Redemption's Kiss

by Ann Christopher

  Now holding up four fingers, Liza waggled them at John, whose face was a vivid red bordering on purple. “Did I get that wrong? I want to make sure the record is straight.”

  Wow. The air had effectively been sucked out of the room.

  Jillian was going to have to award this round to Liza.

  Several seconds passed before John was able to pick up the battered remnants of his ego off the floor and formulate a rebuttal.

  He cleared his throat. They waited. He turned to Beau, whose lips seemed to be twitching with the repressed beginnings of a smile.

  “Since my wife is pregnant with my twins, and in a fragile and delicate condition—” John began.

  Liza snorted with outrage. “You are so going to pay for that later.”

  John pretended he hadn’t heard her.

  “—and since I don’t want to upset her because she probably doesn’t realize what she’s saying, what with the hormones and all, and, more important, since I want to get laid later—”

  Laughing now, Liza balled her napkin up and threw it across the table at him.

  “—I will allow for the slight and outside possibility that you might have changed and might be ready to be a good husband to Jillian.”

  “Wow.” One of Beau’s heavy brows crept toward his hairline. “I feel reborn.”

  The sarcasm seemed like a bad idea, especially since the tension was still pretty thick in here, and Jillian wished she could thump Beau on the head. She started to reach for her wine again, but John scooted his chair back, stood and extended a hand to Beau.

  Beau hesitated, blinked and then looked to Jillian as though he needed an explanation about what a hand was and what the hell he should do with it.

  She gave him a tiny encouraging smile. He stood.

  The men studied each other, exchanging all kinds of subliminal manly signals that Jillian couldn’t begin to decipher. There was one second where they seemed to shake, but the next thing she knew, they were hugging each other, slapping backs and clearing throats. Neither smiled. Then they broke apart, both determinedly looking in opposite directions, and resumed eating.

  Jillian looked to Liza, eyebrows raised.

  “You playing any soccer these days, Beau?” John asked around a mouthful of baked beans. “We can play in the morning. I feel like whupping up on your ass.”

  This, finally, did the trick. They all laughed, and it was relieved and joyful and the greatest gift Jillian could have imagined, because she’d been sure she’d never get Beau and her brother in the same room again without bloodshed, if not homicide.

  And Beau…God, he was looking at her with one of those half-smile, quietly intense looks that shouted out things like love, desire and the fierce determination to get her naked and flat on her back at the earliest possible opportunity.

  A hot blush collected over her breasts and traveled up her neck to her cheeks, a dead giveaway that she was thinking the same thing and was happy to indulge him in whatever his heart desired for the rest of the night.

  Beau’s smile faded, leaving a desperate desire that had nothing to do with sex. He burned with it; she felt him ache with it. He held her gaze, dinner and guests forgotten, and Jillian tried to breathe, but she couldn’t remember how.

  Marry me, he mouthed.

  The yes was right there, on the tip of her tongue and in her heart. She felt her flush deepen and the beginnings of a smile curl her lips, but it hardly mattered because he could surely see the answer written all over her.

  And then someone’s cell phone rang with a muffled chirp.

  The unwelcome sound came again, piercing the wonderful candlelit intimacy of the moment, and Jillian blinked, dragged back to the real world even if she didn’t want to go.

  “It’s not me,” John said as the cell rang again.

  “I don’t have my phone on me,” Liza said.

  “It’s me. Sorry, Jill. I thought I turned it off.”

  Shooting an embarrassed and apologetic look at everyone in turn, Beau unhooked the cell from his belt, turned it off midring and took a quick glance at the display just as he was putting it on the table next to his plate.

  And froze with shock while the color leached from his face, as though he’d drunk a gallon of extra-strength bleach.

  Oh, no. Jillian felt the ripple of concern sweep around the table even as her stomach dropped. “What’s happened?”

  Beau, who seemed too stricken to speak, just shook his head.

  Now he was really scaring her. Someone must have died.

  “Beau, who was it?”

  He met her gaze and she read the answer in his eyes even before he spoke. “Adena Brown,” he told her.

  Chapter 19

  Dinner went south after that, and all the guests and personnel scattered to other parts of the inn, which was fine with Beau. Screw dinner.

  He had more important things to worry about, namely bridging the divide—again—with Jillian. He wasn’t about to lose all the precious ground he’d gained with her over an unwanted phone call.

  Shit. Why hadn’t he blocked that woman’s number from his cell? How unspeakably stupid was he? Very, apparently. “What did she want?” Jillian asked.

  Beau had known terror a time or two in his life. The screaming seconds before his accident came to mind. That was number one. What he was feeling now was definitely in the top five.

  It was the look in her wide eyes that had his heart stuttering now.

  No—that wasn’t it.

  It was the vacancy in her eyes that scared him, the absolute lack of emotion. Those empty eyes were a painful reminder of the dark days after Mary’s death, when Jillian’s body stayed with him, but her soul left the building and wouldn’t come back. Right now, there were no signs of the happy, confident, glorious Jillian he’d rediscovered over the past few weeks, and he prayed she wasn’t gone forever.

  She sat on the sofa in her private upstairs living room, catty-corner to where he sat on a chair. Her chest heaved a little more than it needed to, like she was on the verge of another one of those excruciating panic attacks.

  Yeah. He’d sworn he’d never hurt her again, hadn’t he?

  And look where they were now, right back at square one, if not lower. His promises were still as valuable as Monopoly money, and that seemed to be his bottom line, no matter how he struggled against it. Hell, maybe it was his destiny.

  He braced his elbows on his knees, gripped his hands together and rested his forehead against his interlocked fingers.

  Help me, God. Help us.

  Dropping his hands, he took a deep breath and faced Jillian head-on. “She’s starting a political think tank back in Miami. She wants me on board.”

  Jillian unscrambled this code in no time. “She wants you back now that she’s divorced.”

  Beau hesitated. Adena hadn’t said as much, but he was pretty good at reading between the lines, especially when it came to women. “Probably.”

  “She was in love with you.”

  He wouldn’t lie, no matter how much easier it would make things right now. “She said she was.”

  Jillian was no fool. “She was.”

  Be a man and ’fess up, Taylor. “Yes.”

  “Were you—” Jillian began.

  “No.”

  Try though he did, he couldn’t quite keep all the frustration out of his voice. Jesus. They’d been over this. He’d told her he’d never loved another woman. Told her how meaningless that faceless sex had been—both during his extramarital affairs and since the divorce.

  He loved Jillian. Only Jillian. Hadn’t he lived that these past few weeks? When would she believe him? What more would it take? Why should he be on the hot seat just because that woman called him out of the blue? He hadn’t gone looking for trouble, nor would he ever.

  How many more hoops would he have to jump through?

  But then the wave passed and all that dark emotion faded away. It was his fault Jillian was insecure. He was the one who’d cra
cked the foundation of their relationship. Apparently he needed to shore it up a little bit more.

  “Jill,” he said, reaching for her hand.

  She jerked away. “Don’t,” she said, but it was in that dead, emotionless tone, the way she might have told a server in a restaurant, “Don’t overcook my steak.” Just don’t.

  It drove him wild, losing her like this when she was right here, not three feet away. They wouldn’t go through this again. Not again.

  Without thought, he swung around to the sofa and grabbed her arms, pulling her resistant body as close as he possibly could.

  She went rigid and strained to get away. “I said, don’t—”

  “Don’t you tell me that.” He tightened his grip. “I will touch you. I’m not going to let you go again, Jill. I’m not going to let you pull away like you did before.”

  “Get your hands off me!”

  “No. And if you’re pissed off, you need to tell me. Don’t pretend you’re not. Let it out.” That did it.

  Her face twisted, snarled beyond recognition. With a terrible sound like a roar, she unleashed all her fury, which was enough to make a grown man scurry to the nearest closet and hide.

  “How could you do this? How could you let that woman back in our lives?”

  “I didn’t ask for this, Jill. I didn’t call her. She called me. I don’t want this.”

  “She wants you back!”

  Sliding his hands down to the hard balls of her fists—he was surprised she didn’t take a swing at him—he kissed one hand, and then the other. When she jerked free, he clamped his hands on either side of her hot face and turned her head so that she had nowhere to look but at him.

  Believe in me, Jill. Believe in us.

  “It doesn’t matter what she wants,” he told her quietly. “It only matters what I want. And you know what that is.” Jillian went absolutely still.

  Her breath hitched and he feared he’d made a terrible mistake and shoved her over the edge into a full-blown panic attack. Just when he started to let her go, she surprised him by scrambling to her knees and straddling his hips.

  Wha—?

  For a minute she stared down at him, something feverish burning bright in her eyes, and then she kissed him. She was a hot, aggressive little demon, taking his mouth with her soft, sweet lips, silky tongue and nipping teeth. When she pulled back at last, he was breathless, fully aroused and dazed.

  Ferocious and mind-blowingly sexy with her damp and swollen lips and wide eyes, she held his face and drew her line in the sand.

  “She doesn’t get to show up out of the blue and do this to us, Beau. I won’t let her.”

  Much as he wanted to hold that thought, lower Jillian to the floor, strip and ride her until she was sweaty, shaking and limp with satisfaction, here was yet another crack in the foundation of their relationship, and the damage had been done. They had to address it.

  “What can I do?” Gripping her butt, he anchored her to him so they could be as close as possible while they had this awful conversation. “I’ve already told her never to call me again. I blocked her number, so she can’t get through, but I don’t want you to go through this again—”

  Jillian shook her head, seeming to deflate beneath the weight of her bewilderment. “I don’t know. I thought I was past this. I thought I was ready for reminders to pop up, but I—”

  “I can’t control when something like this will happen, Jill. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “I know.”

  “How can we get past this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wow. Stalemated just like that. And here he’d thought they’d come so far.

  He let her go when she slipped off his lap, and they sat side by side, dejected and a million miles apart.

  After a minute, she took a deep breath that had dread collecting like cement in his gut even before she spoke.

  “I think you should go.”

  “Go…where?” he asked, but he knew.

  “Go to Miami. Talk to Adena. See if you want the job.”

  He waited for the punch line, but there didn’t seem to be one. So he replayed that last bit in his mind and tried without success to process it. He’d’ve had more luck processing a dinner of dried corn kernels mixed with poison mushrooms.

  It took him a good ten seconds to respond. “Is this a joke?”

  “No.”

  No? “You’re…sending me away?”

  “I’m setting you free to make a choice.”

  Suddenly he couldn’t sit still for this, couldn’t let her touch him with her soft skin while she calmly lobbed a grenade into the middle of their relationship and blew it straight to hell.

  Standing and trying to get his freaking weak leg under him, he pivoted to face her, his frustration quickly turning to anger.

  “Setting me free?” He held his arms wide, wobbled and had to grab the back of the chair for support. “Do I look like a damn butterfly?

  “Beau,” she began, getting to her feet.

  “I’ve already made a choice.”

  She flinched and that was just too damn bad. It was her fault he was shouting; her fault that he was coming unglued while she stood there, cool and aloof, and watched; her fault he was teetering on the edge of sanity.

  “I chose you. I chose this life with our child. Don’t you know that?”

  For a minute, she wavered. Closed her eyes, rested her hand against her forehead and seemed to struggle with her emotions, which bunched up in her face and gave her a vivid flush. But when she opened them again, her light brown eyes were as clear and placid as a mountain lake at dawn.

  “You want me not to withdraw and to be honest, right?”

  No. Not when being honest meant she was about to lay some dark confession on him that would surely rip his heart out. Not when it would rock their little boat, which had been sailing along so smoothly with nary a wave on the horizon.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s hard for me to say this because I want to be a strong woman. I want to have confidence. I want to believe that you think I’m the greatest woman in the world—”

  “I do.”

  She held up a hand, silencing him. “But there’s a part of me that still wonders whether you won’t get bored here in the country with me. Whether you don’t miss a faster life in a big city. Maybe you want to be a mover and a shaker again—”

  “Cut to the chase, Jill,” he snapped. “You wonder if I’ll cheat on you as soon as I get a chance.”

  She hesitated, looking like she wanted to deny it, but then she smiled a rueful smile that was exactly the kind of knife to his belly that he’d feared.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but I do.” Blinking back glittering tears, she swiped at her eyes and took a moment to collect herself. “I wonder if you’re only hiding here with me because your leg bothers you and you have nowhere else to go while you lick your wounds. But now you have the chance to do the kind of thing you’ve always enjoyed doing in a city you love. And I wonder if this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.”

  God.

  He tightened his hold on the chair, trying hard not to collapse under the weight of all her doubts, when he’d foolishly thought doubts between them were a thing of the past.

  Fear made him lash out. “You know what I wonder, Jill? I wonder if anything I do will ever be good enough for you, or whether you’ve made up your mind to punish me forever.”

  He must have hit the nail on the head, because she spluttered with words that didn’t seem to want to come. “That’s not—” she finally managed.

  “Oh, I think it is.”

  A hard moment passed, full of so much bitter pain on both sides he was surprised he didn’t smell fumes. He stared, loving her mostly, but hating her just a little, too. Because there was a tiny dark corner of his soul that wondered if she wasn’t right—not about the other women, but about tucking his tail and running from the glittering and successful life he’d had before.


  And he wondered if he wasn’t the same old Beau underneath, a leopard who’d put on a lion suit rather than truly changed his spots.

  Most of all, he hated her for doubting him when he had absolute faith in her.

  “You want me to take this little test for you and go to Miami? Fine. You want a break from me? Fine. Whatever you want. It’s your world.”

  Anguish lined her face, making him feel better and worse. Better because this wasn’t as easy for her as she was pretending. Worse because they’d had enough pain between them to last three lifetimes, and he didn’t want to leave with anger between them, not even for a single night.

  “Beau, please—”

  He reached for her hand, which was smooth and soft and still a perfect fit after all these years. She came eagerly, settling against him, where she belonged, and sighed when he rested his lips against her forehead.

  “Here’s what I want, Jill.” Pulling back just enough, he cupped her face and tilted it back so he could see her eyes and she could see his. “When I get back here—and I am coming back—I want your decision. You’re either in, or you’re out. You either trust me, or you don’t. We either build a new life together, or we let each other go.”

  She stiffened, probably because he’d pushed her much further than she wanted to go, and her brows snapped together in the beginnings of a frown. “You can’t just—”

  Turning her loose, he stepped back and found his cane.

  “Yeah, I can. One of us needs to decide what we want, and it’s not me.”

  Silence. There was nothing she could say to that, and she knew better than to try.

  Wheeling around, he headed for the door. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Why are you so angry, Beau?” Dr. Desai asked right off the bat at the next session.

  Beau snorted. “How much time do we have?”

  Desai bowed his head, doing his waiting patiently thing, and that was all the encouragement Beau needed.

  “I’m not mad. I’m pissed.”

  “Why?”

  Beau could barely get the words out, maxed out as he was on bitterness. “Because why the hell does this woman get to call me out of the blue and ruin all the progress I’ve made with Jillian?”