by Tami Hoag
Even in this setting he looked tough and dangerous. He had donned jeans and a black sweatshirt for their outing, leaving his shoulder holster behind, but not his pistol. The gun had been his contribution to the picnic basket.
A man who packed guns in picnic baskets had told her she was beautiful, had stated it as if it were a plain, irrefutable fact. A smart woman wouldn’t have gone marshmallow soft inside over that. Faith decided her brain shouldn’t enter into the debate. It didn’t seem to function well at all when it came to this man.
A frown tugged at the corners of Shane’s mouth. “You act as if you’ve never had a man tell you that.”
“I haven’t,” she admitted. “Not someone who really meant it.”
“Then your ex-husband is blind as well as stupid.”
She sighed as she absently drew patterns in the sand with her finger. “Disinterested is probably the more accurate word.”
“A fool.”
“Let’s not talk about him, okay?” she said, flashing Shane a brittle smile. “Let’s just enjoy this beautiful day.”
She brought her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Turning her face to the sun, she closed her eyes and concentrated on absorbing the warmth. The whole point of coming to the beach had been to get away from her problems. Shane himself was a reminder, but Faith had decided simply to pretend he wasn’t a government agent. For this afternoon he was just a man, they were just ordinary people enjoying the beach and the sun.
She didn’t have time to do more than register the shadow that suddenly blocked the warm rays from her face. Before she could even open her eyes to see what was happening, Shane’s mouth had settled against hers, and she was enveloped by warmth of another kind.
This was an inner heat that blazed whenever he touched her. Faith let it sweep through her. She didn’t try to fight the feelings that engulfed her. She’d been fighting them for too long. For this one kiss logic and reality could just butt out. She’d had enough reality to last her. This was escape, a wonderful fantasy, and she welcomed it.
Instinctively her hands came up to steady herself. She wound her arms around Shane’s neck as he parted her willing lips and deepened the kiss. Masterfully he explored her mouth, tasting and claiming territory that had lain fallow for too long. Desire awakened inside her and came to life like a seed in the spring.
Slowly he eased her down to the blanket, never breaking the kiss. His left hand stole under the hem of her sweatshirt, and his fingers teased the silky flesh of her belly. She sucked in a breath as he dragged his lips across her cheek and jaw and slid his hand up to claim one aching breast.
“Shane,” she managed to whisper, forcing her eyes open. “What are you doing?”
His eyes were the color of storm clouds when he lifted his head and looked down at her. He rubbed his thumb over the pebble-hard nub of her nipple and smiled with satisfaction as she gasped. His voice was like warm silk when he spoke. “I’m enjoying this beautiful afternoon.”
A perfectly reasonable answer, Faith thought as her eyes drifted shut and her concentration focused on the incredible sensation of his hand on her breast. His long, elegant musician’s fingers stroked and kneaded the soft globe of flesh. His thumb continually massaged the sensitive center. Tingling waves of sensation radiated from that point, shooting directly to the pit of her belly where they swirled in an ever tightening whirlpool.
Lord, she’d never known a man’s touch could incite her senses to riot. This was incredible. This was something she had never experienced. She suddenly felt cheated. She’d been a wife and had never known this kind of physical pleasure. She was a grown woman with a child….
“Lindy—” she said, abruptly trying to sit up and finding it a futile task with Shane half-sprawled on top of her.
“She can’t see us.” He raised up just enough to peer over the wicker food hamper that shielded their activities from Lindy’s view. Faith’s daughter sat playing in the sand a good thirty feet away. “She’s completely absorbed in counting her seashells.”
“That won’t take long,” Faith said on a breathless laugh. “She can only make it to ten.”
“Lindy!” Shane called.
“I’m real busy!” she called back, not even lifting her head from her task.
“Okay. You give a holler when you’re not busy anymore.”
“Okie-dokie!”
Shane turned his attention from daughter to mother. Faith’s heart-shaped face was flushed, her lips were love-swollen and glistened from his kiss. Possessive desire pounded through him in waves.
“I don’t think this is a very good idea,” Faith said weakly, thrills rippling through her at the hungry look on his face.
“Really?” One black brow quirked upward as Shane began to lower his head. “Then you’re going to hate this.”
He kissed her again, slowly, deeply, as if they had years for just this one kiss. Faith wished they did. She wished they had forever. Surely the love she’d stored up in her heart would last that long and then some. But they didn’t have forever. They had only the present. Shane would be with her only a few weeks at the most.
Would the heartache be any less when he left if she said no to a physical relationship with him? Or would it be even more painful with the addition of regret for not taking as much as he was willing to give her?
Shane felt his heart twist when he raised his head and looked down into sable eyes swimming with tears of confusion. He cursed himself for complicating her already complicated situation. He had no business wanting Faith Kincaid in the first place. What the hell did he think he was doing pushing her this way? Not more than a few hours ago he’d told himself he wouldn’t pressure her into anything.
Gently he brushed a crystal drop of moisture from the corner of her eye with his thumb. “No tears,” he whispered, his expression more tender than he would have believed possible. “Today is too perfect for tears.”
He was right, Faith thought, her heart aching with love for him as she traced her fingertips over the angular planes of his aristocratic face. There would be time enough for tears later.
“I want you, Faith,” he said, his smoky voice a caress to her already-aroused senses. “But I won’t push you. It has to be your choice.”
Lindy’s voice floated to them on the breeze. “I’m all done being busy now!”
A rare smile lit Shane’s face as he sat up and put his sunglasses back on. “I think that’s our call to duty.”
“Duty?” Faith questioned, slowly gathering her scattered wits. She took Shane’s hand and let him help her up from the blanket.
“Construction crew. I promised Lindy I’d help her build a sand castle.”
“You’re a talented man, Mr. Callan.”
He slid an arm around her shoulders as they headed up the beach. “I told you before, I’m full of surprises.”
Faith leaned against him, silent, wondering if she dared hope one of the surprises inside him would be love.
He watched from the deck of the cabin cruiser, one eye pressed to the eyepiece of a state-of-the-art telescope. His blood heated as he watched them kiss and embrace. “Ah, yes,” he murmured, “love is a many-splendored thing.”
Sitting back in the comfortable helm seat on the navigation bridge, he propped his legs up on the railing and lazily polished the dull blue barrel of a semiautomatic pistol. “Love and death. How poetic. Soon Mrs. Gerrard, Agent Callan. Soon.”
SEVEN
ONE SAND CASTLE turned into two and eventually became a minor megalopolis on the little beach. After the construction boom came a well-deserved cookie break, then Lindy curled up on the blanket with her bedraggled doll tucked to her chest and fell into the deep, blissful sleep of a happy child.
Faith gazed down on her daughter, gently rubbing a hand back and forth over Lindy’s back as she slept. Shane watched quietly, his expression pensive as feelings tumbled loose inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such a sense of peace. There was no
denying that the source of that peace was the lady sitting across from him, and the little girl with the sun-blushed cheeks and yellow Big Bird sweatshirt.
“She’s pretty special, isn’t she?” he murmured, reaching out hesitantly to touch Lindy’s silky hair. A curl wound around his finger.
Faith shot him a grin. “I hope you’re not expecting an unbiased opinion. Personally I think the sun rises and sets on this little one.”
“I’ve got a slew of nieces and nephews,” Shane announced, almost as startled as Faith was that he had revealed something personal. Suddenly uneasy, he looked out at the ocean where fishing boats bobbed on the horizon. “I haven’t seen them in a long time.”
“Because of your job?”
“The life I lead is not conducive to emotional complications.”
Faith didn’t attempt to hold back her harsh laugh. “How clinically put.”
“It’s the truth.” His answer was almost as sharp as the look he leveled at her. “Would you rather I lie to you, Faith?”
“No,” she whispered. “I’ve been lied to enough.”
Shane bit back an oath. He wasn’t accustomed to explaining himself to anyone—quite the opposite, in fact—but one look at Faith’s expression compelled him to tell her more. “If an agent lets emotions get in his way, he can screw things up. A clear head can mean the difference between life and death.”
“So you just turn it off like a faucet?” she asked. That kind of control was well beyond her. She both envied and pitied him for it.
Shane let the question hang in the air. He didn’t want to think about it today. Today the sun was shining on him. Today he could be with Faith and her daughter. He could pretend to be a normal man for a few hours. The shadows would swallow him up again soon enough.
Faith didn’t press for an answer. She had more questions to ask, but she didn’t voice any of them. Wasn’t it a lonely way of life? She knew it was, she’d sensed the loneliness in him, she’d heard it in his music. Had he ever thought of quitting? That question was too dangerous. “No” would have been too painful an answer to hear.
“When I was a kid,” he said, staring out at the sea again, “my family had this place on the coast of Maine. We used to spend the whole summer there at the ocean.”
Relieved that the sudden tension between them had evaporated, Faith soaked up the information he offered. She felt a little like a squirrel hoarding nuts in preparation for a long, bleak winter, secreting away what tidbits she could about this man. He liked poetry and music and children and summers by the sea. There was a side of him that wasn’t dangerous at all. There was a side of him that was just a man, a man full of memories and loneliness, a man who needed love.
A week ago she had wondered if she had the strength to keep from loving him. Now her perspective was changing, and she began to wonder if she had the strength to give him her love. Could she offer the bounty of her heart, knowing he needed it but might not take it? Could she risk that kind of rejection again? Did she really have a choice?
They put off going back to the inn for as long as they could, trying to squeeze the most out of their golden afternoon. But as the fog bank began to drift in, they surrendered and gathered their things together.
The walk was made in near silence, with Lindy the only one in the mood for conversation. Shane was reticent by nature, but Faith thought she could sense another reason for his silence as they climbed the wooden stairs that zigzagged up the cliff from the beach—sadness.
For once she didn’t scold herself for romanticizing. They had shared something very special. She was certain Shane was as reluctant to leave it behind as she was.
Faith watched him as he carried her daughter across the lawn toward the sprawling house, his head bent, expression serious as he listened attentively to Lindy’s plans for the shells she had gathered. He was so patient and gentle with Lindy. William had offered his attention to his daughter only when there had been a press camera trained on him.
Stopping in her tracks, Faith hugged the folded blanket to her as she came to a decision. She loved Shane Callan. It didn’t matter why. It didn’t matter that he believed he could promise her nothing. She loved him, and she would take what time they had together to give him that love. If a future came of it, she would embrace that future wholeheartedly. If nothing came of it, she would embrace the memories and harbor no regrets.
Shane stood beside his bed frowning as he slipped off his watch and put it on the nightstand. Sleep was going to be a long time coming tonight. Restlessness stirred within him. The day that had healed him with peace and sunlight was a memory now, and somehow that left him feeling unsettled.
Damn, he thought as he pulled his shirt off, he was getting melancholy in his old age. He was supposed to be thinking about surveillance and suspects, but his mind wanted to linger on thoughts of the beach and Lindy … and Faith. Faith the woman, not the witness.
A soft knock drew his attention to the door.
“Shane?”
Her voice was soft and tentative, yet it seemed to reach through the door to caress him. His skin heated instantly at the thought. Before his hormones could run amuck, he called out, “Come in.”
Faith slipped into the room like a thief, closing the door quietly behind her. When she turned to face him, Shane felt as though he’d taken a punch to the solar plexus. Faith stood there, her doe eyes wide and uncertain, the amber glow of the lamp teasing out the red lights in her hair. She wore an ivory satin robe that was belted at the waist and fell to the floor. Framed by the V neckline of her robe was the necklace she always wore. The delicate bit of gold glittered warmly above her heart.
“You said you’d be here when I changed my mind,” she said, her gaze holding him captive. Her teeth grazed her lower lip, further betraying her nervousness. She swallowed and her breasts gave a little jump as she sucked in a breath. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Shane held himself utterly still, as if he were afraid she would vanish if he moved. A heavy warmth surged through his body, settling in his groin. “Are you sure?”
Faith nodded, her heart in her throat. He had to be the sexiest thing on two legs, standing there beside the bed wearing nothing but his jeans. The look he leveled at her from under his straight black brows was fiercely intense, searching for any hint of uncertainty in her. “I’m sure.”
Stepping away from the door, she closed the distance between them. Shane felt the level of his desire for her rise with every step she took. He wanted her. There was no need to question that, but he had to know she had no delusions about what this would mean. For both their sakes he couldn’t afford to let it be anything more than a few sweet hours of bliss.
When she was standing no more than a caress away, he lifted a hand and tenderly brushed his knuckles against her cheek. “I can’t make promises. You know that.”
“I’m not asking for any,” she whispered, her eyes downcast so he couldn’t see that, while she wasn’t asking him for promises, she was praying for a miracle. She would take whatever he would give her, but her heart was hoping that would be a lifetime.
Shane tipped her chin up, but before he could comment on what he saw in her gaze, she said, “I’d like to know what it is to have a man want me.”
It was the truth. Sex with William had been infrequent and unsatisfying. Her ex-husband had never set her on fire with a look or a touch. He had viewed their physical relationship as a necessary evil, and she had accepted that with a mix of guilt and relief. It was Shane who had awakened the latent sensuality in her. It was Shane who made her feel like a woman, who made her yearn for a man’s touch—for his touch.
Now he bent his head to hers, his gray eyes glowing with desire. “Lord, Faith,” he said on a growl, “how could any man look at you and not want you?”
He kissed her with barely restrained passion, groaning as she melted willingly against him. With trembling hands he pushed the ivory robe back off her shoulders, exposing her bare skin to his touch.
Satin whispered to the floor at their feet, and she was naked in his arms.
His lips trailed along her jaw to her throat as his fingers trailed down her supple back, and lower, to the full curve of her buttocks. He lifted her, fitting her against the erection that swelled and strained against the front of his jeans, letting her know just how much he wanted her.
Faith shuddered with raw anticipation. She gasped at the feel of him pressing intimately against her, and at the feel of her nipples burrowing into his chest hair. Need ribboned through her, brushing every nerve ending to awareness so that when Shane stood her away from his body, she nearly cried out at the sudden deprivation.
Mesmerized, she stared at him, her eyes passion-glazed and heavy-lidded as she watched him slowly lower the zipper of his jeans. Her breath held fast in her lungs as he peeled the denim from his lean hips and let the pants drop to join her robe on the floor. This wasn’t the first time she had seen him naked, but the sight still sapped the strength from her knees. He was beautiful and completely unselfconscious as she feasted her eyes on him.
Time ticked by unheeded. Shane’s gaze roamed as hungrily over Faith’s body as hers did over his. She was utterly feminine, all soft curves and creamy flesh. Her breasts were full, their swollen mauve tips begging for his attention. Her small waist flared into womanly hips. The delta of soft curls at the juncture of her thighs was more red than gold, and Shane’s whole body throbbed with the need to discover the sweet secrets that lay beyond.
Ruthlessly checking his own rampant desire, he reached out and took her hand. If passion was all he could give her, then he would make it as perfect for her as he knew how.
“It’s been a long time for me,” she said shyly.
Shane drew her into his arms and kissed her tenderly. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll take care of you. Just lie back and let me love you.”
As they sank to the bed, Faith breathed in the mingled scents of potpourri and man. Shane slid down her body, his hands tracing every line and curve of her. He caressed her breasts, his fingers stroking and kneading. Gently he fastened his lips around one nipple and sucked at the eager peak. She moaned and writhed beneath him. Her back arched off the bed, pressing her breast even deeper into the heat of his mouth.