by Cindy Gerard
Chloe scooted to the door, then turned back to Tara. Making sure Michael couldn’t see her, she fanned herself and mouthed, “He is sooo hot!”
While the scowl she shot Chloe told her she didn’t appreciate her reaction, Tara understood it. Even though she told herself she wouldn’t think about such things, she remembered having the same reaction the first time she’d seen Michael. The fact that she had felt her own cheeks flush and could think of absolutely nothing to say didn’t mean he still had that affect on her. She just…well, she hadn’t recovered from this morning. From seeing him. From his determination. From his kiss.
His kiss.
Oh, how she’d missed his kiss. And his strong, lean body pressed against hers.
Snapping her thoughts back to the here and the now, she cut herself a little slack. Yes, he rattled her. Again. But she hadn’t expected to see him so soon. And certainly not here, where she worked.
Every time she saw him it was a shock—and not just because he was alive after she had finally reconciled herself to the idea of his death. It was the jolt of her heart that danced at the sight of him. Of her breath quickening. Her palms growing damp.
He was dressed in soft, faded jeans and an oatmeal-colored V-neck sweater. He’d shoved the sweater’s sleeves up forearms that were tanned and strong and dusted with fine, dark hair. The same dark hair peeked from the V-neck of his sweater. A vivid image of her fingers playing through that chest hair, then drifting lower, to his taut belly where that silky hair narrowed and arrowed—
Enough. She made herself concentrate on this moment, schooled her gaze to his face.
“I thought you were spending the rest of the day with Brandon.” After their meeting in the sunroom earlier this morning, he’d asked and she’d agreed that Michael should spend some time with the boy.
“I am.” He angled a thumb over his shoulder. “One of the receptionists—Marcie, I think—snagged him the minute I walked in the door and wouldn’t give him back. Quite a charmer, our son.”
Our son. She drew in a bracing breath and tried not to let herself be affected by the sound of it, the feel of it, or even by the fit of it.
“How have you two been getting along?” she asked, because it seemed like a safer topic than lunch and because she had been concerned. Brandon was a healthy, happy little boy, but he was sometimes shy around strangers. Sad fact that it was, Michael was a stranger to him.
“Great.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a broad shoulder against the doorframe. “You’ve done a good job with him, Tara.”
She looked down at her hands, saw she had them clasped too tightly together. She snagged a pencil from a black leather holder sitting on the corner of her desk in the hope it would make her appear less tense. Then she ruined the effect when she bobbled it and in her haste to catch it, sent it sailing off the edge of her desk.
“Hey. Relax, okay?” he said softly. He pushed away from the door and walked across the room to retrieve the errant pencil.
“I’m not here to pressure. Honest,” he added when she arched a brow in doubt. “I just wanted to see you again. And I wanted to apologize for this morning. I’m sorry I came on so strong. It’s just a little overwhelming for me yet.
“Sometimes this rush of…I don’t know, I guess you could call it want, just gets a hold of me and, well…” He held up a hand. “Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“You didn’t frighten me, Michael.”
She would go to hell for lying. He’d scared her to death. He still scared her. She was too susceptible to him. To his looks. To his touch. To everything about him that she couldn’t let herself give in to. Not if she wanted to salvage some of herself.
“Good,” he said, smiling again. “Because the last thing I want to do is scare you, or make you nervous or uncomfortable around me. So, that’s why I’m here. To try it again.
“So here’s the deal. I wanted to see you. And I knew Brandon would want to see you, and I knew you’d want to see him so I figured, hey, three out of three ain’t bad. And here we are.”
She had to smile at that logic.
“So what do you say? Can you join us for lunch?”
It was tempting but then, Michael had always been a temptation. For that reason, and for all the temptations he would throw in her path, she had to resist.
“I don’t think I can manage it today. My schedule’s really full.”
“No, it’s not,” Chloe said, popping her head back in the room. She glanced from Tara to Michael and back to Tara again.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” She gave a sheepish shrug. “I was just passing by the door, and, um, overheard. The art department had to postpone the meeting until tomorrow so you’re clear for the rest of the morning. As a matter of fact, you’re clear for the rest of the day,” she put in cheerfully, then sobered when she caught Tara’s stone-cold glare.
Chloe had picked a fine time to find her voice again.
“Well, I’ll just…I must have some filing to do,” Chloe said weakly.
Michael grinned as Chloe’s head disappeared behind the door.
“Looks like you’re free as a bird. Just lunch, Tara,” he added, sobering. “I promise. No pressure.”
Just lunch. If only it were that simple. But nothing in her life was going to be simple anymore. She’d just as well get used to it.
“I’ll get my jacket.” Resigned to learn here and now how to deal with the complications Michael would bring to her life, she pushed away from her desk and walked to the coatrack.
Michael, in the meantime, had decided that he liked Chloe on the spot, as well as Marcie and the rest of the women who had swarmed around Brandon then cast sly, speculative looks his way. The word, evidently, had gotten out. Not-so-subtle whispers had followed him down the hall after he’d been directed to Tara’s office.
“That’s him.”
“Him who?”
“Michael Paige. Her husband.”
“Michael Paige? But I thought he was dead!”
“Oh, honey, if that gorgeous hunk is dead, then this is the Great Beyond and we’ve all gone to heaven.”
Not only did they relish the juicy fact of his appearance, they seemed to approve of it because he got a couple of covert thumbs-up as he balanced Brandon on his hip and held the door open for Tara as they left the office.
He grinned goodbye to the women huddled around the reception desk, all making a bad show of looking busy and fighting against craning their necks in the hopes of catching any last comment as the three of them walked out the door.
Unreasonably buoyed by their obvious approval, Michael felt better and better about the tack he’d decided to take. It had become apparent this morning when he’d met with Tara that he wasn’t going to win her back with pressure. From the stiff set of her shoulders and her closed look when Parker had interrupted them, she was getting enough pressure from him. Her father, no doubt, had been applying the screws, too. Emma, however, had proven again that she supported not Grant, but him in this.
“Don’t you worry about Grant.” Emma had pulled him aside after his meeting with Tara in the sunroom. “I can handle him. As a matter of fact, he’s already coming around, albeit grudgingly.”
“He wants what’s best for her,” Michael had conceded.
“Well, that’s not John Parker. John is a dear and Grant may have once thought he was perfect for her, but I’ve always known he wasn’t for Tara.”
“You didn’t always think that I was, either,” Michael had said with open speculation. “What changed your mind?”
She’d regarded him with warmth and affection as they started up the wide, curving staircase that led to the bedroom suites and Brandon’s room.
“The day we lost you was the day we lost Tara. I knew then that we had never given you enough credit for making her happy. I want our old Tara back, Michael. So does Grant. We miss that fiery little hell-raiser who used to laugh and cry and live her life li
ke she was riding the front car of a roller coaster.”
“There’s something to be said for merry-go-rounds over thrill rides,” he offered fairly.
She shook her head, smiled. “Not for Tara. Not for you.”
He was silent as they walked the carpeted hall to Brandon’s playroom, then paused outside the door.
“Did you know she’d asked me for a divorce just before I left for Ecuador?”
Emma nodded then grasped his hands, squeezed gently. “No marriage is perfect, Michael. Lord knows, Grant and I have had our problems.”
It was the first time he’d ever heard Emma allude to the period of time in their past when Grant had strayed. While Grant’s short affair with his former secretary, Angie Donahue, wasn’t a subject that was often broached, Tara had confided in him about it, explaining that the end result was her half brother, Seth.
That disclosure had helped define the special relationship Tara and Seth had always shared. The two of them had always been rebellious and despite the eight years that separated them, they’d always been close because of it.
Seth hadn’t become a part of the Connelly family until he was twelve years old when his mother had finally decided she wasn’t cut out to be a single parent or capable of managing the handful Seth had become. Grant had sent him immediately to military school to clean up his act. So yeah, he’d been rebellious, just like his new little sister, Tara, who was too young to prejudge him as a punk when almost everyone else had.
“I’m counting on you, Michael,” Emma had said warmly. “I’m counting on you to fix the problems in your marriage.
“Can I offer a little advice?” she had asked gently.
“I’m open to anything.” Even he had heard the desperation in his voice.
Emma had smiled. “Don’t try to coerce her. She’s troubled right now and confused. And she’s under enough pressure as it is. Take the low road, Michael. Try to remind her, with subtle ways and gentle persuasion, why it was good between you once and why it could be good between you again.”
The memory of Emma’s words brought him back to the moment and the woman by his side and the child in his arms. Emma was counting on him.
Now, as he and Tara and Brandon descended from the twenty-fifth floor that housed City Beat’s suite of offices, he told himself he was counting on someone, too. He was counting on Tara to listen to her heart and eventually realize they were meant to be together.
If that kiss they’d shared this morning had been any indication, she was already weakening even though she didn’t want to.
Emma’s advice was sound. Two years ago he wouldn’t have had the patience for a slow and subtle courtship. He had it now. He also had something else. Something John Parker didn’t have. He had a history with his wife—more good than bad—and the determination to win back the most important element of his life.
“Where are we going?” Tara asked after they’d buckled Brandon in his car seat.
“On a picnic,” he said brightly as he checked the rearview mirror. “You’d like that, right, buddy?”
He caught Brandon’s bright eyes in the rearview mirror, and was once again stunned as he looked into his gray eyes. He was a miracle, their son.
“Michael, it’s barely sixty degrees out today and the wind must be gusting up to twenty or thirty miles an hour.”
“Not to worry.” His smile was secretive and smug. “I’ve got it covered.”
He had it all covered. Feeling more at peace than he had in a very long time, he pulled out into traffic and set about the business of getting his life back.
Five
Twenty minutes later they swung into the Lake Shore Drive condominium complex. Tara frowned.
“This is Brett’s old building.”
“Mine now,” Michael said as he pulled into the underground garage. “I’m subletting his unit.”
That made her nervous, he could tell, so he tried to dispel the wariness in her eyes.
“It worked out great for both of us. Brett hadn’t had a buyer yet and while room service does have its advantages, I don’t particularly like living in a hotel. I want to move in here as soon as possible. Too much of a nester, I guess.”
Nester. Did that word trigger memories for her, too? Beside him, Tara walked toward the elevator in silence as he carried Brandon and a picnic basket Ruby had packed for them. Was she remembering their first apartment?
He’d driven by it a couple of times since he’d returned to Chicago. It never failed to bring vivid and pleasant memories, like the one that drifted into his consciousness now…
They’d been married a week, had been staying with her brother, Seth, until Michael had been able to scrape together enough money for a deposit and the first month’s rent on a place of their own. He’d wanted to find a place where she could walk to class so they’d ended up north of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago, which were like an island of affluence amidst this very poor section of town.
Michael had watched her eyes as they stood in the doorway of a dumpy little one-room walk-up on the fourth floor. Chalky gray paint peeled in blotchy flakes from the outside door molding. The hallway smelled disgustingly like someone had used it for their personal restroom. She tried to hide the horror with an overbright smile as he turned the key and swung open the door.
“It’s…intimate,” she said after a long, tense moment in which her huge eyes had taken in the cracked ceiling, the bare lightbulb hanging from a central fixture, the camper-sized refrigerator and hot plate with a dangerously frayed cord.
“Like…like a little nest,” she added, swallowing back her shock and gamely widening her smile.
She was eighteen. She was used to household staff and unlimited lines of credit. She’d probably never made a bed in her life, never so much as boiled water. He’d taken her from luxury to near squalor in five easy steps—and in that moment, he’d never loved her more.
He lifted her into his arms, this violet-eyed beauty who could have had any man she wanted but had chosen him. She had an inner fire and spunk that shined through her eyes, and as young as she was, she was savvy and self-assured. And she was fiercely protective of those she loved. Even now her bright smile protected him from her disappointment and fear over what she’d gotten herself into.
“It’s only for a little while,” he’d promised as she looped her hands over his shoulders and he carried her over the threshold.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s ours. Only ours and I love it!”
“You can’t love it.” He laughed and pressed his forehead to hers. “It’s an ugly little hole.”
“No,” she insisted, “it’s a home waiting to happen. It’s our home. Our nest.”
They made love on the floor that night where they slept huddled together in his sleeping bag. That and a beat-up radio were their sole pieces of furniture.
“I love you, Tara Paige,” he murmured as he held himself above her, her face cradled in his hands, her body naked beneath him, lush and damp with the heat of their loving.
“I’ll never make you sorry for marrying me.”
Eyes closed, she smiled a sleepy, sated smile and slid her legs up and along his, then wrapped them around his waist.
“I love you, Michael. Always. Forever. And there is nothing you could ever do that would make me sorry.”
He kissed her then, long and deep, then slid down her body, pressing kisses as he went, loving the slide of her skin in sweet friction against his. Loving the feel of her velvet-tipped nipple against his tongue, her silky sigh of pleasure, her uninhibited cry of surrender as he made love to her with his hands and his mouth and his soul.
The next morning he’d given her the last one hundred dollars he had to his name.
“This needs to stretch until payday, babe. That’s gonna be a long five days.”
When he came home that night he was stunned by the spicy scent of marinara sauce and garlic wafting from the apartment. He smiled at the fresh coat of deep purple pain
t that coated both trim and door. When he opened the door with his key, he was dazed all over again.
He stood there and would have wondered if he’d stepped into the wrong apartment if his wife of seven days hadn’t been waiting for him inside, her eyes shining with excitement and barely guarded anticipation of his reaction.
He looked from her to the once bare lightbulb that was now covered with a colorful paper shade. A small studio sofa sat in the center of the room, covered with a floral slipcover in soft shades of blue, mauve and gray. Beneath the table, a worn tapestry rug covered the stark and barren gray tile floor. Twin, battered tables of an unidentifiable wood painted deep navy flanked the sofa; dozens of cream colored candles, all sizes and shapes, flickered from every available surface.
He smiled through his worry. She had to have blown the entire hundred bucks and then some.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, forcing back his concern about their immediate financial situation in the face of her hopeful smile.
“It’s home.” She threw herself into his arms and offered him a stack of folded bills. “There’s still thirty-some dollars left,” she said beaming.
He blinked, fisted the money. “How?”
“I called Ruby.” She flew out of his arms, touched a hand lovingly to the sofa cover. “Told her I needed to do some shopping. Oh, Michael, she showed me the most fascinating places! Little flea markets, secondhand stores and bargain basements tucked here and there around the city.”
“Tara Connelly at a flea market?” A doubtful but proud grin tipped up both corners of his mouth.
“I’ll have you know,” she said saucily, “I’ve discovered a talent for finding bargains and for making deals.”
“You,” he said, pulling her back into his arms, “have a talent for making me happy. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
“Better hold that thought until after you’ve tried my marinara sauce.” She looped her arms over his shoulders. “Ruby gave me a crash course on that, too, and I made enough to last the rest of the week so you’d better like it a lot.”