by Fiona Brand
Kyle was an alpha male. Testosterone aside, that meant taking charge and taking responsibility. To have lost the two people most intimately connected with him, the wife and child he had vowed to care for and protect, must be unbearable. In that instant a whole lot of things she hadn’t understood about Kyle settled into place. Foremost was the fact that he had loved his wife and child.
A sharp ache started somewhere deep in her chest. The way she, all those years ago, would have loved to be loved. “You still miss them.”
The lights changed, Kyle accelerated through the intersection. “Birthdays and important dates are the worst, but it’s not as bad as it used to be.”
“I’m sorry.” As much as she had gotten used to loss and grief, the process of losing her family over a period of years had, at least, given her time to adjust. She could not imagine what it must have been like for Kyle to lose a wife and child, literally, in an instant.
He took the off-ramp for Takapuna Beach, his expression closed. “It’s okay. It hurt, but it was years ago.”
She stared ahead at the road as it unfolded, feeling suddenly incredibly self-centered. She had been viewing Kyle as controlling and intrusive—the big, bad wolf—but like all the men in his family, he was a family man.
Abruptly, she understood him in a way that was unbearably and intimately personal. As the oldest child in her family, she had said goodbye to her twin and two younger siblings. She could remember holding their hands and willing them to live. One by one they had died; there had been nothing she could do. It wasn’t the shock of a bomb blast, but the sense of helplessness was the same.
Kyle turned down a side street then into a park, with the sea just a few yards from a small parking lot. Now that they were alone, and at the beach, she was out of stall time.
Panic gripped her. Given that she now knew she could not marry a stranger, she needed to decide whether or not she could cope with a temporary marriage to Kyle.
Six
Kyle tossed his jacket in the space behind the driver’s seat and walked around the hood of the Maserati to open the passenger side door. Predictably, Eva already had the door open, but was still seated while she unfastened her shoes. He drew in a breath at the elegant line of her legs and the tantalizing glimmer of a fine chain around one slim ankle. “If you want to walk, I don’t know how long we’ll have. The forecast is for rain.”
It was actually for a thunderstorm. He could already see lightning flashes farther north, and from the drop in temperature the rain could start any time.
“Don’t care.” She sent him a fleeting look that, half hidden by a tousled swath of tawny hair, was unconsciously sexy.
His stomach tightened as he was irresistibly reminded of a seventeen-year-old girl who had trailed endlessly along the beach at Dolphin Bay in a bikini top and a pair of ragged, cutoff denim shorts, driving most of the male population crazy.
She slid out of the Maserati, the gusting breeze plastering her little black dress against the lithe curves of her body as she closed the car with a brisk thud that made him wince.
She sent him a smooth, closed smile, the kind he’d gotten familiar with lately, as if he was one of her difficult clients. “I’m tired of the city and miles of concrete. I want to feel sand between my toes.”
He depressed his key and locked the car before walking to the beach. Eva was already standing on smooth, hard-packed sand, just inches shy of the water, her expression oddly relaxed.
“I love it, especially when there’s going to be a storm.” She sent him a slanting sideways look as he joined her, as if she was trying to assess him in some way. She smiled encouragingly. “Shall we walk?”
His jaw tightened as he suddenly got it. After months of avoidance, Eva had changed tack completely. Every muscle in his body tightened when he realized that Eva’s question outside the Irish pub about whether or not his offer of marriage was still open had been for real. And that some time between that moment and the drive to the beach, she had moved on to summing him up as a potential husband. When Eva began asking him about his work hours and his interests, he realized he was being interviewed.
In a weird way, it reminded him of when he was nineteen and had spent a whole summer getting to know Eva. In a lot of ways, the process had been the exact opposite of the usual pattern. She had started out so confident and self-contained it had been hard to get close to her at all.
One day, with the summer almost over and Kyle pushed to his limits, he had saved her from an older guy who had cornered her at the end of the beach. The tussle had been brief, but when the tourist had beat a hasty retreat, she had stared at him and blushed. She hadn’t said a word, just continued on as if it hadn’t happened, but from that moment on her behavior had changed. In a weird way it was as if he had passed some kind of test.
She strolled down to the water’s edge, wading in ankle-deep. There was no attempt to look sexy or alluring, just a simple enjoyment of the seaside. She turned, her gaze connected with his then dropped to his mouth before she looked quickly away.
Every muscle in his body suddenly taut, Kyle waited her out. He wanted Eva, and she knew it. Last night he thought he’d blown any chance of having her in his bed, but in the space of twenty-four hours, something had changed. Added to that, the beach setting was creating an unsettling sense of déjà vu, as if they’d been spun back years.
Lightning flashed, followed by a heavy roll of thunder. Simultaneously, rain pounded down.
Eva flinched at the sudden deluge, but the rain, though torrential, wasn’t cold and, besides, she loved the wildness of it. Kyle jerked his head in the direction of the car but, caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the shelter of a large, gnarled pohutukawa tree.
She sucked in a breath as they stepped beneath the dense overhang of the tree. With the sound of the surf and the shift of shadows as dappled light from the parking lot flowed through the leaves, in a strange way it felt like stepping back in time to Dolphin Bay and that first kiss.
When Kyle reeled her in close and framed her face with his hands, the breath stopped in her lungs. She should have extricated herself in her usual smooth, sophisticated way, but ever since Kyle had slipped onto the stool beside her in the Irish pub, she had been subtly off balance. He had been tailing her for months and had ruthlessly gotten rid of any man who had gotten too close. Now he was making no bones about the fact that he wanted her, and against all the odds she loved that.
And suddenly she no longer wanted to resist him. Years ago she had loved Kyle and then lost him along with the whole future she had imagined she might have as a woman, a wife and a mother. He had loved another woman, but she’d had no one. Now she had a chance at...something. If she stopped to think— But right now, with the storm pounding all around them, all she wanted to do was feel.
When she ran her palms up over his chest to his shoulders, Kyle’s response was instant. Hauling her closer still, he bent his head, his breath washing over her lips. “What is it with beaches,” he muttered.
Lifting up on her toes, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, the passion white-hot and instant.
Long seconds later, she wrenched her mouth free and dragged at the buttons of Kyle’s shirt. He muttered something short and sharp. Dimly, she registered the loosening of the fit of her dress as the zipper tracked down, a damp blast of cool air against her skin. A split second later the dress was gone and her bra along with it.
Bending down, Kyle took one nipple in his mouth. Dizzying sensation jerked through her in waves. When he lifted his head, she remembered his shirt, but he must have shrugged out of it at some point, because she found naked skin.
Kyle groaned. “Maybe we should slow down—”
Her palms slid down over washboard abs and found the fastening of his pants. He uttered a short, so
ft word. Moments later, she was on her back on the sand, her dress and what she guessed was Kyle’s jacket and shirt beneath her.
Kyle’s fingers hooked in her panties, dragging them down. Lightning flashed, illuminating the stark planes of Kyle’s face as his weight came down on her. Sucking in a sharp breath at the sheer heat of him, she wound her arms around Kyle’s neck, the fierce need to keep him close momentarily blotting out coherent thought.
“Babe—there’s something I need to do first.” He disengaged and rolled to one side. She logged the sound of foil tearing. A condom. Thunder detonated again and the rain pattered down through the canopy of leaves, splashing on bare skin so that she shivered.
Kyle hauled her close, sheltering her with his body, and in that moment it seemed the most natural thing in the world to hook one arm around his neck and lift up for his kiss. At the same time, curious about the condom, her fingers closed around him. She felt the smooth texture, the heated satin of his skin underneath.
A split second later, he came down between her legs. She felt the heated pressure of him. There was a shivering moment of sanity, when she logged Kyle’s stillness, as if, like her, he had come to the sudden sobering conclusion of exactly what they were about to do. She should say no. Kyle would stop, she knew he would, and in a crazy way that in itself was freeing.
It was a plain fact that she didn’t want to relinquish him or the burning, irresistible pleasure that held her in its grip. It wasn’t love. She wasn’t that silly, but when set against the shadows of her past and her present loneliness—the growing fear that she would never truly be cherished—it tipped an internal balance so that she no longer wanted to think, only to feel...
She felt him tense at the tight constriction and freeze in place. She thought he was going to stop, but when he lifted his head, she clung, unable to bear letting him go, arching against the burning pressure at the center of her body.
He groaned and a second later, shoved deep. She felt the drag of the condom, an uncomfortable pinching as with each downward stroke he seemed to push a little deeper still. Her hips twisted automatically, trying to ease the discomfort, but the restless twisting momentarily dislodged him.
He cradled her closer and the next downward stroke felt smoother, sleeker, more pleasurable, and she realized that something had changed. The condom was gone, but it was already too late as irresistible sensation gripped her, coiling tight, and the damp, heavy darkness shimmered into light.
* * *
Kyle stopped the car outside Eva’s house. “We need to talk. Somehow, I don’t know how, because it’s never happened before, but the condom slipped—”
“You don’t have to worry about contraception.”
The words were out before she could call them back, but she couldn’t regret them. She knew Kyle would probably think she was on the pill or had some other form of contraception, but that wasn’t the case. She could get pregnant.
The thought made her heart beat wildly. It was the last thing she wanted, but maybe, just maybe, she could get lucky and it wouldn’t happen. If it did... She drew a swift breath, unable to imagine a scenario that was so far out of left field for her.
Fingers fumbling in her haste, she unfastened her seat belt. She still felt damp, gritty and disoriented that the night had spun so far out of control that they’d actually had sex and, in the end, because the condom had come off, unprotected sex. She couldn’t wait to say goodbye and escape into the quiet refuge of her home. “Thanks,” she said brightly, throwing the car door open.
It was still raining. No problem, since she was already bedraggled and her dress was most likely ruined. Cheeks burning, she searched for her clutch, which had somehow managed to slide down the side of the seat. By the time she had retrieved it, Kyle was out of the car and it was too late to make a quick getaway.
Rain was cold on her bare arms as she jogged to her front door and searched for her key. Intensely aware of Kyle beside her, she jammed the key in the lock and somehow missed.
Kyle calmly took the key from her and unlocked the door. As he pushed it wide, the tinkle of glass made her freeze in place.
“Wait here,” he said softly. Kyle stepped past her, flowing into the darkened interior.
A chill went down her spine at the quiet way he’d moved, his utter assurance, and despite her dilemma over whether or not to just give in and marry him, she was abruptly glad he was with her. Burglaries were common, but this was the first time it had happened to her.
Long minutes later, lights went on and Kyle reappeared in her tiny hallway. “I’ll call the police. Whoever it was, they’re gone now, out through the laundry door and over the back fence. The sound of breaking glass was a vase. They knocked it over on their way out.”
Eva followed Kyle into her lounge. Drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Her one framed family photo of her mother and father in happier days was sitting on the dining table, as if whoever had broken in had paused to look at it. Immediately, suspicion flared. Her last stepfather, Sheldon Ferris, had once tried to get money out of her, but Mario had threatened him with the police.
As she checked around the sitting room, she noted that her TV and stereo were still in place, but her laptop was gone.
Kyle terminated the call he’d just made. “A cruiser will be here in the next ten minutes.” He frowned. “Did you set the alarm?”
“Before I left. I always do.”
While Kyle checked her alarm system, she stepped into her bedroom. Her shocked disbelief was swamped by burning outrage. If her lounge was a mess, her bedroom was worse. Her closet and every drawer had been emptied. Clothes had been dumped on the floor with hangers still attached. Shoes, makeup and costume jewelry were scattered over the bed and the floor. She picked up lacy scraps of underwear and jammed them back in their drawer. She knew she shouldn’t touch anything, because the police needed to see the scene of the crime, but she drew the line at having uniformed police officers claiming her underwear as evidence.
Until that moment, she had thought a burglary was about the scariness of a stranger, losing stuff and the inconvenience of insurance claims, but she knew now that wasn’t so at all. Shock and anger that someone had thought they had the right to invade her privacy and rummage through her private things kept running through her in waves. They had tossed items aside and taken what they wanted as if she didn’t matter.
She didn’t know what was missing other than her laptop, but suddenly the laptop ceased to matter. A chill went through her, and she found herself rubbing her arms. Her home, her sanctuary and all of the personal things that were about her had been violated.
Kyle, who had been quietly checking through rooms, reappeared and looked annoyed when she told him the laptop was gone. “Anything else appear to be missing?”
She skimmed the room and tried to think, although when her gaze snagged on a broken music box, a precious keepsake from her childhood, her temper soared again. If it was Sheldon, a one-time used car salesman and inveterate swindler, he would know how precious that music box was to her. “It’s a little hard to say with all the mess.”
His gaze was cool and very steady as he noted the damage. “Made any enemies lately?”
She frowned. “I haven’t had time. I work too hard.”
“What about in business?”
“I deal with hotel groups and caterers. All they want from me is a confirmed date and a check, which they get.”
She heard a car pull into her driveway. Trying to keep her emotions in check, Eva looked through the rooms of her house, relieved to see that the burglar hadn’t managed to get to her spare room or the kitchen. Minutes later, she opened the front door for two police officers.
Absently, she noticed that the fresh-faced detectives who introduced themselves as Hicks and Braithewaite seemed dazzled, making her aware that her damp d
ress was clinging and her hair was tousled. It was a reaction she’d gotten used to over the years, and which she usually managed to ignore.
As Hicks flashed his ID, Kyle stepped into the hall, his hand settling in the small of her back. The small proprietorial touch in front of Hicks forcibly brought back the passionate interlude on the beach. But, given her shakiness over the break-in, she didn’t mind the context. Messena and Atraeus men were naturally protective of the women in the family. Whether it was an elderly aunt or someone much younger, the small courtesies and the masculine backup were always available if there was a problem.
Kyle kept her close as Hicks asked questions and looked around. When they walked through the rooms, he even threaded his fingers with hers. They had made love, that was intimate enough, but Kyle’s possessive behavior had shunted them straight into something scarily close to couplehood.
Eva’s stomach lurched as, once again, she turned over her options: marriage or stay single and possibly lose her business and house, both of which were mortgaged. She faced losing everything for which she had worked so hard over the years. She would survive; she didn’t have to have the silk cushion. What would hurt, though, with Mario gone and no inheritance until she was forty, was the feeling of alienation that would go with losing that essential link. Maybe that was a ridiculous way to feel, since she was still an Atraeus by name. But it was a fact that she had always had to strive to fit in, to feel good enough to be an Atraeus.
Whichever way she viewed the future, she kept coming up against one constant: she did not want to cut Kyle out of it. That meant marriage.
She drew a quick breath at a heated flash of their lovemaking. And if what had happened tonight was anything to go on, if they married, even if they started out as a paper marriage, she didn’t think it would stay that way.
After taking photographs, Hicks asked a few straightforward questions and made arrangements for an evidence tech to call in and dust for prints in the morning. Eva gave him a description of the laptop and a serial number, and promised to call in to Auckland Central Police Station with a list of anything else that was missing.