“I meant what I said. Every word of it. You don’t have to worry. I know it’s not what you want from me, so I won’t say it again. I just… I had to tell you.”
“I’m sorry.” He swore softly, turning his head away, then faced her once again, that bleak, lost look in his eyes. “I’m sorry about everything. I don’t want to leave you, but dammit, I’ve got to go. Right now.”
He kissed her one last time and then wrenched free, walking her to the limousine and pushing her inside, leaving her alone with a man who looked oddly like him. Josh, but not Josh. Older, nearly as handsome, but with none of the warmth, none of the laughter, none of the joy. None of the things that made her love desperately the man who’d just walked away from her.
Chapter 14
“What do you mean she’s not there?” Josh roared into the phone ten days later.
“Well, hello to you, too,” Sunnie said sweetly. “It’s so good to talk to you.”
“Oh, hell. You know I’m always happy to talk to you. Now where’s Amanda?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Josh thought his heart might have stopped for a minute. “Where did she go, Sunnie?”
“Probably just for a walk. Or out to do some touristy thing. And to think…”
“Thank God,” he said.
“…about leaving before you come back,” she added.
“She doesn’t want to see me?”
“She’s worried herself half to death over you, but she also thinks that all you ever felt for her is a misplaced sense of obligation—the same kind of misplaced obligation you have for me.”
He frowned, finding it hard to move from one subject to the other, then decided to deal first with his sister. “There’s nothing misplaced or obligatory about my feelings for you. I love you.”
“And I love you, too, Josh. I’ve just about stopped beating myself up over what I did nine years ago, and that’s because of you. So I find it particularly hurtful that you’re still beating yourself up over it.”
“Sunnie—”
“I would never have survived it if it hadn’t been for you. I didn’t even want to survive, but you wouldn’t let me go. And I felt the pull of every bit of love you had for me. I saw how much it would hurt you if I didn’t find a way out of my depression. Before I ever wanted to succeed for myself, I wanted to do it for you. Because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you anymore. I don’t think I would have had the strength to fight without you beside me.” She paused, catching her breath. “You’re the best, Josh.”
He took a breath and held it, wondering why all the women in his life had turned weepy lately. “And you just thought I might need to hear this?”
“Amanda did. She has an incredibly kind heart.”
“I know.”
“And I think you love her.”
Josh shook his head, all of his excuses right on the tip of his tongue. He just wanted her. He needed her. It was the novelty of it. The newness. He and Amanda, together, intoxicatingly sweet and overwhelming and new.
“She makes me crazy,” he confessed. “She got a scratch in that mess on the boat. Honestly, that was it. But I saw blood on her blouse, and I nearly lost it.”
“So you’ve got it bad for her, too,” Sunnie said.
“I suppose you’re trying to be helpful?” He groaned, and wished he was close enough to grab her and haul her up against him for a quick hug. He really didn’t see nearly enough of her. She was trying to be helpful, and Lord knew, he needed help. “Amanda has a way of pushing past all my defenses. She even got me to talk about you.”
“She’s good for you, Josh.”
“Maybe,” he admitted grudgingly.
A part of him wanted to stand up and scream, She loves me! Women had said that to him before, of course. He just hadn’t believed it, hadn’t placed any value on that most-mistaken and misunderstood of all emotions. It had no staying power, after all. It was so fleeting, so unreliable, how could it matter in the least? But Amanda had staying power. She was real. Her feelings for him seemed painfully real. He knew, because he’d seen her looking so sad it seemed to have broken his own cynical heart. So sad that it made him hurt inside, a physical ache that spread through his entire body and nearly had him on his knees begging her to forgive him.
She was a generous woman, he knew. She would have forgiven him for making her love him and then walking away from her, for saying nothing when she cried and told him she loved him. She would forgive him. But he had to ask himself, what was he going to do with his life? What did he have to offer a woman like her?
“I hurt her,” he confessed.
“And I hurt you,” Sunnie said.
“No—”
“How could I not, Josh? You loved me, and I ignored all of that. I discounted it, as something that wasn’t an important enough reason for me to try to go on, and I was wrong about that. I was so wrong, Josh. But you didn’t stop loving me.”
“I could never stop loving you,” he said, the words torn from the depths of his heart.
“But you’ve decided to keep yourself from loving anyone else?”
He stopped, feeling as if he’d slammed into a wall. As if Sunnie and Amanda had taken him to this point and hurled him up against a solid concrete barrier. What was he so afraid of?
“I’ll hurt her,” he said. “I’ll let her down. Just like—”
“I love you, Josh,” she cut in. “Don’t you ever think you let me down. You’re the reason I survived. You’re the one constant source of encouragement and love in my life. You’re kind and generous and incredibly loving, when you let yourself be, and it’s time you stopped running away from who you really are.”
“You think I’ve been running? All this time?”
“I think you don’t want to get hurt, either, as much as you don’t want to hurt anyone else. Either that or you don’t want to take the responsibility for guarding anyone else’s heart, the way you always tried to guard mine.”
He thought of Amanda’s heart. Her fragile, battered heart.
“Sometimes love hurts,” Sunnie said. “But not all the time. It can be really good, too.”
“I never thought I could be good for Amanda.”
“You’ve already been good for Amanda. She told me so.”
“She’s not like anyone else I’ve ever been with.”
“Thank God for that,” Sunnie said.
He sighed, wanting so badly to see Amanda, to hold her in his arms again and reassure himself that she was okay. He wanted so damned much for her, wanted everything. Absolutely everything.
“She won’t wait much longer,” Sunnie warned.
“I know.”
Four days later the doorbell rang at Josh’s sister’s flat in Paris. Amanda jumped, as she did every time it rang.
“It’s not him,” Sunnie said. “He picks the lock and comes right in. I usually don’t even know he’s here until he grabs me and kisses me.”
“He picked the lock at my house once, too,” Amanda said sadly.
“It’s a hobby of his.” Sunnie gave her a quick hug. “He’s fine. I have a sixth sense where he’s concerned. I’d know if he was hurt.”
The bell rang again. Amanda watched as Sunnie, a pale, thin, fragile-looking blonde went to answer it. She was beautiful in a totally eccentric way. She lived in loose, white, gauzy things, tied at her tiny waist with elaborate, jeweled belts she made herself and sold in her boutique. She almost always wore at least three necklaces made of colored crystals, earrings to match and a series of wide bracelets on each wrist, and she looked delicate, like a fairy creature. Her hair was startlingly blond, a bit curly and long, her eyes the same blue as Josh’s, and she had his smile, as well. Sometimes it was hard just to look at her, she reminded Amanda so much of Josh.
She’d rescued Amanda from the ambassador’s winter retreat in Nice nine days ago. It had been a revelation, seeing what Josh’s life must have been like. It told her so clearly that they came from t
otally different worlds. The ambassador’s house was as elegant as a palace, with polished marble floors and oriental rugs, priceless sculptures and paintings, glittering crystal. Amanda had been afraid to touch anything. There were antiques and decorator-perfect rooms, an astonishingly beautiful view of the Mediterranean and a highly efficient staff at her beck and call.
Amanda had felt insulated, physically safe, but emotionally brittle. There was no warmth there, no genuine laughter, no emotion whatsoever. Josh’s father treated her with the quiet, if hurried, politeness she supposed he would offer any stranger foisted off on him. He’d asked her exactly two questions about his son—whether he was doing well in his work and whether Amanda knew when to expect him back. If he was at all worried about Josh, it didn’t show in anything he said or in anything she could read on his handsome yet oddly blank face. She dared to ask how long it had been since he’d spent any time with Josh, and the man looked puzzled, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to keep track. Two years, possibly? Three? They were all so busy, of course.
She met Josh’s mother on the evening of the second day, found her a suitable match for her husband. Beautiful, obviously used to the best money could buy, she made cold, scarcely polite inquiries about her son for all of two minutes and then excused herself to get ready for a party she was scheduled to attend. Amanda caught the tail end of what she thought must have been a nasty argument between the couple when she came downstairs to breakfast the next day, startling them and embarrassing herself.
Josh had grown up in the midst of this, she thought. Was it any wonder he didn’t believe in love or that he didn’t want anything to do with marriage?
He regretted making love to her on the boat. He’d only done it because she had begged him. She’d been totally unfair to him, pushing for a more intimate relationship than he wanted with her. All along she’d taken kindness and concern and a misplaced sense of responsibility on his part and tried to make it into something else entirely. Into love.
And he didn’t love her.
Amanda leaned forward, resting her forehead in the palm of her hand. Now he was gone. She was starting to think he wasn’t coming back. Which might be for the best. If he came back, she had to pull herself together and face him, thank him for all that he’d done and try not to make a fool of herself.
If there was any way for her to get out of here, she would. But there was this odd little matter of her passport, her identification, her credit card, her cash, all left at Rudy’s villa and never returned to her. She was at the mercy of the French authorities and the U.S. Embassy. Otherwise, she’d have been gone by now.
Sunnie walked in carrying a huge, flat, rectangular box tied with a fancy bow and held it out to her. “Special delivery. For you.”
Amanda started trembling all of a sudden.
“Someone has very good taste, and I bet I know who,” Sunnie said.
Josh.
After an excruciating week and a half, Josh.
Amanda gave a slight tug on the ribbon. It fell apart in her hands. She pulled the top off the box and found a card with her name on it in a familiar, nearly indecipherable scrawl. A bit scared of what it might contain, she set it aside and dug into the box, finding a silver, shimmering dress inside, much like the one she wore to Rudy Olivara’s dinner in Washington.
“Seems a bit elaborate for a man bent on saying goodbye. Even for my brother,” Sunnie said. “Read the card.”
Amanda pulled open the flap. The card read: “Have dinner with me. Please. 9 p.m.”
He named a Paris hotel and scrawled a big J at the end. That was it. Dinner.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Amanda said shakily. “I’m no good at goodbyes.”
“How do you know it’s goodbye?”
“What else would it be? He’ll never stay with one woman. He told me so. Just like that. Right from the beginning he told me it wouldn’t last. I just didn’t listen to him. So it’s not his fault. None of this is.” Amanda took a breath, tried to steady herself. “He really is the most amazing man.”
“I know,” Sunnie said.
“I’ll never, ever forget him. It’s a sad commentary on what my life is normally like, but I have a feeling that getting my heart broken by Josh will be the best thing that ever happens to me,” she admitted. “I felt so alive with him, Sunnie. The whole world was full of possibilities. There were no limits to what might happen. Good things. Impossibly good.”
“He has a gift.”
“Yes.” That was it. A gift. Feeling foolishly sentimental at the moment, she admitted, “I look at him and think of fairy tales, of endings with happily ever afters, even when it’s obvious there’s no way things could work out.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” Sunnie insisted.
“He’s the prince. He’s every man I ever dreamed about when I was a little girl, before any man had ever lied to me or broken my heart.”
“Josh has a truly kind heart.”
“Yes, he does. Which is why I don’t think I can face him again. I’ll do something really stupid, like tell him again that I love him.”
Sunnie smiled. “I knew all along that you loved him.”
“What woman doesn’t? I might as well get in line.”
Unbidden came the memory of his voice, of one tantalizing promise. There’s no line, Amanda. There are no other women in my life right now. There haven’t been for a while now.
“Amanda?” Sunnie took her hands, bringing her back to the present. “I haven’t set foot inside one of my father’s houses in nine years. Josh knows that, and he loves me. For him to ask me to go there and get you… He would never ask that of me if you weren’t very important to him.”
“He feels responsible for me, that’s all.”
“He’s never asked me to watch over one of his women before. He sounded as if he was afraid that by the time he got back, you’d be gone.” Sunnie sighed. “I want him to be happy. If anyone deserves that, it’s Josh.”
“I want him to be happy, too.”
“So go to him. Give him a chance to tell you how he feels.”
Amanda gave in. That night she donned the dazzling, shimmering dress. Cinderella once again, off to see her prince. Sunnie wanted to put her hair up, but Amanda politely refused. Because Josh liked it down. She did let Sunnie adorn her with pretty colored stones and do her makeup. Sunnie even drove her to the hotel, giving her a kiss for luck before she got out of the car.
“Ms. Wainwright?” The doorman came up to her right away. “Mr. Carter’s waiting for you in his suite. Would you follow me, please?”
She let him put her in an elevator and give the elevator operator instructions on delivering her to Josh’s door. She’d counted on being in a restaurant, with people all around, not alone. The elevator whisked her to the top of the hotel, and the attendant walked her to the door. He even knocked, as if he’d known she might not have had the nerve to knock herself.
Josh opened it before she had time to even catch her breath. Even if she had, she would have promptly lost it once again. He was beautiful, dressed all in black, a tuxedo this time, his hair gleaming like gold in the dim light of what must be two dozen candles. His mouth was stretched into a tight, thin line; his gaze raked over her. He didn’t say a word, merely extended a hand. She laid her palm across his. He pulled her inside, closing the door behind her, leaving them well and truly alone.
Vaguely she noted the table in the corner by the windows, set for two with crystal and china and silver, the fresh flowers, the candlelight, the elegance of the room, the soft music. So this was how Joshua Carter romanced a woman, she thought. Was she getting the standard treatment now?
Despite that, a little lick of heat unfurled inside of her.
She’d missed him desperately. Josh, her lover. Her one and only lover, and their one, too-brief night together. She remembered the fevered way he’d moved inside her, the husky need in his voice when he’d told her, “I want to see you,” when there’d been no
thing but near blackness inside the locked cabin on the boat. She’d wished to see him, as well. To see that powerful, exquisitely beautiful body of his bared for her to see, to touch, to taste.
She dared to look back up at him, her breathing fast and shallow, her head spinning. He looked just as affected as she did when he hauled her into his arms.
“I really meant to feed you first,” he said, a second before his mouth closed over hers in a stormy, demanding kiss that left her limp and feeling like putty in his arms, like a woman he could do with what he wanted, without one squeak of protest from her.
When he lifted his head, she was glad to see that he was breathless, as well, and his eyes were positively smoldering. “We had a deal,” he said. “Six months. You promised. Six months for me to have my fill of you. Which means you owe me five months, one week, six days, three hours and some change.”
“That’s what you want?” she said carefully. “Five months?”
“If that’s all I get, then, yes, I want it,” he said, pushing her against the wall and pinning her there with his body, with his big, hard, heavy, aroused body.
She felt an answering awareness in hers, that tightness to her breasts, swelling and puckering and begging for his touch. She felt heat in her stomach, between her thighs, the weakness in her knees.
“Josh, please,” she said.
“Please, what?”
Tears seeped out of the corners of her eyes. She closed them tightly and hung on to him. He had his face buried in the sensitive curve of her neck, his hands running all over her body. Hers were busy, too, pushing against his chest, trying for just enough room to undo his tie and the studs on his shirt, so she could touch him. She desperately needed to touch him. She’d never been so greedy in her entire life.
He undressed her with lightning speed and stealth. She was hardly aware of it until the cool air hit her skin, her dress somewhere around her ankles.
He carried her to the bed, lowered her to the cool sheets and started yanking at his own clothes. Her mouth went dry. He was a man made for candlelight, she decided, drinking in the sight of him. She was on her knees on the mattress in front of him, touching him, stroking him.
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