“One of the first things I learned when I moved up here was that I didn’t want to be alone.”
“You were just lonesome. The shock of leaving the city.”
“It was more than that. Once the novelty of having the ultimate freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted wore off, I realized that I missed having someone to be with.”
“I thought you’d met people up here.”
“I have. They’re really nice. But it’s not the same.”
“The same as what?”
“Belonging.”
Derek felt a familiar tightness gather in his throat because he knew exactly what she meant, only he hadn’t realized it until then. She had put the word to a feeling he’d been blindly reaching for since the very first time they’d met.
Unsure of his silence, Sabrina hurried on in her own defense. “It’s a strength. Two months ago I didn’t know that. I thought that if you weren’t able to live alone there was something wrong with you, some deficiency.” She took a quick breath. “But I am able to live alone. I guess I did prove that to myself. I got everything settled in New York and moved up here, and functionally I was doing just fine. But then it became a matter of choice. Personal preference. I like sharing. I like doing for other people. I like having other people do for me once in a while. In a nutshell, I’m able to live alone, but I don’t choose it.”
Derek studied the earnestness of her expression. There was something so serious about her that he couldn’t resist teasing. “Then anyone would do?”
“Anyone?”
“For a roommate.”
For several minutes she stared at him. Then the corner of her mouth twitched in the beginnings of a chiding smile. “No, anyone would not do. I’m very fussy about roommates.” Reaching forward, she drove a handful of fingers into his hair. “I want someone with dark hair, for instance. I like dark hair.”
“I like blond hair.”
“Then there’s no problem. And shoulders.” Her hand fell to glide over the skin in question. It was firm, buttressed by muscle. “I like strong shoulders. I noticed that about you from the first. Your shoulders hold a lot.” Her gaze slid lower. “And your chest. A roommate of mine has to have a chest like this.” Her free hand had joined its fellow in touching him. She was really getting into the game. “Warm skin, just enough hair, needs a little filling out around here”—she patted his ribs—“but I’m working on that.”
“You’re working on it?”
“Feeding you.”
“Seems like I’m doing my share of the cooking.”
“Ah,” she said in a magnanimous sigh. “Another requirement in a roommate of mine. Just and fair division of labor.”
“You could have hired a dark-haired maid and paid her to do it all.”
But Sabrina was shaking her head. “A woman wouldn’t have the right equipment.” Her palms were flat on his abdomen, fingers dipping under the waistband of his sweatpants. Her fingertips brushed the more curly hair that she couldn’t quite see.
Derek was beginning to labor at breathing. “Already filling out there,” he managed, but hoarsely.
Her hands slid lower. “So you are,” she observed in a siren-soft voice.
He pressed his fists to the wooden bench on either side of his hips. While one part of him ached to grab Sabrina and drag her over him, the other part didn’t want anything to disturb what she was doing. She knew just how to touch him. She knew the movement, the pressure, the little tricks that set him on fire. He’d taught her some of it himself; the rest she’d learned through adventure and instinct.
Muscles quivering at the restraint he imposed on himself, he gave a quiet moan, then murmured thickly, “You do it to me every time, Sabrina. I haven’t been this horny since I was a kid. It’s like being born again.”
She chuckled, a throaty, sensual chuckle that turned him on even more. “Not quite the way a religious fanatic would put it.”
“I’m not a fanatic. I’m just male.”
“You are that,” she whispered, looking up at him with eyes that were green and hungry. “You are so that, I can’t bear it sometimes.”
He sucked in a harsh breath and covered her hands with his own to still their movement. Then, sliding his arms under her, he scooped her up and strode from the kitchen through the hall and the living room into the master suite.
The bed was a tangle of sheets, but that was irrelevant. What mattered to Derek was laying Sabrina down, opening her robe and devouring her nakedness with his eyes while he divested himself of his sweatpants. He was fully aroused when he lowered himself to her heat.
She framed his face with her hands and made him look at her in those last lucid moments. “This is why just any roommate wouldn’t do. You set me on fire, Derek. I’ve only had one other lover, and he never turned me on this way.”
“Then you’ll let me stay?” Derek whispered.
Her smile grew silky as he slowly entered her. “I’ll let you stay.”
* * *
“It’s not just sex, is it?” he asked. He was standing in the bathroom later that day watching Sabrina dry her hair. Her body was bound in a large terry towel that matched the one swathing his hips.
“Of course it’s sex.” Her teasing gaze slid over his chest and belly to the faint bulge below. “You are very well endowed.”
“Sabrina.”
“I’m serious.” She pressed her lips together for a minute, then ventured with a glint in her eye, “Well-hung—isn’t that the expression?”
“Sabrina!”
“Hmm?”
For the space of several breaths he said nothing. Then he tipped his head just the slightest bit and asked with just the slightest unsureness, “Do you really think so … uh, like … notice things like that?”
“Sure I do,” she said, then added more quietly, “but it’s not just sex and you know it.” She flipped on the dryer and resumed work on her hair.
“I want to stay.”
“Hmm?”
He raised his voice to make himself heard over the dryer’s hum. “I do want to stay. I like it here.”
Sabrina kept at her hair because it was the most casual thing to do. She felt far from casual inside. Each of Derek’s words counted toward a dream. “It’s not too quiet for you?”
“Quiet? After what I’ve lived through for two years?”
“I was thinking of your life before that. You were used to things happening. Not much happens up here on a day-to-day basis.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Since I’ve been here I’ve seen sun, clouds, rain and snow.” The last was falling outside the window just then, but it was a wet snow that promised to revert to rain before long. “And as for my life before, it was a rat race—a blur of airline flights and interviews and screenings and red tape. I’m not sure I could handle that right now even if I wanted to. I need this, Sabrina. I need to be here with you.”
She did turn off the dryer then. “Will you tell me when you get tired of it?”
“When, or if?”
“Either. Both.”
“And if I never do?”
“Then I’ll know it, because you’ll be content. That’s what I want, Derek. I want you to be content. If you are, I am.”
He lowered his head and arched a brow her way. “That’s a heavy load. Your happiness shouldn’t be dependent on mine.”
“Maybe not. But if you stay here, it will be. That’s what love is about.”
Leaning forward, he caught her lips in a soft kiss that lingered. In time, though, he drew back. His eyes held their familiar shadow. “Can you accept that I have to go after those files?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Will you help me?”
“Only if I can’t convince you to change your mind.”
“You can’t.”
She dropped her gaze to the dryer—which at that moment resembled the nozzle of a gun—and thought about the possible danger. Then she looked back at Derek and thought ab
out the alternative. Frustration and helplessness could eat a person alive. She knew. When it came to Nicky, there had been nothing she could do. But possibly, just possibly, Derek could vindicate himself. If the choice was between a haunted Derek and one who had found peace of mind, there was no choice at all.
“I’ll help,” she said.
Only with the breath he released did Derek realize how much he’d wanted her help—and how unsure of it he’d been. It was a form of commitment. He needed that commitment.
Wrapping his arms around her, he drew her against his tall frame. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“When do we start?”
“After the first of the year. After Greer declares his candidacy. He may be the one running, Sabrina, but in the end it’ll be our victory.”
Sabrina could only pray that he was right.
* * *
“He’s living there? With you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sabrina.” The deep and disapproving voice of her father bellowed through the telephone, “What in the blazes are you doing?”
“Right now?” Purposely misinterpreting his question, she held the telephone cord aside and twisted to eye the crowded kitchen counter. “Making pumpkin pies.”
“What in the blazes are you doing with McGill?”
“Mmm, do you really want to know?” she asked a little too softly.
Gebhart Monroe countered with a boom. “Did you actually invite him there?”
Had she invited him there? She’d never issued a formal invitation, but the offer had been between the lines of every letter she’d written. “Yes, I think I did.”
“But why?”
“Why not? I’m not married anymore. I’m not tied to another man. Nor am I a twenty-one-year-old virgin.”
Gebhart was silent for just a minute, obviously gathering his composure. In some ways he was remarkably old-fashioned. Sex and his only daughter was one of them. Rather than link the two—or acknowledge that there was or ever had been any relationship between the two—he steered away from the subject. “That isn’t the issue here, Sabrina. The issue is the man himself. He’s come fresh from prison.”
“I know that,” she said more seriously. She was grateful her father had chosen to call while Derek was out running.
“Does it make you uneasy?”
“No.”
“He killed a man.”
“In self-defense.”
“He’s spent the last two years of his life in the company of the world’s lowlife.”
“Through no choice of his own.”
“But he’s done it. And now he’s with you. I’m worried, Sabrina.”
“I’m a big girl, Dad.”
“Age doesn’t make you any less vulnerable.”
“It does. It makes me a better judge of character than I was five or ten years ago. Believe me, I am in no danger from Derek. If anything, the reverse is true. I’m safer with him here. He’s strong, more than capable of protecting me. You were worried about my being alone. You should feel relieved.”
“Produce any other man but McGill and I might be.”
Sabrina was feeling discouraged—and she hadn’t even gotten to the part about telling her father she was in love with Derek. “You don’t know him, Dad.… Then again,” she said with sudden inspiration, “maybe you do. Derek isn’t all that different from Bart Slocum, your hero in Lone Rider. Bart killed a man—several, actually—but still he was a worthy hero. He killed only when he had no alternative, and he agonized over it even when the victim was the lowest of the low.” She was rather proud of the analogy. “Bart did time.”
“In a jail. Very different from a modem penitentiary. Do you have any idea what hellholes those are? Yes, I suppose you do, since J. B. says you visited McGill several times. But, dear God, to bring that into your home?”
“As I recall, your jail in Lone Rider had rats and snakes and a man with something resembling leprosy. But moving beyond that, when Bart was released, he returned to his girlfriend. Did he beat her? Rape her? Spit on her? He certainly did not. He treated her like ‘precious porcelain’—I think that was the phrase you used—and he went on to save her life.”
“The only reason he had to save her life,” Gebhart argued, “was that the villain was after him but shot her by mistake. I’m telling you, if I’d been her father—rather than the guy who wrote the book—I’d have been mighty upset.”
“Come on, Dad, you can’t condemn Derek simply because of time spent behind bars.”
But Gebhart was firm. “I can condemn anyone who threatens my daughter’s well-being.”
“He’s not threatening—”
“Talk with your mother.”
“Sabrina,” Amanda came on the line. “Your father’s right. It’s one thing to write a book about the man, quite another to live with him. Is that really necessary?”
Sabrina felt a headache coming on. Her parents’ objections to Derek were another indictment to add to the list. It seemed that in their eyes she could do no right. But she refused to cower. “Yes, it’s necessary.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because I love him.”
That brought a heavy silence, followed by a quiet, “You’re just saying that for effect, I hope.”
“No. It’s the truth.”
“Oh Lord, Sabrina,” Amanda wailed in an unearthly sort of way, “what did I do wrong? First Nicholas Stone. Now Derek McGill. I know that your father and I haven’t had the most traditional of marriages—”
“This has nothing to do with you and Dad.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing, Mom. Nothing at all. Just the opposite, in fact. You and Dad are in love. You’ve always been in love, in spite of the unconventional way you live. You’ve stayed together against the odds. Maybe you’ve been an inspiration.”
Amanda’s “Oh Lord!” suggested that she was anything but pleased with the thought, so Sabrina went on.
“You don’t know Derek. How can you condemn him?”
“I’m imagining what he’ll do to your life. Do you honestly think that he’s emerged from prison stigma-free? I don’t see him working. I haven’t read anything in the papers about his being snatched up by one of the networks. There’s a reason for that, Sabrina. He evokes negative reactions. He was in a position of power and visibility, and he abused it.”
“He acted in self-defense! If he hadn’t, he’d have been killed!”
“He shot that man.”
“There was a struggle. It was the other man’s gun.”
“Perhaps. But do you hear yourself? You’re defending him. You’re bound to defend him. Is that what you want to spend your future doing? Because you’ll have to. If Derek McGill lives with you, people are going to ask questions. You’ll be as much of a social outcast as he is.”
“You know, you’re as bad as Dad. Talk about hypocrisy.”
“In what way have either your father or I been hypocritical?” Amanda asked indignantly.
“Your books, Mom. Consider Quist. He’s great, by the way, but if ever there was the hero as outcast, Quist is it. He’s different from the other Dusalonians, different in looks, acts and desires. He broke the rules of the High Command. He alienated the Elite. He lived among the Snaleks for months—talk about lowlife. And still he found his way back, and with the daughter of one of the premier members of the Elite, no less. If Quist could succeed, why not Derek?”
“Quist is fictitious.”
“And fiction is largely nothing more than wishful thinking. So why can’t you look for the positive in Derek? Why can’t you try to make Quist’s success real?”
“Because Dusalon is a far cry from Earth. People here are judgmental.”
“As they are on Dusalon.”
“But I control what happens on Dusalon. I don’t have such power here, and that’s the difference. When you’re shunned, I won’t be able to help.”
“Shunned,” Sabrina murmured under her brea
th. “My God, this is absurd.” She raised her voice. “And since when are you—the ultimate nonconformist—so concerned about what other people think?”
“I’m concerned about you, your future, your career. What is it that you want in life, Sabrina?”
“I want a home and a family,” Sabrina blurted impulsively.
“And you honestly think Derek McGill can give you that?”
“Actually, I haven’t planned that far ahead. Things have been pretty spontaneous where Derek is concerned.”
“Aligning yourself with a man like him isn’t the best way to make friends and influence people. Putting Nicky in that place was bad enough. This won’t help.”
Sabrina felt the sting of her mother’s words. She had to work harder to keep her voice low and controlled. “If anyone criticizes me for placing Nicky at the Greenhouse, he does so out of ignorance. But since you brought it up, look at it this way. If my putting Nicky ‘in that place’ was so bad, people will already have come to expect the worst from me, so I won’t be surprising anyone by taking up with Derek.”
The finality in her tone was not to be missed. Amanda sighed. “We can’t change your mind?”
“About Derek? No.”
“How about coming out here for Thanksgiving?”
“Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I can’t get tickets at this late date.”
“Your father could pull some strings.”
Oh, yes. He could pull strings. For one round-trip ticket. She could have Thanksgiving dinner with her parents, leaving behind her son and the man she loved.
“Thanks,” Sabrina said more sadly, “but no. Not this year.”
* * *
Derek awoke late on Thanksgiving morning to find himself alone in Sabrina’s big brass bed. He wasn’t surprised. A glance at the bedside clock told him that it was nearly eleven-thirty, and he knew that the wonderful smells coming from the kitchen couldn’t possibly have been produced if Sabrina had been as lazy as he.
He should get up, he told himself. He should give her a hand. But she’d refused his offers the night before, had specifically told him to sleep late. This was the first Thanksgiving dinner she’d ever made, she said, and he’d gotten the impression that there was a good deal of pride involved in the undertaking. If the smells emanating from the kitchen were any measure, she had just reason for pride.
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