At that, she must have looked as devastated as she felt because all at once, he reached across the table and took both her hands in his. “You know, Janie, it’s easy to imagine things that aren’t really there when the options are limited. Chance has thrown us together, not choice. We’re all each other has at the moment and as a result, we’ve become somewhat dependent on each other. But it would be a mistake for us to read more into it than that.”
“Dependent? Speak for yourself,” she said scornfully. “I don’t need you for anything.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, with more kindness and insight than he’d ever shown before. “You’re adrift in loneliness, whether you’re ready to admit it or not. You’re the kind of woman who needs other people in order to feel fulfilled. The kind who gives. And I—dammit, I’m in the position where I have to take more than I care to, and we’ve developed a certain…relationship because of those things.”
Swallowing the ache in her throat, she said, “Is that such a bad thing, Liam?”
“It could be. Do you really think I don’t know I’m with the most beautiful woman in the room, or that I don’t find you desirable?” He shook his head in mock reproof. “Heck, Janie, it would be very easy to make a pass at you, to embark on an affair.”
“But it’s not going to happen.” She didn’t need him to complete the thought. He was clearly leading up to letting her down gently.
Releasing her hands, he swirled the wine in his glass. “If our lives were running along as usual, we’d have nothing in common except, perhaps, a mutual distaste for one another. Our paths would never have coincided. We don’t move in the same social circles. We don’t share the same goals or even similar interests. This summer is an aberration, a time-out for both of us, and it’s important we recognize that it won’t last forever. In another week or two, maybe less, we’ll go our separate ways and likely never see each other again.” He stopped and heaved a mighty sigh. “So no, it’s not going to happen.”
“Well, thank you for spelling it out for me, but you really didn’t have to. I’d already arrived at the same conclusion.”
“Then we’re in agreement.”
“Absolutely.”
Indicating the Chateaubriand the waiter had carved and set before them, Liam raised his wineglass. “In that case, let’s drink to a fine meal and start eating before this gets cold. Bon appétit!”
To say the rest of the meal was strained was to overstate the obvious. “Good little band they’ve got here,” he remarked at one point, when the lapse in conversation became too oppressively obvious. “I hadn’t expected they’d have live music.”
“They don’t, except during the summer and even then only on weekends.”
“Ah, yes, you did mention you’d been here in the past. Were you with your husband?”
“A couple of times, when we were first married.”
“If I’d known that, I’d have suggested we go someplace else. The last thing I wanted was to stir up unhappy memories.”
The only unhappy memories, she could have told him, are those we’re creating tonight. “It was a long time ago,” she said starchily. “And there isn’t anyplace else on the island.”
He rolled his eyes in mock despair. “Struck out again, McGuire! Shall we talk about the weather, instead?”
“I’d just as soon not.”
That dealt a death blow to any pretense they were having a good time! Giving up, he concentrated on his meal, his appetite clearly none the worse for the company he was keeping.
She could hardly say the same for her. The beef, delicious and tender though it probably was, might as well have been cardboard. That everyone else in the room was having a whale of a good time merely emphasized the pool of alienation in which the two of them were struggling to remain afloat.
Aware of his glance resting on her every once in a while, Jane fought to keep her expression calm and unruffled. But inside, she was bleeding. Not until he’d spelled out the way he viewed their relationship had she realized how big a part he’d come to play in her life. That he was right, and their connection would end with summer, was too painful to contemplate.
“You care for dessert?” he asked when their plates had been taken away.
“No, thank you.”
“Coffee?”
She shook her head. “I’ll pass.”
He could barely contain his relief. “Then let’s get out of here.”
Indeed yes! Coming in the first place had been a mistake. They were the only two in the room who weren’t a couple.
“Let’s,” she echoed miserably.
If the evening had ended then, with both of them sulking, she might have been saved from herself. For a minute, when he levered himself to his feet and reached for his cane, she thought she was safe from the silly dreams persisting at the back of her mind. She was in the grip of a late-onset adolescent infatuation, that was all; one based on nothing but proximity and, as he’d so bluntly pointed out, lack of choice.
But the music was fast, the rhythm infectious, and the tiny dance floor packed with people too busy enjoying themselves to notice the tiny drama taking place on the periphery of the crowd. As she went to pick up her wrap from the back of her chair, someone accidentally bumped Jane from behind, a glancing blow only, but catching her off guard and just a little off balance the way it did, it was enough to send her staggering.
With a gasp of shock, she collided into Liam. Automatically, he closed his hands over her shoulders to steady her, or perhaps even to hold her at a distance because heaven knew he’d made it plain enough he didn’t want her crowding him.
Too late, though; that split second of contact, and the damage was done. The feel of him—the solid wall of his chest beneath her palms, his touch on her bare skin—sent shock waves of awareness ricocheting clean down to the soles of her feet.
The reaction seemed to be mutual. A tremor swept over him and she felt his breath, ragged at her temples. Daring to look up, she found him gazing down at her as if he’d just seen her for the first time.
For one startled moment, they remained that way, his eyes burning into hers, his face a mask of ill-concealed confusion as he fought whatever private demons pursued him. Then, with agonizing slowness, his hands slid down her arms until he found her fingers. Lacing them in his, he said hoarsely, “It would be a shame to let the entire evening go to waste. Let’s dance.”
“We can’t,” she said, too strung out to care about diplomacy or tact. “It’s all you can do to walk with a cane. What if you fall and hurt your leg?”
“I won’t, not as long as I’ve got you to lean on.” A fleeting smile touched his mouth. “Unless, of course, you’re embarrassed to be seen doing the shuffle when everyone else is cutting a high-stepping rug with the cha-cha.”
As if it mattered one iota, she said on a frail breath, “They’re not playing the cha-cha anymore.”
“You’re right,” he said, holding her lightly at the waist. “They’ve switched to something even I can manage.”
The question was, could she? Could she keep her soul intact, her heart where it belonged, with the clarinet player weaving a soulful blues number through the air and binding her ever more tightly to Liam? Could she control the runaway response of her body? Or should she stop trying to fight a war she couldn’t hope to win and simply give in to the overwhelming urge to plaster herself all over him and let tomorrow and its repercussions go hang themselves? Did either of them have the fortitude to resist such blatant temptation?
The answer wasn’t long in coming.
All evening, she’d avoided any kind of physical contact with him. Much though it had gone against her better nature, she’d stood back and let him struggle unaided, in and out of the boat and up the path to the clubhouse. He’d made it clear often enough that that was the way he preferred it. He managed by himself every other day, and just because he’d abandoned his customary blue jeans in favor of something a bit dressier didn’t mean he couldn’t c
ope the same as usual.
But now, having once touched each other, they couldn’t seem to let go. As naturally as water runs downhill, his hands slid over her hips and locked in the small of her back. And just as naturally, her arms found their way around his neck to where his hair brushed the edge of his collar.
“You smell nice,” he murmured, resting his chin on the crown of her head.
Nice. When they’d first sat down to dinner, she’d have rated the word only slightly above stuff on your eyes. But things had changed since then. The tension charging the atmosphere now seethed with the slow-burning intimacy rising from the ashes of their earlier discord.
Floundering, she said, “You’re a good dancer, Liam.”
It was a lie, a last-ditch effort to keep control of a situation already too far gone to be reclaimed, and she knew it. Except when they stumbled over each other’s feet, the best they could accomplish was to sway on the spot to the music. But it didn’t matter. It was enough to be in his arms, to feel his thighs nudging against hers. To drown in his gaze turned sultry blue with passion and to realize with delicious shock that he was aroused by her nearness and helpless to hide the fact.
Drawing her tighter into his embrace, he said unsteadily, “Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea, after all.”
But the way he continued to hold her told another story, and when the music finally came to an end and he said, “Let’s go,” she handed him his cane and went with him in the full knowledge that the outcome of their leaving would be vastly different from what either of them had expected half an hour before.
The night was still, the water smooth as glass except where the boat’s wake flowed in a graceful triangle from the stern. At first, as Liam navigated the narrows at the southern tip of the island, Jane sat well to the stern, content simply to admire his sleek powerful silhouette illuminated by the lights on the instrument panel.
She’d pinned many labels on him since they’d met, not the least and most unflattering being that he was stubborn, difficult, obnoxious, and proud to a fault. Now it was time to admit to another, more risky truth. He was also sexy, virile and unforgettably, unabashedly masculine.
For years, she had remained immune to desire, had been content to drift through life, instead of becoming caught up in the mainstream of emotion which truly defined it. Tonight, though, with little more than a touch and a telling glance, Liam had awoken her to a different reality.
She had, she knew, arrived at a fork in the river of her existence, and the choice about what happened next was hers alone to make. One way continued her along the quiet backwater which, until recently, she’d thought she wanted; to uncomplicated tranquility. The other led to turmoil. To passion and fire and uncertainty. To living!
A shift in the angle of moonlight on ocean alerted her to the knowledge that they’d passed through the narrows and reached the calmer water in the lee of the island’s westward shore. Except for the low purr of the engine, night lay quiet all around them. Except for his figure, tall and silent at the wheel, there was no one else in the world who mattered, and she’d waited long enough to let him know it.
Going to him, she leaned into his spine, rested her head in the niche of his shoulder, and slid her arms around his waist. His midriff was hard as iron to her touch, his skin cool and smooth under the fabric of his shirt. Splaying her fingers, she explored the definition of rib and sinew which shaped his chest.
He said not a word, gave not a single outward indication that he was aware of her touching him. But his heart raced beneath her fingertips and when she dared to slip her hands lower, over his flanks to the narrow planes of his hips, she heard his sharply in-drawn breath.
Still, he made no effort to respond to her overtures and, suddenly unsure of herself, she went to back away, afraid she’d misread the signs which had seemed to spell such a clear message mere seconds before.
Only then did he move, killing the engine so that the night closed around them like a thick, concealing blanket, and leaving the boat to drift idly on the ebbing tide. “Don’t you dare back off,” he said in a low, husky voice.
Less a command than a solicitation, it spurred her to rash confidence. Boldly, she let her hands roam the firm, flat contours of his belly, and then, with unthinkable daring, to where his flesh rose hard and hot against the confines of his trousers. At her touch, a shudder passed over him, powerful as a tiny earthquake.
Aghast at her own audacity, she made to retreat to safer territory but, covering her hand with his and pressing her more firmly against him, he said hoarsely, “You can’t stop now, Janie.”
“I don’t want to,” she admitted faintly, the blood surging through her veins like wildfire. “Oh, Liam, I don’t ever want to stop.”
He turned then and pulled her hard against him. Supporting himself against the instrument panel, he nested her between his thighs with such intimacy that she could feel the pulsing urgency of him through the layers of their clothing.
Her own pooling response was no less intense. She had never known such hunger, such aching need. Yearning toward him, she lifted her face to his. He towered over her, blotting out the moonlight, the stars—everything but the shimmering expectation of his kiss.
He paused a bare millimeter from her lips. “I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for, Janie.”
“I do,” she whispered, tilting her hips against his in blatant proposition. “You don’t have to worry, Liam. I’m a grown woman. I can look after myself.”
Brave words, and ones she was prepared to live by, at the time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE RELENTED then, and slanted his mouth over hers in a kiss so shattering that her knees buckled. Clinging to him, she opened her lips to the subtle persuasion of his. His tongue flirted with hers, teased the tiny crease at the corner of her mouth, and wove wickedly past her teeth to engage in a rhythmic thrust and retreat that left her breathless.
Meanwhile, his hands…sweet heaven, his hands were instruments of exquisite torture, bent on discovering every tactile inch of her. The straps of her dress slid away. Above the soft thunder of her blood, she heard her zipper slide open, felt the cool night air on her exposed skin. Felt his touch, his fingers warm and slightly calloused, his palm firm and possessive.
At her soft moan of pleasure, he inched her dress and panties past her hips and sent them shimmying down around her ankles. Naked, and quivering with a mixture of hope and trepidation, she stood before him, more vulnerable than she’d ever been in her life before.
And then his mouth was at her breast, creating a turbulence which stripped away any pretensions to modesty she might once have entertained.
She arched her spine compliantly, the better to give him access when he ran his hand over her ribs to her stomach. Beyond a momentary shudder of delight, she allowed him to track the delta of her hips with his tongue.
When he strung kisses along the slope of her thigh and her legs fell slackly apart, no more able to resist him than any other part of her, she acquiesced and allowed him to divine with expert finesse the sweet, hot moisture she was helpless to control, unmistakable proof of her surrender to his seduction.
Past caring that her too thin body was laid bare to his critical inspection, that she was indisputably, shamelessly ready for him, she rocked against him, almost sobbing at the escalating tension which threatened to rip her apart unless he stopped…!
Yet if he stopped, she would surely die!
Couldn’t he feel her heart banging wildly behind her ribs? Couldn’t he hear it disturbing the deep silence of the night? Didn’t he know that she was awash with gnawing hunger, that a deep and primitive throbbing born in the very center of her being was spreading sweet tentacles of destruction to the very tips of her fingers and toes?
“Oh, Li…am…!” she sighed brokenly, her whole body undulating with need as he tormented the one spot most sensitized by his ministrations. “Please, come to me…!”
He lifted his head at t
hat and stared deeply into her eyes, his own full of dark fire. Deliberately, he unsnapped his belt buckle. Tugged his shirt loose from his waist. Took her hand and guided it to the zipper of his fly.
Gaze still scorching over her, he said, “I’m not doing all the work, sweetheart.”
His words fell rough as gravel in the night. His chest heaved. A film of sweat gleamed fitfully on his face. He was, she recognized dimly, in the throes of his own personal agony, one only she could assuage.
She touched him. Delicately; nervously. Uncertain of her ability to return a fraction of the ecstasy he promised her, she hovered over and around the taut shaft of his flesh until, impatient with her efforts, he wrenched open his fly and closed her hand hard around him.
He was…he was overwhelming! Magnificent!
Wonderingly, she tested the silken weight of him, stroked the heated energy of him, her senses suddenly so fine-tuned to his needs that she knew instinctively how to please him.
He closed his eyes. Inhaled sharply. Let his head roll back against his shoulders. Brought his hands up to her head and swept away the silver comb holding her chignon in place so that he could clench his fists in her hair.
Curling her fingers possessively around him, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth against the pulse throbbing at the base of his darkly tanned throat. He tasted of summer and she knew she’d never again know the smell of the sea and sun-warmed sand, or the lush, fragrant shade of evergreens, without thinking of him.
He tasted of surging, masculine passion and she knew, too, that there’d never be another man like him, no matter how many others might come her way.
And in some tiny, unprotected corner of her mind, she knew that what was hers for the taking that night was not hers to keep forever. It made her mouth greedy and demanding, her hands clever and aggressive.
Stifling a groan, he held her away from him and traced his fingertip from her breasts to the shadowed cleft of her thighs, a light, electrifying flight of movement which left her suspended midway between heaven and hell. Then, snaking his arm around her, he pulled her down beside him on the runabout’s broad cushioned starboard seat and, as smoothly as if she’d been tailored specifically to accommodate him, he laid claim to her.
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