her was so much more than it had been in her fantasies. But it didn’t feel new. It felt as though her body recognized him, as though it had come home.

  In the moment, everything about this felt right, as though it were meant to be. As though she’d always been waiting for him.

  She pulled his T-shirt off over his head and kissed his warm skin, running her hands over his chest. Then she stopped and lifted her eyes, just for a moment, and saw him looking at her with such passion, such desire, that she was lost.

  “Stay with me.” His voice was ragged.

  She unbuttoned her shirt, slid it off of her shoulders, and let it fall to the floor. That was all the answer she gave, and all he needed.

  In that moment, he was so grateful to her that he felt the rush of it through his entire body, releasing tensions he hadn’t known he had.

  He took her hand and led her to the bed.

  Making love with Megan was not like it had been with Tessa, or with any of the women he’d been intimate with before. He’d enjoyed other women, yes. But this felt like an entirely different type of act than what he’d known.

  It was like she’d been made for him, and he knew that was bullshit—the kind of thing you read about in sappy books or heard about in love songs. And yet, that was how it seemed. Like her body, her curves and planes, had been made to fit his.

  This didn’t feel just like sex—it felt like he was worshipping her, soothing his soul at the altar of her body.

  He undressed her, kissed the length of her, ran his hands along her smooth, trembling skin. Slowly, to make this last as long as he could, he touched her with his fingers, the palms of his hands, his tongue.

  She tugged at him, trying to pull him up to her as he pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, but he wouldn’t be rushed.

  “Ssh.” He soothed her, caressing her with gentle hands. “Not yet.”

  He ran his tongue up the tender skin of her leg with agonizing slowness, listening to her little gasps of pleasure, her ragged breath. Then he eased her thighs apart and tasted the core of her as she tangled her hands in his hair.

  “Oh … God. Oh.” Her body began to shake, and then the orgasm ripped through her like an explosion, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake.

  “Drew … Oh, my … Please …” She pulled at him again, but he continued to plunder her with his tongue and his fingers until she rose up, up, up again, crying out in an exquisite spasm of pleasure.

  By the time he entered her, he was so close to the edge that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to last. So he moved slowly, teasing both of them, until the tension was unbearable. Then he buried his face in a tangle of her hair and gave her everything he had, clinging to her body, moving faster and harder until he, too, felt himself break apart in a blinding spasm of release.

  For a minute, he didn’t know his name, where he was, who he was, or even how he got here. He didn’t know anything but the shining, pulsing pleasure rushing through him. When it finally receded, he seemed to have lost the power of speech.

  That didn’t matter; he didn’t need it. All he needed was Megan, and he clung to her as they both drifted off into a light sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Later, they talked a little about Liam and Redmond, and about Tessa.

  “You’re the first woman I’ve been with since my ex,” he told her as they lay side by side under the covers of the hotel bed. He said it lightly, as though it were idle conversation, but to him, it was an important confession, a signifier of what being here with her meant to him.

  “The first? And your divorce was …”

  “About three and a half years ago.”

  “But …”

  He tried to explain. “I just wasn’t … Look. Tessa left me because I was too wrapped up in all of my feelings about Redmond and my dad. I didn’t have room for anything but that. For anything but the anger and the hurt. I didn’t have room for her.” He’d known that, but this was the first time he’d said it just that way, just that plainly. “Then, once she was gone, there was Redmond’s death, and the inheritance, and the Delaneys. And I was still all wrapped up in my feelings. Maybe more than before.”

  “You thought that if you got involved with someone, it wouldn’t go well,” she said.

  “Well, sure. And it probably wouldn’t have.”

  She was silent for a moment as she considered what he’d said.

  “She should have stuck. She should have seen you through it. Even if she wasn’t happy, she could have been there.”

  “Yeah, but how long?” He propped his head up on his hand. “I was one miserable bastard for a year and a half before she pulled the plug. At the time, I felt like a real victim, like she’d really screwed me. But now … I guess I can see her point. I couldn’t have been much fun to live with.”

  “If you care about someone, you stick when they’re in trouble,” she said.

  “Yeah, well.”

  She sat up and leaned her back against the headboard, pulling a sheet up around her body.

  “So, what happened with Redmond?” She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, and the one small gesture made his entire body warm.

  When he’d found the letters, he’d wanted so much to talk to her about it. Now that she was here with him, he let all of it pour out.

  “Sandra let me look in his room. She’d been saving everything—all of his things—for me. Which is an amazing gesture, when you think about it. So, I looked through his stuff, and I found some letters.” He felt himself start to get emotional, and he took a deep breath to bring his feelings under control.

  “What kind of letters?” she prompted him.

  “To my mom. About me.” He told her about the letters, about the checks and Redmond’s pleas to see Drew, and the way they’d all been returned to him unopened. “I always assumed he didn’t want me. From the time I found out about him, I assumed that he’d stayed away because he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. But it wa
s her, not him. She was the one who kept me from knowing him.”

  “Have you talked to her about it?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I need to think. I need … She and I barely had any relationship at all for a couple of years after I found out. Now, we’re putting things back together slowly, a little at a time. But this? This is a lot to take in. She kept me from my father, Megan. I don’t know how we’re going to move on from that.”

  The look she gave him was all tenderness and sympathy.

  “She kept you from your father so you wouldn’t lose your other father—the one who raised you.”

  He nodded, his mouth in a tight line. “Yes. I guess.”

  “And it was more than just you. If she and your dad had gotten a divorce, it would have affected your whole family. You, your dad. Julia.”

  He thought about Julia, about the close relationship she’d always had with Andrew, and how that would have been damaged if she’d been shuttled back and forth between the homes of two divorced parents. But Isabelle had also been thinking about herself.

  “My mother was saving her own skin,” he said.

  “Yes, sure. But she was saving her family, too.”

  “I guess.” He rubbed at his face with his hands. “Colin says I need to get over myself and move on. Accept things, so I can go forward, you know? He’s right. I need to do something about the money, and the property … other than pretending it’s not there. And I need to start getting to know the Delaneys better. They’re my family.”

  And that naturally led to a topic neither one of them wanted to talk about—though they knew they had to.

  “I guess this—us—isn’t going to help your relationship with Liam much,” Megan said.

  “I guess it’s not.”