Redemption's Kiss

by Ann Christopher

  “When can we talk about Mary?” he asked.

  Chapter 11

  Jillian stilled, stunned senseless, even though she’d known this was coming. The name hung in the air for so long it became a presence of its own, an echoing reverberation that hurt both her ears and her soul. She couldn’t believe he’d said it, but of course he’d said pretty much anything and everything to her tonight, so why would he stop now?

  But Mary.

  How could he do it?

  “Don’t you dare speak her name to me.” He plowed ahead. “We need to—”

  Fueled by blind panic, she dredged up the anger that had been simmering beneath the surface, waiting just under the tight layer of her skin, and threw it in his face. She was desperate to get away from him, desperate to get to her bedroom, where she could hide in her dark closet and collapse until she’d ridden out the despair by herself.

  “No.” Her only goal was to divert him and escape. Well…and to hurt him a little more. That was always her underlying goal. “Don’t you tell me what we need. There is no we. And you’ve had your little say, so now it’s my turn. Or don’t you want to know how I feel?”

  He stared at her, reproachful, resigned and silent. Then he gave a sharp nod.

  So it was okay if she spoke her mind, was it? Well, screw him. She didn’t need his permission for a damn thing. She opened her mouth, determined to make her words as ugly and hurtful as possible.

  It wasn’t hard.

  “I hate you Beau. I used to love you, but you killed all that two or three times over.”

  He kept quiet, swallowing with a hard bob of his Adam’s apple.

  “I hate you for breaking my heart.” Continuing in a monotone, she kept going because this was a pretty long list and she wanted to finish it and get some sleep sometime tonight. “I hate you for destroying our family and forcing Allegra to grow up in a house without a father in it. I hate you for not being the man I thought you were.”

  Beau blinked, his gaze wavering. His chest may have heaved, but she didn’t give a damn if it did. He could drown in his own tears for all she cared.

  “Thanks to you, I’ve cried so many tears I should have collected them and had a pond dug out back. Do you understand that? I have images of you screwing other women in my head, and I can’t get them out.”

  His face crumpled, straightened and crumpled again until he finally dropped his head and pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes, as though he wanted to gouge them out.

  Watching him was oddly satisfying, and yet the sight didn’t affect her at all. She might have been watching a movie from the other side of a Plexiglas divider; the scene before her couldn’t reach her and didn’t have any effect on real life as she knew it.

  “Thanks to you, I’ve spent thousands of hours thinking about things like, hmm, ‘I wonder if that woman screws better that I do? I wonder if she tastes better than I—’”

  “God, Jillian, don’t—”

  “—do? Is it my belly? Is my belly not flat enough for you? Am I not adventurous enough for you? Is that it? Did you want to swing from the chandeliers or have a threesome, and you just didn’t feel like you could indulge that side of yourself with me? What did I do wrong? What did they have that I didn’t have?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It must have been something, Beau.”

  “Jillian.” He took a hurried step toward her, palms up, and she could feel his rising desperation, smell its salty tang on him like the sweat that shone on his brow. “I’m sorry about all that. I‘m sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. If I could die for it, I would. But I can’t. And we were falling apart way before all that. That’s what we need to work through—”

  “No.”

  “—because our real problem will haunt us forever if we don’t talk about it.” He paused to take a deep breath and square his shoulders in a way that clearly said he may be defeated, but he wasn’t quitting. No matter how much pain they had to wade through and how much she didn’t want to do it. “When can we talk about—”

  “No,” she shrieked. “No!”

  “—Mary?”

  “This is not about…about her.”

  Jillian tried to keep it together, but she was failing, bit by bit, and her body could not handle this much emotion without self-destructing into a pile of ruined flesh and limbs. She couldn’t breathe; her heart threatened to explode; her skin was clammy and her knees weak.

  She was, in short, a disaster, and all she could think of was hurting him and escaping.

  “This is about how I feel about you, Beau. I hate you. As much as I loved you before, I hate you twice as much now. Do you understand that? I have zero good feelings left for you, and you’re wasting your time trying to look for any. I hate you now, I’ll hate you for the rest of my life and then I’ll probably be blocked at heaven’s gate for hating you after I’m dead. Can I be any clearer? I. Hate. You.”

  Did that do it? Was that enough ugliness for one lifetime? Would he leave now so she could spend the rest of the night peacefully wallowing in her anger and despair? Had she, with that one heartfelt speech, killed Beau’s determination to reconcile with her for once and for all?

  They stared at each other. Actually, she stared in his direction, trying to see him through the bitter shimmer of her tears, and he watched her with an utter stillness that made her wonder if her tirade had turned him to stone.

  And then, not done with her yet, he opened his mouth.

  “You hate me,” he said evenly. “Fair enough. But when can we talk about Mary?”

  One arrested second passed.

  And then she lost it.

  “Get out!” The words jammed in her throat, refusing to come, but the sobs erupted freely, doubling her over with their ferocity. “Get out!”

  Beau took one hurried step forward. Oh, thank God. She gasped in a racking breath, just trying to survive until the door closed behind him. Thank God he was leaving. Thank God, thank—

  But he didn’t go to the door. He reached for her, his face twisted and tormented and every bit as devastated as she felt.

  “I’m sorry, Jill. I’m so sorry. But we’ve got to talk—”

  And then his gentle, scalding hand touched her face, offering comfort that she sorely needed, and she was halfway into his arms before she remembered that she couldn’t hate him forever and cry on his shoulder at the same time.

  Pulling away, she wheeled around, stumbling to the doorway leading to her bedroom. So he wouldn’t leave? Fine. Screw it. He could stay all he wanted to. She would leave instead.

  Distraught, she slammed the door in his face and kept going to her walk-in closet. She could collapse in there. It was safe in there.

  Except that his voice could still reach her and it was in her ears and in her head and her heart. And she realized that there was no safe place for her after all.

  “You can’t keep shutting me out like this,” Beau called. “She was my daughter, too.”

  Ignore him, Jill. Keep going…Keep going…Keep—

  Blinded by her tears, she staggered in among her clothes, purses and shoes, slamming a second door shut behind her. Then she hit the thick carpet on all fours and crawled to the farthest, darkest corner, hiding behind the row of long skirts and trying to block everything out except her desperate, heaving struggle for breath. She settled on her butt, planted her feet on the floor and put her head between her knees.

  She reached for her locket with fumbling fingers that managed all the dexterity of lead pipes, and tried to focus on the comforting

  warmth and smoothness of the gold, its weight and its meaning,

  anything but Beau.

  Breathe. You can do it. Ignore him. Breathe—

  On the other side of the wall between them, Beau’s despair came through loud and clear.

  Eventually, Jillian tumbled, exhausted, into bed, where she tossed and turned like an Olympic gymnast doing her floor exercises. She fell into a troubled sleep just bef
ore dawn, and he came to her right away.

  They sat on the sofa. Without a word, he swung her legs across his lap, which was a huge relief. Thank God he was touching her; thank God he’d taken the decision out of her hands.

  He went to work on her feet the way he always had, gripping them in his strong hands and rubbing them, getting her used to the feel of him again.

  Not that she’d ever forgotten.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Hmm.”

  He ran his thumb up the sole of her right foot, from her heel to her toes, in the wonderful massage that skirted the line between delicious pain and real discomfort. She melted into the cushions, her worries slipping away despite all her efforts to hold them close and nurture them. Then he switched feet, starting the sweet torture all over again, and there went more fears and anxieties, gone like the outer layers of a baseball-sized Bermuda onion.

  It was safe here and she could, just this once, be honest.

  Who would know?

  “Tell me,” he said again.

  “I need you.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  His thumb zeroed in on her spot…oh, God, her spot, the one that drove her wild, right on her instep, right there. There. The spot was a secret pipeline that sent electrical jolts to her sex and contracted her belly with need.

  She twisted, but he held tight and it was okay because she couldn’t see his eyes and didn’t have to face his burning intensity. Her twisting became writhing, and her breath, a moan.

  “What’s everything?”

  She could answer because there was no smugness in his tone, only a deep curiosity. And this was only a dream, right? Wasn’t she safe here?

  “I need to talk to you about Mary. And Allegra. And the inn. And my life. I need my friend back.”

  “Hmm.”

  His hands slid over her calves in unbearable, feathery strokes. She stretched out and lay back, letting the sensations wash over her until her hips arched. After tickling behind her knees, he kneaded her calves—one in each hand—with muscle-deep squeezes so satisfying she thought she might die on the spot.

  “What else do you need?”

  “I need to turn to you. Trust you. I need to know you’ll be there if I fall apart or if I need to lean on you. I need to be the only one.”

  “I see.”

  She’d known it was coming, but that didn’t prepare her for the shock of his fingers heading north, over her thighs, and coming to rest right—ahhh, yesss, right there. They circled the hard nub beneath her panties, driving her higher with a relentless rhythm that had her pumping her hips in a desperate counterpoint.

  “Beau.”

  It was a plea. A down-on-her-knees, intense beg of the worst kind. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for that touch, nothing she wouldn’t admit or say, no confession too scary.

  “What else do you need?”

  The words were both on the tip of her tongue and locked behind a thick steel door guarded by armed soldiers and pit bulls. She couldn’t get them out and couldn’t hold them back. “I need—”

  His fingers wandered to the edge of her wet panties. “What?”

  I need you to never destroy me again.

  But she couldn’t say that.

  “I need you inside me. Now. Hurry.”

  He withdrew his fingers, punishing her for her cowardice.

  Everything shifted and he was gone, just like that, and she was resting on nothing but a sofa without his sheltering body beneath her.

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s all right here—”

  His voice faded away—there was some stupid beeping sound drowning him out and she couldn’t hear him, but she needed to hear him because this was important. Possibly the most important thing he’d ever told—

  “—and all you need to do is ask…”

  There was more, but the words were lost to her forever, drowned out by the insistent racket of her godforsaken alarm clock.

  Shooting upright, disoriented and infuriated by this lost opportunity, Jillian grabbed the alarm clock on her nightstand, yanked the cord out of the wall and hurled it across the room, where it made a huge clatter and, worse, a streaking scratch in the taupe wall that she’d have to patch sometime today, during her nonexistent free time.

  She flopped back onto the pillows, desperation making her crazy. Go back to sleep, dummy. Go back to—

  But Beau was gone.

  He had, unbelievably, taken some of her anger with him.

  Beau had just been buzzed into Dr. Desai’s office for his appointment, and was shutting the door behind him, when he turned and ran into a solid wall of muscle coming around the corner.

  “Pardon me,” he began automatically, making sure he kept his feet under him, but then he looked up and saw who he’d bumped into.

  Ah, shit. Just what he needed to get his day off to a winning start. What a nasty coincidence.

  It was that prison guy…what was his name? Dawson Reynolds.

  Him.

  He hadn’t gotten any more cheerful, that was for sure. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sullen and challenging, as though he just needed one imagined slight to fly into a rage.

  Today he wore knit shorts and a dark T-shirt that revealed the whole neck tattoo thing. It was an African symbol—Andrikan, wasn’t it?—that Beau recognized. Something like a tic-tac-toe grid, with curving swirls where the lines ended. It was the sign for, if he wasn’t mistaken, peace.

  Peace? This guy?

  Ha. Funny.

  The tense silence grew, so Beau did the polite thing. “How’s it going?”

  The guy gave him a withering look. “Swell.”

  Beau could just imagine. If he was smart, he would move aside and let the guy leave. No doubt he had a full day of glaring and seething ahead. But something about Dawson niggled at Beau, and he decided to ask another question or two, at least until the guy killed him.

  “You seeing Dr. Desai?”

  Dawson’s jaw locked and his lips twisted. “Yeah,” he said. “Turns out I’ve got some anger issues.”

  “Really.” Beau tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but he was amused. And a little confused. Desai wasn’t cheap, and this guy didn’t seem to have any money, so how—

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Dawson told him, “but this is all part of me getting back on my feet—”

  A light went on over Beau’s head. “The Innocence Program.”

  “—but even when you’ve got people helping you out a little, employers don’t want to hire innocent ex-felons in a bad economy—”

  “Oh,” Beau said, feeling uncomfortable and…guilty.

  “—even if you graduated from Duke with honors. Because most people figure that even if you were innocent when you went into prison, you probably learned some bad stuff while you were there. So they don’t want you around. But you probably know something about people not wanting you around, don’t you, Governor?”

  Irritated now, Beau kept quiet; he didn’t trust himself to say anything without ripping this guy’s head off.

  “So, if you’ll excuse me,” Dawson concluded, “I have an application in to scoop elephant shit at the circus. And if they don’t hire me for that, you can find me on the corner, selling drugs to schoolchildren. Have a nice day.” With that, he edged around Beau and stalked out the door.

  Beau watched him go, barely resisting the urge to plant his foot in the man’s ass as he went.

  “How was your week?” Dr. Desai asked right out of the box.

  How was his week? Ha. Good one.

  “Funny you should ask, Doc.” Beau settled deeper into the leather chair, crossed his legs and didn’t bother to keep the bitterness from his voice. “I think this was the single best week of my life.”

  Dr. Desai, deadpan as always, played along. “How so?”

  “I’ve had so many successes this week, it’s hard to know
where to start.”

  Desai waited.

  “I interviewed about a thousand people for my foundation grants. But not that Dawson Reynolds guy who was just here. I don’t like him.”

  Desai absorbed this in silence for a minute. “Did you give him a chance?”

  Was that reproach in the good doctor’s voice? “I don’t have to give him a chance.”

  “I thought you were all about second chances these days—”

  That brought Beau up short.

  “But you’re not here to talk about Dawson Reynolds. What else happened?”

  “What else happened?” Beau pretended to think, and then snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah. How could I forget? Jillian and I got back together.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We had a long talk, nice and mature, and hashed everything out. She’s decided to forgive me and give me another chance. So we’re good as new. Better than ever. We’ll get remarried by the end of the month.”

  “Wonderful.” Desai’s eyes crinkled at the edges, proving that the good doctor may have something approaching a sense of humor. “Sounds like you don’t need me today, then. Don’t forget to pay the receptionist on your way out.”

  Beau snorted.

  They sat in silence for a minute, with Desai in no particular rush to listen, and Beau in no particular rush to spill. It may have gone on like that forever—that certainly would have been the easy solution—but Beau needed so much fixing they really didn’t have any time to waste. Best to get right to the bottom line.

  “You want to know something, Doc?”

  A pause, and then, “Sure.”

  “The only souls in Atlanta who don’t hate me—whose hate I haven’t earned—are my daughter, Allegra, and my dog, Seinfeld. Allegra’s too young to know she should hate me, and Seinfeld is too dumb to hate me. That’s quite a record, huh?”

  “You can add me to the list,” Desai said. “I don’t hate you.”