Dana woke to the first gray light of morning and the warmth of Kieran’s face on her breast. When she made a little sound of contentment, he looked up and smiled at her.
“Good morning.” He shifted so that his erection rested against the place that was already warm and wet for him.
“Good morning.” She sighed happily, still half asleep but completely aroused.
She smiled lazily and wound her legs about his hips.
When they had sated themselves, she kept him in the embrace of her long legs. He seemed content to stay there as she drifted happily and warmly back to the comfort of sleep.
When she next woke, pale sunlight was streaming through the bedroom windows, proving that the island did have some sunlit days even in the winter. Kieran was gone. The bed was cold where he had lain. On the foot of the bed lay a fleece robe—extra large, Dana discovered when she wrapped it around her. She hugged it to her, inhaling the faint masculine scent of its owner.
The day was indeed glorious. From the big bedroom window Dana could see Nantucket Sound glistening in the winter sun. In the far distance stood a picturesque lighthouse. It looked like a scene transported straight from the days of whalers and whalebone corsets. Strange, Dana thought, how every time she was with Kieran, the real world seemed to fade away, replaced by something that was far out of the realm of the everyday.
The master of the house was not in the kitchen, where Dana expected to find him. She located him in a downstairs room fitted out with exercise equipment. He was sitting on an exercise pad facing a huge window overlooking the sound. Cross-legged in a yoga position, eyes closed, he was obviously deep in meditation. Yet he smiled when Dana peeked into the room.
“Dana.” On Kieran’s lips the name was almost a caress.
“Hi.” Dana forced a smile. Finding him communing with whomever gurus communed with made her uneasy for some reason.
He opened his eyes, taking in the robe and bare feet with an appreciative chuckle. “I’ll bet you’re hungry.”
“I’m okay.”
“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll be up. Raid the fridge if you want.”
“Okay.”
As she backed out of the room, he sank once again into his semi-trance. Dana thought she heard him softly utter a mantra of some sort.
“Weird,” Dana muttered to herself. Why couldn’t Kieran be just plain Joshua Gellis? A businessman, maybe. A salesman, a teacher or the lawyer he once was.
Because that’s not who he is, her better sense answered. Don’t do this, Dana. You always do this when you find a guy you could get serious about. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Dana found the coffeemaker. She desperately needed caffeine. Sooner than the allotted fifteen minutes, Kieran joined her. He came to where she sat at the kitchen table and massaged her shoulders through the plush robe.
“Good morning, again.” The greeting was a caress of his voice. Something inside Dana melted, while something else panicked. The intensity of this man’s effect was scary.
“Good morning, yourself.” She tried for brightness. “Coffee’s ready.”
“I can smell it. I think you make better coffee than I do.” He poured himself a cup. “But I’ll bet I make better eggs Benedict than you do.”
“That’s a given. I don’t make eggs Benedict at all.”
“Then you’re in for a treat.”
It didn’t take long for Kieran to sense Dana’s uneasiness. Most men would have tried to smooth over any awkwardness by inane chatter or making plans to gad about the island. But Kieran wasn’t like other men.
“You’re uncomfortable,” he commented halfway through breakfast, which was undoubtedly the best eggs Benedict that Dana had ever tasted. His words were not an accusation, nor did they hint at hurt feelings. But they closed the door to escape.
Still, Dana tried to escape. She was the world’s leading lady of confrontation avoidance. “I’m not uncomfortable,” she lied.
“Dana?”
“What?”
“You and I belong together. We shouldn’t spar. There should be no games between us.”
“I’m not playing games!” Don’t do this! a voice inside her whispered. You are blowing the best thing that’s ever come your way.
He reached across the table and clasped her hand. The physical connection between them strengthened the bond that was already there. Perhaps it was the sheer intensity of their togetherness that panicked her. It had begun in Kieran’s Sedona gardens and become irrevocable the night before, when he had indeed touched a part of her that no one else had ever reached. But what about her independence? What about her lifestyle? What about belonging to herself and no one else?
Idiot! the voice inside her warned. Don’t do this!
“Dana,” Kieran said softly. “This was not a light thing we did together. It came from the soul.”
Sedona blarney, the devil in Dana urged her to say. She bit back the rude words before they left her mouth.
“You’re afraid, Dana. It doesn’t take a mind reader to see that in you this morning. But I tell you, love, we are two halves of a whole.”
He was just making things worse. Two halves of a whole implied some serious commitment.
“Kieran.” Dana took a calming breath. “Joshua.” She hoped his non-guru name would rob him of some of the sensual force that still made her want to fall into his arms. It didn’t. “Uh . . . last night was fantastic, but you’re making too much of it. Really. This two halves of a whole thing isn’t something that happens just like that. In fact, in the modern world, the old-fashioned true love thing is like a dinosaur. No one believes in that kind of commitment anymore. Really.”
Insane! You’re totally insane! What is wrong with you?!?
“You’re a wonderful guy,” she prattled on. “A wonderful person. A great cook, too. But we’re really different. Really, really different people. But, you know, we’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks.”
Lame. Very lame. Why don’t you just shoot yourself and get it over with?
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Dana.” Gently he brushed back a long tendril of red hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “You and I have known each other for a very long time,” he told her softly. “You can’t run from the connection between us. If you try to leave me out of your life, I will still be there.”
Dana bit her lower lip. Now this was getting really scary. “You know, Kieran, this has been great. Absolutely great. But I have to be back in the city before this evening. I forgot that I have this really important . . . thing. My sister is getting married, you know. It’s . . . that sort of thing.”
Bang! Bullet straight to the brain.
“But I know you were planning to spend the weekend here at your house. If you could just take me down to the ferry, I can catch a flight from Hyannis. No trouble. I don’t want to spoil your weekend.” She smiled weakly. Very weakly. And he gave her a look that was all sympathy and no anger. If he would just be mad at her stupidity, Dana would actually feel better.
“Whatever you like. There are things between us that won’t die, Dana, and there are words still left to be said. But we have time. We have all the time in the world.” Abruptly he leaned over and touched his mouth to hers. Dana tried to ignore the lightning that shot through her veins. It was just one more reason to withdraw while she could, before she got absolutely too involved with a guy from a truly alternate universe. She was simply doing what she had to do. She was.
Liar! Coward! You’re a lifetime member of the Lonely Hearts Club while your younger sister is joining the couples crowd. It’s no wonder!
Dana stuffed her carping common sense to the back of her mind, where she couldn’t hear its griping. She’d had enough bizarre misery for one day, and the day had scarcely begun.
When Alix and Carole returned to the office from their lunch break the following Monday, they were greeted by a warning from Robyn. “You’d better tiptoe through the hallway, ladies. The
Grinch is back.”
“What?” Carole asked.
“Ssssh!” Robyn cautioned. “Don’t let her hear you. Dana might come out and lop off all our heads.”
Alix looked puzzled. “Dana? I thought she was out today with a cold.”
“Don’t I wish!” Robyn grumbled. “She decided to come in and make our lives miserable this afternoon. Take my word for it. Don’t even try to talk to her.”
“I thought this problem was solved,” Carole complained.
“And I thought she’d be walking on clouds after a weekend with the studly swami.” Alix snickered. “Unless he turned out to be not so studly.”
Just then Dana walked out of her office, coffee cup in hand. She gave them a jaundiced look. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you have a cold?” Carole asked.
“I decided to martyr myself and come to work.”
“And give the cold to us,” Alix said as Dana poured herself a cup of coffee.
“If you don’t want my cold, then just stay away from me.”
Carole shivered dramatically. “Brrr. I can feel the chill from here. I take it the weekend in Nantucket didn’t go too well.”
Dana made a rude sound.
Carole regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Was Mr. Perfect a jerk, or did you have your customary panic attack?”
Dana glared at her.
“A panic attack, then. I sense a pattern here, my friend.” Carole took Dana’s arm and steered her back toward her office. “Alix, we need to have a little talk with our girl, here. Robyn, warn us when Elyssa gets back from lunch.”
Robyn pouted. “I want to be in on the talk!”
“You’re too young.” Carole winked at Robyn as she closed the door.
Dana felt as though she’d traveled back in time to the weeks before Christmas that had been such misery. Now she felt even worse, because for a while she’d been so happy, so complete. Her self-accusations didn’t help the situation. They varied with her mood—whether she was in a self-pitying woe-is-me mood or a take-no-prisoners, make-the-world-as-miserable-as-I-am mood. The woe-is-me mantra went something like: It’s all his fault, he pushed me too fast and who would be stupid enough to make that kind of commitment after one night together? The take-no-prisoners castigation included things like: It’s all my fault, I never should have gone to Nantucket, I never should have slept with him, hell, I never should have even seen him because the real thing could never live up to the fantasies.
The trouble was, though, that the real thing had exceeded all expectations. Dana had never known sex could be so overwhelming. They had actually made love. Love, not sex. Sex had certainly been an interesting part of it, but what they had done was Make Love, capital M, capital L. And the experience had scared her right out of her wits.
That was the gist of what Carole and Alix had confronted her with her first day back at work. Dana all but threw them from her office, but their words slowly sank in.
About midweek, though, Dana admitted the truth. She’d been scared, and that was the whole problem. Not Kieran’s fault. Dana had been stupid. Lusting after Kieran the great master guru was all very well and good when he was pretty much out of reach, but then he’d shown up, big as life and wanting something from her that she was just too much of a scaredy-cat to give.
“Do you want to live like this?” Robyn said to her on a sunshiney Wednesday as she and Dana took a lunchtime walk along the canal path.
“Like what?” Dana snapped.
“Miserable. Afraid. Cranky as my old great-aunt.”
“I’m not afraid of anything! Or cranky.”
Robyn the serial risk-taker was sometimes much wiser than she seemed. “Yeah. Right. What’s wrong with taking a chance? Kieran’s not that weird. Lots of perfectly normal people are very into spirituality and all that New Age stuff. From what I could see, Kieran actually seemed pretty normal. And smart.” She snickered. “Not to mention a hunk. Take a chance, Dana. You couldn’t be any worse off than you are now.”
“Oh, thanks!”
“Besides, you’re a real pain to have moping around the office.”
Not until Friday morning did Dana decide that Robyn was actually right. She didn’t want to live her life wondering what might have been if she’d been just a tad braver. The longing to see and touch Kieran was deep in her bones. He was right. She could try to push him out of her life, but he was still there. So she asked Elyssa for the afternoon off.
Elyssa raised a brow. “Is work interfering with your personal life, Dana?”
Dana smiled. “Yes. At the moment.”
“And what do you propose to do with a Friday afternoon off?”
“Go to Sedona.”
Both of Elyssa’s brows shot up. “Do what you need to do. With my blessing.”
Dana suspected the staff had a party to celebrate her leaving.
Nothing quite matches Arizona in the depths of night, when the Milky Way sweeps across the sky in a bright swath and glistening stars fill every corner of the dark. It was such a night, moonless but bright with stars, when Dana turned her rented Beetle into the driveway at the Gardens of Oak Creek. Up the hill, the dormitories were dark.
Only a dim light in the empty hotel lobby greeted her as she parked the car.
The night silence was almost absolute when she stepped out of the car. The quiet ripple of Oak Creek and the mournful howl of a distant coyote only made the quiet seem deeper.
Stupid, Dana told herself. You should have gotten a room in town and driven out in the morning. Did you expect Kieran to be hanging out at midnight, maybe mooning over you? He doesn’t even know you’re coming.
Because you were too cowardly to call, she reminded herself.
Then a shadow moved in the garden. Dana started, remembering suddenly that in this part of the world skunks and javelinas often made night raids into people territory. But the shadow was too big to be either of those creatures. In fact, it was a creature about Kieran’s size. It emerged from the garden wearing Kieran’s face and Kieran’s smile, not to mention Kieran’s guru tunic.
Words choked in Dana’s throat.
“Do you need help with your baggage?” He didn’t seem a bit surprised to see her.
Her mind flew back to the first time she’d seen him, and she almost laughed. Only the laugh might have come out sounding hysterical. “I . . . I don’t have a reservation.”
Kieran smiled. His smile was the warmest thing Dana had ever seen. “You don’t need a reservation. You’re signed up permanently.” He tapped the area of his heart. “Here.”
“Oh, Kieran!”
He opened his arms, and she fell into them. Falling, falling, falling, past where she could ever again pick herself up.
“I was so stupid! No, I was scared.”
“You are here now. No fears.” His mouth came down upon hers, gently at first, then branding her with a passion that burned all trace of weariness from her bones.
“Can we make this work?” she asked. “With what you do, and what I do, and you traveling so much, and my job in DC, and . . .”
His finger on her lips shushed her. “Nothing in the universe is impossible. The more difficult something is, the more rewards it brings.”
She laughed. “I should have known you would say something like a . . . well, like a guru.”
He grinned. “Are you in the mood for a reward?” With his hips pressed against hers, his offer was unmistakable.
“Maybe you should meditate on that,” she suggested impishly.
“I can do better than that,” he whispered into her hair.
And in a secluded nook in the garden, beneath the Sedona stars, he did.
Nothing Between Them
VIVIAN LEIBER
Chapter 1
“It’s because you’re a fabulous saleswoman,” Elyssa said, smiling at Carole over the big stack of papers on her desk. “And, incidentally, because we have a wonderful product.”
“But we don’t have the right product for Private Bank,” Carole whined, knowing she was whining and knowing she shouldn’t be whining. She should be happy, should be pleased, should be thrilled to sign the contract on behalf of Allheart.com. Should be looking forward to popping open the champagne bottle cooling in the lunchroom fridge. Should even be a little self-congratulatory on the eve of the biggest sale of her career. Still . . . “I don’t see how a secretary from New York sending an e-mail birthday card to her mother-in-law is going to say, ‘Gee, I need a reinsurance consultant for my billion-dollar transfer to an offshore bank. I’ll use Private Bank, since it’s advertising on Allheart’s—’ ”
“We don’t know what new products Private Bank is developing,” Elyssa interrupted.
“Elyssa, they work exclusively with the international banking community. They make sure your cash or your bullion doesn’t get stolen on its way to the sweetdeal banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or the Caymans. They don’t need to advertise on an Internet greeting-card site!”
“Just sign the contract. You can’t save them from bad business decisions. They’re a big business, well regarded, competitive. What do you want?”
Carole stood up, pacing back and forth. She paused at the window overlooking the parking lot. Two black stretch limousines huddled at the entrance. The snow was gray and the clouds were gray and maybe—hell, probably—she was just suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. January was a horrible stretch of gray—maybe it was affecting her judgment. She should be happy closing this deal.
“I don’t know,” she admitted wearily. “I don’t know. I stayed up all last night thinking there’s something wrong with this company contacting me and asking me if we could sell them ad space. It’s almost like they’ve been selling to me and not the other way around.”
“Oh, I understand now. I never buy stuff from telemarketers who call me. Lawn treatment, home security, refinancing a mortgage. If they were really successful and good at what they do, they wouldn’t have time to call me because they had so much work to do and, furthermore, they wouldn’t have to call me because, again, they’re so busy their bottom line’s doing just fine without me.”
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