The Solitude of Passion (2 page)

“The vineyard?” I consider Kat’s question. “Colt has two weeks to run it into the ground.” I give a wry smile. “Considering he doesn’t have far to go, I’d say he can do it in one.” It’s the truth. Kat and I both know it.

Unfortunately the Townsend label doesn’t have great distribution, so the construction business helps keep the financial cogs spinning. Max, on the other hand, has turned his father’s vineyard into a global conglomerate. You’d think they were selling the fountain of youth the way bottles of Shepherd wine fly off the shelves. It’s been served to royalty. And, poor Mitch—nine out of ten derelicts prefer Townsend wine across the country.

“Weird they’re playing together,” Kat muses, never taking her eyes off the sultans of soon-to-be third degree sunburns.

“So strange,” I whisper. Max wasn’t even invited to our wedding.

It was me who was playing with Mitch before I started to sway in the heat. Kat works at the club, so she brought me lemonade. Max came out with her and challenged Mitch to a quick match. “Wouldn’t it be great if they could be friends again?”

“Mitch-the-Bitch and Maxi-Pad?” She balks at the insanity of it all.

Clearly I’ve stunned her.

Those were the monikers of choice they used for one another in school after the “incident.”

Maxi-Pad
. That’s what Mitch called him for years, still does sometimes. It’s hard to let go of all that misplaced anger. It was his dad he really wanted to strangle for having the affair with Max’s town-harlot of a mother. But, both of their fathers are long since dead. You’d think it would have brought them closer together, but under the circumstances it created a division as wide as the sea and made them captains of industry far too soon. It set them up at the helm their fathers abandoned and led them to turn their livelihoods into a bitter rivalry.

“Mitch feels like he’s always on the losing end of the stick.” It’s an unmitigated truth never before spoken, but it hangs in the air like a ghost every time we read of another Shepherd victory.

“He said that?” Kat’s mouth rounds out as if I’ve just dispensed a juicy bit of Mono gossip.

“Not those exact words, but it comes out in other ways.”

“Oh, come on.” Kat’s eyes roll back a moment. “He’s got
you,
Lee. He won the war. Who cares about battles fought with toothpicks when he’s already holding the gilded trophy?”

I look over at Kat. Her play on words amuse me. Ironic if you think about it. Mitch and Max, those hardwired rackets nothing more than glorified toothpicks. What are they fighting for so ferociously, anyway?

A dull laugh settles in my chest.

Mitch really wants the win, and Max doesn’t know how to lose.

Max catches the ball with his bare hand and howls out a laugh. He belts the ball into the sky as if it were Mitch himself.

“You
suck
, Townsend,” he shouts, rounding out the gate and blowing me a kiss.

Mitch tosses his racket across the empty court like a machete, and it fractures into a thousand splintered shards.

So many pieces to pick up after those two.

I don’t know why this always surprises me.

Mitch drives us past the vineyard on the way home, and I roll down the window, inhaling the sharp bite of soil. Up ahead, a tall wooden arch rises into the pristine sky with a crooked sign reading,
Townsend Fields
.

“I’ve been meaning to fix that.” Mitch presses his lips together and eyes the sign as if it might crash over the roof of the car as we drive beneath it.

I gaze out at the fields with the earth plowed in rows of deep russet-colored soil. The flat leaves of the vines are as wide as my hand, and the grapes gleam, hidden in the branches like tiny black gemstones.

Mitch and I get out of the car and walk over to the ridge, an overlook where you can see the entire vineyard, acre after luscious acre, nothing but rolling rows of verdant beauty.

“I’m going to turn this ship around.” Mitch wraps his arm around my waist and presses a kiss into my neck as he leads us down into the field.

“I know you will.” I give a peck to his cheek and rub my lips over the sandpaper like stubble. “I’m proud of how you handled yourself out there today, you know, with Max.” Strange, his name hasn’t passed through my lips in so long that it actually sounds foreign, downright illegal.

Mitch pulls back a dull smile. He’s so unreasonably handsome with his chiseled features, his glowing jade eyes. He still makes my stomach squeeze tight with nothing more than a stolen glance.

“Shepherd has balls to talk to you the way he did.”

“What?” I pull him in by the arm and hug him. “You’re hysterical, Townsend. He was kidding. Only in his wildest dreams would I ever leave you and let him raise the baby.” I brand a kiss over his lips and linger. “Besides, it’s too late.” I stop him from moving ahead and wrap my arms secure over his waist. “I love
you
. You’re my husband. The only one I’d ever want.” I push another kiss off his lips. “You’re my everything. You’re perfect.”

Mitch presses out a gentle smile, never taking those lawn-green eyes off me. He reaches over and plucks a grape off the vine and sets it in his teeth before feeding it to me by way of his mouth. He cups my face as we share the sharp bite of fruit with his sweet tongue dancing over mine. Mitch is a master of achingly soft kisses—kisses that wrench a cry from the deepest part of me, kisses that give birth to moans that have the ability to stretch out for weeks. My hands ride into the lip of his jeans, and I pull him in until his body is pressed against mine. The baby protrudes just enough to create a barrier.

He trails his mouth up to my neck and bites down gently over my earlobe.

“You’re my perfect wife, Lee. And nobody, not even Max Shepherd, can take you away from me. I’d move heaven and earth to make sure that didn’t happen. In fact, I already did.” He gives my ribs a quick tickle, and my elbows swoop to my sides as I give a violent laugh.

“Oh”—I reach down and scoop a handful of clay—“tickling, huh? So you want to play dirty?”

“Is that where this is going?” He tilts his head with that wicked gleam in his eye, looking hotter than hell in the process. “Because it looks like you’re the one who wants to play dirty.” Mitch takes a slow step in, and I jump back, laughing. “Come here and nobody gets hurt,” he gravels it out sultry and demanding.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” I try to make a break for it, but Mitch scoops me up in his arms and lands us both in a soft pile of Townsend soil, laying my head to rest in an orange cloud. “Thanks a lot,” I tease. “I’ll be washing dirt out of my hair for weeks.”

His brows twitch. Then, quick as it came, his playful demeanor dissipates. His eyes grow serious as death as he takes me in.

“God, you’re so beautiful, Lee.” He swallows hard as he runs his gaze over my features. “I always want to remember you like this.”

“Hey”—I reach up and touch his face, pulling him down by the chin—“I’m not going anywhere. You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

He gives a quick glance around at the vineyard with its dilapidated sign, its dwindling crops, and gives a wry smile.

“Sometimes I think that’s the only thing I’ve done right”—his eyes squint out a smile born of pain—“having you in my life.”

“It’s you and me ‘til the end, Mitch.” I pull him in until he’s just a breath away.

“You and me ‘til the end.” He crashes his lips over mine and we detonate in a vat of passion, nothing but limbs and sublime kisses right here over a warm bed of Townsend soil.

Mitch said he would move heaven and earth for me.

I believe him.

Mitch

A seam of early morning light streams into the room from the slit in the curtains.

The clock reads 5:54—a full minute before the alarm is set to go off. I seem to do that on a regular basis—beat the buzzer, and I’m not sure why. It’s a gift, I guess, but as far as gifts go, I’d like to put in for something different. Something a little more useful that actually has the potential to produce a paper-like substance traded as currency.

I dot the back of Lee’s head with a kiss and take in her scent as she lies folded in my arms, still and quiet—so beautiful, and I fight back tears. Of all the times for my brother to maim himself, and he chooses now while Lee houses the evidence of our love deep in her belly. The thought of leaving Lee makes me sick to my stomach, but I would never tell her that. I don’t want her to worry. I’ve been making it sound like no big deal, but Colt would have caused less pain in my life if he skinned my balls and used them for batting practice.

Lee relaxes into me, still lost in a silent slumber, and I memorize the way her skin sears up against mine, her silken hair soft against my cheek.

I close my eyes and beg God to take care of Lee, our baby, the business. Protect all three from my idiot brother—and deliver us from Max
.
I throw in that last part about Max just for fun. Can’t get him out of my head since last week. I don’t like the way it happened—the way it felt too coincidental. My father’s self-prescribed doctrine comes back to me—that there are no coincidences in life. It’s never bugged me before, but now, with Max showing up out of the blue and saying the things he did, I hate the concept.

The plane ride floats through my mind, and I can’t help but envision an aerial cartwheel, followed by a ball of flames and nothing but the blue Pacific as we nosedive into the sea.

Wish I could shake this feeling of outright foreboding. Then again, I don’t travel much. Maybe this is how you’re supposed to feel seven hours before an international flight—maybe it’s just self-preservation kicking in—a little something called “fight the flight.”

I slip out of bed and head downstairs to make breakfast while trying to blow off the negativity.

It’s probably just Lee’s hormones rubbing off on me, and any minute now I’ll be bawling like a schoolgirl, craving pickles and ice cream.

I hit the bottom step and my foot lands on the bare plywood that spans the downstairs. I meant to take Lee into town to pick out flooring. We never should have moved in without installing a proper floor of all things. Now there’s furniture to move—heavy, cumbersome furniture that I’m pretty damn sure is lined with lead. Originally we had travertine planned, but at the last minute Lee changed her mind, and we moved in anyway. So plywood it is. The truth is, I’d love our home no matter what the floor was—because it’s just that,
our
home—the one Lee and I designed ourselves. The one I built with Colt as a starter project for our new side business—Townsend Construction.

It hasn’t fallen over yet, so we must have done something right.

“Morning.” Lee comes up from behind and wraps her arms around me. I turn and bury my face in her neck, taking in her scent—not showered and perfumed, just natural Lee. This is how I want to remember her. The sweet scent of her skin is going to get me through the next two weeks. I dig my face into her hair and inhale sharply—saving it all for later.

“Morning beautiful.” My stomach pinches with grief at thought of boarding that plane without her. I wish she could go, but with the baby I don’t want to take any chances.

The more I think about this situation, the more I want to smack my idiot brother. I’ve never been away from my wife for more than a day, and I sure as hell didn’t plan to go on some foreign relations excursion while Lee is pregnant with our first child.

“Don’t go,” her voice dips into its lower register when she says it, sounding sexy as hell in the process.

I give her a minute to see if she’s going to back it up with some nightmare she had of a plane crash, then for sure I wouldn’t go. When Lee was six, she dreamed her parents were in a horrible crash the night before they were killed in a car accident. It’s never happened again, the dream thing, but if she said it, I wouldn’t go.

“I’ll be back before you know it. Besides, hundreds of disabled orphans are counting on me.” I throw in that last part with a lopsided smile—amused she might actually believe this.

“I know.” Lee sags as she sweeps the floor with her gaze.

“Come here.” I pull her in tight. “Stupid Colt,” I whisper into her hair.

“Stupid Colt.” Her chest rumbles over mine.

“I may have to kill him before leaving the country,” I tease, rubbing her back, and she lets out a moan of approval. “Of course, I’ll have to make it look like an accident. Maybe I can run his head over with my back tire at the airport. People are always in such a damn hurry in those kinds of places.” A soft laugh rumbles from my chest.

Lee pulls back and makes a face. “No killing, Colt.”

“You’re right. Screw it. I’m sure he’ll have some new mutation of the clap before Christmas—and I won’t have to worry about doing the dirty work—
flesh
-eating clap.”

Lee belts out a laugh. “Rumor has it, there’s going to be a beautiful brunette on call in the event you get lonely.” She bites down on her lip, her teeth white as milk. “I think I’d better give you something to remember me by.” She hops up on the barstool and rocks back with the curve of a naughty smile, crossing her legs, slow and seductive. Her skin glows from underneath her nightshirt, revealing the fact she’s not wearing any underwear.