by Maggie Cox
Watching his wife through the gothic-style archway that led into the chapel as she lit the little candle, Reece was momentarily mesmerised by the sight of her. She had removed her straw hat on entering the church, and her bright blond hair was backlit by a ray of sunlight streaming in through a stained glass window—she looked almost heartstoppingly beautiful and very young. Too young, Reece thought as emotion welled up inside him. Too young to have lost a longed-for baby and to have suffered a night of terror as she had when she’d lost it.
Because he now knew with unequivocal doubt that Sorrel had wanted that baby more than anything else…maybe even more than she wanted their marriage to continue. He absorbed the stinging realisation with a deeply heavy sigh of profound regret. Another woman with the same wonderful opportunities to travel and have such a glamorous career as fashion modelling might have resented the looming curtailment of that career in lieu of taking care of a child…but not Sorrel. Motherhood would come naturally to her, and she wouldn’t resent the responsibility one iota.
‘She looks like the Madonna, no?’ A smiling Italian tourist, his sunglasses on the top of his head and his bronzed tan evident even in the dim interior of the church, stopped next to Reece to gaze in mutual admiration at Sorrel as she stood in front of the several rows of flickering candles, her expression rapt.
Reece couldn’t even find the words to answer him. But he did find a quickening of longing take an almost violent hold inside him as he shared the vision of his beautiful wife with the unknown tourist and desired nothing more than to take her home and keep her for nobody else’s edification other than his own. Giving the other man a brief nod of acknowledgement, he moved into the little chapel to step up beside Sorrel. He already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask her, but somehow he was driven to hear confirmation of it from her own lips.
‘Who did you light the candle for?’
His voice was pitched low so that only she could hear. Turning to glance at him, Sorrel clutched her straw hat with the jaunty little silk daffodil to her chest and gave him the briefest glimpse of a tiny smile.
‘Our baby,’ she whispered, and Reece saw her lovely blue eyes glaze over with unshed tears. Fighting back the wave of inconsolable sorrow that flooded his heart, he put his hand behind her waist, and as he did so the intoxicating scent of rose stirred the air—for a moment shutting out the more sonorous smell of incense that was everywhere.
It hit Reece right in the centre of his solar plexus and brought an immediate almost shockingly accurate vision of his mother to mind. He stopped still and didn’t move. His mother had always smelled of roses. They had been her favourite flowers.
‘Reece?’
Having turned and caught the shocked glance of surprise mirrored in her husband’s stunning green eyes, Sorrel felt her heartbeat quicken with concern. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘What perfume are you wearing?’ he asked huskily.
More than a little discomfited, Sorrel shrugged. ‘I’m not wearing any perfume today…why?’
Seemingly snapping out of the trance he appeared to have fallen into, Reece flashed her a genuinely warm smile. ‘It doesn’t matter, honey. Let’s go, shall we?’
Somehow feeling that he’d been given a rare gift, but not really understanding how or why, Reece led his wife gently away from the undoubted peace of the exquisite little chapel to the shimmering haze of the hot afternoon outside.
Ricardo and his plump, unashamedly expressive wife Ines were waiting for Reece and Sorrel on their return. When they drew up outside the house in their hire car Ines flew out of the kitchen, where she’d been working, and Ricardo appeared from one of the terraces to greet them. As tall and thin as his wife was short and round, with his face a deep bronze ingrained by the sun and his crinkling brown eyes, he looked as if he was a quintessential part of the earthy landscape surrounding them. He was also the kind of man who would willingly lend a hand or put his shoulder to the wheel for anybody in need and expect nothing in return.
With great enthusiasm and warmth he pumped Reece’s hand, then embraced him, and did the same to Sorrel. But it was Ines’s great motherly hug that almost made Sorrel dissolve into tears. The woman had five grown-up children of her own and several grandchildren, and her stores of energy, enthusiasm and affection were seemingly boundless.
‘Minha crianca doce! My sweet child!’ she crooned, touching Sorrel’s face and stroking her hair—as if indeed she really were a child. ‘But you have got so thin! What is this? You do not eat any more? Tell me?’
Catching Reece’s eye across his wife’s shoulder, Ines looked to him to give her an explanation for what she clearly concluded was Sorrel’s unacceptable slenderness.
‘I can’t get her to eat, Ines,’ he confessed, with no small regret in his tone. ‘Perhaps you can do better and tempt her with your wonderful cooking while we are here?’
‘Yes, yes! She must eat! This is not good she is so thin! I have made one of my best dishes for you both tonight, and if you do not enjoy it you will break my heart!’ she announced dramatically.
Ricardo nodded sagely. ‘She is right. Food is a great healer when you are having troubled times,’ he added, exchanging a secret glance of mutual understanding.
His hands on his hips, Reece frowned for a moment. It seemed it was a day for strange happenings. First the strong sense of his mother’s presence back in the little church, and now this. How Ricardo and Ines had intuited that he and Sorrel had been having ‘troubled times’ he didn’t rightly know, since he had not mentioned any such thing to the couple at all.
‘I promise I will enjoy your lovely cooking tonight, Ines. I will make a great effort especially for you. But right now I think I need to get out of the sun for a little while. Do you mind?’ Sorrel squeezed Ines’s plump bronzed hand with genuine apology. ‘I’m feeling a little tired, and I might just go and have a lie-down.’
‘Is there anything I can get for you, my child? Perhaps a long cool drink? I will bring it to your room.’ Ines immediately bustled away in search of the kitchen.
As she turned away herself, towards the house, Sorrel felt Reece’s hand on her arm.
‘Are you OK?’ he demanded, clearly concerned that she needed to lie down.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she assured him, not quite meeting his gaze. ‘I’ve just got a slight headache, that’s all. I’m not used to the sun yet.’
‘Then go and rest. I’ll come in and check on you later,’ he said, and let his arm drop to his side.
She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that the sun had made her feel tired. But emotion was also weighing her down, making her feel weary and permanently close to tears. In the little chapel today, when she had lit the candle and offered up a prayer for her baby, Sorrel had wondered how she was supposed to go on living when a permanent cloud of sadness seemed to be dogging her every step. She and Reece were still no closer to resolving their difficulties—and how long would he wait, she wondered, before he thought enough was enough and concluded that perhaps a divorce was the only real solution to their problems? He was a dynamic, vital man, with a man’s healthy needs, and no doubt there’d be no shortage of interested women to help him meet them should he decide to end their marriage.
Closing her eyes against the pain of her own tormenting thoughts, she turned her face into the pillow and prayed for sleep to give her a brief respite from her seemingly endless sorrow.
It was a terrible dream—even more graphic in content than when she had experienced the real thing. Clutching the bedcover to her as sweat trickled down between her breasts and clung to her forehead, Sorrel finally threw the sheet aside, sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Staring down at her long pink nightgown, which was made out of the same material as a T-shirt, she at last woke up to the fact that everything was as it should be. There was no distressing sight of blood, as there had been in her dream, and she wasn’t in any kind of physical pain. No. It was the emotional and s
piritual pain that was threatening to take her breath away.
Crossing her arms in front of her stomach, Sorrel leant forward and rocked to and fro in a keening rhythm as old as time, trying desperately to contain the grief and distress that poured out of her heart. She was like a wounded animal run to ground, with not a single solitary person to care that she was so distressed or hurt. Her very soul cried out for strong arms to hold her, to witness her pain without words and merely be an ally in the searing silence until such time as she could breathe again and return to herself. Reece.
Without even realising that she had got to her feet, Sorrel headed for the door and went out into the quiet corridor with its cool tiled floor. In her bare feet she found herself walking towards the room a little way down from hers, opening the door and staring at Reece’s prone figure beneath the single Egyptian cotton sheet on the bed, outlined only by the light of the moon that shone through the uncovered window and the dim light that illuminated him from the corridor behind her. One bare golden arm was flung out by his side, and the sheer strength and beauty of the man made her shiver violently.
Suddenly unsure whether she should have come to him after all, Sorrel nearly jumped out of her skin when Reece opened his eyes, propped himself up on one elbow and studied her with immediate concern reflected across his compelling face. ‘What’s wrong?’
Hesitating for only a moment, Sorrel shut the door behind her and moved across the room to stand beside the bed.
‘Will you hold me?’ she asked him. Her throat almost closed with pain on the words.
Needing no more entreaty than that, Reece reached out for her hand and pulled her down next to him. ‘Get in,’ he said hoarsely.
Climbing beneath the sheet, heavy with the warmth from his vital strong body, Sorrel lay down with her back to him and let him pull her tight against his chest. As his heat and strength enfolded her, the familiar male scent from his body saturating her senses and the fine silken hairs on his muscled arms feeling like heaven beneath her fingers, Sorrel started to shudder with the force of emotion that swept through her.
‘Let it out, baby,’ Reece crooned next to her ear. ‘Let it all out. I’m here now…I’m here.’
CHAPTER NINE
EVERY quiver, every shudder, was like a knife carving his heart into tiny little pieces. Holding her hard against him, he held onto her slender trembling body like a lifeguard held onto someone who was nearly drowning. Reece wanted to weep, too—not just for the tragedy that had befallen their expected baby, but also for the loss of the trust and the love they had once shared so passionately.
Feeling the whisper-soft hair that spread out on the pillow beside him touch his skin, Reece breathed Sorrel in, closing his eyes to the pain and the pleasure of her closeness…a closeness he had missed more than anything he had ever lost in his life before. Only the loss of his mother matched it.
‘Try and sleep now, honey. I’m here for you, and I promise you I’m not going anywhere.’
Touching his lips to her hair, he made a silent vow that, come earthquake, thunder or flood, he would hold her tight to him for the rest of the night if she allowed it. As Sorrel continued to sob into the pillow Reece knew that no other words were necessary….
Bright sunlight streaming in through the uncovered window made Sorrel open her eyes extra slowly. There was some kind of weight pinning her down, and when she realised that it was Reece’s arm anchored across her chest she couldn’t help but release a gasp. She had slept as if she’d been heavily sedated, hardly stirring a muscle. Now it shocked her to remember that she had come into his bedroom of her own volition—in search of comfort and solace because of the soul-searing nightmare that had punctured her sleep. And he’d held her and kept her safe all night.
Unsure of what she would say to him when he woke, she stared up the ceiling, trying to buy some time and wishing that her head didn’t throb so much. But, as well as the ache in her temples, there was another part of her anatomy that was waking up to an ache, too—but this one wasn’t painful. The physical need that seemed to be gripping her because of the intimate proximity of her husband’s strong, fit, warm body took Sorrel by complete surprise. It had been such a long time since they had shared a bed that she’d forgotten how arousing it could be—especially first thing in the morning.
Slightly moving her leg, she felt the naked muscle of Reece’s strong thigh brush against her, and heat just seemed to pour into her from everywhere. He groaned softly beside her as he started to surface from sleep, and as he moved his arm his hand glanced against Sorrel’s breast beneath her nightwear. An electrical shock couldn’t have stunned her senses more. Biting her lip, she hardly dared draw breath, even as her nipple hardened into a small tight pebble. Then he was raising his head and smiling at her, his expression downright lascivious.
The effect was the equivalent of an explosive sexual broadside on a libido slumbering peacefully in relatively calm waters. Blinking back the searing effects of the riveting emerald gaze that was practically blinding her with its intensity, Sorrel’s intended smile of greeting barely made it to her lips. ‘Good morning,’ she said huskily.
It had to be a good morning if Sorrel was back in his bed, Reece thought with no small amount of fierce pleasure. And she was there of her own free will. Remembering the events of the night with an undeniable throb of warmth in his chest, he stroked back a deliciously wanton honey-blond curl from his wife’s pale, smooth brow and felt a rush of helpless heat flood his loins when he saw her pretty blue eyes turn that smoky shade that told him she was aroused.
‘Good morning to you too, beautiful.’
‘We should get up. I’m in desperate need of a cup of tea.’
‘And I’m desperately in need of…a kiss.’
Before she could respond to such an unexpected declaration, Reece lowered his head and planted a slow, burning kiss on Sorrel’s surprised mouth. As his velvet tongue stroked her into compliance, her heart went delirious with delight, her hips turned soft and needy, and the ache in her breasts almost made her want to crawl out of her skin. The man must have taken lessons from no less than a master seducer, she concluded dazedly, her lips throbbing and clamouring for more of the same wicked treatment. Even in the morning Reece tasted good. He smelled good, too—all warm and musky and deliciously, gorgeously masculine.
‘Hmm…that was nice.’
He was circling one of her breasts with his fingers, watching the nipple pucker and grow tight beneath the pink material of her nightwear with absorbed fascination. Letting out a shaky breath, Sorrel frowned. As explosively arousing as his touch undoubtedly was, she wasn’t ready for this sexual bombardment of the senses he was drugging her with. And what could she do about it anyway? She still had nearly three weeks to go before she could safely make love. They’d both only end up feeling frustrated, and how would that help either of them?
Feeling doubt and sudden fear shiver through her, Sorrel deliberately dragged her glance away from the hot, simmering promise in his eyes. ‘I’ve got to get up.’
‘What’s your hurry, angel? We’re on vacation…remember?’
‘I—I need the bathroom.’
‘Sure you’re not just running away?’
In the middle of circling her aroused nipple, Reece stopped his sensual teasing and successfully trapped her gaze. Unsettled by the suspicion she saw lurking there, Sorrel pushed herself up into a sitting position and threaded her fingers nervously through her dishevelled blond hair.
‘Running away?’
‘From us…from intimacy. We don’t need to actually go all the way to enjoy being intimate, Sorrel. There are lots of things I can do for you to make you feel good.’ His honeyed words started an ache down deep inside her that begged her to allow him to demonstrate. Oh, how she thrilled to hear him suggest that he still wanted to please her sexually! But underlying Sorrel’s pleasure, threatening to drag her straight back down into the murky darkness, was a deep feeling of inadequacy and fear. Not b
eing able to bear the child of the man she loved struck at the most profound core of a woman’s femininity. How could she possibly deserve pleasure when she felt so bad about herself? She clearly wasn’t good enough in some way, or else why would this terrible thing have happened to her?
Was she being punished because she’d wanted too much of her husband’s time and attention? Reece had always told Sorrel that he worked hard for her, too, because he didn’t want her to be denied anything her heart desired. But what if her desire was to have a baby and a husband who was home more often than he was away? A husband who wanted to be an integral part of the little family they’d created?
‘I…I enjoyed you holding me last night, Reece, I really did. But I’m not ready for anything more intimate than that. To tell you the truth…I’m so scared of us being intimate again. I’ve got all these terrifying feelings inside me about losing the baby and not feeling good enough, and I don’t know what to do with them. My own body betrayed me, and sometimes I think the fear is making me crazy! Please don’t think I was using you in any way…I—I just needed you to hold me for a while.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me what was wrong? I could have helped you, Sorrel. I still can. We can even see someone while we’re in Portugal. I have lots of contacts…people I can ask for advice to find the best person to help. You’re not in this alone, honey…I’ve been trying to tell you that all along. Don’t shut me out. Now that I know what you’re feeling I won’t pressure you.’
He’d registered the pain behind her words with staggering regret. Yet he couldn’t deny his own frustration at not being able to be intimate with his beautiful wife. There was fear underlying his frustration too. If they left it much longer to reach out to each other what hope would there be for their future together? Reece wanted to demonstrate to her how much he cared, how much he shared her sorrow, but at the end of the day he was only a man—and God knows his patience was testing him to the max when it came to not being able to touch Sorrel in the way he longed to touch her…