Beach Reads Boxed Set

by Marie Force

  “How you manage to eat the way you do and not gain a pound I’ll never understand.”

  With a big grin, he said, “Metabolism, baby.” He reached for a book on the coffee table. “The Grapes of Wrath? Are you reading this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  She laughed. “It is a classic, you know.”

  “I read it in college.”

  “So am I.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “You’re finishing school?”

  “Uh huh. I took this semester off because of the wedding, but I should be done by the end of the year. The Grapes of Wrath is on the reading list for next semester, so I figured I’d get a jump on it.”

  “That’s great, Susie. I always felt so bad about you leaving school to marry me.”

  “We said I’d go back, but it didn’t quite work out the way we planned, did it?”

  He smiled. “Nothing did.”

  “The minute you signed on the dotted line with the Mavs, everything got so insane.”

  “It was exciting, though, wasn’t it?”

  “When I wasn’t terrified, I guess it was exciting.”

  “Why were you terrified? I don’t remember that.”

  She shrugged. “We had just gotten married. I wanted to settle in and nest, but we had nonstop obligations, events, fund-raisers, fans, security, money. So much money. It was mind-boggling. I was so afraid you’d forget you had a wife or you’d forget to come home.”

  “I never did, though, did I?”

  “You never forgot to come home.”

  “I never forgot I had a wife, either,” he said emphatically.

  “Never?”

  “Not once. Ever.”

  Susannah studied him. “All those women, Ryan, throwing themselves at you everywhere you went. You’re going to tell me you didn’t ever, you know...”

  “I was never unfaithful to you. Never. Not once. I never thought about it. I never considered it. I never did it. I still haven’t.”

  “You’re not serious,” she said, snorting with disbelief. “We broke up more than a year ago. In all that time—”

  “There’s been no one else.”

  She shook her head. “I know you. I know what you...need. I find that very hard to believe.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “There were rumors when we were still together,” she said quietly.

  His face turned as stormy as the weather. “Whatever you heard, none of it was true.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. “You can believe the gossipmongers or you can believe your own husband.”

  Susannah was torn. She wanted so badly to believe him, but there was a nagging doubt deep inside that left her chilled. She must have shivered because he reached for her. The moment she was close to him she was warm again.

  He kissed the top of her head. “I have something for you.”

  “You do?” She tipped her head back so she could see him.

  “Stay put. I’ll be right back.” He eased himself up, went down the hall to the bedroom, and returned with a small box wrapped in red foil paper.

  Puzzled, she asked, “Where did you get that?”

  “I’ve had it for a while. I saw it in a window in Houston, and I’ve been hoping I’d get the chance to give it to you.” He handed it to her. “Open it.”

  She tore open the paper to find a jeweler’s box. Inside was a charm: the number ten, encrusted with diamonds. “Ryan...”

  “Our anniversary was a big one, and we were technically still married.” He sat down next to her by the fire and put his arm around her. “I forgot a lot of important stuff when we were together, unforgivable things. But I wanted you to know I remembered our tenth anniversary, even though we weren’t together for it.”

  Susannah rested her head on her knees and wept.

  Ryan tipped his head into the groove of her shoulder and rubbed her back.

  “I have no idea what to do with this new and improved Ryan.”

  “I could offer a couple of suggestions if that would help.”

  Lifting her head off her knees, she smiled and fingered the delicate charm. “I stayed home alone on our anniversary. I didn’t see anyone or take any calls. I stayed in my pajamas all day.”

  “I came up here and went for a long hike. I wanted so badly to call you. I should have. But things had gotten so hostile between us. I wanted to tell you I was sorry and beg you for another chance, but I didn’t think that was the day to do it.”

  “I wanted to call you, too,” she confessed. “You were the only one I wanted to talk to that day. I don’t know what I would’ve said. I just...I missed you.”

  He brought her into his arms.

  She rested her head on his chest. “Thank you for this, and thank you for remembering,” she said, admiring the charm again. “I’ll add it to my bracelet.”

  “I was going to get you something bigger, something more significant...”

  “No, this is perfect. There’s nothing else I’d rather have.” She returned the charm to the box and put it on the table. “It’ll also remind me of ten crazy days one February.”

  “Ten days that were maybe the start of something new?”

  Raising her head to look at him, she said, “Maybe.”

  He kissed her with a passion and a thoroughness that took them both by surprise. She was startled to realize the almost chemical attraction they always had for each other had grown and intensified during their long separation. His tongue tangled with hers, and the taste that was so uniquely his only fueled her desire for more. When she slid her hand into the back of his jeans, he moaned and tumbled down on top of her.

  Without breaking the kiss, he filled his hands with her breasts and pushed his erection into the V of her legs. He tore his lips free of hers and dragged in several deep breaths. “Susie,” he sighed. “God, I want you. I want you more than I ever have before.”

  With a coy smile, she lifted her hips to press against his pulsing erection. “I know. I can tell.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment before he dipped his head and reclaimed her lips. What had been frantic now became soft and sensual. The air was electric with the sounds of wet mouths, urgent moans, the crackling of the fire, and the howl of the wind. The lights flickered once, twice, and then went dark.

  Ryan lifted his head. “Well,” he said with the dimpled grin that made her knees weak. “Isn’t this romantic?”

  She laughed and brought him back down to her. “You planned this.”

  “You’re damned right I did.” He kissed her cheeks, her nose, and her chin.

  By the time he made it back to her lips, Susannah was desperate for him. Forgetting about his injuries, she held him tight, and he winced. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine,” he whispered against her lips as he tugged at her sweater. “Take this off.”

  She sat up, aware she was about to cross a line. But she wasn’t thinking about Henry or their engagement at that moment. No, her every thought and emotion belonged to Ryan. His eyes, hot with desire, devoured her as he waited breathlessly to see if she would do what he had asked. He ran his tongue over his lips as he waited, waited. Finally, his patience ran out, and he reached over to do it himself. The sweater sailed over her head and landed on the sofa.

  Trailing her fingers over his chest, she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it aside. The hair on his muscular chest and washboard stomach was bright gold in the firelight. “Ry,” she whispered when she uncovered the horrible bruises above and below the tape on his ribs. “I’m afraid to touch you.”

  “I won’t break.”

  Careful to steer clear of his midsection, she caressed his chest. Even bruised and battered, he was magnificent. His nipples stood at attention as she nuzzled through the soft hair to run her tongue over one of them.

  He lay back on the floor, exhaled a long deep breath, and closed his eyes. “Once won’t be enough,” he said. “You know that, right?”
>
  “Hmm?” she asked, intent on what she was doing to his nipple.

  “Susie...” With his hands on her face, he found her eyes. “If you make love with me and then go back to him, you’ll ruin me.”

  His words were like a blast of cold air. She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair.

  He reached for her. “Come back.”

  She lay down next to him, resting her head on his chest.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s going to get cold in here if the power doesn’t come back on. We’ll have to sleep by the fire.”

  “We’ve done it before.”

  “I’m going to hook up the generator for the fridge.” He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “Nah, I’ve got it.”

  “Watch those ribs.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he said with a teasing smile as he buttoned his shirt and pulled on his boots. Before he got up, he kissed her. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I won’t.”

  Susannah curled up to watch the fire. If he hadn’t stopped me, we’d be making love right now. She didn’t often think of Ryan as being vulnerable, but he had shown her more with one simple statement than he had during all the bigger, deeper subjects they had covered during the course of that extraordinary day.

  The firelight reflected off her engagement ring, and she realized she hadn’t thought of Henry in hours. In fact, she rarely thought of him when she wasn’t with him. She loved Henry, but she wasn’t in love with him. She couldn’t be because she was still in love with Ryan. This time alone with him had shown her that. Now she had to decide if she had it in her to give him another chance.

  Ryan stomped through the snow to the shed where he kept the gasoline for the generator. “Fucking idiot,” he muttered under his breath. “You could be in there with her right now. Why’d you have to stop her?”

  She never had fully appreciated the hold she had over him. He’d often suspected she was waiting for him to grow tired of her and move on to one of the ever-present groupies who followed the team from city to city. But he’d never grown tired of her. If anything, he had grown so dependent on her that when she left him he’d been completely lost without her.

  He had told himself at the start of his ten-day campaign that he would do anything it took to get her back. But he’d discovered today he had limits, and now he wanted to shoot himself for showing her that she rendered him defenseless. Somewhere in the course of discussing the son they lost, the anniversary they missed, and the life they shared, the stakes had gone up. Ryan was even more convinced that if she left him for good he wouldn’t survive it.

  Chapter 10

  They cooked hotdogs in the fireplace and opened a bottle of red wine. After he polished off his third hot dog, Ryan pushed the sofa closer to the fire. Just six feet from the fireplace, the cabin was freezing. Susannah snuggled under a heavy blanket and picked up her book to read by the firelight. Ryan reached for his guitar but stuck his feet under the other end of her blanket.

  “Do you take requests?” she asked with a smile after she listened to him for a long time.

  “Depends on who’s asking.”

  She chuckled.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “Anything by The Eagles.”

  He played a song she hadn’t heard before, called “No More Cloudy Days,” that was all about second chances and new romances.

  “I like that,” Susannah said softly.

  “You’re supposed to be reading.”

  “I’d rather listen to you. You’ve gotten really good.”

  “I’ve had lots of time to practice.” He played “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” which he knew was her favorite song by The Eagles. The concert continued with a slice of “American Pie,” a bit of Toby Keith, and ended with a blast of Kiss that had her howling with laughter.

  “Hot dogs and Kiss,” she said, recovering from the laughing fit. “Just another night with my millionaire husband.”

  He kept his eyes fixed on her as he continued to strum the guitar, singing along to a tune of his own creation. “She called me her husband, so I have to believe, she loves me enough not to leave. She looks at me with eyes so blue, and I love her more than I ever knew.”

  He was three feet from her, but he touched her everywhere. “Maybe you’d better not quit your Sunday job after all,” she said in a dry attempt to hide her true feelings.

  “Are you implying my dream of a second career as a songwriter is a nonstarter?” he asked, feigning offense.

  “Pretty much.”

  “You liked it.”

  She shrugged with pretend boredom. “It was all right.”

  Laughing, he put down the guitar and tunneled under the blanket to her end of the sofa. He popped out and rested his head on her leg. “Read to me.”

  “You’ve already read it,” she reminded him.

  “I can’t remember. Come on. Read it to me.”

  “All right. If you insist.”

  He shifted onto his good side, and Susannah combed her fingers through his hair absently. Absorbed in the story, she didn’t notice when he released the bottom two buttons of her denim shirt. Her words got stuck when he pressed his lips to the skin he had uncovered.

  “Keep reading,” he whispered as he opened two more buttons and kissed her breasts through her bra.

  She clutched a handful of his hair. “Ry...What’re you doing?”

  “I was listening to you read, but then you stopped.”

  “I can’t read when you’re doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  Overwhelmed by him, she was gentle but insistent when she pushed him away. “Let me up. I want to get changed.”

  He sat up slowly, favoring his injured side.

  Susannah dashed down the dark hallway to the guest bedroom and made quick work of changing into a flannel nightgown and heavy socks. She was shivering by the time she went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. No more than five minutes later she returned to find that Ryan had inflated the air mattress they used on the rare weekends when they invited friends to join them at the cabin.

  “Come on, blue lips,” he said, lifting a blanket.

  She grabbed her book as she lay down on the mattress.

  He layered the blankets on top of her. “Good?”

  She nodded. “Thanks,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “There should be enough hot water for a quick shower,” he said when he finished building up the fire. “Get that bed warmed up for me.”

  Susannah planned to read but found she was too cold to do anything but burrow deeper under the covers. Over and over she relived what he’d said earlier: If you make love to me and then go back to him, you’ll ruin me. You’ll ruin me. Since she still didn’t know if she was ready or able to reconcile with Ryan, she was fearful of getting too close to him until she decided for certain. Still puzzling it over, she dozed off. She woke up when Ryan crawled in with her wearing only a pair of sweats. Since he usually slept nude, the sweats were a major concession to the cold.

  “It’s really coming down out there,” he whispered as he curled around her. “We might be stuck here for weeks.”

  “All part of your evil plan,” she said with a yawn. He felt so good and so warm that she put her arm around him and discovered the tape was gone from his ribs. “You unwrapped them? Can you do that?”

  “It was starting to itch.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Now it’s more like a toothache than a heart attack.”

  “Did it really hurt that much?”

  “Worse than anything ever has...except for losing you, of course.”

  “Cute.”

  “You think I’m kidding.”

  She found his eyes in the amber light and discovered he wasn’t kidding. “Ry,” she said with a sigh.

  He brought her even clo
ser to him and kissed her.

  “We can’t,” she said. “What you said earlier...I haven’t decided anything yet, and until I do...I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “About four seconds after I said that I decided I’m willing to risk it.”

  “But what,” she stammered. “What if...”

  “What if it never stops snowing and we’re stuck here forever?” He trailed soft kisses on her neck. “What if? What if? How about we talk about what is?

  “And what’s that?”

  “Well, let’s see.” He sprinkled kisses on her face, seeming to avoid her mouth on purpose. “There’s you, and me, and this dark, cold cabin, and this nice fire. It seems silly to let all this atmosphere go to waste, don’t you think?”

  As she listened to him, she caressed the rippling muscles on his back. His lips hovered over hers, but she turned her face away. “Wait, Ry.”

  “What, baby?”

  “I just don’t want you to think if we, you know, do this, that it means...”

  “All it means is we want to make love. You’re still my wife, Susie.”

  “But I’m also—”

  “Don’t say it.” His eyes were dark and fixed on her. “Do not say that.”

  She reached for him.

  His lips came down on hers and swept away any final doubts that she was exactly where she belonged. Everything about him was familiar, yet it was new, too. This wasn’t the same man she’d wanted to divorce. He wasn’t the same man she’d decided she could easier live without than try to live with. Which Ryan would she get if she agreed to stay with him? That uncertainty still nagged at her. But when he reached for the hem of her nightgown, sat her up, and swept it over her head, she ceased to think of anything but him.

  “Oh, Susie, is that from the EpiPen?” he asked, smoothing his hand over the fist-sized bruise on her thigh.

  She trembled from both the chill and the heat of his gaze. “Yeah.”

  He replaced his hand with his lips. “I hate that I did that to you.”

  “You saved my life. I think I can forgive you for a little bruise.”

  “It’s a big bruise.”

  “It’s nothing compared to all of yours.” She ran her hands over his arms. “Are you comfortable up there?”