Redemption's Kiss

by Ann Christopher

  As always, her pride took over. The most important thing was not to show how much this tiny rejection, the latest in a long line that stretched from here to eternity, hurt. So she flashed an indifferent, do-what-you-want smile as she reached for her purse on the floor.

  “I understand—”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  A hard edge had crept into his voice, a husky rasp of emotion that startled her. It was there in his eyes, too—an unexpected gleam of something that made her wonder if he was more complex than his bow ties and nice but unexciting Toyota sedan had led her to believe.

  “I want you,” he told her.

  Oh, God. He did. Jillian felt it in the sudden crackle of electricity in the air between them and saw it in his expression, which was ablaze with a new heat that prickled her skin and curled her toes.

  “I’ve wanted you from the second you came into my office. It’s taken me this long to work up the courage to tell you because you’re the president’s sister and you’re rich and I’m not and you’re incredibly beautiful and I’m your accountant.”

  “Oh,” she said helplessly.

  “I’ve waited this long for you and I was willing to wait some more. I didn’t care about taking it slow. I was on board with all that until—”

  He trailed off. What had begun as a tiny flicker of dread in her belly grew to the size of a California wildfire. She didn’t want to hear this next thing, whatever it was, but she had to ask because her curiosity demanded it.

  “Until…what?”

  He stared at her. “Until I saw you with your ex-husband.” No. Oh, no.

  She opened her mouth, and out flew one of her automatic denials. If she kept issuing them, she had to get better at it—right?

  “I don’t have any feelings for Beau.”

  The bitterness in her voice gave her away. It was so brittle and ugly that even she could hear it, and it didn’t matter that she’d been trying to speak in the genteel car voice she always wished Allegra would use.

  I don’t have any feelings for Beau.

  Right. The sentence was as convincing as a kid telling his mom he hadn’t eaten all the brownies when he had a ring of chocolate around his mouth.

  Adam didn’t argue, but his unblinking gaze, quiet with reproach, made her long for some sort of explosive outburst. Embarrassed heat crawled up her face and prickled in her scalp until she had to look away, out her window.

  Seconds passed. Several very long seconds. For reasons that eluded her, it seemed critically important to convince this man, this near stranger, that she was a whole person, as mentally healthy and at one with the universe as a Tibetan monk meditating in his temple. That Beau had no hold on her life or her emotions and never would again.

  Even if her heart of hearts told her that was a damn lie.

  “Beau and I have a long history, yeah. Most of it painful. We push each other’s buttons sometimes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “Are you trying to convince yourself?” Adam cocked his head and raised his brows with what looked like a burning desire to get to the bottom of a mystery that kept him awake nights. “Because you’re not convincing me.”

  Stymied, she shut up.

  There was no arguing with someone filled with so much absolute certainty, much as she wanted to. She’d only wind up looking like an idiot. Well…a worse idiot. And there was a tiny part of her rational mind left that whispered that Adam was right. What kind of fool would he have to be to get involved in the emotional knot she and Beau still had wrapped around each other?

  Adam, she was beginning to realize, was no fool. Nice? Yeah. Strong and honorable? Definitely. The kind of man she should want and would be lucky to have in her life? You betcha. He was the elusive good man of all the legendary stories, and he was nothing like her bad-boy ex-husband.

  Which naturally meant that he wanted nothing to do with her.

  Ah, hell. Who was she kidding? Eventually all men rejected her. If a flying saucer full of men from a neighboring universe flew in looking for women to help repopulate their dying planet, they’d reject her, too.

  God, her face was hot. It felt like it was lit with a red flame bright enough to illuminate the car’s dark interior. That was what utter and complete humiliation did for you.

  Get out of the vehicle, Jill. Now.

  “Well,” she said, reaching for the door handle, “thanks for dinner. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  Adam didn’t look any too happy to finally be getting rid of her. In fact, judging from the fleeting eye contact that was all she could maintain at the moment, he seemed so sad and deflated that she actually felt a little better. Still embarrassed, but less so.

  “Jillian.”

  With her heart thumping and one foot out the door, she waited.

  To her astonishment, he cupped her cheek and stroked it with more tenderness than she deserved, all things considered. When her lips parted on a gasp, he used his thumb to gently stroke those, too.

  Deep in her belly, the reawakened passion she’d felt in the last several days twisted and tightened to a sweet ache. Vibrant with agitation, she shoved aside the jumbled images in her mind.

  Adam. Beau. Adam and Beau. Adam and her. Beau…

  And her.

  Her lungs heaved, straining for air.

  Through lids that had slipped to half-mast, she saw the glint in Adam’s eyes, the terrible doomed want. It excited her and she despised herself for it.

  “When you get over him,” Adam told her in a voice that was low and husky, “I hope you’ll call me.”

  They stared at each other until, helpless to do otherwise, she nodded.

  Satisfied, Adam ran his fingers under her hair into her nape and exerted gentle pressure that she could have resisted. She didn’t. And then his lips were on hers, moving and caressing and…ah, God, it was sweet…so unbearably sweet.

  The sensations rose and swirled, coalesced and deepened until a tiny gasp escaped from a needy, dark place inside her that she wished she could tamp out forever.

  And in her heart, she knew the truth:

  The mouth and hands on her were Adam’s.

  The face in her mind’s eye and her body’s responses belonged to Beau. Beau. Always Beau.

  The bastard.

  A new kind of tension shot through her body and, catching herself, she pulled back. Afraid to look into Adam’s eyes, she pressed her fingers to her lips. Did Adam know how screwed-up she was? Could he taste her confusion?

  Maybe not. Heaving a harsh sigh, Adam turned away, rested his elbow on his window and rubbed his own lips. Sexual frustration obviously had him tight around the neck.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  “Good night, Adam.”

  “Good night.”

  She got out, her skin prickling with sudden anger. She wanted to slam the car door, stomp up the path to the inn and rant in an adrenaline-fueled frenzy, to rage at the unfairness of life.

  But somehow she kept an iron leash on her emotions and did none of those things. Slipping into the side door that was her private entrance to the house, she made her way through the darkened vestibule and up the back stairs.

  With each step, she added another item to the list of unforgivable transgressions Beau had committed against her.

  That man had single-handedly ruined everything in her life that had ever been beautiful or happy. It wasn’t enough that he cheated and destroyed their marriage, shattering her heart, soul and confidence in the process. It wasn’t enough that the Beau she thought she’d married—the best friend, the generous lover, the protector and provider and playmate—had never existed at all, but had only been a figment of her girlish imagination. It wasn’t enough that he’d turned her out in bed, awakening and teaching her until her body was a slave to the pleasure that only he could provide, so much so that even now, years after they’d last had sex, the touch of another man evoked only desires for him.

  Oh, no. All that wasn’t enough. Not for Be
au.

  He had to follow her hundreds of miles and reappear, a ghost out of the darkness, just when she’d cobbled together something resembling a life. He had to change just enough to renew her obsession with him and make her wonder if he’d changed or was capable of changing when she knew damn well that the answer to those questions was, and always would be, an emphatic no.

  He had to make her want him again.

  Always. Still. Forever.

  This whole time she’d worked on getting over her emotions, being healthy and not wasting time hating him. So much for that. She did hate him. She hated everything about him—from his wounded hazel eyes to his earnest ability to play a role and pretend he was like other humans, with sorrows and regrets, strengths and weaknesses, rather than just weaknesses; to his house and his car and his dog.

  The hatred was so strong that she tasted its bitterness on the back of her tongue and smelled it in her flaring nostrils. She wished he were dead. She wished he’d died in that car accident rather than come up here to torment her. She wished she could kill him now with her bare hands. Would anyone blame her? Surely everyone who knew their tortured history together would understand. She wished—

  Oh, God.

  Cracking open Allegra’s door and poking her head inside the dim room, which was illuminated only by a pink-and-white butterfly lamp on the nightstand, she froze, stopping so suddenly her feet may have been fixed to the floor with invisible clamps.

  Beau sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over a sleeping Allegra and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

  He was glaringly, outrageously out of place among the girly-girl frills, a shot of high-octane testosterone amid all the sweetness. The squared shoulders encased in a simple dark T-shirt of indeterminate color, the muscled arms, the strong thighs stretched along the bed—all those things radiated pure masculinity as jarring as a peek into an NFL locker room after a playoff game.

  Dumbstruck, Jillian could only stare. For one upside-down millisecond, she had a thought so disturbing she wondered if she should leave now and head for the nearest insane asylum to check herself in for evaluation.

  Beau’s home.

  And then all her anger rushed back, bigger and blacker than ever.

  The girl rustled and stirred, turning from her back to her side and settling her favorite stuffed animal, a fluffy yellow lion cub named Archie, under her chin.

  Beau hesitated, clearly not wanting to wake her, and then, when Allegra didn’t move again, got up, planting his cane underneath him. He tucked a picture book under his arm—Click, Clack, Moo, Allegra’s current favorite—and crept toward the door.

  That was when he saw Jillian and hesitated.

  The blazing hatred she felt toward him must have been unmistakable, because his face paled; she could tell even in the relative darkness.

  Even as his discreet gaze flickered over her, taking in the sexy dress, the cleavage, the bare arms and legs and the heels, she felt his new stillness and saw the subtle squaring of his shoulders. It thrilled her in an ugly way that made her heart pound and her fists clench.

  Yeah, you bastard.

  We’re about to throw down up in here. Because she had a couple new additions to her list, didn’t she?

  It wasn’t enough that he’d moved down the street. It wasn’t enough that now she’d have to share her precious daughter with him half the time, which was much more than she wanted, even though it was best for Allegra. It wasn’t enough that she’d have to see his terrible, beautiful face every single day.

  Oh, no.

  Beau had to invade her peaceful sanctuary. Had to come here, to her inn. And not just to the public rooms, where she could grudgingly tolerate him. He had to come into the private rooms. Show up in Allegra’s bedroom late at night, when Jillian least expected him to be there.

  Hell, maybe she should check the master suite to see if he’d cleared out a drawer for his socks and put his toothbrush in the holder by the sink.

  When she least expected it, there he was.

  In. Her. Freaking. House.

  The anger flared into a rage so powerful she could probably lift a jet one-handed with it.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Chapter 10

  Before Beau could answer, Barbara Jean materialized in the hall by Jillian’s side. She’d probably been right next door in the private sitting room adjacent to Jillian’s bedroom, watching TV, texting her friends or doing whatever the hell it was youngsters did these days.

  “Hi.” Something in Jillian’s expression must have struck her as particularly grave, because Barbara Jean took the extraordinary step of pulling out the earbuds and giving the situation her full attention. “You’re back.”

  “Yeah.” Jillian didn’t bother transferring her glare from Beau to Barbara Jean; of the two of them, Beau was the one she needed to keep her eye on. “I’m back.”

  Barbara Jean twisted her hands in the first show of concern Jillian had ever seen from her. “I, ah, hope you don’t mind, but I called Beau—”

  Beau. Brilliant. Beau was now on a first-name basis with her nanny. Beau had wormed his way into yet another female heart.

  Beau was like Big Brother—omnipresent and inescapable.

  “—because Allegra wanted him to tuck her in and wouldn’t go to sleep without him. I tried to read her an extra story, but she—”

  Barbara Jean trailed off with an uncomfortable shrug, withering before Jillian’s frigid disapproval.

  Though Beau was the ground zero of all Jillian’s fury, she had a little to spare for the nanny, beloved though she was, who’d invited this…this…man into Jillian’s private zone.

  Did Barbara Jean think that was okay? Did she not have the most basic level of common sense and sensitivity? If Dracula showed up on the doorstep and gave the girl the hypnotic eye, would Barbara Jean invite him in, too?

  Peeling her gaze away from Beau—she’d deal with him in a minute—Jillian turned at last to Barbara Jean, who swallowed visibly and seemed to brace herself.

  “Thanks for your help tonight.” The swelling tightness in Jillian’s throat almost blocked her voice. She struggled to manage another sentence with relative calm. “You can go now.”

  “Great.”

  With visible relief, Barbara Jean scurried back into the sitting room, grabbed her backpack and hurried down the hall and away, sparing one worried glance over her shoulder at Beau, as though she wasn’t sure she’d ever see him alive again. Then she disappeared down the steps.

  Beau had by now limped his way across Allegra’s room and edged past Jillian through the doorway into the hall. He kept his gaze averted and seemed determined not to make any further eye contact with her, which was the appropriate protocol when it came to angry ex-wives and rabid dogs alike.

  “I’m going, too.” He kept his voice to a low murmur, as though he knew the sound of it would only escalate the situation. “I’m just going to get my cell phone. I think I left it in—Yeah. There it is.”

  He headed into the sitting room, to where, sure enough, his phone sat on the coffee table. Jillian followed with the single-minded focus of a spring bride at the Filene’s Basement sale, and when Beau turned to leave, she was right there in his face, blocking him.

  He pulled up short and hesitated, still not looking at her. “Going so soon?” she asked. “That seems like a good idea, yeah.”

  Jillian paused, wondering, for one wild second, if she’d heard right. Surely those words hadn’t just come out of that man’s mouth. She’d better check.

  “A…good idea?”

  Beau had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

  Which only pissed her off more.

  “By ‘good idea,’ do you mean like the good idea you had to show up here in the private rooms of my inn while I was gone?”

  “Allegra wouldn’t go to sleep—” he began.

  “Or like the brilliant idea you had to move to my city and my street without any advance notice or cons
ideration for my feelings? Is that what you mean by ‘good idea’?”

  For the first time he looked up at her, and the shock of the connection nearly toppled her over backward. His hazel eyes now flashed a muddy brown, a color she’d seen only a few terrible times in their relationship; it never boded well. She stared at him, filled with a swelling and primal satisfaction.

  Was he upset now, too?

  Peachy.

  Yet he remained calm, with only his eyes and the creeping red flush across his cheekbones to give him away.

  “I apologize,” he said to her astonishment. An alpha male to the last follicle of hair on his sleek head, he wasn’t big on admitting culpability for run-of-the-mill transgressions like invading her space, so this was a first. “I should have checked with you. I just wanted to help Allegra get to sleep and I figured I’d be gone before you got back from your date. Won’t happen again.”

  Taking advantage of her momentary speechlessness, he tried to sidestep her.

  Pivoting, she blocked him a second time.

  Oh, no, buddy. It’s not that easy.

  His head was down again, so she waited while he hesitated. Waited while he stared at the floor, his jaw flexing in back where he ground his teeth together. Waited until his gaze, hot now with the turbulence of the Caribbean during the full force of a summer hurricane, flickered back to her and held.

  “What do you want, Jill?” His low voice was full of gravel.

  “A fight?”

  Yes. A fight. That was exactly what she wanted and needed.

  She scrunched her brow and widened her eyes with mock confusion.

  “Isn’t this where you want to be?” Marching past the coffee table, sofa and her desk in the corner, she flung open the door to her bedroom, where the nightstand lamp illuminated her enormous wrought-iron bed. Covered with a mint-green duvet and matching black-patterned pillows, it was fluffy and inviting. So much so that Beau couldn’t hide the sudden flair of greedy interest in his eyes. “Don’t you want to see my bedroom? That’s what you came for, right?”