by Sandra Brown
Susan could have found a more modest apartment that would still have been considered luxurious. She could have found herself a job. As Rana knew firsthand, her mother was certainly a capable manager. She was extremely attractive. Why didn’t she find herself a well-to-do husband to henpeck? But Rana was too tired and upset to engage in a verbal battle with her mother by making any of those suggestions.
She pulled herself to her feet, weariness evident in every move. “I’m going to bed, Mother. When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow at two. I’ve hired a limousine to pick us up. You’ll find your retainer on the bedside table. Put it in. Your teeth are deplorable.”
“You go in the limousine. I’ll take a cab. Since I don’t intend to wear that damned retainer another night of my life, and my teeth are deplorable, I’m sure you’ll prefer riding in the limousine alone, rather than being seen with me.”
At the funeral, Rana stood apart from the other mourners, hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses and a black hat, which she had purchased at Macy’s that morning. No one recognized her. No one looked at her. No one spoke to her as she stood weeping at the edge of the small crowd that dispersed as soon as the final prayer was said. Each one of its number seemed thankful that he had done his social duty and was now free to escape the heavy, muggy heat of the New Jersey cemetery and find relief in an air- conditioned car.
Rana lingered, even after Susan swept past her without a nod. Why, Morey, why? she asked the carnation-blanketed casket. Why hadn’t he told her he was in financial trouble? Had he taken his own life?
It was too horrible a thought to contemplate, but she couldn’t help remembering the excitement she had heard in his voice when he ‘d told her of the substantial contract, the despondency he had conveyed when he’d asked her to reconsider the offer.
And now, driving from the Houston airport back to Galveston, those questions were still haunting Rana. To add to her misery, rain was pelting the highway. It was a dark, ponderous, dismal rain that matched her mood perfectly.
Her future stretched out in front of her like the fiat coastal highway. Unrelieved. Monotonous. Dreary. She could see no light in that future. How could she ever be happy and carefree with the indelible stain of Morey’s suicide on her conscience?
The house was dark. She noticed that Trent ’s car was gone. He and Ruby must have gone out together. Picking up her suitcase, she ran through the driving rain to the back door.
Leaving her suitcase on the sleeping porch, she took off her hat and shook the rain from it. She slipped out of her jacket and spread it over a chair to dry. Her shoes came off next, and with them her stockings.
Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen. It was uncharacteristically gloomy. Even the crisply starched ruff1ed curtains at the windows looked sad and limp against the bleak landscape beyond them. She got a drink of tepid water from the tap in the sink, but after taking two swallows, she left the glass on the drainboard. She was disconsolate that every movement was a chore. Her limbs felt leaden, and it took a supreme effort to move them blackest depression weighed her down.
She had been a baby when her father had died, so she didn’t remember. Now, for the first time in her life, she had suffered the death of someone she really cared about. How did anyone survive the loss of a beloved spouse, a child? The finality of death was dreadful.
Without turning on any lights, she went through the shadowed dining room into the central hall. Raintrickled down the tall, narrow windows on either side of the front door. It looked mournful, silvery, cold. It looked like tears. Rana stared up the dark staircase and wondered where she would get the energy to climb those steps to he room.
Listlessly, she dropped onto the deacon’s bench beneath the stairs. Propping her elbows on her knees, she laid her head in her hands and began to cry. She had pt quietly, politely, at the funeral, but she hadn’t lifted the floodgate of her grief.
Now tears, scalding and bitter, fell from her eyes with the same incessant pattern as the rain falling outside. They ran down her cheeks and into her mouth. They dripped from her chin. Her shoulders shook with racking sobs.
She sensed he was there only a second before she felt his hand on her shoulder. She raised her head. He was standing in front of her, looming as tall as a pillar. The gray light was dim in the hallway, particularly beneath the stairs. She could barely distinguish his features, but she could tell that his dark brows were drawn together with worry.
Her mother had offered her no words of consolation. Rana had been a stranger to the others attending the funeral. She needed comfort, craved some token of reassurance. She reached toward the only available source. Mindlessly, she clutched his arms.
Instantly responsive, Trent sat down on the hard deacon’s bench beside her and wrapped his arms around her. He said nothing, only pressed his face against her damp hair. He cupped the back of her head and forced her face down into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. She burrowed there, letting the soft cloth of his shirt absorb the torrent of relentless, salty tears.
His fingers stirred in her hair, and he was amazed to find it so thick and lush, and so soft to his touch. When his fingers settled on her scalp, he massaged it tenderly. His lips touched her ear.
“I’ve been so worried about you.”
As though grasping his concern as something rare and precious, Rana’s fingers curled into the front of his shirt. Through it she could feel the warmth of his skin, the shape of his hard muscles, the crinkly texture of his chest hair.
“Where did you go, Ana?”
The pseudonym was foreign to her, and for a moment she couldn’t imagine why he was calling her by the wrong name. Then she remembered. The name was a lie. It was as phony as the rest of her. Her whole life had been a string of fakeries, a tapestry of superficiality. At that moment she longed for nothing more than to hear her name, Rana, from Trent ’s lips. She wanted to feel his breath as he spoke her name against her ear. She wanted to see her name forming on his lips.
“Why are you crying? Where have you been?”
“Don’t ask me, Trent.”
“I find you crying alone in the dark. How can you expect me to ignore that? Tell me what’s wrong. Can I help? Where have you been and why did you go without saying good-bye to me?”
She pushed herself away from him and sniffed. Unabashedly she wiped her face with the backs of her hands. Suddenly she realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses. But he wouldn’t recognize her tear-bloated eyes in the darkness.
“I had to go out of town to a friend’s funeral.”
He waited a moment, then laid his arm across her shoulders. He ran the back of his index finger down her cheek, picking up tears that her fists had left behind. “I’m sorry. Was it a close friend?”
“Very.”
“A sudden death?”
She covered her face with her hands again. “Yes, yes.” She moaned. “A suicide.”
Trent hissed a curse, and the hand resting on her shoulder tensed. He tucked her head beneath his chin again. “That’s tough. I know. Before I played for the Mustangs, I had a buddy on another team. His knees got so banged up, they finally told him he couldn’t play ball anymore. He shot himself. I know just how you feel.”
“No, you don’t,” she cried angrily, shoving herself out of his arms and standing abruptly. “You weren’t to blame for your friend’s death.” She tried to make it to the stairs, but he caught up with her and, grabbing her arm, spun her around.
“Are you saying you were to blame for this suicide?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said firmly, shaking her slightly. “You can’t take responsibility for someone else’s life. No one can.”
“Oh, Trent, tell me that until I believe it.” Her hands folded around his steely biceps, and she gazed up at him imploringly. “Repeat it a thousand times if that’s what it takes to convince me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, holding her against
him tightly. “It’s true. Believe me. If this friend was inclined toward self-destruction, there was little you could have done except possibly delay it.”
“I let him down when he needed me. ”
“Most people learn to cope with disappointments. You’re not to blame that your friend didn’t.”
He closed his arms around her and held her for a long time, rocking her slightly back and forth. “Better now?” he asked softly.
“Yes. The hurt is still there, but it isn’t so sharp.”
He had turned them so that her back was to the wall. She leaned against it, but left her arms resting lightly on Trent ‘s shoulders. He pressed his lips to her neck.
“I’m only sorry that you had to suffer over this.”
Unconsciously she let her head tip backward. “Thank you. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it. I needed this… needed you.”
“Then I’m glad I was here.”
His caresses had gone beyond consolation and were now of another nature entirely. “So am I. ”
“Ana?”
“Hm?”
He gazed down at her, his expression filled with wonder. “Ana?”
Then his mouth was on hers, hot and hard and urgent. Imprisoning her face between his hands, he slanted his lips across hers. He made a low, growling, hungry sound deep in his throat.
Rana’s hands clenched on his shoulders, taking up handfuls of fabric. She turned her head away and gasped, “No.”
“Yes.”
He gave her no other chance to protest. His mouth was commanding as it trapped hers in a kiss that robbed her of will.
Her body went weak, and she would have slumped against the wall, had his hard form not been pressed against her, holding her up.
Her arms folded around his neck. She answered the low mating sounds that emanated from his chest with murmurs of want-primal, untamed, untutored want.
His tongue slipped inside her mouth, and it was as though her mind exploded in a riot of color and light. The warm, damp, velvety-rough texture of his tongue was new and delicious to her. She allowed it the liberties it seemed to take as its due. Its searching thrusts elicited thrilling sensations throughout her body. Her breasts tingled. Behind them, her heart was thudding with the deep bass pounding of a timpani.
They paused to breathe, looked at each other with astonishment, then fell on each other again. Having had that first taste, they were hungrier than ever, and ate at each other’s mouths.
Trent was the aggressor, but Rana was more than compliant. Hers was a greediness stemming from ignorance and deprivation. Her young husband had never kissed her with this kind of unbridled desire. Other men wouldn’t have dared.
Trent knew no such restriction. His mouth twisted over hers repeatedly. He couldn’t get enough of kissing her. And soon kissing wasn’t enough.
His hands slid down her arms to her waist. With a quick, savage motion, he yanked her up against him and ground his front against the cleft between her thighs.
“I want you,” he growled as his mouth traced a fiery path down the column of her neck.
“We can’t.”
“We will.”
“Where’s Ruby”
“We’re alone.”
“But-”
“No arguments. You and I both knew this was destined to happen.”
And she had known. From the moment she had stepped out of her room and seen him in the hallway, she had known that Trent Gamblin posed a threat to her. Not a sinister threat, but a threat nonetheless. She had known in that instant, when she first looked into his chocolate-colored eyes and fell victim to his charming smile, that he would change her life. Now she resigned herself to that fate… but resignation had little to do with her acquiescence when he laid his hands on her breasts. Her eyes closed as he massaged her nipples gently, rubbing in slow circles, dragging his thumbs back and forth across them until he got the reaction he wanted. Even then, he continued the love play as he nestled his face in her neck and let his mouth coast back and forth over her fragrant, warm skin.
He unbuttoned her blouse with frantic clumsiness, eager to see what his hands had discovered. He had known she wasn’t wearing a bra, but he was pleasantly surprised by the lacy sheerness of her slip.
“My God,” he breathed as he stepped back to look at what he had uncovered. He wished for a light, because what he imagined he saw were incredibly beautiful breasts, not large, but full and well shaped. They filled the cups of the slip with skin that looked creamy enough to drink and nipples as sweet and lovely as baby rosebuds.
With his fingertips barely touching the lace, he caressed her, this dream woman who lived inside the ugly clothes. Except she was real. This wasn’t another of the fantasies he had had to rely on to put him to sleep lately. This was actually happening. He was touching her.
Through the lace her skin was warm. And when he lightly stroked the delicious-looking crests, they responded in a way that made his sex surge to ready hardness. He actually groaned with the force of his longing. He peeled. down the straps of her slip and, with a sound that was part sigh, part moan, took one tight peak into his mouth.
Rana cried his name and buried her fingers in the thick mass of his hair. She bent her head over his, squeezing her eyes closed. Her breath came out in rapid little pants that had a way of getting trapped in her throat. Each sweet tugging motion of his mouth coaxed a responding contraction from her womb. She grew moist with need.
As though her body had silently telegraphed that need, his hands reached for the hem of her skirt and raised it. When she felt his hands on her thighs, she shuddered. His callused palms created an exciting friction against the smooth length of her thighs. She held her breath in expectation. Surely he wouldn’t. Not here. Not now.
But Trent was driven to discover. And then to know, and know thoroughly.
His hands smoothed all the way up her thighs, enjoying every silky inch. They settled on her hips. He pressed his thumbs against her hipbones and rotated them slowly, mesmerizingly, while his fingers bit deep into her derriere.
Then his thumbs met at her navel and traveled down over the satin smoothness of her panties, disappearing into the V of her femininity.
Rana gasped. Her hands gripped his shoulders out of fear of falling, or of flying out of the universe. She no longer felt earthbound. Gravity had no power over her like the touch of Trent ’s hands.
Her breath shuddered in and out when he slipped his hands beneath the waistband of her panties and eased them down. Bravely she opened her eyes and met his. They were hot. Even in the darkness, she could see them burning. It never occurred to her to protest. She didn’t want to. Her body was yearning for his possession.
She stepped out of her panties with a remarkable lack of awkwardness. His mouth rewarded her with another searing kiss. His tongue was intent. Each stroking caress was executed with full concentration.
His mouth moved down her neck, leaving hot, random kisses in its wake. Her heart soared when his lips fastened onto her breast again. He caressed the nipple with lazy circles and airy brushes of his tongue.
She sobbed.
He touched her.
She enveloped his fingers in honeyed heat.
He caressed, slowly and gently, creating never-ending spirals of pleasure.
She felt her body quicken.
With his fingertips he coaxed her to surrender.
She did.
Wave after wave of blissful sensation cascaded over her. She trembled with each fiery inundation. They seemed to go on forever. When the last one finally receded like the lacy benediction of a wave against the shore, where sparkling bubbles burst and were absorbed into the sand one by one, she wanted to leave her eyes closed and sleep forever.
But she felt his breath against her cheek as he kissed it gently. She opened her eyes. Trent was staring down at her with a tender smile curving his beautiful mouth.
But his body wasn’t as serene as his face. She could feel the tensio
n of passion as yet unleashed. He worked his hand between their bodies and opened his jeans.
His hands cupped her bottom. He lifted her up and spread her thighs over his lap until she was straddling it. He slipped inside her, and her head fell forward onto his shoulder as they sighed their mutual gratification.
He was so warm, so smooth, so hard. The petals of her body closed around him. He moaned his supreme pleasure. And it was the dearest sound she had ever heard. She had pleased someone and it had nothing to do with how she looked.
He reached high, and she gloried in the strength and power of his possession. Her soft whimpers told him so. For her, he wanted to be better than he’d ever been. He kissed her breasts lingeringly, lovingly.
Rana didn’t think it was possible, but she felt new stirrings of desire deep within her. With each searching motion of his body, the desire escalated, until she was racing toward the precipice of reason again.
He waited, baring his teeth with the effort to hold back. Only when her crisis came did he relax his control. Then he experienced a release so complete, so wondrous that it shook not only his body, but his heart and soul as well.
Damply, weakly, they clung to each other. Their hearts beat in time. His breath fanned her shoulder where he rested his head. Hers soughed against his throat.
The rain tapping at the windows was like background music now. The ticking of the clock on the mantel in the parlor could be heard faintly over their harsh breathing and the pounding of their hearts.
At last he set her down. Then he pulled her close and hugged her tight. He was amazed that she was so slight. His arms encompassed her with room to spare. He planted a tender kiss on the crown of her head.
Wordlessly taking her hand, he led her toward the stairs. He went ahead, but kept his eyes on her as they made the long, slow climb to the second story. He pulled her inside his bedroom and pushed the door closed, shutting the world out. Leaving her to stand in the middle of the room, he went to the bed and turned it down. Then he extended his hand to her and nodded toward the bed.
“We have to talk,” she said huskily.
“No, we don’t.”