by Karina Bliss
Staring at a picture of herself and Harry on holiday in Sydney, she found herself worrying about Luke. “He’s a big boy,” she told her husband’s image. “He can take care of himself.”
In fact, Luke insisted on it…which made the hint of desperation in his invitation more unnerving. “Dammit, he’s ruining our evening.”
In the photo, Harry smiled.
“Well, if you’re going to be this casual about it, I might as well tell you…I could be falling in love with him. Which is the last thing he’d want.”
Harry’s smile didn’t waver.
“I don’t want to.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my darling, I don’t. I need to be safe. Please come back to me.”
But as with all the other pleas she’d made over the last twenty-seven months, nothing happened. Drying her eyes, Liz went downstairs with the wine bottle and found a cork, then picked up her bag and took both out to her car.
She might not be able to ease her own misery, but at least she could alleviate someone else’s.
LUKE OPENED the door with a glass in his hand. “Oh, hell,” he said.
His shirt was unbuttoned, his eyes were slightly bloodshot and his hair looked as if he’d been clutching it.
“I see I’ve got some catching up to do.” Liz handed him the bottle as she passed.
He closed the door and followed her into the lounge. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Luke passed a hand over his eyes. “Yeah, we’re friends, but—”
“No buts—pour me a glass of wine.” She added curiously, “So how drunk are you?”
His grin was rueful. “Enough to wish you weren’t here.”
She walked into the stark lounge. “How about we sit outside?”
“Yeah, I look a lot better in the dark.” He pointed—not to the pool courtyard—but to the deck on the ocean side. “I’ll get a glass.”
She followed him as far as the dining room, shifting newspapers on the table to make room for her handbag. Luke’s Olympic medals fell to the floor, landing on the wood with a clang. “Oh, look what I’ve done.” Horrified, Liz crouched to pick up the tangle of ribbons. “I’m so sorry.”
From the kitchen, he glanced over the breakfast bar. “Don’t worry about it. They’ll be fine.”
“Did you leave them out for cleaning?” Carefully, Liz returned them to the table. God knows they needed it. The kids at the wedding had really given them a hard time. Looking more closely, she saw the dullness on the metal was longstanding. “You know I use Metalson on the mayoral chain. I’ll give you some.”
“Sure.” Luke pulled a wineglass out of the cupboard and held it up to the light. Even from here, Liz could see the dust.
Maybe it was painful for him to remember his glory days. She touched the discs with reverence. “You must miss it sometimes.”
Rinsing the glass under the tap, he snorted. “Which part? The relentless training schedule that meant I didn’t date until I was eighteen? The public adulation that turned to disgust whenever I didn’t place? Or maybe the weight of carrying other people’s dreams? My coach—”
The glass, clinking against the sink, stopped him. “God, I’m getting maudlin, aren’t I?” He checked it for cracks then added lightly, “Swimming got me a scholarship to university. I’ll always be grateful for that.” Reaching for a tea towel, he started drying the glass. “Go sit down, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Liz took the hint.
Outside, she found a deck chair between a half-empty liquor bottle and his divorce papers. She picked up the bottle and sniffed. Bourbon.
“Bring Coke,” she called. If Luke wanted to drown his sorrows, that was fine, but he should probably slow down.
Pulling up another deck chair, Liz made it comfortable with cushions. Beyond the dunes, she could hear the sibilant whisper of the waves, mere meters away but, from where she sat, she could only get a glimpse of the moon-bright sea. He was a man who guarded his privacy.
A shadow fell on the light spilling onto the deck. Luke padded out and handed her a glass of wine. Splashing Coke into his drink, he raised his glass. “To?”
“Surviving,” she said.
“Good choice.” They chinked glasses and he sat down. “I’m over her, you know,” he said conversationally.
Liz sipped her wine; it was tart and cold on her tongue. Lime, green apple and a hint of grassy herbs.
“It’s the messy way Amanda did it I’m still bitter about,” he said. “I had to find out she’d left me for ‘true love’ through the tabloids.”
“Dignified goodbyes—we all want them,” she said slowly. “My last words to Harry were ‘Don’t forget the Slug Slam.’ We had a snail infestation in the canna lilies and he was driving past a garden center.”
“I like that,” he said. “Love should be domestic and comfortable and something you can take for granted.”
Except Harry had never come home. “You can never take love for granted.”
There was a small movement on the dunes, and for a moment a rabbit stared at them.
“Amanda and I never had those kinds of conversations. Truth is, I sucked at marriage. Maybe the capacity for intimacy was conditioned out of me in the children’s home before I got fostered.” He swirled the ice cubes in his glass. “No, it was probably earlier when my mother left me there.” Because there wasn’t a trace of self-pity in his voice, it took a moment for Liz to register what he’d said. She turned her head to stare at him.
“I can’t blame Amanda for having an affair,” he continued reflectively. “Hell, if she hadn’t publicized it, I’d even be glad she found someone who could make her happy.”
“That’s a good attitude,” she managed to say.
“Except it also lets me off the hook.” Luke refilled her glass, topped up his own with Coke. “I don’t have to feel guilty.”
“Just because you couldn’t love Amanda—who doesn’t sound very lovable, I have to say—doesn’t mean you’re incapable of the emotion. I know it sounds like a cliché, but you haven’t met the one.”
Maybe it was the earnestness in her voice, maybe it was her profile, pale and beautiful and sad under the moonlight. Maybe it was the hot burn of bourbon that finally made Luke hear what his heart had been telling him ever since the wedding. Oh. Shit.
“Tell me about Harry,” he said, because he had to know if he had a chance with her.
She did.
And he didn’t.
He went back on the bourbon.
THE MOON ON HIS FACE woke Luke at two in the morning. He vaguely remembered Liz putting him to bed, fully clothed. With a raging thirst he went to the bathroom and drank from the tap, great gulps of water, then filled the sink and dunked his head.
It wasn’t enough, so he stripped and showered, letting the water pummel every screaming nerve. No. No. No.
“Luke, are you okay?”
Wearing one of his T-shirts, Liz peered anxiously through the steamed glass. “You’re still here,” he said.
“I’d drunk too much to drive. I’m in the spare room.”
Of course she was, Luke thought sourly. Because she didn’t want to have sex on her late husband’s birthday.
Except it wasn’t Harry’s birthday anymore.
Turning off the shower, he stepped out and started drying himself down with a towel. Slowly.
Liz took a step back but her gaze stayed exactly where it was. On his body. Under the thin cotton of the T-shirt, her nipples pebbled. The camp’s logo rose and fell with her quickening breath.
“Sweltering in here, isn’t it?” she said and shoved open a window. Luke grinned. The steam spiraled lazily into the night.
As she turned back, he lifted his arms and started toweling his hair dry. Her gaze fastened on his biceps and she moistened her lips.
Luke clenched his fists in the towel to accentuate the muscle. “Are you hungry, Fred?” he asked innocently, then had to drop the towel
to cover himself. Watching her dark eyes melt always made him hard. Anger flashed through his need and the fun suddenly went out of the game. He’d given her too much power.
Liz’s expression grew wary. “We never did get around to eating.”
Luke knotted the towel around his waist. He had to start practicing self-control where this woman was concerned. “Let me get some clothes on and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
As he pulled on a T-shirt and jeans in his bedroom, Luke decided he needed to kill these new feelings before he slept with her again. He was a realist, so it shouldn’t be difficult.
In the kitchen, he stuck the Pyrex dish, still dewy from being defrosted, into the microwave, then buttered some bread rolls. Liz arrived fully dressed and dropped her car keys casually on the counter. He scowled.
“I’m probably okay to drive home after we’ve eaten,” she said awkwardly.
“Go now if you want to.”
Her color heightened. “It’s you who doesn’t want me here.”
Her perceptiveness annoyed him. “Of course I bloody do,” he snarled, lifting the lid. Not chicken casserole but pumpkin soup.
“Why are you angry with me?”
For once Luke’s customary honesty deserted him. “What makes you think that?” He poured the golden broth into a couple of mugs and carried them over. “Here.”
He held out a mug. Liz sniffed and looked down, then recoiled as though he were offering her a rattlesnake.
“What?” he asked impatiently.
Liz started to choke, her throat closing up. She hated that smell, hated where it took her.
Back to that foster home. Back to herself as a child, the smothered gagging as she forced herself to spoon her plate clean.
“For God’s sake, Liz, what is it?” Still holding the mug, Luke came closer.
Clapping a hand over her nose and mouth, Liz stumbled to the doors and threw them open. She sucked in deep breaths but the stench lingered in the heavy humidity. “Liz?” Luke said beside her and her nausea became panic. Seizing the mug from his hand, she hurled it up and into the dunes. Under the security lights, the soup fell in an arc that splattered across the pale sand; the mug landed with a thud. She started to shake.
Luke pushed her down into a deck chair. “Stay here while I get rid of the rest.”
Teeth rattling like castanets, Liz sat hugging herself. She flinched when another mug was thrust under her nose. “Brandy,” Luke said. “Drink it.”
Her eyes watered as she choked it down, but the alcohol stripped the last cloying trace of pumpkin from the back of her throat. Luke picked her up and carried her to bed then wrapped himself around her. The last chill of shock worked its way through her bones.
Completely empty, Liz cried. As helplessly as when she’d first heard of Harry’s death. Cried until her nose streamed, her eyes swelled and her head ached.
And while she sobbed, Luke soothed her with nonsense words of comfort, stroking her head and shoulders. Their bodies grew hot and sweaty under the blankets; he kicked them off, but he never stopped holding her.
Her fingers dug into his back, but Liz couldn’t make herself let go. When her sobs abated to intermittent spasms, she gasped. “This…is…silly. No one hurt me. Nothing…to complain about…No one abused me.”
It broke his heart.
“But did anyone hold you?” Against his chest she shook her head, not making a sound now, even as another deluge of hot tears scalded his skin. “Did anyone love you?”
In the midst of shaking her head, she paused. “Yes. Harry.”
No, he could never compete.
She pulled away a little, looked up at him with eyes that were red and swollen. “Who hugged you?”
His throat tightened. “I’m not sensitive like you.”
Her hold tightened until he thought his bones would crack. “Tell me.”
“I was six when my mother put me in care, saying she’d come back for me. She never did.” Liz’s hair tickled his nose as he shrugged. “Probably never intended to.”
“You can’t know that for sure. Maybe her life was hell, maybe she was working to better it before she came and got you. Maybe…”
His nonchalance deserted him. “I waited at the door of that home every Christmas and birthday for three years on the strength of maybes.” He’d never told anyone this before, not even Jordan and Christian. “Then she died, and I finally had peace.”
“Oh, Luke.”
“No pity, Liz.”
“Go to hell,” she said and kissed him.
Luke pulled away. She was taking him from a man who felt too little to a man who felt too much. “Let me get you a washcloth for your face. A glass of water.”
“I’m sorry, I must taste like the Dead Sea…No, don’t turn on the light.”
When his emotions were under control, Luke went back. He stood and watched her as she gulped down the water. Her wedding ring glinted in the light from the hallway.
Luke took the empty glass, chill against his fingers, and placed it on the bedside table. Still standing, he asked, “Why were you in care?” In silence, he waited while Liz fought through her reluctance.
“My father was a single parent. He tried, but he worked long hours at a poorly paid job and my child care was…erratic. Social Welfare intervened when I was five. I didn’t live with him again—he died when I was seven.”
“And the soup?”
Unconsciously she pulled up the sheet. “One of my foster parents was hot on self-discipline. My aversion to pumpkin soup was something she thought I should master.” Liz laughed weakly. “I guess…the lesson wore off.”
It was the laugh that got Luke. He knew this woman, knew what had shaped her, as it had shaped him, knew her strengths and weaknesses as a result. It was like being given X-ray vision into another person’s soul.
And it was impossible to withhold the compassion he rarely allowed himself. Impossible not to admire what she’d overcome…without any of the riders he put on his own achievements. They had been soldiers in the same war.
He’d come to think of himself as invulnerable, but Luke realized suddenly he was helpless against loving her.
Taking the washcloth out of the bowl of water, he sat on the edge of the bed and passed it lightly over her pale, exhausted face and tear-swollen eyes.
Liz sighed as she exposed her neck to the wonderful coldness.
“Lie down.”
Obediently, she slid down the headboard. Tomorrow she knew she’d be ashamed about this; right now she needed his comfort.
Luke’s fingers moved to the buttons of her rumpled blouse, the zip of her skirt. Gently he stripped her naked. She closed her eyes as the cloth traced her collarbone, her shoulders, her arms and hands.
Heard the trickle of water as he rinsed and squeezed the cloth, then felt the weight of it on her breasts and stomach, skin tingling in the wake of its delicious trailing coolness. Her nipples peaked; Luke’s hand stilled.
Then the sheet was being pulled up and Liz felt the brush of a kiss on her bare shoulder. “Get some sleep.”
Opening her eyes, she grabbed his leg. “Don’t go.”
Under her hand the muscle tensed, but his voice was calm. “If that’s what you want.”
She expected him to undress, but Luke only removed his T-shirt before he lay down beside her, on top of the sheet. The embarrassment Liz expected to feel tomorrow arrived early.
“You know I’ll go.” She pushed back the sheet. “It’s dawn soon and if I’m home I’ll—”
He rolled over to trap her body under his. “Don’t be hurt.” Gently, he pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“If this is pity, get off me.”
Luke nuzzled her neck, following the sensitive sinew down to where it joined her shoulders. “God help me, it’s not.”
Liz opened her mouth to ask what he meant and he kissed her in a way he never had before, a kiss both tender and fierce.
His erection press
ed hard and hot through his jeans, the rough denim scratched her inner thighs, he smelled of clean sweat and aroused male and his hands were rough-skinned on her sensitized skin. But his kisses were heartbreakingly sweet.
Their lovemaking had always been passionate, intensely physical, now every stroke of his tongue was laced with a dangerous tenderness that both stirred and scared her.
Lightly, she raked her nails across his back, trying to change the mood. But his lips still on hers, Luke captured her hands and held them by her sides while he continued his exquisite seduction.
There was something intensely erotic about being kissed so gently by a big, powerful man while she lay naked under his half-dressed body, helpless to touch him.
And though she knew it was dangerous, Liz found herself responding in kind, beguiled by this precarious, poignant intimacy. The world reduced to their intertwined fingers, Luke’s weight pressing her body into the mattress and his mouth making tender love to hers.
At some point he released her hands: reverently she traced the smooth muscle of his back, then unfastened his jeans and pushed them down, solely focused on drawing him closer.
She cried out as he entered her, painstakingly gentle even in this, and wrapped her legs around his body, needing the feel of him, skin to skin.
With every stroke, he kissed her, his tongue mimicking the movements of his body.
Liz gripped Luke’s shoulders, trying to control it, but her orgasm was a shattering of boundaries.
Still he hadn’t finished, intensifying his strokes, bringing her to another climax, and taking her with him into oblivion.
Afterward they held each other in silence. It was the sense of rightness that triggered Liz’s insight and made her suddenly stiffen.
Luke was the lover in her dream.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LIZ MOVED restlessly in his arms, and Luke let her go. It really was too hot to lie together but—he pulled her back for a lingering kiss—he wanted to savor this rare intimacy while he could.
Abruptly, Liz ended the kiss. “I should go.”