“Good morning,” he said, tracking her with his eyes as she made her way across the room to stand next to him.
“It is morning but it’s too early to be good,” she said, hoping the smile she could feel tugging at her mouth would take away any of the sting from her words.
It didn’t appear to deter Micah as he leaned in and pressed his lips against hers in a kiss as sweet as the sugar she never took in her coffee. His flesh was warm and soft against her own, and she didn’t even notice that she was leaning into him, following the lead of his hand which was suddenly cupping the back of her neck. Fuck, but he killed her with his kisses. He was world-class, stellar, toe-curlingly good.
Every kiss flared the passion between them again as it had after round two early this morning. In the only attempt for him to leave, Micah had kissed her, intending it to be good-bye, and it had left them sweaty and wrapped up in each other on the rug in her bedroom.
“Does that improve your assessment of the morning being ‘good’?” Micah asked, his breath warm on her cheek as he skimmed along her skin, stopping only to deliver a tender bite against the skin of her neck.
Kelsey shivered, laughing softly as he leaned his forehead on her shoulder and the seconds passed by them in a comfortable way she didn’t have with many people. Micah was a surprise, one that pleased and puzzled her, as she tried to keep their relationship in the right box. The sex part was easy but the compatibility, the easy way between them was harder to pigeonhole.
Micah lifted his head, turning back to the bookcase while taking a sip of his coffee. He gestured toward a photo of her parents taken about five years ago on the back patio of the house. Her mom was in her father’s lap as usual, since they couldn’t be in the same space without touching each other.
“Are these your folks?” He glanced back at her. “You look like your mom.”
Kelsey hesitated to answer, her first inclination to suggest that she call him a cab to go back to the hotel, and it must have been written all over her face because he quickly backtracked.
“Did I ask the wrong thing?” He stepped away, running his free hand through his hair with more embarrassment than irritation. “I’m not sure where the boundaries are here, Kelsey.”
Defensiveness rose up in her chest, and her words flew out of her mouth much harsher than she intended. “The boundaries are easy. This is temporary. We have sex. You leave. I stay.”
“So, is asking questions about family off-limits? I can go down on you for hours, but I can’t ask about a photo in your living room?” He stared her down and she shuffled a little on her bare feet with the intensity of his stare. “I know this is what it is, but we’ve been friendly enough so far without causing any type of international incident. If I wanted a girl to let me fuck her, I could have rented one of those by the hour.”
When he put it that way, it sounded ridiculous. It wasn’t like they hadn’t talked before about things in their lives, she’d taken him to meet her friends. She liked Micah. It didn’t have to change the rules to tell him about a damn photo.
“You’re right.” She offered up a smile and reached for the photo, handing it over to him. “I’m just…twitchy.”
“Twitchy,” he said, his expression and his tone flat with a hint of confused.
“Yeah, twitchy. You make me twitchy.”
“I’m presuming that isn’t as bad as it sounds since you let me make you feel other things at least five times last night.” His smirk was back, and Kelsey wondered again how he could be so laid-back and easy to talk to.
“You make all of this too easy,” she said, waiting to see if he understood what she was really saying. Micah stared at her for a couple of beats, his eyes assessing her and then warming with his understanding and agreement. “That makes me twitchy.”
He broke eye contact first, and she felt the loss of the warmth in his deep brown eyes, but she also felt relief. Shit was getting way too serious in here.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. The rules don’t cover everything going on here between us,” he murmured while still gazing down at the photograph. She struggled with how to answer that, but he wasn’t expecting one and didn’t leave her any space to fill. “They are a beautiful couple together.”
She looked at the photo, one of her favorites, and she knew what he saw. Her father was a large man with gorgeous dark skin and his hair cut very short, smile wide and open. Her mother was tall as well, her skin a stunning mocha shade that was beautifully matched by her coppery, butterscotch eyes, her dark hair long and curly. Kelsey was a perfect mix of her parents with her skin a deep caramel, her father’s copper brown eyes, and her mom’s dimpled grin.
“They were so much in love, best friends, but they could fight over politics like the world was on fire. They took great pride in canceling out each other’s votes, but they both adored Japanese food and agreed on how to put the toilet paper on the bar thingy.”
“You put it on there so that the TP rolls down from the top.”
She grinned at him, patting him on the head like an obedient pet. “Exactly.”
Micah shook off her touch with a grin and a roll of his eyes. “Your parents sound like mine. They make you believe that all that stuff I write about is possible.”
“My folks had it. I’d bet all the money in Vegas on that fact.”
She knew that her tone gave away her own wistfulness over ever having that kind of love in her own life. She didn’t really care right now. She wanted it. Who wouldn’t?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know your mother had passed,” he said, watching her intently. “I hope I didn’t bring up a tough subject for you to talk about.”
Kelsey squirmed, realizing too late that she’d caused his misunderstanding and walked right into a part of her life that was difficult to share with her best friends, much less an almost stranger. But none of her warning bells had gone off when they’d moved to the topic of family with Micah.
“She’s still alive,” she said and for a split second she thought about covering it up and telling him she’d misspoken, but she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to tell him about this part of her life. As usual, talking with him was like talking with someone she’d known forever. This guy was different, and she was glad he was leaving on Sunday or she could be in big trouble. “She’s suffering from early onset dementia and has been in a nursing care facility for eighteen months. It’s a toss-up on any given day if she even knows who I am. She remembers my dad more often.”
“Oh,” Micah said, his gaze fixed on her own as he obviously struggled to figure out what to say. She opened her mouth to spare him the effort but he beat her to it, and what he said had her stepping closer and letting him put his arms around her and drag her to him in a loose but warm embrace. “That’s got to be even harder on you, to see her still here but know that inside she’s lost.”
How did he know? How did he have any idea what kept her up nights and had her weeping in the hallway outside her mom’s room so her dad didn’t see?
“My dad has it worse. He misses his best friend,” she murmured, her face buried in the dip of his shoulder, his warm skin and scent washing over her in silent comfort. “But he says that we at least have the memories she’s lost. We have that comfort, and she…doesn’t. We loved each other, laughed a lot, and supported each other.”
“It sounds like you had a happy childhood,” Micah said, his voice low and soothing as it vibrated against her cheek. She looked at him, wondering how he made that accurate leap from all the heavy stuff she said. He must have read her thoughts because he chuckled and took the photo from her, running his thumb across the glass. “I’m not one of those guys on the Strip who reads mind. It wasn’t much of a leap to know that a kid who grows up knowing her parents love each other that much is likely to have a happy childhood.”
“You speak like you know from experience.”
“I do. My folks sound like your parents. I always had the security of knowing they adored each oth
er. That makes a kid secure and happy. It set the bar pretty high for my own marriage.”
She remembered that he was divorced, but he’d never spoken about it in the press, so she wasn’t sure how big a failure his marriage really was. All she could do was ask, and if he told her that it was none of her business, fair enough. This thing between them was in a weird space, and they were negotiating its terms minute-by-minute it seemed.
“And your marriage? How far off the mark was it?”
...
Micah released his hold on Kelsey and placed her photograph back on the shelf, turning his body so she couldn’t see his face clearly. It was a move calculated to give him some privacy from her prying question, even though he knew he was going to answer. It hadn’t been easy for Kelsey to share that fact about her mom, and the least he could do was return the show of trust.
“Well, since I count being faithful as one of those basic things to make a marriage successful, I’d say we missed the mark pretty spectacularly,” he said on a sigh that rumbled down deep in his gut. When would the knowledge of what happened stop making him feel like shit?
“She had to be crazy. Who would cheat on you?” Kelsey clapped her mouth shut pretty quickly, her expression telling him that she blurted it out before she could stop herself. It gave away more of her feelings about him than she really wanted to reveal, but that was okay by him. He liked Kelsey, and he was glad to know she liked him, too, even if they couldn’t keep each other.
He laughed a little before he launched into his answer, the taste of it both bitter and sweet on his tongue.
“We were sweethearts from elementary school, married right after high school, and then I went to boot camp. I don’t think either of us was prepared for life in the military much less being married. We had never lived anywhere but Bridger Gap, and suddenly she was left alone on a military base with nobody while I was halfway across the world.”
He was trying to a gentleman, to be fair. Yes, Becky was the one who broke the vow, but he hadn’t been that great a husband, putting the Corps before her in everything and not really sympathizing when she’d told him how lonely she was and asked to go back home while he was deployed. Looking back on that time, it felt like two kids playing at being grown-ups.
Kelsey wasn’t so understanding, and she didn’t hide her irritation on his behalf. “It’s not like it was a huge surprise either. Everyone knows what being a member of the military means these days. It’s no picnic for anybody.”
“I’m not making excuses for her. Becky cheated on me with a guy I’d been friends with since we were in diapers, and that shit hurt,” he said, his tone carrying more of an edge than it should after all this time. “I woke up in the hospital in Germany with a head injury from the IED and my parents were there with the news that my wife wasn’t going to be waiting for me when I got home.”
“She didn’t even tell you herself?” Now Kelsey was pissed and he couldn’t help but admire the way her cheeks flushed pink when she was angry. It was cute and sexy and made him want to pick her up and carry her back to bed. “There is being young and there is being a cowardly bitch, and I know where I put the former Mrs. Holmes right now.”
Her reaction made him smile; he didn’t necessarily disagree with her assessment of his ex-wife, but Kelsey’s outrage was so genuine, so visceral that it made him happy down in the very sick part of his brain that wanted her to give a shit about him. He reached out and grabbed one of her hands, feeling the jump of her pulse point on her wrist as he slid their fingers together. After what they’d done last night, holding hands was pretty tame, but it shot warmth over his skin that he allowed himself to revel in, soaking in her vitality.
“She wrote me a letter, but it came after I was injured. My parents knew and when they came to the hospital in Germany, they got the honor of breaking the news.” She squeezed his hand, adjusting their grip so that her hand covered his own. It was an intimate gesture, one that touched him more than the sex they’d had last night. It reached below the surface and beyond the nerve endings and latched onto that vulnerable spot located just behind his ribs. “Your face looks just like my mom’s did when she told me what had happened with Becky.”
“Well, I hope so,” she said, her words dripping with her heated irritation. “That was a pretty shitty thing to do.”
“Yeah, but looking back on all of it, it was probably never going to work. We loved each other, but it wasn’t the kind that could stand up to what life threw at us and that was the truth. My deployment just made us realize it sooner rather than later.”
“I don’t know how you write the books you write if that is what happened to you,” Kelsey said.
“I guess I’m writing about how I would like for it to have been.” He shrugged and drew her to him, his nose brushing along her jaw as he pressed a soft kiss here and there. She leaned into it and he realized that he hadn’t kissed her this morning. Not properly. He fixed that ridiculous oversight, pressing his mouth softly to hers, the tangle of their tongues remaining sweet and easy. He pulled back, looking down at her as her eyes opened slowly on a sexy, dazed blink of her long, dark lashes. Micah somehow continued what he was saying. “Or the way I think it should be, and hope I might have one day.”
“Do you really think that’s possible?” she asked, her voice a smoky whisper.
“I’ve seen it, and so have you. It’s like the lottery, right? Somebody is going to win it, and it might as well be me.”
“They also say that you have to play to win,” she said. Her smile was twisted, an attempt at sarcasm but he saw the wistful expression in her eyes.
“I didn’t think you were inclined to play that game,” he said, keeping his voice neutral with the hope that he’d get some insight into this intriguing woman.
“I hit my three strikes, and I took myself out.”
“Permanently?”
“I’ve never met anyone who made me change my decision.”
“So the right guy…”
“The right guy could change lots of things.” Kelsey stared at him when she said it and he thought he sensed a dare in her eyes to change her mind, and he almost took the conversation further but she blinked and dropped his hand, turning back toward the kitchen. “I’m warming up my coffee.”
Micah almost followed her, but what was the point? He wasn’t staying past Sunday and she wasn’t asking. Instead, he placed his coffee cup down on a side table, turned and continued his review of her shelves, interested in what kind of book Kelsey would choose. The entire wall of her living room was covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves with books stacked two deep on many of them. College textbooks, travel guides, and various “for Dummies” volumes took up a little bit of space and then they gave way to fiction.
Thrillers and suspense, popular mainstream novels, and a couple Tom Clancy books and then it became romance. Every kind of romance: historical, paranormal, contemporary, young adult. Every big name and some he didn’t recognize, new and old. He lifted a Bertrice Small and thumbed over to the copyright page, noting that it was likely from a first or second mass market paperback printing, and it had been well-read and loved. Coffee stains, scratches, and creases covered the front and the pages within.
He’d arrived at the shelf with his books lined up in a row, and she reached around him and pointed to Safe Harbor.
“That’s my favorite one of yours,” she said, her body brushing against his.
“Why?” It was probably vain to ask, but he was curious.
“Two words: hammock sex.” Kelsey waggled her eyebrows and he laughed, sliding an arm around her waist and pulled her back until her back touched his entire front. He placed a kiss on the skin exposed by the slide of her T-shirt off her shoulder, loving the way her giggle vibrated against his lips.
“Lots of readers love that scene,” he answered.
“Because it was freaking hot.”
“Thanks.” Micah leaned in even closer, letting his eyes wander over the line up of
books he really didn’t want to write. The question now was whether he had the balls to quit or not.
“Are you really going to stop writing romance? Do you really hate them so much?” she asked, and he bit back a laugh of surprise that she seemed to know his own train of thought.
“I don’t think I hate writing them.”
He turned over his feelings and tried to examine every inch before he answered. “I think I hate feeling like I don’t have the option to write anything else.”
“You could self-publish, some of my favorite authors do that. Then you could write whatever you want for yourself and then the romance for your fans.”
“You sound like Allen.”
“Well, obviously he’s brilliant.” She laughed.
“Jesus, don’t ever tell him that.”
“So if you know you can do whatever you want, then what’s stopping you? Why keep letting the people at the publisher tell you no?” Kelsey asked, turning in his arms to look him right in the eye. “You’ve got a name and connections, and I hope you’ve made some money from the books and the movies.”
Micah fought the urge to squirm but he did break eye contact, leaning his head back to puff out a long sigh at how her words cut him to the quick. She was honest, and he found himself unable to do anything but reciprocate.
“I don’t know…ego…hurt pride at having them turn down my ideas…the sheer amount of fucking incredible work that would have to go into self-publishing.”
“So…” She dragged her words out and didn’t mince any of the sarcasm that dripped from every syllable. “You’re holding yourself hostage because you’re ass hurt that they don’t want to play in your sandbox, and you’re afraid of hard work?” She shook her head and gave him a look that told him exactly what she thought of his reasoning. “Nope. I don’t buy it. I’ve only known you for a short time, and that guy is not you.”
“He’s not?”
Her Secret Lover (What Happens in Vegas) Page 10