by Nalini Singh
Frowning, he threw the second half of an orange slice into his mouth. “You don’t want to try?”
Cheeks flushed and eyes glittering, she ducked her head. But it was too late; he’d seen what she was trying to hide. His entire body heated up, his smile slow and dangerous. He hadn’t been trying to tease her—he didn’t know how, not unless he had his hands on her. Clearly, however, he’d managed to do so by accident.
Why not capitalize on his success?
Taking a piece of apple, he dipped it in the sauce, then lifted it to the lush curves of her lips. He fucking loved Sarah’s lips. Back when she’d liked him, the things she’d done to him with that mouth… mercy. “Here.”
Her gaze lifted to hold his as her lips parted. She bit down on the first third, chewed. He waited, fed her the second bite… then the last. When her lips brushed his fingers on that final bite, he had to force himself to drop his hand. His damn cock might burst otherwise. His balls were already beyond all hope.
Then Sarah smiled again and he realized it was worth it.
Why in hell had he let this woman go? Talk about a lesson on the evils of alcohol and drugs. But of course it hadn’t only been the booze and the drugs. He’d been an asshole to her in his angry grief, but grief didn’t excuse how he’d acted. Nothing excused it.
Sarah wasn’t ugly in her own grief.
And that grief lived in her every second of every day, regardless of if she laughed; he understood that. He’d witnessed his mother’s devastation at Tessie’s death—he had some idea of what it did to a woman to lose her child. His father, too, had never recovered. Gregory Bellamy hadn’t been like Jeremy Vance, hadn’t just been able to forget his daughter and move on. He’d mourned her every day till he died.
Abe’s heart ached at the memory of the man who’d been his example of manhood, who’d taught him about honor and keeping your word and how to treat a woman. He’d have been so disappointed at Abe’s behavior toward Sarah—but Abe vowed to his father that he’d do better. This time around, he’d do it right.
He couldn’t control fate, couldn’t control what would happen during the pregnancy, but he could control his own actions: he’d make damn certain that Sarah was happy in every way he could make her. It wasn’t atonement, wasn’t redemption.
It was hope… and need… and love.
That last terrified him. Because there was a very big chance that he’d permanently snuffed out any possibility of getting Sarah to love him back. She’d given him that priceless gift once, and he’d thrown it back into her face. Abe wouldn’t blame her if she never trusted him again.
SARAH SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF ABE’S SUV, replete and content and with her skin tingling in that anticipatory way that said bone-melting pleasure hovered on the horizon. Sarah looked out the window at the slumbering lights of Los Angeles, swallowed. She and Abe, the sex had always been good. Phenomenal. That had never been their problem. And now…
Her hand opened over her abdomen.
“You good?”
She started, not having realized he was paying attention to her actions, he’d been so focused on driving. “Yes. I just suddenly remembered I’m pregnant.” Of course it was always there, the knowledge, but sometimes it faded into the background, and other times it burst right into the very front of her consciousness and took away her breath.
Abe nodded, his eyes on the road. “I wonder if it’ll be a boy or a girl.” A grin. “Can we fight over the names?”
Who was this wonderful man so excited about the journey they were to share?
She wanted him desperately.
Inhaling deep, then exhaling in a quiet release, she made herself look forward instead of at Abe. She had to be careful, so careful. Fear gripped her heart at the idea of falling for him again only to be rejected, to be left behind.
No, she couldn’t permit that to happen. Their relationship had to remain stable and friendly for the baby’s sake. Nothing more, nothing less. It didn’t matter how fiercely she was attracted to the man Abe had become. “We’ll definitely be fighting if you want a weird Hollywood-child name,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.
“Nope. I like girly names for girls and manly names for boys. Traditional as they come.”
She rolled her eyes, her lips twitching. “If we have a son, I’m buying him dolls as well as trucks, same for if we have a girl.”
“Fine with me. As long as their names are girly for a girl or manly for a boy.”
“We’ll see.” Sarah was just messing with him. The truth was that she liked the more traditional names too… and it was so strange to be having this discussion with Abe, with the man she’d never thought would come back into her life. Now, if nothing went wrong with the pregnancy, he’d be part of her life forever.
ABE BROUGHT THE SUV TO A STOP IN FRONT of Sarah’s gate, waited until she used the remote she had on her keychain to open it, then drove in. When she pressed the remote a second time to keep the gate from closing behind his SUV, disappointment was a cold, hard lump of stone in his stomach.
“Thank you for dessert.” She unclipped her seat belt.
“Hold on.” His seat belt already undone, he pushed open his door and jogged around to her side to grab her waist and help her down. His SUV had to be a bit of a monster to comfortably fit his big body; it had a step you had to stand on to climb up and down. Abe didn’t need it, but Sarah did, and he didn’t want her to trip.
That’s a load of bullshit, Abe.
Sarah could handle his SUV. The truth was he hadn’t wanted to let her exit the vehicle and leave him, the night over. And he’d wanted to put his hands on her, hold her close. “There,” he managed to say, his hands lingering on her waist.
“Thanks.” Sarah slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and made a small motion as if trying to step back.
Abe forced his fingers to open. “I’ll wait until you’re inside.”
She gave him a faint smile, an unspoken tension between them that hadn’t been present over the past couple of hours as they’d teased and played with one another. Something had happened on the drive home; he had no idea what. “You’ll call me? If you need anything? Otherwise I’ll be here to take you to the doctor at ten.”
Sarah separated out her house key from the other things on the fuzzy yellow ball of her keychain. “You really want to come to all the appointments?”
“Yeah, unless it’s something female where you don’t want me there.”
Laughing, the incredible woman who’d been his wife shook her head. “It’s all female, Abe.” She patted her belly. “I’ll call you. If you can’t come—”
“I’ll be there.” No matter what.
CHAPTER 21
ABE MADE SURE HE WAS ON TIME FOR SARAH’S return appointment with Dr. Snyder. Mostly the doctor just took Sarah’s vitals, ordered a few more blood tests to check she was healthy in terms of iron and other nutrients, then told her he’d call through a prescription for anything she needed once he had the results.
Abe had intended to pick her up, but she’d messaged for him to meet her at the doctor’s office. Appointment over, they stood in the underground parking area under the building, protected from the scorching heat of the LA sun. “You working today?” he asked, taking in the tailored navy-blue dress that screamed professional to him.
A nod. “One of my employees is retiring, so I need to find a replacement. It’s all interviews back-to-back.” She glanced at her watch. “First one’s in forty-five minutes.”
There was so much of Sarah’s life he’d missed out on, so much he didn’t know about this woman she’d become. “I guess you’d better head out in case you get delayed in traffic,” he said, even though he wanted to talk to her.
“Yes, it gets this hot and someone always loses it.” Sarah gave him an awkward smile as she slid into the driver’s seat, as if she couldn’t believe they’d been reduced to talking about LA traffic. It was a favorite topic of locals, but they’d been too muc
h to each other for it to come to this.
Abe gripped the door before she could close it. “You free this coming Saturday?” His heart pounded like that of a teenage boy asking a girl out for the first time.
When Sarah said, “Yes, I think so,” he told himself not to celebrate prematurely.
Slipping on her sunglasses, she put her purse on the passenger seat. “Why?”
He curled his fingers over the red metal of her car door, the edge solid under his palm. “I have tickets to the symphony.”
“The symphony?” A smile that felt far more real, far more his Sarah. “Let me guess. No one else will go with you?”
He scowled. “Philistines.” In actuality, he hadn’t ever asked anyone else. He usually liked to go alone, lose himself in the music so different from that which he made but that spoke to him on the same visceral level.
“In the interest of full disclosure,” he said, “they’re not the best seats and it’s a matinee performance—I didn’t want to be front and center at the fancy night session.” True, except this time around, he’d bought two tickets, and when he’d chosen the seats, he’d placed Sarah’s aversion to media interest over his own liking for the front seats where he could stretch out his legs.
Abe couldn’t not be a big guy who attracted attention, but the symphony audience was different to Schoolboy Choir’s audience. And even if there were rock fans in the crowd, most people didn’t expect to see the keyboard player of a hard rock band at the symphony. Especially one wearing a button-down shirt and clean, dark blue jeans. And because they didn’t expect it, they didn’t make the connection.
Sarah placed her hands on the steering wheel, closed her fingers over it slowly as if she was thinking. His heart boomed a bass counterpoint to his breathing, his blood a roar in his ears.
“I’d like to go.”
The words were an exhilarating punch to the gut. “Great. I’ll pick you up around one thirty.”
“See you then.”
Abe shut her car door with a smile.
His wife was letting him take her out on a date. He could work with that.
THE REST OF THE WEEK DRAGGED for Sarah until at last it was Saturday.
She didn’t know why she’d said yes when she’d instructed herself to stay friendly but distant with Abe. Then he’d asked her and he’d looked so… wary, as if he expected her to turn him down flat, and her mouth had opened and she’d heard herself agreeing to go with him.
“Sure, Sarah.” She glared at herself in the mirror as she put on her earrings. “You’re doing this out of the kindness of your heart, not because you have a dangerous weakness for a certain rock star.”
The glare didn’t help; bubbles of excitement still popped in her blood at the thought of seeing Abe again.
She knew she was in trouble. Bad trouble.
Which probably explained why she still hadn’t ’fessed up to Lola about the fact that Abe was once more in her life. “Soon,” she promised Flossie. “I’ll tell her soon.”
Her dog didn’t look like she believed Sarah.
Having Internet researched what people wore to early performances of the symphony, she’d chosen a simple black dress and paired it with a fine string of pearls. Those pearls were real, given to her as a wedding gift by Abe’s mother. Diane Bellamy had placed them around her neck before the reception, kissed her on the cheek with what felt like real maternal warmth, and said, “Welcome to the family.”
Sarah should’ve handed them back during the divorce, but she hadn’t. It wasn’t because of their value, but… “Because a mother gave them to me,” she whispered to her reflection.
Sometimes, when things got really bad in their marriage and she was so lonely, she’d pretended Diane was her mom as well. In real life, however, she’d never dared make such a claim. It wasn’t that Abe’s mother hadn’t been kind to her, but Sarah had always felt as if Diane didn’t think Sarah was good enough for Abe.
Or maybe those were your own insecurities messing you up, hmm?
It was Lola’s acerbic voice, a memory of one of the many conversations she and her best friend had had over the time they’d known one another. That particular conversation had happened while Sarah was cleaning a Bel Air mansion not long after she’d gone out as a one-woman-operator; alone in the house but for a slinky black cat with a diamond collar who’d purred up a storm when she petted it, she’d called her best friend, and they’d spoken while Sarah dusted and wiped.
Six months later, Sarah had walked into that same mansion on Jeremy’s arm. No one but the cat had recognized her, though she’d cleaned that mansion for five months before she hired her first employee and handed off the house. People didn’t ever really look at their cleaners for the most part, and dressed-to-the-nines and elegantly made-up Sarah, her hair slick straight, appeared a different woman from dressed-down Sarah with her curls pulled neatly back.
Lola had once asked her if she felt more herself without the trappings of sophistication.
Sarah’s response had been immediate. “No. All those things—the nice clothes, the makeup, the ability to hold a cultured conversation—I learned them, earned them.” Glossy Sarah wasn’t a mask she put on; it was simply the look that helped her navigate certain situations in this life she’d clawed out for herself.
Could she have done it without Abe’s money?
No.
Sarah had never lied to herself about that. The divorce settlement had been relatively conservative because of the short length of their marriage—and Abe’s own Rottweiler of a lawyer—but it had been more than enough to give her what she needed to set up a new life.
Abe had also given her something even more dear to her: his name.
It had infuriated Jeremy that she hadn’t reverted to her maiden name of Smith, but that name held only horrors for Sarah, far worse than the most painful memories from her marriage. She hadn’t even cared when, right after the divorce, certain snarky columnists had called her a “first wife” who wanted to cling to the fame of her ex-husband.
Sarah paid her good fortune forward every single month, writing out checks to charities that supported and tried to offer help to teens on the streets. She’d been one of those lost children not that long ago, knew that sometimes a teenager had a home so unsafe the street was the better option.
Flames. Fear. Grief.
Those were her last memories of her childhood home.
“That’s in the past,” she whispered aloud. “No one will ever link Sarah Bellamy with the unwanted girl born in a one-bedroom shack in Miami, or with the teenager who became the star witness in a murder trial.” She was gone forever, that fifteen-year-old girl with her skinny face and bruised arms and legs, her hair cut tight to her skull.
The people who’d known her then would never recognize her in Sarah.
And this strong, successful woman she’d become, she had a date to attend the symphony.
“I’VE NEVER BEEN TO THE SYMPHONY BEFORE,” she confessed to Abe after they took their seats.
“Yeah?” A pleased smile as they waited for everyone to finish filing in. “It’s fucking amazing.”
Sarah bit back a smile as the blue-haired matron in front of them turned to give Abe an admonishing look. “Really, young man. Language.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Abe said with a rueful smile. “Got a little too excited.”
As Sarah had mentally predicted, the matron melted. Smiling her forgiveness, she returned her attention to her partner, an elderly man in a dapper brown suit and spotted bowtie.
“Charmer,” she whispered under her breath to Abe.
“Nana Bellamy would call it good solid manners.”
Cheeks creasing at his choirboy response, she said, “Do you ever think about giving up the band to join an orchestra?” He was a gifted classical pianist who’d been offered placements at prestigious music academies right out of high school.
“Nah.” Abe played with the program for today’s concert. “I love listeni
ng to it, but this isn’t the kind of music I want to make—and those people would never be my family.”
Not like Fox, Noah, and David.
Sarah glanced away, reacting as she’d always done to mentions of the band, her jealousy a bitter creature inside her. She turned back the instant she realized what she was doing.
She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, not after the way the band members, as well as Kit, Thea, and Molly, had closed ranks around her after the nightmare with Jeremy. Not after Molly had invited Sarah into her home and her wedding. Not after all three women had extended the hand of true friendship.
Abe was right—his bandmates had never been the problem.
“Noah and Kit,” she said under the cover of rustling and mumbled conversation as people settled down. “I always knew they had chemistry, but I could’ve never predicted their relationship.” It was obvious the couple was madly in love, however. Any idiot could see they were a unit, two halves of a whole.
Stretching out his arm behind her seat, Abe leaned down to speak against her ear. “Kit’s good for Noah, really good. And he’s nuts for her.”
Sarah was having trouble thinking with Abe so close, his warmth enticing and his mouth almost touching her skin. “At Zenith, they did that thing with the eyes,” she finally managed to say.
Abe’s fingers brushed her shoulder. “What thing?”
Butterflies in her stomach, her skin hot, the bad, bad trouble becoming ever more dangerous. “You know, when couples don’t speak but they’re communicating with their eyes.”
“Huh.”
The lights dimmed on Abe’s bemused response, the haunting song of a single violin filling the void until that void was music and there was no more darkness.
The concert was unlike anything Sarah had ever before experienced, the soaring highs making her feel as if she were flying while the somber notes brought tears to her eyes. She was on her feet with the rest of the audience come the end of the concert, clapping enthusiastically and calling for an encore.