against his chest.
Music was playing somewhere nearby. The sound of the waves on the beach mixed with the tune and made an island symphony. The air was soft, his hands were just rough enough to tantalize, and a fire was beginning to smolder inside her in places she didn’t know could burn.
His hands slid down her sides and then the simple dress she’d worn was in a puddle on the floor. She heard someone moan and realized the sound had come from her own mouth. She was going to make love and be made love to for the first time in her life. That was just awesome. A landmark. A red-letter day.
Would she be glad or sorry when it was over? She didn’t know. She only knew it had to be done. And now her body was reaffirming that very mandate. She was melting and yet floating at the same time. She didn’t feel normal at all, and she loved it. As she pressed her mouth to his neck and kissed him with her tongue, she knew she could get addicted to this feeling. And then, suddenly, she felt an urgency building inside her, a need so intense, she cried out in surprise.
“Just a moment, Callie,” he whispered huskily against her throat. “Don’t worry. We’ll get there.”
As he picked her up to carry her to the bed, she knew she was sinking into passion as though it were a very thick and very soft pillow. And passion was a destination she never wanted to leave again.
Sometime later, they lay together, spent for the moment, catching breaths. A whole new world of sensation had opened up for Callie, but there was more. A whole new world of closeness and affection had opened up as well. She knew what it was to have a man. Did she also know what it was to love?
She would have said yes to that question just moments before. Now that the air was cooling her skin, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Cooler heads prevail,” she murmured groggily.
“What’s that?” he asked, raising his head and looking at her with a slight smile.
“Nothing. I’m just enjoying the moment,” she said, smiling at him. She reached a lazy hand up to touch the skin of his wonderful chest. “I feel so…so good.”
“I’m glad.” He looked at her warmly, and then almost imperceptibly, his gaze cooled. He looked away. “I hope that did us some good,” he said crisply, sounding like things were all business again. “We’ll have to keep trying until…”
She closed her eyes, appalled, and drew back her hand. Here she’d been thinking love and he’d revealed he had a calculator where his heart should be. For just a moment, she understood the old saying that hatred is the closest thing to love.
Oh, Grant, don’t ruin this.
He leaned over her and began dropping small kisses around her navel. To her shock, her hunger was back so strongly, it was as though it hadn’t been satisfied just moments before.
So this was the way it was going to be. Alternating joy and chagrin. Well, if that was her destiny, bring it on. She had to admit, she rather liked it.
By the time their honeymoon ended, they’d had two days of mostly bliss. Callie didn’t think she’d ever been so happy in her life. She was an old hand at making love now. She knew the ropes. A lady with experience. That made her laugh at herself, but it was true. They’d made love three times that first night and countless times since. And each time she felt she learned a little more about this man she’d married.
For the short time they were together on the island, they developed a closeness that amazed her. He’d been so warm and loving, she felt as though she could say anything to him, and ask anything of him. Well, almost anything. As long as it had nothing to do with his first wife and child.
And now they were going home. Already missing the place, she looked about to make sure they had picked everything up before leaving.
“Have you had a good time?” Grant asked, smiling at her.
“Oh, it’s been like heaven here,” she said.
“Heaven I’m not so sure about,” he responded with a grin. “But I do agree it’s about the best place on our earth.” He looked at his watch. “We all packed and ready to go?”
“I think so.”
“We’ve got about twelve minutes before the car arrives to take us to the airport.” He looked at her speculatively. “Twelve whole minutes,” he said softly.
She started to smile, eyes sparkling. “Twelve whole minutes, huh?”
He nodded, one eyebrow quirked in question. “What do you think?”
She shrugged, feeling an unfamiliar sense of wicked delight. “Why not?”
Laughing, they began a race to see who would be first getting rid of the clothes they’d just put on. In half a moment, they were back on the bed, tumbling together, hot skin and willing flesh, a heady recipe for ecstasy.
Callie marveled later, when she was remembering this crazy, wonderful event, that her response had become so quick and ready in such a short time. She was very much afraid that it was mostly due to the fact that she loved the man. And, almost as important, she loved his lovemaking.
They were back and it was like stepping out of a beautiful fantasyland into the cold, hard reality of everyday life. Things that had seemed so easy on Santa Talia suddenly seemed impossible to achieve.
It had been late in the evening when they’d driven in from the airport. Callie had gone straight to the kitchen to begin to find her way around and get used to the place. She’d come over a couple of times in the days before the wedding, fixing up the spare bedroom into a retreat of her own and moving some of her things in. He’d wondered why she felt she needed her own space at the time, but he hadn’t said a thing. He wasn’t sure, really, how he was going to feel when the time came.
She made them both some hot chocolate and they sat at the kitchen table and sipped, talking softly about their weekend. They had both been yawning and he was thinking it was time to go to bed when she’d rinsed out their cups, turned to smile at him. “Well, good night,” she said.
And off she went down the hall before he realized what was happening, straight into the spare bedroom. The door closed with a crisp finality. And he was still sitting at the table with his mouth hanging open.
He supposed she was just as tired as he was, but still…He hadn’t realized she was going to value her privacy quite so completely and now he was feeling a bit disgruntled-even a little confused. He’d looked forward to having Callie in his bed, to holding her close in the night. He hadn’t had that warm companionship for so long, not since…
Well, Jan of course. Not since Jan.
Funny that he hadn’t realized where that thought was going until it got there. Usually Jan was right up-front, foremost in his consciousness. But never mind, he was just tired. This had nothing to do with Callie and the fact that they had made love. Not at all.
His instinct was to go straight to her and bang on the door, asking her just what the hell she thought she was doing. But he controlled the impulse. He’d vowed to treat her more calmly than he used to treat Jan. Give her some space. Let things develop naturally.
Still, he hoped he wasn’t going to have to point out to her that one weekend in the Caribbean wasn’t necessarily going to be enough to start a long line of descendants hatching. It might take a bit more work. In fact, it was going to take more no matter what.
Callie was leaning against the bedroom door with her eyes closed, listening intently. She’d taken that long, lonely walk down the hall, waiting to hear his voice calling her back, losing hope with every step.
Why didn’t he call her? Why didn’t he laugh and say, “No, darling, I want you in my bed-all night long.”
But he never said a word. She supposed he didn’t want her to try to take Jan’s place in his bed, so she wasn’t going to try to push her way in. She knew that in his mind, Jan was his real wife. Callie was his business partner in this baby-making enterprise. She wouldn’t encroach. She wouldn’t try to take any more of him than she was due. But it was going to be a cold, lonely night with only memories of Santa Talia to warm her.
Tina was worse. The doctors had decided her cancer was inoperable. Her outlook was not good and that cast a pall over everything.
Callie threw herself back into caretaking with a vengeance. Though she insisted on working a full day at the office, she vowed to spend every moment she could with Tina and Molly, trying to help smooth the transition for them both. The golden idyllic space and time on Santa Talia very quickly began to seem like a dream that had taken place far, far away in a past that was receding.
At dinner that night, Grant was edgy, and she wasn’t exactly calm herself. They both knew a moment of truth
