“Or did it?” Judd asked.
Her eyes flew to his, questioning.
“Were you two ever a couple?”
She humored him. “We were always a couple.”
“Were you ever lovers?” he asked.
“That’s an intimate question.”
“Yup,” he said, and skewered her with those direct eyes of his while he waited for an answer.
She wanted to deny it. But she hadn’t ever lied to him before. Maybe she hadn’t told him all she might have at times, but she’d never lied.
“Once,” she said quietly, drawing her hand back to her lap. “It didn’t work.”
“On whose part, his or yours?”
“Both. We decided to stick to being partners and friends.”
“That works, after being lovers?”
“So far,” she said, but there must have been an inkling of doubt in her voice, because Judd looked at her curiously.
“Do you like his wife?”
“Hailey? Sure.”
“How long have they been married?”
“Not long.”
“How long, Chelsea?”
She let out a breath, said, “Since June,” and immediately saw him aligning the dates.
“Just about the time you came to the Notch. So he’s the third person you lost. Did you love him?”
“No. That was why it didn’t work.”
Judd thought about that for a minute. “Did he decide to marry Hailey before or after you decided to move to the Notch?”
“Carl and I made independent decisions that just happened to coincide.”
He grew quiet again. Having said as much as she wanted to, Chelsea put the photographs back in the shoebox, put the shoebox in a carton, and went to the dark side of the furnace to take several more boxes from the metal shelf there. When she turned, she bumped into Judd. He took them from her and put them back on the shelf.
“I’m glad,” he said, pinning her hands behind her. His voice was thicker than before.
“Glad of what?” she asked, but her attention was drawn to his mouth. He had a wonderful mouth. It was firm and spare in a masculine way. Movement from it was always a reward.
“That you didn’t like it with him the way you do with me.” He drew her closer. He didn’t kiss her, just held her closer, then closer, until her body brushed his, until their hips met.
Her breath caught.
“Love that sound,” he murmured.
She smiled against his throat. “Here, Judd?”
By way of answer he bunched up her dress—easy enough to do, since it was another of the loose, trapeze-style dresses she was so comfortable wearing—until the hem was at her waist. Seconds later his hands were inside her panties, holding her backside, pressing her even closer. There was no way she could mistake his erection, no way she wanted to.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed his name.
“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked.
She hummed in a helpless sound of pleasure when his fingers came forward.
“Yes or no?” he repeated.
“The housekeeper is upstairs.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Take everything off, then,” he said in a rough whisper, and lent his own hands to the cause. In no time the dress was over her head, her bra unhooked and tossed aside, and her panties slipped off. She had barely straightened when Judd touched her again, this time frontally and deeply. She reached for his pants, but he held her off.
“Please,” she gasped.
“Not yet.”
“I can’t stand. My knees won’t hold.”
With his fingers stroking her insides and her body halfway to bliss, he looked toward the far end of the basement.
Chelsea wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know what he saw. “Not the Ping-Pong table.”
“Got a better idea?” he asked, scooping her up and starting off.
“The Ping-Pong table won’t hold.” She laughed breathlessly. “The washer. Use the washer. It’s closer.”
She was there before she could say anything else. He sat her on top and fought with her hands to get his trousers open. She had barely spread her thighs wide when a single powerful stroke put him inside, and then she was lost. She was always lost when he entered her—just as, when he buried himself deeply inside her, then pushed even deeper, she was always found. It was as simple and devastating as that.
JUDD WAS IMPRESSED WITH HARPER, KANE, KOO. HE COULD have done with a little less chrome, but he understood that clients would be dazzled. Everything he saw spelled success. He was more amazed than ever that Chelsea was taking a year out to play with Plum Granite.
It didn’t make sense. Even knowing that she’d lost her mother to death, her father to retirement, and her friend, partner, and onetime lover to marriage, all in the year, didn’t fully explain it. She was too successful in the city to be giving it up.
She was also too well-liked, as was evident by the attention everyone in the office paid her. They were clearly pleased to have her there, if only for a brief visit. Melissa Koo was as offbeat as Chelsea had painted her. Carl Harper was the surprise.
He came in that second morning, not at nine, with the regularity Chelsea had mentioned, but, more leisurely, at ten, and wearing a patterned tie that was definitely not conservative. Even Chelsea seemed surprised.
“Hailey’s doing?” she teased.
Carl looked at the tie, grew vaguely red, and shrugged.
“It’s okay,” Chelsea said. “I like it.” She paused for a second. “How is she?”
“Hailey? She’s fine. Getting bigger, actually. She’s gaining weight fast. The doctor thinks it might be twins.”
So Carl’s new wife was pregnant, mused Judd. Chelsea didn’t look surprised by the news, which meant that she’d known it but had conveniently forgotten to tell him. If Carl and Hailey were married in June, and already Hailey was “getting bigger,” it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she’d conceived before the ceremony. That meant Chelsea had probably learned about the pregnancy right before she’d come to the Notch. Another shock. But enough to drive her out of the city? Judd wondered.
To his eye, Chelsea’s smile looked forced. “Twins? That’s great. Will you give her my best?”
“Sure,” Carl said, and turned to Judd. “So you work with Chelsea?”
“You could say that,” Judd said. He didn’t like Carl. Something had to be wrong with the man not to find Chelsea wildly attractive. He wondered what the pregnant Hailey looked like. “I work the granite end. I’m the one who’ll keep the men ahead of the work she brings in. Are you helping her get business?”
Carl deferred to Chelsea, who said, “No. Carl isn’t in this with me.”
That struck Judd as another betrayal.
“Why not?” he asked Carl. “Chelsea said you were joint partners in other ventures.”
Carl looked uncomfortable. “This one came at a bad time for me.”
“You’re not as daring as your tie?” Judd asked. “That’s too bad. There’s good money to be had. I’d think you’d want it, what with a new wife and baby and all.”
“This was Chelsea’s project from the start. She’s the one who’s into granite.”
“Ahhhh,” said Judd, and drew himself up. “Well, that’s my gain.” He looked at Chelsea. “I have a ten-thirty meeting. I’d better be heading out.” He tipped an imaginary hat to Carl and turned away.
Chelsea walked him to the elevator. When they were past the reception area, she asked, “What was that about?”
“I don’t like him.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I can’t believe you went to bed with him.” It was eating at his craw. He didn’t know why. What she’d done before they’d become lovers was her own affair.
She was silent. Finally she looked up at him and said, “Carl is a good friend.”
“Carl is a wimp.”
“
He’s a good, loyal friend. If I needed him, he’d be there for me.”
Judd shook his head. “His first priority is his wife and child.”
She looked bothered by that thought, which pleased the part of him that resented her allegiance to Carl. But as he stepped into the elevator, he was bothered, too, because he knew he shouldn’t resent any allegiance she made. He was her lover. That was all.
Actually, that wasn’t all. Over dinner that night, Kevin Kane seemed determined to define the parameters of their relationship. He asked about Judd’s background, about Judd’s position in the granite company, about his role there vis-à-vis Chelsea’s.
“Then you’re her link to the working part of the company,” he concluded.
“You could say that.”
“I worry about her wandering around a quarry.”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“She doesn’t wander there,” Judd told him. “No one wanders there. If she goes to the quarry, she goes with me.” It wasn’t a rule, exactly, but over the weeks that was the way it had been. Judd didn’t want her falling off a ledge, any more than he wanted any of the cutters leering, whistling, or making an out-and-out pass.
“What about her house?” Kevin went on. “She says it’s old.”
“It was a stop on the Underground Railroad,” Chelsea put in. “I checked it out at the historical society. Runaway slaves hid out in the secret passageways on their way to Canada.”
Kevin didn’t look as thrilled by that as she was, not that Judd imagined he was a proponent of slavery, simply that he didn’t like the idea of the house.
“Is it safe?” Kevin asked him. “I take it she had all the major systems checked out before she moved in.”
“It’s safe,” Judd said. “I’d live there myself.”
“Do you?”
“Dad!”
“No,” Judd said. He had to hand it to Kevin for seeing something he wasn’t supposed to see. “I live in town with my father.”
“What does he do?”
“Not much nowadays.” Judd explained the situation. That kept Kevin busy for a time, and in a way that Judd welcomed. Kevin was up on the latest medical thinking regarding Alzheimer’s disease and shared it in layman’s terms. He didn’t have any solutions to offer, any miracle treatment or cure, but by the discussion’s end Judd better understood the physiology of the disease.
When he thanked Kevin for that, Kevin said, “It’s too bad you live where you do. Doctors up there just aren’t in the mainstream.”
Judd had never been a name dropper, but the comment irked him, so he said, “Actually, we’ve been seeing Duncan Hartigan.”
Kevin looked impressed. “In Boston? He’s a good man.”
“So’s Neil Summers. He heads the local hospital. He trained at Johns Hopkins.”
“That’s a fine center,” Kevin acknowledged, and proceeded to talk about the various medical centers he had visited in recent months.
Judd listened only enough to be able to ask intelligent questions—and drop the occasional name to let Kevin know he wasn’t a hick—but all the while he was wondering about the distance between Kevin and Chelsea. It was there, clear as day, though he would have thought they’d be close, what with Abby gone. That was what had happened with his father and him. Once his mother had left, Leo was all he had, and vice versa. Granted, he’d been a kid then, and they’d had dire differences in subsequent years, but the feeling remained. It was one of the reasons he was having so much trouble with Leo’s illness. He wasn’t ready to accept the idea of his father’s mortality.
He wondered if Chelsea thought about that. He guessed she did. She was making an effort to please Kevin—ordering his usual drink for him, smiling when smiles were due, making no complaint at all when Kevin directed himself more to Judd than to her. She was the perfect social creature. Only Judd could see the tension in her, the haunted look in her eyes when Kevin’s talk took him miles away, the fearful look when talk turned to Norwich Notch.
“Are you still planning to stay there the year?”
“Uh-huh,” she said with a cautious nod.
“Aren’t you bored?”
She laughed. “I only wish there were more hours in the day to get things done. I don’t have time for all I want to do.” She grew cautious again. “I’d really like you to visit. By the end of the month, I’ll have a guest room ready. Will you come for Labor Day?”
“I can’t. I’ve invited a group to Newport.”
Judd saw disappointment on Chelsea’s face, but it was gone in an instant. In its place was a deliberate enthusiasm. “Oh? Who?”
“The Wescotts, Charlie and Lil DuShayne, the Rodenhisers.”
“That should be nice,” she said without malice, and took a breath. “How about mid-September? I’m thinking of having an open house and inviting potential buyers up to see the granite firsthand. At the same time friends could come see the farmhouse. The whole weekend would be festive. You might like it.”
That was the first Judd had heard about any open house. He wondered if she was improvising again.
“I’ll have to see what’s on my calendar,” Kevin said.
Judd wanted to shake him. Even a blind man could see that Chelsea was desperate to have him visit.
Then Kevin said something that puzzled him.
“Have you learned what you wanted to learn?”
She gave a quick shake of her head.
“Doesn’t that tell you something?” he asked.
“Only that I’m still settling in.”
He looked suddenly angry.
“It’s a wild goose chase, Chelsea. There’s no point in your being there.”
She swallowed.
He cocked his head toward Judd. “What does he think?”
Chelsea swallowed again. Judd grew curious.
“He doesn’t know?” Kevin guessed.
Judd spoke up. “Know what?”
“That she was born in Norwich Notch,” he said in disgust. “That’s what drew her to the place. She’s trying to find out who her birth parents are. She won’t accept the fact that if they didn’t want her then, they don’t want her now. She doesn’t understand that every day she spends in that place is a slap in the face to me.”
Chelsea had gone pale. “It shouldn’t be.”
“Well, how would you feel if you gave someone your name, your resources, and your love, and that wasn’t enough?” he asked her.
“You’re comparing apples and oranges,” she argued, but beseeching. “I have parents—you and Mom. I’m not looking for replacements. But I want to know who was physically responsible for my creation. That’s not so horrible, or so unusual.”
Kevin snorted.
“You’re afraid of losing me,” she went on, “but you’re the one who’s pushing me away. You never want to see me anymore.”
“You’re always up there.”
“I would have been with you in Newport on the Fourth.”
“You should have spoken up before I made plans.”
“If I hadn’t been afraid of being turned down, I would have.”
Stalemated, they stared at each other. She finally let out a breath and turned apologetic eyes to Judd. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean this to happen.”
“Obviously,” Judd said. He was still trying to absorb the fact that she’d been born in the Notch. It was the missing link all right. The fact that he’d had to learn it from Kevin, rather than Chelsea, made him livid.
“YOU’RE ANGRY,” SHE SAID A WHILE LATER. SHE WAS SHAKEN. Not only had the dinner with Kevin ended badly, but the drive back to the condo with Judd had been made in utter silence. She felt as though all she had feared and tried to avoid were about to come true.
He tossed his blazer to a chair. “Damn right I’m angry. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“You didn’t?” He hooked his hands on his hips and hit her with an incred
ulous stare. “It was what brought you to the Notch.”
“Plum Granite brought me there.”
“You wouldn’t have known about Plum Granite if you hadn’t been nosing around the Notch, and you wouldn’t have been nosing around the Notch if you hadn’t been born there. How much more relevant can anything be?”
He was right, he was right, but that was only half the story. Trying to stay calm, she said, “I didn’t think it was relevant to our relationship. My biological history is a private thing.”
“And what we do isn’t?” He straightened, actually arched his back as though the added distance from her might help him see things more clearly. “You’re with me at night, totally naked, totally open, totally honest in your sexuality—and you are that, Chelsea. It’s one of the things that turns me on. So am I missing something here? Is all that just an animal response to a chemical attraction? I thought we’d gone beyond that. I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” she cried. Hearing him talk about their relationship, about it being more than just sex, added to the urgency she felt. She had to make him understand. “But we didn’t start off that way. At the beginning it was all physical. Somewhere it changed. I don’t know where it did, but it did. Suddenly we were friends, and you didn’t know something basic about me, and I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Hah! You’re as articulate as any woman I’ve ever known!”
“But this was different!” she argued. “Telling you about it would have been telling you that I hadn’t been completely honest, and I didn’t know how you’d respond to that. I was afraid you’d be angry. It looks like I was right.”
“I’m not angry. I’m hurt. I thought you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“Not enough to tell me something very important about yourself.”
“I do,” she said more quietly, and felt a twisting inside. “I do trust you.” She held her breath, then let it out slowly. “It’s just that I don’t want things to change.”
“Why would your being born in the Notch change anything?” His eyes were dark, begrudging. “It sure as hell won’t ease the ache I get in my gut every time I look at you.”
“Something else might,” she whispered. She swallowed, buried her hands under her arms for the comfort of it, then forced the words out because she felt she owed him that. “I’m pregnant, Judd. It happened at the beginning of May, the one time I was ever with Carl. By the time I knew it for sure and went to tell him, he and Hailey had decided to get married. She was already pregnant.”
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 26