He left his clothes in a sopping heap on the bathroom floor, turned the spray on hot, and let out a grateful sigh when he stepped in.
The little room, and the tub in it, hadn't been designed for a man of six-one. The nozzle was aimed straight at his throat, and if he wasn't careful he rapped his elbow against the wall whenever he moved his arms.
But he'd developed a routine during the time he'd been with Nell.
Bracing his hands on the front wall, he bent over so the spray sluiced over his head and back. Since she tended to use fragrant and feminine soaps and shampoos, he'd casually placed some of his own on the ledge above the lip of the tub.
Neither of them had mentioned these additions—or the change of clothing he'd left on the shelf of her closet.
They didn't talk about the fact that they rarely spent a night apart. Other people did, he knew. He saw the winks and was becoming accustomed to having his name and hers roll off people's tongues together as if they were one word.
But they hadn't spoken of it. Maybe it was a kind of superstition, he thought, not to speak out loud what you were most afraid to lose.
Or maybe it was just another kind of cowardice.
He wasn't sure it mattered, but he was sure it was time to take another step forward.
He'd taken one himself, the biggest step he'd ever taken, on the mainland that afternoon.
He had to admit he felt good about it. He'd felt a little jittery, but that had passed quickly enough. Even the hideous ride back from the mainland hadn't managed to dampen his mood.
The sounds on the other side of the curtain surprised him enough to make him move too quickly. The rap of his elbow against the wall echoed in the little room, and was followed, viciously, by a stream of curses.
"Are you all right?" Torn between amusement and sympathy, Nell pressed her lips together tight and kept his wet bundle of clothes crammed against her chest.
He wrenched off the spray and whipped the curtain back. "This room is a hazard. I've a good mind to check the code and… what are you doing with those?"
"Well, I—" She broke off, baffled when he all but leaped naked out of the tub and snatched them back from her. "I was just going to toss them in the dryer."
"I'll take care of it later. I've got a change around here." He dumped them on the floor again, ignoring her wince as they hit with a wet plop behind him.
"At least hang them up. They'll just mildew lying in a pile like that."
"Okay, okay." He grabbed a towel, ran it roughly over his hair. "Did you just come in here to pick up after me?"
"Actually, yes." Now her gaze traveled down, slowly, over the damp chest where her locket glittered, the flat belly, the narrow hips he swagged in the towel. "But right at the moment, I'm not thinking tidy."
"Is that so?" One look from her did more to warm his blood than an ocean of hot water. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking the very best thing to do with a man who has just come in from a storm is tuck him into bed. Come with me."
He let her take his hand and draw him through to the bedroom. "Are we going to play doctor? Because I think I could get really sick if it was worth my while."
She chuckled, then tossed back the quilt. "In."
"Yes, ma'am."
Before he could twitch off the towel, she did it for him. But when he grabbed for her, she evaded, then gave him a nudge onto the bed.
"You may know," she began and, picking up matches, walked around the room lighting candles, "that in lore and legend witches often served as healers."
Candlelight swayed, and it shimmered. "I'm starting to feel really healthy."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"I'm counting on it."
She turned to him. "Do you know what I've never done for anyone?"
"No, but I'm riveted."
She slowly lifted the hem of her sweater. She remembered the day she'd stood, poised like this, on the sunny back of his inlet.
"I want you to watch me." Inch by inch, she peeled the sweater up her body. "And want me."
If he'd been struck blind, he would have seen her, skin glowing in delicate light.
She slipped out of her shoes in a kind of graceful dance. Her simple white bra cut low and sweet over the subtle curve of her breasts. She lifted her hand to the center clasp, watched his eyes follow the move, then she deliberately left it fastened and trailed her fingertips down her midriff to the hook of her slacks.
His pulse began to thrum as the fabric slithered over her hips, down her legs. When it pooled at her feet, she stepped out with that same fluid ease.
"Why don't you let me do the rest?"
Her lips curved and she stepped closer, but not close enough. She'd never set out to seduce a man before, and wasn't ready to surrender the power.
She could imagine his hands on her as she ran her own up her body, as his breath rushed out of his lungs.
With that faint and knowing smile on her face, she flicked open her bra, let it slide away. Her breasts already felt full, and tender. She peeled the panties over her hips, stepped free of them. She was already wet.
"I want to take you," she whispered. "Slowly. I want you to take me." She eased onto the bed on hands and knees to straddle him. "Slowly." She seemed to melt over him. "As if there'll never be an end to it."
Her lips were warm and soft on his. Seeking. The taste of him slid through her system like a drug. When he rolled to take more, to deepen it, she went with him. But not in surrender.
She ran her fingertips lightly up and down his back, finding pleasure in the ridge of muscle, the ripple of it as she aroused him.
She let herself float on sensation as he gave her, and took from her, the gradual glide she'd demanded. Candlelight shifted, then the flames ran straight and true as spears and filled the air with fragrance.
They rose together, danced on that scented air. They knelt on the bed, centered on it, torso to torso and mouth to mouth.
If it was a spell, he'd have stayed bound eternally without question, without struggle. Witch or woman, a blend of both, she was his.
He watched the way his hand looked against her skin, dark to light, rough to fragile. The way her breasts could be cupped in his palms, and how the tips hardened under the brush of his thumb.
They touched, and tasted. A brush, a sip, a lazy caress, a long, slow drink.
When at last he slipped inside her, the gentle rise and fall was like waves of silk. Magic shimmered as they watched each other, as for each, for that moment, no one else existed. Beat to beat, with an intimacy that was more than mating, that abounded past needs and outraced passion.
It welled in her heart, overflowed in a spill like gold.
Her lips curved again as he lowered his mouth to hers. Their hands joined, fingers linking as they slid off the world together.
~•~
When she lay curled to his side, her palm over the steady beat of his heart, it seemed nothing could touch them. Her haven, she thought, was safe, as they were safe inside it.
All of her fears and worries, that creeping dread, seemed foolish now.
They were simply a man and a woman in love, lying in a warm bed and listening to the last of a storm pass overhead.
"I wonder if I'll ever learn how to manipulate objects."
"Honey, you manipulate just fine," he chuckled.
"No." She gave him a playful slap. "I mean moving things from one point to another. If I could, I'd chant the proper incantation and so on, and we'd have chicken soup in bed."
"It doesn't work like that. Does it?" he asked.
"I bet it does for Mia, if she wants it enough. But for lowly students such as me, it takes getting up, going into the kitchen and doing it all the old-fashioned way."
She turned her head to give his shoulder a pecking kiss, then rolled away.
"Why don't you stay here and I'll get the soup?"
She tossed a look over her shoulder as she walked to the closet for the robe she'd fi
nally gotten around to buying. "Clever of you to suggest that after I was already up."
"I thought so. And since you caught me, I'll throw some clothes on and come out and give you a hand."
"Fine. Bring out that wet heap in the bathroom while you're at it."
Wet heap? It took him a minute to remember, so she was already out of the room when he leaped out of bed and snatched up his sodden pants from the floor. Digging in the pocket, he let out a breath as his fingers closed around a small box.
She had a round loaf of bread on a cutting board and was ladling up wide bowls of soup when he came in. She looked so pretty, so at home in her soft pink robe, he thought, her feet bare, her hair a little mussed.
"Nell, why don't we let that cool a minute?"
"We'll need to. Do you want some wine?"
"In a minute." Odd, he thought he'd be nervous, at least a little. Instead he was rock calm. He laid his hands on her shoulders, turned her, then ran them down to her elbows. "I love you, Nell."
"I—"
It was as far as she got before his lips silenced hers.
"I thought of different ways to do this. Taking you for a drive one night, or a walk on the beach next full moon. Or for a fancy dinner at the hotel. But this is the right way for us, the right place, and the right time."
The little flutter in her stomach was a warning. But she couldn't step back. She couldn't move at all.
"I thought of different ways to ask you, what words might suit best, and how I should say them. But the only ones that come to me right now are I love you, Nell. Marry me."
The breath that she had been holding released as joy and grief waged a helpless war inside her. "Zack. We've been together such a short time."
"We can wait a while to get married if you want, though I don't see the point in it."
"Why can't we just leave things the way they are?"
Of all the reactions he'd been expecting, the hitch of fear in her voice hadn't been among them. "Because we need a place of our own, a life of our own, not pieces of yours and mine."
"Marriage is just a legality. That's all." She turned away, reached blindly into the cupboard for glasses.
"For some people." He said it quietly. "Not for you or me. We're basic, Nell. When basic people fall in love, and mean it, they get married, start a family. I want to share my life with you, make children with you, grow old with you."
Tears threatened. Everything he said was what she wanted, so deep in her heart that it was into her soul. "You're moving too fast."
"I don't think so." He took the box from his pocket. "I bought this today because we've already started our life together, Nell. It's time to see where it takes us."
Her fingers curled into her palms as she looked down. He'd bought her a sapphire, a rich, warm stone set in a simple band of gold. He'd have known she would need warmth and simplicity.
Evan had chosen a diamond, a brilliant square in platinum that had sat on her finger like ice.
"I'm sorry. Zack, I'm so sorry. I can't marry you."
He felt the slice through his heart, but he never flinched as he watched her face. "Do you love me, Nell?"
"Yes."
"Then I deserve to know why you won't make a promise to me, and take one from me."
"You're right." She struggled to steady herself. "I can't marry you, Zack, because I'm already married."
Nothing she could have said would have stunned him more. "Married? You're married! For God's sake, Nell, we've been together for months."
"I know." It wasn't just shock she saw now. It wasn't just anger. He stared at her as if she were a stranger. "I left him, you see. More than a year ago."
He struggled over the first hurdle. The fact that she'd been married and hadn't told him. But he couldn't make it over the second. That she was married still.
"Left him, but didn't divorce him."
"No, I couldn't. I—"
"And you let me touch you, you slept with me, let me fall in love with you, knowing you weren't free."
"Yes." It was so cold, suddenly so cold in the little kitchen that it penetrated her bones. "I don't have any excuses for it."
"I won't ask when you were planning to tell me. Obviously you weren't." He closed the box with a snap, jammed it back in his pocket. "I don't sleep with other men's wives, Nell. A word from you, one goddamn word from you, and we wouldn't have gotten to this point."
"I know. It's my fault." As his anger grew, hardened his face, she felt the strength she'd rebuilt draining away like the color in her cheeks.
"You think that makes up for it?" he shot back, as temper and misery careened inside him. "You think taking the blame for it cleans the fucking slate on this?"
"No."
"Goddamn it." He spun away from her and caught the way she flinched at the move. "I'll yell when I need to yell. You're only making me madder standing there like you're waiting for a punch. I'm not going to hit you. Not now, not ever. And it's insulting for you to stand there wondering if I will."
"You don't know what it's like."
"No, I don't, because you won't tell me." He reined himself in as much as he could, though temper was still sparking. "Or you tell me just enough to keep things running smooth until the next time."
"Maybe that's true. But I told you I couldn't tell you everything. That I wasn't going to go into the details."
"This isn't a damn detail. You're still married to the man who did this to you."
"Yes."
"Are you planning on ending the marriage?"
"No."
"Well, that's plain enough." He snatched up his boots, his jacket.
"I can't let him find out where I am. I can't let him find me."
He started to yank the door open, then stood there a moment, his hand on the knob. "Did you ever stop and think, just once did you ever stop and look at me and know I'd do whatever needed to be done for you? I'd have done it, Nell, for a stranger, because it's my job. How could you not know I'd do it for you?"
She did know, she thought as he walked away from her. It was only one of the things that frightened her. Unable to cry, she sat miserably in the house she had made safe, and empty.
Chapter Seventeen
I've lost him. I've ruined it." Nell sat in Mia's great, gorgeous cavern of a living room, in front of an ox-roasting fire sipping a cup of healing cinnamon tea. Isis stretched her lean, warm body over her lap like a cozy blanket.
None of it lifted her mood.
"Damaged it, perhaps. And nothing's lost that can be found again."
"I can't fix this, Mia. Everything he said to me is true. I didn't want to think about it, to see it, but it's true. I had no right to let things get as serious as they did."
"I don't happen to have a hair shirt handy, but I imagine we can make something up." At Nell's shocked stare, Mia lifted one shoulder elegantly. "It's not that I don't sympathize with both of you, because I do. But the fact is, Nell, you fell in love, both of you. And both of you dealt with it the way you needed to deal with it. You brought each other something that not everyone is given. That's nothing to regret."
"I don't regret loving him, or being loved by him. I regret a lot of things, but not that."
"All right, then. You need to take the next step."
"There is no next step. I can't marry Zack because I'm legally tied to someone else. And even if Evan decides to divorce me in absentia or whatever, I still couldn't marry Zack. My identification is false."
"Details."
"Not to him."
"Yes, you're right." She tapped her pretty fingernails on the side of her cup as she considered. "Some things Zack would see, because he's Zack, as black and white. I'm sorry I didn't think this far ahead and warn you of that. I know him," Mia continued as she rose to stretch. "I didn't anticipate that he'd move toward legal binding so quickly. I'm jaded when it comes to love."
She poured more tea, pondered while she roamed the room and sipped.
There were two
sofas, both in deep hunter green, that begged for a body to sink down and sink in. They were scattered with jewel-toned pillows, all in soft fabrics. Texture was essential to luxury, and when at leisure, Mia insisted on luxury.
The room was populated with antiques, because she preferred the old to the new unless it was in business equipment. The rugs on the wide-planked chestnut floor were satisfactorily faded. There were flowers everywhere, in priceless crystal or in cheerful colored bottles of no special value.
Some of the candles she surrounded herself with in every room were lit. The white ones, for peace.
"You've hurt him, Nell, on two levels. One by not falling into his arms in utter delight when he proposed." She stopped, lifting one brow. "I told you I was jaded in this area, but nonetheless, when a man asks a woman to marry him, he's not going to be pleased when she says 'No, thank you.'"
"I'm not a complete idiot, Mia."
"No, darling. I'm sorry." Contrite, though secretly amused at the biting tone, Mia stopped behind the sofa and stroked Nell's hair. "Of course you're not. And I should have said three levels, the second being his sense of honor. He has just discovered himself poaching on what he would consider another man's territory."
"Oh, really. I'm not a damn rabbit."
"Zack would see himself breaking a code. The third level is that he would certainly have done so anyway, if he'd known. If you'd told him the circumstances. He could adjust his line there, because he loves you and wants you, and because he would be relieved that you'd escaped from a horrible situation. But the fact that you didn't tell him, that you let him go into this, let him fall in love with you blind, is going to be hard for him to swallow."
"Why can't he see that my marriage to Evan means nothing? I'm not Helen Remington anymore."
"Do you want comfort or truth?" Mia asked flatly.
"I can't have both. It may as well be truth."
"You lied to him, and by lying you put him in an untenable position. More, you told him you didn't intend to end the marriage."
"I can't—"
"Wait. You won't end it, and without an end there can't be a beginning. This is purely your choice, Nell, and no one can or should take it from you. But you've blocked Zack from being able to stand for you. To stand with you or, more to his liking, I imagine, to step in front of you and face your demon. Nell."
Books by Nora Roberts Page 166