His Rebel Heart

by Amber Leigh Williams

  “I know you do,” he said, solemn-eyed. He leaned back against the window, tucking his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. His gaze drank her in slowly and surely. She felt the heat of that look all the way down to her toes.

  She swallowed. Her eyes veered over his shoulder. “Um...is your meat burning?”

  James’s brows shot onto his forehead. “Pardon me?”

  Adrian gestured toward the deck outside. “The meat. The pork chops. I think they’re burning.”

  James looked around, saw the black smoke wafting out of the Weber grill. He muttered an oath before shoving the sliding glass door aside and sprinting toward the fire.

  * * *

  “WHAT DOES THE Latin mean?”

  James glanced up from his plate. Adrian hadn’t spoken much since the revelations about his past. As they sat down to dinner, he’d been able to almost hear the wheels turning inside her head. Her feelings about the more sordid details were a mystery to him. He’d hoped she would say something before the end of the meal. The words she spoke weren’t what he was expecting.

  He saw her pointing at his collar with her fork. He dropped his head to the front of his shirt and the Latin letters peeking through. “Non omnis moriar,” he said after chewing his food and swallowing. He took a sip of water before adding, “It means not all of me shall die.”

  Her eyes widened for a moment. Then softened. “Oh. So that one’s for your—”

  “Dad,” he nodded and smiled softly.

  She continued scanning his collarbone and his throat, a line of puzzlement appearing between her brows after a moment’s study. “Is that...” She pointed to her own throat in indication. “The leather string. Is that the same one you wore—before?”

  James dropped his fork and reached up to tug the thick brown cord from underneath his collar. The wooden cross on the end of it fell against the front of his shirt, right over his sternum. “I’ve never not worn it,” he told her. “Not since the wreck, anyway.”

  Adrian took a deep breath. “You used to play with it a lot, tugging and twisting it when...” She cleared her throat, dropping her eyes back to her plate where she picked at her food. “...when the withdrawals would get bad.”

  James lifted a brow, surprised by her memory. He’d caught himself doing the same when he quit drinking four years ago. When she went back to her studied silence, he all but groaned at the step back. Looking down at the sorry excuse for a meal, he searched for something—anything—to keep that from happening. “Sorry about the pork chops,” he said. Adrian had managed to throw together a salad. The squash had had to be thrown out alongside the potatoes. The pork chops had barely been salvageable. “I swear I’ve cooked before.”

  “I saw the take-out containers in your trash pail.” Adrian eyed him knowingly as she brought a forkful of salad up to her mouth. “It’s really not that bad. I like my meat well-done.” When he cracked a smile she flushed and pressed a hand over her eyes. “Oh, God.”

  James drank a bit of water because he’d come very close to swallowing the food wrong and his tongue with it. “I’m the one who took it the wrong way.”

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t take but a moment for me to catch up,” she told him. “I guess we’re both dirty minded.”

  James smirked. “Oh, if I remember, you had a very dirty mind and a mouth to match. Remember that time we snuck off to your parents’ greenhouse and—”

  “Stop right there, James Bracken,” she said, holding up both hands.

  He laughed again because she was blushing. “Hey, I promised I’d keep my hands off you, not stop myself from thinking about the good ol’ days.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t have to bring them up. Then we both have to think about them.”

  He frowned as she chewed the last tough piece of her pork chop. “You expect me to believe you haven’t thought about it?”

  “The past is dead,” she said.

  “What about when I kissed you last night? Was the past dead then, too?”

  “James...” She sighed, crossing her arms on the table’s edge. “I didn’t come over here to talk about the past. And please tell me you didn’t delude yourself into thinking this was a date.”

  He peered over their plates and the candle in the center of the outdoor teak table before letting his gaze climb back up to hers pointedly. The radio was tuned low but he’d made sure to load his Red Hot Chili Peppers playlist before turning it on. It was currently burning through the Stadium Arcadium album.

  Her frown only grew. “It’s not.”

  “It could be,” James suggested.

  “It’s not,” Adrian said again and pushed her plate away.

  “All right,” he said. Leaning back in his chair, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and asked, “Why did you come over here tonight, Adrian?”

  She lifted her water and simply held it as she mirrored his stance, leaning back in her chair. “I guess I came to settle things, in a way. I’m sure you have questions...about Kyle.”

  “Hundreds,” he confirmed. A small grin touched his lips. “Mostly small things. Like what’s his favorite board game? What was his first word? And, beyond the physical, is he anything like me?”

  Her lips twitched for a moment. Then she replied, “Battleship. Dog. And, yes, minus the delinquent streak, you couldn’t be more alike.”

  He gazed at her, admiring the concession. He could tell it wasn’t easy for her to share Kyle. With him, of all people. With anyone. But especially him. “Thank you,” he said after a moment. “I have other, more serious questions, too, about him. And about you.”

  “Such as?”

  James paused, thought about it. “Besides the hospital stay in the beginning, was it easy? The pregnancy.”

  Adrian raked a hand through her hair. In the last light of day, it was the color of a good Bordeaux. “It depends on what you mean by easy. He was a healthy baby. He was two weeks late and weighed in at seven pounds, six ounces.”

  “But was it easy on you?”

  She held her water close under her chin and lifted her eyes to his slowly. “Not really, no. I was sick a lot longer than the first trimester. More than I thought any pregnant woman deserved to be. Maybe it was the stress of the whole situation. Maybe it was just the way my body reacted to the pregnancy. I don’t know. I didn’t put on as much weight as the doctor would have liked. In fact, I don’t think anybody could tell I was pregnant until the latter half of the second trimester.”

  James frowned over his next question, wondering if he had a right to ask. “Did you ever consider...giving him up?”

  Something on her face changed. Her eyes turned reflective, seeing beyond him. “Whatever doubt I had about having a child went up in smoke when he was born. Here was this beautiful little boy who deserved all the love and care anyone in the world could give, and I desperately needed to be that person for him—no matter how hard it was going to be.” She licked her lips, averted her eyes. “And however much I resented you at the time, he came out of something special. On my end, at least.”

  His brow furrowed as he steepled his hands under his chin. “Adrian...”

  “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want affirmation of what we had. Whatever it was, it’s gone and I can’t put myself in that situation again. That’s one of the things I wanted to make clear tonight.”

  “Whether you want to hear it or not, I’ve wanted to tell you for a while that what we had was extraordinary,” he said. And before she could argue, he added quickly, “I want more than anything for you to believe that.”

  She pinched the skin between her eyes, closed them. “James—”

  “Being with you,” he went on, “made me the happiest I ever remember being, and I can’t express how much I regret not staying.”

  “Sure,” she said, and swept
her hand in a dismissive wave. “If you hadn’t come back—if you’d never known—you wouldn’t regret leaving. Because what we had might’ve been extraordinary, but it wasn’t enough to make you stick around.”

  He looked down at his plate. “You know, I’ve gone a long time convincing myself that I’m content knowing that’s what you were led to believe. But I can’t do that anymore.”

  “Maybe it’s better that you do,” she said and stood, dropping her napkin to the table. “I can’t make myself vulnerable to you again. Did you think telling me everything about your time away would make that any easier?”

  “No,” he said. “I just wanted to put everything on the table. You deserve that.”

  “It took a lot for you to tell me,” she acknowledged, “and it was the right thing to do. But it doesn’t change things between us. Twice in my life I’ve dropped my guard, trusted someone with all that I am. And both times were more devastating than I can say.”

  She walked toward the sliding door. “Adrian,” he called as he pushed his chair back and rose to go after her. “Wait.”

  “There’s nothing left to say,” she said, stepping inside.

  “The hell there isn’t,” he replied, following her, reaching for her.

  She rounded on him before he could touch her. “I’m willing to let you have time with Kyle. Weekends, holidays. We can work it out. You’ve cleaned up your life. And Kyle’s grown attached.”

  “I’m not done talking about us,” James said.

  The sharp words made her scoff and throw both hands up in disbelief. Her voice rose an octave. “Did you honestly believe I’d fall for this again? I’m not as stupid as I used to be!”

  “You were never stupid, Adrian,” he told her firmly. “And how you managed to lose sight of yourself enough for Kennard to hurt you the way he did is beyond me. The Adrian I knew didn’t let anyone push her around or call the shots.”

  Her jaw dropped, and cold fury etched the lines of her jaw. Her eyes turned to stone. “Let? You think I let it happen? You think I just let Radley take swings at me? You think I let him come after my baby?”

  “No,” he said, trying desperately to gather his emotions. They were jumbling his mind, mixing up his words and meaning. “That’s not what I meant.”

  She planted her hands on her hips. The frigidity on her face was melting away in the face of fresh temper. “Then what exactly are you trying to say to me?”

  He took another step toward her, wanting to touch her. Wanting to make her understand. Wanting her to feel how conflicted he felt whenever he thought of the girl he’d known and what she’d been through. “You had such fire, Adrian. Anybody who looked at you could see it a mile off. Your fire consumed me that summer at The Farm. It stayed with me. I hate that Kennard tried to take it from you, tried to stamp it out and undo everything that made you shine. That fire’s still there. I’ve seen it. He tried to take it from you, but that fire and that woman I fell in love with are still right here in front of me.”

  Her lips trembled open. “What?”

  James stopped. His words echoed between them. He blinked and took a step back.

  “What did you just say, James?” she asked, advancing on him.

  He backed up until his shoulders found the door. “Uh...” He’d never said the word love to anyone. Not to Adrian. Not to anyone. Not since Zachariah Bracken left his life. His lips numbed and his heart pounded at the dawning light of understanding on Adrian’s face.

  Well, hell. There it was. What he should’ve stuck around to say to her eight years ago. Only he’d chosen to turn his back on her, instead.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ADRIAN DIDN’T KNOW how long she stood gaping at James as he shifted his feet and tried not to look awkward. But dear God, he’d said it, hadn’t he? Along with a lot of other wonderful things. And by the high color in his neck and the sudden awareness in his eyes, she knew he hadn’t meant to.

  Dear God, he had loved her after all. Her inhale was shaky, as were her hands when she raked them through her hair. “What am I supposed to do with that?” she asked.

  “I don’t rightly know,” he admitted after a moment’s thought. “I don’t know if I’ve ever known what to do with it...exactly. But there it is.” His eyes were as naked as she’d ever seen them. “I loved you, hard.”

  It had always been so much easier to believe that she’d loved him more than he had ever loved her, or felt about her, period. It had been so much easier to believe that she had been nothing but a handy coping mechanism. “Why...why did you have to tell me?” she asked finally. “Now we both have to live with it!”

  He dug his hands into his pockets. For a moment, he looked lost. “Beats the hell out of me,” he murmured.

  One look at him and she knew he was as vulnerable as she had been eight years ago. “Damn it, James.” She dropped the purse she’d picked up on her way to the exit. “Goddamn it.”

  He nodded shortly. “That sums it up.”

  “I shouldn’t believe you. After all you’ve put me through, I should just walk out that door.”

  He glanced from the exit to the purse she was no longer clutching and back to her, a light entering his eyes. “Then what are you still doing here, Adrian?”

  “Complicating things,” she said, crossing the room to him. She hesitated briefly before sliding her hands up to his shoulders and lifting on her tiptoes, touching her mouth to his.

  The kiss was brushing, tender. He sucked in a long breath. She felt the hands in his pockets twitch. Pulling back, she looked at the bar between his closed eyes, the muscles quaking in his jaw. Smoothing her hand over his cheek, she tipped her mouth up to his again and indulged in another sweet kiss, lingering when he made a noise in his throat.

  Cupping his face in her hands, she deepened the kiss, opening her mouth to his for the first time since his return. Yet he did as promised and didn’t touch her. He held himself back even as she pulled his tongue into her mouth and suckled. His body hardened under her hands and he hissed. She smiled a bit because she saw that his effort was costing him dearly.

  “I think you should touch me now,” she told him.

  He didn’t open his eyes. The muscles in his face were drawn tight under his skin, his voice hoarse. “Once I start, I can’t promise I’ll be able to stop.”

  “Just do it,” she demanded, “before I start thinking sensibly again.”

  James’s answering kiss was blistering, nearly knocking her off her feet. She wound her arms around his neck as his folded around her waist. They both held on. She tilted her head, letting him delve deeper. He tasted so good. So like James. She wanted to melt into the big, long line of him and disappear into his heat...

  Her hands roamed free over his shoulders, arms and back. Lower, under his shirt, her nails dug into the dip of his spine. Hot. His skin was hot to the touch. Her fingertips found the dimples above his beltline. He nibbled at her mouth and she lost all train of thought. It wasn’t until he growled in the back of his throat that she realized she’d gone a step further and let her hand wander below his waist to grab a firm hold of his rear.

  The laughter trembled out of him. “You’re playing with fire, woman.”

  “Just...shut up and kiss me.” She panted and captured his mouth for herself. He made an agreeing noise and turned her so that his body pressed hers into the glass door. One of his thick, Viking thighs wedged between hers and pushed up against the aching spot between her legs.

  Despite the intensity of the kiss and the power vibrating in the muscles beneath her hands, she didn’t feel the first lick of fear. Despite the fact that he’d pressed her to the glass as if it was the slide under a microscope, she didn’t feel fear—only heat and hunger. God, she was hungry. So hungry she could—

  “Ah!” James cried, his head sailing back from hers a
s he covered the lip she’d sunk her teeth into.

  She stuttered in apology. “Oh, God. Are you bleeding?”

  James smiled, dabbing his lip with his finger, his wicked blue eyes seeking hers. “You’ve given me worse.”

  She let out a tremulous laugh. “I’m sorry. It’s...it’s been a while. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bitten you.”

  His eyes went soft again. “Adrian, if you need to take a bite out of anybody, trust me, I’d volunteer.”

  She couldn’t fight another laugh. It washed out of her in a relieved wave.

  “BBs, biting...anybody else would move away. Far away.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.

  She wanted to believe that. Reaching up, she touched the tip of her thumb to the swollen spot on his lip. He touched his hand to the back of hers and held her gaze as he dipped his head and kissed the pad of her thumb. Then, watching her still, he pulled the length of her thumb into his mouth, closed his eyes and gently suckled it.

  Lust, bright and burning, lashed at her. She nearly dove at him.

  “How long?”

  “Hmm?” she asked, lifting a brow absently.

  “How long has it been for you?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not important.”

  “How long?” he asked again, patient.

  She blew out a resigned breath and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. “Not...not since the divorce.”

  She opened her eyes and peered at his blank expression. Embarrassment hit her. “And...not very much before it, either.”

  James’s eyes narrowed as sympathy blinked to life there. “Oh, baby...”

  She stopped him. “You promised you wouldn’t pity me, remember? Don’t.”

  He took a deep breath, then nodded.