Endless Summer

by Nora Roberts

  She’d know that his passion had never been more intense, more relentless, but she wouldn’t be able to say how she’d known. Had it been the frantic way he’d said her name? Had it been the desperate way he’d pulled the snug suit down her body, exploiting, ravishing, as he went?

  She understood that her own feelings had reached an apex she could never express with words. Words were inadequate. She could only show him. Love, regrets, desires, wishes, had all culminated to whirl inside her until she’d clung to him. And when they’d given each other all they could, she clung still, holding the moment to her as she might a photograph faded after years of looking.

  As she lay against him, her head on his chest, she smiled. They had given each other all they could. What more could anyone ask? With her eyes still closed, she pressed her lips against his chest. Nothing would spoil the night. Tonight they’d have candlelight and laughter. She’d never forget it.

  “I hope you bought plenty of shrimp,” she murmured. “I’m starving.”

  “I bought enough to feed an average person and a greedy one.”

  Grinning, she sat up. “Good.” With a rare show of energy, she struggled back into the bulky cover-up and sprang up. Bending over the pot of shrimp, she breathed deep. “Wonderful. I didn’t know you were so talented.”

  “I decided it was time I let you in on some of my more admirable qualities.”

  With a half smile, she looked back to see him slipping on his shorts. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. After all, we’ve got to travel a long way together yet.” He sent her a quiet, enigmatic look. “A long way.”

  “I don’t—” She stopped herself and turned to toy with the salad. “This looks good,” she began, too brightly.

  “Bryan.” He stopped her before she could reach in the cupboard above for bowls. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Did he always have to see? she demanded. Couldn’t she hide anything from him?

  He stepped over, took her arms and held her face to face. “What?”

  “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, all right?” The brightness was still there, straining. “I’m really hungry. The shrimp’s cool by now, so—”

  “Now.” With a quick shake, he reminded both of them that his patience only stretched so far.

  “I’ve decided to fly back,” she blurted out. “I can get a flight out tomorrow afternoon.”

  He went very still, but she was too busy working out her explanation to notice just how dangerously still. “Why?”

  “I’ve had to reschedule like crazy to fit in this assignment. The extra time I’d get would ease things.” It sounded weak. It was weak. “Why?”

  She opened her mouth, prepared to give him a variation on the same theme. One look from him stopped her. “I just want to get back,” she managed. “I know you’d like company on the drive, but the assignment’s finished. Odds are you’ll make better time without me.”

  He fought back the anger. Anger wasn’t the way. If he’d given in to it, he’d have shouted, raged, threatened. That wasn’t the way. “No,” he said simply, and left it at that.

  “No?”

  “You’re not flying back tomorrow.” His voice was calm, but his eyes said a great deal more. “We go together, Bryan.”

  She braced herself. An argument, she decided, would be easy. “Now look—”

  “Sit down.”

  Haughtiness came to her rarely, but when it did, it was exceptional. “I beg your pardon?”

  For an answer, Shade gave her a quick shove onto the bench. Without speaking, he pulled open a drawer and took out the manila envelope that held his most recently developed prints. Tossing them onto the table, he pulled out the one of Bryan.

  “What do you see?” he demanded.

  “Myself.” She cleared her throat. “I see myself, of course.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “That’s what I see,” she tossed back, but she didn’t look down at the print again. “That’s all there is.”

  Perhaps fear played a part in his actions. He didn’t want to admit it. But it was fear, fear that he’d imagined something that wasn’t there. “You see yourself, yes. A beautiful woman, a desirable woman. A woman,” he continued slowly, “looking at the man she loves.”

  He’d stripped her. Bryan felt it as though he’d actually peeled off layer after layer of pretense, defense, disguise. She’d seen the same thing in the image he’d frozen on film. She’d seen it, but what gave him the right to strip her?

  “You take too much,” she said in a quiet voice. Rising, she turned away from him. “Too damned much.”

  Relief poured through him. He had to close his eyes on it for a moment. Not imagination, not illusion, but truth. Love was there, and with it, his beginning. “You’ve already given it.”

  “No.” Bryan turned back, holding on to what she had left. “I haven’t given it. What I feel is my responsibility. I haven’t asked you for anything, and I won’t.” She took a deep breath. “We agreed, Shade. No complications.”

  “Then it looks like we both reneged, doesn’t it?” He grabbed her hand before she could move out of reach. “Look at me.” His face was close, candlelight flickering over it. Somehow the soft light illuminated what he’d seen, what he’d lived through, what he’d overcome. “Don’t you see anything when you look at me? Can you see more in a stranger on the beach, a woman in a crowd, a kid on a street corner, than you do when you look at me?”

  “Don’t—” she began, only to be cut off.

  “What do you see?”

  “I see a man,” she said, speaking quickly, passionately. “A man who’s had to see more than he should. I see a man who’s learned to keep his feelings carefully controlled because he isn’t quite sure what would happen if he let loose. I see a cynic who hasn’t been able to completely stamp out his own sensitivity, his own empathy.”

  “True enough,” he returned evenly, though it was both more and less than he’d wanted to hear. “What else?”

  “Nothing,” she told him, close to panic. “Nothing.”

  It wasn’t enough. The frustration came through; she could feel it in his hands. “Where’s your perception now? Where’s the insight that takes you under the glitter of some temperamental leading man to the core? I want you to see into me, Bryan.”

  “I can’t.” The words came out on a shudder. “I’m afraid to.”

  Afraid? He’d never considered it. She took emotions in stride, sought them, dug for them. He loosened his grip on her and said the words that were the most difficult for him to speak. “I love you.”

  She felt the words slam into her, knocking her breathless. If he said them, he meant them, of that she could be sure. Had she been so caught up in her own feelings that she hadn’t seen his? It was tempting, it would be easy, to simply go into his arms and take the risk. But she remembered that they’d both risked before, and failed.

  “Shade…” She tried to think calmly, but his words of love still rang in her head. “I don’t—you can’t—”

  “I want to hear you say it.” He held her close again. There was no place to go. “I want you to look at me, knowing everything you’ve said about me is true, and tell me.”

  “It couldn’t work,” she began quickly, because her knees were shaking. “It couldn’t, don’t you see? I’d want it all because I’m just idiot enough to think maybe this time—with you… Marriage, children, that’s not what you want, and I understand. I didn’t think I wanted them either, until everything got so out of control.”

  He was calmer now, as she became more frazzled. “You haven’t told me yet.”

  “All right.” She nearly shouted it. “All right then, I love you, but I—”

  He closed his mouth over hers so there could be no excuses. For now, he could simply drink in the words and all they meant to him. Salvation. He could believe in it.

  “You’ve a hell of a nerve,” he said against her mouth, “telling me what I want.”

  “Shad
e, please.” Giving in to the weakness, she dropped her head on his shoulder. “I didn’t want to complicate things. I don’t want to now. If I fly back, it’ll give us both time to put things back in perspective. My work, your work—”

  “Are important,” he finished. “But not as important as this.” He waited until her eyes slowly lifted to his. Now his voice was calm again. His grip eased, still holding her but without the desperation. “Nothing is, Bryan. You didn’t want it, maybe I thought I didn’t, but I know better now. Everything started with you. Everything important. You make me clean.” He ran a hand through her hair. “God, you make me hope again, believe again. Do you think I’m going to let you take all that away from me?”

  The doubts began to fade, quietly, slowly. Second chances? Hadn’t she always believed in them? Long shots, she remembered. You only had to want to win badly enough.

  “No,” she murmured. “But I need a promise. I need the promise, Shade, and then I think we could do anything.”

  So did he. “I promise to love you, to respect you. To care for you whether you like it or not. And I promise that what I am is yours.” Reaching up, he flipped open the cupboard door. Speechless, Bryan watched him draw out a tiny cardboard pot of pansies. Their scent was light and sweet and lasting.

  “Plant them with me, Bryan.”

  Her hands closed over his. Hadn’t she always believed life was as simple as you made it? “As soon as we’re home.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Cooperate, will you?”

  “No.” Amused, but not altogether pleased, Shade watched Bryan adjust the umbrellas beside and behind him. It seemed to him she’d been fiddling with the lighting a great deal longer than necessary.

  “You said I could have anything I wanted for Christmas,” she reminded him as she held the light meter up to his face. “I want this picture.”

  “It was a weak moment,” he mumbled.

  “Tough.” Unsympathetic, Bryan stepped back to study the angles. There, the lighting was perfect, the shadows just where they should be. But… A long-suffering sigh came out. “Shade, stop glowering, will you?”

  “I said you could take the picture. I didn’t say it’d be pretty.”

  “No chance of that,” she said under her breath.

  Exasperated, she brushed at her hair, and the thin gold band on her left hand caught the light. Shade watched it glimmer with the same sort of odd pleasure he always felt when it hit him that they were a team, in every way. With a grin, he joined his left hand with hers, so that the twin rings they wore touched lightly.

  “Sure you want this picture for Christmas? I’d thought of buying you ten pounds of French chocolate.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but her fingers laced with his. “A low blow, Colby. Dead low.” Refusing to be distracted, she backed off. “I’ll have my picture,” she told him. “And if you want to be nasty, I’ll buy my own chocolate. Some husbands,” she continued as she walked back to the camera set on a tripod, “would cater to their wife’s every whim when she’s in my delicate condition.”

  He glanced down at the flat stomach under baggy overalls. It still dazed him that there was life growing there. Their life. When summer came again, they’d hold their first child. It wouldn’t do to let her know he had to fight the urge to pamper her, to coddle her every moment. Instead, Shade shrugged and dipped his hands in his pockets.

  “Not this one,” he said lightly. “You knew what you were getting when you married me.”

  She looked at him through the viewfinder. His hands were in his pockets, but he wasn’t relaxed. As always, his body was ready to move, his mind moving already. But in his eyes she saw the pleasure, the kindness and the love. Together they were making it work. He didn’t smile, but Bryan did as she clicked the shutter.

  “So I did,” she murmured.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 9781460399538

  ONE SUMMER

  Copyright © 1986 by Nora Roberts

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  www.Harlequin.com

  Lessons Learned

  Nora Roberts

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  CHAPTER ONE

  So he was gorgeous. And rich…and talented. And sexy; you shouldn’t forget that he was outrageously sexy.

  It hardly mattered to Juliet. She was a professional, and to a professional, a job was a job. In this case, great looks and personality were bound to help, but that was business. Strictly business.

  No, personally it didn’t matter a bit. After all, she’d met a few gorgeous men in her life. She’d met a few rich ones too, and so forth, though she had to admit she’d never met a man with all those elusive qualities rolled up in one. She’d certainly never had the opportunity to work with one. Now she did.

  The fact was, Carlo Franconi’s looks, charm, reputation and skill were going to make her job a pleasure. So she was told. Still, with her office door closed, Juliet scowled down at the eight-by-ten glossy black-and-white publicity photo. It looked to her as though he’d be more trouble than pleasure.

  Carlo grinned cockily up at her, dark, almond-shaped eyes amused and appreciative. She wondered if the photographer had been a woman. His full thick hair was appealingly disheveled with a bit of curl along the nape of his neck and over his ears. Not too much—just enough to disarm. The strong facial bones, jauntily curved mouth, straight nose and expressive brows combined to create a face destined to sabotage any woman’s common sense. Gift or cultivated talent, Juliet wasn’t certain, but she’d have to use it to her advantage. Author tours could be murder.

  A cookbook. Juliet tried, and failed, not to sigh. Carlo Franconi’s The Italian Way, was, whether she liked it or not, her biggest assignment to date. Business was business.

  She loved her job as publicist and was content for the moment with Trinity Press, the publisher she currently worked for, after a half-dozen job changes and upward jumps since the start of her career. At twenty-eight, the ambition she’d started with as a receptionist nearly ten years before had eased very little. She’d worked, studied, hustled and sweated for her own office and position. She had them, but she wasn’t ready to relax.

  In two years, by her calculations, she’d be ready to make the next jump: her own public relations firm. Naturally, she’d have to start out small, but it was building the business that was exciting. The contacts and experience she gained in her twenties would help her solidify her ambitions in her thirties. Juliet was content with that.

  One of the first things she’d learned in public relations was that an account was an account, whether it was a big blockbuster bestseller already slated to be a
big blockbuster film or a slim volume of poetry that would barely earn out its advance. Part of the challenge, and the fun, was finding the right promotional hook.

  Now, she had a cookbook and a slick Italian chef. Franconi, she thought wryly, had a track record—with women and in publishing. The first was a matter of hot interest to the society and gossip sections of the international press. It wasn’t necessary to cook to be aware of Franconi’s name. The second was the reason he was being pampered on the road with a publicist.

  His first two cookbooks had been solid bestsellers. For good reason, Juliet admitted. It was true she couldn’t fry an egg without creating a gooey inedible glob, but she recognized quality and style. Franconi could make linguini sound like a dish to be prepared while wearing black lace. He turned a simple spaghetti dish into an erotic event.

  Sex. Juliet tipped back in her chair and wiggled her stockinged toes. That’s what he had. That’s just what they’d use. Before the twenty-one-day author tour was finished, she’ll have made Carlo Franconi the world’s sexiest cook. Any red-blooded American woman would fantasize about him preparing an intimate dinner for two. Candlelight, pasta and romance.

  One last study of his publicity shot and the charmingly crooked grin assured her he could handle it.

  In the meantime, there was a bit more groundwork to cover. Creating a schedule was a pleasure, adhering to one a challenge. She thrived on both.

  Juliet lifted the phone, noticed with resignation that she’d broken another nail, then buzzed her assistant. “Terry, get me Diane Maxwell. She’s program coordinator on the Simpson Show in L.A.”