by Jill Shalvis
They could still hardly see each other in the thick blanket of night, but Sean was so attuned to her he found he didn’t need to see her. Not that he wouldn’t have loved taking her in the bright daylight, watching every nuance, every flicker of emotion that crossed her face as he kissed and licked and teased her to a screaming orgasm.
His body hardened at the thought.
Yep, definitely, he planned to do that.
But this had been incredible, too.
As he grabbed her hand, he felt her little shiver. She thrilled to his touch even now. It was a little unnerving, this connection.
Thunder cracked, startling them. Carly moved closer. Sean pulled her tight and kissed her. Which led to another kiss. And another.
Hearing the second, louder drum of thunder, she broke away from him with a nervous laugh. The single low cloud that had covered the moon had thickened during the time they’d spent on the beach. Time they’d spent lost in sexual pleasure.
Sean couldn’t contain his very male, very satisfied grin.
“We’d better run for it,” Carly said as a drop of rain hit her on the nose.
He licked it off, and while that turned to another hot, long, wet kiss, something was different in the heat and hunger streaking through his belly. It was deeper, more powerful. Heart-wrenching.
Which bothered him. This was not to have been deep or powerful. Definitely not to have been heart-wrenching. He didn’t want her in his system. But he was beginning to understand that getting her out would be impossible. She was in his heart, and quite possibly there to stay.
He’d think of this later, much later. Right now he wanted to bask in the afterglow.
And maybe get some more. “Let’s make a run for it.”
By the time they climbed the bluff, the clouds were coming together with ferocious cracks of thunder, lit by razor-sharp strikes of lightning. The rain fell in earnest, big, fat drops.
Given the desolation and emptiness of the street in front of Sam’s house, his party had broken up long ago. Drenched yet still exhilarated, Sean and Carly came to Sean’s car. He searched his pockets.
“You found your condoms a lot faster than this,” Carly teased as he fumbled for the key.
“I was in a much bigger hurry then.” There was a streetlight illuminating them, and for the first time in hours he could see her face. Her makeup was smeared, her glasses askance. And her hair…it had long ago exploded out of its restraints and out of control. Her clothes looked heavy and cumbersome, especially now that they were getting wetter and wetter.
But her eyes were glowing, her smile was soft and special, and he knew she’d never looked more beautiful to him. “You look unbelievable,” he whispered.
“Destroyed, more like,” she murmured, brushing a hand over her hair, dropping her gaze from his.
“Ravaged,” he agreed with a smile, letting her into the car. Bending, slipping his arms around her, he sucked a drop of rain off her bottom lip. “I like it.”
She went still, staring deeply into his eyes, looking so solemn all of a sudden, so full of sorrow, his heart caught. “What’s the matter?”
In a move that stirred his heart, she stroked his jaw and sent him a slow smile. “I’m just remembering this moment. I don’t want to forget a thing. Not the way you touch me, the sound of my name on your lips, how you look at me, nothing.”
She spoke vehemently, as if what was between them was all over. “In my opinion,” he said slowly, “this is just beginning.”
She touched his mouth with her fingers, then kissed his jaw, still looking sad.
They got about a quarter of a mile down the isolated, narrow two-lane road before there was a loud pop.
Sean knew the sound and with a grim sigh pulled to the side of the road. “Flat,” he said, and got out in the driving rain to fix it.
He’d removed everything he needed from the trunk and had bent to his task when he realized Carly was standing on the road alongside him.
“Here,” she said, nudging the jack toward him.
Her hair was plastered to her face, and she had her arms wrapped around what he now knew to be a slender yet curvy frame.
“You’re frozen,” he protested. “Wait in the car.”
But she squatted beside him. “Did you mean it?” she asked in a low, direct voice. “About this being just the beginning?”
Her eyes were huge behind the wet glasses, her body taut with…nerves?
“I meant it,” he said with an ease that no longer startled him. “This isn’t over just because my sister is coming back.”
“Really?”
“Really. Now go stay warm in the car.”
Instead, she went to her knees in the dirt beside him, reaching to stroke a strand of wet hair from his eyes. “You look very sexy all wet, Sean O’Mara.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” She wet her lower lip with her tongue.
He promptly dropped the jack and wondered if it was possible to do it in the back seat of a car filled with blueprints.
“If I help with the tire,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ll get done faster, which in my estimation—” she glanced at her watch “—would leave us with at least two hours of darkness left to do…well, whatever we pleased.”
Sean broke the world record changing his tire with Carly’s soft laughter egging him on.
“My, my.” She handed him the wrench. “A man who can use his tools. I like that.”
He was laughing when he kissed her. Laughing. He couldn’t remember ever being turned on and full of amusement at the same time.
The thunder and lightning had stopped, but the rain hadn’t. The side of the road where they’d parked had become a sea of mud.
If anyone had said he’d be changing a tire in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, in a damn suit, and laughing while doing it, he would have called them crazy.
But here he was.
He wasn’t thinking about work—not the getting of said work, or the doing of it, or the finding of it. In fact, around Carly, he almost always felt this way.
He liked that. Hell, he ran his own business, and he’d worked long, hard years for his success. If he wanted to cut back a little, if he wanted the weekends and evenings to himself, he was entitled.
And now he had someone to spend that time with.
They got back on the road, but hadn’t gone far when they came to a small café with a Breakfast All the Time sign. Sean pulled in and turned to Carly.
She had a streak of dirt down one cheek, mingling with her running makeup, which made him grin. “I’m famished,” he said. “How about you?”
“Pancakes sound like heaven,” she admitted.
The rain hadn’t let up, so they made a run for it, holding hands and laughing like a pair of kids.
Sitting at a booth toward the back, Sean pushed away the newspaper that had been left on the table, the one that had Princess Carlyne Fortier’s face plastered across the front page.
They both blinked like owls in the garish, obnoxiously bright café, which was decorated in equally eye-squinting red vinyl and checked floors. But the scents coming from the kitchen had Sean’s mouth watering.
Until he caught a good close look at Carly for the first time since they’d left Sam’s party.
“I’m going to have bacon, too,” she said, scanning the menu, oblivious to his sudden stillness. “Tons of it. Crispy,” she added with a grin that slowly faded when she realized he was staring at her. “What?”
His heart had stopped, but now it started up again with a funny rhythm that hurt with each beat, so he was mildly surprised to find he sounded so normal. “Where are your glasses?”
Her hand went immediately to her face, which turned ashen beneath the dirt and makeup. “I don’t know.”
He stared at her because it wasn’t just the glasses, it was…
“I…must have lost them when we were changing the tire,” she said, her words picking up speed as she we
nt. She scooted to the edge of the booth and started to get up, but he put a hand on her wrist to stop her.
“Your eyes.” He had to pause to take a deep breath. Something awful was happening as he stared at her, something so beyond his comprehension that his brain refused to put it together for him. “One is blue, like always. The other is…green. Carly, your eyes are different colors.”
She closed her eyes, and when she answered, her mouth trembled. “I didn’t realize I’d lost a contact, as well.”
“They’re really…green?”
Her eyes opened, but at the look on his face, she covered her mouth with a shaking hand and nodded. Belatedly, her other hand went to the top of her head.
“Too late,” he whispered hoarsely. “I can see the blond poking out from under the wig I didn’t know you wore.”
A funny sound escaped her, one that told him exactly how miserable she was, but since he felt worse, had to feel worse, he didn’t sympathize. “Why are you wearing a wig? And why do you need both glasses and contacts?” But he knew, God help him, he knew. He grabbed the newspaper, holding it up to compare the two faces, one so poised and elegant, one so grim and miserable. “You’ve purposely disguised yourself.”
“Sean—”
“Coffee, folks?” Their waitress appeared and smiled at them, oblivious to the tension humming between them. “Or would you like to order?”
Order? He wanted to throw up. He tossed the paper aside. “We need a minute,” he managed to respond.
“Of course.” The woman started to walk away but glanced at Carly.
Her double take might have been comical if this nightmare hadn’t been happening to Sean.
“Why, I don’t believe it! It’s you! You’ve been hiding out here on the west coast? Oh, I knew it!” She let out a happy little squeal. “I told Marge just this morning you weren’t any junkie in rehab. So…are you enjoying your stay?”
The clues had been there all along, of course. Her desperation for a job that supposedly had nothing to do with needing money. The way she always looked when she saw her reflection in a mirror—so utterly surprised.
And then of course, the whopper—her secrecy about her past.
“I’m an idiot,” he muttered.
The woman he’d just made wild love to, the one clenching the menu, with her wig falling off and her eyes mismatched, winced. “Could we have a moment, please?” she asked the waitress.
“Of course!” Grinning, she bent close to Sean. “I won’t tell a soul about your little romantic tryst,” she promised in a stage whisper. “Honest.”
When she was gone, he looked right into one green and one blue eye and said, “You’re looking like quite a different woman than I started out with tonight. Princess.”
She closed her eyes, both of them, and looked so miserable, so hurt and vulnerable that he hurt, too. But he didn’t want to hurt. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever hurt again. So he found his anger and let it override any sympathy he might have had. “Don’t tell me. You’re suffering amnesia. You’ve forgotten your real name.”
Her eyes flew open. “I never forgot anything.”
“Except to mention it to me.”
“Oh, Sean.” In spite of the multicolors, her eyes softened. “I wanted to tell you.”
“Please.”
“I did! I was going to tell you tonight, after the party.”
“Before or after I made you come half a dozen times in the sand?”
She looked at the table, a flush working its way up her face. “I didn’t know we were going to do that.”
He jabbed a finger toward the paper. “How I didn’t see it is beyond me. So what were you doing here? Was I your latest charity case? Screw a lonely architect? Make his week? What?”
“No!” She shook her head. “God, Sean, it wasn’t like that.”
From the counter, there came a clatter of a tray being dropped. The three waitresses in the café, one of them theirs, were all on the other side of the Formica counter, unabashedly eavesdropping.
So much for secrecy.
Sean stood and tossed a few bills on the table.
“Sean? Where are you going?”
If he hadn’t known she was a liar, he might have believed the note of total panic in her voice. “Home,” he said wearily.
“You’re just going to leave me here?”
Princess Carlyne, or what he knew of her anyway, was a strong, independent, very capable woman. Carly Fortune wasn’t so different. Look at what she’d managed to do to his life in only a few weeks. “I think you can manage,” he said.
“I want to go home with you.”
“No.”
“You have my things.”
Well, hell. “Fine.” Purposefully distancing himself, he stood back to let her go first. He didn’t touch the small of her back as they walked out of the café he’d never forget. He didn’t so much as smile when she looked at him over her shoulder. He did hold open the car door, but he did it politely, and he didn’t kiss her as she got into the car, though she was close enough, and just an hour ago he would have.
She tried to stop him, put a hand on his arm. He quivered at her touch and shrugged her off.
“Sean—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Carly. Or should I say Princess?” Disgusted with both of them, he shoved the door closed.
They drove home in utter silence. His life would never be the same, and the pathetic thing was, he had no one to blame but himself.
11
MRS. TRYKOWSKI greeted them with a smile that faded as soon as she saw Sean’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Thank you for tonight,” he said, ignoring her question. He pulled some money out of his pocket, but the older woman shook her head, refusing to take it.
“I don’t want money for watching your darling niece.” Slowly, she divided a glance between Sean and Carlyne, who wanted to die of mortification because she knew exactly how she looked.
Like a circus performer.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Trykowski said with a sigh. “The jig is up, huh, dear?”
Carlyne gaped at her. “You knew?”
“I have eyes in my head, don’t I?” Turning to Sean, she lifted a finger and wagged it in his face. “And if you search your heart, you’ll realize it doesn’t matter, Seany, my boy. She’s still a ten, and she’s still the one for you. So don’t you go doing something stupid now.”
“Wait. She’s the one who lied, and you’re getting mad at me?”
“You’re the male, aren’t you?” With a secret smile aimed at Carlyne, she left.
Leaving Carlyne alone with Sean. She was so cold. Cold and sad. Oh, and destroyed, let’s not forget that, because in one foolish move she’d blown her chance for anything and everything she’d ever wanted.
She started to shake, though whether it was the chill, her wet clothes or grief, she hadn’t a clue.
Sean took one look at her, one really long look from head to toe. It was a look that might have made her melt with longing only a couple of hours ago, except all that heat she’d come to know had turned to quiet fury.
“Go change,” he said roughly, then turned away.
Her clothes weighed a ton, but she hadn’t explained, they hadn’t talked. Without knowing how to make this right, she followed him.
He went into Melissa’s bedroom. Kneeling by the bed, he reached out and smoothed the little girl’s covers, then gently touched her cheek.
Carlyne couldn’t see his expression, but there was tenderness pouring from him. Tenderness and tension.
Tension she’d given him.
Standing, he brushed past her and moved out of the room.
She caught up with him in the hallway. “Sean.”
Shocking her, he stopped, and she wondered how to begin. “We need to talk about it.”
Jaw tight, face grim, he sighed. “You’re shaking, dammit.”
“Because I’m afraid.”
A frown curved his mout
h downward. “Not of me. I would never hurt you.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Don’t.” His eyes closed, and she briefly glimpsed a world of pain behind his controlled temper. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
But she needed to. Needed to tell him how she’d meant to come clean sooner but hadn’t known how, needed to tell him how much she cared about him. “I—” A terrible bone-shaking tremor struck her, and she had to clamp her mouth shut, wrapping her arms around herself.
Sean turned away. “Go to bed, Carly. Princess,” he corrected immediately. “You can wait until morning to leave.”
But she couldn’t move.
“Go on,” he said harshly, and when she looked at him, he swore the hallway blue. He stalked toward her and swung her into his arms. Without a word, he strode into his bedroom, his arms taut and quivering with tension.
Or maybe it was her quivering.
Both miserable and in heaven, she laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted—”
“Save it.” He practically dropped her to the bathroom floor in his rush to get his hands off her. “You’re frozen solid.” He flicked on the hot water. “Get in the shower and warm the hell up.”
She stared at the steaming shower, everything blurring because of the tears she refused to shed. She’d brought this on herself. There was no one else to blame.
Somehow she’d broken all her rules. She’d fallen in love with Melissa. She’d fallen in love with Sean, a man who represented every part of every fairy tale she’d ever told herself. He was strong and independent with a sense of humor and a mind of his own. A man who might have even loved her back—as Carly.
How ironic was that? She’d finally found herself locked in Carly’s persona, and now that woman was gone, as well. Now she was a woman halfway between. A woman who would be happy to spend the rest of her life this way, with a small, intimate family who loved her. Her.
“Get in the shower, Princess.”
“Carly,” she whispered.
“Carlyne.”
“I want to be Carly.” She tried to unzip her sweater, but her fingers were shaking so badly it took her a moment to get a good grip.