“Lucky for you they weren’t quadruplets,” Kelsey quipped, selecting the largest mushroom cap she could find. It disappeared behind her lips in less than a heartbeat.
“Mike looked enough like them to almost make that happen,” Kate told her, still recalling her first encounter with the Marlowe boys—before they became hers. “He was just a tiny bit taller—”
“And not as charming,” Travis interjected, helping himself to a third mushroom. Or maybe it was his fourth.
“I don’t know if I’d exactly call what you guys were like then ‘charming,’” Bryan said, finally joining them.
“A challenge,” Kate told Venus with a fond, nostalgic smile. “They were definitely a challenge.” There was love in her voice as she said it.
Not for the first time Venus was struck by how close-knit, how warm they all were. And how foreign that seemed to feel to her, even though, at the same time, she found it incredibly comforting. And alluring.
Not knowing a single detail about herself, she still sensed that her family had been nothing like these people, who all cared about each other and could still take in a stranger and make her feel welcome. Maybe she didn’t even have a family, she mused. For a second, curiosity flared again, but then she banked it down. She wanted nothing marring this special event.
“So where’s the couple of honor?” Kelsey asked, dramatically looking at her watch. “Aren’t they supposed to be here by now? I mean, this dinner is for them, right?”
“This dinner is for all of us,” Kate told her daughter tactfully.
“But most especially for them.” Kelsey stood by her assessment. “They’re late.”
Trent’s mouth curved in a wicked smile. “Maybe they got distracted.”
“Distracted or not, they’ll be here if they know what’s good for them,” Trevor commented, walking over to the window that faced the street. He drew back the curtain and gazed out.
“Right,” Travis deadpanned, nodding his head. “Can’t miss a meal created by Trevor the Magnificent.”
Trevor dropped the curtain as he looked over his shoulder at Travis. “Well, at least you’ve finally got my name right.”
Venus glanced from one brother to the other. “Are they always like this?” she asked Kate.
Kate set down the large covered dish that contained the main course, something that Trevor had spent several hours putting together. She nodded. “Pretty much so. Although,” she added, recalling the early days of her arrival in this house, “there was a time when they were very introverted. I could hardly get them to talk. Turned out they were testing me. This is much better,” she assured Venus.
Helping himself to a bottle of stout, Bryan sighed and shook his head. “If you say so, Kate.”
“Men,” Kate whispered fondly to Venus. “What do they know?” And then she raised her head, listening. “Trevor—” Kate looked over at her co-chef “—be a dear and bring out the mashed potatoes from the kitchen. I hear someone pulling up in the driveway.”
Cocking her head, Venus strained to hear the sound of a running engine, or at least one rumbling into silence as it was turned off. She heard nothing. Kate, she thought, had phenomenal hearing.
“What if it’s not them?” she asked.
“Then we’ll invite whoever it is,” Kate replied cheerfully.
Venus knew Kate was serious. She also realized that she liked the woman’s answer because it spoke of a hospitality that was without bounds. She had a feeling people like Kate were scarce in the world she couldn’t remember and had less and less of a desire to reclaim.
Losing her memory, she decided, might turn out to be the luckiest thing that had ever happened to her.
Chapter Ten
“Well, looks like two down and three to go,” Kate commented as she turned the faucet up to fill the sink with sudsy, warm water.
“There’s more food?” Bryan asked, looking around the kitchen. He groaned as he held the sides of his stomach. “I’m not sure if I can do justice to any more—”
“No, not food, Bryan.” She laughed. “Kids.” Reaching for a towel, Kate wiped off her hands. The dishes needed to soak for a while. “I was talking about our children pairing off.”
Bryan’s dark eyebrows drew together in a thoughtful squiggle. “Two? What two?”
She began with what he knew. “There’s Mike and Miranda.”
Bryan nodded. “Right.”
And then she smiled as she added, “And Trevor and Venus.”
“Hold it right there. There’s nothing going on between Trevor and Venus,” he insisted. “Besides, the woman doesn’t even know who she is.”
“Small matter,” Kate said, brushing off his statement. Affection came into her eyes as she looked at her husband. “And if you think there’s nothing going on between them, you’re just as sweetly naive—and blind—as the first day I came to work for you.”
He bristled at the label. His was a sharp legal mind trained to think on multiple levels. There was nothing naive or blind about it—or him. “Trevor’s just helping the girl out, Kate, that’s all.”
Kate sank all four glasses into the bubbles. They went down without a trace.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t. I also don’t think ‘that’s all.’” She emphasized the phrase that he’d used. “Look at the way Trevor watches her when he thinks no one’s noticing.”
He was beginning to think that women were preprogrammed to see romance everywhere. “Oh? And just how is he looking at her?”
Kate couldn’t resist patting his face. “The same way you used to look at me.” Turning away, she added silverware to the water.
Amused, Bryan asked, “And how did I look at you?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering. There was nothing like the thrill of discovering that romance had entered your life. “Like I was the light of your life.”
Bryan came up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist and nuzzling her neck. “You still are, Kate.”
“Oh, God, get a room, you two,” Kelsey cried, pretending to avert her eyes as she came in with an empty serving dish.
“We did,” her father told her, leaving his arms around his wife for a moment longer. “As a matter of fact, we got a whole house. Speaking of rooms, why don’t you go to yours?”
“I just came in to see if Mom needed any help,” Kelsey replied, innocence personified.
“She asks once she knows that everything was taken care of,” Bryan said in a deliberate narrative voiceover.
Kelsey spread her hands wide. “Hey, I can’t help it if I have great timing.” She glanced at the Roman numerals on the kitchen clock that hung over the table. “I’m going to go back to the school library. I’ve got this nasty paper due next week and I haven’t even gotten started yet.”
A small laugh escaped Bryan’s lips. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
Taking her purse, which had been left slung over the back of one of the chairs, she slipped it on her shoulder. “Don’t wait up,” she told them.
Kate frowned slightly, her mind already into overdrive. “Be careful, Kelsey.”
One hand on the doorknob, Kelsey paused to sigh dramatically. “Mom, this is Bedford. Nothing ever happens in Bedford.”
“There’s always a first time,” Kate pointed out. And then she glanced toward the living room. “By the way, is Trevor still here?”
“Nope.” Kelsey grinned as if she was the gatekeeper of a provocative secret. “And neither is Venus.”
Kate exchanged looks with her husband. They both looked at Kelsey for enlightenment. “Oh?”
“Trevor mentioned that he had gotten an aquarium and Venus said she wanted to see it. She thinks she remembers liking fish, but she couldn’t be sure,” Kelsey said over her shoulder as she went out the back door.
“Aquarium,” Bryan repeated, slowly examining the word. “Is that anything like ‘come see my etchings?’”
Kate only smiled, feeling very validated for her earlier as
sessment. “It could be.”
Venus circled the large tank twice. Nothing. Funny how, when he’d mentioned the aquarium, something had eddied through her, a quick flash of something she couldn’t get hold of. As usual. But now, when she was right here looking at the tank, there was nothing. No flashes, no odd feeling of déjà vu, nothing.
“When would you have time for them?” Venus asked, examining the huge tank that took up a good portion of the living room.
As long as it wasn’t up to him to clean the tank—and it wasn’t—the fish had no real claim to his schedule. “They’re not like dogs, Venus. I don’t have to take them out for a walk twice a day. Besides,” he reminded her, “it’s just temporary. My friend’s gone to Europe for three months, not three years. It’s his tank. He just needed someone to take care of his fish until he got back.”
She moved around the perimeter one last time, silently waiting for that the sliver of premonition she’d experienced when Trevor had first mentioned the aquarium.
“So he just dismantled the whole thing and brought it and the fish all here?”
It made more sense than she knew, he thought, given his penchant to get wrapped up in projects. “Easier than leaving them at his place—”
“Where you’d forget to feed them for a week,” she guessed.
Trevor didn’t even bother to deny it. Admittedly, he wasn’t usually very good with details that didn’t, on some level, somehow involve cooking.
“Give or take a few days,” he allowed.
Venus hardly heard his answer. Unable to conjure up any familiar feelings, she was still mesmerized by what she saw. His absent friend had collected a great many exotic fish that seemed to get along.
“Look at them,” she said softly. “Look at the way the light from the ceiling catches them.” She bent over to get a little closer. “They are positively beautiful.”
He watched her. Not the tank or the fish, but her. She was far more beautiful than the diverse squadron of fish milling around the tank. He had a feeling that she probably didn’t think she was beautiful, but she was. Very. “If you say so,” he murmured.
Something in his voice made her raise her eyes from the tank. “You don’t think all those multiple colors are beautiful?”
He didn’t answer her directly. “I think the word beautiful should be used sparingly, applied as an adjective to something that really moves the soul.”
Trevor was setting lofty bars, Venus thought. “Such as?”
“Such as a beautiful sunrise.” And then, he added even more softly, “Or a beautiful woman.”
The room around them seemed to grow very, very still. She could hear her own blood pumping through her veins. “I see.”
“No,” he corrected. “I see.” Because he was looking directly at her, he added silently. “At the moment, you can’t see. You can only remember.”
He was hardly a measurable inch away from her now. Venus felt her breath get caught in her throat. Part of her was waiting for him to make another move, to say something that would take the burden of choice out of her hands.
But a part of her wanted to move forward. To make things happen rather than to simply mark time until they did. To grab hold of life before it was too late.
She had no idea where this sense of urgency came from. Whether it was because she was afraid that she would suddenly remember something that would separate her from this dear man. Or whether she was afraid that time was running out because, subconsciously, she was reacting to some kind of terminal situation. Or perhaps, in her other life, she’d been the type to let life happen to her. She didn’t want to be a pawn, she wanted to be a player.
Turning from the tank, Venus slipped into the small space that was created between the tank and Trevor, neatly confining her body in the less-than-ample pocket.
Mystified, Trevor could only look at her. “What are you doing?”
Her smile radiated from her eyes and filtered down to the curve of her mouth. She tilted her head back as she rose up on her toes.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
He could feel her breath on his face as she spoke, could feel his gut tightening in response. “It looks like you’re going to kiss me.”
Amusement highlighted her features. “Very perceptive.”
He was tempted, sorely tempted, but she didn’t know if she was free to make this choice. If there wasn’t someone waiting for her, worrying about her. “You sure you want to do this?”
The question wafted along her skin. Causing her to shiver. Not from the cold but from anticipation.
“Very sure,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and sealing her body to his a moment before she did the same with her lips against his.
For a little thing she packed one hell of a punch, he caught himself thinking.
Damn but she made it tough to be honorable. Tough to do the right thing—especially when the only thing he wanted to do was kiss her until they were both senseless—and then make love with her.
The moment her lips touched his, he felt a series of explosions going off inside him, each one more powerful than the one before. Each one shaking him down to the core with progressively more impact. So much so that he thought he’d just splinter apart.
What was going on here?
Trevor couldn’t remember ever feeling this alive and yet this needy, all at the same time. But if he crossed this line, if he gave in to the urges battering his body and made love with her, he knew there would be consequences to pay.
For him if not for her.
He’d never been like a lot of his peers, the ones who were satisfied with random, spontaneous couplings, done merely to savor the sensations and nothing more.
This most intimate of acts had a great deal of meaning for him.
It had never been about racking up mindless conquests, or about having sex just to feel that intoxicating rush. For him the rush came from having feelings for the woman he was making love with.
And never had he felt it as much as he did right at this moment.
But Trevor still wasn’t able to shake the specter that hovered over him like an oppressive blanket. Couldn’t shake the fear that he was about to do this, about to make love, with a married woman.
With what amounted to almost superhuman effort, Trevor struggled to separate himself from Venus. He held her at arm’s length even though all he wanted to do was lose himself in her, in the scent of her, the promise of her.
He felt as if he were being ripped apart. “Venus, are you sure?”
Why was he doing this? Why was he trying to question her at a time like this?
From out of nowhere came the feeling that most men would have already had her clothes ripped off by now. Which made Trevor exceptionally kind, putting her needs before his own.
“I’m sure. I’ll sign an affidavit to that effect if you want,” she promised, her breath so short she was all but gasping.
She probably thought he was an idiot, Trevor thought. But he had more than his share of reasons—despite the fact that he also had a driving need to make love with her.
“I just don’t want you to regret this in the morning.”
“The only thing I’m going to regret in the morning is if I don’t do this with you,” she told him. A small sigh escaped her lips. “Trevor, I am actively throwing myself at you. The least you can do is have the decency to catch me.”
“It’s not the least,” Trevor murmured against her mouth.
The next second, every single honorable intention he’d ever harbored left his body, swept away by a wave of desire the magnitude of which he’d never encountered before.
He wanted her so badly, he couldn’t breathe.
On some distant plane, it occurred to him that this sensation rushing through him had all the ingredients of madness—or a heart attack. But hell, if he was going to go, he certainly couldn’t think of a better way.
Caressing her curves, possessing her body from his very fi
rst touch, Trevor drew her away from the tank and the potential disaster. He wanted to be able to concentrate exclusively on her and not any crack that might occur to the tank.
The moment they were clear, he began peeling away her clothing, peeling away all the obstacles that stood between him and the flesh he was eager to touch, eager to savor. To make his own.
Her blouse slid off her shoulders, and then her arms, coaxed down by his eager, hot hands. His fingers tangled in her bra straps and it was all he could do not to rip them away. It wasn’t easy, curbing his desire. Unsnapping the clasp on the bra took longer, but even that lent itself to building anticipation. It throbbed through his veins, growing more insistent.
The feel of her creamy skin against his palms was practically more than he could stand. He almost took her then and there before he managed, at the last moment, to rein himself in.
But romancing Venus, playing up her fantasies, was important. As important to him as he sensed it was to her. So he went as slowly as he was able, working her skirt and panties down along her hips. Doing it all with paced, deliberate movements.
His heart raced. As he pulled her naked, heated body to him, it took him a moment to realize his clothes had joined hers on the floor, wantonly scattered here and there. Whether by her design or his, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that the clothes were gone and his body was on fire. The only thing that could put it out was the press of her body against his.
Or so he thought.
All that did was increase the urgency that roared like thunder through his veins. He wanted her that much more.
There was no turning back. Not for him. He prayed not for her because he didn’t know what he would do if she suddenly asked him to stop.
Sliding his hands up and down her body, he found himself memorizing every dip, every curve, every perfect contour, all while kissing her over and over again. And very swiftly, they were both spent. And both ready to explode.
[Kate's Boys 02] - The Bride With No Name Page 10