Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  He was skirting around it again, denying good intentions and his feelings. She wasn’t about to let him, at least not easily.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Pierce sat up and hooked a thumb on the corner of her jersey. With a good tug, he pulled her to him. Laughing, she came willingly. He slipped his free hand under the jersey and up her thigh.

  “And you know what I mean.”

  Last night he’d denied himself because she had needed him to. This morning, his desire was ripe and so was she. He could feel her nipples brush up against his chest, and that sent needs running through him. Instantly.

  “Why don’t you check on Christopher, satisfy yourself that he’s all right, and then come back here. We can discuss my payment for scouring the semi-sleeping city for a cold mist vaporizer last night.” He let his hands slide slowly down the length of her body.

  Amanda felt herself responding to him. Just a single touch, that’s all it took, and the throbbing began. “Did I thank you for that?”

  His eyes tore away her jersey, seeing her the way she’d been for a moment last night. Soft, vulnerable. Tempting. “No, but you can once you get back.”

  Amanda moved away from him and off the bed with effort. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Pierce leaned back and laced his hands behind his neck. “I’ll be here.”

  As she approached Christopher’s bedroom, Amanda could hear the soothing hum of the vaporizer through the door. Opening it slowly, she quietly crept into the room. It was like moving through the Everglades in the middle of summer. The air felt heavy with mist. It was covering almost everything in the room.

  She was going to have to dry the carpet, she thought, looking down at the darkening semicircle around the side of the crib. But the important thing was that Christopher seemed to be better. His breathing was even and he was still asleep.

  Smiling to herself, Amanda eased out of the room and closed the door.

  Pierce looked up when she reentered the bedroom. “Well?”

  Amanda slid fluidly onto the bed. “He’s asleep and his breathing’s normal.”

  Pierce looked pleased. “What did I tell you?”

  There were no words to express the gratitude she felt for what he’d done for her. There was no way even to begin. Tucking her feet under her, she sat down before him. Tiny pricks of excitement began to jab through her.

  “That thing with the shower—how’d you know what to do?”

  Pierce slowly began to trail his hands over her. He felt excitement drumming impatient fingers through him, but he maintained a slow, steady tempo.

  “I’m just naturally brilliant.” He laughed as she arched a dubious brow. With a tug, he settled her against him. “I also saw a nun do it at an orphanage in the Ukraine while I was doing a three-parter on conditions there.” He remembered the appalling squalor he’d seen in remote parts of that country. It was hard to conceive of human life surviving in places like that. Yet somehow, it managed. “Except they didn’t have a real shower. She rigged up something with a garden hose hanging over the curtain rod. But it did the trick.”

  He smiled as he thought of the nun. “Sister Maria Elena. Must’ve been at least seventy. She was a tough old lady, ran that orphanage like a military camp. But she managed to keep those kids clothed and fed, against all odds.”

  Amanda cupped her hand along his cheek. She wished she could have met the woman who’d so earned his respect. He certainly didn’t give it easily. “Sounds like an admirable woman.”

  Pierce captured her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm. He rolled her words over in his mind. “Yeah, I guess there are a few around at that.”

  For once, she could easily read between the lines. “Don’t like women much, do you?”

  He grinned broadly. He wasn’t in the mood for serious conversation. He was in the mood to lose himself in her. “I love women.” He ran a possessive hand over her hip. “They’re much curvier and softer than men.”

  “I used the word like, not love.”

  Looking over his past history, at the women who had figured prominently in his life—his mother, who had deserted him; his grandmother, who had abused him; and his ex-wife, who had cheated on him—Amanda could see why he didn’t exactly hold the gender in high regard.

  No, he didn’t like women, Pierce thought, but he didn’t feel like talking about it. There was no point. It was all philosophical anyway.

  “Trying to analyze me, Mandy?”

  “Maybe.” He kissed her throat and her eyes fluttered shut for a moment. He was pressing her buttons again, and she was helpless. Her voice grew thick with desire. “Maybe I’m just trying to understand you so I know whether or not I’m being a fool.”

  Pierce dove his fingers into her hair and framed her face. For a moment, he just looked at her—at the determined chin, the clear eyes.

  “Not you, Mandy. You’re nobody’s fool.” Maybe that’s why he kept coming back. Because she didn’t allow herself to be used, and yet was still here for him. It was a powerful aphrodisiac.

  She frowned as unwanted memories surfaced. “I was Jeff’s.”

  He didn’t want to hear about Jeff, or anyone else in her life. He only cared about now. There was no tomorrow, no yesterday. They had only this moment. That was the way it had always been. No plans, no regrets. No ties. He wanted to keep it that way.

  “You were younger.”

  “I was in love.” Amanda searched his face, looking for something he wouldn’t show her. “That’s very dangerous for intelligence. Intelligence seems to shut down in the face of a strong emotion.” Like now.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  The lie came so easily to his tongue, he almost believed it. The fact was, he thought he did know. And he didn’t want to. He was still grappling with the unwanted emotion and the fear that knowing he was getting tangled up with her created.

  Every ounce of reason within him told Pierce to leave. It was just his body, he maintained, that was urging him to stay. But even as he spun that excuse for himself, he knew better. Virile, with healthy, active hormones, he’d still never been the prisoner of his urges, not even when he was younger.

  What was happening to him went beyond sexual enjoyment, beyond even a passing infatuation. It was more. And because it was more, he was afraid.

  He saw the flicker of disappointment pass through her eyes at his words. He couldn’t help that, he told himself. He’d warned her. She knew what he was like. She knew he couldn’t love anyone.

  Pierce began to slowly slide the jersey up her body. “Now, are you bent on talking away whatever free time I have left, woman, or are we going to do something constructive with it?”

  Pulling it over her head, Pierce tossed her jersey to the floor. She sat before him, nude and tempting, an ice cream sundae set before a man who was dying for even the smallest of licks.

  The very heat from his eyes was warming her. Leaning over, her breasts brushing along his arm, sensitizing his skin, she began to unbutton his shirt.

  “Constructive?” she echoed. “I never heard it called that before.”

  Impatient, he shrugged out of his shirt. Balling it up, he threw it next to her jersey. Amanda’s hand pressed against his abdomen as she slid her fingers to the top of his slacks.

  She was going to make him beg, he thought, feeling his blood surging through his loins. “There’re lots of names for it,” he said.

  Loosening his belt, Amanda placed the tip of her finger on the zipper and slowly moved it down. She slipped her hand inside.

  “Like?” she prompted.

  Fire flashed through him when she touched him. He saw the satisfaction come into her eyes and he almost laughed, enjoying her pleasure.

  “Right now, all I can think of is you.” He pulled her down on top of him and lost himself in the taste of her mouth.

  This time, the lovemaking evolved slowly, as if there were time, all the time in the world. As if there were no clocks ticking for
either of them.

  He let himself taste every part of her, sampling, nibbling, savoring. A deep fulfillment spread through him as desire bloomed like a spring flower. The sensation held him in awe.

  With a gentle hand, Pierce explored what he already knew, and took what was already his. Amanda was like warm water in his hands, soft and fluid. She seemed to second-guess all his needs, all his moves; she was right there with him—not ahead, not behind, but with him.

  She was his soulmate.

  But when Amanda moved on top of him, straddling him like a horse she intended to ride, she managed to catch him by surprise.

  Delighted, he kneaded her buttocks, gripping her warm flesh. “Something new, Mandy?”

  “Always,” she murmured.

  She felt both drugged and drunk on his Iovemaking. Her hair hung down both sides of her face like a blond curtain as she placed her hands on his chest and balanced herself above him. “With you, always. The familiar becomes different.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Tangling a hand in her hair, he brought her mouth down to his and mercifully stopped thinking about anything except the wildness she aroused.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  The hours knitted themselves into days, and somehow two weeks passed by.

  Amanda felt like she was going stir-crazy.

  Stone had gotten in contact with the station and had presented their terms. Wheels, as predicted, were turning slowly—far too slowly for Amanda’s taste. She wanted an instant confrontation, an explosion; she wanted to have it all over with now. But the law didn’t work that way, Stone counseled her.

  How well she knew that. The law was slow, cold, methodical, and often plodding. The same adjectives she would have used to describe her father. Though now in Dallas indefinitely, Henry Foster had made no attempt to contact his only daughter, or to see the grandson he’d never met.

  That, more than anything, Amanda couldn’t forgive him for.

  “Poor Christopher,” she murmured, watching the boy play on the floor next to her. “Forsaken by both your father and your grandfather.” She sighed. “It’s not an easy life, sweetie.”

  Her thoughts drifted to Pierce and what he had endured as a little boy. Unloved, unwanted, always in everyone’s way. What a horrible life for a child. It was a wonder he hadn’t grown up to be a homicidal maniac. At least Christopher had her and knew that he was loved.

  She ruffled the boy’s head. He looked up at her and grinned. “You’ll always have lots of love,” she assured him. “I love you, Christopher.”

  “Love you, Mama,” he parroted.

  She’d taught him to say that, taught him the words from the very beginning so that they would always be part of his life. He was always going to know love and accept it as part of his due.

  Not like Pierce, she thought, who resisted it now that it was finally being offered to him.

  Contrary to her lawyer’s advice, Amanda had seen Pierce frequently during this exile. Try as she might to resist—and she wasn’t trying nearly as hard as she had earlier—Amanda would find herself either going to his apartment or opening her door to discover Pierce standing on her doorstep.

  He was part of her life now. She knew it was only a temporary arrangement, but she’d take it on any terms it was given. She cared for him, wanted him, and even if it could only be for a short time, better that than not at all.

  She knew that on some level, this whole situation disturbed Pierce. He didn’t like patterns, and he was falling into one. It was making him feel trapped. She could see it in his eyes.

  Yet he was here, and it was enough.

  What a stupid thing it had been to fall in love with him, she thought with a sigh. She knew that when he left—and he would—she was going to feel lost.

  Though she didn’t say anything to Pierce that in her opinion might inadvertently be used against her, seeing him so frequently was having an adverse effect on her case.

  Amanda was beginning to have doubts about going on with it.

  Anyway she looked at it, she was in a catch-22 situation. If she continued to pursue the case and won back her position, Pierce would be out of a job; at the very least, he would lose the high-profile position that anchoring the six o’clock news afforded. The worst-case scenario was that he’d leave the station altogether and go off to God knows where. The very thought made her melancholy.

  Career moves aside, there was the matter of his pride to deal with. His pride was at once both very delicate and steely. Could Pierce handle being bested by her in public? It would have been a difficult enough matter to deal with in private, much less having it splashed across the newspapers.

  She thought of the small boy he’d been. His pride had been all that had seen him out of that backwater town in Georgia. Amanda didn’t relish going up against it.

  And that was what it all boiled down to, in the absolute sense: him against her. More than anything, she didn’t want it to be that way.

  Amanda closed her eyes. She could just hear the feminists railing against her, vilifying her for the way she felt. But being old-fashioned had nothing to do with it. It was a matter of being logical and facing reality. Where could a relationship go after a man felt he’d been humiliated by a woman? She didn’t know and she was afraid of finding out the answer.

  All she did know was that she wanted this relationship to grow, to thrive.

  Despite the case, despite anything he might or might not have had to do with it, she knew she loved Pierce. After Jeff, she’d been sure she would never fall in love again. But she had. Deeply. Did she want to win her case more than she wanted his love?

  But would she ever even have his love? At least her career was tangible. Pierce had gone out of his way to tell her that he couldn’t love anyone, that he didn’t want to. Then again, for that matter, neither did she, and here she was, hip-deep in it anyway.

  But Pierce was different.

  His actions indicated that he cared for her, but maybe that was just his way. The bottom line was that he’d never told her he loved her. And even if he did say the words, could she risk believing him?

  He had, after all, accepted her job. If the tables had been turned, she knew she would have never done that in his place, no matter what the reason. By turning the job down, he would have given her a show of support.

  But taking it was just a smart move on his part, she reminded herself. His rationalization throbbed in her brain.

  Damn, but she was confused.

  She looked listlessly around the living room. She had too much time to do nothing but think, to do battle with shadows and vacillate. She was on the telephone to Stone’s office three times a week. Stone continued to tell her the same thing—to leave everything in his hands, to do nothing. And the one thing he had instructed her to do, she hadn’t done: She hadn’t stopped seeing Pierce.

  Amanda sighed. It wasn’t going well.

  She wasn’t meant to just sit around and watch life pass by without her. She had a need to be out there, amid the stories, amid the pulse of the city, at least once in a while.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top. Maybe she should just quit this whole thing and go back to journalism. Amanda turned the idea over in her head, toying with it. She could find a little newspaper somewhere in a small town and write columns for it.

  The hell she could.

  She wasn’t the small-town type any more than she was a big-league baseball player. What she was was a newscaster without a news program.

  Amanda watched Christopher begin to destroy the city they had spent the better part of an hour building out of large Lego blocks.

  Forcing her problems to the back of her mind, she laughed as Christopher toppled a blue skyscraper. Turning, she raised her voice so that it would carry into the kitchen. “I think we’re raising another Rodan, Carla. All he likes to do is smash things.”

  Christopher grinned at his mother over his shoulder and then demolished a
squat orange building that Amanda had designated as a firehouse.

  Amanda leaned against the back of the sofa and watched him continue to reduce the rest of the city to rubble, squealing with delight as he did it. It was wonderful seeing him look so healthy. He’d taken only three days to bounce back from his bout with the croup.

  Even that reminded her of Pierce. It seemed as if Pierce was taking over all the corners of her mind, forcing everything else into the background. A small, niggling voice whispered that maybe he wanted it that way. For his own reasons. Amanda dragged her hands through her hair, wishing she could clear her mind just as easily.

  “I can’t wait to see what he’s going to be like when he grows up,” Carla called from die kitchen. Her statement was punctuated by the clatter of a pot being loudly placed on a burner.

  “I can.” Amanda scooted closer to her son again. “Don’t grow up too fast, Christopher,” she whispered to him, “no matter what I say when I’m upset. Okay?”

  His palm hovered over the last remaining building in the city. “Okay, Mama.” The blocks toppled, to his obvious satisfaction.

  The doorbell rang. Amanda hurried to her feet, glancing at her watch. It was too early for Pierce and too late for the mail. Her life had been reduced to a waiting game. Like a prisoner behind bars, she was waiting for people and things to come to her.

  It had to stop. She needed to get back among the living, and soon.

  Hoping it was Pierce even though the odds were against it, she unlocked the door. It wasn’t Pierce.

  “Paul, what are you doing here?” Amanda opened the door wider to let him in. She smiled as he entered. “Taking the day off?”

  He strolled in, a little more cocky than usual. “Yeah, permanently.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Amanda slowly closed the door. “What do you mean?”

  Paul hooked his thumbs on his belt. “Grimsley’s pretty uptight about the lawsuit. Seems he has more eyes and ears than we thought he did, people desperate to hang on to their jobs.”