Can't Stop Loving You

by Janelle Taylor

  Impulsively, he reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  Her fingers were warm and solid in his, and she seemed to cling to his hand for a moment. He saw that the tears in her eyes had spilled over and rolled down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, using her other hand to reach up quickly and dab at her face with her linen napkin, glancing furtively around to make sure nobody had noticed.

  “Don’t be sorry, Mariel. Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know what happened. I guess my emotions are just too close to the surface right now.”

  “That’s understandable. So are mine,” he said, feeling intimately connected to her just because he was holding her hand, and she wasn’t letting go. “Do you want to stay here and eat, or should we leave?”

  “We can stay,” she said, composed again. “I’ll be fine. Really. It’s just that sometimes memories can be overwhelming.”

  He nodded. He didn’t know whether she was talking about memories of her mother, or memories of giving up their daughter for adoption. Probably both. She had been through a lot since those first carefree days they had spent together as naive college freshmen. She was an entirely different person from the girl he had met, and from the girl he had later left behind.

  Of course she was, but for some reason, acknowledging that basic fact took him almost by surprise. It was as if he didn’t want to believe that she was different—that she had grown and changed—because that would mean things between them could be different.

  Different as in better.

  And he knew that would only be buying into false hope. Mariel might have changed, but what couldn’t change was the tremendous amount of pain in their past as a couple. They couldn’t change what had happened between them. Nor could they change the fact that they lived in completely different worlds, and they wanted completely different things out of life.

  The lights blinked.

  She jumped, and he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

  As he opened his mouth to tell her not to worry, there was a deafening bang.

  Then the room was plunged into silence, lit only by the flickering candlelight.

  “What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning?” Mariel asked Noah as they mounted the stairs to the third floor, guided by the beam of the flashlight he held behind her.

  “Early,” he said. “Just as soon as we can get up and get on the road. I’ll have to call my office first.”

  They had reached the third-floor hallway. The sound of the storm was much louder up here. She could hear tree branches creaking in the wind, and the rain pattered deafeningly on the roof directly overhead.

  “I’ll walk you down to your room,” Noah said, holding the flashlight beam high to illuminate the hallway. Their bodies cast weird, long shadows on the walls. “And I’ll make sure there are candles lit there, like they said there would be.”

  “Thanks,” Mariel said.

  After the power had gone out, Susan had come to the dining room to tell them that she would go up and light votive lanterns in both their rooms. She had been apologetic about the power loss and had told them there was no telling when the lights would be back on again—there was no telling in a storm like this.

  Luckily, their meals had been cooked and were on the verge of being delivered to their table when the power was knocked out, so they had at least been able to eat. But the dining room had been warm and uncomfortable with the windows closed and the ceiling fans not working.

  Now, though it wasn’t much past nine o’clock, there seemed nothing to do but go to bed.

  Mariel knew she should be satisfied with that, and that she should be exhausted.

  But for some reason, she didn’t want to go to bed yet, and—inexplicably, given last night’s nocturnal activity—she wasn’t exhausted.

  She wanted to spend more time with Noah, whose presence had once again gone from disconcerting to comforting. When he had grabbed her hand across the table, she had been as stunned by the unexpectedly tender gesture as by her own welcoming reaction. It had simply felt right to hold his hand. In that moment when he had touched her, she had been less alone.

  Now she knew that he was going to deliver her to her room and go off down the hall to his, and she would be alone once again.

  Alone in the dark on the top floor of a big, old house with a violent storm raging outside.

  She told herself that was the real reason she didn’t want him to leave her. That she was afraid.

  And maybe on some level it was true.

  So she wasn’t lying when she said, as she unlocked her door and opened it, “Would you mind coming in for a few minutes? I’m a little freaked out by this weather and the power being out.”

  “No problem,” he said, so readily that she wondered if he had been hoping she would ask him to come in, or if he might have been on the verge of suggesting it himself.

  Yet she noticed, even as they stepped over the threshold, that the thunder seemed to be growing more distant; the rain less urgent; the wind less ferocious.

  She didn’t want the storm to be over.

  Not yet.

  She didn’t want him to have an excuse to go back to his room.

  A candle glowed on the dresser top, just as Susan had promised, flittering shadows on the walls.

  Noah closed the door behind them.

  Mariel was suddenly aware of the silence in the room. The storm still raged outside, yes; but the windows were closed, and the room felt insulated from its ebbing fury. They were safe inside, alone together.

  “My mother always said never to leave a burning candle unattended,” Mariel commented nervously, just for something to say.

  “I guess Susan just wanted to make sure we had some light when we got upstairs,” was his somewhat inane reply.

  She realized he, too, was acutely aware of the sudden intimacy, and that he, too, was unsure of how to handle it. After what had happened last night…

  But he had made it pretty clear that it wouldn’t happen again.

  Why had they decided it shouldn’t happen again? Now, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember. The only memory that sprang readily to mind was what it had been like to lie naked in his strong arms, to feel his hot mouth on her lips, her neck, her…

  “It’s so hot in here,” she murmured, moving to the window and tugging on the sash. It didn’t budge.

  “Here, I’ll help you,” he said, and he was instantly beside her, reaching past her. “Sometimes this happens in old houses. The frat house was an old Victorian, and the windows were always sticking. I remember that you had to push out on the bottom of the window first, like this,” he grunted slightly, “and then pull…”

  The window raised slowly upward with a drawn-out groan.

  “There,” Noah said, brushing his hands against each other in a satisfied way. “Done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  Now there was absolutely nothing to say.

  His face was inches from hers.

  She swallowed hard. “The breeze feels good,” she said, as the curtains stirred, brushing against her bare arm.

  She focused her gaze on the wet darkness just beyond the screen, though there was nothing to see. The other night, there had been streetlights visible below, and shop windows, and restaurants. Now the street was dark.

  The rain still fell steadily, pinging against a drainpipe or a gutter somewhere above.

  “Yeah, it does,” he said.

  “But it hasn’t cooled off.”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  Their voices were hushed.

  He hadn’t stepped away, and she couldn’t step away; she was blocked by the chair beside the window and by Noah on her other side. The only way around him was to sidestep him, and that would feel too awkwardly deliberate.

  Besides, it felt nice to stand here, close to him, listening to the summer rain.

  A rumble of thunder sounded, far off, unthre
atening.

  “The storm is moving away,” he observed.

  Her heart sank. “I know.”

  “Do you want me to stay anyway?” he asked in a low voice.

  For a moment, she couldn’t reply. She wanted him to stay with all her heart—but her heart didn’t know what was best. She should be thinking this through, not going on instinct. Look where instinct had landed her in the past.

  “I want you to stay,” she replied, reaching for him.

  She tiptoed up, her lips expectant, and was swiftly gratified by his kiss as he swept her against him.

  “Oh, hell, can we do this?” he asked, breaking away, his heart racing against hers.

  “We can’t not do this,” she answered, knowing that if he stopped now, she would die.

  But he didn’t stop; he pulled her toward him as he backed across the room, and they fell onto the bed together. His mouth rained hot kisses on her throat. She undid the buttons on her blouse and writhed out of it, and he fumbled with the front clasp on her bra. When it opened he buried his face in her breasts with a groan, and then she felt his tongue swirling over her nipples, stroking the sensitive peaks as heat pooled between her legs, tickling and tantalizing, begging his manhood.

  He changed his position, and she felt his taut bulge graze her thigh. She twisted her hips, squirmed, pressed herself against it, gasping, “Noah, please, now.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I can’t wait any longer. Now,” she said ardently, slipping her hands beneath his shirt and hauling the hem past his shoulders. She ran her fingers over his skin, breathing his masculine essence. She heard him unzip his shorts, and he raised himself in one quick movement to ease them down over his thighs. She heard the swoosh of heavy cotton as they tumbled over the edge of the bed to the floor.

  Then his hands moved to her waist, and she felt him pulling on the hook-and-eye fastener of her skirt. He tugged, then growled, frustrated. She reached up to help him, but he was already pulling the folds of fabric up to her navel, then pulling her lace panties down. She realized that he wasn’t even going to bother to undress her all the way, and his urgency sparked her own. She opened herself to him, and he sank into her. She gasped; he moaned. They moved in an exquisite, age-old rhythm, once, twice, three times, and then she clenched around him as everything exploded in a storm more forceful than the one that had roared overhead. She saw flashes of light against her tightly closed eyelids as wave after trembling wave rumbled through her, and Noah, panting her name, gushed silken, white-hot liquid into her.

  When the storm had waned, and they lay spent in each other’s arms, Mariel kissed the top of his head as he burrowed his face against her breast, nuzzling her with his lips.

  “Promise me that in the morning you won’t run away,” she said softly.

  “I won’t run away,” he whispered. “Not until you want me to.”

  She couldn’t imagine ever wanting him to leave her again.

  But she noticed that he hadn’t said unless.

  He had said until.

  And she realized that he believed it was inevitable, and that he was probably right.

  But she shoved the thought away.

  They had waited fifteen years to make love again.

  Reality could wait another day or two.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Katie Beth?”

  “Is that you, Mariel?” her friend asked, across the long-distance wire.

  Clutching the telephone receiver tightly, Mariel sank onto the edge of her bed, relieved to hear the familiar voice in her ear. “It’s me.”

  “Hang on a second,” Katie Beth said to Mariel, who could hear children chattering and cartoons blasting in the background. “Guys, Mommy’s going to take this call in the kitchen. Olivia, keep an eye on T.J., will you? Don’t let him tip over his Exer-saucer.”

  Mariel found herself smiling, imagining the early morning chaos in the Mulligan household.

  “I’m back,” Katie Beth said a moment later. “What’s going on? Did you meet her?”

  Mariel took a deep breath. “Not only did I not meet her, Katie Beth, but she’s vanished off the face of the earth.”

  Katie Bell cried out in dismay on the other end of the line. “Sweetie, are you serious? What on earth happened? Start from the beginning.”

  Mariel did, filling her in on Amber’s disappearance. It felt good to pour out the whole story, and to hear Katie Beth’s words of sympathy and comfort. “You must be just beside yourself, sweetie. Is there anything I can do to help? You’re so far away, dealing with this all alone…”

  “Not exactly,” Mariel said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Noah’s here, Katie Beth.”

  She heard the gasp on the other end of the line. Quickly, she told Katie Beth what had been going on between them.

  “I can’t believe all this,” Katie Beth said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to deal with this one step at a time,” Mariel said. “The most important thing is finding Amber. Whatever is happening with Noah is just a result of both of us being emotionally frazzled. It won’t last. I’m flying home tomorrow, and he’s going back to New York.”

  “What about Amber?”

  “I’m going to come back here in a few days if she still hasn’t turned up.”

  “Why don’t you just stay there now?”

  “Because I’m worried about Leslie, and Daddy—”

  “Don’t you say another word about them, Mariel,” Katie Beth said with a snort. “They’ll be fine on their own. It might even do your sister some good not to have you here taking care of everything for once.”

  “But Daddy—”

  “Is fine, Mariel. He’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but if you’re worried, I’ll check in on him when I bring Olivia to her play date later.”

  “But there are so many things Leslie needs to do for the wed—”

  “Listen, I ran into Jed’s mother in the supermarket yesterday, and she was on her way to pick up Leslie to take her to a dress fitting. Everything is under control. You don’t need to be here.”

  “Yes, I do, Katie Beth,” Mariel said, and bit her lip. “I need to be there, because I can’t keep being here. Not with Noah. Not like this. I need to get away so that I can get some perspective. When I’m with him, I can’t think straight.”

  “Yeah, but your feelings for him are not going to go away just because you get on a plane, or just because you want them to. There are some things you can’t fight, Mariel.”

  “And there are some things you have to fight, Katie Beth. This is wrong, with Noah. He wants a certain kind of woman, and I’m not her. My heart broke once because of him, and I can’t go through that again.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to,” Katie Beth said. “Who says you’re not his kind of woman? Who says your heart is going to break this time?”

  “I say so,” Mariel said. “Because I know it. There’s no other possibility. But for the next twenty-four hours, I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to live in the moment for a change.”

  “You do that, sweetie,” Katie Beth told her. “And you might be surprised at what happens.”

  “This is David Grafton.”

  Noah cursed silently, clutching the phone against his ear. He had been hoping to get his boss’s voice mail at this hour. It wasn’t even seven-thirty yet.

  He didn’t have to force a distressed note into his voice; it came naturally. “David, it’s Noah. I’m still not feeling well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Noah.” There was no sympathy in his boss’s words. He was a cold human being under the best of circumstances. Noah could just imagine, if David was in the office this early, what kind of a deadline the client had imposed upon the group this time. His boss definitely wouldn’t be thrilled to bestow another sick day on Noah.

  “I’m not going to make it to the office today,” Noah said, trying to will away the surge of guilt. He rem
inded himself that he wasn’t doing anything illegal, for Christ’s sake. He was taking a sick day, one of the ten sick and personal days that were allotted to him by the company for each calendar year. Granted, so far this year he had used more than half of them, but he had been forced to use several during the divorce proceedings.

  “I would strongly urge you to rethink that, Noah,” David said crisply.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that unless you’re on the brink of death, you’d better get in here. The story boards for the new Douglas campaign are missing. I tried to call you several times yesterday to see if you knew where you had put them.”

  Noah fumbled for something to say, his mind careening.

  He had better get in there today? Impossible.

  Where were the story boards? Lord only knew.

  David had tried to call him yesterday? Terrific.

  He braced himself for the inevitable: for David to say that he had spoken to Alan and Alan had told him that Noah hadn’t been home in a few days. A lie formulated quickly: he could say that he had been away for the weekend when he had fallen ill from eating the bad shellfish, and that he was too sick to travel back to the city. He had never told David he was at home when he called yesterday, had he? Damn, he couldn’t remember.

  “I was under the impression that you were at home, sick,” David went on. “But when I called, there was no answer. The machine kept picking up.”

  Noah wanted to say that the machine had picked up because he hadn’t been home.

  That, in fact, he had been called to a tiny town in the central part of the state because his daughter was missing.

  He wanted to say it…

  And he did.

  It wasn’t his intent. Some part of him knew he would be a fool to dig himself in deeper with the food poisoning tale now, but an even bigger fool to opt for honesty.

  Yet even as his mind was formulating a lie about how he had been too sick to get out of bed and answer the phone, his mouth began spewing the truth.

  Not the whole truth.

  It was none of David Grafton’s business that Noah’s daughter had been given up for adoption, or that he hadn’t seen her since the day she was born.