by Maggie Cox
‘I wish you knew how much I regretted that.’ Shaking his head, he stared back at the fire. He picked up the heavy poker and prodded the charred logs, watching the flames hiss and brighten in the grate. ‘I can only promise you I wouldn’t ever let that happen again.’ Replacing the poker in its brass stand, he turned back to Tara. ‘I want to be a good husband to you, Tara…and a good father to our children.’
Her throat tightened. ‘It’s too soon to talk about that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s hard enough coping with the idea of us getting back together again, never mind thinking about having children.’
‘Are you scared?’ he asked gently.
‘Of what?’ But Tara’s heartbeat had accelerated wildly at the idea of being pregnant with Mac’s child again. Sudden longing made her dizzy.
‘Of being pregnant.’
What had happened to their first-born son remained unspoken between them, like an indelible hurt that would never go away but would always exist to haunt them with what could have been.
Restless and on edge, Tara got to her feet. ‘What do you think?’
‘This time I’d be there for you. All the way.’ Slowly Mac approached her, a tender smile etched seductively on his beautiful face, his blue eyes dark. ‘We’ll get you the best doctors, the best care. You won’t lack for anything.’
She was aching for him to hold her but she wouldn’t make the first move. The fact that he’d left her once already loomed large in her mind and rejection was like a hundred tiny scores in her heart. Somehow, some way, Tara needed him to prove he meant what he said about wanting them to try again; that it wasn’t just some whim of his fuelled by guilt about the baby they’d lost. And so far he hadn’t mentioned anything about love.
‘I couldn’t move back to London. You know that?’ Expelling a softly anxious breath, she gazed up at him with wide green eyes.
His smile remained. He reached out and fingered a strand of her hair. Heat swirled in her stomach.
‘I’m not averse to moving to where you live now if that’s what you want. When I do need to go into the office I can commute. We could look for a house, somewhere with a decent-sized garden so the children have space to run around.’
Oh, Mac… His words fell like soft rain on her dry soul. She swayed a little towards him, her lip quivering as she tried with all her might not to give way to tears.
‘Will you let me hold you?’ he asked, his voice low. ‘Just hold you?’
Tara moved into his arms without a word. Urging her deep into his chest, Mac cupped the back of her head with one hand and circled her waist with the other. She smelled of flowers and sunshine and rain, all the things that nature manifested so freely and magically, and Mac remembered the slightly overpowering, heady scent that Amelie had favoured and knew in an instant the one that beguiled him more. Like the woman he held in his arms. Free of artifice, Tara had always had the power to beguile him from the very first moment he’d set eyes on her, sitting opposite him on a crowded London tube train, supposedly engrossed in a dance magazine. Only she wasn’t. Not really—because she’d been stealing furtive little glances at him all the way from Oxford Circus to Victoria. When he’d followed her out onto the platform and waylaid her with ‘What’s your favourite food?’ she’d automatically come back at him with ‘Italian. Why?’ and he’d proceeded to persuade her to have dinner with him that night at the best Italian restaurant he knew in London. When she’d accepted, he’d given her his business card just so she could check he was who he said he was, then walked back down the platform with such a feeling of elation in his heart because he knew without doubt that she’d be there at the restaurant at the allotted time. The electricity between them had been all but humming.
But right now Mac had no hope of proceeding cautiously as he’d so often admonished himself since seeing her again, not when his body had other more urgent ideas. Pressing his lips against her hair, he moved his hands up and down her back, loving the perfect fit she made in his arms, relishing the sexy, firm contours of her body, wishing he could just strip her of every stitch and take her here now on the Arran rug in front of the fire…
He heard her little heartfelt sigh then felt her tremble. Helpless to act in any other way, Mac tilted her chin up towards him to stare hungrily into her depthless green eyes with their pretty dark-blonde lashes.
‘I never stopped wanting you,’ he said huskily and Tara had the evidence to prove it pressing into her pelvis.
‘Sex would only cloud the issue.’ She shivered again but made no attempt to move out of his embrace. ‘Nothing’s been decided yet. I still—I still need time.’
‘But I’m not suggesting we have sex,’ Mac replied intriguingly and a spark of something like fire flashed in his eyes. ‘I’m suggesting we make love. You’ll agree there’s a difference?’ As he had done out in the meadow earlier on in the day, he slid his hand possessively onto her breast shielded by her soft wool sweater and cupped it. As he teased her nipple, she felt it bead beneath his touch into an exquisitely tight, aching nub. Tara’s womb responded with a deep contraction. Hot little ripples of need pulsed through her body. The sensual pull of his fascinating mouth seemed to lure her lips closer. With a hungry little groan she put her hand up to his face and brought that same sexy mouth down to hers. The touch of it scalded her and she parted her lips almost instantly, letting the sensual heat of his tongue invade her. The taste of him brought an avalanche of passionate memories and she willingly gave herself up to the eroticism of them. No other man tasted like Mac. Not that she’d had vast experience, or any other experience for that matter—Mac had been her one and only lover—but she couldn’t imagine any other man setting her alight so completely. Sex on legs, she had mused in fright when her gaze had collided with his that first time on the tube—and her instincts had all been right.
Behind her back his hand slid down further to caress her shapely bottom. Naked, that particular part of her anatomy felt like velvet, he remembered. Deepening the kiss, he urged her hips flush against him, parting her thighs with his knee, his sex hardening to the point of pain.
‘Did you make love to Amelie or was it just sex?’
The question was like being stripped naked and dunked into a pool of freezing ice. His heart pounding, Mac let Tara go then stepped back, his face a barely controlled mask of raw fury.
‘You really know how to kill a mood, don’t you? You do that to all the men in your life or is that particular torture reserved purely for me?’
Pained, Tara tunnelled her fingers through her hair and looked at him aghast. ‘There haven’t been any other men in my life since you—’ Choked, she broke off, trying desperately to reassemble her tumbled defences. The question about his ex-girlfriend had come out of nowhere, taking her by surprise—but she must have wanted to ask it or it wouldn’t have been in her consciousness. Now she couldn’t help wondering. What had this Amelie been like? Had she been shattered when things hadn’t worked out with Mac? The way Tara had been shattered when he’d left?
Even though he was furious with her, Mac felt gratified by her answer. He didn’t quite know how he would have coped with the idea that she’d slept with other men—even though she had every right under the circumstances.
‘She lived with me for six months. We were intimate sporadically at best, at worst—hardly at all. Amelie was a very fastidious woman—she didn’t exactly like to get herself in a sweat, if you know what I mean?’
Tara did…only too clearly. His base reference made her hot all over and she cursed herself for breaking the mood. What had she been thinking of?
‘I’m sorry… I had to ask.’
‘Sorry that my love life wasn’t all it could have been or sorry that she didn’t enjoy it?’
Her cheeks flamed red. Suddenly she felt as if a million flashing cameras were trained on her. She could barely bring herself to meet his glance.
‘You’re angry.’
‘Yeah, I
’m angry. Go the top of the class!’ His response was like whiplash. ‘You have every right to feel aggrieved by what I did to you, Tara, but you don’t have to try and emasculate me to make a point. The fire’s burning low. I’ll wait until it’s nearly out then I’m going to turn in. In the meantime, I think I need something a little stronger than this.’ Striding away from her, he took his untouched drink out into the kitchen, leaving Tara standing there wishing she could roll back time to the moment before she had so thoughtlessly blurted out her crass question about his ex.
She wanted him. The need was a physical ache that had her twisting and writhing in the big double bed where she slept. Powerful erotic dreams of Mac had tormented her for hours, making her more than just a little hot and bothered. Pushing back the bunched-up patchwork quilt, she swung her long legs to the floor, dragging her hands feverishly through her hair as she stared at the grey, misty dawn that was seeping through her half-drawn curtains. Reaching for her silky aqua-marine robe, she pulled it on then padded barefoot into the corridor. Somewhere a clock ticked and at the end of the hallway glowed a soft red light in front of a portrait of Jesus Christ—the famous ‘Sacred Heart’ that Beth had once told her shone in practically every home in Ireland.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Tara tried to remember which room was Mac’s. There were four doors down the corridor including her own, two on the left and two on the right. Gathering her courage in both hands, she peeked into three of them, her heart in her mouth when Mac was not to be found anywhere.
Had he been so mad at her that he’d decided to fly back to the UK without her? He wouldn’t do that…would he? Momentarily paralysed by fear and self-doubt, she gave herself a little shake then walked slowly into the living room. She came to an immediate standstill when she saw his long, muscular physique draped awkwardly along the couch. He’d obviously fetched a counterpane from his room and some time in the night it had covered him, but now it lay in a colourful heap on the floor in front of him. Tara shivered violently and not just from the chill in the room. Soft-footed, she moved towards him.
He was still wearing his sweater and jeans. Gazing down at his handsome sleeping face, his light hair swept back from his forehead, she studied the faint little ridges on his brow and the new lines beside his eyes. It made her hurt inside to think of him working so hard and so long without a break and she wished—not for the first time—that he wouldn’t drive himself so hard. The man needed to cut himself a little slack. He had a successful, thriving business—he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. Least of all her… All she had ever been of his hard work and ambition was intolerant. Funny how she could see that so clearly now, as if someone had switched on a light bulb in her brain. Hands shaking a little, she clutched at the silky material of her robe as if to prevent herself from reaching out to touch him. But oh, how she wanted to touch him. The need was consuming her. She might be cold on the outside but inside she was burning up.
Finally, her pulse racing wildly, she reached out and laid her hand on his chest. Mac opened his eyes. Without a word his fingers curled around the fine bones of her wrist and tugged her towards him. Losing her balance, Tara tumbled on top of him, her breath shooting out of her in a shocked little whoosh. Then he was kissing her, making love to her with his mouth while his hands roamed her body, stroking, pressing, caressing, until she was too weak to fight the matching need that throbbed through her and surrendered instead to the powerful conflagration that was consuming them both. She drew back momentarily to look at him, her hair softly dishevelled, shimmering green eyes glazed with desire, and when he protested Tara placed her finger across his lips as if silently begging him not to speak, just to feel. Dropping his head back onto the tasselled cushion behind him, Mac held his breath as her hands moved down to his pelvis, stroked across the hard, aching ridge behind his fly, then slowly eased down his zipper. He groaned and would have reached for her again but she was working his jeans down to his knees and then doing the same with his black silk boxers. Heat slammed into Mac like a force of nature. His mouth went dry as she straddled him with her long, pale thighs and slowly but deftly took him inside herself. Deeper and deeper she took him, and as she began to rock herself gently back and forth Mac seriously thought her scorching heat would set him on fire. Then she bent towards him and kissed him and Mac reached for her, his hands stroking across the rigid, velvet tips of her breasts through her thin nightshirt, squeezing and cupping. When she sat back to give him greater access, he covered them hungrily with his mouth so that she cried out, releasing his name in soft, breathy little gasps that had all the nerve endings on the surface of his hot, awakened skin exploding with pleasure.
Memories Tara had held in her heart came flooding back. Arousing memories. There wasn’t a surface in their apartment that they hadn’t made love on at one time or another. They’d always been so hungry for one another—as if they could never get enough. Bringing her concentration firmly back to the present, Tara sighed, fierce pleasure shuddering through her like an electrical current on high voltage—she could practically hear it hum. With every rocking movement of her pelvis, Mac thrust into her more deeply, until finally the intensity of the pleasure became just too much to bear. Exquisite little sensations of heat erupted inside her, eliciting a ragged cry from her soul as her soft, moist walls clasped and unclasped his hardness in a primal rhythm all of their own, until she felt his own powerful capitulation as he bucked against her. Breathing hard, he held her hips firm beneath his hands—right where he wanted her—before slowly letting her go. When he opened his gorgeous blue eyes, his lips parting in a devastating smile that made Tara feel as if she was drowning in moonlight and passion, she dared to smile back, her heartbeat wild in her chest.
‘I remembered that’s how you like to be woken up.’ Her voice was unconsciously silky.
‘Ten out of ten for effort, Mrs Simmonsen,’ he responded huskily, knowing that calling her that made him believe she belonged to him and him alone—or would do again soon if there was any real justice in the world. To his absolute delight she blushed like a schoolgirl and the blood in Mac’s veins heated and throbbed anew. In an instant he wanted her again. When she would have moved away, he stilled her with his hands, pulling her back down, his eyes darkening as desire stirred once again in his loins.
Tara bit her lip in shock but obediently stayed where she was, allowing Mac to push her robe off her shoulders, then to slowly and deliberately unbutton her nightshirt until she was naked before him.
‘You’re so beautiful, baby.’ His voice was hoarse with admiration as he skimmed his fingers round her perfect, sexy little navel then proceeded to do the same to her breasts. ‘And if you think you’re running away from me any time soon…think again, because I have plans for you.’
‘Plans?’ Her pulse skittered as she stared down into his melting blue gaze.
‘Yes, plans,’ he teased. ‘And they may just keep us both here all morning.’ Removing his sweater, his broad, magnificent shoulders and flat, hard stomach exposed to her hungry gaze, Mac deftly swapped places so that Tara ended up flat on her back beneath him, her blonde hair a bright, silky mass on the red tasselled cushion behind her head. Mac sucked in a deep, satisfying breath. ‘Now I’ve got you right where I want you and, barring an earthquake or other acts of God, that’s where you’re staying until I’ve proven to you we’re making love and not just having sex. Is that understood?’
Sliding her hand round his back, loving the feel of those strong, rippling muscles slick beneath her fingers, Tara managed a briefly tremulous smile. ‘Do I look as if I’m about to run away?’ she asked.
Later, Tara walked down to the beach. She’d left Mac reading a recipe book of all things—one of many lining the bookshelf in the kitchen—surprised and intrigued when he insisted he was going to rustle something up for lunch. Wrapping her arms tightly round the oversize chunky-knit sweater she wore—one of Mac’s that she’d borrowed—she sniffed at the sexy masculine fra
grance emanating from the material and shivered with pleasure. There wasn’t a single place on her body that hadn’t received her husband’s passionate and loving ministrations and she had the aftershocks to prove it. Her limbs had the consistency of semolina and her breasts throbbed from the insatiable demands of his mouth. It had been a long time since her body had been so thoroughly loved. Mac was right: the conflagration they’d ignited between them hadn’t just been about sex—they had really and truly made love. Even if he hadn’t exactly professed to love her.
Turning her head, Tara gazed up at the house on the hill, her heart racing a little when she thought about living with Mac again. Had he meant it when he said they could look for a house in her home town? Would the quaint little market town be enough for her cosmopolitan, city-bred husband? Would he soon tire of the lack of urban culture? More to the point—would he soon tire of her?
And could she risk getting her heart broken all over again if he left? Even if she had announced to Beth that that was an impossibility because it was still broken from the last time.
A seagull squawked loudly overhead, stealing her attention. Shading her eyes, Tara glanced skywards, feeling a deep longing that she couldn’t begin to explain, except maybe to realise it was something about freedom. What was that saying? ‘If you love somebody set them free.’ Mac’s devotion to his work had played a big part in their break-up but had Tara had the right to try and curtail his ambition? His passion? If she’d truly loved him she wouldn’t have tried to restrain his desire to make his business a success. True, there’d been many times when he hadn’t been there for her because he was needed at work, but equally she hadn’t always been there for him when he wanted her to be. There’d been countless functions and dinners where she’d been invited to accompany her husband, including two black-tie events when Mac’s company had won prestigious awards, yet Tara had refused to go with him, preferring to sulk in their apartment alone, feeling hard-done-by and aggrieved. And Mac hadn’t even given her a hard time about it.