by Tami Hoag
“Like father, like son,” Regan grumbled.
“Elliot had been indoctrinating him for a long time. It’s hard enough for kids to make the right choices in the best of circumstances, let alone when someone is hitting them over the head with a lot of propaganda.”
Regan jerked her head around, making eye contact for the first time since Lynn had entered the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, black-rimmed from mascara that hadn’t held up under the onslaught of tears, and burning with blue fire. “Are you making excuses for him?”
Lynn shook her head. “No, honey, I most certainly am not. Nothing could excuse the way he treated you. I’m just trying to understand him a little better,” she said calmly. “How are you feeling?”
Regan looked away quickly, swiping at her nose with the back of her hand. “What’s the difference? You want to be able to send me back to my folks with a clear conscience and a clean bill of health?”
“I’m not sending you anywhere.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why you were following me tonight—so you could catch me at something and have a good reason to get rid of me.”
“I’m sorry we had to follow you, Regan, but there was no other way to prove you weren’t behind the vandalism.”
“They would have pinned it on me, wouldn’t they? E.J. would have lied about meeting me. I would have been without an alibi.” She had a lawyer’s mind, Lynn thought, wondering how long it would take for Regan to see how bright she was, how bright her future could be. Longer than this night, that was for certain.
“Of course everyone would have believed I did it,” Regan said bitingly, raising her hands in surrender. Her mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. Tears rose in her eyes and clogged her throat, leaving her hoarse. “Anyone can see I’m just rotten to the core. Good for nothing—except maybe a little fun out behind the old plumbing shop.”
She pressed a hand against her mouth and fought the tide of hurt and despair so hard her face turned red. Lynn shifted positions subtly, edging a little closer.
“I see something a lot different than that when I look at you, Regan,” she said softly. “I see someone good caught up in a lot of bad stuff. I know what that’s like. You get into it a little at a time and pretty soon you’re in so deep you’re not sure how to get back out—or even if you deserve to. I’ve been there, honey. I know how much it hurts. I know how scary it can be.”
Regan was trembling visibly now, fighting to hold herself together, shaking as she choked back a sob. Lynn’s heart went out to her, but she held her position, knotting her fists into the pink chenille bedspread to keep from moving too soon. The girl shuddered, caught in the grip of an agony Lynn remembered well. She gasped for breath, rocking herself on the edge of the bed, her hands gripping her upper arms so hard her fingers lost all color.
“H-how d-did you g-g-get out?” she stuttered.
Lynn closed her eyes for an instant and offered a quick prayer of thanks. “Someone held out a hand,” she said. “And every time I batted it away, she held it out again. Finally, when I was sure she wasn’t just going to yank it away, I grabbed it and hung on.”
Slowly she turned toward Regan and stretched out a hand. The girl looked at it, her eyes brimming with tears and fear. Then she looked past it to Lynn and the dam burst. The barriers crumbled, the tears gushed forth, and Regan went into her arms, crying for help and begging for forgiveness. And Lynn just hung on.
Erik was waiting for her when Lynn finally descended the stairs. He was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in the living room, his head back, his big, sneakered feet up on the coffee table. The lamp on the end table cast a wash of buttery light over him, softening the lines of weariness that were etched beside his eyes and mouth.
He looked up at Lynn as she walked in, and smiled that warm, wise smile that made her heart turn over in her chest. A small knot of anxiety stirred in her stomach. She had become much too attached to that smile. The idea of never seeing it again was getting difficult to face. She pushed the thought aside, too tired to deal with it. It had been a long night. She simply didn’t have the strength left to do the right thing.
“I thought you’d be home by now, getting your beauty sleep,” she said quietly.
“Shows how much you know.” Erik hauled himself up out of the chair, and stretched. He’d had no intention of leaving without Lynn in tow. He knew the way her mind worked. She would see catching Graham and putting an end to the controversy over Horizon House as a natural place to end their relationship. Think again, sweetheart.
“Yeah. I guess I’m not as smart as I thought I was,” she said, her brow furrowing. “I never would have suspected Elliot.”
“That just shows you’re a failure as a cynic. There’s hope for you after all.”
Lynn shook her head in disbelief as she thought of the man who had so piously preached about the dangers of letting “girls like those” into a nice family neighborhood. “He didn’t even seem sorry for what he’d done, just angry that we caught him doing it.”
“I imagine he excused it all in the name of a good cause. He thought he was hastening the inevitable by doing the vandalism himself.”
“Hastening himself onto the city council so he could fight for the greater good of Rochester,” Lynn said bitterly. “The end justifies the means.”
Erik slid his hands along her shoulders, kneading the rigid muscles, trying to get her to let go a little of the tension. She was like a lioness defending her cubs whenever anyone threatened Horizon or her girls. They were her family, he realized, taking the place of the child she had given up and the father and sister she had left behind.
Her shoulders started to sag grudgingly under the tender ministrations of his fingers. She sighed and let her head fall back, her lashes drifting down like delicate black snowflakes against the ivory of her cheeks.
I’d give you a family, Lynn, he thought, the need to shelter and nurture rising up inside him like a flame.
“Well, it’s over now,” he murmured. “How’s Regan?”
“Hurting.”
It was Erik’s turn to shake his head in disbelief, both at young Graham’s actions and at the power of the fury that had roared through him in that parking lot. He had been raised to treat women with respect and he thought little of men who didn’t hold to that rule, but what he’d felt in that instant had been magnified a hundred times by his feelings for Lynn and by thoughts of her being in Regan’s place.
“You’ll never know how close I came to punching that kid in the mouth,” he said.
A bittersweet smile turned the corners of Lynn’s mouth. She slipped her arms around his lean waist and hugged him. “Our white knight, charging to the rescue.”
Erik brushed off her glowing description of him. “I’m not nearly as chivalrous as you make me out to be. I thought Regan was guilty as sin. I only went along with you because I wanted to score a few points in my favor.”
And to be there for her if things went badly, Lynn thought, to protect her and support her. He was every bit as good as she made him out to be. That little ball of anxiety rolled around in her stomach like a marble, cold and hard, and she squeezed her arms tighter around Erik. “Consider them scored,” she said.
Erik stroked a hand over her hair and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Come home with me tonight.”
Lynn pressed her cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat for a long moment. She shouldn’t. It probably would be easier on them both if she simply said no and thus begin the process of breaking it off with him. But she couldn’t say the word. She was so tired, physically and emotionally. Tired of being alone. It was late. In the morning there would be the press to deal with. They would hail Erik as the conquering hero and drag him off for interviews. They would lead him away from her and back to the world he was used to dealing with, the world he was destined for. And she would let them. But not tonight. He could be hers for a few more hours tonight.
• • �
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“Yes,” she whispered. They made love slowly, tenderly, savoring every touch, every kiss. Lynn absorbed everything about the experience, recording it in her mind and in her heart like a piece of videotape to be replayed again and again when this time was over. Every detail of the room registered—the shade of tan on the walls, the plushness of the carpet, the glow of the light on the lamp’s brass base, the dull sheen of the finish on the fine oak furniture. She memorized the smell of the room—sandalwood and the scent of the trees drifting in on a cool breeze through the open glass door. Her senses seemed heightened, hypersensitive, overreacting to every stimulus. The rustle of the sheets seemed louder, the musky scent of lovemaking was like a heavy perfume in the air, the slightest touch of Erik’s hand against her skin made her breath catch.
“Does that hurt?” he asked.
Lynn blinked up at him, belatedly realizing she’d moaned aloud as his fingertips had traced the line of her shoulder.
“There’s a bruise,” he pointed out, drawing a careful circle around a darkening spot the size of a fifty-cent piece.
“I’ve got more than one,” she said with a wry smile. “Now I know how the tackling dummy feels after football practice.”
A rush of anger burned through Erik at the idea of his lady being hurt. The emotion didn’t shake him quite as much as it had the first few times. He was in love, really in love for the first time in his life, and he suspected it would be the only time, that Lynn was the one woman in the world he would feel this way about. He might love again, but never like this. She was his soul mate, destined for him. As grounded as he was in the mundane and the practical, he believed that as strongly as he believed anything. They belonged together.
Slowly he lowered his head and brushed his lips to the dark circle on her creamy skin. She sighed and stroked a hand over his hair, holding him in place when he would have raised his head. He turned and settled his mouth against her throat, then trailed his kisses downward.
“Does it hurt here?” he asked, his voice like smoke in the night.
Lynn groaned softly at the touch of his fingertip to the underside of her breast. “Yes,” she whispered. He kissed the spot his finger had grazed.
“And here?” He drew the tip of his tongue across her nipple, dampening the point, then blowing softly over it, sending lightning bolts through her.
“Yes,” she said with a gasp. “Everywhere.”
She was aching with need for him. It throbbed in her muscles just beneath the surface of her skin. It pooled and burned in the center of her, intensifying as Erik painted kisses across her stomach. He lingered there, kissing her deeply, dipping his tongue into her navel, wringing another gasp from her, then sliding down. He kissed the point of her hip, the sensitive crease between groin and thigh, and moved lower still. Desire shuddered through her as his warm breath caressed the tender flesh between her legs, and Lynn opened herself to him, inviting him, enticing him, silently begging him.
When he closed his mouth over her, she cried out at the exquisite pleasure. He slid his hands beneath her, cupping her buttocks, lifting her into his intimate kiss. His fingers kneaded in rhythm with the deep stroking of his tongue as he sought to touch the core of her desire. Lynn arched upward, straining toward climax, begging him to take her over the edge, but he held her there, poised on the brink.
“Tell me you love me,” he said, sliding his body up along hers.
Lynn stared up at him, her heart pounding. His eyes were fierce. His golden hair tumbled across his forehead. He was the picture of a man caught in passion’s grip. His nostrils flared slightly with each breath. His cheekbones stood out sharply, the skin taut across them. He braced himself above her with a hand pressed to the mattress on either side of her, the muscles of his broad shoulders bulging as he held himself in check. He was poised to enter her, his shaft nudging insistently at the threshold of her woman’s body. He was a man on the verge of sexual fulfillment, but he was postponing that fulfillment because he wanted to hear her say the words she was determined to keep locked in her heart.
“Say it, Lynn,” he commanded.
She stared up at him, loving him desperately and holding the words back because she loved him. “No,” she said, her voice little more than a breath of air disturbing the space between them.
A shudder of something like fear rolled through Erik at her denial. She was pulling back from him even now. He could sense her retreat. Not a physical retreat, but an emotional one. She would give him this night, but nothing more. He could see it in her eyes as plainly as if she’d spelled it out for him. She loved him. He knew she loved him. She had to, he thought, a sense of desperation yawning inside him. But she didn’t see a future for them—or rather, she saw his future and had convinced herself it couldn’t include her.
Suddenly, the need to hear the words became the most important thing in the world to him. The physical need for completion pounding in his groin was nothing compared to the need in his heart to hear her say the words. Somehow, he thought, if he could just get her to say the words, he would have a chance. If he could make her love him enough, if he could make her acknowledge the bond that existed between their hearts, between their spirits …
“Say it, Lynn,” he murmured, lowering himself to her. His eyes locked on hers, he slowly began to enter her. “Tell me you love me.”
A fine mist of tears filled Lynn’s eyes. She wanted him. God, she wanted him! Not just tonight, but forever. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t let the words come. Her silence would hurt him now, but it would only hurt more if she told him she loved him and then walked away.
She ran her hands down his sweat-slicked back to the tight, hard muscles of his buttocks, pulling him into her. He filled her completely, pressing deep, throbbing inside her. She swallowed a breath and tried to move against him, but he held himself still, his gaze still hard on hers.
“Say it, Lynn. Please. Just once.”
His plea was her undoing. She watched as the ferocity in his expression cracked and crumbled and the fire in his eyes softened to pure blue need.
“Just once,” he whispered, lowering his head to press his cheek to hers.
She closed her eyes and banded her arms tightly around him, love and regret mixing inside her into a bitter pain that burned like acid in her heart. “I love you,” she said softly as the tears came and squeezed their way past her barriers to roll down her temples.
Erik almost went weak with the wave of relief that surged through him. He had a chance. They had a chance.
Tenderly, he brushed the tears from the outer corners of her eyes. Then he lowered his mouth and settled his lips on Lynn’s, kissing her deeply as he moved his body against hers, gradually taking them both beyond need to bliss.
I love you. Such a simple sentence. Such a complex emotion.
Lynn sat at the table on the deck, bundled against the predawn chill in one of Erik’s sweatshirts, her rumpled jeans, and white cotton socks. She propped her feet on the other chair and hugged her arms around her knees, her gaze fixed on nothing, unfocused on the middle distance and the low-lying fog that hung like thick smoke in the still air.
She had managed to slip from the bed when Erik had finally succumbed to sleep. She’d lost track of the number of times they’d made love, determined to please each other, one wondrous moment blending into the next and the next. She had wanted to give Erik everything she could as a final gift, a final memory. And Erik had been bent on making her see how good it was between them, how much he loved her, how much she loved him. They had been seized by a kind of aching, sweet desperation, both wanting to hang on to something that simply couldn’t last.
She would end it today. It was the logical point to make the break. They’d had their time together, brief though it had been. They had shared something special. Their paths had crossed and joined, but now they would go their separate ways again. He deserved someone better, someone without a shadowed past. And she had to be content with t
he taste she’d gotten of his love. White knights didn’t come along every day. She had to count herself lucky for having had this chance, then do the noble thing and let him go.
She only wished it didn’t have to hurt so much.
Why were her dearest dreams always just beyond her reach? Her father’s love, her baby, Erik … How long would she have to go on paying for the mistakes she’d made?
Forever. There was no way of atoning for the lives she’d altered. Those mistakes could never be erased. She could only go on with her life as she had been, trying to right other wrongs before other lives were ruined. Her girls’. Erik’s. And maybe one day, if she was very, very lucky, she’d get another chance at love she could hang on to.
“I come out here to think some mornings too.” Erik’s voice sounded behind her, low and smoky. “Things seem clearer, simpler.”
Lynn looked back at him. He stood with a shoulder braced against the frame of the open glass door, bare-chested, barefoot. Faded jeans were molded to his legs and hips. His zipper was up, but the button was undone, revealing a wedge of tawny hair low on his belly. She was struck by how handsome he really was—not just when he was groomed and tricked out in one of his senator’s suits, but now, when he was just a man, when his hair was mussed and his morning beard shadowed the hard, angular planes of his face.
“Nothing’s ever really simple,” she said.
“This is.” He crossed the deck and stood beside her chair, his fierce Nordic-blue gaze boring down on her as if he could convince her by sheer force of will. “I love you, Lynn. You love me. That’s all there is to it.”
“I wish that were true.”
Erick bit back a curse and reined in his temper. He was a politician. He was supposed to be naturally persuasive and diplomatic, he reminded himself. He lowered himself to one knee beside Lynn’s chair, bracing a hand along the back. She watched him silently, the aura of dread calm around her setting off warning lights inside him. She was resigned, she was determined, and she was nothing if not stubborn. If her mind was made up, he was going to have the fight of a lifetime on his hands. Well, so was she, he pledged as he met her even gaze.