by Tami Hoag
“Ellen?” That explained Justin’s resemblance to Becca. One of the few things Jace remembered about Rebecca’s younger sister was that she was nearly a carbon copy of Becca. And the boy’s blue eyes? Well, they were nothing more than a coincidence. Plenty of people had blue eyes. Hugh Bradshaw had blue eyes.
Jace suddenly felt a bit foolish for having been so sure he was Justin’s father. Foolish and sad. He felt as if he’d lost something that had never really been his. He tried to set his feelings aside as questions filled his head.
“Then where is she?” he asked. “Why does Justin call you Mom?”
Rebecca ran a hand through her hair and sighed tiredly. “Justin doesn’t know. I think a little boy would find it hard to understand why his mother would simply leave and never come back.”
It was impossible for her to say it and not sound bitter toward her sister. At the same time she was filled with such guilt, every inch of her body ached with it. The conflicting emotions brought tears up to sting her eyes.
Jace halted her pacing, gently taking hold of her shoulders and turning her to face him once more. “What happened?” he asked softly, then waited patiently for her to compose herself and her agitated thoughts.
“It was a few weeks after you left for Chicago,” she finally began. “Ellen was supposed to be getting ready to go back to college, something she wasn’t very enthusiastic about, but Dad insisted his daughters have a college education. Ellen wasn’t much of a student. It didn’t help matters that I had gone before her and graduated early.
“She came to see me at the hospital and told me she wasn’t going back to school because she was pregnant. We had a horrible fight about responsibility and letting Dad down. She said she didn’t care. She was sick of living in my shadow and never measuring up. In the end she left.”
“Where did she go?”
“We never knew. We didn’t hear from her for months, didn’t have any idea where she was, if she was alive or—When she came back, Justin couldn’t have been more than three or four days old. She handed him to me and said I would undoubtedly be a perfect mother since I was perfect at everything else.” She could still hear the resentment in her sister’s tone of voice. It still hurt. “We arranged for me to legally adopt Justin, then she left. We haven’t seen her since.”
“She’s never come back to see Justin?” Jace asked, incredulous at the thought that a mother could care so little about her child, especially a child he had become so attached to.
“Not once. She’s never so much as sent him a birthday card. She made it clear she wants nothing to do with him.”
“What about his father?”
Rebecca shook her head sadly. “We don’t know who he is. Ellen refused to tell anyone.”
She walked away from Jace and went to stand by the window, where crisp new curtains framed the view of a dark, rainy evening. Even though it wasn’t cold, she wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a chill.
“Legally, Justin is and always will be mine. Still, I shouldn’t have misled you, Jace. I like to pretend none of that trouble with Ellen ever happened, that Justin is my son and I’m his real mother. But someday I’m going to have to tell him.” Despair swelled inside her and choked her words in her throat as she said, “Then I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”
The tears that spilled from her eyes soaked into Jace’s dark blue shirt when he turned Rebecca and folded his arms around her. They soaked into his soul as well. He hurt for her, with her, because he loved her. He knew her pain and her uncertainties. All he wanted was to comfort and protect her.
“You’re his mother, Becca, in every way that counts.”
“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had offered Ellen support that day she came to my office, instead of getting on my high horse. I drove my own sister away because I had to be judge and jury. Then there’s a selfish part of me that’s glad about what happened because it gave me Justin. I love him so much.”
She lifted her head, her emerald eyes glittering with tears and pain. Her soft, sweet mouth trembled with emotion. “Yesterday you asked me if I’d ever made a mistake. Jace, I’ve made so many…”
And she’d punished herself for every one of them. Over and over. Rebecca had never been as hard on anyone as she was on herself. Jace knew that. Her sense of perfection was tied in with her sense of duty and her sense of responsibility. Because she didn’t want to let anyone down, she didn’t allow herself to make mistakes.
Smiling tenderly, he brushed her tears away with his thumbs as he framed her face with his hands. “Making mistakes only proves you’re human, sweetheart. I couldn’t love you if you weren’t human. And I do love you, Becca.”
Jace lowered his head the two inches necessary to press his lips to hers. She tasted of tears and vulnerability. He drank in the taste and offered what strength he had left after a long and trying day. He offered comfort and consolation, empathy and understanding.
No one knew more about making mistakes than Jace did. One of the biggest he’d ever made was leaving Rebecca behind all those years ago. Now he kissed her in an effort to make the past go away, to take them to a place where nothing else mattered but their love.
Rebecca took what he offered gladly, greedily. Tonight it didn’t matter that the future was uncertain or the past full of hurt. She opened herself to Jace and the kind of magic only he could give her, holding nothing back in their kiss. She gave him everything she was, everything she had been.
“Stay with me tonight, Becca,” he murmured, holding her close and kissing the black hair that curtained her ear like a raven’s wing. “I need you. I need to hold you.”
Her heart beat with a sense of relief. The thought of going home to spend the night in a lonely bed made her shiver. There had been so many nights like that. She needed to be with Jace. Some higher power had made them soul mates. That had never been more clear to her than now, when they had both bared their most painful secrets.
“Say you’ll stay all night, Becca,” Jace whispered, his hands sliding over her supple back.
A smile curved Rebecca’s mouth upward ever so slightly as she looked at him. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble with Muriel.”
He smiled back and rubbed the tip of his aquiline nose against hers. “She doesn’t do a bed check.”
“Good,” she said, sobering. She ran a cool hand along the plane of his cheek, noting the lines of strain and experience that added character to his handsomeness. “Because I don’t plan on going anywhere until dawn.”
Moving into Jace’s bedroom, they shut the door in the faces of two curious tabbies that had wandered into the sitting room. In the back of her mind Rebecca registered the fact that the walls had been given a fresh coat of beige paint and the heavy green drapes had been replaced. But her attention was focused on Jace.
They had come together before out of desire. Their need now was different but no less intense. This need was one to comfort and be comforted, to give strength and take it.
They undressed each other slowly, kissing and caressing as they went. Jace sat on the bed as he undid the buttons that ran down the back of Rebecca’s white cotton blouse. His lips trailed down the valley of her spine, lingering just above the waistband of her skirt. He nibbled at the downy-soft flesh as his fingers dealt with a button and a zipper. Her breath fluttered in her throat at the feel of the gauzy skirt sliding down over her hips and thighs. Dizziness swirled in her head when his lips followed the descent of her white silk tap pants over the graceful line of her hip.
Jace stood behind her then, his hands stroking the smooth bare flesh of her stomach and lower. She sighed and pressed her head back against his shoulder as his fingers combed through the thatch of ebony curls that hid her most feminine secrets. His arousal pressed into her back. She moved against him, wanting him, needing to be one with him.
When they stretched out across the mattress of the big mahogany bed, there was no sense of urgency, only the desire to
be close. One long kiss faded into another and another, and the only sound was that of the rain that came steadily down outside the windows. Night closed around the old house like a black satin cloak, leaving the lovers in the soft, colorful glow of a single old Tiffany lamp.
Rebecca felt the past and all its hurts recede as Jace’s hands and mouth soothed and aroused her at once. He knew every inch of her body, every place to touch and tease. He sought them all out and gave each his full attention, then allowed Rebecca to do the same with his body. Time stretched on and on. Neither noticed or cared.
When Jace finally mounted her, he let Becca take his full length in one smooth, slow stroke. They were still for a long moment as they savored their union and the sense of completion that came with it, a completion that was uniquely theirs.
Finally nature intervened. Rebecca’s body tugged at Jace’s, silently begging for release. He groaned and rocked his hips against hers. She sighed and arched up against him.
Their loving was slow and gentle, each movement designed to prolong the pleasure as well as heighten it. Rebecca felt like a finely tuned instrument being played by a master musician. It was a sweet, tender melody, one that touched the most vulnerable corner of her heart, one that built slowly toward what she knew would be a soaring crescendo.
She straddled Jace, moving on him as he leaned back against the headboard of the bed. Her fingers dug into his muscular shoulders as she took him into her, deeper and harder with each stroke. Jace clutched her to him as their pleasure crested powerfully and left them floating on a wave of weakness and bliss.
Sated and relaxed for the first time in hours, they lay together, sharing a pillow. They listened to the rain and the mournful sound of a cat meowing at the back door.
“Can I make a confession?” Jace asked softly. He reached up a hand to comb back a lock of her hair.
“Haven’t we done enough of that for one night?” Rebecca didn’t want anything to intrude on this time, not the past, not the future.
Jace’s smile was sheepish as he ignored her question. “I was disappointed when you told me Justin isn’t mine. I want us to have children together, Becca. I want the love we make to create something even more beautiful than it has.”
A sharp sense of longing ran through Rebecca. She wanted that too. She couldn’t count the times she had wished she had given birth to Justin, and, although she had never admitted it, Jace was the only man she could have pictured as the father of her child. Sometimes it was hard for her to look at Justin and not imagine him as Jace’s and her son.
Those were feelings she tried hard to ignore. She couldn’t afford dreams like that one. They meant investing heavily in a future that was uncertain. Jace wanted to build on the foundation of the changes he had struggled to make within himself. That was an admirable desire. But Rebecca could too easily remember the past promises that lay broken with the pieces of a young girl’s heart. And, too, there was a part of her that didn’t want to be a part of Jace’s penance. If her relationship with him was tied to his sense of guilt about Casey Mercer and his own past, what would happen when the ache of that guilt dulled?
Jace didn’t comment on her lack of response. He warded off the hurt by simply ignoring Rebecca’s silence and telling himself they would be a family, a growing, loving family. All they needed was time. He couldn’t heal the wounds overnight, nor could he expect Becca to forget them.
Leaning on his elbows, Jace gazed down at her, his eyes midnight blue. “I love you, Becca. I’ve never said that to another woman.”
“I love you,” Rebecca whispered, reaching up to touch the silvery strands of his hair that spilled across his forehead. She had never said those words to another man; something told her she never would. For better or worse, Jace Cooper was the man who had captured her heart. She could only hope this time he wouldn’t break it.
He leaned down and brushed the softest of kisses across her mouth. “You’re everything a man could ever want. I don’t deserve you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you go again.”
Then he switched off the Tiffany lamp, took Rebecca in his arms, and proved his love to her in the only way he could.
8
“Feelings” blasting from an electric organ—complete with boom-chukka rhythm sounds—was not what Rebecca was used to hearing first thing in the morning. Her head came up off the pillow. Beside her, Jace slept on, magnificently naked, having kicked the sheets off. His ash-blond head was burrowed under his pillow. Rebecca’s thoughts scattered as she feasted on the sight.
He was all lines and angles and lean muscle—except for a gorgeously rounded backside. He grumbled in his sleep and turned from his belly onto his side so he was facing her. Rebecca’s heart lodged at the base of her throat. She saw bodies every day—male, female, in shape, out of shape—but she had yet to come across a shape that made her mouth go dry the way Jace Cooper’s did. The scars he had acquired over the past seven years only enhanced his masculinity.
Jace was an athlete in every sense of the word. He was beautifully made and possessed strength and stamina. Oh, boy, did he have stamina, Rebecca thought, her cheeks blooming with the memories. When Jace made love to her, it was magical. Nothing and no one could compare. When they made love, it was as if the past had no power over them, as if nothing mattered but the beautiful harmony between them.
Lying on her side, studying Jace in the early morning light, Rebecca wished she could feel secure knowing he was that one special person.
Suddenly her face dropped. She had spent the entire night in Jace’s arms, and now it was morning and she was trapped in Jace Cooper’s room with his landlady sitting out in the hallway playing “As Time Goes By” on the organ. His landlady, who had strictly forbidden him to have any hanky-panky go on in the room he rented from her.
“Jace, Jace, wake up!” Rebecca whispered urgently, poking him in the belly.
“Mmmm…again, sweetheart?” he mumbled in a low, lazy voice, rolling on his back. “Let me sleep just five more minutes.”
Rebecca straddled him and pulled the pillow off his face. “Will you wake up?”
Jace’s eyelids rose as lazily as his smile. Rebecca leaned over him, her black hair mussed wildly around her head. Naturally, his gaze was drawn downward to her full breasts with their large, dark rose-colored nipples. It wasn’t at all difficult to remember how they had tasted, how they had felt in his mouth. He was also very aware of the heat of her femininity pressing softly against his bare belly. Lord, to share a bed with this woman for the rest of his life would be like heaven on earth.
In a smoky morning voice he said, “For a view like this I’ll not only wake up, I’ll jump through flaming hoops if you want me to.”
“This is hardly the time for you to get turned on.” Rebecca scowled at him and started to move away, but Jace clamped his hands to her waist and held her where she was, his thumbs rubbing seductively against the soft skin of her tummy.
“I always thought morning was the perfect time,” he said. “Especially when I wake up to find a beautiful naked woman sitting on my—”
“Jace Cooper,” she whispered, her face flaming, “your landlady is practically right outside the door.”
Jace shook his head, fighting back a devilish grin. “I’m not into threesomes. Becca, you surprise me.”
She grabbed her pillow and thumped him in the face with it. “I’ll surprise you all right—”
The next thing Rebecca knew, she was flat on her back and Jace’s body was lovingly pressing hers down into the mattress. It happened so fast, she didn’t even have time to squeal in surprise. She stared up at him as Muriel segued into “You Light Up My Life.”
“Jace, this is serious,” she said, trying to keep his mind on the topic. “What are we going to do?”
He bent his head and whispered a scenario in her ear that made her go weak.
“I meant about Muriel,” she said, trying her best to ignore the way Jace was nipping at her collarbone. “If she
catches me sneaking out of your room, she’ll be furious with you.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to keep you prisoner here in my bedroom. Mmmm, I like that idea,” he said against her breast. He raised his head, his hair falling into blue eyes that gleamed with mischief. “Will you let me tie you up?”
“Jace!”
He slid up her body, growling and chuckling devilishly. As his arousal probed the juncture of her thighs, he stuck his tongue in her ear.
“This isn’t funny.”
“I agree,” he said on a groan. “Wrap your legs around my hips, sweetheart.”
A heat wave swept over her body at his words, but Rebecca refused to comply. “Muriel is from a different generation. She will not find it the least amusing that I spent the night with you. She’ll probably throw you out.”
Jace nibbled at the corner of her frown. “Then I’ll have to come live in your bedroom. I’ll let you tie me up.”
“You ought to be locked up,” she said, giggling as he tickled her ribs.
“Come on, honey,” Jace cajoled in his most persuasive tone. He slid his hand between their bodies and made her gasp as his fingers found her most sensitive flesh. “Open up for me, baby. I can’t think of a more wonderful way to start the morning than making love with you. And we can be as loud as we want. No one on earth could hear us above Muriel’s playing.”
The music stopped abruptly. Rebecca took advantage of Jace’s surprise to scramble out from under him and off the bed. As she scavenged for her clothes, the organ burst into “Some Enchanted Evening.”
“She’s improved since she got her hearing aid, don’t you think?” Jace asked, sitting back against the headboard and admiring the view as Rebecca bent over to pick up her panties.
“You’ll have to go out in the hallway and distract her so I can sneak out the back door,” Rebecca said as she struggled with the buttons that ran down the back of her blouse. This hardly seemed like the time to critique Muriel’s organ playing.