by Heidi Betts
He’d taken her virginity without a backward glance and left her to deal with the repercussions on her own. They’d known each other nearly all their lives, but she hadn’t even warranted a phone call after they’d slept together.
Had he even once considered that she might get pregnant and need his support? Of course not. Typical man—out for his own pleasure and to hell with the consequences.
And even though she hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him about the baby, she blamed him for the miscarriage, too. If he’d called or driven up to the university to visit even once after they’d had sex, he would have known and they could have begun making plans together.
She might have moved back home with him and not had to keep to a hectic class schedule that wore her out and increased her stress level. Or he might have been with her when the first cramp hit and driven her to the doctor in time for the baby to be saved. Either way, she felt certain that the situation would have turned out differently if he had made any effort to contact her after their night together.
Even if she had still lost the baby, they could have grieved together, healed together, made plans to have another baby somewhere down the road.
Instead, she was alone and hurting, and it was all Connor’s fault.
A sharp rap on the door jarred her awake. She sat up with a jerk, sending now-cool, bubbleless water sloshing over the edge of the tub.
Her face, she realized, was streaked with tears. Even in her sleep, she’d grieved for the child she’d lost all those years ago.
“Beth, you okay in there?”
Connor’s voice permeated her still-sluggish brain, adding the residual emotions causing her heart to ache. A wounded moan trembled from her lips and she covered her mouth to keep from being heard.
Pushing to her feet, she grabbed a towel from the rack on the wall and wrapped it around her naked torso. Rivulets of water sluiced down her skin, dripping onto the mat on the floor as she quickly patted herself dry.
“Beth?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she called out, embarrassed to be caught sleeping, dreaming, sobbing in the tub.
“You’ve been in there for quite a while, and I heard you cry out. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Making sure to dry her face and remove any sign that she’d been weeping, she tucked the ends of the towel above her breasts and opened the bathroom door a crack. She made herself give him a small smile as their gazes met.
“I’m fine, Connor, really. I must have dozed off in the tub.”
“You look a little pale,” he pointed out, studying her from head to toe as much as he could through the narrow opening.
“I’ve been sitting in cold water too long, I guess,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “I’m all pruny.”
His eyes went dark at that, his lips thinning slightly.
“If you’re sure you’re okay…”
“I am, thank you. I’ll be out in just a minute, in case you need to use the bathroom.”
“No, I’m good,” he said in a low tone. “I was just worried about you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, and was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak past the lump growing in her throat, so she merely nodded with downcast eyes and closed the bathroom door with a click.
Ten minutes later, she emerged with her hair freshly combed, wearing a short satin nightgown with matching sunflower yellow robe. Her feet were bare as she padded down the hardwood hallway and stairs, wineglass and bottle in hand.
Surprisingly, she was feeling better than when she’d first been startled awake from her dream…or maybe it had been more of a series of relived memories. Lord knew it was all true and had happened to her seven years before.
She tried not to think about those times any more than she had to, but being home and so near Connor muddied the waters and made it almost impossible to deny the past.
Still, it had been nice of Connor to check on her, to be worried about her. And for once, she hadn’t snapped at him or thrown up her ice-princess veneer.
Being in Crystal Springs again reminded her of the kind, innocent girl she used to be. She hadn’t had much of a chance to be either kind or innocent lately. Polite, civil, professional…but not naturally, sincerely, down-home pleasant.
Detouring through the kitchen, she retrieved a second wineglass, then headed for the living room, where Connor was once again propped on the couch watching television.
She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to talk with him. She could just as easily have gone to her room and avoided him until morning. But for once, her dreams or memories or whatever they were about the pregnancy and miscarriage didn’t make her hate him more. For the first time, it occurred to her that she’d piled an awful lot of blame at his feet.
Yes, he’d gotten her pregnant. Yes, he’d failed to call afterward, which she still thought he should have done. But in the same vein, she could have just as easily called him—and should have after she realized that their night together had resulted in a baby.
And because he hadn’t known, he really didn’t bear any responsibility for the loss of that baby or for the roller-coaster ride her emotions took because of it.
She wasn’t ready to tell him about the pregnancy and miscarriage…not now, maybe not ever…but it wouldn’t hurt to sit and talk with him a bit. She hadn’t exactly been Sister Mary Sunshine since they’d gotten stuck together in her brother’s house.
He watched her cross the carpeted floor with hooded eyes, but to his credit, his gaze never wandered to her legs, bare from a little above midthigh down. As she took a seat on the sofa beside him, setting the long-stemmed glasses on the low coffee table, he sat up and cleared his throat.
“So what do you think—pizza for supper? I was just going to call one in.”
She nodded, pouring them each a healthy portion of wine. “Sounds good to me.”
Pushing himself up from the couch, he set his beer aside and sauntered to the phone. Her mood was just generous enough that she watched him walking away and appreciated the view. My, he really did fill out a pair of jeans nicely.
He dialed the local pizza place and ordered a large pie, then covered the mouthpiece and asked, “I’m getting the works on my half, what do you want on yours?”
She shouldn’t, but she said, “The same.” She’d make up for it later…maybe get up early in the morning and go running, regardless of the weather.
“Make that one large with everything,” he told the person on the other end, then gave his name and directions to the house.
Once that was done, he moved back to the sofa and reached for his beer, but she handed him a glass of wine instead.
He eyed her warily for a moment before accepting the dark claret. No doubt he was wondering if she’d slipped some sort of poison into his drink. Considering her attitude so far this week, she couldn’t blame him.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, taking a small sip.
She leaned back against the overstuffed cushions, balancing her painted toes on the edge of the coffee table, mimicking Connor’s relaxed pose.
“Nothing special. I just thought it was awfully nice of you to worry about me when I disappeared into the bathroom for so long, and I wanted to thank you.”
“It wouldn’t do for my best friend to come home from his honeymoon and discover I’d let his little sister drown,” he quipped.
She grinned. “No, I guess it wouldn’t. Although, after the way I’ve treated you since discovering we’d both be staying here for a few days, I’m surprised you didn’t come in and try to hold me under.”
One side of his mouth quirked up at that. “Thought about it. Didn’t want a criminal record.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Time passed while they enjoyed their wine, the only sound in the room coming from the low volume of the television, playing a family sitcom.
The calm serenity of the moment washed over her. She hadn’t felt this way in far too long…weightless, almost lig
ht-headed, without a care in the world. It was a far cry from her life back in L.A., where she had to keep on her toes and almost every waking moment was filled with tension.
She never got to sit and just unwind. Or if she did, it was alone, not in the company of a handsome, average, everyday guy who preferred beer to martinis and pizza to nouveau cuisine. It was comforting to know Connor didn’t care what she was wearing, whether her makeup was flawless, or every strand of hair was in place.
As desperately as she’d been avoiding him for nearly a decade, she had to admit she could be herself around him. He’d seen her with scraped knees and gum in her hair. Sobbing her heart out when her pet cat had been killed by a car. While her eyes were red and swollen, her nose running, he’d helped her bury Zoey in the backyard. He’d even seen her throw up macaroni and cheese in the school cafeteria when she was nine, and had been the only student other than her brother not laughing, pointing or making gross gagging noises. Instead, he’d put his arm around her shoulders and walked her to the nurse’s office, waiting with her until her mom came to pick her up.
Growing up, he’d been her hero. If she were being honest with herself, she’d have to admit he still was. An imperfect one, true, but still her hero.
Everybody was entitled to a few mistakes in their lifetime, weren’t they?
Hmm. Taking another slow sip of wine, she let her head fall back against the couch, balancing the glass on her upper thigh. She must really be feeling relaxed if she was thinking about forgiving him.
But she didn’t know if she was ready to be that charitable just yet. It was enough that she was even allowing it as an option. She considered that growth—and quite enough growth for one night. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and seven-year-old emotional wounds couldn’t be healed that quickly, either.
“Do you ever wonder,” Connor said in a low murmur, breaking into her thoughts, “what might have happened if we hadn’t grown up together? If we’d met each other back then as complete strangers?”
She didn’t need him to identify what he meant by “back then.” He was talking about that night again.
Surprisingly, her stomach didn’t clutch and her temperature didn’t begin to rise. Her muscles did tense, but she took another small drink of wine and mentally forced herself to relax.
He obviously needed to talk about it—he’d certainly cornered her often enough—but she had never been in a frame of mind to listen before. She wasn’t sure how long she could listen now, either, but at least she was willing to give it a shot.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said softly, rolling her head on the sofa cushion to look at him.
“I’ve always thought of you as my sister, Beth. You were Nick’s sister by blood, but we grew up together, your family practically adopted me, so it felt like you were my sister, too.”
His brandy brown eyes darkened, the corners crinkling slightly as he offered a tight smile. “But we both know I didn’t treat you like a sister that night after the football game, in the cab of my truck. I’ve been wanting to apologize for that for years.”
Her heart squeezed for a moment and the old anger and pain tried to break through. She tamped it down, determined not to backslide into her previous attitude and mind-set.
“Why would you apologize? You weren’t in the truck by yourself.”
“I took advantage of you,” he pushed on, glossing over any responsibility she might take for her own actions. “You were young and confused…and a virgin. I was older and more experienced, I should have stopped things before they got out of hand.”
With a harsh laugh, she said, “You can get down off the cross now, Connor, no one’s blaming you for taking my virginity. I wouldn’t have been in your truck if I hadn’t wanted to be, and I wouldn’t have had sex with you if I hadn’t wanted to, either.”
From the corner of her eyes, she saw his thumb rubbing absently up and down the stem of his wineglass.
“That still doesn’t make it right,” he told her. “Your parents have always treated me like one of their own. They trusted me to take care of you, protect you…not to take advantage of you.”
“For the last time, you didn’t take advantage of me.”
With all the negative thoughts she’d had toward him over the years, that had never been one of them.
“Connor,” she said in a near whisper, “from the time I turned thirteen, I had a huge crush on you.”
It cost her to admit it, but if he’d been living with this guilt for seven years, he deserved to know the truth. Granted, a part of her wanted him to feel guilty, but about other things. About not calling her after their night together. About not making a point of finding out if there were repercussions—such as an unplanned pregnancy—involved.
But this conversation, this delicate peace they seemed to have developed, wasn’t about that, it was about setting him straight on what he was feeling guilty over.
“I don’t know how you could have missed it,” she continued with a light laugh. “I was positively cow-eyed over you. I followed you and Nick around like a puppy, wrote ‘Mrs. Connor Riordan’ in my notebooks a thousand times and did everything I could think of to catch your attention. I wanted to be with you that night. If anything, I orchestrated it so that the situation would play out exactly as it did.”
He was sitting up on the sofa now, his arms resting on his denim-clad thighs, staring at her. She straightened under his intense gaze, resisting the need to squirm with embarrassment at her admission.
At least he wasn’t laughing at her. She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to bear that.
But Connor looked anything but amused by her confession. His eyes were blazing, warming her from head to toe with something other than the flush of humiliation.
“I never knew,” he said finally, his voice rasping like velvet over sandpaper.
Blowing out a breath, he ran the splayed fingers of one hand through his short, dirty-blond hair. “And I wish to hell I had, because I felt the same damn way.”
Shock and disbelief slammed into her like a bolt of lightning. For a moment, she felt dizzy, almost as though she were floating outside of her body.
This wasn’t happening, not really. She was still asleep in the tub upstairs, and her dream had segued from memories of the past into some sordid mix of her juvenile hopes and her present circumstances with Connor.
But then he started speaking again, and even though the words roared in her ears, she could hear them, make out what he was saying.
“I watched you grow up and kept telling myself that you were as much as my sister. Your family was my family…I had no business being attracted to you.” He paused to take a deep breath. “But I was. God knows I fought it, and I never would have admitted to it, not even under penalty of death, but there it was. Every time you walked down the hall at school or into a classroom. Every time I came over to see your brother and you were bopping around in sweatpants and a skimpy little tank top, I just about swallowed my tongue.
“And then that night after the football game, I couldn’t seem to help myself. You were so beautiful, and I’d been wanting you for so long.”
All these years, she thought she’d thrown herself at him and he’d only slept with her because…well, he was a man and she’d been available. But the whole time she had a crush on him, he’d been interested in her, too? It was too much to absorb all at once.
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind and her vision. “I can’t believe this,” she murmured.
He shifted closer to her on the sofa. Their legs touched, the denim of his jeans brushing against her bare skin. He reached out with one hand and covered her thigh just below the hem of her nightie, his thumb drawing circles on the smooth, sensitive flesh of her inner knee.
“I know. All this time we’ve felt the same way about each other without even realizing it.”
He paused for a moment, his gaze zeroing in on her lips, which suddenly felt so dry, she darted he
r tongue out to moisten them.
“You know what else?” he asked in a low tone that slid down her spine like warm honey as he leaned in even closer. “I still do…want you.”
Seven
As soon as their mouths touched, the years melted away and every fantasy he’d ever had that revolved around Beth flooded his mind.
Her lips were warm beneath his, closed at first, and then parting until their tongues touched. She tasted of the claret they’d been drinking—and something else, something uniquely Beth.
His fingertips slid beneath the hem of her short, sexy nightgown, caressing the silken smoothness of her legs and traveling higher. She seemed as involved in the kiss as he was, her hands cupping the back of his head, tangling in his hair.
With a groan, he pressed her back against the sofa, one arm around her waist to keep her flush with his chest and lower body.
She smelled so good. Fresh from her bath, with her hair still damp in places and falling down her back in a loose, carefree tangle. He could feel the budding of her nipples through the layers of fabric separating their bodies, and he wanted them in his mouth, against his palms.
He abandoned her mouth, only to pay homage to her chin, her jawline, the pouty little lobe of her ear. She arched into him, a purr of pleasure rumbling low in her throat. And then she lifted one leg to hug his hips and the desire already pumping through his veins like a drug shot straight to his groin.
He ground against her, wishing they were naked already so he could be inside her at that very moment. His lips dragged down the column of her neck, the tip of his tongue darting out to trace the line of her collarbone.
From there, he kissed his way to her breast, licking the pearled tip through the slinky material covering her. A wet patch began to grow and he fed it, opening his mouth wider, suckling her until she moaned and held his head in place.
Power surged, lust arcing between them so strongly, he felt almost light-headed. He wanted her—more than he could remember ever wanting another woman. Possibly more than he’d wanted her even back in high school.