On Lavender Lane (28 page)

“Liar.” He heard her deep sigh. “It’s because you can’t stop being a hero, isn’t it?”

He stopped walking. “Where did that come from?”

“Kara told me about what happened in Afghanistan. When the helicopter crashed.”

There was no way his best friend’s wife could even begin to know what happened that night. No guy in his right mind would ever share the details of those hours of horror with
anyone, let alone a woman he loved. But apparently Sax had given her the PG version.

Probably because it would’ve been a little hard to hide those ghosts he’d talked about. Even if he’d been the only one to see them, they would’ve had to have affected his and Kara’s relationship.

“Trust me. I’m no hero.” He started up the stairs again, reached the top, and headed into the cottage.

“That’s what Kara always says Sax claims. But I don’t believe it.”

“We were just doing our jobs. Same as anyone else. End of story.” He hoped.

“God, I’ve always loved this house,” she said, as he carried her into the cottage, seeming to give him his wish. “When you stand at the window, it’s as if you can see forever. Or spread your wings and fly.”

Isn’t that what she’d done? But as clueless as he’d been about women back then, and he’d been as dumb as a stump, at least he’d understood that Maddy had to leave Shelter Bay to truly soar.

“My grandpa Joe swept Gram off her feet,” she said as he carried her down the hall.

“Good for him. They always seemed to have a great thing going.”

“They were madly in love,” she continued as they reached his old bedroom. He hadn’t yet felt comfortable moving into his father’s master. “And my point was that although every woman fantasizes about being swept off her feet by a hero in shining armor, being hauled off over a man’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes—which, I’d like to point out, is not the way Rhett carried Scarlett up that staircase—isn’t turning out the slightest bit romantic.”

Amused, annoyed, and, dammit, aroused, especially since her skirt had tumbled nearly over her head when he’d hefted her up and his hand was splayed on the smooth, pale skin
at the back of her thigh, he dumped her on the bed he hadn’t bothered to make this morning. She bounced. Twice.

“You want romance?”

He leaned down, took her chin in his tensed fingers, and closed his mouth over hers.

And—
pow!
—felt as if he’d just been hit with a cluster bomb.

Her taste, headier than the champagne she’d drunk, exploded inside him.

It would’ve been easier if she’d pulled away. Resisted even a little bit. But no. Instead she grabbed hold of the front of the blue dress shirt he’d worn to the meeting with his father’s lawyer, pulled him down onto the bed, and threw herself into the kiss. Heat scorched through him. Images of smoke and flames sparked in his mind.

He could have her, he thought, as she tugged his shirt from his jeans with fevered hands. She twined around him, her short, neat fingernails digging into his back, her legs holding him in a vise, her breasts flattened against his chest.

Lucas had fantasized about this moment more times than he could count over the years. There’d even been times when he’d been sleeping on the hard Afghan ground, with his pack as a pillow, that he’d wake up hard as a pike because of dreams of this woman. He’d always wanted a second chance with her.

“Do you have any idea,” he asked against her ravenous mouth, “how hard you’re making it for me to do the right thing?”

“I’ll help.” Her hand moved to the fly of his jeans. “And speaking of hard…”

Oh, sweet Jesus.
“Dammit, Maddy!” He caught her wrist and pulled her hand away before her stroking touch had him going off. “There are rules.”

“Forget about rules,” she said recklessly. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m not everyone else.” He touched a hand to her cheek, holding her gaze to his. “And, more important, neither are you.”

“I wanted you to kiss me. To touch me.” He watched her throat as she swallowed. Took in her smoke gray eyes that were trying, unsuccessfully, to focus. “I want you to make love to me. I need you to make love to me. To prove…”

Oh, hell.
She didn’t need to finish that sentence. Damn, that Frenchman had done a number on her.

He groaned. Could she make this any more difficult? The last time she’d begged him to make love to her, he had, even knowing the timing was all wrong. And look where that had gotten them.

“I want you, Madeline.” Although he knew he was playing with fire, taking a risk, he took hold of her wrist and pressed her palm against the front of his jeans again. “I’ve been walking around stiff as a damn pike since you came back to town.”

“That’s just physical. You could’ve taken care of it yourself.”

“True.” And hadn’t he been tempted? “But I’ve been waiting. For you.”

“Well, then.” She smiled up at him, teasing, tempting. “What are we waiting for?”

Rational thoughts fled. The good Lord had given him both a brain and a penis. Unfortunately, when it came to Maddy, Lucas only seemed to have blood enough to run one or the other.

His head swooped down again, his kiss hot, hungry, and rough with built-up sexual frustration. Images rushed through his mind—hot, tempestuous images as dangerous as a storm-tossed sea.

It would be so easy. It was so damn tempting.

It was also wrong.

He abruptly tore his mouth from hers and buried it against her neck. After a long, aching moment, he drew
back, shaken by the intensity of the visceral need for this woman that still had parts of his body in a vise grip.

“Lucas?” Her heavy eyes slowly fluttered open. They were wide and vague and confused. “I don’t understand.”

Desperate but determined not to show it, he stood up. “That makes two of us. But here’s the deal. You’re drunk. Which is totally understandable under the circumstances. But when we make love, and we will, I want you stone-cold sober. So that, when I’m finished with you, even years—hell, decades—from now, when we’re old and gray and walking on the beach with our great-grandkids, all I’ll have to do is look at you and you’ll remember every single thing I did to you.” He slipped off her sweater and skimmed a hand down her arm. “With you.”

“I don’t remember you being so arrogant.”

Although he could still feel her pressed against him, still taste her on his lips, he laughed. “Determined,” he corrected. “Which is why you’re going to marry me.”

“Ha.” She tossed her head. And from the way her eyes nearly crossed, he suspected just that gesture had made her dizzy. “I told you, that is not going to happen. I’m not going to marry anyone. Ever again.” She batted her eyelashes at him in a very un-Maddy-like way. “Though, if you get back on this bed, I’m willing to let you be my rebound boy toy.”

It took an effort not to laugh.

“Why don’t we discuss that idea in the morning?”

“I’m not sure I’ll even be speaking to you in the morning.”

Her haughty-empress-of-the-realm tone, a vivid contrast to her tousled, warm, and sensual appearance, did make him smile. “I’ll take my chances. And a rain check.” He skimmed a hand down her hair. “Good night.”

“A rain check,” she muttered. “Good idea. Since if we did make love right now, I have this sudden fear I’d humiliate myself by falling asleep before we got to the really good parts.”

That said, she rolled over, and like a stone, dropped straight into sleep.

From her steady breathing, he decided she hadn’t passed out. Just collapsed from having run on fumes these past few days.

He considered taking her out of that dress; then, deciding there was only so much temptation he could handle, Lucas got a quilt out of the hall closet, covered her with it, and left her to sleep off her independence indulgence.

He stripped off his jeans and shirt and sprawled on the couch. As Scout blissfully snored on the rug beside him, Lucas felt as if he were about to explode, his aching body rock hard and frustrated.

An hour later, unable to sleep, he made his way painfully across to the kitchen, where he poured a glass of ice water. As he chugged it down, he willed it to cool his lingering hunger.

It didn’t.

Five hours later, after checking in to make sure Maddy was still okay, he pulled on a pair of sweats and a ragged gray hoodie and went down to run on the beach.

The fog had blown in during the night, cloaking the beach in a cold mist that should have cleared Lucas’ mind and body, but didn’t. Nor did the rain falling from the dark sky.

He was too tangled up with thoughts of Maddy. As he’d been so many times over the years, but his mind had gone to her seemingly nonstop since she’d suddenly shown up in Sofia’s kitchen. It only made sense that he’d think of her while planning her grandmother’s addition, but she’d also infiltrated his mind during his drive to Portland and back.

The past few nights he’d gone to sleep wanting her. Dreaming of her. Hot, vivid dreams that had him waking up frustrated.

And even as Scout ran on the sand beside him, seemingly
unhindered by the loss of her leg, Maddy’s scent, the feel of her silken skin, the taste of her, lingered in his mind.

He ran all the way to the lighthouse and back, around a bend in the coast, past the cave that held so many memories. By the time he returned to the cottage, his heart was pounding against his ribs, his blood was flowing, he was drenched with rain and sweat. Unfortunately, the enforced PT had failed to drive Maddy from his mind.

He had been up front about wanting her. And although she’d admittedly been wasted, he believed that she’d been telling the absolute truth about wanting him.

But something Brooke had told him about him being her rebound had echoed in Maddy’s claim that while she had no intention of marrying him, she was more than willing to let him be her lover.

Which, while appealing, wasn’t enough. While he’d never thought of himself as a greedy man, Lucas wanted more than just a hot night. Or even a sizzling affair. He’d done those and knew that passion always flared out quickly.

He also understood that she was still technically married. They’d be working together for the next few months. Giving her time to get used to him in her life, to come to trust him, to realize that he was nothing like her cheating, lying, ex-husband, was the logical conclusion.

The only problem was, there was nothing remotely logical about his overwhelming feelings for the woman currently sleeping in his bed.

34

It was the sound of the rain on the roof that woke her. Feeling as if her head was filled with rocks, Maddy moaned and pulled the pillow over her head when she saw Lucas sitting in a chair across the room.

“Rise and shine,” he said so cheerfully, Maddy thought there wasn’t a jury in the world who’d convict her if she took a meat mallet to his head.

“Go away,” she muttered from beneath the goose-down pillow.

“I would. But having been where you are right now, I can tell you that you’ll feel better with something in your stomach.”

“Oh, God.” Just the idea was enough to make her moan. “Why didn’t you stop me last night?”

“I suggested you might want to go easy. But you seemed to have a different goal in mind.”

“I was celebrating.”

“That’s what you said at the time. But given that you threw four carats of diamonds into the ocean makes me think you were more likely trying to drown the Frenchman.”

“That, too,” she admitted.

“If you’d asked, which you didn’t, I could’ve told you it wouldn’t work.”

She pushed the pillow aside and opened eyes that felt as
if the entire beach full of sand had ended up beneath her lids. “Tried to drown a lot of Frenchmen with champagne, have you?”

“Whiskey was more my adult beverage choice. And it wasn’t a Frenchman. It was a woman.”

That got her attention enough to make her push herself into a sitting position. Her stomach roiled as the boulders in her head tumbled. Surely he couldn’t mean…

He leaned down and pushed what had to be a rat’s nest of hair off her face. “And, yeah, if you’re thinking that woman in question was you, you’re right. It always left me with a hangover about like the one you’re suffering now. And you know what?”

“What?”

“Ten years later, I still haven’t found a way to get you out of my mind.”

“That’s a low blow. To play on my emotions while I’m at a distinct disadvantage.” She slapped his hand away. “Given that I’m dying.”

“You’re not going to die. Though you’ll probably wish you could.” He held out the glass in his other hand. “Here. Drink this. It’ll help.”

She looked with open suspicion at the rust-colored liquid. “What is it?”

“It’s an old Cajun recipe for hangovers.”

“You’re not Cajun.”

“True. But Sax is. And he’s the one who taught me how to make it.”

She studied it more closely. “I hope you had a hazmat suit on while you prepared it, because it looks like toxic waste.”

“Tastes like it, too,” he said agreeably, with a coaxing smile. “Trust me.”

She did, she realized. Which just went to show how much her life had changed in a mere few days.

She took a tentative sip. And had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from spitting it all over the bed.

“Ugh.” The taste was enough to keep anyone from drinking ever again. “What the hell is in it?” She could detect the Tabasco, but with her tongue coated with whatever beach sand hadn’t ended up in her eyes, her palate was in worse shape than she was.

“You don’t want to know.” He actually had the nerve to grin at her. “Drink up. I’ve got coffee waiting.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a sadist?”

“Nope.” Another grin. Damned if he didn’t seem to be enjoying this. “And you’ll thank me later.”

“If I don’t kill you first,” she muttered. Then swallowed the unsavory sludge and felt her stomach rebel. “I really think I’m going to die.” Was that a whimper she heard coming out of her Sahara-dry mouth? She
never
whimpered. Of course, she’d never suffered a morning-after hangover, either.

After handing him the glass, she flopped back against the pillow and flung a hand over her eyes. “Then again, I’m even more afraid that I won’t.”