His face relaxed into a smile as he threw himself down next to her on the bed. Almost magically, he turned back into McCade again—McCade, her old buddy, her best friend. The muscles were still there, and the heat of desire still shone from his eyes, but in this relaxed, almost nonchalant pose, the effect he had on her wasn’t quite so overwhelming. “It was the summer you turned fourteen. I carried you to the hospital on my back. Three miles. You screamed the entire way.”
“I was scared,” she said defensively. “It hurt like hell.”
McCade propped his head up with one elbow, reaching out his other hand and lightly touching the tips of her toes. “Then when we got home, your mother had a fit, kicked me out, and told me never to come back.” He smiled into Sandy’s eyes. “At least not until she got over the shock of seeing her poor baby bandaged up.”
Sandy looked down at his hand, which still stroked her toes. How could such a seemingly nonintimate touch be so sensual, so sexy? “You snuck up the fire escape to my room that night.”
“I was worried about you.” He grinned. “The way your mother was carrying on, I thought you were maybe going to drop dead from tetanus or something. I wanted a chance to apologize before they buried you.”
“Do you remember what you told me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“You said that we should never have gone fishing in the first place. You said that it was a stupid idea, and that my getting hurt was all your fault.”
McCade shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t all my fault.” He gave her a quick smile. “You were the genius who didn’t watch where you were walking. But the fact is, if I hadn’t had the brilliant idea to go fishing, you never would have been hurt.”
“If I hadn’t been born, McCade, I never would have been hurt,” Sandy said tartly. “It really makes me mad to think that we never tried to fish again.”
His hand stilled on her foot, and he frowned down at the bedspread. “I wasn’t cut out to be a fisherman, at least not the kind that sits on the end of a pier and waits for a fish to swim by and grab the bait. After you got hurt, it seemed kind of pointless to try again.” He glanced up at her searchingly. “Why are we talking about fishing?”
She closed her eyes and answered honestly. “Because I’m stalling. I’m scared.”
McCade was quiet for a moment.
“I guess I am too,” he finally said. “But it’s a good kind of scared. It’s a kick, like a roller-coaster ride, you know?”
She knew. But roller-coaster rides always ended too soon.
McCade rolled onto his stomach, reaching for her, pulling her down next to him on the bed. He kissed her sweetly, but that sweetness was laced with passion, intoxicating passion.
Sandy felt herself respond, felt herself cling to him, felt her arms tighten around his neck, as if she was holding on for dear life. A roller-coaster ride, he’d said. She’d always been drawn to roller coasters. But it was a love/hate relationship. She dreaded the thought of that hellish ride up, up, up the tracks. And the first teeth-rattling drop was nothing short of torture. Yet somehow she always found herself coming back for more….
“Sandy, what’s wrong?” McCade’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts. She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her, his face almost somber. God, he could read her like a book. “We don’t have to do this. You know, we can wait.”
As she watched him he rolled his eyes and smiled, his grin crooked and so very McCade-like that she had to smile too. “Man, did I really just say that?” he asked. “Who would’ve believed those words would’ve ever come out of this mouth, huh?” His smile faded, and the sheepish look vanished from his eyes. They turned smoky, luminous, reflecting the hunger she could see on his face. “Truth is, baby, I don’t want to wait. I want you. I’ve never made love before, not the way I want to make it with you.” He took a deep breath, exhaling noisily through his mouth. “But if you’re not ready for this—”
“Clint, I don’t want a one-night stand.” The words ran together in her haste to get them out.
He was quiet again, just looking down at her. “When I said that I love you, I meant it,” he told her. “I don’t want just one night, either. I want forever.”
Forever. Sandy stared at him, surprised at his choice of words. Forever? Of course, anything longer than three months was forever to McCade. She wouldn’t allow herself to dream that he was referring to anything other than a short-term forever. Still, his words gave her hope that he’d stick around for the summer, maybe even longer, until the lure of the open road finally pulled him away from her.
The bottom line was that when it came to Clint McCade, she’d take what she could get.
She kissed him, pulling him on top of her, opening her legs, bringing him even closer. She heard him groan, a sound that was half pain, half pleasure as he lifted his head to look deep into her eyes.
“I want you to be sure about this,” he whispered. “About me.”
“I’m sure.” She’d never wanted anyone more than she wanted McCade. She was damn sure about that. But she was also sure that after he left, she’d spend the rest of her life searching for a man who made her feel half of what she felt right now. And she was sure she’d never find anyone who came remotely close.
But the future was far in the distance.
Sandy smiled. “You know what I’m not sure about?”
Silently, he shook his head.
“I’m not sure why we still have our clothes on.”
McCade relaxed, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I can take care of that. Unless you want to talk about, oh, say…the first time we went bowling?”
She laughed and McCade kissed her possessively, hungrily, his tongue filling her, and her laughter turned to a moan of pleasure.
True to his word, McCade made their clothes disappear. The sensation of his warm body against hers was so much better than anything Sandy had dreamed or imagined. He was hard as steel underneath the sleek smoothness of his tanned skin, and she explored his body with her mouth and hands even as he touched her. His hands were so gentle, and he took his time, caressing her, stroking her. He kissed her breasts, encircling her tender nipples with his tongue, sending fire shooting through her.
She wanted him to fill her body the way he filled her soul. Reaching down, she found him, hard and smooth against her. As her hands surrounded him he groaned and drew harder on her breast. Pleasure tore through her, and she didn’t want to wait another minute.
She guided him down, lifting her hips to receive him.
But he pulled back, out of her reach. He kissed her slowly, deliberately, lazily, as his hand moved down, across her flat belly, then even lower. At the first touch of his lightly exploring fingers, she moaned, lifting her hips and pressing herself against his hand. More. She wanted more.
“Please,” she breathed. “Clint, please. I need you now.”
Her soft words made McCade scramble for his jeans, for his wallet, for the condom he’d put there weeks ago, on the night he’d pointed his Harley east, toward Phoenix and Sandy. Tearing open the small foil package, he sat back on the bed.
Sandy was watching him, lying back against the pillows. Her hair fanned out around her like a golden cloud, and her skin shone in the soft light. He could see the faint outline of a bathing suit she’d worn in the sun. Her breasts were two triangles of creamy, pale skin, the darker pink of her nipples erect, as if waiting for his touch.
Her eyes were half-closed, and as she watched him cover himself she focused on his masculine parts with an interest that made him even harder than he already was. Her gaze flicked up to meet his eyes, and she smiled. It was a smile of anticipation, and it made her beautiful face even more lovely.
“If I wake up in the morning, and this turns out to be just another erotic dream, I’m going to be really depressed,” she said.
“Oh, baby. How long have you been having libidinous dreams about me?” McCade teased, crawling across the bed towa
rd her.
Sandy lowered her eyes, as if aware she’d given herself away. “For about a decade or so,” she answered honestly.
“All that time…?” he sputtered. “Lord have mercy, Kirk, I never had a clue.”
“Of course not.” She stretched out her leg, touching his arm lightly with her foot. “I never told you in so many words, and…well, you know, back then I was a body-language illiterate.”
McCade grinned, his eyes raking over her naked body as he resumed his predatory crawl toward her. “You seem to have overcome your communication problem. Right now I can tell from your body language exactly what you’re thinking.”
Sandy laughed. “I’m lying here without any clothes on. You better know what I’m thinking, or I’m in real trouble.”
“You’re thinking that you’re hungry,” he said. “You want to order a pizza and watch Country Music Television.”
Sandy hit him with a pillow.
“I was kidding,” he protested, grabbing her to keep her from hitting him again.
He had her pinned, her wrists held with one hand, her arms above her head. He could feel the softness of her breasts and stomach as he looked into her eyes.
“Do you really love me?” Her voice was breathless.
“Yeah,” he answered huskily. “I really do. Is that so hard to believe?”
Sandy was quiet for a moment, just gazing up into his eyes. Then she laughed. “Well, yeah, McCade, actually, it is. I may need some convincing.”
They were nose to nose, and McCade smiled and then kissed her, losing himself in the sweetness of her mouth. “I love you,” he whispered between kisses. “I love you. I love you.”
Man, she was so soft, so sweet. Her arms were around his neck, her fingers in his hair as she returned each kiss fiercely.
“Convinced?” he murmured, running his hands down her body.
“Not yet.” She gasped as his mouth latched onto her breast.
Sandy was on fire. And McCade was too. She could tell from the urgency of his mouth, the roughness of his touch, the feverish light in his eyes.
She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in closer, even closer to her. She could feel his arousal against her—it wouldn’t take much effort for him to be inside her.
She lifted her hips, and this time he didn’t pull back. He thrust into her, hard and deep, filling her so perfectly, making her feel impossibly complete. He looked down into her eyes and held himself absolutely still, locked together with her. The muscles in his shoulders and arms were tight as he held himself above her.
“I was wondering if we were ever actually going to get around to this,” Sandy said breathlessly, “or if we were just going to spend the rest of our lives in foreplay.”
“Or talking about fishing.” His voice was oddly tight. “You were the one who started the whole conversation about fishing, remember?”
She laughed, and her movement pressed him more deeply inside of her. McCade drew in a sharp breath.
“Sandy, I want to make love to you slowly,” he whispered. “I want to savor every second. I want it to last for hours and hours, but baby, you turn me on so much, I think I’m gonna burst—”
His soft words provided the final fuel to the fire that was burning fast and hot inside of her. She pulled his mouth down to hers as she began to move underneath him.
McCade heard himself moan as he matched her every move. He drove himself into her, harder, faster, their pace accelerating with each thrust, sending him dangerously close to the edge. And then he exploded. He could hear his voice as if from a distance, shouting Sandy’s name as a cannonball of pleasure ripped through him.
Somehow she followed. He could feel her body racked with the waves of her own release, heard her answering cries of pleasure, saw the rapture on her beautiful face through the haze of his eruption.
He held her tightly until their pounding hearts began to slow.
“I’m convinced,” Sandy said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
He lifted himself off of her on still shaky arms and rolled to the side, pulling her with him. “Convinced?”
“That you love me,” she said. She traced his lips lightly with her fingers. “You couldn’t have made love to me like that if you didn’t.”
“I wanted to make love to you all night long.” McCade closed his eyes. “Man, I didn’t even last three minutes.”
“What, did you time yourself?” she teased. “Come on, McCade, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your mother’s third rule for manly success: ‘When it comes to making love, it’s not how long you do it that matters, it’s how well you do it.’ And I happen to think we did it extremely well.”
He opened his eyes. “Her third rule had to do with—”
“Penis size. Right.” Sandy rolled her eyes. “I know. I just figured since you’ve obviously got that department handled, I’d give you a variation on the rule.”
McCade started to laugh. “Lord, I love you,” he said. “You’re right. That was great, wasn’t it?”
“Damn straight. I vote we do it again, real soon.” She glanced at him from underneath her eyelashes. “Assuming, of course, that, unlike fishing, it’s something you’d want to try again.”
“Would you please stop with the fishing?”
Her eyes sparkled as she laughed and McCade’s heart turned a somersault of joy in his chest. Every day for the rest of his life, he was going to hear her laughter. Every night for the rest of his life, he was going to hold her in his arms like this.
“You know, I came to Phoenix because I’d finally figured out that I was in love with you,” he admitted.
Startled, she looked up at him.
“Yeah.” He smiled ruefully into her eyes. “I thought I could just ring your doorbell and tell you that I loved you. But it wasn’t that easy, and then you blew me away when you told me about James. He sounded so perfect, and I was so scared that I’d lost my chance with you….”
Sandy could barely make sense of his words. Clint had come to Phoenix because he loved her? And then, God, she’d gone and hit him over the head with James.
She’d never known McCade to be anything but self-assured and confident. But as she looked into his eyes she saw the reflection of all the things she’d said about wanting James, about her attraction to that man.
“I mean,” McCade said quietly, “the guy’s already a law partner in a big firm and he’s probably going to be lieutenant governor if Harcourt wins the campaign. He’s got it made, Sandy. He was born with not just a silver spoon, but a whole damn utensil drawer.” He took a deep breath. “James is everything I’m not.”
“James?” Sandy met his gaze steadily. “James who?”
McCade’s face relaxed into a smile and then he laughed.
“I love you, Clint.” She smiled. “Need to be convinced?”
He pulled her close and kissed her. “Definitely,” he said. “Convince me.”
TEN
THE SHADES WERE pulled down and the room was still dark when the clock radio burst into song. Sandy woke up instantly and lay awake for a moment, mentally reviewing the day’s schedule and listening to the cheerful country tune. The music took a little bit longer to penetrate McCade’s sleep-soddened brain, and he stirred, then muttered something unintelligible, burrowing down under the covers.
Sandy reached across him to shut off the radio and he grabbed her, pulling the covers over their heads.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice thick and raspy with sleep. He kissed her and the stubble on his unshaven face was rough against her cheeks.
She had to get up. She had meetings all morning. But as he kissed her one more time she felt herself melt. She was going to be late—again.
It had been a week since they’d returned from the Grand Canyon. It had been a week full of laughter and lovemaking, a week to learn all about Clint McCade on this new level, a week to get used to waking up to find him in her bed.
But she couldn’t get used
to any of it. She wasn’t sure she ever would. At times it seemed things hadn’t changed between them. On the nights that they didn’t have to work late, they went out, just as they had before. They had dinner, went down to the billiard hall to shoot some pool, or took in a movie. They laughed and joked and teased each other the way they always had. They were best friends—that hadn’t changed. But they were lovers now, too, and Sandy would often turn to find McCade watching her. The look in his eyes would remind her of the love they’d made the night before and his smile would promise more of the same later on, when they were finally alone.
Sandy couldn’t remember ever being so happy. She celebrated her happiness noisily, determined to wring every last drop of enjoyment from it. She knew it wasn’t going to last forever, and she was so afraid it would end sooner than she hoped.
As she lay in McCade’s arms, their passion spent, she refused to think about the future. The question was always there, though, gnawing at her. How long? Just how long did she have before he left?
McCade rode his motorcycle into Scottsdale to shop. The wind had removed every trace of styling from his hair, and as he walked into the little jewelry store, he ran his fingers through it, glancing at his reflection in the mirrored wall. His hair was getting long, and it refused to be tamed. It no longer stayed combed back, instead falling constantly into his eyes.
McCade’s eyes narrowed as he looked at himself. With his worn-out jeans and his dragon tattoo peeking out from under the tight sleeve of his faded black T-shirt, he looked like the old McCade, like a biker from Jersey. He certainly didn’t look like an upwardly mobile man who had been attending country-club functions.
He frowned harder at the mirror. Lately he and Sandy had been hanging out in pool halls and roadhouse-style bars. She hadn’t complained, but it was entirely possible that she felt as uncomfortable in those places as he felt standing and chatting in the clubhouse bar next to the ninth hole. He felt a flash of guilt, a stab of uneasiness. Did being with him mean the end of her dream of joining a more sophisticated social world?
Yet she loved him. Sandy honest-to-God loved him. He didn’t doubt that. If he did, he wouldn’t be in here right now, with the store’s owner glaring at him suspiciously. Man, the guy looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to take out the gun that was hidden under the counter or call the police.
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