by Tracy Sumner
A woman who’d loved him once. Or so she said.
Oh, yes, Merry Christmas.
5
Tanner stepped inside the Sentinel office and stopped short. Kate sat behind a scarred wooden desk, spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose, pencil tapping against the record book open before her.
Wonderful.
Charlie’s fidgeting the night before suddenly made sense.
“Hurry in, Charlie, it’s freezing,” Kate said without looking up.
He closed the door and walked forward, trying to mask the heaviness of his step. Pausing before his knees hit the desk, he searched her bent head, her tidy chignon. No sign of the rusty hairpin. His rusty hairpin. Probably have better luck searching the ditch along Main Street.
“I’ve almost finished the subscription accounts for” —Kate glanced up, stumbled— “for last month.” Her grip on the pencil tightened; a rosy streak crossed each cheek.
“Good news. Excellent.”
She stared for a moment, reached to brush her lips, then dropped her head, gazing at the record book. A shiver she probably didn’t want him to see worked its way up her arm. “If you’re following me or—”
“I didn’t know you would be here,” he said, anger peaked. “Honest.”
A sound—a dubious grunt he thought an apt description—met his ears.
“Really.” He hitched his hip on the desk. “I didn’t plan this. Charlie’s grand idea.”
“I can believe that,” she whispered.
“Tell you what, Kat, just pretend I’m not here. Like that evening we sat through dinner at the Chisom’s ball, right across from each other. Our eyes met twice, I think. Obviously, I’m easy to ignore.”
Another grunt as her pencil skated over the page.
“Actually, I would have arrived earlier in the day, but I was making up for lost sleep. Standing around in a poor man’s excuse for an alley half the night really took it out of me. Waiting for” —he tapped his finger atop the slanted figures marking her page— “waiting for...oh, what the hell was I waiting for?”
Her head lifted, amber eyes glowing in a pale face. Her anger was easily definable. Whatever else she felt, she tucked close. “I don’t owe you a blessed thing, Mr. Barkley. Not ten minutes behind my mother’s shop or sixty seconds in here. Your effrontery never fails to amaze me. Truly, never fails. Why...oh....” Her pencil arched across paper, the tip snapping when it bounced off the desk’s surface.
Tanner smiled, felt a responsive, aggressive tightening in his gut. He’d experienced this sensation many times with Kat. During one of their chess matches or, if they’d been in a bit of a combative mood, just before they made love. Well, he and Kate had been heading toward this confrontation for two years: two lonely, silent years. His palms slicked, and he rubbed them against his thighs. Jesus, he was ready. “Last night, you said you would be there. Listen to me. Give me a chance to work things out.”
“I lied.”
“Obviously. Getting pretty good at lying, aren’t you?”
She pulled her spectacles free and flung them to the desk, then stood and leaned in until their noses almost brushed. A broad band of sunlight washed over her, igniting her hair, bronzing her skin. She looked formidable and magnificent. “You bastard. I never lied to you. Not once. I gave you everything I had to give and more. What a fool, oh, what a fool I was.”
He released a breath, delayed taking another. The scent of sandalwood confused his thoughts, did strange things to his insides. “Don’t you think I know that? Why I tried so goddamned hard to talk with you. Explain—”
“Explain? Explain.” She brought her hand to her brow and squeezed, as if she could expel her thoughts.
“I never used one word you said in the story, Kat. Not one. I didn’t need you to get inside Asher’s business. I didn’t need your information. Not one damn thing you told me showed up in any of those articles. Your name, yes, but I didn’t plan that, Kat. I swear.” His fist hit the desk, sending papers to the floor. “By God, didn’t you read them?”
“No. Not after the first morning.” Her fingertips pressed hard, making dents in her skin. “I couldn’t endure the pain.”
“Goddammit, Kat, you didn’t read them? No wonder, then.” All the time they had lost. “I’d been bellying up to Asher for more than three months when I met you. Occasional games of poker at the club, late night political discussions over whiskey, constantly needling him to hire me. None of my articles had anything to do with you. I told Asher the truth, partially. Presented myself as a jaded heir to a banking fortune needing an office to waste a few hours of the day. He understood my situation all too well. Mirrored his. And, Sloane-Barkley wasn’t a bad contact for him to have. I had protected myself, my identity, and I knew it. My byline hadn’t run in the Times for three years. Not under my own name, anyway. He never guessed for a moment that I was not who I said I was.”
Kate lowered her hand, her eyes sweeping across his face. “That made two of us.”
Tanner grasped her chin, drawing her gaze to his when she would have pulled away. Soft skin, the softest he’d ever encountered, her pulse skipping beneath his fingers. “You weren’t something I planned on, Princess. Things would have been much simpler had I never met you.”
Her mouth formed a startled “oh” as she wrenched free. Tanner prided himself on rarely making mistakes, but he realized this one, and rounded the desk, blocking her exit. He closed his hands around her arms and pulled her to him, forcing her up on her toes. Standing chest to chest, their harsh breaths mingled.
God, he loved her. Loved her raw courage, her frank intelligence. Loved the proud tilt of her jaw and the way she worried her lip rather than give in to tears. While thoughts of what he could say circled in his mind, surprisingly, he heard himself say this: “I will never regret the time we spent together, Kat. Never. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. And I knew it. I always knew it. I planned to tell you about my family, the newspaper, anything, everything you wanted to know. But I was close, so close to finishing the damned story, one I’d worked on for almost a year. Just one more day, I kept telling myself. Just one more day. I thought I had time. I thought we had time.”
Her throat worked, her chin trembling as she tried to lower it. “Time for what? More...intimate discussions in your tiny bed? A rousing game of chess sitting on feather pillows stacked on the floor? Quiet dinners on that coffee table held steady by a pile of books? I remember that microscopic apartment. Really, I found the place terribly charming.” A shot of laughter lifted her lips. She twisted for release but he held firm. “Let me guess. You own the building.”
Tanner clicked his teeth together and feigned a look of pique.
Truthfully, he did own the building, but he would crisp in the pits of hell before he admitted it. He made a mental note to sell the thing the day after Christmas. “Don’t be silly. Own the building?”
Her lids drifted as her bones seemed to melt. She sagged, her slim shoulder settling on his chest. Her breasts lifted, warm and full, then fell on a sigh. “Tanner, it just doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t love you anymore,” she said, voice muffled against his coat.
His breath caught. Tanner. She’d called him Tanner. Perhaps, she didn’t love this Crawford fellow after all. Maybe he had a chance: a second chance to make her love him. “It does matter. We matter. I want you to understand.” He paused, staring at a crack in the wall. Now or never, old man. “Kat, I—I want to tell you, always meant to tell you, that I...how much I—”
She angled her head, up and away. “Whatever it is, you’re too late.”
“Too late?” He set her back, searched her face.
Kate faced him squarely, pain radiating from her eyes. But she also looked awfully certain of something.
Certain enough to have Tanner’s stomach knotting.
“I’m marrying Crawford, Tanner. I telegraphed him this morning. He’s been pushing me to accept his proposal. So I did. A bit rushed
, I admit, but he had a rather public scrape with a colleague’s wife a year ago, and his family is desperate to secure loose ends. One of the loose ends being marriage. To a woman with her own scandal skulking about, but not one as harmful as his. And not as recent.” The words tumbled from her lips in the most emotionless stream he’d ever heard.
“Are you doing this because I kissed you? Because of what happened last night? Because of what you told me?”
Her head wobbled, back and forth, side to side.
What the hell did that mean?
“Do you love him? Tell me you do, honestly, and I’ll leave.”
She blinked and tried to lower her gaze. Tanner cupped her cheeks so she couldn’t look anywhere but into his face. “Do you love him?”
Her lips moved, he felt the drift of air but heard no sound.
“Do you, Kat? For God’s sake, do you love him?” Do you still love me?
She nodded weakly, her brow bumping his chin. “Yes...yes, I love—”
He captured her lips beneath his, desperate to halt her rash admission.
You love me. A dizzying chime, a maddening recitation. Ringing in his mind, resounding in his ears as her lips bloomed beneath his, as her fingers danced over his chest, his ribs, her hands locking behind his back. A groan he could not contain surged from his throat. She responded with a sigh and a wiggle, unintentionally nestling his erection firmly against her.
Oh, Princess. You don’t love him. Can’t love him.
I don’t love him. I...do...not...love...Tanner Barkley. She repeated this even as she brought her hands to his chest, fisted her fingers in the coarse material, nudged, and with his help, propelled his coat to the floor.
God, she remembered him in just this way, handsome, aroused. Vivid images flooded her mind as his hands cupped her bottom and brought her flush against him. Her head dropped back, exposing her throat to his lips, his teeth. She gloried in his familiar touch, his familiar scent.
So enticingly familiar that he slipped past her defenses as easily as a hushed whisper.
“You don’t love him.” He nibbled at the tender patch of skin beneath her ear as his knuckles skimmed her breast. “You love me.”
She tugged at his shirttail. “Lust.” A button, then two, plinked to the floor. She recognized his goal. He used what had always been, in his mind, his greatest source of power over her. Thank God he didn’t know she had lied about marrying Crawford.
He was right; she did love him. Too much to ever marry another man.
She would simply never let him know the real power he held over her.
He choose that moment—as if he sensed her retreat—to pull the ties of her corset and tug the material lower, exposing her breasts to his expectant fingers, his ravenous mouth. Cool air puckered her nipples, then his lips arrived, warming her to the depths of her soul.
And shattering her control.
Arching into his body, she complied, reason rushing out, need rushing in. Need her body remembered even if her mind didn’t want to. Images that felt foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. Fevered sighs, tortured sounds of longing. The scrape of stubble against her skin...his tongue circling, flicking over her nipple...her fingers splayed across his lean belly...sliding lower, tracing the trail of hair...his hands plucking at her corset...it dangling, falling to the floor...his lips, moist and desperate, licking, sucking, moving lower.
She moaned in anticipation.
He came up for air, gasping. “Princess...the shades are drawn, but....” He gazed into her eyes, dipped his head, and captured her lips again.
She wanted to climb inside him, have him climb inside her. Her pulse pounded in her head, her heart in her chest. Loud, unsteady. Curling her arm around his neck, the one beneath his shirt circled his waist. Quivers shook the muscles in his back, shook the arms that held her. Moist skin. Hot. Sliding, bending, his hips met hers and began a deliberate grind, his tongue matching the rhythm. He tasted of mint and man. So good.
He slid his hands to her buttocks and lifted, nestling himself between her tender folds. A ragged sound crawled from his throat as he kissed her, teeth and tongue and lips. She mimicked his movements until they rocked together in perfect accord. His passion did not frighten her; every move he made left her aching.
Made her wish again, desperately, for that damned tiny bed of his.
“The door” —he sucked her bottom lip between his teeth— “isn’t locked.” His hands rose to her bared breasts, his thumbs teasing her nipples in time with the cadence of his hips.
She pulled his shirt free of his trousers and began unfastening his fly. “Closed. The office is closed. No one” —she freed one button— “no one will come in.” Trembling, she worked hard on the next.
He reared back, chest heaving. A moist sheen covered his jaw; his eyes glowed, deep blue and wild. Releasing a shuttered breath, he searched her face. “Thank God,” he whispered and grasped her hand, pulling her, stumbling, behind him. Into a cramped room filled with faded newsprint and the smell of ink. He lifted her, placing her on a desk shoved against the wall. With a swift kick, he closed the door and half-turned, crushing his mouth to hers before she could anchor her heels on the wooden drawers.
“I want you,” he said against her lips, his hands rising to cup her jaw. His fingers quivered, tensed against her skin. “So damn much. God, I can’t tell you how much.”
With a sigh of agreement, she slipped his braces from his shoulders. His crisp cotton shirt followed. She wanted to purr, wanted him to growl. Tried to make him by streaking her nails across his chest. His heartbeat hammered beneath her palm. Three hard thumps. “Take...me...then.”
And she meant it.
He dropped his brow to hers. The tantalizing scent of soap clung to his jaw. “I don’t want to make a mistake...with you. I can’t think clearly. I never expected to be with you, like this, again.”
She could not bear to imagine how troubled, or how sincere, he sounded. If she had to endure life without the man she loved, why not take one final, beautiful memory with her?
Not willing to waste another moment, she decided to play dirty by sliding her hand into his gaping trouser fly. Through a paltry woolen layer, he pulsed, hard and long. She traced the rounded tip, rubbed her thumb over the swollen vein ridging the back. She remembered, oh, she remembered. Knew how to push him over the edge before he realized what hit him. Or had time to deny what he wanted.
What they needed.
“Jesus, Princess.” His hands yanked fistfuls of skirt, petticoat, and chemise to her waist. Splaying her legs wide, he cupped her bottom and drew her close, flush. He rubbed himself against her, rocking back and forth, on his feet from heel to toe.
A faultless, two-pieces-of-a-puzzle fit.
Her toes curled inside soft leather. All else faded in a flurry: fevered touches, ardent moans, the whisper of cloth crushed between damp, grinding skin, the creak and wobble of the desk.
“Now,” he said, bending to draw her nipple between his teeth. “I need you now, Princess, before....” His words faded into vague, meaningless murmurs, muffled against the plump mound.
He shuddered when her fingers curved around his buttocks, nails digging deep. She acted on instinct alone, her hands going to his hips as she trailed kisses along his temple and the curve of his cheek. Salt and soap blossomed on her tongue. “Now, love,” she said, realizing it exited her lips as a desperate plea.
He lifted his head, his hair tickling her lips, the tip of her nose. He found her mouth, distracted, bracing his knees against the desk, fiddling with his trousers. She felt the brush of a hard knuckle, the press of metal buttons—a sharp contrast against heated skin—then, his erection sprang free, nudging her thigh. Pausing, his piercing blue gaze searched her face, dipped to her breasts, lifted.
He’s beautiful, she thought, raising her hand, tracing the angry scar on his brow, skimming her thumb across his lips. He turned his head, pressed a soft kiss to her wrist, black hair glisten
ing against his flushed cheek.
His fingers moved between her legs, seeking, probing. She gasped and arched as he slid a finger inside, arranging a gentle, steady rhythm. Gripping his arms, she dropped her head to his shoulder and drew a ragged breath scented with the mix of their bodies. “Please,” she heard herself say, leg climbing higher, locking in place just below the rounded curve of his buttocks. Pulling, she urged him closer.
God, she was wet. Slick. Near to peaking. She whimpered, her lips moving against his neck. With impatient jerks, she propelled him forward. He laughed, loving her uninhibited exuberance.
As always, loving her.
Afraid he would hurt her—recalling her delicious tightness—he forced his mind, his body, to go slowly. He tipped her hips and guided himself through crisp hair and moist folds, until he met her center. Squeezing his eyes shut, he thrust, inch by inch—a disciplined glide along a sleek canal. Her hands tensed around his arms, her head dropped to his shoulder. Soft mews vibrated in her throat as he came to rest, hip to hip.
The powerful sensation hit him just as hard and he shuddered, the quiver snaking its way from his toes to his lips, releasing in an unbridled moan. Being with her, buried deep, made every woman in his past seem absurd. Meaningless. For two years, he’d taken her in the darkness, her sighs filling his ears, her taste filling his mouth.
Her love filling his heart.
He withdrew as far as he could. She shifted and sucked him back in like a drawn breath. Damn, this old desk is the perfect height. He tried to picture all the desks he’d seen in his life and the rooms they had occupied, anything but her stretched around him, pulsing, thigh muscles jumping, heel digging into his buttocks, nipples scratching his chest.
She nipped his neck, her hands gliding down his back, taking hold of his hips and rocking. “Harder,” she whispered, driving against him, frantic bursts of air batting his cheek.
“I remember, Princess.” Unable to deny her, unable to deny himself, he clasped her to him and began a steady, pounding rhythm. Deep, fluid strokes, ones she matched without hesitation. Compliant harmony.