All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (40 page)

“Ignore it,” Richard muttered. “Wrong number.”

And he bent his head and feasted on her breast.

The ringing stopped after four rings. She turned her face into his shoulder. “I want you to—”

The phone rang again.

“Damn it!” He lifted himself from her. “Sorry,” and he reached for the bedside extension. “It might be Julie—“

“It’s all right,” she whispered, and stroked his leg even as he lifted the receiver.

But no, not Julie.

She had the first premonition when he snapped, “Not now, Lucy!” Oh, heavens, what horrible timing. If Lucy only knew – but she couldn’t, not even Lucy could know what she had interrupted. She felt suddenly aware of her position, wantonly splayed there on his quilt, without shame, without pride, his own private courtesan. She sneaked a look. He was definitely still aroused – now, if Lucy would just say what she had to say and get off the phone—

They needed this, they desperately needed this. They needed the release of each other.

Then he handed the phone to her, and the night was over.

“Hello?” She didn’t even sound like herself. Richard was sitting on the side of the bed, his back to her, a man trying hard to bring himself under control.

“Laurie.” Her sister had the grace to sound embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t – look, I had to call you. I have Meg on the other line.”

“Meg!” Laura sat up abruptly. “What’s happened?”

Lucy exhaled. “Okay, just a second – I’m not very good with this three-way calling thing – she tried to call you at home, but you didn’t answer, and your cell isn’t working. You’re lucky – is this the button you push, Tom? – she remembered my name. Okay, I’m going to try to connect you. Hold on.”

Laura pushed herself up against the pillows at the headboard. Oh, Lord, this must be a foretaste of purgatory. She was about to talk to her daughter, and she was lying here in her lover’s bedroom, in her lover’s bed, only barely covered by a denim skirt riding up around her waist. She reached for the edge of the quilt and pulled it over herself. It didn’t matter that Meg couldn’t see her. She had to shift back into modest-mother mode fast.

She had to forget that, seconds before, her lover had been inside her body, that she ached from him, that she wanted him there still, desperately.

“Mom?”

She forced herself to sound calm. “Hi, honey. What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“Um….”

“Did you and Cindy have a fight?”

Of all the times for a teenage falling-out.

Silence, and then Meg said, “It’s not Cindy. Mom, don’t be mad at me, okay?”

She felt the first presentiment that the world was about to change. “Mad at you for what?”

A foreboding silence. Then, “You’re going to be so mad. You’re going to ground me. But I had to do it.”

She heard a voice in the background, a disembodied voice that she had heard many times before.
Announcing the arrival of Flight 943
… She held her breath. “Do what?”

“I ran away, Mom.” Meg took a deep breath and then said, “I’m at the airport in Richmond. Can you – can you come get me?”

Chapter 12: Confession

“I DO NOT NEED YOU TO COME WITH ME!” Laura was flying around the room, pulling herself back together, diving to the floor to search for her shoes. “I can do this myself. I don’t need your help. God, I am going to
kill
that kid.”

Richard watched her frantic behavior while he methodically redressed. The shirt she had thrown on the floor, his running shoes – his glasses that he must have tossed on the chest of drawers at some point. “No,” he said, “you’re not. Going alone, that is. I won’t interfere in the punishment phase.”

Punishment that he wouldn’t mind dishing out to Miss St. Bride himself. Damn it, if she had just waited another five minutes – but he dragged his mind back from what she had interrupted, made himself think like a father rather than a lover who had just been thwarted at the critical juncture.

That they had desperately needed each other was beside the point. A thirteen-year-old girl was sitting in an airport by herself in the middle of the night.

“I think I can manage to drive to the airport to get my daughter.” Laura’s tone was mulish. “Just take me home so I can get my car. I’ll take it from there.”

“Be reasonable.” At that, she looked even more stubborn. He saw her mentally digging in her heels. “There’s a driving rain out there with rising water. The airport’s fifty miles from here.”

“So what?” She pulled her shirt over her head. “You think I can’t drive that far alone? I drove halfway across the country
by myself
not three weeks ago—”

He squelched a flare of irritation. The last thing either of them needed right now, while they were still reeling from unresolved emotion and intense sexual frustration, was a pointless blow-up. “Where’s the airport in Richmond? North, south, east, west? What exit do you take?”

She glared at him. She really had her back up now. “I’ll figure it out. I can read a map. I’m sure there are signs. Just take me home.”

“Laura—”

“No, Richard!” She sliced through his objection swiftly. “This is between me and
my daughter
. I don’t need you along.”

He stepped in front of her and gave her a direct look down from his superior height. He wasn’t above using that right now. “Why?” he asked. “Is there a reason you don’t want me to meet her?”

Just tell me, Laura. Tell me, and get it over with.

That stopped her dead in her tracks. He watched in interest as
I can’t let him see her
warred with
now what do I do
. Her eyes fell, and she swallowed. “No,” and now she sounded more subdued. “No reason. It’s just – this isn’t the best time. I’m going to ground that kid for life. You don’t need to see this.”

Oh, so now she was protecting him from Meg’s unruly behavior, was she? “Miss you flattening your daughter? I want a ringside seat.” He smothered amusement by turning around and scooping up a money clip. He caught a look at her reflection in the mirror and then had no trouble erasing his smile. “You’re not going looking like that, are you?”

“What?” Laura stared at him, nonplussed. “What’s wrong with the way I look?”

What was wrong was that any male she encountered would take one look at her and know exactly what she had been doing. Her eyes looked glazed, her hair was pillow-tousled, her lips had that just-kissed swollenness, and her damp shirt outlined in stark detail the breasts he had feasted on only minutes before. She looked like a woman who had just been thoroughly loved. It was his turn to swallow hard, to keep from falling on her and finishing what had been so definitely interrupted. “Look in the mirror.”

Startled, she peered at herself and tried to straighten her hair. Richard crossed to the chest of drawers and rummaged around for one of his polo shirts. Too big, but she didn’t need anything clinging to her, and neither did he, if he was going to keep his mind on the road. “Here,” he held it out, “an official Ashmore & McIntire shirt. I should have given you one to wear today as my hostess.”

She plucked at her shirt nervously. “I don’t want to take your shirt.”

“I told you,” he said, “you can wear my shirts any time.”

She took his offering. Her voice came muffled as she took off the damp top and pulled the polo shirt over her head. “I left my diaphragm downstairs in my bag.”

Fine time to remember that. He made his voice light as he checked to make sure he had everything he needed. “We didn’t get that far. You’re not worried, are you?”

“No.” Laura crossed her arms over the too-large shirt. “But I thought you didn’t want any just-this-once.”

“I don’t.” He put his cell on his belt. “We’ll be more careful in the future. Ready?”

Downstairs, Laura tried once more. “You really don’t have to do this, Richard—” She dried up at his quelling look. She picked up her bathrobe and started to put it in her overnight case. “I need to hide this in the trunk so Meg doesn’t see it.”

So she expected him to drop her and Meg off at Edwards Lake. That was the prudent thing to do – no awkward explanations for Meg, no chance of Julie coming home early. He’d spent so many years arranging his private life around the need to keep everyone else out of the loop that he found himself automatically planning the sleight-of-hand to get her case back into her house unnoticed. But – he’d wanted her here. Whether she knew it or not, and she probably did because so far she had managed to stay out front of him emotionally, he’d intended to break his long-set pattern. Sleep with her in his bed. Listen to her breathing in the night. Wake up at dawn and see her burrowed under the quilt, her hair spread across the pillow next to him. Fix breakfast with her in his kitchen.

“Leave it.” The words came easily after all. “The power’s still out. I don’t like the idea of a woman and child over there in the dark without an alarm system.”

Laura shook her head. No telling what degree of panic raged behind her eyes at this moment. He felt a profound wave of exasperation. What did she think he was going to do – turn on her, denounce her for stealing his flesh and blood, and scoop Meg away?

Probably not the opportune moment to tell her what a goose she was being.

“Look.” Richard put his hand over hers. “I’ve got plenty of room. You and Meg can have your pick of rooms for the night. I’ve got power, AC, lights – it’s the safest solution for you and your daughter.” He had no compunction about playing on her maternal concern. “She won’t guess anything because there won’t—”
unfortunately
— “be anything for her to guess about.”

Laura looked away, and he would have given a great deal to know what calculations she was making right then. Probably persuading herself that he wouldn’t have a clue – and then the realization hit him hard. For the first time, he was going to set eyes on his child. For the first time, he was going to shelter a child of his body under his roof.

He drew a breath.

“Come on.” He propelled her gently towards the door. “Let’s get going.”

~•~

Once in the car and on the road, they said nothing. He mentally ran through several routes to decide where they were least likely to meet rising water, and then headed northwest to the interstate. The rain wasn’t slackening off – the forecasters hadn’t been kidding when they had said it might foreshadow a nasty hurricane season – and for a time, Richard drove, and Laura thought.

Or she seemed to be thinking. Once he steered the car onto the freeway, he relaxed. Unless accidents slowed them down, they should have a straight shot to the state capital and the airport. He settled back and glanced over at her.

She was staring straight ahead, her profile barely lit by the storm outside, and on the surface, she appeared serene and untroubled. The storms of the night – atmospheric and emotional – might not even have touched her. But he’d have thought that only if he hadn’t noticed the convulsive swallowing in her throat and the nervous movement of her hands in her lap. She caught herself, finally, and he saw her deliberately stretch her hands out along her thighs.

He hoped that she wasn’t twisting herself into knots because he was about to meet Meg.

“We’ll be there in an hour,” he said. “Do you want to call Meg and let her know?”

Laura seemed startled at the suggestion. Then, without a word, she pulled her phone from her bag and pushed some buttons. But nothing happened. After a few seconds, she set the phone down.

“Here.” He pulled his from his belt clip. “Try mine.”

His didn’t work either in the storm. Her silence was beginning to concern him. A driving rainstorm, a defiant and provocative Diana, even a rebellious Julie – although that one had surprised him – he could handle without a thought. Even his argument with Tom, he could shrug away. They’d disagreed before. But this woman was not so easily dealt with.

Stop acting as if you have a choice. You absolutely do not.

And there lay the problem, unresolved, still standing between them. They had each refused to say the words the other wanted to hear.

They were back to where they had been the morning after they had first made love. He knew what she wanted of him – it shone through her eyes, he heard it when she spoke his name, he felt it when she touched his face. She wanted him, heart and soul. And he still didn’t know if he had heart and soul enough to hand over to her.

He could give her the rest of it, though. He could hand her his name and his home; he could hand her back the position in his world that she had lost fourteen years before.

Why not give in and let it happen? Lucy was right –
what happens when this ends?
– there was no good outcome to his relationship with Laura unless he eventually married her. He did not have the option, as with Jennifer, of letting the relationship drift until it finally went nowhere. He’d known for a week that he was heading down a road from which he might not return. Why not go with the flow?

For the same reason that he had ignored the obvious desire of his mother’s heart. He’d known perfectly well, all the time he was courting Diana, that Laura Abbott was the ideal mate for him. She was sweet, docile, loving; she would love and cherish him her entire life. She would give and give; she would demand nothing. He would never doubt her loyalty; he would never suffer her infidelity. He would never wonder, minute to minute, if she had stopped loving him.