by Ward, Susan
I study him, knowing he’s right and knowing I can’t do it. The reasons are more fuzzy, less logical, but still there. Walter. The custody battle. The problem that is Chrissie. It would be selfish of us both to put our happiness before the resolution of these issues. If Jack lost his daughter because of me, he would never recover, and in the end he’d blame me for it if I ever allowed myself to be in the position where Walter could use me against him.
It would be selfish to put myself ahead of all the other things more important than me in Jack’s world, and loving Jack makes that something impossible to do.
I ease back down against him with my cheek resting on his chest. “It’s only a year.”
He tilts my chin until he can see my eyes. “Come back with me.”
The way he says that makes my heart clench. “I can’t.”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. He kisses my curls. “I know, baby. It was selfish of me to ask.”
That nearly makes the tears give way. “You’re the least selfish man I know, Jack.” I feel awful again. Absolutely awful. I tighten my arms around him. “Make love to me again.”
He turns me until I’m beneath him on the bed. His mouth moves along my jaw in light kisses, then down my neck to the swell of my breasts, his fingertips brushing me with featherlike softness. Each touch, each kiss, is leisurely, thorough and complete. Down my arms to my palms, and then back up again. The other side. To my breast, then lower, lower. Only gentle touches and airy kisses, but the urgent demand shoots through my cells. I am pulsing and heated and ready for him, and he’s done nothing beyond loving touches and kisses.
No, Jack, no. I’m the farthest thing from patient right now.
He eases back, balanced above and staring down at me. I slip my hand around his neck, my fingers tightening in his golden hair, and I drag his mouth back to mine and alter the kisses into a deeper, more frantic, more ragged exchange.
I arch up into him, brushing my sex against him there, my tongue fucking him with the urgency of my body. I can feel him resist, trying to temper my assault, wanting to consume me slowly, and it heats my arousal into something sweetly painful.
I nip his neck in the spot that makes him crazy. He inhales deeply. I rock my hips and his erection twitches. The tip of his cock is at my entry, neither buried within nor completely separate from me. We are joined, we are separate and his quiet is driving me crazy. I want him so badly I am not even conscious of his touches and kisses or the moves of his body that pin me to the bed, surrounding me.
My breath catches as I become a tingling, quivering mass ready to swallow him within me. I groan as he thrusts into me, his hips moving in the rhythm of my want, filling me so deeply that my head starts to sway on the pillow. We are moving in an effortlessly matched perfection. My lips on his lips. My hands on his body. His cock stroking my inner spots of arousal with the same potent sureness of his caresses.
I have no idea what I’m doing. The command of my limbs is no longer my own, all coherent thought banished by the feel of him.
My fingers curl around his shoulders. I open my eyes to find him watching me.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips. I take his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss.
I roll my hips, the pace slowly increasing with each thrust. I watch him. I move my body. I kiss his jaw. Soon, my need is desperate and so is his, and we are nothing but frenzied movements.
I come apart, my flesh burning from the force of my release, and I feel his body tighten with his own orgasm. He says my name in a ragged whisper as he spills into me.
We quiet slowly, me stroking him, him waywardly touching and kissing me, our flesh joined and rightly so. I don’t want him to ease out of me. I hold him there with the wrap of my legs. I don’t let go, I hold his body in me, and Jack is savoring this like a guy who has missed me in a way that makes my heart ache.
Nine
One Month Later
I hate this job, that’s all there is to it.
I stare down at the completed press release, shaking my head, and for what is surely the thousandth time I kick myself for not hopping the plane back to California with Jack in August. I let him go without me, and some inner instinct, frantic and never resting, warns me that I shouldn’t have.
Returning to London, my less than comfortable living circumstance with the Graysons and my job in Sandy Harris’s public relations office hasn’t helped improve my life in the UK. At least, not the way I want to.
Alan Manzone is a force impossible to escape. He is all the rage in every corner of the country and is keeping the presses running full print. Fuck, even the stack of briefs dumped on me to complete today were about him and Blackpoll. He’s become such a sensation that I even hear his name when I’m home because he’s even captured the fascination of Jeanette.
I crinkle my nose. Haughty, uptight Jeanette is teenage-girl-like obsessed with him, and if she backhandedly tries to maneuver me into introducing her to him—again—I swear I’m going to freak out.
The only pleasant thing in my world is my calls with Jack and they are too infrequent since the court proceedings rapidly started to heat up two weeks ago. Even my doses of Jack aren’t enough to soften the turbulent impact of Alan’s unrelenting presence in my world. Alan doesn’t give up, even though I harshly rejected him. It’s illogical in every way. His repeated advances. His pointed insistence that I work the US tour in January. The way he looks at me, waiting, wanting, and heart-wrenchingly him.
My thoughts drift back to the morning Jack left the UK, when Alan showed up unexpectedly at my hotel room. I cringe with the memory as the two men introduced each other, the surface of their exchange oddly normal and at odds with the currents in the room. After Alan left, I could see it in Jack’s eyes, an unspoken comprehension that something had happened with me and the kid.
Tears burn behind my lids as I kick the memory away, but my heart aches regardless, remembering the understanding I could see in those brilliant blue eyes, the worry and the apprehension about leaving me.
The most dreadful mistake of my life was in the room with me and Jack, not voiced, but known to us both in a way that devastates me and makes me afraid we won’t make it through another eleven months of this.
I do a quick scan of the paper, making sure there are no typos or fuck-ups needing correcting, then slap shut the file and go down the hallway to drop it into the wall hanger outside my boss’s office.
I hurry back to my desk to gather my things. I check my watch. I’ve got twenty minutes to grab the tube to Belgravia for another excruciatingly tense night home with Jeanette and her parents. Then morning and the tube to school, followed by five hours in this dreary office, and home again.
Why the fuck do I stay here?
When I push through the main doors of the building to step out onto the street, of course it’s raining. Why does the weather have to be so unpredictable here and why the hell can’t I remember just to take an umbrella everywhere regardless of how it looks at the start of day?
I hitch up my collar and pause beneath the entryway awning, not thrilled yet again with the prospect of wet streets and damp clinging hair as I trek down the four blocks to the rail station.
I let out a ragged exhale of breath and start to move to the sidewalk.
A hand on my arm stops me.
I look up, surprised. “Get your hand off me, Len, or so help me I’ll punch you today. I’m not in the mood to be fucked with.”
He laughs and a smile teases my lips. He’s a good-hearted guy, and likeable in his own quiet way. He is a far cry from the rest of the peckerwoods in the band, Alan Manzone included.
“And here I was trying to be nice, stopping you before you stepped out into this, and offering you a lift,” he says affably.
My brows hitch up. “You have a car?”
He looks amused. “Car. Driver. Everything, love. It’s funny how quickly the label is opening up the checkbook the
se days.”
He holds his umbrella over my head and points. I look in the direction of his finger to find Phil and a black sedan waiting only a few steps away.
Len smiles shyly. “I’ll take you home.”
If not for the downpour, I wouldn’t accept the ride. Without a word, I climb into the backseat and scoot over so Len can join me without running around the car in the rain to the passenger side door.
The car pulls slowly from the curb, merging into the clogged city streets. We drive for a while in silence.
I look at Len. “Thanks.”
A smile claims his eyes. “No problem, Linda. You’re one of us now.”
A short laugh pushes out of me. “Somehow I don’t think so, Len. Not now. Not ever.”
I can feel him studying me. “He’s got quite a thing for you,” he says quietly. “And one thing I’ve learned about Manny is no doesn’t mean no to him. He wants you heading out on the road with us. You’ll be there. Mark my words.”
I arch a brow. “The only place I’ll be in January is here, working and in school.”
He shakes his head as if I baffle him. “You’re the first bird I’ve ever met who doesn’t want a piece of the guy. What have you got against him, anyway?”
Disobedient to my will, how close I came to fucking Alan flashes in my mind. “I have nothing against him. I’m in love with another man.”
He frowns. “If you’ve got to work, why not do something that’s worth being a success at? The band is going places. You can be a part of it. Why work in the publicity office, going nowhere, when you could be in the thick of the glitzy scene? There are people who’d give their right arm for the opportunity you’re tossing away.”
I stare out the window, ignoring that comment, but it painfully strikes a nerve in me. An opportunity I’m tossing away. That has the power to make me think of Jack and the dull ache I carry night and day consumes me.
I shift my gaze to his. “Listen, we’ll get along better if we don’t talk about Alan Manzone, the band or the tour.”
He shrugs. “Sure thing, Linda. Whatever you want. You won’t get another word out of me.”
We roll to a stop in front of the Graysons’ and I open the door before Phil can get there.
“Thanks, Len.”
His fingers close around mine and he gives me a gentle squeeze, and for a brief moment I feel something in Len I haven’t felt before. I turn back to look at him. The expression in his eyes stops my heart.
Oh my God, Len Rowan has a thing for me. He hasn’t made a move or said a word—well, not since Alan nixed all the guys toying and flirting with me—but I can see it in his face, and there is something in the way he is quietly staring at me that feels oddly good.
I smile and unbend a smidge. “You’re an OK guy, Len.”
“You’re a pretty OK girl, Linda.”
I laugh and climb from the car. I hurry up the walk, open the black iron gate, and then go up the short flight of steps to that ridiculous, enormous, heavy wood door.
The interior of the house is silent and I cut across the foyer toward the stairs, hoping to make it to my room without being seen by anyone. I’m in no mood for a full nightly dose of the Graysons today.
I’m almost into my bedroom when Jeanette steps into the hallway.
She looks startled and surprised to see me.
“You’re home early,” she exclaims, awkward and tense. “What are you doing here?”
My eyes widen. “I got a ride from the office. What the heck is up with you?”
Behind her frigid bitch composure, she almost looks flustered. I hear a noise from her bedroom, and my mouth drops. The house was even more quiet than usual when I entered. The Graysons are gone, and Jeanette has a guy here. In our four years as roomies at USC, she hardly dated and I never once caught her with a guy in her bed. It’s a hard battle not to laugh at her discomfort over my catching her.
“Do you mind staying out of sight for a while?” she whispers feverishly.
I roll my eyes, but say, “Sure. Have at it, Jeanette.”
I’m about to slip into my room when her door opens and I sneak a fast glance over my shoulder to find Alan Manzone standing there tucking his shirt back into his pants.
Black eyes lock with mine, and everything inside me turns into scorching liquid. He fucked the girl I hate and envy—a suspicion forms in my mind out of nowhere—and this is anything but a spontaneous event. Len showing up at the office and giving me a ride home; that was so I could make it to the house in time to witness what Alan wanted me to see. He fucked Jeanette to hurt me, because he thought it would bother me, and maybe stir some pathetic sense of competitive femaleness inside me.
Oh, he may have fucked Jeanette, but what they did in that bedroom is only about me. How could he use her that way, and how could Jeanette be so foolish as to let him?
I stare up at him, sparkly and enraged. “You bastard,” I hiss, slamming my door in both their faces.
~~~
I spend the rest of the night locked in my bedroom. I ignore Jeanette’s repeated attempts to get me to come out and talk to her. I don’t know why she’s in such a frenzy about me knowing this. She’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants. She can definitely do it with Alan Manzone with no squawking from me.
Her fingers rap on my door again and I cringe.
“Linda, talk to me. I don’t want this to be a problem between us. You said you weren’t interested in—”
“I’m not interested in him,” I snap back at her despite my vow to ignore her. “Go out. Have fun. I hope you’re happy together.”
“Why do you have to be so petty?”
I laugh gruffly, staring at the door, shaking my head. “I’m not petty. I don’t care. How many times do I have to tell you that? But Alan Manzone is a mistake I don’t even want you to make.”
I scrunch up my nose. Fuck, that came out wrong.
I hear her heels clicking on the wood stairs and then the front door opening and closing. I sink back to lie on my bed, relieved she’s gone and that this is over for at least a little bit.
I don’t care that she fucked Alan. Well, not beyond that way you care when you read in the paper about some injury happening to a stranger. I feel badly about the event, but I hate that she can’t see what Alan is about and why he’s toying with her. I hate that he’s doing it. There is nothing I can do to fix it on either side and it is definitely not my problem.
My problem is across the planet in California, probably sitting on the cliffs staring at the ocean today.
Now that Jeanette has finally left and won’t be banging every few minutes wanting to discuss the issue, I reach for the phone and place an overseas call.
Anxiously I tick off the rings in my head, waiting for someone to answer.
“Hello.”
Jack. I smile. “Hi, sweetheart. How did your day go?”
“Linda.” He sighs and I feel it run across my flesh like a caress. “It’s better now.”
He’s trying to be upbeat, corny line and all, but I can tell he is far from happy.
“Rough one for you today?”
“Not really.” A long pause. “I got Chrissie moved back into school, and it’s too quiet here.” He laughs in a way opposite to humor. I hear another long, ragged exhale of breath. “It was fucking miserable, baby. She didn’t want to go back. I could see it in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. And I didn’t want to leave her there. I want this over. I want her home. This is wrong. It is tearing her to pieces.”
I shake my head, my lips tightly puckering. “Fucking Walter,” I say, unable to stop myself, but the man I love is in pain and I know who is causing it.
“Don’t fold on me now, Linda. I need your calm head, keeping me grounded, focused, or I’ll end up hating him before this is through. I don’t want to.”
“I’m sorry. I just hate knowing you’re going through this. Any news on the psychologist
’s report?”
“They finished the home visits last week. We have a hearing date on the calendar next month. I should get the report sometime before that. The judge wants us to sit down in mediation, to attempt to work this out amicably, but Walter is resistant to a face-to-face discussion.”
“It doesn’t matter. It will work out in your favor no matter what Walter does. I’m certain of that.”
“I hope you’re right, sweetheart.”
I hear the patio door open and close. He’s walking. I can tell by the way he’s breathing into the phone. He is too keyed up over everything even to sit and talk to me.
My heart twists. “I am right. I’m always right about everything.”
He laughs, but what I don’t say is it would be too cruel for me to have left him and for God to take away Chrissie. This agonizing sacrifice has to be worth something. If Jack gets to keep his girl there would never be a moment’s regret in me over these miserable days without him.
“Tell me about your day,” he asks.
“Same old, same old. Nothing extraordinary,” I answer, pushing from my mind the Alan Manzone and Jeanette development.
“I miss you, sweetheart,” he says in a kind of despondent way.
“It’s only been a few weeks. Well see each other soon,” I murmur, fighting to maintain an upbeat tone of voice.
Another moment of silence comes through the phone and for some reason it makes me tense.
“About October,” Jack says and I tense. “I know you’re expecting me to fly there, and there is nothing more I want to do, sweetheart, but I can’t.”
My fingers tighten around the phone. I can tell by his voice, I don’t need to ask, but I do anyway. “Why can’t you come in October? I really miss you. I really need to see you, Jack.”
A long pause and I can hear a loud exhale of breath through the receiver. “There’s an issue with Chrissie. An incident she had at school. It’s not a good idea for me to leave right now. Not before the hearing. And if it goes against me, definitely not after the hearing. Not for a while. I’ll need to have the lawyers start immediately to get my girl back.”