by Caryn Carter
"For your information, and not that it's one damn bit your business, my sister Franny was going with me on that cruise. It was supposed to be her first vacation since a very messy and very painful divorce years ago. A vacation that has been cancelled now because of our mother's illness." There, she'd managed to get it all out in one breath before she passed out from lack of air. She took a deep breath and was relieved when it filled her lungs.
Nick stepped back, took the keys that were still in the door and handed them to her without a word, his mouth moving as if he were trying to form words that wouldn't come. He closed the door and took another step back, a heavy silence between them.
She turned the engine over, shifted smoothly into reverse and rolled away from him, thankful that there were no cars approaching to slow her retreat. Blinded by tears, she drove slowly and cautiously out of the parking lot, keeping her eyes steady on the road in front of her.
She made an angry swipe under first one eye, then the other. Unfair accusations had always been hard for her to swallow, and the unjust accusation Nick had just leveled at her was the hardest she had ever had to bear.
She made another swipe under her eyes, pulled in a quivering breath, then locked her jaw so tight her head began to throb, taking some comfort in her decision to end the unbridled sex between them. There was no doubt now that it had been the right thing to do. But it was small comfort indeed when she measured it against the burning pain in her heart at the thought of never seeing Nick again.
Chapter Fifteen
According to the second hand on his watch, Nick had been leaning on Bella's front doorbell for a full thirty seconds. He had no doubt she knew he'd followed her home after she left the hospital parking lot, and that he was the one ringing the bell. He also knew she was determined not to answer it.
He pressed the bell harder, as determined as she was not to give up. Then, just as his finger was beginning to cramp, he heard movement inside the house. Footsteps. And they were coming closer to the door.
He jabbed the bell again, knowing it did no good, that nothing he did would make the bell ring louder. But it made him feel better. As if he had some kind of control. Lord knows, he needed that, because at that moment whatever happened next was out of his hands. He could stand out here until doomsday, but if Bella refused to talk to him ever again there wasn't much he could do about it.
As he was pondering his next move, he heard the click of a lock. The door opened a crack, held back by a short chain latch. He could barely see the outline of Bella's face through the narrow opening.
"Go home, Nick. I don't want to see you."
"I'm not leaving until you let me explain."
"You've already said everything I needed to hear."
"Please open the door." He wedged his toe between the door and the doorframe to prevent her from slamming it closed.
As he feared, the door pressed against his foot, but he didn't budge. He'd come this far and he wasn't leaving until he had his say, even if it proved to be the biggest mistake of his life.
He'd lived the last seven years risk free, not taking any chances where women were concerned. In seven years he had managed to never get hurt. He'd also managed to live a very lonely, loveless life.
He had to try again. "Bella, please let me in."
She came back with an emphatic 'no', and pushed harder on the door, but he was prepared and he braced both palms flat against the door. It was now or never.
He inhaled a deep, steadying breath, felt his stomach knot. "Bella, I think I might be falling in love with you."
There, he'd actually said the words out loud. Maybe now she'd listen to him, give him a chance to explain. "Will you open up, please?" He softened his tone, hoping to play on her sympathy.
She didn't answer right away, but when she did, her voice was soft as his had been. "I can't do that as long as you're pushing against me."
Was she toying with him so he'd ease up on the door and she could catch him off guard, or was she really relenting? He had no choice but to believe she had finally decided to hear him out. He eased up a little, holding his breath, expecting the worse, but hoping for the best. The door clicked closed. He heard the chain slip free.
When Bella opened the door, he saw that she'd been crying. Another surprise. He definitely hadn't figured her for the weepy type. But oddly, instead of feeling like a heel for hurting her, he reveled in the burst of joy that filled his chest. If he'd hurt her enough to make her cry, didn't that mean she cared about him, too?
His heart took a quick leap, but he kept himself restrained. He'd opened up enough. It was her turn now.
She stood aside for him to enter. The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside was that the tickets were no longer on the little table against the wall.
Her gaze followed his, then she turned to face him, her eyes filled with questions. She had thrown the ball to him again.
"I'd like to explain..." He glanced again at the empty table, and his damn throat locked up.
"I'm listening," she said, the softness in her voice a gentle assurance that she was ready for his explanation.
He admitted then, about setting up the first meeting between them. How word of Kevin's release had brought back all the memories of Debbie and the tragic accident he'd fought to bury all these years. How he and Vince had decided to watch her house, certain Kevin would show up there for one last visit, and then they could follow him to where he had hidden the money. He left out any mention of the suspicion that she might have been the one hiding the cash.
Neither could he tell her that he'd set out deliberately to seduce her and that the security system with its attendant problems had all been designed to set her up. He was ready to tell the truth about a lot of things. But not about that. Not yet, anyway. The only thing he was ready for now was the feel of her body against his. He whispered her name.
She answered by moving into his arms. He crushed her to his chest and they clung to each other like two halves of a whole, not saying a word, just holding on to the moment.
Her arms tightened around him. "I'm sorry I overreacted," she whispered into the curve of his neck.
He squeezed her gently. "You had every right to react the way you did. To be angry with me. I overstepped the bounds." Oh God, if she only knew how far over the boundary he'd crossed.
"Yes, you did, but I shouldn't have blown up and run away like that. After I had my say, I should have at least let you have yours." He felt her lips thin into a smile against his skin. "Even though what you did was indefensible." She said it softly, but seriously. Like she meant every word.
His stomach tightened at the thought of what her reaction would be when she found out how far he'd really gone. "You're under a lot of strain with your mother." It made him feel a little better to give her a reason for her fierce reaction, although in his heart he knew she didn't need one.
"Speaking of that," she said, tilting her head back so she could see him, "I have to get up very early in the morning. The operation is scheduled for seven."
She trailed a finger along his jaw, ending at the corner of his mouth. He parted his lips and teased the tip of her finger with his tongue as she slipped it inside his mouth. That was all the invitation he needed.
He lowered his lips to hers. Their first kiss eased some of the ache inside him, but there was a lot of need left and the tilt of her body against his told him he could take whatever he required.
Wasting not another moment, he swept her up in his arms and took kiss after kiss from her sweet mouth as she surrendered to him. A twinge of guilt pricked his conscience about the wrongs he'd done her, but he kicked it aside along with his shoes as he carried her down the hall.
Tomorrow, he'd come clean about everything he'd done and everything he'd meant to do. But not tonight. He wanted this night to be free of everything but the pleasure they brought each other and the affirmation of their feelings for one another. Tonight, he wanted them to have more than just sex. Toni
ght, he wanted them to make love.
* * * *
"I'm glad you came," Bella told Carmella after they were seated at one of the tables in the hospital cafeteria on Saturday morning. "It meant a lot to Mom."
She took a deep swallow of coffee and spent a couple of seconds savoring the taste of an unusually good cup of coffee considering where they were. It was her first cup of the day. She'd had to scramble for every second this morning after dragging herself out of bed with only four hours of sleep. She smiled inwardly. Nick had left her sexually satisfied, but short on time. She corrected the unjust accusation. Nick was ready to live up to his promise to leave early. It was she who had made him renege on it. Not that she was one bit sorry. The pleasures of the night had been well worth the hours of sleep she'd lost.
Bella set the cup down and turned her attention back to her sister who reached across the table and put a hand over hers.
"It meant a lot to me too, Bella. Thanks for going out of your way to get me to come see her. I didn't realize just how much I've missed her." She brushed a tear back from a lash with a long, red lacquered nail. "Or how much I've missed all of you. It was so good to be welcome, to feel part of the family again."
A lump rose to Bella's throat at her sister's sincerity and a momentary twinge of guilt nipped at her conscience because she hadn't tried harder over the years to bring Carmella back into the family. Maybe if she hadn't been so wrapped up in her own heartbreak after what had happened between her and Kevin, she might have made more of an effort. She gave herself a sharp mental shake. All that was in the past, and the present was all she had to work with. All she wanted to work with now that her life seemed on a steadier path.
Carmella, visibly more relaxed than she'd been since Bella had come barging into her life, leaned back in her chair. "We've done an awful lot of talking about my life since yesterday, Bella. What about yours? I know you have a successful business, but what about your personal life?" She tapped the table with one of her long manicured nails, seemingly unaware of the action. "The disaster with the guy who went to jail was what, seven years ago, you said? There's been no one else in your life since then?"
Bella's spirit dipped at the turn in the conversation even though she knew they were bound to get around to her personal life eventually. After all, what was a personal life without someone special in it? There really had been no one special until now. Even now, could she in all honesty call what she had with Nick special in the same way she knew her sister meant?
Sure, they had admitted a deepening in their feelings for each other. Nick had even gone so far as to say he might be falling in love with her. Might being the operative word in the statement.
Might was not a full-fledged commitment, she reminded herself. And thank heavens it wasn't because she sure wasn't ready to commit to him. But even as the thought ran through her mind she caught herself in the lie. She had fallen for him. Fallen for him hard. But he didn't have to know that.
Her mouth went suddenly dry when she tried to answer Carmella and she had to take a sip of water before she could get the first word out. "I never had the desire or the time to pursue another relationship." She almost let it stop there, but something made her add, "Until very recently. Until a week ago to be exact. But even that isn't going anywhere permanent."
"Oh?" Carmella raised her perfectly arched brows, as she waited for Bella to give her more information.
"Oh, what?" Bella came back, forcing a smile, to prove how insignificant she considered both the question and the relationship to which it referred.
"Oh, why isn't it going anywhere permanent? Because of you? Or because of him?"
She didn't have to think more than a second before the answer to that question popped out. "Both, I guess."
"You guess?"
"Hey, what is this? The third degree?"
Carmella sighed deeply and lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry. Here I am acting like a buttinsky big sister when I haven't even been part of the family for years."
Bella leaned forward and touched her sister's hand. "You've always been family to me. I want us to catch up on all those years we've missed. There just isn't anything to tell yet. So far, it's been mostly physical." She felt herself blush at the admission. "He's hinted that he may want more, but who knows? Maybe he's just saying that because he doesn't want to lose the sex."
"How do you really feel about him?" Carmella asked, before Bella could change the subject. "I mean, if he really wanted to get serious, would you? The whole nine yards, marriage, kids?"
A flutter in her heart made Bella's breath catch at the thought of Nick making such a proposition, but she couldn't let herself fall into that trap. She didn't want to get hurt again. Even after seven years, the pain of rejection was still sharp enough to make her bleed inside.
"I don't know." She had answered as honestly as she could. She really didn't know what she would do if she found out Nick really was serious about her.
Something about the look on Carmella's face made Bella look harder at her. She caught the first glimmer of tears in her sister's eyes before Carmella blinked quickly and turned her head away from Bella's probing gaze. She swallowed noticeably hard, then turned to look at Bella and made no attempt to hide the tears shimmering on her long, mascara laden lashes.
Bella felt her sister's pain. "What's wrong?"
Carmella swallowed hard again, pressed her lips firmly together, then parted them on a low sigh. "I had my chance for Mr. Right and blew it. I hope you don't do the same."
Bella held her breath and waited to see if Carmella was going to clam up or let the whole story spill out. She had the feeling her sister needed to get whatever it was out in the open regardless of the pain it cost her. She was right.
"The first few years I worked on Bourbon Street, the only jobs I could land were in the smaller clubs," Carmella began. "It isn't easy breaking in down there." She paused, and Bella nodded in understanding. "Then one night, after almost five years on the stage, my first night in one of the better clubs, this guy I'd met in a restaurant the day before sent a note to my dressing room, asking me to have breakfast with him after my last show." Carmella paused again, but this time Bella sat perfectly still, holding her breath for what came next.
"It was the beginning of the only decent relationship I've had in my life." There was no bid for pity in her statement, but Bella couldn't help feeling sorry for her sister. Her words were not only filled with pain, but with deep regret.
"What happened?" Bella asked, her throat clogging with emotion for this sister that she was coming to know so well in such a short span of time.
"We spent a wonderful year together. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. As well as the worst," she added ruefully.
"How?"
"He wanted me to move in with him ... even marry him if I wanted. He owned the restaurant where we'd met, a couple of blocks down from the club where I was working at the time. He had living quarters above it." Carmella closed her eyes and Bella knew her sister had slipped into the past and was reliving some significant part of it.
She found it hard to speak, as if Carmella's pain had somehow slipped beneath her skin and curled around her own heart. "But you didn't?"
Carmella shook her head, her long, red hair swishing like a proud horse's mane. "I couldn't. He begged me. Said I could go on working at the club for as long as I wanted, he wouldn't interfere." She drew in a wobbly breath and passed her tongue over her lips. "The only thing he couldn't do, he said, was come to see any of my shows. Said he couldn't bear to see all those men ogling me."
"If you cared for him, why couldn't you do as he wanted? It sounds like he was willing to accept you as you were."
"Oh, I thought he would, for a time. Until the great sex wasn't enough and he got tired of me dancing half-naked all night long in front of all those men. I figured then he'd start accusing me of sleeping around and we'd begin fighting and end up hating each other. The way I figured, we'd probably las
t a whole lot longer keeping things the way they were."
Carmella's fingers curled into her palms, the skin on the back of her hands stretched taut.
Bella laid her hands over her sister's clenched fists and stroked them tenderly. "You don't need to tell me any more." Carmella's hands relaxed, opened up under hers and Bella continued the stroking, both of them oblivious to their public surroundings. Carmella looked steadily into her sister's eyes.
"Oh, but I do. I want to. I don't want you to make the same mistake with your guy that I did with mine, especially if there's any chance he's the right one for you. I meant it when I said my guy was the best thing and the worst that ever happened to me. The worst was that we could have been together every day, every night for as long as we had, if I had been willing to take the risk. I never knew how little a risk it really was until I knew I'd never again have the opportunity to find out."
Bella quickly dismissed any thoughts of her own situation. Her sister needed to know that she was there for her for whatever she needed. "What happened?" she asked, her heart about to burst with compassion for this sister she had called back into her life.
"He died. Shot in the head during a robbery while he was closing the restaurant. We were supposed to meet for breakfast, then spend the rest of the morning at my place."
The tears came then. They slid down Carmella's cheeks, unchecked, but she seemed to Bella to be more at peace with herself, as if she had kept this painful part of her past locked up for too long and now with its release, the healing had begun.
Bella felt her own eyes filling with tears. In these short, intimate minutes with her sister, it seemed their whole past had come together seamlessly and they were as bonded as if they'd spent all of their lives together in one uninterrupted sequence.
Carmella looked up. "He'd asked me again to marry him the night before. And again, I'd refused. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have taken him up on his offer and let the chips fall where they may. At least he would have known how much I loved him. And I did love him, Bella. I'll never love another man as much as I loved him. So, if you love your guy, take your shot with him if he offers it to you. Don't walk away and end up like me with a lifetime of regret staring you in the face."