Escalation Clause (28 page)

“Don’t call me that,” She looked forlorn and lost, not at all like the in control woman he’d just glimpsed. He wrapped his arms around her, determined to make her understand he did not intend for this to be a quickie, or a one-off or anything but a relationship. Rafe had never in his entire life felt so strongly about another human being as he did right now about Maureen Taylor.

“Okay. Sorry,” he backed away when she remained stiff in his embrace, a sudden tendril of remorse licking at his brain. He took a breath, shoving down his innate need to establish himself as the one in charge of the situation. “I’ll see you when? And I’m ready to talk to the kids too, so they understand.”

“No,” she said, her voice sharp. He took another step back. “I mean, we will but just…not yet.” She walked to his door, then turned.

His heart pounded and every inch of his skin felt clammy. “Okay,” he made himself say. She crooked her finger, and he walked to her slowly, cupped her chin and kissed her neck. “You are amazing. And I am very much not finished with you.”

She nodded. “I’m not finished either. But we…we have to go slow.”

“Whatever you want.” He claimed but not meaning it at all. “Maureen,” he exhaled into her neck, then opened the door behind her and watched her walk to the elevator. She turned at the last minute, making him rip his eyes from the sheer sensuality of her swaying hips. He gulped, took the five steps behind her and swept her into his arms once more. “I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to cope with my very base Latino male, but I do not like you just walking out like this. It feels…cheap and I don’t want that for us.”

She smiled and kissed him, a gentle, slow moving thing that enveloped him completely making him ready to toss her over his shoulder and dump her down on his bed. “You are very convincing. But, I told you, I have all the kids. And I….”

“Let me come with you. Kids love me.” He heard the desperation in his voice and hated it, but he meant every word.

“Oh, Rafe,” she held onto him, put her head on his shoulder, making him feel complete and at peace for the first time in his memory. “I will, I mean, eventually. But all these kids are really going through a lot, and I don’t want to add to the emotional stress level right now.”

He bit back what he wanted to say: “You don’t want your kids to know you’ve had sex with me.” And instead took another long breath and forced himself to smile. “That’s fine. I will wait. But not for long.”

She gave him an odd look then. A bit of frustration, mixed with stubborn, all tossed together with longing—was clear as day. He held on to that, let it soothe him away from impending anger.

“Good night, Rafe. I’ll…talk to you tomorrow.” And she slipped into the elevator without another word.

Rafe stood, staring at the closed doors, listened to the lift ding open downstairs and to the doorman wishing her a good night. His hands hurt. He looked down and saw he had them clenched in fists so tight they were white knuckled.
Rafael Miguel Inez, you need to get your head together. Get a grip, as your American friends say. Because this has the potential to be fantastic or terrible depending on how you handle yourself from here.

Going slow, being cautious, tiptoeing around important family issues, none of that was part of his nature. He put a shaking hand on the wall, trying to still his racing pulse and realized that he may well have met his match—a woman who would be his soul mate, or kill him, one or the other.

Chapter Twenty

The plane took off, bumped its way up above the clouds in time with the pounding in Jack’s skull. He’d done what he could to keep from looking as if he’d been in an a back alley fist fight but still got odd glances from fellow first class passengers. Although the whip-thin woman in a Delta flight attendant’s uniform didn’t even blink, a credit to her training, no doubt. He smiled at her professionalism, realizing his eye was nearly swollen shut. It sure hurt like the proverbial son of a bitch.

He winced when the bourbon she brought him hit his split lip then stretched his legs into the aisle and hauled out his laptop. After about fifteen minutes of messing around with emails he didn’t care about and asinine social networking, he shut the thing and put it in the empty seat. He stared at the blue leather in front of him, lost in thought. A hand on his shoulder made him jump.

“No, no, I’ll just take water, thanks. And, uh, an aspirin, if you’ve got any.” He said when she pointed to the empty cup, shooting her his most charming smile which likely looked like a freak show grimace given the state of his face.

He had no idea what to expect from this trip Sara had planned and was frankly more nervous about than he’d been on their wedding day. That day he’d been sure they could overcome any and all the bullshit life could throw them, having made it through a substantial pile of it just to reach that moment. But fate could be a total raving bitch when she put her mind to it. The hanging curveball they’d fielded when Blake had been killed had proven more than he could take. And he knew it. He leaned forward on his knees and pondered the carpet a minute willing his heart to stop pounding so hard.

That whole fucked up scene from his office kept replaying, but damned if he could figure out how he could have done it any differently.

“Hey,” he looked up from the file on his desk to see Shannon, her eyes red-rimmed and unhappy. He allowed himself two seconds to peruse her trim figure encased in a sleek grey suit then smiled, and stood. “What’s up?” They had a comfortable working relationship now, after everything that had gone down between them. She was a consummate professional and had not clung to him once she’d seen the writing on the wall. The fact she’d stuck around and kept working spoke volumes to him about her maturity.

She slumped against the doorway. He walked around from behind his desk and pulled her in, shutting the door behind her. “Sit. Talk.” He sat, prepared to listen. He’d needed her at one time, and she had been a good friend, a fun playmate. And she was rapidly becoming one of the best damn agents in the company.

She sucked in a breath. “It’s…um…oh, never mind.”

He grabbed her hands. They were ice cold. A shiver passed through her. “Damn it. You listened to enough of my bullshit. Your turn. Spill it.”

“It’s Kyle.”

Jack blinked. There was no Kyle at Stewart Realty that he knew. Then it hit him. Kyle. As in Summerlin. “Oh. Wow. I didn’t know….”

“Yeah, no one does.” She ran a shaky hand down her face. “We’ve been, you know, playing. And um. Shit.” She gripped her elbows.

“Please do not tell me you are pregnant or something equally awful.” He leaned back, trying to square what he thought he knew about his friend who owned and ran the exclusive BDSM club, The Suite, in downtown Detroit and what was likely happening between him and the woman sitting in his office right now. “I mean…you know what I mean.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “No boss, I’m not pregnant.”

He chuckled, and crossed his ankle over one knee. “So, you and Kyle. Funny I never thought he played for my team.”

“He’s had women before, but only as playmates. He has had more actual relationships with men although he hasn’t really done much since Rob.”

“Christ, this is more convoluted than a Scottish border war. So. You guys are… together then?”

“No, not exactly.” When she burst into tears Jack was startled. Shannon had not struck him as a crier. “I mean,” her shoulders shook as she grabbed some tissues from the box on his desk. “It’s really weird. We started playing, you know, the usual,” she blew her nose. “But last week, one night, we did a kind of switch. And um, it was amazing. For both of us, I think.”

Jack was intrigued. He’d never encountered anyone who could top him, be the dominant in a sexual situation. And Shannon was a fairly classic submissive personality—highly strung, driven, in control at all times—except in the bedroom. He stayed quiet as she calmed down some. “I think I love him, Jack. And he, well, he’s….”

“Complicated would be the word you’re looking for I think.” He stood, and without thinking about it, and with nothing more in mind than to soothe a good friend who needed him he gathered her in his arms. She gripped his waist, turned on the waterworks for a few more minutes, thoroughly soaking his shirt. He held her, relieved that he was past all this sort of extreme drama, at least for the most part. A split second of need for Sara hit him in the gut. He gulped. They had to talk and soon or he was going to fuck that all up, too. “Want me to talk to him?”

She shook her head.

“Asshole,” he frowned at the sound of his wife’s voice, and then looked up when Shannon jerked out of his arms. He stood, gaping, as Sara stared at him, then at Shannon then back to him.

Mother fucking son of a bad timing bitch—that was him, in a nutshell. He groaned, as his eye started singing a strident “I need pain killer now please” tune. The flight attendant handed him a bottle of water and a packet of generic aspirin. He took them and stared out the window, his mind utterly blank and his heart heavy.

Something about Sara, about them, had been off and stayed that way for nearly a year and half, ever since Blake was killed. Her withholding sex stunt had definitely backfired. They’d had plenty of conjugal activity since he put a stop to that bullshit in the spec house. But that was all they had—sex. He hadn’t felt any sort of connection to her beyond that and he needed it, badly, but couldn’t figure out how to get it. She stayed busy either working or dealing with her parents and of course, he was gone a lot. When they were home there was endless kid drama. He leaned his slightly less aching head against the window watching the serene upper clouds pass below him. A snippet of conversation he’d had with Evan passed through his brain, making him wince.

“Yeah man, we are like ships passing in the night, fitting in a fuck, and then sailing apart. It sucks. But it’s a life stage, I hope.” His friend had said, but without resignation, just matter-of-factly like Evan always did, as they drank a couple of beers on his back patio. There were kids were all over the place, at the moment up in the tree house that had come pre-installed when they bought the place. Damn thing was likely a hazard on all sorts of levels, he recalled thinking as Katie and Maddie and Evan’s twin girls led the little boys on a wild goose chase up and down the tree house steps then in and out of the back tree line. He’d watched his son running on wobbly legs, a new skill he seemed determined to master, and shrieking like a wild thing, tackling his best buddy-slash-worst enemy, Gabe, to the grass. Katie separated them, shooting Jack a shrug and a look that made his heart hurt. He hardly knew the boy, and they were headed in a predictable direction—one he hated and had no idea how to change.

A life stage Evan had said. Somehow, it felt like something more—something he needed to fix. Soon. He and Sara were like magnets facing the wrong way, repelling each other and bouncing around in an attempt to find the connection again. This getaway was a step in the right direction, and he had been surprised and pleased by it, but not by the look on her face when she’d walked out of his office. He closed his eyes to keep the voice quiet—the one that told him it could very well be the last step they took, one way or another.

The soccer thing was so fucking close. He had Rafe on board. The guy had a lead on a great potential coach. The NASL had approved the concept and released some money and the Black Jack Gentlemen were going to be a reality. Sometimes he actually wondered how and why he cared so much, but like most things with him, it had taken hold, and he’d been bound and determined to make it a success. Of course, all the time and energy he’d spent on the project was starting to feel wasted, if he had nothing but a lame-ass bachelor apartment and visiting rights by the end of it all.

 He dozed as the giant plane took him towards what he sincerely hoped would be a weekend of recovery with his wife, waking when they bumped down on the tarmac at the Savannah, Georgia Regional Airport.

The taxi dropped him at a medium-sized, classy-looking building right on the beach. The Southern fall air was still warm, and it caressed his aching face as he paid and checked the text message he’d gotten once the plane had landed giving the details of where he was to meet her. No extraneous chat or “I love you’s” just the facts, in the spare way that haunted him more than angry words would have.

 He grabbed his suitcase and wandered into the carefully tended courtyard, squinting at the numbers on the condos, stopping at number seventy. He hesitated before knocking, as the butterflies set up their annoying commotion in his gut again
. Get a grip. This is your wife. The woman you love. Go in, make nice. Have a ton of responsibility-free vacation sex and go home. All better.
But he knew deep down there would be more to this trip than that. And while something in him didn’t want to face it, a bigger part of him was one hundred percent terrified that this
was
a last ditch effort on her part and that he would fail the test.