Love to Believe: Fireflies ~ Book 2

by Lisa Ricard Claro

  “You look gorgeous,” he said.

  “That’s not what you’re thinking.”

  Sean grinned. “You’re right. I’m thinking about doing this task in reverse later on.”

  “The zipper gets stuck sometimes.”

  “A challenge.” He slid his hands over her belly and upward in a sensual stroke, watching her reaction in the mirror.

  Rebecca’s breath caught. She twisted to face him. “We don’t have time for shenanigans, Chocolate Man.”

  Sean sighed and released her. “You’re right. Wedding now, shenanigans later.”

  Rebecca moved past him to don her earrings and slip on her heels. She grabbed her purse and glanced up to find him watching her, his smile faded and replaced with an expression she couldn’t read.

  Another day, in another moment, she might have flipped off a smart-ass remark. But something in his demeanor stayed her voice. It wasn’t what he gave away that gathered foreboding in her chest, but rather what he held back. It hovered just beyond her reach, hiding behind his eyes.

  ***

  Sean watched her move about the room, her lithe body and long limbs all fluid energy and graceful motion. She’d slid into her dress, a classic-looking tailored thing as green as her eyes, and brought the satiny fabric to life simply by wearing it. He had told her the truth about looking forward to unzipping it to get her out of it later, but he couldn’t deny his enjoyment at watching her wear it now.

  She wore little makeup. A few swipes of the mascara brush, a touch of some silky powder that made her sun-kissed skin even more translucent, and a dab of gloss or something like it over her lips. He really liked her lips. And that red hair, all those wild curls going this way and that like out-of-control Slinkys. Sexy as hell, and somehow endearing at the same time. And the woman had no clue, no clue at all what she did to a man.

  To him, he admitted. What she did to him.

  He watched her slip on her heels, trailed his eyes up her well-molded legs, over her slender torso and back to the face he never tired of looking at. She had twisted her mane into a bun…no, what did women call it?…a chignon, and secured it with some clippy thing with sparkly do-dads on it. Whatever. She had done it in about thirty seconds, and he’d bet money she looked better than any of the women who had spent hours at the hotel’s salon.

  She grabbed her purse and looked his way, and she took his breath away.

  “You look beautiful.”

  She stared at him with those wide emerald eyes, probing, he knew, her mind whirling at a million miles an hour. Her intelligence, determination, and fierce independence had sucked him in. It should be no surprise that he loved her.

  His chest tightened.

  What would she think if she knew? That he was just like every other man who wanted more than she was prepared to give? That he was a fool who couldn’t follow his own rules of engagement?

  It didn’t matter. She deserved a better man than he would ever be.

  He had blood on his hands from those days when he belonged to Lindsay, blood that wouldn’t come clean no matter how much he denied himself personally and professionally, no matter how much time he devoted to pro bono cases or how many strangers he helped by the side of the road. He couldn’t undo the past.

  As always, when the dark thoughts washed over him, he thought of his brother Jack, who had died in a senseless accident. Jack, who had loved Maddie so well, robbed of the chance to share a life with her, to be a husband and a father, and all because the drunk driver who killed him had an attorney who cared more about winning than seeing justice met.

  An attorney just like Sean used to be.

  Rebecca regarded him with a tentative smile. “You okay? I feel like you’re a million miles away.”

  “No. I’m right here with you,” he said, and held out his hand.

  Chapter 10

  The weather turned hellish overnight, with every forecast warning of heavy wind and rain, along with freezing rain in Atlanta and all counties to the north, which encompassed Bright Hills and across the Georgia line into North Carolina. Everything north of Macon was under a severe weather watch.

  The charcoal sky and pounding rain made for a subdued ride home. Sean kept both hands on the wheel, slowing when the dense rain obscured his vision. Rebecca sat with her bare feet resting on the dash—her toenails were painted a festive red with little white flowers on them, and Sean wondered why he was just noticing that now—looking relaxed and thoughtful as she stared out the passenger window.

  She kept quiet to allow him to focus on the road, he supposed, though the steady purr of the engine, rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers, and drumming rain threatened to render him unconscious.

  They had both slept in, Rebecca longer than Sean, and gotten a late start, not setting off for Bright Hills until almost noon. They had stayed up into the wee hours after the wedding, first drinking and talking with Alanza, Phil, and Yvonne, then back in their suite where the two of them continued a private party.

  For Sean, going to sleep meant waking up and heading home, and heading home meant their arrangement would settle back into place with sporadic meetings designed for sex but little else of substance and—hell, the situation was fucking perfect. Why be unhappy about it? What a moron!

  Rebecca turned her head his way. “That was a big sigh.”

  “Trying not to fall asleep at the wheel. You want to talk to me, keep me awake? Or play music—something loud.”

  She grabbed his iPod, fiddled with it, and, a moment later, the interior of the car rocked with Aerosmith. Rebecca drew a breath and started singing in her off-pitch voice with Steven Tyler, and at the top of her lungs.

  Sean hollered over Rebecca’s grand volume, “That ought to do it.”

  She flashed him a happy grin and kept on singing, moving her cute toes in time with the music, and drumming on her thighs in rhythm with Joey Kramer. Sean drank in the sight of her before forcing his focus back on the road.

  The weather and traffic slowed them down, and a trip that should have taken no more than seven hours expanded to ten. The farther north they traveled the worse the weather became as freezing rain began to accumulate. They debated finding a hotel for the night, but at that point home lay less than an hour away, so they opted to keep driving. Neither of them had a desire to be stranded somewhere, given the forecast. The temperatures promised to plummet, and the newscasters warned that the nasty conditions would only get worse over the next twenty-four hours.

  Bright Hills loomed like a ghost town. A power outage blackened the streets. The only light emanated from the car’s headlights, which illuminated scant little through the pounding mix of rain and sleet. Sean slowed the car to a crawl. By the time he turned the Mustang onto Magnolia Street the roads, already slick with ice, had begun to hard freeze. He resisted the urge to kiss the ground after he pulled into the driveway behind Rebecca’s Civic.

  “Wow. This is like a Stephen King novel or something,” Rebecca said, her voice quiet. Sleet and rain drummed on the soft-top. She looked around. “Power’s out everywhere.”

  They sat in the car for a few moments listening to the pounding rain and ice before Sean patted her leg. “Stay here. I’ll go in and make sure everything’s okay before you come in.”

  “What, you think Jeffrey Dahmer is hiding in my bedroom closet?”

  “Don’t be silly. Jeffrey Dahmer is dead. Merton Findelstein, however, is alive and well, and you don’t need to go in and find him lying in wait with his chainsaw and pickaxe.”

  “Who’s Merton Findelstein?”

  “Serial killer in hiding, right here in the North Georgia mountains. Haven’t you heard about him? It’s been all over the news.”

  “You better be kidding.”

  Sean peered out the window. No point waiting. The wet stuff wasn’t letting up. “All right, here goes. If I’m not back out in five minutes call 911 and tell them Merton Findelstein got me.”

  Rebecca snorted out a laugh and gave him
a shove. “You’re ridiculous. We’re going in together.”

  “You want to protect me from Merton?”

  “No. I just don’t want to be left out here all by myself. In every scary story the guy runs off to make sure everything is safe and when he comes back the girl is missing. I refuse to go missing, so I’m coming with you.” Her adorable toes disappeared into a pair of leather mules that had seen better days, but which looked like they could withstand a hurricane without falling apart. Rebecca threw Sean a smile, grabbed the door handle, and said, “Last one in is a rotten egg.”

  “That’s not fair. One of us has to wait to—” He sighed, because she already stood on the porch fumbling in her purse for the house key. He waited until the front door swung open and then cut the engine and switched the lights off, thought about bringing in Rebecca’s suitcase and decided to wait on that. They had other things to worry about first, like heat and food.

  “The power has been out a while,” Rebecca said, assessing the food in the freezer with the light from her cell phone flashlight app. “Things are beginning to melt.”

  Sean punched a few buttons on his cell phone and it lit up as well. He set it on the counter to illuminate the space. “Hand me the frozen stuff. I’ll put it on the patio. It’s well below freezing outside so you won’t lose anything.”

  “Smart,” Rebecca said. “I wouldn’t have thought of that. Let me grab my cooler so the stuff won’t be sitting out in the open.”

  Twenty minutes later, the freezer lay empty and the packed cooler sat on the covered patio. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Rebecca collected blankets and pillows and arranged them in front of the hearth while Sean poured them some wine. He met her in front of the fireplace where she stood looking, he thought, rather fidgety.

  She accepted the wineglass he handed her and stared into the silky pinot noir.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She glanced up to meet his gaze, bit her lip, and nodded.

  “If you don’t want me to stay, just say so. I should probably go home anyway, make sure the house is okay.”

  “No. No, please.” She set her wineglass on the mantle and touched his arm. “Please. I’d really like you to stay.”

  Sean held his gaze on hers. “So what’s going on?”

  Rebecca looked away and held her hands to the heat. “I did something I shouldn’t have.” She stared at the fire, then straightened her shoulders and faced him. “I need to tell you about it.”

  Sean’s chest tightened while his imagination rushed to fill in the blanks. What could she possibly have done, and why the hell hadn’t she told him during their ten hour car ride? Why wait until now?

  “God, I don’t know how to say this.” Rebecca pushed her hair from her face and took a deep breath. Red splotches bloomed on her face and throat. “Okay. So, that private conversation you had with Lindsay on Saturday wasn’t…um…so private. I was in the room. With Andrea. We were behind the lectern. We should have let you know we were there but, well, we didn’t. You had an expectation of privacy and I—I breached that. I’m sorry.”

  Sean released a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding, relieved, he realized with some surprise, that her big sin amounted to nothing more than eavesdropping.

  “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “What I did was wrong and…well, dishonest in a way. If this is a deal breaker for you, if you feel you can’t trust me, I totally understand.”

  She thought he’d stop seeing her over something as inconsequential as this? The worry in the depths of her troubled eyes said yes.

  Sean regarded her as the silence stretched. He drew pleasure from looking at her face surrounded by the mass of curls, coppery-gold and vibrant in the firelight—honest to God, he loved the way those springy spirals danced, it fascinated him—while her green cat eyes watched him with solemn intent and missed nothing. He dropped his perusal to the little dent in her chin, and then a bit higher to those soft lips, the lower just a tad fuller than its partner. She never failed to surprise him, always showing him something new, like now, stepping forward to tell the truth about something he would never have known without her confession. He knew of no other woman who would shed so negative a light on herself with such deliberation just because she thought it was the right thing to do. No wonder he loved her.

  The screws in his chest tightened another turn. There it was again, that word, that reality.

  “Geez, Sean, say something, will you? What are you thinking?”

  He cocked his head and regarded her through narrowed eyes, considering. “The room is still cold, so I’m thinking I should wait until we’re under the blankets before I rip you out of those jeans.”

  Rebecca’s hands dropped to her sides and her lips parted in surprise. “What?”

  Sean set his wineglass on the mantle next to hers, caught her by the hips and drew her to him, pleased by the hitch in her breath and the darkening of her eyes. “You didn’t have to tell me, but you did, and your honesty means more to me than your indiscretion.” He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and then brushed her lips with his. He unbuttoned her jeans and tugged the little zipper down, slid his hands inside and over her ass, and felt her smile against his lips when his surprise registered.

  “Hey, you’re naked under there.” Delighted, he leaned back to look into those glittering green eyes. “You really do go commando sometimes. Hot damn, Xena.”

  “You’ll never know when, Chocolate Man. You’ll just have to—”

  “Go exploring,” he said, and proceeded to do just that.

  At some point after midnight, the restored power jolted them from darkness to light. The refrigerator rumbled to life and the furnace kicked on, blasting heat through the vents.

  “Geez, it’s getting hot now.” Rebecca sat up and lifted her hair from her shoulders, using her fingers to part it down the middle in the back and bring it forward over both shoulders.

  Sean yawned and stretched. “You look like the cartoon mermaid.”

  Rebecca trailed her fingers over his hard abs. He caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm, then sat up and kissed her neck. She tasted sweet and salty, and he wondered how she managed to be both at the same time. He kissed and licked his way along her spine and across her shoulders until she shivered and arched her back like a cat.

  “Let’s move to the bedroom,” she said, her eyes dark and sultry. “It’s cooler in there.”

  “Not for long.” He stood and she accepted his hand up, thanking him with a quick kiss before wrapping up in one of the lighter blankets for the walk down the hall. Sean detoured to the kitchen for a couple bottles of water and returned to the living room where he pushed through the mass of blankets to find his jeans, turned the pockets inside out, muttered a quiet, “damn,” and safety-checked the waning fire before joining Rebecca in the bedroom where she waited for him with the covers folded back.

  He twisted the top off one of the waters and handed it to her before opening his own.

  “Thank you.” She drained half the bottle. “I was dehydrated and didn’t know it.”

  “Me, too.” He guzzled his water, finishing it off.

  “What?” Rebecca asked, when he hesitated before joining her on the bed.

  Sean settled in next to her, his expression rueful. “We’re out of condoms, Xena.”

  Her brows raised. “Are you kidding? How did that happen?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Smart ass. You know what I mean.” She arched over him to check the drawer in the nightstand. “Damn.” She blew out a frustrated breath and rested her arms on his chest, her gaze steady on his. “What now, Counselor?”

  Sean stroked her back and shrugged. “Up to you. I don’t mind riding bareback if you don’t.”

  “I’m on the pill and I never miss.”

  “That’s not a concern.”

  “Ninety-nine point nine percent effective says you’re right.” She grinned and rose up to straddle him, but he shifted th
eir positions and flipped her to her back, making her gasp with surprise.

  He pinned her and nuzzled her neck, scraping her tender skin with his day’s growth of beard in a way that tickled, and made her laugh and squeal in protest. He drew back to enjoy the deliberate merriment he had caused, his heart filled to overflowing at the sight of her laughing up at him with her eyes sparkling, hair spread around her in a blanket of coppery red. They stared at each other until the laughter and smiles faded. Sean touched the indent in her chin before taking her face in his hands, and his eyes remained focused on hers.

  Too strong. It was too strong, what he felt, what he had to say, what he saw reflected in the depths of her eyes.

  “Sean.” It was a whisper. “I—I lo—”

  He stopped her words with his mouth, kissed her until her eyelashes fluttered closed and her fingers curled into the skin of his back.

  I love you, too.

  The words lodged in his brain. Tomorrow. He’d tell her tomorrow, and they could talk all day if she wanted. Tonight he’d show her. He smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks and looked at her face, waited for her eyes to open and, when they did, his only thought was, She knows.

  When he touched his mouth to hers again it was in a different way than ever before, hesitant and a bit unsure, testing, tasting, as if this was somehow the first time. They shared a knowing smile and then sank into each other with a desperate joy, a sensation of exploration and new discovery. Sean gave wholly of himself, knew he received Rebecca in the same way, saw that she understood it too when their gazes met after their passion was spent. She whispered his name and her heart shone in her eyes.

  For the first time in years Sean felt clean again.

  ***

  “I’m exhausted.” Rebecca fingered the dark hair jetting over Sean’s ears, “but not sleepy yet. Does that make sense?”

  They lay facing each other. Sean traced the curve of her body from ribs to hips to thighs and then back again in a continuing loop, felt his eyes becoming weightier the longer she toyed with his hair. He hadn’t been this content in a long time. Maybe never.