He held out his hand. "Let's walk, then."
She looked surprised, but she let him take her hand. He hoped he could find his way in the dark.
The path picked up just beyond the end unit, zigged beside a rusting playground and zagged into the trees. Some manager with dreams of family vacations and summer picnics must have constructed it in the hotel's heyday. It was crumbling underfoot now, unlit and deserted. But it was private and peaceful and all Con had to offer.
Like a fairy fashioned of fog and night, Val glided along the overgrown path beside him. Only her hand curled in his was warm and real and trembled slightly.
He'd insisted on giving her his protection. He'd pushed her into sharing his family. It wasn't enough. Tonight, he wanted to give her himself, to fill up all the lonely places and heal the hurting ones.
At the bottom of the path, the stream rent the canopy of trees. High above them, the moon floated on a bank of cloud, hazy in the humid air, sparkling on black water. The old gazebo was a deeper shadow in the dark night. Con felt the moisture on his skin. He half-expected it to steam, he was getting so hot. But he pushed the thought away, concentrating on control, struggling for tenderness.
Tonight was for her.
She wore the mist in her hair like diamonds. He stopped and cupped her delicate jaw and kissed the dampness from her cheek.
She stepped closer, lifting on tiptoe, so that her peaked breasts pressed his chest and her thighs pressed his legs. He shivered with temptation. He forced himself not to take, did his damnedest not to rush.
I wanted to be your first.
To be the first. To be the one and only.
And so he gently kissed her mouth and then trailed his lips up smooth, moist skin to kiss her eyelids closed. Murmuring appreciation, she shifted to give him access to her breasts. With an effort, he disregarded her invitation, continuing to kiss her as if he had all the time and patience in the world.
He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue before dipping inside, exploring the sweet, slick inner surface and the sharp, smooth edges of her teeth. She opened, urging him in, urging him on, her arms wrapping around his neck, her fingers threading through his hair. The sensual tug against his scalp dragged at his control. His body hardened.
He grabbed at his fading resolve, bypassing the seduction of her lush mouth to string a line of tiny kisses down her neck to the place where her pulse beat hard and fast. He laved it and then blew on the spot. She whimpered. Even in the shadows, he could see the raised outline of her nipples under the clinging white top.
He returned his attention to her mouth, brushing her lips with kisses, soft kisses, sweet kisses, tender kisses. Her hands reached back into his hair and tugged hard, in earnest.
"Ouch." He lifted his head and glared at her. "What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?"
"Kissing you."
She tossed her head. "So, kiss me. Don't treat me like a fourteen-year-old out on her first date."
He stiffened. "Don't treat you with respect? Don't treat you with tenderness?"
"Don't treat me like a victim."
Even in the darkness, he could see tears standing in her eyes. They quenched his anger as effectively as flood. His arms fell away from her.
"Is that so bad?" he asked her quietly. "What the hell did someone ever do or say to you, that you want me to pretend what happened to you never happened?"
* * *
Chapter 15
«^»
Val moved away to look over the ribbon of water, her profile pale in reflected moonlight, her skirt a whisper in the darkness.
"You don't get it, do you? Because that's why Rob did it. To change me, inside."
Con's jaw ached. He realized he was grinding his back molars and exhaled slowly through his teeth. He wanted to shout, wanted to explode, and all he could do was stand there and wait for her to deliver the rest of her story, like a punch to his gut.
"Rob wanted things to stay the way they were," she explained. "He was finishing at State, he had the job lined up with my father. He wanted us to get married. My parents wanted us to get married. And I was threatening all that."
She crossed her arms over her stomach, as if she were cold. She wasn't cold. The night air was warm and soft. Three feet and a hundred miles away from her, Con was sweating.
She licked her lips and continued. "He told me I didn't know what I wanted. He told me I didn't have a choice, that he'd make sure I didn't have a choice. He wanted me to get pregnant, he said."
Con moved toward her instinctively. "Oh, God, sweetheart—"
She shook her head, and he froze.
"I cried. I said I'd tell my parents, and he said they wouldn't believe me. I was so confused. So ashamed. I mean, I'd gone with him, and it wasn't as if we hadn't done it before." Her voice was higher and bewildered, a young girl's voice. "I didn't know what to do. And Rob said it didn't matter. I'd come to my senses, he said." Even with her face turned away from him, Con saw her throat move convulsively. "Whatever had happened, it didn't make a difference."
"So what did you…" He broke off, swallowing futile rage and an aching desire to help. But he was years too late. She'd already cut loose from her boyfriend's coercion and her parents' expectations, made a life and a career for herself and come back when she was old enough and strong enough to tackle the bunch. Admiration for her filled him.
"Do?" Val shrugged, pale shoulders gleaming in the near dark. "I decided he was right. I decided what happened wasn't going to make a difference to who I was or what I wanted."
She drew a ragged breath and turned back toward him. "Only it does, to you. When you look at me now, when you kiss me now that you know, I'm different in your eyes." The bleakness in her voice tore at his heart. "Now I'm a victim."
So, she'd left him something to do after all. Now that she was open and hurting and vulnerable, he could tell her she was wrong.
"Not a victim." He took a cautious step across the splintery plank floor, feeling his way. "You're a survivor."
She sniffed, but she didn't back away. "Then what was the kid-glove treatment about?"
Logic wouldn't help him here. He was going with his gut, leading with his heart, and it terrified him. He risked a touch on her shoulder, running a finger along one of those skinny spaghetti straps. "Foreplay?"
She regarded him a moment, eyes luminous in the dark, and then her smile wobbled to life. Relief squeezed his chest.
"As long as it wasn't therapy," she said.
"Nope."
He gathered her to him by slow degrees, his hand on her shoulder, his arm at her back, his kiss in her hair. With a sigh, she relaxed her neck and let her head rest against his chest. They stood like that a long, long time, and it was good. It was nearly enough.
But she was in his arms, warm and close against the front of him, and rising in his blood. He could feel the pressure building and the longing in his unruly body. And he made his hands be still and his arms be loose, but he could do nothing about the pounding of his heart beneath her ear or the slow, helpless rise of his desire.
She murmured and moved against him and pressed a kiss to the center of his chest.
Last night he'd been in control of himself and her response. Tonight, in her need, she destroyed his restraint.
He sucked in his breath. "Dixie…" he warned.
She stood on tiptoe and bit the point of his chin. He laughed shakily while his blood pressure threatened to blow off the top of his head. "Sweetheart…"
Her hands moved sneakily around and over him. She was quick and hungry and irresistible. He tried to be careful of her and tender, stripping his shirt to lay on the damp plank bench, trying to take the time to arouse her with his kisses, to ready her with his touch. But she was urgent, almost fretful in her impatience to get closer.
She pushed him back on the bench and straddled him, her rapid hands dispensing with his belt and zipper. Feeling her warm and naked and curved against him—when the hell had she di
tched her panties?—he almost lost his mind.
"Protection," he groaned.
She wiggled against him. "Do you have any?"
"Pocket."
She dug for it. He grit his teeth, mentally calculating this year's taxes, last year's taxes …
She sat back, flushed and triumphant, waving his wallet. She flipped it open. "That's what I love about you business types. Always prepared."
Thinking she'd find it funny, hoping to buy time to regain his breath and control, he told her, "Actually, Sean offered me some."
"Oh." Her head lifted. Her teeth worried her bottom lip. "Is that… Did you take them?"
He lifted his billfold from her, finding the foil packet inside. "No."
Ever so slightly, she relaxed above him. "Why not?"
Because, he almost said, a man doesn't do that to the woman in his life. He doesn't expose the woman he loves to another man, even a brother.
"They were blue," he explained instead.
He felt the vibration of her laughter and then she fastened her mouth to his. Her kiss was hot. Her skin was damp with perspiration. Her hands trailed fire down his chest to where his pants gaped open. He was burning for her, desperate.
He fumbled with the condom while she hovered above him, tempting, close. And then he was covered. He reached under her skirt. Grabbing her soft, smooth, luscious rear with both hands, he thrust up and into her, groaning at the perfect fit, the snug, wet clasp of her perfect body.
She rode him with sharp, sweet little cries, her knees on either side of his thighs and her skirt spread out around them. The wind picked up, sliding over naked skin, stirring the curtain of her hair. A cloud scudded over the moon, deepening the darkness. Her breasts rose and fell. Her hips moved busily up and down, and her breath rushed in soft, hot pants against his face. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He couldn't stop.
He was wrapped in her so tightly it was no longer possible to tell where he left off and she began, no giving and taking, only joining and need. She gasped and arched. He groaned and thrust, again and again, deep and deeper, losing himself inside her. Somewhere outside, the rain began, sighing on the trees, tapping on the roof, but it was nothing compared to this storm inside. It gathered and broke. She clutched at him, her shudders shaking him at the root and to the heart.
With a force that jerked them both, he poured himself into her.
* * *
Smiling, Val rolled over, radiating well-being from her toes to her fingertips, stretching between the motel sheets. Con's unfeigned and uncontrolled response last night had tumbled the last barriers of her mistrust. He'd done more than let her claim him; he'd restored to her her own feminine power. Straddling him in the damp night, in the dark gazebo between the summer bank and the silent moon, she'd felt like a goddess. Inside she was molten, liquid and changed.
But the unreserved sharing, the mingling of their breaths and bodies and souls, had left her in some ways more vulnerable than ever.
Con had restored her confidence and stolen her heart.
He was already up, bending beside the bed to set a plastic tray on the laminate table. The scent of coffee—full and strong and not at all what she was used to in the mornings—teased her. His blue gaze met and held hers. A sizzle of memory, a shiver of greed, quivered through her.
Oh, my.
She glanced at the tray. Two lidded cups steamed side by side. A bottle of orange juice chilled in the motel ice bucket. The devised domesticity of the setup should have disturbed her. She'd never planned on playing house with Mr. Business Solutions. But the makeshift breakfast tray looked charming and felt oddly right.
She moistened her lips. "This is nice."
"This is nothing." He sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling the covers tight across her stomach. "I took a run to the convenience store."
Literally took a run, she saw. His gray T-shirt molded his chest. His short styled hair curled into the back of his neck. He smelled of sun and sweat, and looked good enough to have come from her dreams.
"I'm not used to—people—doing things for me."
"Unless they want something, right?"
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to."
"Con … thank you."
"It's no biggie, Dixie. It's just breakfast."
He didn't understand what it meant to her, to have him constantly considering her needs without thought to his personal convenience. Maybe he would never understand. But his care of her pierced her heart.
Helpless to resist, she raised her hand to touch his cheek, testing the heat and dampness of his skin, the texture of his morning beard. He turned his face to kiss her palm, lips warm against the tender center, and her insides liquefied.
Uncertain in the face of her own feelings, unsure of his response, she sought refuge in humor. "Must be that hunter-gatherer instinct."
His mouth, with its disciplined upper lip and its temptingly full lower one, quirked. "Must be. Only, knowing you, I switched the actual woolly mammoth for powdered doughnuts."
"I like doughnuts." She struggled to sit up under the taut covers, hitching the sheet up under her armpits.
"Here." He offered her a cup.
"Oh, um…"
He watched her steadily. "It's tea."
"Oh."
She reached for it, wrapping her hands around the hot cup. And then realized that his gaze had dipped. A muscle tightened in his cheek. His pulse beat in his throat.
Deliberately, she let the sheet drop to her waist.
His blue eyes went black. His chest rose and fell as if he were still running. She was all bare to him, and warm and flushed and more than ready to give what he had not asked for. Wanting to give him all the love stored in her cautious heart.
He leaned forward to kiss her, his mouth closing sweetly and surely over hers. She closed her eyes. He tasted like coffee.
The phone on the bedside table jangled.
"Hold that thought," he whispered against her lips. He lifted the receiver. "MacNeill."
She watched him go away from her, watched the ardent, urgent lover fade and the businessman take his place. His eyes sharpened. His voice cooled. His replies became clipped.
"…gets in tomorrow afternoon," he was saying into the phone. "Yeah, dinner would be good. All right. Grandison, too? Fine. Well, that was nice of him to say. Thanks. I appreciate the call, Josh."
He hung up and sat a moment with his hand on the receiver. She could feel the excitement rising in him, see the tension in his neck.
"Who was that?" she asked quietly.
"Hmm? Josh Wainbridge. He's picking me up at the airport tomorrow. Grandison on the board wants to meet me."
She remembered. Con had a job interview in Boston on Friday. Her heart sank down somewhere near her stomach. The day after tomorrow. "You must be pleased."
"Yeah. Oh, definitely." His quick smile showed the edges of his teeth. "This could be my ticket out of the minors."
He wouldn't stay.
The certainty of his departure had freed her to be his lover. Now the knowledge of his leaving stretched between them like barbed wire.
"Baseball analogies are wasted on me, MacNeill," she said, more sharply than she intended. "But if that's what you want…"
"Sure, it's what I want."
"What about being your own boss? Solving clients' problems?"
"It has its advantages," he admitted. The amused complicity in his eyes invited her to smile. "And I will work with you on any problem any time."
"As long as it's my problem and not yours."
His eyes narrowed. "I don't have a problem here. I have an opportunity."
"An opportunity for what? To do work you don't care about among people you dislike?"
"Look, I'm not saying that if things were different… But I'm not going to let my family down."
"Let them down?" she repeated, disbelieving. "Do you really think that because you get a job back on Wall Street—"
&
nbsp; "Federal Street
."
"—whatever. Do you really think some job makes you a better man than Patrick or a happier man than Sean? I don't know your parents, but I've met their sons. Do you really think they care how much money you make?"
"Hold on. What the hell is this?"
Fear. She could admit it to herself. Fear that he would leave her, worry that his fast-track, high-profile career would carry him away from her and mold him into someone she didn't want to love.
But she couldn't admit that to Con. She wouldn't bind him with her expectations the way her parents had tried to bind her, or use sex to coerce his agreement.
"Maybe I just don't want to see you wind up like my father."
"Rich? Successful? A pillar of the community?"
"With a wife who is subordinate to him and a daughter who can't get close to him for fear he'll try to overhaul her life."
He went from steamy to glacial in less time than it took her to remove a simmering pot from the stove. "Is that what you think will happen if you get close to me?"
"I was talking about my father."
"According to you, there's not a hell of a lot of difference, now, is there?"
Somehow, she realized, she'd hurt him, when she'd only meant to set him free.
"You're taking this the wrong way," she said as calmly as she could. "I only meant that you can get caught up in thinking the wrong things are important."
"And what do you think is important, Dixie?" Panic rolled over queasily in her stomach. He was important. Far too important. But telling him so would tip the balance of power too heavily on his side. So she gave him the old answers, the answers that would leave her pride intact and let him go to Boston with an unchained heart.
"Your personal choice is important. Your independence."
"Big ideas," he observed. "Maybe too big for a simple guy like me."
She tossed back her hair. "Oh, please. You're the Harvard business grad."
"Humor me, anyway. Let's keep it specific. What's important to you?"
Val bit the inside of her cheek. What did he want, a plane ticket and her blessing?
"I don't think you should be bound by someone else's expectations," she said.
THE COMEBACK OF CON MACNEILL Page 18