For All of Her Life

by Heather Graham

  But it didn’t matter. The figure turned in silence, and fled, slipping out of the bedroom door so quickly that it was only a matter of seconds before she began to wonder if she had dreamed the intruder along with the past.

  For several long moments, she lay in bed, shaking.

  She leapt up then and walked out to the hallway in her bare feet. No one about. She walked down the hall to Jordan’s office, Jeremy’s room for the night. She hesitated, then twisted the knob and went in. Jeremy’s head rested on his pillow, the sheets were drawn to his shoulders. She came closer to him and listened to his deep breathing. He was definitely asleep and had been.

  Jordan? What the hell was he up to? Should she go back to bed or walk over and confront him?

  It suddenly seemed to her that their pasts had been a series of unspoken accusations. Whatever happened between them, she wasn’t going that route again.

  She left Jeremy’s room and walked purposefully along the hallway to the stairs, down them and to the kitchen. Jordan had keyed in the alarm at the kitchen door. The little red light meant he had done it to protect those sleeping within the house. She hesitated a second, wondering if he might have changed things in the past decade and if she might not bring the police force down on them. She punched in the old number and the light flicked off. He hadn’t changed the code. She slipped outside and over to the guest house.

  The door was unlocked. She started up the stairs, then paused. She could hear movement, sounds. She hesitated, chilled, then became too warm as a strange heat swept through her. Was he alone?

  She started to turn away, but one of the sounds seemed like a groan—not one denoting ecstasy. He might be in some kind of deep and private pain. She had seen him twist, heard him moan before.

  What if she was wrong? If he was with someone, if Tara had arrived early, if...

  He groaned again.

  Kathy rushed up the stairs, pausing at the landing to catch her breath and stare across the room.

  Jordan was alone. In bed. His body was sleekly bathed in sweat, he had been tossing and turning so that he had kicked off his sheets. He was dreaming, in a nightmare. She had seen him this way before, but it had been very long ago, right after he had come back from Vietnam.

  She wasn’t his wife anymore, she shouldn’t be here. If they hadn’t already had the strange experience of sudden sex after a decade apart she would have felt very awkward indeed.

  But he was in pain. And she had already seen his sweat-sheened body tonight. To walk away would be—

  Churlish.

  She could not do it.

  “Jordan!” She knelt at the side of the bed, softly touching his face, his cheek, trying to wake him gently. “Jordan, you’re dreaming. Jordan...”

  He bolted up suddenly, eyes wild. They landed on her. For a moment Kathy thought he was lost in time. Then he blinked. His broad-shouldered frame shuddered, and he shook his head, shaking away the dream.

  “Kathy,” he murmured. “Kathy...” Then, “What happened? Hmmm. Maybe I’m nicer than I thought. You left Muscleman to come back to me?”

  “Damn you, Jordan, you were in the middle of a nightmare and I was trying to help you.”

  “Thank you. But why are you here?”

  She stood, irritated by her previous desire to ease him from the dark grips of his dream. The kindness was backfiring on her now. “There was a man in my room.”

  “I thought you invited him.”

  “Jeremy was not the man in my room.”

  “You invited another man?”

  “Jordan, I’m going to slap you in a minute.” It was quite obvious that he didn’t believe her.

  “There was a man in your room, uninvited. In the middle of the night, in a house with an alarm. Well, did Jeremy catch him?”

  “Jeremy is sleeping. I was sleeping. I looked up, and someone was in my room. I thought it was you.”

  His eyes lowered suddenly. “I’ve been right here,” he said, his tone somewhat bitter.

  “I can see that,” Kathy told him. Irritably, she clutched the tousled sheets and threw them over his body.

  “Tempted?” he asked her pleasantly.

  “Jordan, damn you—”

  “I am,” he said very softly, suddenly smiling in a way that caught her entirely off guard.

  Leave it to Jordan. Even when he was somewhat embarrassed at being caught in the middle of such a wretched dream. What had the nightmare been? He wasn’t going to share it with her, so it seemed, and was determined to taunt her instead.

  “Don’t you think we’ve been foolish enough for one night?” she asked him.

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to slap you at any instant Jordan, I saw someone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She started to say that she was, then paused. She wasn’t. She’d been dreaming herself. Haunted by the past. By a houseful of people. By a night that had exploded on them all.

  “I thought I was sure.”

  He shifted over to one side of the bed, drawing the sheet tightly over him so that he looked decent. He patted the bed beside him. “Sit, tell me what you think you saw.”

  She looked at the bed. “Sit?”

  “Lie, then. Want me to make coffee?”

  “I’m probably up because of the coffee.”

  “It was decaf. The company is probably overstimulating.”

  “Jordan—”

  “Kathy, please come here. Lie down, relax. I just—”

  “Just what?”

  He shrugged. A slow smile curved his mouth. “Lie next to me. Talk to me. Let me hold you. Auld lang syne. I always wanted to protect you, you know. Be the great provider, make the shadows in the night go away.”

  She hesitated, then slipped down beside him. Resting her head on the pillow, she gave in to sheer longing and turned against him, her head and face nuzzling his chest, her body close to his, his arms around her, his long fingers moving through her hair.

  “Jordan, this is insane. What are we doing?”

  “Does it matter? We are adults.”

  “And we have separate lives. There are... there are others to worry about now.”

  “He shouldn’t have left you.”

  “What?”

  “Muscleman. He shouldn’t have left you to the shadows of the night.”

  “And what about Miss April?”

  He hesitated. “She isn’t here.”

  “Jordan, does it make this right?”

  “Does it make it wrong?”

  “Well, actually... yes.”

  He didn’t say anything right away. Didn’t agree with her, didn’t disagree.

  “Kathy,” he said huskily at last, “it’s good to hold you. I always loved you so very much.”

  The burning of tears stung her eyelids. She tightened her jaw. “When you didn’t think I was sleeping with Keith.”

  “Kathy—”

  “I don’t think I realized until now that you really went farther than suspicion. You had condemned me.”

  “I hadn’t.”

  “I believe you did.”

  “I don’t know what I thought back then.”

  “Which would have been worse—that I’d somehow killed him or that I’d slept with him?”

  “Kathy...” He groaned.

  She suddenly pushed up and straddled him, staring down at him, demanding an answer. For a moment, there might not have been a Miss April or a borrowed Muscleman. It was amazing how the closeness, the intimacy between them returned.

  “Which?” she snapped down to him.

  He looked up at her, one brow arched high. “All right, I wasn’t made of stone, I was afraid. I hated you both sometimes when I was gone and in hell and I knew you two were together. I had visions of the two of you, head to head, commiserating with one another, laughing perhaps, getting high, talking music... needing comfort.”

  “It never happened. Jordan, we fought over Keith when you came back from Vietnam.
It was just over his drugs then, the stuff he’d left all over the house.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But you were already suspicious.”

  “I think Keith wanted me to be. Maybe he even wanted to split us up. It didn’t happen then, but he liked to keep that wedge in there.”

  “Nothing happened between us.”

  “I believed you.”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Then... well, then...” He hesitated, then stared at her. “I thought I saw you the night he died, going to him. And Miles said he saw you with him before. It just seemed that people always saw you with him.”

  She shook her head, suddenly more confused than angry. Yet it was true, if she thought about it. Miles had thought she’d been with Keith the afternoon he had died, and she hadn’t been. It was strange. And a little chilling. “Jordan, it wasn’t me. I mean, I was with Keith many times, not with Keith. As a friend, talking to him. I never lied to you. I wouldn’t have, I had no reason to. I did talk to him a while that day after the practice—”

  “In our bedroom,” Jordan reminded her icily.

  “Talked, Jordan. He’d been in that room before. Miles, Larry, Derrick—and Shelley and Judy—had been in our room at one time or another to talk to us. I’d been in Judy and Derrick’s room. If that implies—”

  “It implies that I didn’t like him in our room, and that’s all,” Jordan said firmly.

  “He was so excited about that last piece of music. It was as if he was about to turn around on his own. Clean up his act.”

  Jordan stared at her, shaking his head. “Kathy, you always want to see the good in everyone. You’d argue like hell with me, but defend Keith or anyone else like a pit bull.”

  “You never meant to throw him out of the band.”

  “No, but I did mean to end it,” he said softly.

  “You were a perfectionist. You wanted that from others.”

  “Maybe I was too hard.”

  “But...”

  “But what?”

  She shook her head. “Jordan, I still can’t believe someone killed him. It was just us here—Blue Heron. And the Garcias.” She shivered suddenly. “Then he died. And now you’re getting phone calls.”

  “Cranks. Hoaxes. That’s what you told me.

  “But now I could swear someone was standing over my bed.”

  He hesitated just a second. “Do you think it might have been Jeremy, just making sure you were sleeping where you were supposed to be—and alone?”

  “It wasn’t him.”

  “Kathy, how can you be so certain that he isn’t the least bit afraid there might still be a spark between us?”

  “Impossible,” she said flatly.

  “That would be incredibly insulting, murder on my ego, if there weren’t a spark remaining between us,” he said innocently. “I think it was Jeremy.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “How can you be so damned sure?”

  “Because...” she began and broke off.

  “Yes?”

  “He was just... sleeping so soundly.”

  “Tara would be damned suspicious, were she here. But she isn’t, thank God.”

  “Jordan! You have a relationship with that woman—”

  “I have one with you at the moment.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Damn! I do!” he told her. She started to speak, choked up, felt as if lava straight from Vesuvius poured though her. Color touched her cheeks. She had chosen her position, straddling his hips, nothing but the thin sheet between them. And now...

  She could feel him. Fully aroused. Very warm. No, hot. Swollen. Stimulating. Intriguing. Exciting...

  Where was her willpower?

  Not where he touched her, that was for damned sure.

  He made a sudden shift, arms upon her shoulders. Sweeping her down beneath him, he kissed her lips with both slow-burning passion and sweet coercion. She barely felt his fingertips on the buttons of her nightgown... against her flesh. The touch slow. Hypnotic. His hands were calloused, but so gentle. Rough, soft. Caressing. Almost like a breath of air. Fingertips against her belly... a palm erotically rubbing against her nipple, his hand lower again, the whisper of a touch against her thighs, then suddenly a stroke into the dampness of her sex while all the while his tongue bathed her other...

  “Jordan!” she managed his name when his mouth broke from hers.

  “You still smell like me,” he whispered huskily. “Like you and me. Like sex. Musky. Erotic. Enticing.”

  “Jordan, we shouldn’t—”

  His eyes were on hers then. But he hadn’t withdrawn his touch. She trembled, feeling as if he were completely within her, in her soul, her mind, filling her with his essence.

  “Kathy, can you really leave?” he demanded. There was the oddest hint of anguish to the words.

  She nodded.

  She was lying.

  He knew it.

  “Do you really want to leave?”

  She inhaled. Choked. Caught his head, her fingers threading in his hair, and pulled his mouth back to hers. She kissed him. Tasting the dreams she’d lost for a decade. Warning herself that she played recklessly with a fire that could scorch and burn and hurt her again, ripping open scars that had never really healed...

  But it didn’t matter. Not tonight. Tomorrow the world would change again. They could go their separate ways. Keep their distance. Right now...

  Right now his touch was upon her. Within her. Her fingers relished the feel of him. His open-mouthed kiss ground down upon her lips, tongue sweeping deep into her mouth as the thrust of his fingers moved and stroked between her thighs. So much was sweetly familiar, so much had so long been denied. She touched him. Hands upon him. Fingers stroking down his chest. He was hers to touch again for this moment. Briefly, perhaps. But the ghosts of the past faded in the hungers of the present, as did the knowledge that he was no longer hers; for in these sweet moments, he was hers again. To touch, brush, pet. Stroke. Her palms upon his heated flesh. Fingers and kisses, liquid caresses, as intimate as any he might offer her. She’d missed the feel of him. Missed the length of his back, the muscles of his torso, his arms. The silvering, crisp sandy curls that grew in abundance on his chest. The taut-ness that remained at his waistline, the intoxicating fullness of his sex, the sheer sensual pleasure of closing her fingers around it...

  They touched everywhere, kissed; aroused. He brought her down upon him. They moved like rabbits, wild, erratic, seeking more and more of one another, remembering, learning anew. He swept her beneath him, impatient with his own deepening desire, giving, demanding. She could no longer touch, kiss, caress... just hunger, seek, desire, demand, crave in turn. Waiting, feeling the sizzle of pure erotic pleasure build within her, crying out when it burst violently upon her, within her, throughout her. She was barely aware of him, then keenly aware of him, the fullness of him, the hardness of him, moving once more against her, as if he could become a part of her. Then he remained there.

  She became aware of the air-conditioning again. Cool now that they were glittering with sweat touched by the moonglow and night lights streaking in upon them. He had shifted from her, but remained locked with her. So it had been during most of their married life.

  She was tempted to ask him wistfully if it was the same way he made love to Tara Hughes. She didn’t speak. She lay still, trying not to think, trying to savor the minutes that were still hers.

  “We did so much so wrong,” she said after a moment.

  He moved his hands in her hair, remaining quiet, pensive. So be it. They had to be careful what they said. They lived separate lives now.

  “Well, the girls would be happy that we’ve managed to get along,” she murmured, pushing up. She could still rest her face against his slick shoulder. Feel him breathe, enjoy the warmth of his body.

  He set an arm around her, pulling her back beside him, bringing her head to rest against his shoulder again. “Yeah, the girls would be gl
ad.”

  She closed her eyes, thinking there was so much more to be said, then realizing that she didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to plan ahead, worry, regret what they had done.

  Twice now.

  She just wanted to lie beside him. Not too long. Soon enough, she’d have to rise. Slip back across the patio to the main house. To her own room.

  Once upon a time, her room.

  His fingers moved in her hair. The feel was absolutely lulling. She closed her eyes. A mistake. When she opened them again, the sky was bright outside the guest-house windows. She was tangled partially in the sheet, and partially with his body. One of her legs lay beneath him. One of his was draped over her hip. His hand was set just beneath her breast. His chest was against her side. His breath just touched her cheek, coming slowly, evenly, smoothly.

  She stared at him a moment, felt wonderful for a second, then pained and alarmed. She’d touched him. It was morning. Morning’s light was pouring in on her. Darkness had surely been far kinder.

  Tara Hughes was one of the most perfectly formed females.

  She was insane! Worrying, fearing her looks. It was daylight. People could be up and about.

  She propped herself up, trying to stare over Jordan’s still prone body and out to the patio beyond. What time was it? Early enough still? How the hell was she going to sneak back to the house?

  “Seven-thirty,” she heard suddenly. “Too early for the party crowd to be up and around.”

  She looked down. Jordan had sensed her movement and awakened. His eyes were cool upon her, narrowed, assessing. “Don’t worry. You can salvage an image of innocence for Muscleman.”

  She frowned. “Jordan, that’s horrible. I told you, Jeremy is smart and kind.”

  “I see. You mean ‘Miss April’ as a kind term.”

  She smiled ruefully. “She is a lovely child.”

  “So is he. And if he means a lot to you, I’ll help you sneak back to the house.”