Within Reach
Page 41
“Yes,” William goaded indignantly.
“Because Blake prefers men to women! He was having an affair with Harlan Magnusson!”
William raised his hand and, for a minute, she thought he was going to hit her. Then the hand curled into a fist and lowered slowly. “I don’t believe you,” he stated very quietly.
“You don’t have to believe me,” she said, suddenly even more quiet than he. “Blake confirmed it. And it explains certain things—such as why Harlan was able to get that illegal shipment out of Eastbridge.”
“Are you suggesting that Blake was sweet-talked into it, that he knew about it all along? You’re skating on thin ice, girl. A jury acquitted him.”
“And I’m not making accusations one way or the other. All I’m saying is that there always was a special relationship between Blake and Harlan. Now I understand its full nature.”
William was not one to accept defeat graciously. Danica might be his daughter, but Blake had always been his man. “Maybe if you’d been a better wife Blake wouldn’t have had to…to resort to something else.”
It was the final straw. Danica was the one who wanted to hit now, and only by pressing her fists to her sides did she refrain from doing so. Every one of her muscles was rigid. She didn’t so much as blink, though her voice was tremulous when she spoke. “I don’t have to justify my actions if you’re so blind that you can’t see what I’ve done even during these past five months of hell. All my life I’ve tried to please you, but that hasn’t been enough—not for you, because I never quite reached the top, and not for me, because I don’t want to get to the top as you see it.”
She shifted her purse on her shoulder and swallowed. “I’ll be leaving now. I’m going to stop in to say goodbye to Mom. By the way, she doesn’t know about Blake and I don’t want you to tell her. Considering the fact that she’s had one stroke, she can do without the added strain. Besides, she accepts me for what I am, and she knows that I’ll be ten times happier with Michael than I ever was with Blake. Thank God, that means something to her.”
Danica turned and headed for the door. She walked slowly, waiting, praying that her father would say something to heal the rift between them. When he said nothing, her shoulders slumped and she quietly let herself out.
Eleanor insisted on driving as far as Hartford with her, and Danica was grateful for her company. She told her of the conversation with her father, omitting that one part about Blake, and about her fervent hope that one day William might see things her way. She told of her plans for the divorce, of her desire to sell the Kennebunkport house and move in with Michael as soon as possible. She told about her hopes for the future, her excitement, the dreams that seemed finally within reach.
And Eleanor was happy for her, which was some consolation for the pain Danica felt at her father’s rejection.
The following morning, feeling more rested and alive with anticipation, she climbed back in the car for the drive to Boston and, after that, the final leg of what had been a long, long journey.
twenty
oNE MINUTE THERE WAS NOTHING BUT A CLOUD of fog before him, the next she was there, materialized from the mist. Stunned, Michael came to an abrupt halt.
He wondered if he was dreaming because he knew he had lived through this once before. Then the weather had been as inhospitable, the figure before him as striking. Now, though, it was the January wind that whipped through the ends of her sandy hair, and rather than a long skirt she wore jeans. Her jacket was as chicly oversized as the other had been on that March day nearly three years before, but this time it covered a rounded belly, inside which lay his child.
She was his dream come true. When he opened his arms, she came running, throwing her own around his neck, burying her face in the collar of his sheepskin jacket as he crushed her to him.
“Dani…Dani…” he murmured, defying the thunder of the waves by pressing his lips to her ear.
She was crying when he held her back, but she was laughing too, and she was beautiful. Unable to speak, she simply grinned at him while she brushed the tears from her face. He saw it then, the ring finger on her left hand. Taking it in his, he stroked its slender length.
“It’s gone,” he whispered hoarsely. “Your wedding band’s gone.”
She nodded vigorously, then laughed when she still couldn’t stem her tears.
“You’ve left him?” he asked cautiously, knowing she had been planning to but refusing to count on it until it was done. She nodded, and his voice rose. “For good?” She nodded again, and he spoke even louder. “And you’re free?”
This time when she nodded, he bent his knees, threw back his head and let out a great whoop of joy. By the time he straightened, she was burrowing against him again. Wrapping her tightly in his arms, he held her until she raised her head and sought his gaze.
“I’m…so…happy!” she cried.
He gave her a crooked smile. “So am I. I was beginning to think you’d left your tongue in Washington!”
“Oh, no. I’m just happy! Kiss me, Michael. We’ve made it!”
He kissed her once, then again and again. She was laughing when he finally released her. Opening his jacket, he drew her inside, then turned them both and started walking slowly along the beach. When moments later Rusty loped in from the mist, Danica knelt to hug him, then returned to her man.
“Tell me, Dani. Tell me what happened.”
She did, though she grew sober from time to time. “I really feel sorry for him, Michael. I read in today’s paper that he’ll be back as Secretary, but I don’t envy him his future.”
“You don’t envy him because it’s not the life you want. You’ve chosen your own, thank God.”
She slanted him a cautious glance. “When I said I was free before…you know that it’s only in the figurative sense just yet. I still have to file for the divorce. I told Blake I’d wait a couple of weeks until things die down, but I’m going to get a quick one. He won’t give me a fight.”
“That’s all that matters. What about your father? Do you think he’ll ever come around?”
Her expression grew more pained. “I don’t know. Mom will work on him. I know she’ll be coming up here to visit whether he chooses to or not. I want him to, but it’s up to him. I can’t dwell on it, Michael. I’ve earned the right to our happiness.”
He tucked her closer. They were both silent for a while before he spoke again. “Do you remember that first day we met here on the beach?”
She had been thinking of the same. “How could I forget? It changed my life. You talked of pain then, of how sometimes strength comes from facing pain and dealing with it. You were right. I think that’s what’s happened to me. I feel so much stronger, so much more whole.”
“You were always strong, Danica. You’d been dealing with pain for a long time before I came along. The only difference is that now you see it, now you see the strength in yourself.”
“Perhaps.” She looked toward the waves. “You also talked about the ocean. Do you remember? You said that everything here was raw and truthful and commanded the same from us. You said that falling victim to the sea meant baring one’s soul.”
“I remember.”
She turned into him then, sliding her arms inside his jacket and around his waist. “It can be painful, as it was then, or it can be beautiful, as it is now.” Her voice grew hushed. “I love you, Michael. With my heart, my soul, everything, I love you.”
For the longest time he could only drink in the adoration she offered. “I think I’m the luckiest man on this earth,” he murmured at last. Unaware of the bounty of love his own gaze returned, he grew concerned when she began to tremble. “You’re cold. Come on. Let’s go back to my place for a warm drink.” When she chuckled, he tipped his head. “What’s so funny?”
“You said the same thing that day. I remember thinking to myself that it’d be hot chocolate, just like your eyes.”
“And I remember thinking that you had the most stunning
violet ones I’d ever seen. I have to amend that. They’re even more stunning now, all love and glow.…Well?”
“Well what?”
“How about that drink? You refused me that day.”
“I was scared then. You were too attractive.”
“Are you still scared?”
“Not on your life, bud.” She broke away from him. “I’ll race you there.” With Rusty at her heels, she started to run, but the sand slowed her down and Michael caught up with her after she’d taken no more than three plodding strides.
“Ohhhhh, no, you don’t.” He firmly anchored her to his side. “A woman in your condition doesn’t race.”
She didn’t argue because in her joy to be reunited with him she had completely forgotten about her condition, and there was so much she wanted to tell him about that. “Michael, guess what?” Her eyes widened. “I heard the baby’s heartbeat!”
His voice jumped. “You did?”
She nodded. “I saw the doctor this morning and he put the stethoscope in my ears and there it was.”
Michael’s eyes were round, too. “How did it sound?”
“Thu-thump. Thu-thump. A good, healthy little heartbeat. You’ll hear it next month when you take me to the doctor.” He grinned even more widely, but she had more to say. “And I can feel it moving now. It just kind of turns from time to time and there’s this ripple inside me.”
“When will I be able to feel it?”
She laughed. “As soon as its little leg is strong enough to kick when you have your hands on me.”
“Mmmm, that’s where I want ’em, babe. That’s where I want ’em.” Hastening his pace, he headed home.
An hour later they were sitting on the floor before the fire having seconds of hot chocolate. They had been talking nonstop since coming in, but the spell of the flames had taken over and they had fallen into a warm and comfortable silence. Curving his body behind hers, Michael rested his chin on her shoulder.
“Hypnotic, isn’t it?”
“Mmmm. Maybe it’s the time, though, or the place, or you.”
He pressed his lips to her neck and murmured against her skin, “I think all of those things. You smell so good.”
She smiled and tipped her head against his. “This is what I’ve always, always wanted. A home, a fire, the man I love, our child…”
Michael slipped his hand under the hem of her sweater and caressed her belly. “You feel so good.”
Closing her eyes, she basked in the warmth of his touch. When his hand moved higher to cover her breast, she pressed her own atop it. “That feels so good,” she murmured. A different kind of spell was taking over, well, not truly taking over because the other was still too strong, but mixing with it to make her float. She was still thinking about the heavenly sensation when she felt herself being lowered to the cushions Michael had tugged from the nearby chair. Opening her eyes, she met his gaze.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he whispered and reached for the hem of her sweater again. This time he drew it up and she arched her back, then raised her arms to help him. The sweater was tossed aside and his fingers went to the buttons of her blouse. “Tell me if you get cold,” he warned huskily, but she knew she wouldn’t get cold because, between the fire in the hearth, the one burning in her body and that in Michael’s, she was melting.
He had her blouse open and eased it off, then reached behind her and unhooked her bra. It too was discarded and he sat back on his heels to look at her. His gaze traced fire along her profile, retracing it again and again over her swollen breasts and their pebbled tips, then again down over the curve of her belly. With hands that trembled, he drew the stretch band of her jeans down until the curve was bare; then, with awe in his touch, he inched his palm back up over everything his gaze had scaled.
“So…beautiful,” he whispered as he continued to familiarize his fingers with every nuance of her altered shape.
Danica lay with hands by her head and her hazy eyes on his. A tiny sound came from her throat when he rubbed the tips of his fingers over her darkened nipples, and in the delight of the moment she lowered her lashes and let her head fall to the side. He touched her everywhere then, always slowly and with wonder, always with the same devastating effect on her senses.
She heard him move and felt him taking off her flats and the stylish patterned socks she had worn. Then he was slipping the jeans and her panties off and she was naked. She opened her eyes to see him before her bent knees, and would have murmured a protest when he gently eased her legs apart had it not been for the worshipful expression he wore.
He looked at what he had opened, then placed a hand there and stroked her. She did murmur, but not in protest, because she felt the heat and the tension that had begun to gather and she wanted him to relieve it as only he could. He had the key to her heart, and hence her body. She knew he was feeling joy in pleasuring her and that enhanced her pleasure tenfold.
Her knees fell farther to the side and he inched closer. He caressed her slowly, looking up along the creamy lines of her body from time to time to meet her gaze and smile. She smiled back while she could, but she was breathing more heavily and clear thought was fading fast.
“I love you, Danica,” he breathed, slipping a finger into her. She arched at the sensation, then closed her eyes and bit her lip when he introduced a second finger and began to move both.
She whispered his name in a tattered gasp and closed her fists on the edges of the cushion beneath her head.
“I love you,” he murmured again, and she cried out because his words, his fingers, his very presence, conspired to drive her to higher and higher peaks. Then she sucked in her breath, held it, and let it out at last in a series of fierce bursts.
Michael watched her, heard her, felt her spasmodically hugging his fingers. Only when the tension had seeped from her and she lay limp did he remove them and slide up alongside her body. He stroked her face until, smiling shyly, she opened her eyes.
He spoke softly. “I’ve always wanted to do that, to watch you when you climax, but I can’t when I’m in you myself because I can’t think straight then.” He smiled. “You have so much passion in you and you let it out with the same grace, the same beauty, with which you do everything else in life.”
Blushing, she managed to raise a hand to stroke his face and the light shadow of a beard on his jaw. “You unleash the passion,” she whispered brokenly. “You unleash so much of what’s good in me.”
“Then we complement each other, which is how it should be.”
She thought about that for a time, until her pulse had returned to normal. “I read a tea bag tag once—”
He rolled his eyes.
She lowered her hand to his chest. “No, I’m serious. It was soon after I met you, but I was thinking about Blake at the time. The tag said something about love being a magical bond, which makes one and one far more than two, and I remember thinking that Blake and I were so separate that there wasn’t any possible way we could combine to produce something else, at least not emotionally. Maybe deep down inside I was fantasizing about you and about how I knew we could make something more.” She began to stroke his chest, absently at first, then with more direction when the swell of his muscles titillated her fingers. “But it’s strange. When we’re together, when we make love, we’re totally united, really only one, though there’s no ‘only’ about it. It’s when we pull apart, when it’s over, that I feel like so much more because I’ve still got a part of you with me and I’m that much fuller a person for it. Take your sweater off. This is absurd.”
Laughing aloud, he whipped the sweater over his head, then curved his arm along her back, supporting her while she moved her lips through the hair on his chest.
“You smell good. What have you got on?”
“It’s either soap,” he mocked in his deepest voice, “or eau de Michael. You’ll have to be the judge.”
“Not soap, but clean. I love the way you smell.”
“That was the obvious part,” she breathed, dabbing his nipple with the tip of her tongue. “I was trying to be more…more esoteric.”
“Esoteric.” He arched his back, then cleared his throat, but his voice still came out sounding hoarse. “Good word, esoteric.…Dani, you’re driving me crazy.” Her lips were moving in lazy circles over his ribs, her breath warming his flesh. She lowered a hand to his jeans and cupped the firmness there.
“Take off your pants, then,” she whispered.
“You do it.”
“I can’t. I feel weak. You’ve made me that way.” Leaning back, she grinned. “I’ll watch.”
With a low growl, he rolled to his knees, tore at the fastening of his jeans and pushed them, and his shoes and socks, off to the side. Then he lifted her up and against him, groaning when her breasts touched his chest. Sliding his hands down her back, he cupped her bottom and raised her hips against his. She had her arms around his neck, which was good, because moments later he was lowering them both to lie face to face before the fire.
He kissed her then, drinking deeply from her lips in long, lingering sips. She offered her tongue, which he took readily, pulling it deeper and deeper into his mouth. Her hands were on him again. She used her fingers and palms to extend what was already so fully extended. When he could take no more of her torture, he lifted her thigh and opened her to his probing.
It was Danica’s turn to whisper soft words of love, which she did repeatedly as he sheathed himself in her warmth. She kissed him between breaths, stroked him where she knew he would be inflamed, and tightened herself around him as though to hold him there forever.