by Bella Andre
But that didn't make sense. Not when the last time he'd seen her, they'd been having a picnic beneath the big oak tree and things had never felt better. So good, in fact, that he'd finally realized he was in love with her.
"So," Drake said to Kerry after they'd found an empty booth and ordered, "how did you two meet? Something to do with Rafe and Brooke's wedding? Or did you already know each other?"
The question was innocent enough, pretty much what anyone would have asked after seeing Kerry and Adam walking into the popular cocktail bar together. But by the way Kerry flushed, he knew she didn't see it that way. All because they had a suite waiting for them upstairs, one of many they'd made secret love in throughout the city.
"We didn't know each other beforehand," Kerry replied. "But Adam is helping to build a gazebo on the beach for the wedding, which I really appreciate."
"Am I getting in the way of you two getting down to business?"
Adam was about to say yes when Kerry said, "No. We've actually finished planning the gaz--" If she was trying to make it look like this was a business meeting, she stopped herself a little too late. She picked up the drink that had just been delivered and gulped half of it down.
Where was his calm and collected wedding planner? Had Colleen's news really thrown her off this much? Was being seen together by one of his relatives freaking her out?
Or was something else going on?
"Kerry and I hit it off when we started working on the gazebo," Adam told his cousin. "So well, in fact, that I'm now also working with her to restore a house she just purchased."
"Right, the house!" Kerry put in gratefully. "We always need to meet to talk about the house." As if she realized that she was acting a little strangely, she quickly asked Drake, "Am I remembering right that you have three siblings?"
"A sister and two brothers," he confirmed.
"How's everyone doing?" Adam asked as he reached for Kerry's hand under the table.
"Same as always," Drake said. "Alec is busy building his planes, Suzanne is busy with her computers, and Harrison is busy with his academic research. Dad is still painting rings around me, of course."
"I'm really looking forward to meeting all of them at the wedding," Kerry said. "Although I keep thinking my biggest job all weekend is going to be keeping everyone's names straight between your relatives in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Maine."
Drake laughed. "We Sullivans definitely know how to take over a country, that's for sure. I'll put in a vote for name tags," he joked, "and that way I won't forget any names, either." His phone rang then, and even though he clearly wanted to ignore it, he said, "I'm sorry, I need to take this."
As soon as his cousin stepped away from the table, Kerry pulled her hands from Adam's and said, "He thinks we're a couple."
"The way he was flirting with you makes me wonder if he does."
But she shook her head. "You've got to tell him we aren't. You've got to tell him we really were just meeting to talk about the plans for my house. Otherwise, he might say something to someone in your family, and then they'll--"
"Sorry about that."
Drake sat down, cutting Kerry off before Adam could find out what exactly she thought his family would do if they thought he was dating Rafe's wedding planner.
A beat later, Kerry slid from her seat. "Thank you for the drink. It really was lovely to meet you, Drake, but I'm sure you two would like to catch up without me before your meeting." She was talking too fast, her cheeks too flushed, her eyes looking everywhere but at Adam. "I've actually got to head out now to take care of some business I forgot about, so, Adam, I think it would be best if we rescheduled our meeting for another time."
"Kerry--" He was already halfway out of his seat when she put up her hand to stop him.
"No." She swallowed hard. "I really can't stay." Her skin flushed an even deeper rose as she shook her head. "Not tonight." And then she was spinning around on her sky-high heels and heading out of the bar in a flash of long legs and silky hair.
Drake looked from Kerry's retreating back to Adam. "What the hell is going on with you two? At first I thought you were an item, but now I'm getting some pretty mixed messages."
Hard-core frustration rode Adam as he said, "It's complicated right now."
But hopefully it wouldn't be for long. Because even if she'd just said she didn't want to talk to him tonight, he wasn't planning to wait. Still, he couldn't forget her request. Couldn't ignore how serious she'd looked as she made it.
"Look, Drake, I'd appreciate it if you could keep seeing Kerry and me together to yourself for now."
His cousin raised an eyebrow. "So you're not a couple?"
They were. She just didn't know it yet.
Instead of answering Drake's question, Adam threw some money down on the table. And when Drake said, "Good luck," it was clear that he thought Adam was going to need it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
What had she been thinking?
The question kept running through Kerry's head, over and over and over again, while she sat in the back of the cab that took her back to her house. Normally, she appreciated the peace and quiet of her home--but when she stepped inside tonight, she didn't feel at all relaxed.
How could she relax the slightest bit when she knew this wasn't even close to being the end of a day that had begun badly and gotten worse by the second? Though she'd left him sitting with his cousin in the hotel's cocktail bar, Adam Sullivan wasn't the kind of man who did what someone else told him to do when he didn't agree with it.
And it had been perfectly clear to her that he hadn't wanted her to leave.
It was bad enough that she had to break things off with him. But to run into his cousin in the hotel lobby and have Drake clearly think they were a couple right before she did it?
Had she really thought there would be no tears shed for Adam Sullivan? What a fool she'd been...
She closed her front door behind her and put her head in her hands. There was no point in locking it, she knew. Not when--
Adam's knock came at the same time as he said, "Kerry, let me in."
As she turned to open the door, she couldn't stop herself from bracing as if for battle. And from the look on Adam's face, he was clearly itching for one.
She decided not to pretend nothing was wrong. There was no point even trying to do that with Adam when he was one of the most direct people she'd ever known.
"I know you're angry with me." The second she'd asked him to explain to his cousin that they weren't really a couple, she'd seen the frustration move across his face. Frustration that seemed to have amped up several levels since then.
Now, she struggled to make herself say the words she needed to say. It's over. We can't do this anymore. It's been fun, but I can't get in any deeper with you.
But none of them would come, even though he was walking inside and closing her door behind him. The sound was loud enough with her already brittle nerves to make her jump.
He looked worried, then frustrated again as he ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not angry with you, Kerry. I'm angry with the whole damned situation. With continuing to play this game."
Finally, her tongue came unstuck. "It's not a game, it's an agreement. An agreement we made together."
"Call it whatever you want," he said as his brows came down low over his dark eyes, "we need to change it."
Surprise came first--surprise that he'd want to change what she'd assumed would be most guys' perfect arrangement with a willing woman.
And then, close on its heels, came longing. A desperate longing to have a real relationship with Adam.
But then, a beat later, panic swept in. Panic that gripped her just as tightly as longing did.
"No." She needed to take a step back from him, needed to have more space between them to be able to say, "We can't change it."
Even as his frown deepened at her refusal, she watched stubborn determination light in his beautiful eyes. Eyes that she'd f
elt were seeing all the way into her when they were making love and he was taking her to places she'd never even dreamed existed.
"Yes," he said in just as firm a tone as her no had been. "We sure as hell can change it. We don't need to sneak around anymore. We don't need to pretend to my family--or yours--that we're not an important part of each other's lives. We don't need to do things like ask my cousin not to tell anyone that he saw us together, or have you jump out of my arms when your mother finds us dancing."
"Why are you saying this? Why would you want this?"
"Kerry." He moved closer again, reaching out to stroke her cheek. "You know why. You know why I want to take a chance on you. Because you want to take a chance on me, too."
"No." Her voice sounded strangled as she repeated the two-letter word. "My mother took a chance on a guy like you and ended up all alone with two babies. My sister took a chance on a guy like you and drank herself into worse and worse situations every weekend until he finally deigned to come back home to her for a little while."
"Do you really think I'm like those guys?" He looked disgusted by the thought. "Don't you know me at all by now?"
"Of course I know you, Adam. You're a great person. You're a great friend. But you'll never be relationship material. You were the one who was totally clear with me from the first moment about not wanting a relationship. About not wanting a girlfriend, or God forbid, a wife."
"Well, maybe I've changed my mind!"
"Maybe?" His voice had boomed out across her foyer, where they were still standing, but so did hers as she shot the word back at him and whirled out of his arms. "That's exactly why I've tried to be so careful not to fall in love with you. Because I refuse to ever be any man's maybe!"
He reached for her again, even as she moved farther away. "I said the wrong word, Kerry."
"No, you said exactly what you think. What you feel. And I'm glad you did, because I've never wanted the two of us to lie to each other."
"Then we'd better not lie about this."
Before she could blink or breathe or move, he kissed her again. And then again and again, until her head was spinning from the taste and feel and wonder of him.
When he finally dragged his mouth from hers, his voice was raw as he said, "There's no maybe about the heat between us."
She stared into his eyes, dilated to an even darker brown now, and admitted, "I know." But focusing on the ridiculous amounts of heat they'd always generated together wouldn't help get them back on level ground. So she made herself push the heat back, and bring the prudence that she'd always lived her life by until meeting Adam back into the forefront again.
"Meeting your cousin at the hotel tonight really drove home the point that things can't be weird between us at the wedding next week. So I think it's for the best that we end things as friends. Friends who had great sex for a little while. But in the end, just friends. And since you'll be heading up to the lake this weekend to work on the gazebo, it's probably best if we just end that part of our relationship now."
He didn't say anything for a few long moments, and she thought that maybe he would let her go. And then she could shut the door behind him and let the tears she was holding back fall for everything she was making herself give up in the name of protecting her heart.
"I am your friend, Kerry. I'll always be your friend." He tightened his hold on her. "But I'm also in love with you."
Oh God, how could she have been more wrong? He hadn't been planning to let her go. Instead, he'd planned to pull out every card he could possibly play.
Even the last-resort love card.
"You don't--" Her heart wasn't beating right, and her breath couldn't quite make it in and out of her lungs. "You don't love me."
"Yes, I do. I love you, Kerry. I was planning to tell you tonight. Not like this, though. I was going to tell you when we were up in our suite, with champagne, when I thought everything was going to be perfect. And when I thought--" It was the first time she'd ever seen him look even the slightest bit vulnerable. "I thought you were going to say it back to me. I thought this was going to be our new beginning."
Again, she could barely find words, couldn't manage anything but shaking her head and saying, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, just love me back, damn it!" The force behind his words hit her so hard she was surprised she didn't fly back into the living room. "You do love for a living. How can you not know? Can you really not see? And are you really still that scared that I'll turn out to be like your father or like Colleen's boyfriend?"
She wanted to tell him she wasn't scared. But that wasn't true, so she told him what was. "I'm just being realistic."
"How the hell do you call refusing to believe that I love you realistic?"
"What you think you're feeling for me right now--it will fade. And when it does, you'll still be the man who told me flat-out that he's not looking for forever with anyone."
"I wasn't looking for forever. But then I met you and everything changed. You've got to believe me. You just said it--I've never lied to you."
So much of what he was saying was making sense. And yet, what if she let herself believe that the reformed rake was real--and then it turned out that his declarations tonight were simply coming from a thwarted urge to claim her in front of his cousin? Or were the crazy-hot hormones from their kiss talking? Or was it simply the fact that she was the only woman who had ever challenged or said no to him?
When she didn't say anything--all her thoughts were way too jumbled to be able to straighten them out into words--he said, "I know you've never lied to me, so I'm just going to ask you one more question tonight. Do you love me, Kerry?"
She swallowed hard. It had all seemed so simple at first. They were just going to have sex. It was going to be fun and exciting. And mean nothing.
But nothing had turned into everything from their very first kiss. From the first time he'd held her in his arms. From the first time she'd looked into his dark, intense eyes and been helpless to look away.
She couldn't stop her tears from falling. "Maybe." More tears fell, fast and hot down her cheeks. "Maybe," she said again, the only word she could get out.
He'd never touched her more gently than when he wiped away her tears, smiled down at her, and said softly, "You're not a maybe kind of woman. Just the way you once told me I'm not a maybe kind of man."
Her brain was in tangles, and her heart was in tatters. Still, she tried to hold on to the one thing she'd promised herself, and Adam, that they wouldn't ruin.
"Are we--" It was hard to talk past the tears clogging her throat. "Are we still friends?"
"Yes." He didn't pause, didn't need to think about it for even a split second. "Always."
Relief flooded her. Relief that she hadn't ruined everything after all.
"I'll always be your friend, too," she told him. "Always."
And as they stood facing each other in her foyer, it finally hit her that they'd had their last time together already...and she hadn't even known it. Hadn't had a chance to savor every last moment in his arms.
Regret swamped her. Regret so strong it was like a physical pain slamming straight into the center of her chest.
Just weeks ago, she'd found herself standing in front of him and saying, One night. Now--too soon--she found herself saying, "One last time."
She was too lost in her own emotions to be able to read his clearly. But he didn't keep her guessing for long, not when his arms were around her by the time she took her next breath--which he promptly stole from her with a kiss that made her knees buckle. And just as he'd always been before, he was right there to catch her. He swept her up into his arms, his mouth never leaving hers, not for a single second, as he carried her into her bedroom and stripped away their clothes.
Their kisses never stopped as he sent her reeling first with his hands, and then came over her and drove her up so high she would have been gasping for oxygen if she hadn't been able to take it straight from his lungs.
&nbs
p; Never again would she know this pleasure.
Never again would she know the sweet sensation of his mouth on hers.
Never again would she feel his hands molding her curves as if he were sculpting them.
Never again would she look up to see him above her in bed, his eyes going darker and darker as he took them both higher and higher.
Never again would he tangle his fingers in her hair as he kissed her while fireworks exploded between them.
Never again would she fall asleep in his arms, warm and safe and impossibly happy.
Never, ever again...
*
Adam had heard every word Kerry had said before she told him she wanted one last time with him. But he couldn't believe any of them. Wouldn't let himself believe she meant them.
They couldn't be ending everything right when they'd just begun. Even if she was utterly certain it had to be so. Even if she had a reason, an argument for everything. Not even if her reasons and arguments made sense.
Some things didn't make sense, but that didn't mean they weren't right. It didn't mean they weren't meant to be.
And it didn't mean they shouldn't last forever and ever. Past that, even.
Adam had refused to let himself memorize her with his hands as they made love. He hadn't let himself drink in her scent as if it were the very last time he'd ever be this close to her again. He'd fought the desperation to take her again and again so that she'd be left with the imprint of his body on hers, in hers.
Because this wasn't the end, damn it.
Tonight he'd hoped--assumed--that he could convince her to change their arrangement. He'd thought that tonight would be the night when she'd officially become his girlfriend and he'd be her boyfriend. He'd thought that when he said the words I love you that he'd immediately hear her saying them back to him.
But he'd never been so off base, never miscalculated so badly before. And now he needed to regroup, needed to figure out what the hell to do next, so that she would come back to him. Come back and see just how much she meant to him.