A Time for Us

by Amy Knupp

  When he entered her, her eyes filled with tears that contained both relief and need at once. She bit her lip against the momentary sting as her body adjusted to his size. He stilled, as if waiting for her to be comfortable, and when the heat inside of her climbed feverishly, outweighing any discomfort, she moved her hips suggestively and nibbled at his shoulder.

  Finding her mouth with his again, he began to move inside of her, gently at first, inch by incredible inch, until she couldn’t stay quiet.

  “More,” she whispered.

  “Yesss.”

  They fell easily into a rhythm, their bodies working together as if they had an age-old intimate knowledge of each other. Her body began to tingle and burn in no time and their pace quickened, became more urgent as he slid in and out of her. She clung to him, her mind stopping, letting the physical sensations take over. Taking, giving, needing...finally tumbling over the edge in a climax that turned her inside out. Her senses were overwhelmed as she held on to him for all she was worth. Moments later, he thrust into her a final time, a sexy groan of ecstasy rumbling from his chest.

  Rachel closed her eyes and slowly regained her senses, came down from the ecstasy bit by bit. Her breathing slowed, as did his, and her heart rate gradually returned to normal. The sheen of sweat on her body eventually made her shiver in the chilly room.

  He rotated to his side, pulling her with him and drawing the blankets back around them.

  He kissed her forehead as if she were the most precious thing in the universe. “Rachel,” he said in a growly, gravelly voice.

  An alarm went off in her dazed, satiated mind when Cale spoke her name.

  Cale.

  He was beautiful with his sleep-tousled hair and his stubble-rough chin. Tender and caring in the way he touched her, caressed her face, pressed sporadic kisses to her temple and eyelids as if he never wanted their connection to end.

  He was so off-limits. Not supposed to be in her bed.

  She pushed against his chest and turned her head when the crash of realization pierced her, bringing with it the black, suffocating guilt. “No.”

  She was the worst sister ever. Had betrayed Noelle in the most fundamental way.

  Cale lazily raised his head and stared down at her, confusion in his green eyes. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  She sat up and pulled herself toward the headboard, away from him, feeling the stupid plastic Yoda jab into her back until she turned and leaned against the cold wall. She located her shirt and put it on in an attempt to feel less exposed. Blindly, she shook her head desperately from side to side.

  “What is it, Rachel?” Cale asked, rolling onto his side at the edge of the bed. “That was...good. Wasn’t it?”

  God, it was world-shattering good. She nodded absently, sadly. “That’s bad. Really, really bad.”

  He sat up, studying her, as if afraid to ask too many questions, afraid of this hot-and-cold basket case who’d just pretty much seduced him.

  “You should go,” she said in a rough voice. She leaned past him and fumbled around in the blankets for her shorts then pulled them on.

  “I’ll go after you talk to me. Let me help.”

  “You can’t help me do anything. I...can’t believe I did that.”

  He was quiet as he absorbed her words. “We. Pretty sure there were two people involved in that.”

  The regret closed in on her, squeezed the air from her lungs, blackened her vision around the edges. Her skin felt like someone else’s, as though it didn’t quite fit. She wanted to crawl out of it. She had to settle for scrambling off the bed and standing in the middle of the room, but that gave her no relief.

  Cale stared at her almost fearfully as she ran her hands through her hair and pulled, wishing she could make this awful guilt go away simply by yanking every last strand of hair out of her scalp.

  He put his shorts back on and then approached her, but she spun around, throwing her back toward him. Stopping a foot away from her, he said, “Rachel, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

  Not. Even. Close. It would never be okay.

  Guilt was burning a hole in her chest and she yelled, a pained, frustrated sound, but she didn’t care what he thought, what anyone thought. She was on the verge of being crushed by the awful feelings and only wanted relief. Even though she didn’t deserve it.

  “You need to leave, Cale. Please.” She whirled around and dared to look him in the eye.

  He sized her up, his eyes searching hers, and she stood strong, defiantly, not against him, but against her own self-loathing. If he saw that, he might stay and try to make her feel better—as if that were possible.

  She so needed him gone, so she could fall apart—again—this time in private.

  Cale swallowed and nodded once, the look in his eyes so sad—as if she’d let him down, too.

  Rachel turned away again to try to get that look out of her mind. Behind her, she could hear him step toward the bed and pick up his shirt. Then he walked out of the room and down the stairs. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest just before she heard the kitchen door shut quietly behind him. Then she crumpled. Slid to the floor right where she was, not even waiting until she landed before the sobs came out, feeling as if they were wrenched from deep inside of her.

  Thank God the air conditioner was on and all the windows were closed, because at this rate, the entire island would have been able to hear her.

  She rolled onto her side, clutched at her middle, wished for something, anything, to lessen the all-encompassing pain. The relentless guilt.

  She was the worst sister ever.

  Rachel balled up her body and let the sobs rack clear through her, unsure that she would ever stop crying.

  And that was exactly why she’d fought so hard for nineteen months not to start.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE MESS CALE had avoided at his condo for months was going to take a hell of a lot longer to clean up than it had to make. Good thing he was in dire need of something to do—something physical and absorbing.

  And then there was the “mess” he’d just gotten himself into with Rachel. That wasn’t so easily taken care of.

  What in the living hell had he been thinking?

  He’d slept with his fiancée’s sister.

  It didn’t matter that Noelle was dead—it was wrong. On so many levels.

  He’d driven straight to his condo from Rachel’s, moving on autopilot as his brain had been...numb. Now that the numbness was wearing off, he was heading straight for an emotional tailspin.

  Best to focus on doing something constructive, he told himself.

  The wall he’d attacked was a wreck. He’d gotten it more than halfway demolished his first go at it, but it had obviously been done in a rage. There was nothing professional about the job he’d done.

  Time to fix it. He began pulling off the chunks of drywall that jutted every which way and throwing them into a pile in the corner.

  He’d slept with Noelle’s sister. Knowingly. She might have been in a sleepy daze, but he didn’t even have that as an excuse.

  He’d wanted Rachel.

  What kind of a bastard did that make him?

  He loved Noelle, to this day. When a person died, your love didn’t just go away, he’d discovered. It lived on; it became stronger in some ways, more sacred. Cale had just basically taken a dump all over that sacredness for a twenty-minute roll in the hay.

  But it hadn’t been just a roll in the hay, and frankly, that made it worse. Had he picked up a girl at a bar, gone home with her and satisfied their mutual physical cravings, it would have been easier to accept. That would have been purely sex. Understandable for a guy who hadn’t been with a woman for going on two years.

  He couldn’t begin to claim that Rachel was just sex. He cared about her. She’d turned him on in three seconds flat, no doubt, but before she’d even stirred, he’d been thinking about how content he was to wake up beside her. To be the one who was there when she fin
ally let herself go, let the grief in. To be the one she turned to for...anything. He liked being that person for her.

  But he loved Noelle.

  Cale tossed another chunk of drywall to the pile that was beginning to amass on the floor and wiped the sweat off his forehead. He wandered through the dining area and the living room, shoved aside the vertical blinds and stared out the glass door at the rainy, gray gulf. He let his forehead rest against the window and swore at himself.

  He knew Noelle wasn’t here anymore, that she couldn’t be hurt by his actions. God, did he know that after spending so many days and nights working to accept that. And yet...he was so damn ashamed that he’d been weak. So easily tempted by another woman. Just like that, he’d set aside his feelings for her when it was convenient.

  Maybe someday the love he felt for Noelle would turn into something only remembered in the distant past, allowing him to give himself to a woman but...not now. He’d planned to spend the rest of his life with Noelle, and those kinds of feelings couldn’t just be laid aside when another woman happened along. Doubly so when that woman was Noelle’s freaking twin sister.

  God, what would other people think if they found out? That he was messed up? Trying to replace one sister with the other? Pretending they were one and the same? They’d no doubt be disgusted.

  He disgusted himself.

  Cale straightened and let the vertical blind fall back into place, blocking his ocean view. After standing there for several seconds, trying to calm his racing, guilt-ridden thoughts, he headed back toward the kitchen.

  Thanks to his impulsiveness, Noelle wasn’t the only one to consider. Judging by the way Rachel had kicked him out, she was having an even harder time than he was accepting what they’d let happen. And that was as much of a concern to him as how he’d desecrated Noelle’s memory.

  He went over to the outside wall of the dining room to the area he’d long ago set up as his “workbench” since he had no other available space. He searched among the tools and materials on the floor and finally located the saw he needed to destroy the studs. A little more searching yielded an extension cord. He plugged in the saw and tested it, then trudged back over to the former wall and went to work on it. It didn’t take long for him to get into a rhythm with the power tool and his mind to return to his dilemma.

  The bitch of it was that he cared for two women. One was no longer living, and logic said the thing to do would be to let that go. Let her go.

  Shit. His throat clogged up with emotion at the mere thought. He couldn’t let Noelle go.

  Cale swore loudly as he forced a stubborn piece of drywall loose and scraped his arm on a nail sticking out of one of the studs in the process. He inspected the cut, decided it was nothing and kept working.

  He couldn’t let Noelle go, and that pretty much said it all. Until he could—if he ever could—he couldn’t be with Rachel. Not that way.

  He paused in his sawing and wiped some sawdust from his cut. Unfortunately, that conclusion didn’t bring him any peace. He laid into the saw with a new determination, willing himself to concentrate only on the job, to get the women out of his mind.

  An hour and a half later, the wall was gone and he’d vacuumed up the mess. The scraps were piled about three feet high in the corner by the kitchen. He surveyed the newly opened area, visualizing how the room would be once he carried out the rest of his plans—their plans.

  Screw visualizing. His stomach rumbled so loudly the upstairs neighbors could probably hear it. He pulled out his phone and located the number for Chinese food delivery then stopped himself.

  That was their restaurant. His and Noelle’s. The one a block over from the condo. The one they’d ordered from countless times after he’d moved in here. Always pork lo mein, cashew chicken and a double order of dumplings. His first instinct was to try the sub place instead, or the brand-new Chinese place on Gulf that was a few blocks farther away. Everything he used to do with Noelle was harder now, ripe with memories, a blatant reminder of what he’d lost. But tonight...he needed that. Needed to feel closer to her. He pushed the call button, placed his order and hung up to wait for the first food he’d had since breakfast fourteen hours ago.

  The silence in the condo after the scream of the saw for so long rang in his ears, and all at once, the physical labor caught up with him. The labor and the day with Rachel. He staggered to the living room and fell into the upholstered chair that faced back toward the dining and kitchen area. The missing wall gave this room a different feel to it, too.

  He glanced around at the living room, wondering vaguely how it would best be arranged to open it up, as the oversize leather couch currently cut it off from the dining room. His eyes landed on a photo on the second shelf down of the bookcase along the opposite wall. Noelle. His favorite picture of her.

  He summoned the energy to drag his butt out of the chair and walk over to it. Picking it up, he felt his eyes tear up for the second damn time today. But while it made him sad to stare at her pretty, too-young-to-die face, tonight it brought him comfort, as well. He felt so much relief with his earlier conclusion that he wasn’t ready to let go of her yet. He carried the frame back to the chair with him and sat down, still staring at it, drinking in her every feature. It’d been a while since he’d allowed himself to do this, to linger over thoughts of her, and it felt right tonight.

  He let the memories come. He opened himself to them, to Noelle, so much so that he could practically hear her voice, smell her sweet scent, feel her energy in the room with him. And as he looked into her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes that matched her sister’s, he could imagine what she’d say to him if she were able to come back and have one more conversation with him. Once she got over the initial shock of what he’d done earlier today, she would no doubt threaten his life if he ever dared to hurt Rachel.

  With or without an imagined decree from Noelle, he was certain of one thing—he never wanted to hurt Rachel. Directly or indirectly. And that meant one thing—he couldn’t just try to shove what had happened under the rug and ignore it. Suck though it might, he was going to have to go back to Rachel and level with her about his intentions once she’d had time to work through some things. And then he was going to have to hold himself to the promise that he would never let things get physically out of hand between them again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THERE WAS NO way to miss it when she turned down her street—Cale’s orange Sport Trac stood out in the gloomy, overcast day like a bright red clown nose in an otherwise black-and-white photograph.

  If her street hadn’t been so short, therefore making it unlikely that he hadn’t also noticed her car approaching, Rachel would have given serious thought to backing up and driving elsewhere. As it was, she pulled into her driveway and garage without glancing his way or giving him any indication that he was welcome.

  Why in the world was he here? Hadn’t she made her feelings known last night when she’d forced him to leave? It hadn’t even been fifteen hours. Nothing had changed.

  As she’d suspected, he didn’t appear to care whether he was welcome or not. When she got out of her car, he was walking into the garage toward her, looking at her expectantly.

  Rachel ignored the pang of longing brought on by a single glance at those green eyes. She turned away and went to the stairs without a word.

  “Ignoring me isn’t going to change anything,” Cale said from the bottom of the stairs.

  He wasn’t scoring any points by speaking that truth. “Knock yourself out,” she said flippantly as she unlocked the door at the top of the steps. “Come on up.”

  Cale clambered up the wooden steps and joined her in the kitchen as she took off her rain jacket.

  “Not the best weather for kayaking,” he said.

  “How long have you been waiting for me?”

  “Long enough to know you must be cold.”

  Freezing, but she wasn’t going to admit it to him. She hadn’t expected sunshine, but the precipita
tion on the weather forecast radar had been spotty enough that she’d hoped to stay mostly dry on her kayak outing. The mist that had shrouded the bay for the past two hours and the unseasonably cool temperature had penetrated her lightweight rain jacket within minutes of paddling away from Buck’s dock.

  “How’d you know I wasn’t at work?”

  “I went there and checked.”

  Rachel made a point of showing no reaction to his supposed dedication, but it took significant effort. “Talking about it isn’t going to change anything, either, you know,” she said, echoing his earlier declaration.

  “I’m aware of that.” His tone was somber, as if he, too, were experiencing some hard-core regrets over what had happened. “Do you want to change into dry clothes before we discuss this?”

  She wanted to take a long, cleansing, hot shower and then curl up in bed for the rest of the day. Preferred never to discuss “this.” “Give me five minutes,” she said. “If I take too long, feel free to give up on me.”

  Not surprisingly, though she did take closer to ten minutes to change clothes and dry her hair, Cale proved he wasn’t the type to just give up. In fact, he’d made himself at home in the living room and had thought to start the gas log fireplace. Either he was beyond considerate, or he was scheming to get her down there, knowing she wouldn’t be able to ignore the warmth.

  Unable to resist, she took the bait and stood in front of the fireplace with her back to him. She heard him lower himself to one of the chairs behind her, letting out a frustrated breath as he did.

  “Rachel...”

  She held her still-cold hands above the faux fire and waited.

  “Obviously, last night was a mistake.”

  “Obviously,” she mocked. His word choice had her hackles raised in a millisecond, and for a moment, she chose to defer the focus from her guilt to her lousy self-esteem. “Why else would someone be with the geeky sister?”

  Before she could react, he was by her side, in her space, turning her toward him with gentle force.