Forever My Love (8 page)

But she inhaled on a shaky breath and said, “We should go.”

To her surprise and pleasure, she felt him shake his head. “It must be one o'clock by now. Even if we managed to catch up with them in the next few hours, we'd probably wake everyone up and scare them all half to death. We'll start out at first light.”

“Oh,” she murmured. Her heart was thundering. She didn't want to move. And he didn't move. She felt his lightest touch, and the touch of the breeze, moving over her naked flesh. She closed her eyes. She had slept so many nights of her life in his arms, just like this. It was all new, and yet it was all so familiar….

She must have closed her eyes and dozed. She was vaguely aware that he dragged the cushions down from the fiberglass seats and that he laid her upon them. Sometime during the night he must have gone down to one of the cabins, because a sheet was wrapped around them both, a gentle barrier against the slight coolness of the breeze.

When she awoke, the stars were still in the sky, but the darkness was fading fast. The dawn was coming in curious, soft pastel shades. A filter of pink was stretching across the heavens before any touch of the sun's gold.

Brent was still sleeping. His bare back was to her; the sheet had fallen from his shoulders. She stared at the breadth of his muscles, and she felt like smiling just because she liked the way he was built. His back was bronzed from the sun, and it tapered to a narrow waistline. Below that his flesh was a lighter shade, and his buttocks were rounded and hard-muscled and very sexy, she thought. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Despite the fact that so much had been drained from her the night before, that so much desire had exploded with such tremendous force, she wanted to taste his flesh. See if it was salty, if…

He turned his head suddenly, and she realized that he was awake. His heavy-lidded golden gaze was upon her with a certain amount of amusement. She met his gaze, then moved toward him. Her lashes fell at the very last instant, as she touched his flesh with her lips, then grazed it slightly with her teeth. He didn't move; he waited. But she was certain she felt the beat of his heart, felt his pulse at his nape, felt the intake of his breath, the hardening of his body.

As he had done the night before, she began to move against him. She kissed the breadth of his back, caressing it with her fingers. She teased his spine, up and down, with the moist pink flicker of her tongue. She caressed the small of his back and nipped at his buttocks and bathed them with her kiss.

He rolled to his side, and she was face-to-face with his hardness, the result of her assault. She felt a delicious power surge through her with an unbearable sweetness as she realized that she could still affect him as deeply as he could her. But it wasn't just with that sense of power that she continued to touch him, it was also with love, with memory. Once he had been hers. And on this shimmering pink morning, he was going to be hers again.

She closed her fingers around him, teased and caressed him and stroked him with her tongue. She heard his ragged cries, and the molten fire took hold within her own body. A fever began to rule her movements. She tasted his ecstasy, and still she held him with her caress, until his hands were on her and he was lifting her and she discovered herself seated on one of the fiberglass benches. His hands were upon her, parting her thighs. His eyes were glittering with passion. Then he began his own assault, searing her to her very center with the hot thrust of his tongue, then rising to impale her and take her with reckless fury. Cries tore from their throats, and spasms shook them as they peaked in an exultant climax together.

He held her very close, burying his face against her hair and throat. “I had forgotten how nice it could be to wake up beside you,” he said softly.

To wake up…

It was morning, and there was no more darkness to use as a shield against the past. She had wanted him, and she had had him, but it had been a horrible mistake. No matter how deeply she had been filled, she was still hungry. Their union wasn't as complete as she had thought it would be.

She had wanted a memory. And in the light of day, the pain from the past would come back. Sex had never been their problem. It was life that had come between them. It had been his temper, and her temper, and the awful things they had said. Nothing could erase the things that had happened.

“We have to go,” she whispered painfully.

He nodded.

She started to rise, but he pulled her back, his eyes questioning as they touched her. “Kathy, tell me, are you sorry?”

She wanted to pull away. She didn't want to answer a question like that.

But he wasn't going to let her go.

“I don't know, Brent. I really don't know. It was probably the biggest mistake either of us has ever made. And—” She broke off, then she inhaled quickly and lowered her lashes. “That's all a lie. Maybe not all a lie. No, I'm not sorry. I wanted you last night more than I can remember ever wanting anything or anyone.”

“What about this morning?” he demanded.

“I…wanted you this morning.”

He inhaled quickly and seemed to catch his breath. He looked at ease and very handsome, sitting naked on the fiberglass by the hull. Was she so natural and easy, standing there in the buff, now in the sun and the early morning light? She tugged his hand. “Brent, it's daylight. Fishermen will be coming out.”

He smiled. “You look great.”

“Thank you.”

“You always did.”

“Thank you. So, uh, so do you. Brent, let go, please, we've got to get clothes on.”

He shook his head, holding her tight. “Uh-uh. Not yet.”

“What do you want?” she demanded desperately.

“I don't want to pretend that it didn't happen, that's all.”

“I never meant to pretend.”

“Or that it wasn't good, Kathy. And I don't mean that in any casual way. It was good for the past, and good for the future, and when I'm with you, you have to know that I want you.”

She tugged more desperately on his hand. “Brent, we're not going to be together, remember? It's too damned dangerous. And not because of Johnny Blondell.”

He dropped her hand slowly, and his eyes were heavily shaded as they brushed hers once again. “That's right. Damned right,” he said coolly. He rose, relaxed again, able to swing in the breeze with the best composure. “Let's shower and get going. I'm really sorry. I guess I did forget some of the past.”

He walked past her and disappeared into the cabin. She held still a second longer, wanting to scream. He didn't understand. He didn't understand what she had been trying to say at all. “Oh, Brent!” she said to the breeze. There were tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away furiously. She had taken what she wanted, and now it was time to pay. She'd made her bargain with herself openly, knowing the consequences.

She hurried down the steps to her cabin and into the shower. She turned on the water and leaned against the wall.

He thought he had hurt her, and he thought he was going to hurt her again.

The water poured softly on her and she leaned there, trying to reason, trying to understand herself.

He thought he had caused her to lose the new baby that had meant so very much to them both after Ryan had died. He had thought that the argument had caused her miscarriage, that he had been too rough, that he couldn't give what she needed anymore. And she had been too hurt herself at the time to realize he was slipping away with every remote, polite word. He had moved out of the house, and he hadn't been able to talk to her. Her pain had turned to fury and she had filed papers, and suddenly all that had been left was the pain.

He hadn't left when she had been sick. He had been there, white-faced, every day. He hadn't left her alone for a minute in the hospital, not when she had hemorrhaged, not when she had hovered so dangerously on the line between life and death. She could remember trying to promise him that there would be another son, and she had thought then that he was bitterly disappointed because he had seemed to decide, all on his own, that there never would be another one.

When Ryan had died, he had been tender at first. Then he had dragged her back into life, and that had included arguing—and making love fiercely, desperately. It had been good for her. She had wanted to live again, but then she had found out that she was pregnant again.

Kathy sank down slowly in the shower stall. He had never realized she hadn't wanted his temper to change. They had been wild as kids, neither one of them willing to give up a battle, and yet neither one of them walking away.

They had argued right down the aisle, so it seemed.

And he thought it was his temper. The doctor couldn't convince him that things just happened. She could remember now the way he had listened, his face so taut, his words betraying nothing, the denial within his heart.

“It is the past!” she whispered vehemently. Then she stood, wondering what in hell they were doing. They were forgetting their surviving child, the daughter that meant everything in the world to both of them.

She wrapped up in her towel and hurriedly opened the door to tap on the one across the narrow hallway. There was no answer. She didn't hear the water running so she carefully cracked open the door, then entered the cabin. Brent was gone. Within a few minutes she had pulled out a pair of shorts and a sleeveless cotton shirt with a mandarin collar. She paused as she dressed, listening.

Brent had already brought in the anchor and started the motor.

She walked across the hallway and crawled into the bunk, balancing with just her toes on the bed, to dig into the wall cabinets above it. She had a few things left that belonged to Brent. Cutoffs and old T-shirts. She'd kept them because, with a boat, you never knew when you would need something dry for a guest, male or female.

Maybe that was a lie. Maybe she'd kept them for the same reason she'd kept so many of his things at the house. She hadn't been able to part with them.

Leaving the clothing on the bunk, she hurried out to the galley, then paused. Before going topside she put on a pot of coffee and quickly cleaned up the mess from the night before. She wondered if she was stalling, if she was afraid to see Brent after everything that had passed between them. No, she determined, and hurried topside.

The magical pink lights of the dawn had faded. It was still early, but full daylight was already upon them.

Brent was at the helm. Barefoot, naked-chested, he had donned the damp, salty jeans of the night before. His eyes were focused on the sea, straight ahead. He was determined on making up for lost time, it seemed.

“Brent!” she called to him over the hum of the engine. He turned her way, curiously, politely.

A stranger watching would have never believed that they had been incredibly close and intimate on this very deck less than hour ago.

It was the way he had behaved all through the divorce. She could see it in the coldness of his eyes and she couldn't stand it. But she didn't know how to change it; she hadn't know then, and she didn't know now.

“What?”

“I found some of your things. Let me take the helm, and you go change. You can't be very comfortable.”

For a moment she thought he was going to argue with her just for the sake of arguing, but then he shrugged and moved aside. Kathy slid in next to him, taking over at the tiller.

He disappeared down the steps. Kathy held steady to his southward course and estimated it shouldn't take them more than a few hours to reach Shanna, assuming she could find the Brennans' boat among the many pleasure craft that would be out on a day like today.

Brent returned, still bare-chested and barefoot, a dry pair of cutoffs hugging his hips. He hadn't bothered with a shirt. He had brought up coffee and he silently handed her a cup, moving to take his place at the tiller. Kathy had little choice but to give way.

She moved several inches down on the bench, noting that he had returned the cushions to their proper places. It was all over, really. It was almost as if everything that had gone on had been a fantasy. She might as well have slept in her own cabin and dreamed the entire episode.

Brent didn't say a word, he just watched the sea. After a few minutes Kathy couldn't bear the silence any longer.

“Do you think we'll have any trouble finding them?”

“No.”

It was a flat answer. “The Brennans' boat is a beautiful sixty-five footer. The
Cary-Anne
.”

“I know, I've been on it.”

“Oh,” Kathy murmured, startled. Shanna had never mentioned that her father had gone with her and the Brennans anywhere.

Maybe she didn't want to talk, after all.

But she didn't seem able to let anything rest, either. “Brent, are you sure this is all necessary? It's beginning to sound a little…silly. I really should have radioed to her. If she has heard something, she must be terribly worried. And if—”

She broke off because his eyes were on her, hard, cold, disdaining. “You think that what happened to Johnny Blondell is silly?”

“No, of course not! But even if we say that something is going on, I still don't understand—”

“Okay, Kathy, listen carefully. Several years ago we were all together as a group, touring South and Central America and the States. We came through customs and Harry Robertson was arrested. The rest of us were furious because musicians seem to get a bad rap to begin with and because—to the best of my knowledge—no one else had had anything to do with it and we all had our private lives, our families and our careers. I felt kind of sorry for Harry because he wouldn't talk, and because he seemed so afraid, and I remember thinking Harry had been coerced into what he was doing. We couldn't really help Harry, no one could. He went to prison—he died in prison. Then Larry Jenkins was killed. Then Keith's wife was killed. Then Johnny Blondell was killed. It seems to me that someone out there thinks we all know something about something, and either they want information no one has been able to give them yet, or they just want anyone who might have any information to be out of the picture. I don't want to use a radio. I don't want anyone to know where Shanna is, I don't want to lead anyone to her.”