“You kept wearing his ring,” said Kent with an effort. “Why the hell did you wear his ring when he did that to you?”
She looked away, bit her lip. “Protection, I guess. I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone...never again.”
He covered her hand, holding it against his chest. “And the baby?”
“I’ll cry if I talk about it. I don’t want to cry.”
He didn’t say anything, just held her hand close against him. She gulped and said, “I—the shock, I guess. I ended up in the hospital and—and I had a miscarriage.” She gulped and blinked, hard. “I—I didn’t want to lose the baby. I’d always wanted...I called Anna. They came and got me, paid the hospital bill and drove me home.”
He touched her cheek, brushed at the dampness. She shuddered and he pulled her into his arms. Where the hell had her own parents been when she had needed them? And the bastard she had married?
She whispered, “Harvey and Anna—I think they hoped Ben would change, come back and—Harvey searched for him, but I knew it was over. I knew I’d been fooling myself for a long time that it could work. The police contacted us a few weeks later. Ben had died in a freeway accident.”
Kent closed his eyes tightly and held her close, feeling her tears against his neck and wishing he could have been there for her. Wanting to give her all the things she had believed she was getting when she wrote and they lived happily ever after in her diary. Children, love. A home that was her own, forever.
He smoothed her curly head, felt her grow quiet in his arms. I love you. He had not even thought he knew what the words meant, but holding her, feeling her tears still damp on his neck, he knew he wanted to share the rest of his life with her. Hold her in his arms when she was hurt, hear her laughter when she was happy. Feel her sleeping beside him in the night.
She pushed against his chest. He let her free.
“I’m a mess,” she muttered.
He found a tissue and gave it to her, said, “You’re beautiful.”
“I’m not.” She scrubbed at her eyes with the tissue. “Pretty sometimes, when I put make-up on and—”
He said awkwardly, “I meant it about getting married.”
She muttered, “You’re too damned chivalrous. You can’t marry someone just because you think they need looking after.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t suit you at all. You need someone with more polish, and I—if I ever get married again, it will have to be someone who wants the same kind of life I want.”
He wanted to ask what she wanted, promise to give it to her, but the time was wrong. Her eyes were swollen from her tears and she was working at smiling, trying to shake off the memories she had shared with him. He thought of her in the shop, patiently answering Jake’s endless questions. So much love in her. He thought of her baby, wanted to give her his child, to see her looking down on their baby with tenderness and love in her eyes.
He cleared his throat. “Dinner, then?”
“All right,” she whispered, “but stop at that building on the other side of the parking lot. I’ll go in and splash cold water on my face.”
Inside the washroom, she stared at her reflection. Eyes red and swollen. That was a stupid way to turn down a proposal. Crying all over the man. He would be out there thinking what a lucky escape he had had. She ran cold water and slapped her face with it. Then she put her eye make-up back on and she looked a little less like a raccoon. She brushed her hair and decided that she looked almost normal. She would stay that way too, damn it! No more crying all over him. He had felt sorry for her, and he was kind enough to try to reassure her. If she had said yes...
Impossible, she could never fit into the world where he lived, in the middle of the city, in the midst of all that money. He didn’t even live in the same country.
She brushed her hair again, then she went back to him.
Inside the car, there was soft music playing. She got in. It was almost dark now. He stared at her so oddly that she asked nervously, “Do I look all right?”
“Definitely. There’s just one thing.” He touched her ear. “Your butterfly is upside down.”
She held herself very still while he turned the butterfly earring. “It must be loose,” she said shakily when his hand left her ear. She bent her head and pushed the back a little more tightly onto her ear.
He traced the line of her ear, half-smiling. “I’m going to start looking at women’s earrings. I want to buy you some that are gold and a little dangly. I’d like to see them lying against your skin here.” He touched just under her ear. “Moving when you walk...”
“Kent...” She moistened her lips, not knowing what words she meant to say. Just his voice could send her blood wild. “Where...where are we going for dinner?”
He smiled. “Somewhere we can dance. I want to dance with you.”
She was glad he had to turn away to drive. Just the thought of dancing in his arms did violent things to her body.
“All right?”
She nodded, although she thought she might start trembling when he took her in his arms on the dance floor. Had a woman ever fainted from just feelings? Sensations, touching, wanting more.
When he stopped, she stared at the building. He bent over and kissed her parted lips lightly. “Stay right here. I’ll only be a minute.”
“McDonalds?”
“You’ll see.”
Then he was gone, inside the building. He emerged about three minutes later, carrying a paper bag. He put the bag in her lap. She could feel the warmth through her skirt.
“Take-out?”
“That’s right. A twenty piece order of chicken nuggets. We can share, can’t we?” She nodded numbly, suppressing the urge to giggle. The corners of his lips twitched and he said, “I thought I’d surprise you.”
She let the giggle free. “Take-out doesn’t go with the white Chrysler and the tailored suits. Did you change your mind about the dancing? Afraid I’d step on your toes?”
She didn’t care what she ate, but she needed to be in his arms.
He turned right, up the hill and away from the town. She leaned back, the warmth from the bag in her lap, content to let him take her anywhere, not asking questions until he pulled off onto a small, lonely gravel road.
“What’s down here?”
He was surprised. “Haven’t you been out here before?”
“No.” Her heart beat in heavy thuds. “What—I thought you didn’t know this area?”
“Harvey took me looking at real estate last night.”
The road narrowed, then abruptly terminated in a wide grassy clearing surrounded by trees. Kent stopped the car and turned off both the engine and the headlights, leaving only the music from his car stereo. Soft music, dreamy music. Music for dancing with a lover.
He got out of the car and Angela saw him walk around the front of it, his body a dark silhouette in the moonlight. When he opened her door, he reached in for her hand.
“Dance with me?” His voice was husky. She put aside the bag of food and let him pull her up to her feet, into his arms. Here, away from the water, the night air was surprisingly warm. He slipped her coat off and dropped it back into the car.
“Do you mind?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head and moved to him.
There was no need for words. The ground was soft under their feet, the music only a breath on the night air, the moon a gentle hint of light. He turned and brought her closer into his arms. She slipped both arms around his neck and turned her face into his shoulder, letting him take her weight, her body moving with his, feeling each slight shift as he moved slowly to the music.
When the music stopped, he slid his hand up into the hair at the back of her neck. She lifted her face away from his shoulder, let his hand take the weight of her head as she tipped it back to look up into his face.
He was staring down at her, his own eyes in shadow. He said, “I wanted to dance with you, hold you in my arms.” She thought he smiled. His hand moved,
her curls slipping through his fingers. Then he whispered, “but I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted to be able to do this.” He bent and covered her lips with his, brushing softly, then withdrawing.
It was a good thing he was holding her. Her eyes fell shut and she had no strength to hold herself up, especially when he murmured, “...and this,” kissing the soft vulnerability of her closed eyelid, then moving to caress the other lid with his lips.
“Kent...”
“Hmm?” The music had started again, still slow and very soft. He guided her head to his shoulder and began to dance again, only now they were together so intimately that she could feel every hard muscle of his masculine body as he moved with her.
This time when the music stopped she opened her eyes and found that the car was behind him. He leaned against it, taking her with him. She gasped at the sudden, intimate contact and he bent to take her open mouth with his.
“See what you do to me,” he groaned when he finally let her lips free. His hands slid along her back, molding her length to his own hard body. “I was insane enough to think I could bring you out here and we could dance and talk...and kiss a little...Oh, baby...kiss me.”
She found his lips open, ready for her. There was nothing cool about him, from his harsh breathing to the heat of his neck as she slid her fingertips in an exploration along the ridges of his muscles.
When his lips moved from hers, she tipped back her head and he found the long line of her throat, the heated flesh above her bodice. “Did you wear this deliberately?” he asked hoarsely. It was the blouse she had worn the night she came home to find him waiting for her in the darkness.
“Yes.” She remembered how her fingers had trembled as she tied the lace that held the blouse together so cleverly. “Yes,” she whispered. “Are you going to seduce me?”
She saw him close his eyes, saw the shudder that went through his body even as she felt it. She touched his neck, his face, slid her fingers down along the hard line of his throat and heard him groan her name.
“Angela...oh, baby, I want to...”
He lifted her in his arms, taking her swiftly to the softest place, where the grass grew thick under a big, overhanging tree. She stared up at him, hearing the harsh, shallow sound of his breathing, the soft music over it all. When he touched her face, she reached up and caught his hand, drawing it to the warm swollen curve of her breast.
“I couldn’t find the tie last time,” she whispered. “I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. I had to make a new one.”
He traced the line where the lacy blouse met soft flesh. “It was in my pocket. I’ve still got it...I kept it.” He pulled the new tie and she gasped as his fingers found the warm silkiness of her camisole. His fingers slid along the silky undergarment, seeking and finding the hard swelling. “Last time you were wearing a bra. I knew you weren’t tonight. When you came down the stairs at the house, I could see you moving. And when...just knowing...wondering...it’s been driving me insane all night.”
He pushed the blouse away and concentrated on the satiny feel of her curves through the camisole. When she groaned his name, he bent his lips to where his hands had been, kissing her through the camisole, then suddenly needing more, pushing the thin straps down and finding what he sought with his mouth.
He stroked her to a fever, his hands and his lips and the hard need of his body. When her hands worried at his shirt, he impatiently shed his jacket, pulling off his tie and shirt and throwing them aside too. Then he took her hand and held it against his chest so that she could feel the hard slamming of his heart.
“Feel that? Feel what you do to me?” He bent and licked the hard nipple of one breast slowly with his tongue, then demanded hoarsely, “You feel it too, don’t you? You wore that seductive thing, with hardly anything underneath, because you knew what it would do to me, and you wanted—”
“Yes.” she admitted. She had seen it from the beginning, the effect she had on him, making his eyes lose their coolness, his lips smile or frown or go hard with anger. “I wanted—I was afraid, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself wanting you.”
She spread her hands over his chest, felt the hard heartbeat and his stillness. She knew it would end in a second, that he would bend to her again and there would be no more hesitation, nothing that could stop the heat between them.
“I’ll protect you, Angela.”
She drew her fingers along the two ridges of muscle that led from his chest down to his hard midriff. “You don’t have to. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago.”
“Weeks?” He touched her face.
Her fingers curled around his belt buckle. “I was too susceptible to you to take any chances. I was planning to hold out, but I didn’t have much faith in my powers of resistance.” She smiled, teased softly, “What’s stopping you now?”
He took her mouth first, then her warm woman’s body in his arms. He started slowly, touching and kissing, finding the places that make her gasp, trembling himself when she groaned. Her hands were restless on him, needing desperately what he was holding back.
He gasped, “Angela...baby...don’t! I want...if you touch me like that I’m going to lose control completely.”
“Good,” she whispered, and she touched him softly, then with confidence, making him groan her name on a ragged breath. Then he pushed her down into the soft grass.
She was waiting for him when he moved to join with her.
Chapter Eight
Kent was in the kitchen with Charlotte when Angela came down the next morning. He was laughing at something Charlotte had said. Angela stopped in the kitchen door, watching them.
Her lover. She had never had a lover before, only the man she had married so many years ago. Last night seemed an erotic dream, although she had never dreamed that kind of fulfillment in her wildest fantasies.
He was relaxed in his chair at the kitchen table, his back to her. He was, as always, wearing a tailored shirt that he could have worn to any business meeting, and immaculate slacks. She wondered if he owned anything like jeans or rugby pants, tried to imagine having the nerve to buy him something like that.
She remembered how she had felt when she woke this morning, The unaccustomed awareness of her own body, the tingling sensitivity that was the aftermath of his loving.
Loving. She had to control that kind of thinking. It was not going to be love. An affair, an exciting, passionate affair, and one day it would be over.
Charlotte finished telling the tale of her Mexican wedding to Harvey, the witness who had cried for them and flooded them with an incomprehensible barrage of Spanish well-wishing, the taxi driver who had refused to take his fare when he realized they were newlyweds. She shook back her short, gray hair and saw Angela for the first time.
“Honey, come on in. Kent’s made coffee. A vile brew, but a real eye-opener.”
Angela went to the coffeepot. “You guys are early birds. It’s only six-thirty.”
Charlotte laughed. She did that a lot these days. “Kent’s the early bird—he always was. I remember when he was a kid, he’d be up and five and...”
Angela turned with her cup and found Kent’s eyes on her. She flushed from what was in them. She had wondered if morning would come and he would be cool again, a stranger, but how could he ever be a stranger after what had happened last night?
“Hi,” she said. She couldn’t seem to make her voice any stronger.
“Good morning.” His voice was husky, too. “You look nice.”
She was wearing a drifting caftan that Harvey had given her for Christmas last year. It must be the green color he liked, because the thing totally hid her shape.
Lord, she couldn’t talk at all, could only remember last night under the moonlight. Afterwards, Kent leaning over her, stroking her softly, whispering, “You look nice...beautiful...magic.” Then he had kissed her again and she had felt that his arms were forever and he had said in a strange, husky voice, “I didn’t mean to ravish you out in the b
ushes.”
“Didn’t you?” she had asked gently, feeling the soft confusion of his waving hair with her fingers, loving that shaken sound in his voice.
“I just wanted somewhere we would be alone. I was going to take my time.” He had kissed her and she had come close into his arms so that it had been a few moments before he could say, “Seduce you slowly...irresistibly.”
She had laughed then, hearing her own husky amusement on the night air. Then his laughter had mingled with hers, and he’d touched her, a soft intimate caress, and her amusement had turned to a gasp. He had buried his face in her hair, murmuring, “I like laughing with you, but I could have brought a blanket, at least.”
Then she had confessed in a whisper that she had never done this before, out in the open with only the stars and the moon. “Me either,” he had admitted. Then there had been no words, only warmth and heated touches, overwhelming passion and the breathless wonder of their loving.
It was in his eyes now. He was watching her as she came to the table. Charlotte was saying something and Angela realized that her stepmother was looking at her, waiting for some kind of answer. She flushed and Kent smiled.
“What?” she asked Charlotte.
“I said what do you think? Scrambled or fried.”
Eggs, Angela realized. “It doesn’t matter.”
Kent said, “Will you come to Vancouver next weekend?”
Angela whispered, “Yes.”
Charlotte was staring at her and she pushed her hand through her hair, feeling confused. Why had he asked her now? Why not later, when they were alone? Or last night?
Charlotte picked up her cup, said wryly, “I must have missed something here. Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”
Angela said, “No,” breathlessly, while Kent said,
“Angela’s coming to Vancouver next weekend.”
Angela's Affair (Pacific Waterfront Romances, #13) Page 12