Sun-Kissed (11 page)

Lex came back panting with the stick, brown ears floppy, shaking water all over him, and he gave the stick another long, hard throw.

And a quiet came onto the beach. A wry, understanding strength. A sense of not being alone. A relief from that solitude he often felt in a crowd, that he often felt even with his own daughters. The dad. The person who was supposed to know what to do.

Well, except now he was leftover. Both his daughters had found someone else.

He nodded at Anne, shoving his hands into his pockets, and kind of wished, for a second, that he hadn’t gone so over the line last night. Because what if she—what if he couldn’t talk to her this morning? What if she shut him out?
Could
you break a friendship like this, by being too offensive? God knew, despite all the perverse fantasies he’d had about Anne, she’d never shown much sign of being a sexual being.

He just kind of felt like he could change that for her.

And,
damn
, but he had missed her, when she was in prison. He’d felt as if he’d been broken into a million pieces. It made him
frantic
to put himself all back together again, and fuse her tight into him as he was melding those pieces back, so no one could ever get her away from him again. It wasn’t how life worked—they’d gotten to her despite everything he could do the first time—but it was how he
felt.

Anne nodded to him, too, her hands also in her pockets, and they fell into step, the dog bouncing along beside them from time to time to bring back the stick, Mack throwing it forward. In the morning, Anne always looked like his. No make-up artist polishing her up, whether for a public appearance or on call in the “powder room” she had set up last night so the female guests could stop in for a touch-up. No, in the morning, it was just her skin, dewy from a shower and presumably moisturizer, and some clear, glossy thing she put on her lips. Anne was one of those women who could easily pass for mid-thirties, if she ever managed to carry herself with a little less power and experience. Maybe a Triple AAA personality, sleep-deprived, thirty-something mother of twins some days, but she had these beautiful, elegant strong lines to her bones that were part of the reason she’d done so well on television, and she’d taken good care of her skin and her body. He’d fought the good fight against Botox, when she was tempted in her forties, and won, thank God.
Jesus, woman, why would you want to mess with something that gorgeous?

Besides, he had a lot of memories held in those fine lines at the corners of her eyes. All those squinting looks across a sun rising over the sea. All those sidelong, minatory glances at something he said. All those times her eyes crinkled in suppressed amusement, laughter dancing in that elusive green. And those newer, tiny vertical lines that tension had left at the corners of her lips—well, he hadn’t put them there, but he figured they were his, just the same. He’d liked the way they looked last night, when she was staring up at him on her porch, after he’d given that mouth something better to do with itself than be tense.

They walked in silence, as they often did. Seagulls scattered away as Lex dashed after the stick, with a Lab or an Aussie’s energy, although God knew what the dog actually was. Like most of their pets, Lex had appeared on their doorstep in Corey one day, although both the girls had been off to college by the time this particular dog showed up, so Mack had no one to blame for cracking but himself. Brindle brown fur but retriever-shaped, the dog was delirious to be let out now that the bulk of the guests and their no-paw-prints-please reception clothes were gone.

He wondered if Anne had felt like that, when she stepped out of prison. She’d come straight here. Mack had been at the prison with a limo at her release, of course, but she’d been so grim-faced and clearly unwilling to talk yet that he’d left her alone afterward. He knew Anne. It had still pissed him off when he woke up the next morning to find she’d flown off to the Hamptons without even texting him to come with, though. He had flown in after her immediately, to find her already in the ocean. Swimming and swimming in the waves for hours, as if she was going to swim across the Atlantic. Mack had sat on the beach keeping an eye on her, the Coast Guard’s number one touch of a call button
away, just in case.

Gotten a hell of a sunburn, but then, hers had been worse, out in the water so long after all those months indoors.

“Head hurt?” Anne asked dryly now, at last.

He cut her a glance. A little, amused smile curled her mouth, a woman completely smug about how much of a drunken idiot she
hadn’t
made of herself the night before. Probably not the moment to tell her he hadn’t had two swallows of that damn champagne. Who the hell had the time, when he was hosting the wedding? Or wanted to dull his brain, when he was challenging Anne Winters?

Except that smug little look on Anne’s face pissed him off, and he
wanted
to tell her. Wanted her to know how very not drunk he’d been and that she’d better watch out, because he was
after her
now. His whole body itched with it. What Mack went after, he got.

And his body knew it, too. His body was getting all ready to do every single one of those fantasies in actuality.

“Shoulders,” he said instead of any of that, briefly. “I took my sons-in-law out to play tennis, remember?”

Anne smiled a little more. She was a pretty damn good tennis player herself. Competitive as
hell.
She’d hunker down, her racquet ready, and just
grin
as she smashed a shot past him. He’d come so close to locking her up against the tennis court fence and doing obscene things to her when she was all sweaty at the end of some of those matches, she had
no
idea.

A few more steps, another throw for the dog. “How are you feeling?” Anne asked, that quiet tone. Apparently they really were going to let his kisses and his sexual aggression get buried under elegant discretion.

Well, she was going to try that technique, anyway. And he wasn’t going to challenge it during their beach walk, of all moments. Some things were too sacred to ever risk disturbing.

Mack shrugged, liking the soreness in his shoulders. “I beat ’em.” Answer enough. Anne knew how he liked to win. Especially against competitive, arrogant sons-in-law. Well, Luc wasn’t technically his son-in-law, but Summer had such crap-awful parents, he’d always tried to keep up with Julie’s habit of including her with his girls whenever possible. Unfortunately, Summer’s parents had shipped her off to boarding school right at the same time as Julie died, and Summer had gotten lost there for a while. So had they all.

After a second, he added wryly: “Still paying for it, but I taught them a lesson or two.” And after another couple of strides, he had to laugh. “Of course, they didn’t know how to play when we started the morning,” he admitted.

And Anne laughed, too, that warm, rare, husky sound, kind of like the waves tossing in and the sunlight glancing off them all at once. “‘Figure out how you’re going to win before you even pick the game’,” she told him. It took him a second to remember it was something he’d said once.

Hell, it was one of those things that had somehow gotten quoted in stupid books people read in bathrooms. Nobody cared about his codas, all the times he’d tried to clarify that he actually pretty frequently found himself in the middle of completely new games he had to figure out how to win on the fly.

That was the trouble with being famously successful. Any idiot thought that passed your mind could shape future generations into
deliberate
idiocy, just because they were trying to be you.

“If you get a chance,” he said wryly.

Sometimes, after all, the damn Department of Justice took after you, or after your closest friend and ally in the whole damn world, and you couldn’t figure out
any
way around those rules, any way to win that game. Fucking bastards.

“Well, you make your chances,” Anne said. “But…yeah.”

Even though those six months she had spent in prison pissed him off in the worst way possible, he still got a kick out of the way she said
yeah
these days, instead of her elegant
yes
, or just the way she more openly flaunted that
fuck you
attitude. As if under that cool blond exterior, a whole layer of tattoos and piercings was trying to show through. Anne Winters, the elegant, New England punk.

When she’d shot him that bird last night, he’d wanted to suck her middle finger into his mouth and make it feel appreciated.

He’d always known she had that punk part in her, that ability to give a smile that was essentially like raising the middle finger, but he kind of liked her letting the rest of the world see it a bit now, too. Although maybe they’d always sensed it. Maybe that was why the world had gone after her so viciously.
He
could flaunt his
yeah, that’s right, I’m smarter, stronger, more powerful than you
attitude openly, but she was a woman, and women weren’t allowed to be the strongest person in the room.

Yeah,
fuck you, you pathetic world
. He’d never, ever forgiven it for what it did to Jaime.

Or to Anne.

And it had better leave Cade the hell alone, because that oldest girl of his would kick it in the teeth, if she had to.

“But I meant—you know.” Anne waved a perfectly manicured hand. Probably why she’d kept him waiting that morning. Chipped a nail last night and had to repair it before she could take a walk on the beach. It would be like her, but—he’d been getting ready to come pound on her door to make her talk to him again, just in case. “How are you doing. Today. Now that the last one is married.”

And his stomach knotted that fast, punched in, closing hard around the loss and emptiness, closing as hard as it could.
Fuck.
He looked away, trying not to let his eyes sting. But they stung anyway.
Shit.
He brought his fingers up to rub them closed, trying to make it look as if he was just having a little trouble with the brightness of the light starting to gleam across the water.

Anne touched his arm. Just that. They’d never walked hand in hand, not ever, but he wanted to link his fingers with hers so bad.

The idea scared him more than all kinds of aggressive come-ons. Anne could roll her eyes over aggressive come-ons, if she wanted. Hell, they could have all kinds of wild sex and still come out of it friends at the end. They’d
taken
hands a few times. He’d gripped hers across a table when it was obvious she was going to lose that battle with the justice system. Held them hard, held her eyes, pushed
you can survive this
into her with all his might. She’d closed hers around his with every muscle in her, when he was on that damn plane flying across the Atlantic to get to Jaime.

But walking hand in hand—that was intimacy. That was a whole different level of vulnerability and softness and shield-lowering.

Still he opened his hand just a little, turning the palm subtly up, making it easy for her hand to slide down his arm and slip right into it, if she wanted.

Hell, he’d raised two little girls and gotten them across all kinds of parking lots, he knew how to get someone to slip her hand into his.

Knew how good it felt when they did.

And how fucking lousy it felt when they didn’t. When they grew up and stopped doing that, crossed their own parking lots and looked both ways and didn’t need him.

Anne didn’t slip her hand into his. She gave his arm a little squeeze and took the wet stick from Lex, tossing it out again.

Then she touched his arm just briefly, delicately again. And slipped her hands back into her pockets.

“It feels like shit,” he said.

She grimaced a little and nodded, the wind stirring that pixie cut of hers.

He just wanted to kiss her, okay? Just lean over and kiss her, hold onto her, kiss her some more. Not think about this emptiness his daughters had left. Think about fullness. About all the other things his life could hold.

“But you like them,” she said. “Sylvain and Dominique.”

Well…like. He grunted. “They’re competitive, arrogant bastards.”

She raised one eyebrow and slanted a glance at him, her eyes so warm and amused. He did understand why the world called her an Ice Queen, but that warmth of hers—how could it get caught on film over and over, during her shows, and this whole mass of people still not see it?

“So…yeah,” he said. “I li—I mean, they’re okay. Kind of. I guess.”

She smiled.

Like maybe she wanted to lean over and kiss
him.

Hunh. Really?

“I mean, what the hell my daughters see in them, and why the
fuck
they’re so determined to live on the opposite side of the world from me, I don’t know.” He shoved his hands back in his pockets and scowled at the foam seeping away from his strides, back into the ocean.

Because they had, hadn’t they? His daughters. They’d sought out a place as far away from his power over their lives as they possibly could. And it hurt so damn much, he didn’t even know how to think about it straight on.

Hell, they liked his
dad.
Their
grandfather
was welcome in their lives. The man who had been the plague of Mack’s entire existence.

“I mean—artisan chocolatiers,” he said suddenly, and pinched the furrow between his eyebrows, hiding his eyes again for just a second. “I worked so fucking hard. I made—this.” He spread his arms out to encompass the ocean and its enormous horizon. Not that he thought he was The Actual God who had created the world—he wasn’t that bad, quite—but, you know…close. Corey Chocolate
was
a dominant world player. He had more power than most presidents, and was just as helpless as those guys were sometimes, too. “And they don’t even want it. It’s like they think it’s
crap.
”

Anne’s hand came back. This time, she curled her fingers around the edge of his actual hand and squeezed it.

“
Everything
I did for them. My whole fucking life. Every accomplishment.
All
of this. And they don’t think it’s worth more than some idiot who likes to pretend his little chocolate shop in Paris is the most important thing in the world?”