Defying Desire

by A. C. Arthur

  In a flash she was back in the car, buckled in the passenger seat. They were returning from a party where Jake had wanted her to meet with some folks at Vogue regarding another cover spot and pictures of the baby when she gave birth. They were in a great mood as the Vogue execs were ecstatic that she had agreed.

  Tia thought about the many to-do items on her wedding-planning list. A couple of months after the baby’s birth she and Jake were going to be married. All was well in their lives. Then she saw the headlights. They seemed huge, their glare bursting through the front windshield like an explosion. She heard horns, glass crashing, felt the jolt of impact, Jake yelling, her screaming.

  In the next moment a pain Tia had never felt before traveled over her stomach. She buckled over. Breathing had become laborious as she struggled to stand. She felt hands on her arm. Heard someone calling her name. But her focus was on getting up, getting out of here.

  Her legs shook and she stumbled out of the room. There was someone behind her, a female. She was yelling for water or ice or something. Tia couldn’t really tell. All she knew was that there was a door somewhere, a door that would lead her outside and outside would lead her home, where she was safe.

  Finding it she wrenched it open. Her chest burned with every bit of air she inhaled. Her stomach hurt and threatened to retrieve everything she’d eaten today. Cool air tapped at her face but did nothing to ease this turmoil. Looking up she thought she saw the sun then the sky instantly went black, just like that night. The night they’d crashed.

  “Tia! Tia! Are you okay?”

  She heard the female voice again but needed to get away from it. It was just the nurses. The doctor had told her that Jake was dead. Jessica was dead. The nurses tried to help, to comfort her, but it was no use.

  Running, or at least she thought she was running. Her feet were moving, everything around her seemed to be in motion. Tears stung her eyes, she had no clue where she was going, only that she desperately needed to get away.

  Abruptly all her movement was stopped. She’d run into a wall? She was falling, no she was floating. Had she died, as well? Oh God, please say it was finally over. Please say He decided to take her instead of Jake and Jessica. Please, please.

  Chapter 11

  He’d heard screaming and his military instincts had immediately kicked in.

  From the group in which he’d stood and been talking, Trent turned. What he saw frightened him more than any battle he’d ever been in.

  Tia was stumbling out the front door of the house. She’d taken one step and her legs had almost given out. She looked like she was about to faint. Right behind her was his mother, Noelle and Camille. They were all calling her name and reaching for her. But she pulled away, stumbling down the next step. How she managed to stand through the tears streaming down her face and the ruthless shaking of her head Trent had no idea. But in the next instant he was running to her, scooping her up into his arms the minute he was close enough.

  Her breaths came in ragged spurts. She mumbled incoherently, tears springing from her eyes as if someone had released a dam.

  “Call an ambulance,” his mother was saying behind him.

  “She was fine a moment ago,” Camille was at his side as he walked with Tia in his arms.

  “Go back inside,” he told her tightly.

  “No!” Camille yelled. “Where are you taking her? You should wait for the paramedics. Something’s wrong, Trent!”

  “She’s going to be fine, Camille,” Trent heard Adam trying to console his fiancé.

  “Slow down, man. Where are you taking her?” Adam asked.

  “She’s going with me! I’ll take care of her,” Trent said, finally stopping when he was at the passenger side of his truck. He tried to reach into his pocket for his keys but Tia was still thrashing in his arms. He had to get her away from here, to calm her down and find out what had happened.

  His heart pounded, tiny sharp jabs spearing his chest each time she whimpered, at each tear he watched stream from her eyes.

  He felt a heavy hand on his back, then going into his jacket pocket. Turning slightly he saw that it was Linc. He was getting his keys and unlocking the door.

  “Call if you need anything,” Linc told him when the door was open and he was slipping Tia onto the seat.

  Pulling back Trent closed the door, stood and could only stare at Linc for what seemed like an endless second. In his brother’s eyes he saw trust.

  Linc trusted that he would take care of Tia. He didn’t believe he was going to hurt her, a change from his reaction a couple of weeks ago. Trent couldn’t speak, but nodded and ran around to the driver’s side and jumped in.

  He drove like a madman he knew, but the farther away from the house he traveled, the calmer Tia seemed to get. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other touching her anywhere he could, rubbing her arms, wiping what tears he could away from her face, trying to hold her hand, he drove as best he could.

  His house was closer so he turned off the interstate and headed towards his condo without another thought. Her chest heaved and she hugged her stomach as if the pain was unbearable. In less than fifteen minutes Trent was pulling into his complex, shaving twenty minutes off the usual driving distance between his and Linc’s homes.

  He was out of the car with Tia in his hands in minutes, walking as fast as he could toward the building’s front doors. Once inside, he saw Lyle, the concierge, lifting a brow in his direction. Trent sent him a scathing glare and Lyle immediately came from behind the desk.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Donovan? Shall I call a doctor?” The tall thin man was walking beside Trent looking up at him, then down at Tia.

  “Order some food, I don’t care what, and have it sent up immediately,” Trent said watching as Lyle jabbed the button to summon the elevator.

  Stepping inside Trent pulled Tia closer to his chest. She was moaning now, a pitiful sound that ripped at his self-control. What had happened to her in that house?

  Once in his apartment Trent moved instantly to his bedroom, laying Tia down gently. He stood, was going to go into the bathroom to wet a towel for her and wipe her face but she reached up to him, her fingers clutching as if she were trying to grab at something.

  “Please. Please. Take me…instead,” she whimpered. Then her head thrashed back and forth on the pillow. “No. No. Everybody leaves. Please, don’t leave.”

  Trent was confused and then again he wasn’t. Sitting on the bed he gathered her up in his arms, pulling her onto his lap and cradled her.

  Rubbing his hands over her hand, across her cheek, he rocked her, whispering as he did.

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s all over. It was just an accident, Tia. It’s all over now.”

  After a few minutes her thrashing stopped, her heart still pounded, he felt it with each tremble of her body. She was still crying, silently now, not those gut wrenching sobs that were tearing at his control.

  “It’s all right, baby. You go ahead and cry. Everything’s going to be all right.” He was telling her wondering how he was going to make that a reality.

  For once in his life Trent felt completely helpless. A semiautomatic weapon and a good strategy wasn’t going to win this battle.

  What ailed Tia wasn’t an enemy he could hunt down and kill to protect her. It was an inner demon that would haunt her as long as she allowed it. And Trent, no matter how much he wanted to, didn’t know how to exorcise that.

  He had no experience in this area, never having dealt with women on an emotional level. Adam thought he didn’t give a damn about Tia, thought he was going to use her and dismiss her as he had the other women in his life—and for a while he’d thought to do the same. Yet here she was, in his arms, clinging to him as if her life depended on it.

  “They’re gone,” she said her voice sounding tiny in the big space of his room.

  He nodded his head. “I know, baby.”

  “They died and they’re not coming back.”

  �
��It’s all right. They’re in a better place now.”

  She shifted, then pulled away from him slightly. “Trent?” she asked as if for the first time realizing it was he who held her.

  “Hi,” he said weakly, lifting a hand to smooth her hair back from her face.

  She reached up with shaking hands trying to wipe the tears from her face. He pushed her hands away and used his fingers to do the job himself.

  “How did I get here? Where am I?” she was asking looking around the room.

  “Calm down. I brought you to my house because it was closer than trying to take you to yours.”

  “What happ—” she was about to say then her eyes flew to his again. “You said you know. What do you know?”

  Trent knew she was going to be pissed off but he didn’t care. Tia needed to talk to someone. From what Adam had told him, Camille didn’t know about the accident so she couldn’t help.

  Originally Trent had no intention of confessing to Tia about his look into her past but that was because he hadn’t wanted to deal with her on this level. Now, things had changed.

  “I know about Jake and Jessica and the car accident that killed them.”

  She tried to squirm off his lap but Trent held her still. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay to cry and to scream. You lost the people you loved most in this world. It’s okay to be upset.”

  “How did you know? How did you find out?”

  “The information was there, Tia. All I had to do was look.”

  “You looked into my past?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  That one question had him stumped. Despite what his brothers thought, Trent did not go through the time and trouble to investigate every woman that he slept with. But from the start he’d known that Tia wasn’t like every other woman. He’d seen something in her eyes, heard something in her voice that said she was dealing with a situation that she couldn’t handle on her own. It was instinctive that he try to help, it was his job. He went off to foreign countries trying to save the lives of Americans and other people that he didn’t even know. He knew Tia, intimately, why shouldn’t he do what he could to save her?

  “I knew there was something going on with you and I wanted to help,” he said finally, admitting to himself that the need to help her was much stronger than the need to possess her body.

  “You had no right,” she said looking away from him. “It was my business.”

  Reaching around he touched her chin, turning her face to his. “And now you are my business.”

  She leaned forward, letting her head fall into her hands. “It’s been two years. You’d think I’d be over these panic attacks by now.”

  “Have you seen a doctor about them?”

  She shook her head even though he’d already known the answer to that.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “No. They’ll want me to talk about it, to relive it and I…I just…can’t.”

  Her body trembled and he knew she was crying again. He didn’t pull her back into his arms although the need to hold on to her until she was better was powerful. Instead he moved until he was right beside her, simply wrapping an arm around her.

  “You have to try to make peace with what happened, Tia. Or you’ll never be free to move on with your life.”

  “I have no life without them!” she screamed and jumped up off the bed.

  She was pacing the room back and forth and, for a few minutes, Trent simply let her be. She needed space to regain her footing. He knew Tia was a fiercely independent woman. Leaning on him of all people wasn’t going to be easy for her. But in the end, she would. She would trust him to take care of her and to help her through this. Trent would have it no other way.

  “Tell me about Jake,” he said slowly, still sitting on the bed.

  Her pacing slowed. She folded her arms over her chest but continued to walk. “He was my manager. I met him at an audition in New York. We clicked immediately.”

  “Love at first sight,” Trent said tightly, not liking the thought of Tia giving such a deep emotion to another man.

  “No,” she said stopping suddenly. “We were friends. Really good friends. I used to think of him as a brother at first. Then one night we ended up in bed together.” She looked contemplative, then gave a stilted laugh. “I don’t even remember how it was that we ended up in bed together. I just know the next morning we woke up naked and smiling.”

  Okay, she could stop with the trip down memory lane. Trent’s jaw was clenching so tight he feared he’d dislodged a few teeth.

  “And just like that we were a couple. I got pregnant about six months later and Jake asked me to marry him. Everything happened really fast but it felt right.”

  “You wanted to marry him and to have his baby?”

  “I wanted a family.”

  Trent nodded, not sure she understood the depth of what she’d just said, or what she didn’t say.

  “I found out immediately that I was carrying a girl and we decided on the name Jessica. I had everything all ready for her. The room, her clothes, everything was all planned.” She stopped walking. “And then they were gone.”

  Trent stood then, but didn’t go to her. “But you survived. You’re still here. Do you think Jake would want you living this shell of a life because you can’t let go of your grief?”

  “I’m living the best life I can.”

  “Bull! You’re hiding in that apartment, coming out only to work. You’re not living at all.”

  Lifting her head defiantly she retorted, “You don’t seem to be complaining when my non-living consists of sleeping with you.”

  He did walk to her then. “Sex is easy, Tia. It’s physical, not emotional,” he told her hearing the truth in his words and feeling the pity that he himself believed them so stoically.

  She stared up at him, letting his hands go around her waist, her hands hesitantly falling to his chest. “You’re wrong. Nothing is easy with you, Trent.”

  Recognizing that she was probably right, Trent sighed. “It doesn’t have to be hard, Tia.”

  “How else would it be with you? The last of the Triple Threat Donovans with his navy SEAL secret assignments and irrefutable reputation—everything in your life is hard.”

  Her statement held him quiet.

  “I’m sorry you went through this horrible time, but I want to do whatever it takes to make you whole. Do you understand that, Tia? Whatever it takes to keep this from haunting you, I’ll do.”

  Her chest constricted, tears once more stinging her eyes. This was unexpected. He was unexpected.

  “I don’t want you to do anything.”

  “I don’t need your permission.”

  “You’re a bully,” she spat.

  “No. I’m just a man who wants what’s best for…his woman.”

  She should have pulled away again. She should have run out of that apartment and back to her own. She was too exposed, too vulnerable. And Trent Donovan was too good, too smooth and too potent for her to ignore. His words wrapped her in a protective cocoon that she’d longed to feel. His hands and his gaze held her perfectly still, and when his head descended, his kiss took her to a place she’d never known. A place she never wanted to leave.

  The next clear thought Tia had was around eight o’clock the next morning. That’s when she attempted to roll over in bed and found herself face-to-face with Trent.

  He was wide awake and looked as if he had been for some time since he was fully dressed, except for shoes. Glancing down quickly at herself she realized she was still fully dressed, as well.

  “We just slept, Tia. I’m not into having sex with emotionally distraught women,” he said by way of a good morning.

  “I wasn’t emotionally distraught,” she snapped, then attempted to roll in the other direction.

  He stopped her by rolling on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. “Don’t for one minute believe I didn’t want to make love to you all night long. I just like to know
that when I’m with a woman, she’s with me one hundred percent.”

  “Point taken,” she said, noting his raging erection pressing into her center as he parted her legs.

  “As for the emotionally distraught part, don’t get all uptight over it. I’m just telling you what you need to hear. What I suspect other people close to you have wanted to say but have not, for fear of hurting your feelings.”

  “And let me guess, you don’t give a damn about my feelings so you’ll say what you want.”

  She tried to break free of his hold but his fingers clamped tightly over her wrists.

  “I don’t mince words, you know that’s not the type of person I am. As for your feelings,” he sighed. “I care about your feelings much more than I anticipated I would.”

  Tia blinked, not sure how she was supposed to react. What she was sure about was that she’d completely embarrassed herself yesterday. She needed to call Camille and apologize to her and the rest of the women of the Donovan clan. But first, she needed to get Trent off her before she made a further fool of herself by begging him to make love to her.

  “I need to get home,” she said turning her head away from him.

  He kept her wrists pulled together then gently held her by the chin. “Yesterday you had a panic attack,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Tia waved his words away. “I’ve had them before. I have medication that I refuse to take, given to me by a therapist that I no longer see. It’s not a big deal.”

  He ignored her flippant tone. “Last night you were emotionally distraught over an accident you could neither have prevented nor foreseen. I want you to talk to someone about it. You need to move past this grief or it’s going to consume you, Tia.

  “And I’m not saying this because I’m the infamous Trenton Donovan, the brother with no feelings and no cares in the world.” He paused looking at her earnestly. “I’m saying this because I want you to be well. I want you to be able to go to a baby shower without falling apart, to leave your apartment and socialize without creating barriers to keep everyone at a distance. I want you to live. You’ve got to want to live.”