Tides of Love (Garrett Brothers Book 1)

by Tracy Sumner

  Juste Ciel, the man was remarkably skilled.

  Sensation pressed in upon her. Noah's hips grinding into hers in a gradual figure eight. The crisp hair on his arms. The strain and release of muscle. His generous weight atop her. Damp cloth covering his arousal, a part of him she had never imagined, in all her dreams, would be so long, or so hard. His hands stroking the sides of her breasts, curling to cup them, kneading, drawing them into his waiting mouth. Callused palms gliding along her stomach, seizing her waist. Fingers plucking at her nightdress, tugging it higher. His tongue warming her, his lips welcoming her. His touch robbing her of thought or purpose, command or design.

  Mental pictures provided taste and smell: fields of green, dark, red wine, sapphire clouds. A stormy blue-black sea stretching to the horizon. A slender boy nudging spectacles high atop his nose, his smile comforting and compassionate.

  She invited the images into her mind, opened her legs to invite him into her body.

  Pounding. Her heart slamming against her ribs. Pounding. Her pulse ringing in her ears.

  Noah jerked atop her. Dazed, Elle watched him search for his spectacles, frown to find them missing. He straightened, his knees hugging her waist as he sat astride her. The hand he dragged through his hair trembled. His chest rose in rapid catches beneath the dangling strip of cloth covering his wound, the tattered end tickling her breast.

  Bewildered, he looked completely bewildered.

  The pounding inside her head started again. Then she realized someone pounded on the door.

  13

  "This, however, seems scarcely satisfactory."

  ~ C. Wyville Thomson

  The Depths of the Sea

  Except for the heavy footfalls on the staircase outside, the room was eerily quiet. Elle hiked to her elbows and glanced at Noah. Slowly, his look slid past her chest, to her hips, which were still wedded to his. He stared for a long moment, then muttered a ragged oath, and rolled to the floor in one smooth motion.

  He strode to the window, his stride noticeably unsteady. He flipped the curtain aside, pressed his nose to the pane. "Caleb, I think," he said, his breath fogging the glass. "Looks like he's swaying on his feet." He swabbed the circle of vapor away using the ball of his hand. "Blessit, he lets everything upset him."

  Elle waited for him to turn, perhaps finish what he'd started, but he showed no sign of doing either. Drawing the neck of her nightdress to a modest level, she lifted her bottom and yanked in an awkward attempt to cover her legs. A deafening rip filled the silence. With a sigh, she fingered the tattered piece of material. "Well, we can't all be as composed as you. Don't worry. He won't go to Widow Wynne's, see I'm missing and put two and two together. He's not that suspicious."

  Noah turned, a sharp torque from the waist. "Right where he's headed," he said, sounding both shamed and flustered. "He's looking for me, and he knows I'm stalking you like some damned bloodhound." Again, he peered out the window when she understood good and well he couldn't see a thing.

  She rubbed her eyes, breathing in the smell of rainfall and man. Feeling disappointed and unsatisfied, she considered Noah's ramrod posture, the tangled mat of hair on his head. It took considerable effort on her part to keep her hands where they should be and not where they wanted to be: tracing the muscled ridges of his back, the round curve of his buttocks. He had an extremely nice physique, sleek with just the right measure of muscle.

  Scooting to the edge of the bed, Elle wriggled until her feet touched cool heart pine. Her knees wobbled when she put weight on them, but they held. Her toes curled from the chill. "Why do you suppose this is?"

  His fingers knotted as he dropped his brow to the pane. A sweep of air fluttered the trailing end of his bandage. "Why, what?"

  The soft pad of her feet reverberated through the room. She stooped to grasp his spectacles, moonlight sparkling off metal. Thankfully, he'd put no cracks in the lenses. "Why do you suppose we"—she pressed her lips together, figuring how to say this—"we react like this? I never felt this, hot and... and itchy about Magnus. About anyone."

  A minute passed. Thunder rumbled in the distance. "How do I know? Happens to people every day."

  She traced the wire frames with her fingertip, remembering what he had done with them. "Much like your married lady friend, isn't it? I'm not ignorant of life's basic truths. Most men have a lover and a wife. Extreme appetites, Christa told me."

  He tapped the pane: three hard knocks. "You shouldn't be listening to Christabel. And, you're wrong about Caroline."

  "Oh yes, I witnessed, firsthand, how wrong I am." Even now, she saw his hand folded in both of Caroline's, the woman stroking his fevered brow.

  Another knock. "You're confusing what you witnessed."

  "No matter. I kept her from your bed tonight. In fair recompense—"

  All at once, he stood before her, his hands closing about her shoulders. "Don't say that." He shook her. "Don't even think it."

  "How can I not?"

  "I told you, before. I've never touched her." His gaze lingered on her breasts. "Like I just touched you. Never touched her at all. Whoever wrote your father's report wrote lies." His fingers tensed. "The desire I feel for you is more than I've experienced in my life. Nothing has ever come close. No one has come close."

  For a long moment, they stared, caught in a world of their creation, a world Elle wanted to dive into, even as the rational part of her mind rebelled, begging her to remember they would not be in each other's lives much longer.

  Wanting to test his resilience, she brushed the front of his trousers, curling her hand around his rock-hard flesh.

  "Stop."

  She dropped her hand.

  "Stop looking at me like that. And touching me there." He shook his head. "Do you want me to go completely mad and—and tear your clothes off?" His gaze flicked down, then shot up. "What little you're wearing, of course."

  Sinful images stormed her mind. Her lips curved against her best judgment.

  He stumbled back. "Dammit, Elle."

  "If it makes you feel any better, part of me thinks this is all a very bad idea. That part"—she shrugged—"I'm inclined to ignore. I usually do."

  "For once in your life, listen to what the discarded fragment of your brain is telling you, because you and I are not going to happen." His eyes cut away. "Don't make this out to be something it isn't. You'll only end up hurting us both."

  "What do you make this out to be?"

  He wedged his shoulder against the bedpost and crossed his ankles, gazing past her, the wheels in his mind spinning as he reasoned in his systematic, professorial way. All right, two can play this game, she asserted, and struggled to allow her features to slide into lines of indifference. Hard to do when he stood before her half-clothed, hair mussed, charmingly undone. She chewed on her lip, fighting the urge to touch him.

  As a clock counted off time, his eyes lightened, his fists unfurled, and his splendid arousal withered. Her hold over him, whatever that constituted, diminished with each annoying tick. "Elle"—he tapped the bridge of his nose, threw a quick glance at the spectacles dangling from her fingers—"I think we should stay far, far away from each other."

  The edges of her temper crisped and curled. "That's what you came up with? Stay away from each other?"

  A spark of fury lit his gaze. "What the hell do you want me to do? To say? I can't answer every question, find a solution for every problem. That blessed professor nonsense is a myth. I thought you understood better than anyone." He took a fast step forward. "Understand this. I want you. I sit awake, night after night, crammed in a stiff leather chair, lust eating me alive, picturing you twisting beneath me, or God help me, beneath another—"

  With an angry oath, he swept his hand across the marble-topped bureau. The troublesome shelf clock struck the floor, a deafening shatter. Shards of glass glittered amidst the raindrops blowing in the window. "Forget him and let this... situation between us die."

  "Him?" She pointed to the rumpled
bed. "You believe this is still some sort of youthful obsession?"

  Over his shoulder, his tormented gaze met hers, his chin lowering in what she had to assume was a positive reply.

  "Maybe you're right. Maybe everything I feel is for that boy. The one who walked me to the doctor and held my hand while he set the splint. The one who helped me speak his language and protected me until I could do it well enough to avoid getting knocked around in the schoolyard. Maybe I'm yearning for him. Because I see his face when I look into yours. A figment of my foolish, sentimental imagination. Exactly what you expect from me, Professor? Fickle, flighty Elle Beaumont."

  Noah flinched and jammed his hands in his pockets, as if the words he had practically begged her to utter disturbed him. "No, no, that's not what I expect from you at all. It's just, this attraction between us can't work. Some things don't make sense if you take a moment to examine them. We don't make sense. We're too different, you and I. And, the lure, the excitement, well, passion and—and love, love which comes from deep inside, are different beasts. Love is, love makes intimacy special. Inversely, lust roars around in your chest like a bear, clawing and slashing its way out. I guess I don't know... honestly, I don't know if one has much to do with the other."

  Oh, how she wanted to tell Noah Garrett where he could stick his bungling rationale. Instead, she prolonged her departure by slipping his spectacles on her face. The room melted into ribbons of black and white. Seeing the world through his eyes deepened the ache in her chest. She swallowed hard and forced herself to say, "Then, what just happened between us was simply a spontaneous reaction to a—what would a scientist call it—some kind of primitive stimulus?"

  He dropped to his haunches and began to place shards of glass in his cupped palm, his firm bottom resting two inches above the floor. "All I'm telling you, dammit, simply asking you, is to think. Use your clever little mind. Be sensible for once. You're too intelligent not to understand what I'm saying. We're oil and water, Elle, we don't mix."

  Her heart shattered like the clock at his feet. "When have you ever known me to act sensibly, Professor?"

  "Exactly what scares me," he said, the words hard-edged and determined.

  Gravely determined.

  Of course, she wasn't an impartial judge, but her feelings seemed indisputably genuine, shades darker than those she'd experienced as a child. Yet, as she studied him, she realized his old-and-water theory might be true. He painstakingly selected a piece of glass, then paused to consider before selecting another.

  She would have swept them up without regard for anything.

  Despondent, she lifted his spectacles from her face and found him watching her, rotating a jagged shard between his fingers. A strange, almost fearful expression shaped his features. Then he averted his gaze, ending any argument she hoped to make.

  Dazed and unsure, she dropped his spectacles on the washstand, navigated a pile of research books in the living area, and descended the staircase, head high, posture rigid. Pausing at the bottom, she looked over her shoulder.

  Noah stood on the landing, hands gripping the railing, a wooden slat biting into his stomach. Water glistened on his clenched jaw.

  Tell me, she pleaded, struggling to decipher the emotions sweeping his face. Something, anything.

  In answer, he wagged his head slowly back and forth.

  Noah let her walk away, her aggrieved sigh yanking his stomach to his knees. He wanted to go after her, drag her into that sorry excuse for a bed, and make astounding love to her. He threw back his head and expelled a choked breath. Hand trembling more than he liked, he dug into his pocket and lifted the scrap of muslin to his nose: the ever-present earthy scent, a touch of lemon, honeysuckle.

  His sheets, hell, his entire bedroom, smelled of her. Couldn't go there.

  The door slammed behind him. He tripped over a textbook, skidded across glossy pine, and sank into the chair he slept in most nights, where dreams of Elle slicked his skin to worn leather. Dreams that had him jerking awake and reaching for her.

  They had ballooned to intense proportions, incredibly vivid, although he was able to rationalize them, or at the very least, his reasons for having them. He had recently read a commentary by an Austrian psychiatrist who speculated that dreams revealed a person's deepest desire in its most blatant form. This made sense, because having Elle naked and writhing beneath him represented Noah's deepest desire at present. Nonsensical, but true.

  He sloped forward, hands going to his knees. Dreams he could dispute. Scientifically, if this psychiatrist was correct. The agony crowding his chest, he had no argument for. Even worse, he feared his feelings as he'd never feared anything in his life. When he'd turned to see his spectacles perched on Elle's nose, her lovely eyes distorted by the lenses, it wasn't desire that galloped through him like a high-kicking mule.

  Somewhere in the coach house, a branch slapped a windowpane. Tipping his head, he observed a spider spinning a web around the aged kerosene chandelier and realized he was in deep trouble.

  I'm falling in love with Elle Beaumont.

  Though precise classification would have been a blessing—he was not able confirm the assumption in definite terms. Besides love for his family, he did not completely fathom the emotion.

  Or welcome it.

  Just the same, there were far too many factual incidents for a scientist to ignore.

  He yanked the scrap of muslin in two and flung the pieces to the floor. Zach spoke the truth. Emotions were not rational. Love didn't require precise classification. Hadn't the past month—being with his brothers again and unearthing the affection hidden deep in his heart—taught him that lesson?

  It had, but familial love he wanted.

  Somehow, Elle had worked her way under his skin.

  Or, dear God, had she been there all along?

  He slumped, dazed. She loved sunrises and chocolate ice cream. He liked sunsets and vanilla. She thrived on chaos. He loathed chaos. She dreamed impossible dreams. He renounced impossibilities of any kind. He was boring and predictable; she fairly glowed with dynamism and vigor.

  A rational solution must exist.

  He snapped his fingers and strode to his desk. Squinting, he shoved aside the latest Sierra Club Bulletin and an empty specimen bottle, grabbed his notebook, and flipped to the first blank sheet. He plundered through papers and located the fountain pen he had received for five years service with the fisheries commission.

  Walking backward, his legs bumped the chair, and he dropped into it. He brought the notebook close to his face and drew a line down the sheet. Things he admired about Elle went on the right, things he despised on the left. He began writing, his hand sweeping the page. Dismayed when the right list grew considerably longer than the left, he ripped the sheet out and wadded the paper into a ball. It hit the floor with a crinkle.

  He tapped his pen on the notebook and decided to approach the problem from a different angle. In the same fashion he would a research project where the conclusion was certain but procurable by various methods. Outcome: mind free of Elle Beaumont. The pen moved swiftly, until he had two pages of concise clarification and a systematic strategy for avoiding Elle—thereby reducing his engrossment, as he politely termed it.

  Fine. Good. He had listened to the warning signs—like any decent researcher—and devised a plan. He would throw himself into his work and spend time with his family. No more kisses. Blessit, no more anything that involved touching her. No more daydreams—actual dreams he couldn't hope to control. No more considerate gestures. Eating dinner with her or repairing her shutters was forbidden. He had been planning to mow her grass; he would ask Caleb.

  Also, he thought discussing the situation with Caroline might help. Perhaps, he could secure her assistance. Glancing at the plank-and-beam ceiling, he pictured the tangle of fragrant sheets covering his bed. His fingers tightened around the fountain pen. He lifted the notebook and scribbled one last notation.

  Maybe it wasn't crucial, but he listed
it anyway. Less urgency to tell Elle, which, remarkably, he found he really wanted to do. After all, what purpose would it serve to tell her that the astounding taste of her, the exquisite feel of her, had erased any sexual experiences in his past like chalk dust from a blackboard? He snapped his notebook shut.

  No need to tell her. No need at all.

  14

  "I believe we have a simpler explanation."

  ~ C. Wyville Thomson

  The Depths of the Sea

  Her mother's cameo caught a spark of sunlight as Elle pinned it to the collar of her percale blouse. Her father's solicitor, Mr. Hobbs, never realized this piece of jewelry served as the sole legacy from a devoted father to his wayward daughter.

  Mr. Hobbs would be surprised, and her father angered, to know she had nullified the codicil two days before the reading. Reaching into her trouser pocket, Elle touched the scholarship-acceptance letter. She had telegraphed her agreement and had received a reply from Savannah this morning. The committee anticipated her arrival in New York City in no later than seven days. There were applications to submit, a lesson of study to organize, and an awards luncheon to attend. The largest responsibility would be preparing Savannah to manage the school during her absence.

  This activity might keep her mind from straying to impossible dreams, even if her heart seemed captured for life.

  She leaned against the staircase railing outside her father's office and tipped her face to the cloudless blue sky. A familiar voice filtered past the thud of ships edging the dock. A wave of heat—totally unrelated to the sun beating down on her back—lit her from the inside out. Closing her eyes, she strained to hear his words.

  "...quantity and size. Blessit, Zach... need both. You volunteered... stupid questions."

  Warm laughter traveled the distance. Lids lifting, she watched Zach pitch a fish at his brother's head. In turn, Noah pivoted, stuffing a thick book beneath his armpit, and snared the fish with one hand. "Nice try," she thought she heard him say.