by Heidi Rice
Megan turned to her, jiggling her fractious son on her hip, and sent her a smile full of compassion and understanding as she held up the painting. “Well, this explains quite a lot.”
The blood rushed to Katie’s head, her knees buckled and she sat heavily on her tiny couch, knowing she and Jared were totally busted. Now all she had to do was explain the unexplainable to her inquisitive sister.
* * *
“I think you should go and see him, Katie. Not Dario,” Megan said, the urgency in her voice starting to give Katie a headache.
“I can’t do that, Meg. I think I may have messed things up enough already for him.”
She’d explained everything to Megan. It had been a precondition of her sister agreeing not to contact Dario. They sat on the sofa, Arturo sound asleep next to them after his near-death experience.
“Why would you think that?” Megan asked. “This isn’t more of that ridiculous guilt-fest you had going over Mom is it?”
Katie sat up, glad when her head didn’t start aching more. She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I know I’m not responsible for Mom leaving us. Or for the fact Lloyd Whitaker blamed us both for Mom’s infidelity. Jared helped me to see that. But I feel like I took advantage of him when I slept with him that last time. I knew he was vulnerable and I...” The blush scolded her cheeks. “I sort of seduced him.”
“Katie, he’s a grown man with a great deal more experience than you.”
“I know that, but what if those terrible nightmares were somehow triggered by me and something I did? I lied to him about my virginity. I didn’t tell him because I think I’d always wanted him to be the one, after that stupid crush I’d had on him when I was nineteen. Don’t you see I tricked him? And it really rattled him. I know it did.”
“You didn’t trigger those nightmares,” Megan said with complete certainty.
“How do you know that?”
Katie could see knowledge in her sister’s eyes and realized that she knew answers to the questions Katie had never been able to ask. Even so, she didn’t want to press—what right did she have to invade Jared Caine’s privacy even more?
Megan stared at her for a long time and then sighed. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, because Dario told me in confidence, and I don’t think it’s something Jared wants people to know, for obvious reasons. But I think...”
“Then you mustn’t tell me. I’m pretty sure I mean nothing to him and I wouldn’t want to—”
“That’s where I think you’re wrong,” Megan interrupted. She grabbed hold of Katie’s hands and squeezed. “You’re a bright, strong, beautiful, brave, passionate and extremely talented woman, Katie. I know that, Dario knows it. I think Jared figured it out while you were with him. The only one who doesn’t know it is you.”
Katie’s heart bobbed into her throat at the sincerity in her sister’s voice.
Megan studied Katie’s fingers, stained with turpentine and oil paint, and ran her thumbs over the nails Katie had chewed in the last few weeks.
“What do you know about Jared’s past?” she asked. “Did you ask him about it?”
Katie shook her head. “We were only together four days and he’s not a man who it’s easy to ask personal questions of.” She gulped down the guilt that she’d ever assumed she even had the right to ask. “All I know is that he comes from humble origins because that’s what I’ve read in the gossip columns.”
Megan rubbed Katie’s knuckles and then raised her head. “Not humble. I think ‘horrific’ is probably a better description.”
“Horrific, how?” Katie asked, all the empathy and concern for Jared that she had tried so hard to deny for the last two weeks spilling over into her voice.
“I don’t know the specific details, neither does Dario. But this is what I do know... Dario caught him trying to pick his pocket. He was only fifteen, in and out of foster homes, mostly living on the street. Dario took him in that night because he was obviously starving, but sharp and quick, and Dario...” A pensive smile tugged at her sister’s lips. “Well, Dario knows what it’s like to have nothing and no one too. Dario contacted the authorities the next day and helped make sure that over the next few years Jared had all the support he needed. Both financially and, as far as he would accept it, emotionally too.”
Tears stung the back of Katie’s eyes at the thought of how alone Jared must’ve been and how important Dario was to him. No wonder he had been willing to do anything Dario asked of him. Including getting stuck for four days in a luxury villa with a woman who did nothing but annoy him.
“Your husband really is one of the good guys, isn’t he?” Katie said, feeling even more foolish for the reservations she’d once had about Dario when Megan had first become engaged to him.
Megan’s smile blossomed. “Yes, he is, but don’t tell him that. His head is quite enormous enough already.”
Both sisters laughed, but Katie’s felt strained.
“The thing is, Katie,” Megan said, her smile dying, “Dario told me Jared had those night terrors the first night, when he was staying in Dario’s apartment. Dario paid for him to live in a residential home for street kids until he reached maturity, because he couldn’t settle with a foster family. But he had those crippling nightmares at the home too. I have no idea where they come from. And neither does Dario. And Jared refused to do more than a couple of sessions with the home’s therapist. So the fact he even let you comfort him is, I think, a pretty big deal.”
Megan eased a tendril of hair behind Katie’s ear, reminding her poignantly of the last time Jared had touched her. “And the fact he seems to have run off to some remote cabin in Vermont to brood and lick his wounds seems even more significant. Jared has spent most of his life protecting himself. It’s extremely hard to win his trust. Dario managed it, but only after years of friendship, and that clearly has its limits if he can’t talk to Dario now about this. You seem to have won his trust in a matter of days.”
“Did I?” Katie wanted to believe it with all her heart, but she didn’t want to hope. “I’m not sure I did. I thought there was a connection there, something to build on, but I don’t know if he did.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Megan said, her voice as sure, steady and reassuring as Katie remembered it being throughout their childhood.
Stupid to realize, she thought as gratitude made her ribs ache, that she had always believed she didn’t have a mother because Alexis Whitaker had abandoned them as children, when she actually did. And always had.
“What way’s that?” Katie asked, almost scared to ask but even more scared not to act on the hope bubbling back into her chest.
“You’ll have to go and ask him.”
A tear-soaked chuckle escaped Katie’s lips as her sister wrapped her in a hard hug. When they finally broke apart, Megan said, “I’ll get Dario to lend you the company helicopter to get to Vermont.”
Katie didn’t want to mooch off her billionaire brother-in-law, but pride was going to have to take second place to the need to confront Jared before she lost her nerve. “Okay, but what is Dario going to make of the fact that Jared and I slept together? I don’t want to mess up their friendship.”
“You won’t,” Megan said, her eyes shiny with emotion. “I’ll explain everything to Dario. He’ll probably freak out; he’s not super-evolved when it comes to understanding love either. But I know how to handle him. And I should be able to get everything organized by tomorrow morning.”
“But that’s twenty-four hours away. I don’t know if I can wait that long to see Jared,” Katie said, her impulsiveness returning in a rush.
And to think she’d once thought that was a flaw.
But Megan wouldn’t be swayed, insisting that Katie wasn’t going anywhere until she’d had at least twelve hours’ sleep, and Megan had witnessed her eating a three-course meal. With or without radish kimchi.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KATIE WAS GRATEFUL for he
r sister’s mother-hen tendencies at noon the next day when the De Rossi Corp helicopter landed beside the lake on Jared’s ten-acre property. Thanks to the sleep and sustenance Megan had insisted upon, the nervous tension in her stomach was just about manageable, instead of catastrophic.
Nestled amid a grove of towering spruce and pine trees, a strikingly modern cedar-wood house stood beside a traditional redwood barn. The large wraparound porch looked out onto the placid waters of the lake, in stark contrast to the rolling waves of anxiety pounding Katie’s stomach.
Taking a deep breath she jumped out of the helicopter and waved goodbye to the pilot.
Jared’s tall figure appeared from inside the house. Dressed in worn jeans and a checked shirt, his feet bare, his hair rumpled and with a coffee mug in one hand, he should have looked relaxed. But as she made her way toward him through the field of wild grass, the noise of the departing helicopter drowning out the thundering beat of her heart, she could see from his rigid stance he was anything but.
She took her time, absorbing the beauty of their surroundings and trying to get straight in her head all the things she needed to say to him. She could see she might have underestimated the task ahead of her when she arrived at the porch.
His usually clean-shaven jaw was shadowed with a week’s growth of beard, the angular lines of his face even leaner than she remembered, and his brows were drawn down in a heavy frown over the piercing gaze that had remained locked on her every step of the way. Arousal stirred as his gaze roamed down and then returned to her face, the bold appraisal setting alight every millimeter of skin en route. His jaw tensed, and heat and desire flickered in the deep aquamarine of his eyes.
She resisted the answering tug of desire in her abdomen, knowing if he could he would use it to distract her from the conversation she had come here to have.
The noise and wind caused by the helicopter slowly faded into silence until all she could hear was the plaintive cry of a cormorant, the peaceful lap of the water against the dock at the back of the house and the frantic beat of her own heart.
Unlike the lake, Jared looked about as peaceful as a ferocious grizzly bear who had been woken from its midwinter hibernation.
Katie swallowed past the obstruction in her throat.
If he had come to Vermont to recover the control he’d lost that night in Capri, it didn’t appear to have worked. Her heart jolted in her chest, compassion tangling with anxiety and nerves in the pit of the stomach.
What was she doing here? Had she made a terrible mistake? What if Megan was wrong about her ability to heal this taciturn and tormented man’s heart?
Had he been suffering with those terrible nightmares all this time?
She tucked her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans to disguise the trembling. “Hello, Jared, how are you?” She fought to keep her voice firm and even and betray none of the emotion that was ripping apart her insides.
Maybe he didn’t want her help, her sympathy or concern—and would rather die than admit he needed it—but she intended to give it to him anyway.
He studied her, taking a long gulp from the coffee cup. She watched the column of his throat bob as he swallowed, the motion sending another shaft of heat through her system.
At last he placed the cup on the porch rail and folded his arms across his chest.
“What are you doing here?” he said at last, his voice so rusty she could tell he hadn’t spoken to anyone in days.
“Checking up on you. Dario’s worried about you—we all are.”
His brows flattened and the muscle in his jaw jumped. Grasping her arms, he dragged her toward him, pulling her up on tiptoes. “If Dario’s sent you here to give me some of your unique sexual healing,” he sneered, his eyes bright with arousal and fury, “then I’ll take it.” He held her close, his breath whispering over her lips, the promise and provocation of that sensual mouth so close to hers the heat spiraled down to her core. “Otherwise, get lost.”
He released her abruptly and she stumbled back. But as he turned to stalk back inside the cabin she bolted forward and grabbed his arm.
Catching him unaware, she was able to haul him round to face her. The crude invitation had been meant to repulse her. She understood that. And suddenly a fury of her own burned deep in her chest.
“You think I’m scared of you and how much I want you? I’m not.” Or, not anymore. The arousal surged. “I’m willing to own it. Are you?”
She saw his control snap and he grasped her arm to haul her into the cabin.
“Great, let’s own it together,” he said as he dragged her through the living area and up a flight of slatted stairs to a bedroom on a mezzanine platform under the cabin’s slanted roof beams.
Cedar-wood eaves framed a large bed while the glass back wall afforded a stunning view out onto the lake. But Katie barely registered any of that, all her attention concentrated on the man in front of her as he grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged it over his head. Excitement charged over her skin as he wrestled her out of her clothes. Buttons popped and fabric tore in his urgency—but, instead of scaring her, his desperation empowered and excited her. Within seconds they were both naked. She felt giddy with need as they collapsed onto the bed together.
The last of his anger unraveled into a storm of longing as he jerked her thighs apart and buried his face between her legs. She bucked off the bed, broken sobs torn from her throat. Locating the swollen nub with his mouth, he swirled his tongue over the heart of her, and then sucked, dragging the orgasm forth with ruthless efficiency.
She was dazed, still coasting on the brutal wave as he rose above her and angled her pelvis, cradling her bottom in firm hands.
The huge head of his erection pressed at the swollen folds of her sex. Hunger and torment, like that of a starving man, etched his face as his eyes met hers. But he held back even though the need to take her vibrated through his body.
“You really want this?” he asked, his voice full of a desperate despair.
She cradled his cheeks and kissed him hard on the lips before whispering in his ear, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
He buried the huge erection to the hilt in one powerful lunge then moved in hard, heavy thrusts. His seed exploded inside her moments later, his shout of release so full of agony her heart felt as if it might burst out of her chest.
She lay with him in her arms, caressing the thick waves of his hair, his heart thundering against hers as he collapsed on top of her.
Eventually his pulse slowed, beating in deep thuds in time with hers. The rhythm of his breathing hitched as a heavy sigh rumbled against her ribs.
“Are you okay?” he murmured, lifting off her and studying her face as he touched her cheek with his thumb. “Did I hurt you?”
She could feel the tender spot between her legs where he was still firm inside her, the sublime aches and pains from the urgency of his love-making, even the stinging abrasion on her thighs from the rough stroke of bearded cheeks.
But she shook her head, because it didn’t hurt. However inexperienced she was, she had never been fragile. And the only pain she could feel right now was his.
* * *
Forcing himself to get off her before he collapsed on top of her, Jared walked over to his discarded clothes and yanked on a pair of boxer shorts. He felt weary to the bone.
Holding onto the dresser, he ducked his head.
“I just made love to you without a condom again,” he said, unable to look at her. He was no better than an irresponsible kid. The same irresponsible kid who had once been reduced to using sex as a substitute for affection.
He’d done it deliberately, he admitted to himself, sick with disgust—the desire to get her pregnant all part of the madness which had gripped him ever since he’d walked away from her at JFK. Hell, ever since he’d picked her up on the road outside Sorrento. Maybe even before that. Did this all-consuming need to brand her as his in the most basic way possible track all the way back to that night when she had
looked at him with such yearning—and for one brief, shining second he’d wanted it to be real?
“I’m now on the pill,” she said in a tremulous voice.
His head swung round, elated and appalled at one and the same time, especially when she sent him a tentative smile and said with complete sincerity, “I didn’t want there to be anything between us if I ever got to make love to you again.”
“Hell, Katherine.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and dragged his fingers into his hair. “What am I going to do with you?”
Her honesty and openness, her bravery and generosity, crucified him and made him feel like even more of a coward. He’d been rough, uncontrolled, just as he had been on their last night together. And she had taken everything he had to give her and reveled in it. But still he knew he’d defiled her innocence, taken advantage of a situation she would never understand.
He wasn’t worthy of her, could never be worthy of her, and he would have to tell her why not. He was going to have to reveal all the sordid details of his past, his childhood, or she would never realize how wrong she was about him.
But first he needed a beer.
Leaving her on the bed, he trudged down the open staircase and walked to the kitchen on the far side of the living room. Opening the double-wide refrigerator, he pulled out a bottle and rolled it across his forehead, hoping the frosty condensation would cool the flush burning his skin.
He popped the cap and took a long draught.
He heard the soft pad of her bare feet on the granite flooring. She had followed him into the kitchen, just as he’d known she would. Because she had more bravery in her little finger than he had in his whole damn body.
He turned to lob the cap into the trashcan and had to bite down on his lip to control the renewed kick of desire in his crotch.
She had donned his shirt. It swamped her slender frame, reaching almost to her knees. But as she walked toward him the tails shifted, giving him an uninterrupted view of lacy panties and those long legs which had been wrapped so securely around his waist as he’d pounded into her like a man possessed.