Kiss the Bride
Page 18
“I’m hurting you?”
He’d hurt her. Fourteen months ago when he’d allowed her reluctance to drive him away. But this didn’t hurt, so she shook her head and took his beautiful face between her two hands and lifted toward him to initiate her own kiss. She could show him carnal. Needy. It had always been safe to be wild in Luke’s embrace.
She shoved his shirt off his shoulders and then ended their mouth-to-mouth kiss to begin other ones—her mouth running along the strong column of his throat and across the tanned skin of his chest to find a nipple. It beaded against her tongue and he groaned. Under her palms, she felt the goose bumps rising over his back.
He was hers now. For now. She showed him that by shoving at his shoulders again, so that he was flat against the mattress. She made to turn onto her knees, but he stayed her with a hand. “Your scrapes, baby,” he reminded her. “You let me do the work. What are you after?”
Her face burned but she was determined. “I want you in my mouth, Luke,” she said, twisting to her side and scooting down the mattress. “Put it in my mouth.”
He groaned in answer and kicked off his jeans and boxers. Then she had him in her hands, at her mercy. She cupped him from below and used her other hand to curl around his shaft. Her tongue circled the head, flicked the small slit. Then she took him into the heat of her mouth, her cheek pressed to his belly, her body curled so that she could take him deep.
Luke groaned, one hand delving into her hair, twisting the strands around his fingers. She loved the desperation in his voice, in the flexing power of his grip, in the rising tension she could feel in his body.
If he found comfort in this, good for him. But for her it was pleasure, bliss, ratcheting arousal. Her legs shifted and she squeezed her thighs together to ease some of the ache between them.
Opening her mouth wider, she slid her tongue down his shaft and—
—and then she was dizzy, disoriented as he moved again, until she found her own shoulders flat on the mattress and Luke between her splayed thighs. Another instant and he was holding her open to lick the drenched folds. She twitched, the rough touch of his tongue already almost too much.
“No, Luke,” she said, her head thrashing against the pillows.
He looked up at her, his mouth wet, his green eyes glittering. “Yes, Charlotte,” he said. “This time, just say, ‘Yes, Luke.’ ”
And he looked so beautiful and so desperate that she said it, over and over, a chant, a song, a sort of healing balm—for him? for her?—as his mouth took her over the edge.
He was there when she landed, his body already inside of hers, his condom-covered shaft spearing through her as if seeking a path to the heart that she’d been protecting for so, so long.
“Yes, Luke,” she said again, just as he reached the point of no return, and she figured he was blind and deaf to all but his completion.
And when it was over and his head came to rest on her breast, surely filling his ears with the thudding beat of her heart, she said it one last time, quiet enough so that only she could hear. “Yes, Luke.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Charlotte was again awake before Luke. Was he still unaccustomed to this time zone after his months in Qatar? Or had she worn him out with spectacular sex? She smiled a little at that, gazing at his sleeping face from the opposite pillow. His expression was relaxed, the intensity of the night before gone now.
She brushed his hair off his forehead and when he didn’t stir, she smiled again. Yep, the spectacular sex had done him in. The idea that she’d bested him with her body had her scrambling out of bed, ready for coffee and a new day.
Showered, she left the room, almost bouncing in eagerness. That made her pause. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such sweet expectation.
She’d been a cynic for so damn long. Too damn long.
Once she made it to the lobby, she realized she wasn’t the only one who had awoken with a smile. The other guests were gathered poolside, cups of coffee in hand. The only item on the day’s agenda was brunch, followed by their return to LA. But instead of chattering as a group, they were arranged in pairs, some sitting beside each other in chairs, other couples stretched out on a single lounge together. Their lazy companionship reminded her of Sunday mornings when she’d been together with Luke.
Together with Luke.
Why, exactly, had she been so afraid of that?
Crossing to the silver carafes in the lobby, she filled two paper cups with coffee. He liked his black, but she took a moment to doctor hers with half-and-half and a dash of sugar. A giggle from behind her made her glance over her shoulder. Connor and Audrey were walking toward her, arms entwined, attention on each other.
The sight of her ex-stepsister didn’t grate on her nerves as it had in the past days. As a matter of fact, she enjoyed watching Audrey’s interplay with her husband-to-be. Maybe they could make it, Charlotte thought. She hoped they would make it.
It was yet another thought that gave her pause. For so long, for forever, she’d been without expectation for the wedding couples who crossed the threshold of her office. They wanted vows, she’d write them, but the promises had held no meaning for her. She hadn’t put faith in the words she’d written.
But now she wanted to believe in them. She wanted Connor and Audrey to find happiness as a couple. Her gaze drifted back to the pool again and the other pairs relaxing there. Optimism made her heart float free in her chest as she took in their cozy poses, their entwined hands, their whispered conversations. More intimacy. More happiness in the making.
She looked down at the duo of coffee cups she’d prepared. Another pair. One for her, and one for Luke.
A couple.
“Good morning.”
She turned to smile at Connor, then Audrey. “Good morning.” So good. “It’s a glorious day.”
Audrey leaned her head against her fiancé’s arm. “So you’re glad you came?”
Aware she was acting completely out of character, Charlotte didn’t even stop to assess and analyze. “I’m very glad I came,” she said. The time in Palm Springs, the time with Luke, had opened her heart to possibilities she’d run from before. He’d been right to want more from her fourteen months ago. Closing herself off from him hadn’t made her safe, only unhappy.
The only safety she’d found was in his arms.
His voice whispered in her mind. Honey. Sweetheart. Baby. Casual endearments that were emblems of the affection she craved. He knew her so well. He knew her so well and he’d always been so open with her. If she wanted a future with him, she’d have to be the same.
As Connor reached for the top cup in the stack, he sent her a quizzical look. “You’re very chipper today.”
“Mmm.” If by chipper he meant a weird and wild exuberance blended with sexual satiety.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Down for the count.” She still felt a bit smug about that. “I’m bringing him back a cup of coffee.” Maybe she’d attack him once he got a little caffeine in his system.
Connor breathed out a small sigh. “He got some sleep last night then?”
Odd question. “Uh ...” She didn’t think he was prying into their sexual escapades. “Why wouldn’t he?”
He shrugged. “You saw how he was after your near-miss with the taxi. I thought his mood ... when it gets dark like that, well, you know.”
Charlotte stared at him. Yeah, Luke had been in a mood, and she’d not really gotten to the bottom of it, but Connor seemed to see some secret meaning that she didn’t fathom. “What?”
Both Connor and Audrey were staring at her now. Luke’s brother opened his mouth, but Audrey put her hand on his arm. “She doesn’t know,” she said quietly. “Con, Luke’s kept it from her.”
Charlotte shuffled back, her shoulder blades hitting the plaster wall. “What are you talking about?”
The couple exchanged glances.
A shiver ran down Charlotte’s spine as the a
ir turned suddenly chilly. It was as if a dark cloud had crossed over that glorious sun. “What are you talking about?”
Connor cursed under his breath. “You’d better ask Luke.”
Her head whipped toward her ex-stepsister. “Audrey?”
With a glance at her husband-to-be, she stepped closer to Charlotte. “He didn’t tell you he’d been married before?”
Married before? I happen to like marriage. He’d said that, she remembered. “He has a wife?”
Audrey shook her head.
Relief made her giddy. For a stupid moment she’d thought she’d been contemplating couplehood with a married man. “He’s divorced.”
Audrey shook her head again.
The giddiness evaporated. Her heartbeat slowed to a dull thud thud thud. “I don’t understand.”
“Sweetheart,” Connor said to Audrey, “maybe we should let Luke—”
“Continue to keep my sister in the dark?” Audrey said, shooting him a look.
Charlotte’s heart wasn’t moving at all. Somewhere in her past she’d given up trusting men, and it looked like she’d been right about that. “Continue to keep your sister in the dark about what, exactly?”
Audrey reached out, her soft hand on Charlotte’s forearm. “Luke had a wife. She died ten years ago.”
He’d been married. He’d lost a wife. She shivered again as another blast of cold blew across her skin. Her optimism leached from her and she felt herself tumbling, as if she’d been tossed from that balloon’s gondola after all.
She’d kept her heart from Luke ... and then given it, never suspecting he’d kept anything from her.
Luke squinted as he entered the open-air lobby, the mid-morning light bright after the darkened room and hall. He put up a hand to shade his eyes, impatient to find Charlotte. Last night, that bridge he’d wanted to build, those walls he’d wanted to breach ... well, he thought he’d done it.
He heard voices and followed the sound to the dining room. The wedding party was feasting on buffet goods, and his gaze skipped from table to table, looking for the woman who’d slayed him with sex the night before. They’d slept tangled together—God, how he’d loved that—but sometime in his dreams she’d left him. He needed her close again.
He needed her close forever.
At a table in the corner he spied Connor and Audrey. They were talking with the bride’s father, Peter Langford. Ah. No wonder his girl was missing. She avoided like the devil things that had hurt her.
So he wasn’t surprised to discover her at a small table by the pool, the newspaper folded in front of her, a pencil in hand. Her dark hair swirled around her shoulders. She wore a pale blue halter dress that exposed the golden slopes of her shoulders. Charlotte had beautiful skin and his palms itched to caress it again. Remembering he owed some attention to her bountiful breasts, he started forward.
As if sensing his presence, she glanced up, then she ducked her head once again, clearly planning to ignore the man who’d slept beside her all night long, face-to-face, heart-to-heart.
Wary now, he approached her slowly. She was working the crossword puzzle, he noted. Her gaze didn’t move from the page even as he pulled out an adjoining chair, its legs grating against the concrete.
She avoided like the devil things that had hurt her.
But he faced them. So he took a deep breath and stared her down. “What’s going on, Charlotte?”
Her knuckles whitened as her fingers tightened on the pencil. “Just trying to ... solve this.”
“Yeah?” Maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes a crossword puzzle was just a crossword puzzle.
“Here are the clues. Hypocrite. Dishonest. Heart as cold as a fish.”
The crossword puzzle wasn’t just a crossword puzzle. Hell. He didn’t know how it had come to this. “That’s not me.”
Her head came up, her blue eyes icy-hot. “What was her name?”
“Who?” Though of course he knew whom she meant. Someone had told her about his marriage. About the woman he’d married. The ache of that loss filled his chest like black ink.
“What was the name of your wife?”
Did he have to say it aloud? She was his private pain. The dream and the disaster of a very young man, a young man that wasn’t who Luke was anymore, but he was loathe to share it still. It had hurt so bad.
Charlotte made a disgusted sound. “Fraud. Snake. Cheater.”
He jumped to his feet. “I never cheated on her in my life!”
“You cheated on me, Luke.” She rose, too, stepping toward him until they were toe-to-toe. “If you can’t even speak her name, then she’s the one cemented in your heart. You tricked me into ... into caring about you when you’re as unavailable as every other man who has played games with my affections.”
Instinct had him moving back again, away from her temper, even as he was trying to take in her words. “You care about me?”
“I cared about the man who was so damn determined to heal my wounds. But that’s not really you, is it, Luke? Because you’re so closed off you didn’t want me to know who you really were. You didn’t want me to know your hurts. You are so hung up on your wife—”
“Jana. Her name was Jana.” Saying it aloud made her image blossom in his brain. She’d been curly-haired and freckle-faced and so damn young. What had their parents been thinking? “We were a couple of teenagers who thought we had the world by the tail. Nothing could get in our way if we got our way.”
“So you wanted to get married ...”
Shrugging, he gazed off into the distance, seeing that summer wedding so many years before. “And so we got married. In August, right before her first semester of college. I was a sophomore.” Then he could smell September, the scent of dried grass and parched dirt. The sun was hot on his hair and the straps of his textbook-laden backpack dug into his shoulders. The leather bottom had slammed against the small of his back as he’d run from second year Chemistry to the bus stop at the center of campus.
“She had her earbuds in and she liked her music loud. When she crossed the street, she didn’t see the bus.” He was speaking beside the pool in Palm Springs, but his head was at the campus where they’d both attended college and he was racing toward emergency vehicles and strobe lights. Red red red. Then so much blood. “I was too late. Too late to even say good-bye.”
“Luke ...”
He blinked, pulling himself back to the present. “We were married three weeks and two days.”
Charlotte stared at him a moment. Her magnificent blue eyes were glittering—tears? He didn’t want her sympathy, but he could sense her mood changing. Then she snatched up the pencil she’d been writing with and threw it at his head.
He ducked, feeling it whip past his ear. “Wha—”
“Damn you!” she yelled. There were plastic salt-and-pepper shakers on the table and she scooped them up in her hands.
Startled, Luke leaped back, even as she sent one and then the other in his direction. “What did I do now?”
Her chest was heaving. “Now? You did it months ago, ages ago, maybe that day when you limped beside me to the finish line. Damn you, Luke Harper. You and your green eyes crawled inside my heart even when yours has been locked up tight.”
Luke retreated again, teetering on the coping of the pool. “What does that mean?”
Her fingers closed over the chair he’d been sitting in, and he eyed it with alarm, aware he had no way to escape. “Don’t, Charlotte.”
She ignored him, lifting the curved metal legs off the concrete. “It means I love you and you’re not capable of loving me back. It means you’ll never have me.” Then she heaved the chair at him.
There was nothing else that he could do. The day before, he’d saved himself from going in with Charlotte, but he had to take the leap now. Her words replayed as the water closed over his head. It means I love you and you’re not capable of loving me back.
It means you’ll never have me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At least her emptiness made it easier to look Peter in the eye. “Can I help you?” she asked.
He rubbed his jaw. “I guess I thought that should be my line.”
“Oh, I’m good.” Blatant lie, but Peter was no more to her than a business client—and she supposed he was, since surely he was paying all the wedding expenses—so this conversation didn’t require any real depth.
His expression turned apologetic. “I was out on the pool deck about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh. Well.” Meaning he’d overheard her ... discussion with Luke.
“You remember I lost my first wife.”
Audrey’s mother. Charlotte looked away. “Yes.”
“It’s not easy to open yourself up again after something unexpected like that.”
She jerked her chin toward him. “That’s not my fault! He pursued me. He shouldn’t have done that, and he shouldn’t have come back after fourteen months away if he was all locked up tight.”
“Fourteen months away?”
Her hand lashed out. “We were dating. He wanted more, I said no. He went away, and then he came back.”
“Oh, Charlie,” he said.
Tears stung her eyes. “Why did he come back?” Embarrassed by the plaintiveness of her tone, she whirled to run.
Peter caught her arm.
Charlotte found herself huddled against his chest, the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes. Point guards don’t cry, she told herself. Yet the tears still fell.
Her ex-stepfather patted her back. “Seems like you both tried staying apart but it didn’t do much good. You’re still in love with him and he’s—”
“Stuck on his dead wife!”
“Charlie ...”
“Why else wouldn’t he tell me about her? There were a dozen opportunities, a hundred, a thousand! Damn it, he should have told me about it the very first night when he took care of my wounded foot.” She jerked out of his embrace and started for the door leading into the hotel. “He healed my heart only to break it all over again.”