by Anna Adams
“Since I’m not going for any more of your start-and-stop, you’ll have to wait your turn to come in if you’re going to sound like that.”
“I’d better turn around.”
“You know best.” She quickly shucked off her jeans and socks and shoes and stepped, shivering into the spring. “It’s almost hot.”
“Yeah.” His tone dropped suspiciously near a groan.
She imagined herself naked in his mind’s eye. She couldn’t help hoping she looked good in his fantasy. She let it go, trying to ignore her racing pulse. It wasn’t fair to push him unless she was willing to take another rejection.
Just act normal, natural. Her underwear covered everything discreetly. She slid into the water, lifting her feet off the rock and sand bottom.
“I call the ledge,” she said and swam two strokes toward the flashlight. She bumped into rock and dirt and turned over to lean back on her elbows, resting her head against the moss-covered ground. “You can come in now.”
He stripped quickly to plaid boxers. Some things hadn’t changed. He still wore them. She still found them ridiculously sexy.
He dropped into the pool.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t hate the idea of camping so much now. This is like being held.” She lifted her legs to float. “I love to swim.”
“You call this swimming?”
“I love water.” She grinned. “You’re in a bad mood all of a sudden.”
“Lust does that to me.” He splashed water across his shoulders and chest. The droplets glittered on his skin in the meager light. “What bothers me more is that you don’t seem to be as bothered as I am.”
She dropped to the ledge again. “Maybe I’m bothered.”
“You don’t show it.”
“I don’t usually play games with grown men, so I assume we aren’t playing anymore.”
He turned to her, and the water caught the ends of his hair, darkening them. “I haven’t been playing. I want you, but I don’t want to hurt you. How can I explain in a way you’ll understand?”
She shifted, putting just a few inches of important space between them. “You can’t explain because you don’t understand yourself. I don’t know if it’s because your dad died and you don’t remember your parents together very well, or if your time with Helene was really that bad, but you can forgive yourself for Salva. You can change if you want to.” She gasped for air. It was a huge speech, and she’d had no right to make it.
“Tell me about change, Olivia.” Irritation only strengthened the hard lines that made her want to touch his mouth. “The only change you’ve made in six years is moving to your own home. Otherwise, is your life different than it was the day you found out about Evan? What risks do you take?”
Far from making her angry, his argument made her smile. “I’m here right now. I know what I want from tonight.” Not the truth actually. Why she wanted to make love to him when she believed implicitly that it would be a one-night-only event was beyond her. Maybe she just needed the goodbye he’d denied her by disappearing.
He turned to her and his hand drifted over hers under the water. “You talk as if you know me, Olivia.”
“I’m making guesses.” She held her breath as his fingers skimmed her wrist and her forearm and her elbow.
“Who was I in Chicago? Did I love you?”
“I thought so.” She delivered herself to his intent gaze, hiding nothing. “But I’m not sure now.”
“Who were you to me?”
She shivered as his thighs brushed her legs apart. Want grew deep in her belly, an ache that might kill her if he backed away. “Zach, I don’t think—”
“Don’t think. Just feel how good this is. You’re the one who’s willing to take a chance.”
He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her against his chest. She hated him blindly for a moment. “I don’t trust you.” No amount of “good” could make up for the agony of losing him before.
“You shouldn’t.” He nudged her cheek with his chin. She had to look at him, had to meet his tortured gaze, dark as a world with no light, blank as sheer pain.
“I’m hurting you,” she said.
He pressed his mouth to her shoulder. Heat and teeth scraped her. She shuddered, and he tightened his arms. He brushed his lips back and forth over her skin until he reached her jaw.
She only had to turn her head. To lift her face slightly. She looked at him, but closed her eyes as he covered her mouth.
His body against hers, his angles fitting her softness to him was “good” in an elemental way that bore no relation to the gentle love they’d made when she’d been twenty-one.
She cupped his face. He traced the line of her breastbone until he found her bra clasp. Her nipples were tight, her breasts full.
“Olivia?” he said.
She should walk away and hurt him as he’d hurt her time and again. But she needed this, yearned to feel one more time as if he loved her.
She reached between them for the catch on her bra, but when her fingers shook so hard, she couldn’t work the clasp, he opened it and pushed the straps off her shoulders. He touched her with his fingertips first, as if he didn’t dare to take more.
She wrapped her arms around him, gasping with fierce relief as her bare skin met the crisp wet hair on his chest.
“No,” she said, but she meant, “You left me. Don’t leave me ever again.” She slid her hands down his back, tracing each rib beneath his skin.
“No?” His faint voice reached her as if she were far away—where she didn’t want to be anymore.
He breathed harshly against her throat, but Olivia splayed her fingers on both sides of his head again.
“You left me,” she said. “I needed you.”
“I’m here.”
As if being here now made up for six years.
She turned his face to her nipple. Immediately, he opened his mouth and took her inside, stroking her with hunger that fired all the wanting she’d repressed.
Her rough breathing hurt her throat. Zach lifted his face and swept her lips in a soft kiss, but she had no time for gentleness now.
She twisted from beneath him without breaking their kiss and began to punish him, using the passion he’d thrown away. Soon he forgot to be careful with her as he had been when she was twenty-one. He opened her mouth with his and took her as if he had to possess her.
As she wrapped her legs around his waist, Zach stroked her breasts until she feared she might scream for more. She broke the kiss and swam away from him. He stared at her, his eyes glazed, his forehead damp with sweat.
“Wait.” He held on to the mud bank, speaking through clenched teeth. “I’m not giving you another baby.”
“I’m taking the pill. Since Evan, I have to for— I just have to.”
“Are you okay?”
She shook, growing cold without his arms around her, but still said, “I’m fine.” She pushed her panties down her legs and kicked them away.
At the same time, Zach pulled off his boxers and then grabbed her ankles to pull her back. She twined her fingers with his, forcing his hands onto the bank, teasing him, rubbing her aching body against his. If he thought he could leave her again, she’d ensure he wouldn’t forget her.
Freeing one hand, he caressed her nape. For a long second, cloaked in a tender haze, he kissed her. She lowered herself on him, and he tore his mouth from hers to moan against her forehead.
Free of the sweet persuasion of his mouth, she took from him. Satisfaction and pleasure and vengeance that had nothing to do with love. She wanted him to spill inside her, because she needed release. She needed to make Zach feel for her again. Maybe for the first time, she wanted to be everything that mattered to him.
As he had been to her.
He lifted himself to thrust, but she pulled away, staring into his eyes in a silent, sensual challenge. Catching his hands again, she forced him to meet her rhythm. His ragged attempt at cont
rol fed her hunger for him—her convoluted desire for retribution. Tears washed her face.
“Olivia.” He arched against her, and she relented, sharing his need to join their bodies. “Olivia.” His broken voice echoed all the days and nights she’d called his name in the same desperate tone.
Suddenly he gripped her hips and at the same time took her open mouth. His groan fed her as his release pulsed inside her body, and he took her with him. Colors writhed in the darkness of her closed eyes as pleasure curled her toes, numbing her hands and fingers. Locking her legs around his waist, she rocked against him to drag out the last shocking second.
He kissed her again and again, his mouth gentle, comforting her until sanity trickled back, and she struggled to be free of him, of the shame of taking him in revenge.
He refused to let her go, smoothing her hair away from her face. When he pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth, she met his kiss. At last she slumped against his chest, hearing and feeling only the still-frenzied beat of his heart.
“Do you feel better?” Concern and forgiveness threaded his voice.
She would have been furious. “I wasn’t very kind.”
He buried his face in her hair, but his laughter sounded as unsettled as she felt. “I’m a man. You were plenty kind, and I could have stopped you any time.”
“I doubt it.”
He kissed her head. “I like the way you exact reprisal,” he said, “as long as you plan to make love to me now.”
She wanted to raise her head, but she couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. “Why aren’t you angry?”
“We’re adults and I hurt you. Your body speaks to mine, and I guess mine speaks to yours. You had some irate things to say. I have more loving responses I’d like to show you.”
“I don’t understand you, Zach.”
“Turns out I don’t know you either.” He tipped up her chin and kissed her tender lips, his arousal already stirring. “But I plan to learn all about you.”
And though she’d ravaged him, he worshiped where she’d tried to punish. He gave where she’d taken.
His care awoke new passion, a different need equally as vast. She tasted him, kissing his salty skin, caressing his body with a sweeter passion.
He turned her, lifting her onto the ledge as he slid inside her. Each stroke floated her mouth against his. She’d burned with anger and fear. She’d regretted the love that had shaped her from the age of twenty-one.
Zach touched her with compassion and desire. He offered an addictive sharing of generous pleasure.
Crying when the colors exploded again, she swam on a sensation of wonder, on joy she’d believed unattainable. She’d never known anything as loving as his protective arms around her, his voice whispering her name like a vow when he found a second release within her. They both held on as if some threat lay in wait to break them apart.
When Zach finally let her go, Olivia sank against the bank, too tired to turn her head. He dropped beside her and pulled her onto his chest.
“I knew we could be nice to each other.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “I’d like to sleep in your bed tonight.”
He didn’t answer at first, but she refused to assume the worst.
“Can you walk?” he finally asked. “And if you can, will you let me rest a few minutes?”
“We should have brought towels.”
“I didn’t think clearly.”
“Me, neither.” Morning would bring an avalanche of clarity.
ZACH OPENED HIS EYES to the disturbing sensation of Olivia’s lips on his belly. He wrapped his hand in her hair, uncertain whether he meant to urge her closer or ease her away from him. The ringing telephone took the decision out of his hands.
“It’s probably Lily,” he said, seduced by the regret in Olivia’s eyes. “She calls every morning, since my work hours are so erratic.”
It wasn’t Lily. His deputy, Tyler, announced there’d been a car accident before Zach could say hello.
“How serious?” Zach asked.
“Fairly. An eighteen-wheeler ran a family van into a guardrail up on the interstate. The truck driver is unhurt. In the car, we have two children in car seats. They’re fine. The dad was asleep in the front passenger seat—he’s going to need stitches in his forearm for a laceration. The mom was driving. She’s not so lucky. I’ve called for a life flight, but I could use some help.”
“I’m on my way, and I’ll call the state troopers. Give me your mile marker.”
He took directions and turned over to find Olivia pulling one of his T-shirts over her head. In the shirt and a pair of his socks, she looked sleepy, delectable and concerned.
“I have to go,” he said.
“I know.” She scrunched her hands into the rumpled bedding. “Are you coming back?”
She meant to her, not to his house.
“I have to change.” He went to the closet. “Come talk while I dress.”
“How long does it take to admit you care about me?”
She pushed herself off the bed and departed. He stood there, with his dark blue shirt in his hands, frustration showing him pictures of himself easing Olivia back onto the bed. He could tell her everything she needed to know without words. She seemed to need the words.
Swearing, he pulled on his uniform.
He cared about her. He cared too damn much.
He took his gun from the safe in his room and was strapping it on when the shower from the guest room began to run. He went as far as the door.
What could he say? “I think I’ve fallen in love with you—give us a chance” would only start their most furious argument yet. He wanted to fight for her. She and Evan and the family they might make with Lily were worth fighting for. But if he made a mistake, if he couldn’t stay, she wouldn’t forgive him again.
On the way to the accident, he tried to put Olivia out of his head. She wouldn’t go.
He did his job. He tried to comfort the father and the crying children, and he arranged for a car so that they could go to the hospital in Maryville.
He helped Tyler direct the growing crowd of onlookers away from the scene, and they cleared a section of the interstate to give the life flight helicopter room to land. At last the chopper came down on their makeshift landing pad, and the state troopers rolled up.
Zach stood back while the paramedics took care of the woman and then waited with the family until the rental company dropped off a car. He offered the father the services of Bardill’s Ridge’s clinic. Unsurprisingly, the concerned husband only wanted to reach his wife.
As they stood together, each holding one of the man’s crying sons, Zach watched the chopper take off. That was the kind of work he should be doing. Moonshiners and bank robbers in Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, were serious felons, but he had the training to provide a real service to his fellow citizens.
He closed his eyes, ostensibly against prop-wash, but in his head he saw the cockpit controls. Metal flying at crazy angles, snapping, fire flashing through the air. Blood and smoke. Memories? Or facts he knew so well they felt like memories? He couldn’t tell, but he gulped a breath as fear washed him in sweat.
What if he did fly for life flight and this happened to him in midair?
He couldn’t risk taking everything that mattered from another human being. He couldn’t risk failing Olivia as he’d failed Salva and her family and Helene—and himself.
He’d tried to save Kim’s life. In losing her, he’d also lost his own right to the kind of joy she’d never know. Worst of all, he was afraid. He couldn’t ever take responsibility for someone else’s life again.
OLIVIA’S FIRST INSTINCT was to grab Evan and fly him home to Chicago, where she’d been safe for six years. Safe, untouched and maybe a little sterile. Nothing had hurt this much, but her good times hadn’t measured up to a single second of last night either.
Not that she wasn’t angry and frustrated, but Zach had been honest all along. She dressed and ma
de coffee, worked the crossword puzzle in the paper and tried not to think. What came next? Return to Chicago and a businesslike conversation about visitation for Evan? Was she willing to retreat again without a fight?
No. Anyone could change, and she had. She cared for Zach. She’d frozen all possible feelings for anyone other than her son because she’d been scared of getting hurt again, but she was willing to help Zach even if he couldn’t love her. In the end, he’d be a better father to Evan if he could face his past and find a future. Even without her.
On the margin beside the crossword puzzle, she noted everything she knew about Zach’s accident. The woman who’d died was named Kimberly Salva. Olivia didn’t know her rank. She noted the approximate date the accident had happened. She added Kerwin Gould’s name.
She didn’t have enough. She tapped her pen against her teeth. Helene would know more. But what if she found the Salvas? They might not want to talk to Zach. They might hold him responsible, too. Either way, he’d resent her interference.
She couldn’t blame him, but the chance that his friend’s family could ease his guilt made this a risk worth taking. She dialed Helene’s number.
“Zach?” Helene’s voice bit through the phone line. “Is it true you took that woman home with you last night?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“IT’S ME, HELENE.”
“What are you doing in my ex-husband’s home when your son is with Beth?”
How did she know? And why would she ask?
“Do you know how fast rumors fly in this town, how quickly a good friend rushed to tell me where you slept last night?”
Worse than merely having sex with Zach, Olivia had fallen in love with him again. Maybe she’d never been smart enough or strong enough to fall out of love.
“Helene, I’ll tell you though you have no right to ask, and I don’t want to talk about it. I am in love with Zach. He doesn’t feel the same way about me. I’ll learn to live with that, but I’d like to try just once to help him. Do you know the Salvas?”
“That woman he was supposed to rescue? She was an intelligence officer and she got caught in an off-limits area.”