by Dorie Graham
She’d come to embrace the world. She’d been the one to leave this time, so why did her heart feel as though she’d torn it out herself and stomped on it?
Dylan didn’t need her anymore. He had Evelyn now. He had the chance to reconcile with his family—find the connection and sense of belonging he’d been missing. She’d done the right thing to leave. It would be nice to get back to her apartment and see how Tess and Erin were faring.
Maybe she’d pay Maggie a visit at Sophie’s. What was that mother of hers up to? Surely she had some new masterpiece to share. She missed her, actually missed her. Warmth filled Nikki’s chest as she stood facing a walk-in closet filled with a stranger’s belongings.
She loved Maggie. She loved her mother. With that acknowledgment came the acceptance of her gift. In one peaceful moment Nikki found acceptance for it all—for the mother who had dragged them from home to home, lover to lover, and for the gift of healing she’d passed on to her daughters.
“So this is how to let go,” she murmured.
Maggie was dating a new man but, by her own admission, was taking things slower this time—savoring it was how she’d put it. That had sparked an entire conversation on savoring men. Even Sophie had joined in.
Longing swelled in Nikki’s heart. Oh, what a savory man Dylan was.
“So what do you think?” Ginger peered at her.
“Oh.” Nikki glanced around the spacious bedroom. “It’s nice.”
“Nice is for aunts and birthday presents you wished you hadn’t gotten.”
“I’m sorry, Ginger. I was hoping we’d find something that would knock me off my feet, but I guess I’m just not in the mood to do this today.”
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with one hot ex-attorney we both know?”
Nikki stared at her a moment, not sure how to respond. “I have never been so turned around and clueless in my life.”
“Love will do that to you.”
Love? Nikki blinked. Of course, love—she did love Dylan, probably had for a long time. “Yes, I suppose it will. Can I ask you something?”
“Fire away. I’ve been married five times and loved deeply every time. I’m an expert.”
“Is there any price too high to pay for that kind of love—you know, the kind that lifts you up, turns you around, then drops you like a roller coaster until you’re all confused and can’t imagine life without that person?”
“That’s too easy. No, there is no price too high for that kind of love.”
Ginger’s cell phone rang from inside her purse. She excused herself to answer it, but her eyes widened and she motioned to Nikki. “Actually she’s right here. Do you want me to put her on? Oh…okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
She rattled off an address that sounded vaguely familiar, then hung up and turned to Nikki, a smile lighting up her face. “That was him.”
“Who?”
“Dylan. How many hot ex-attorneys do you know?”
“What did he want?”
“Well, you evidently.”
“Why didn’t he ask to talk to me?”
“I guess whatever he has to say, he wants to say in person. He’s on his way.”
“ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT me to stick around?” Ginger’s gaze had that same hopeful appeal it had held earlier.
“I’m not so sure I want to stick around.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You have to at least hear the man out.” She raised her eyes to the sky. “To be young and in love again.”
“You know, love knows no boundaries, Ginger. My mother falls in love at least once every few months. There’s always hope.”
“Hope won’t even get me a cup of coffee.” She straightened at the sound of squealing tires.
Dylan’s car rounded the corner, then came to a screeching halt in front of them. Nikki turned to Ginger. “Thanks so much. I’m sorry about that first deal falling through, but I’ll call you when I’m ready to start looking again.”
Ginger nodded as Dylan stepped out of the car. “Hello, handsome.” She winked at him as he moved beside Nikki.
“Ginger.” He nodded to her.
A bird cawed overhead. Ginger stood smiling at them. The breeze teased around them. After a moment, she straightened. “Okay, then, guess I’ll be going and leave you two youngsters alone…by yourselves…to discuss whatever it is that you might want to discuss. Although maybe you want to find a private spot to have this discussion instead of by the side of the street, where anyone passing by might be privy to your conversation…about whatever is so important that you had to come flying over here like a bat out of hell.”
Nikki gave her a wide-eyed look. “Thank you, Ginger. You have a nice evening.”
“Right. I’ll just go ahead and leave now.” With that she waved her final goodbye, headed across the street to her car with a backward glance or two. Her engine fired and a moment later she was gone.
A lawn mower started somewhere in the distance and the scent of barbecue drifted on the breeze. Dylan toed a stone into the gutter. “You left me.”
“Yes, I did.”
His gaze pinned her. “Why?”
Why had she left? Her reasoning seemed jumbled and nonsensical standing here beside him, his virile presence overwhelming her senses, confusing the issues.
“Well?”
“You don’t need me anymore, Dylan.”
“The hell I don’t.”
“What about Evelyn?”
“What about Evelyn?”
She shrugged. “She may not have always had the best intentions, but no one is all bad. I’m sure there’s something good in her. She’s your people. She’s in love with you. I heard you talking. I saw you embracing.”
“First of all, that was her talking, not me. If you’d listened to the whole conversation, you’d know that hug was me telling her goodbye and wishing her well. I forgive her for anything she may have done and I wish her well. Mainly I wish her out of my life.”
“Are you sure?”
“Maybe I tried to be her people—my parents’ people—for a while, but I was really never one of them. Thank God they sent me away, so they could be less of an influence on me while I was growing up.” He gripped her arms and turned her toward him. “She’s not my people and she doesn’t love me. She loves the idea of me—the image I put out there all those years in my pathetic attempt to gain acceptance.”
“But you want to feel connected. They’re your family. How can you just turn your back on them? Maybe I encouraged it after that party, when they were so cold and bitter, but I was wrong. Family is family.”
“I’m just taking a break from them. Let them miss me and appreciate me while I’m not around. I want to start a family of my own, have a couple of rug rats. Not because my mother will drop down on her knees and beg to be a part of her grandchildren’s lives, but because I really want to have children of my own…with the woman I love.”
He embraced her and pressed his forehead to hers. “With you.”
“Dylan—”
He drew back far enough to make eye contact. “Wait. I’m not finished. I know this may be a lot to spring on you at once, but I’m feeling pretty good right now and it’s all thanks to you. The shadow’s gone.
“See?” His hand pressed the center of his chest. “I figured it out. There was this door I’d shut and forgotten about—both figuratively and literally. I never said goodbye to her. I just closed the door and I never really dealt with it.”
She smoothed her hand over his. It was true. The darkness had left him. “So it was Kathy.”
“I had to let her go. I didn’t even realize I was holding on so tight. But I did it, Nikki. I opened that door and I looked through her things. I packed them up…and I said goodbye.”
“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”
“So.” He cocked his head.
“So.”
“It’s really hot out here.”
“Miami in July.”
&n
bsp; “Will you marry me, Nikki? Have a family with me?”
Her heart swelled. “It is a lot to spring on me, especially when I couldn’t commit to living with you.”
“Okay, we can start there. Baby steps, if that’s what you need. As long as you’re with me, I can be a patient man. Just promise me you’ll consider it.”
“Ultimately nothing’s changed.”
“Sure it has. I’m healed and I still want you, like I said I would.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t know what this means.” She shook her head. “You’re supposed to be off conquering the world.”
“But I do want to conquer the world. I just want you by my side while I do it.” He straightened. “So what does this mean in terms of your gift?”
“I’m not sure, but if I stay with you, it could mean that I lose my gift.”
His expression fell and sadness again swirled around him, though it was a sadness of a different sort. “I hadn’t thought of that and I won’t ask it of you.”
Could she give up the gift? It had been more of a curse than a blessing, except when it came to Dylan. If she couldn’t be with Dylan, would she want to share her gift with another man? The answer came to her with a certainty she couldn’t deny.
“You don’t have to ask me to give it up,” she said. “I do it freely.”
“Nikki, are you sure?”
She gazed into his eyes and his love radiated out to her, enveloped her. How could she ever have doubted it? “Yes, I’m sure. I love you, Dylan.”
He pulled her to him and his mouth closed over hers, his tongue stealing in to dance with hers, stroking, teasing, evoking that heat. After an endless time, she pulled back and fanned herself. “Oh my, it is awfully warm out here.”
He grinned. “Miami in July. I know a place that stays pretty well refrigerated. Want to go?”
“How do you afford the electric bill?”
“Well, I’m now a starving wannabe architect. I may have to take up a collection.”
“Are you really starving?” She eyed him with skepticism. “You look hearty and hale to me.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m not starving, except perhaps for you.”
“Well, then, let’s go enjoy the feast of a lifetime.”
“IT IS COLD IN HERE.” NIKKI shivered as Dylan pressed her to the wall and nibbled a path along her neck.
They had barely made it through the door, but at least they were home. He murmured her name as he slipped her top over her head. His breath fanned across her chest and he unfastened her bra with the flick of his fingers.
“Oh…that’s nice.” She rolled her head back as he suckled her with abandon, teasing one nipple into a hard peak with the steady stroke of his tongue while his fingers played havoc over the other.
“Look at you.” He leaned back to gaze at his handiwork.
Warmth filled her at the sight of the beaded tips, wet with his loving. Then she shivered again as a cool blast of air hit her. “Okay, if I’m going shirtless, then so are you.”
He let her yank off his shirt, then it was no holds barred as they stripped each other, clothes flying and temperatures rising. As he knelt to help her step from her panties, his breath brushed her triangle of hair. She shivered.
With a soft moan he nuzzled her there, parting her thighs and bracing her leg over his shoulder. His mouth took her with a hunger that left her weak, breathless. He laved every inch of her, taking his time to trace each fold, to circle her clit with the pointed tip of his tongue.
Her blood warmed and liquid pooled from her. He drank from her desire, telling her with the stroke of his tongue, the touch of his hands, that he indeed wanted her.
She closed her eyes and basked in his giving. The heat and tension built inside her until she moaned and moved against him, straining for release.
He granted it to her in a moment of blinding ecstasy as she came against his mouth, her hands buried in his hair. Still he knelt before her, his lips on her, calming her, caressing her most private center with gentle kisses.
At long last he rose and took her hand. On unsteady legs she followed him, not to the bedroom they had shared but upstairs to the room at the end of the hall. She stopped as they neared the open door.
“Dylan, are you sure?”
He cupped her face and his love flowed over her. “I promise, there are no ghosts.”
She nodded and he led her inside. Light spilled across the walls from a large bay window. She glanced around, amazed at how much he had transformed the space in the short expanse of the afternoon. Not a trace of Kathy remained.
The furniture had been removed and a large futon occupied the spot that had housed the bed. Dylan led her to the soft cushions and she lay down with him. All thoughts of the room and its former occupant fled as he touched her, kissed her, stroked her to the brink of climax again.
At some point he readied himself and slipped into her when she thought she’d die of need. He filled her, stretched her and touched her in all the right places, in all the right ways. He moved in and out of her with long, smooth motions. She braced her feet against the futon and met him thrust for thrust, and when his hand fisted in her hair and his body tensed in orgasm, she came along with him, carried away in a rainbow of light and sensation.
When his breathing calmed and he’d eased his weight off her, he traced the line of her cheek. “So do I take this as a yes?”
She glanced at him in question and he grinned. “Are we taking baby steps? Are you ready to move in on a trial basis?”
“Oh, actually the answer to that would be no.”
“No?”
“No. If we’re going to have any rug rats, we should definitely commit for the long haul.”
A smile burst across his face. “Are you saying yes, you’ll marry me?”
“And have your children. Granted, I think that we should do in steps. Have one and see how it goes before we commit to another.”
“Oh, you’ll want at least two.”
“Maybe.”
“So maybe we should go ahead and give it a try.”
“Give what a try?”
“Getting pregnant.”
She rubbed his nose with hers, then leaned back to see him better. “Let’s wait a while for that. I want you to myself for now, and with my luck, you’ll be some one-shot wonder.”
A slow smile broke across his face. “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
“No.” She smiled back at him. “Maybe being a one-shot wonder isn’t a bad thing at all.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6334-9
THE MORNING AFTER
Copyright © 2005 by Dorene Graham.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18