She called his name, gripping him tightly with her inner muscles, inciting him higher, faster, harder. “Love me,” she kept whispering softly, fiercely, as if there were ever a time when he hadn’t.
When the first spasm of release shuddered through her, he could no longer hold back. Violent with need, relentless at driving her higher than she’d ever been, he rode them both to the edge…and then tipped over.
By the time he sank against her, burying his face in her hair, he couldn’t have roused for a fire.
Nothing could have made him leave her.
Garrett had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but when his eyes suddenly opened, the sun was poking its head over the horizon. A soft, smoky light seeped through the porch screens. Robins were having an orgy in the dew-drenched grass, plucking worms. Someone’s cat prowled the white picket fence line. And he was stroking Emma’s back while she was stroking his. Side by side, both of their heads on the same jacquard pillow.
The mat beneath them was as comfortable and yielding as bamboo spikes. Still, he didn’t move. He had the craziest feeling that he’d been looking into her eyes just like this, exactly like this, right before he’d completely crashed.
“Am I the only one who slept?” he murmured.
“No. I dropped off like a stone. Better than I’ve slept in weeks and weeks.”
“But short.” One of them must have pulled her Grecian gown over them. The morning was warm enough, yet the gown hardly made an adequate blanket. And still neither moved. “What time do you open the gallery?”
“Not until ten. But Josh’ll be here by nine-thirty, latest.”
“So we need all traces of crime erased by then?”
“The only crime I can think of,” she murmured, “is that I never tried seducing you back when we were teenagers.”
“You were pretty straight back then.”
“Still am,” she confessed.
“Not with me.”
“Not with you,” she whispered and kissed him. They couldn’t have caught more than a couple hours’ sleep, yet he was suddenly aroused again.
More than aroused. On fire. For her, only for her.
She closed her eyes and just seemed to lose herself in him. She responded blindly, fiercely, to every touch, every kiss, every sound, as if no man had ever seeped through her defenses the way he did, as if she’d never wanted before, never needed before.
Or maybe that was just him. Feeling that way about her. Even as a teenager, he couldn’t recall feeling this crazy. He wanted to be with her more than he wanted life or breath. He didn’t care about tomorrow. Didn’t care about anything but having her, taking her and being taken.
As he tugged her beneath him, he hadn’t forgotten his sister’s grave problems…or the public complications of Emma’s called-off engagement. In a matter of hours, they both had to face the reality of heavy problems in their lives.
Maybe that propelled him to be a better lover than he was. A better lover than he thought he could be. But when Emma’s legs were wrapped around him, her throat arched as she surrendered to release, he felt a wild, crazy rush that was far more than orgasmic.
All these years, he’d never married. In that instant he knew it was because he’d never really trusted anyone. In his world, he only trusted himself… Yet he’d already trusted Emma with his fears about his sister, about his life. And now, irrevocably, he was trusting her with his heart.
With her, all his secrets were coming out of the woodwork.
He was in love with her.
Realizing it was the most terrifying sensation he could remember. But damn, it was beyond wonderful.
Emma left him sleeping, knowing how little rest he’d had. She took a few seconds to restore the gallery to order, turning off lights and turning on the phones, before hustling into the shower.
As she should have expected, the phone started ringing the instant she stepped under the spray. Her hair was foamed up with shampoo when she heard a second round of ringing. And she was drying off and tiptoeing around her bedroom off the porch when she heard it ring yet again.
Damn. Soon she had to start taking those calls. It didn’t matter how exhausted she was, she knew she couldn’t escape a full schedule today. She twisted her still damp hair into a chignon, pulled on a light linen skirt and T-shirt, pushed her feet into sandals, took a breath and then aimed back for the porch to find her lover.
It was in her heart, that beat. That find-her-lover beat. It wasn’t familiar, the song, the music, yet in spite of everything-and God knows she knew she was facing Armageddon today-her heart couldn’t seem to stop singing.
On the back porch she found Garrett, looking groggy-eyed and wild-haired, wearing undershorts…and making her want to laugh, because his cell phone looked glued to his ear. He couldn’t escape his business life any more than she could escape hers.
For a moment she just savored the look of him. In high school, kids had pegged him as a brain more than a jock. But she’d gotten to know that bare chest back then, had always known his shoulders were like marble, his chest tightly muscled.
She hadn’t known what a creative lover he’d be. And when he suddenly noticed her in the doorway, she realized she’d never known how vulnerable those wicked deep brown eyes could be, either. Emotion hung between them. Something warmer than the sultry morning, something magical. He lifted a hand in a gesture inviting her closer and immediately cut short the call.
“Hey, beauty,” he murmured.
“Hey, you,” she murmured right back. “I thought I heard your phone ringing several times, because your ringer sound is so different than mine. But I knew I was in for personal calls today. What’s this for you-work calls start bugging you even before seven in the morning?”
“Hey, you don’t get the plaque for being a workaholic if you get off the treadmill.”
“But you get calls this early all the time?”
“Just the nature of the work, Emma.” It was just idle conversation. He was looking at her. She was looking at him.
All she wanted was to climb back on that impossibly hard mat with him and make love all day. She’d never thought of herself as a fragile woman, but right now she felt more fragile than a single silk thread in the sunlight. It was Garrett’s doing. When he’d found her last night, she’d been so, so low. Yet he’d made her feel like a woman, the way she’d never felt about herself as a woman.
She wanted to tell him. To show him.
But a long day was waiting for her. And she was unsure what last night had meant to him. Besides which, the circles under his eyes tattled how hard he’d been pushing it since he’d come home.
She shook her head. “Garrett, you were always that way. Driven. Committed. Never-say-die.”
“I know. They’re on the heavy lists of faults.”
“They’re wonderful qualities, you doofus. But for the next hour and a half you’re turning off the phone and coming with me.”
“Going where? And does the where have coffee?”
“You’re going finger painting. And yes, I’ll get you coffee first.”
“Finger painting. Yeah, right,” he said with a laugh.
Naturally he thought she was joking. She bribed him-if he turned off his cell phone for an hour, she’d tell him the truth. By the time she’d successfully confiscated his phone, they were in her white van, carting mugs of almond-toffee java as she drove. And told.
It was one of her secrets. Not a big one, but nevertheless, not public knowledge. Garrett knew Lily Cartright but not that Lily used to be a social worker for Eastwick Cares or that she’d hooked Emma up with the grief-counseling center.
“I still don’t get it. How do you get from grief counseling to finger painting?”
She showed him. The building was new, built in a shady cul-de-sac with a water garden and ducks-although the ducks, she admitted, were strictly volunteer. When they walked inside, four children were sitting on candy-colored beanbags.
“Sheesh, you guys are early,” she told the squirts, who swarmed them both. Martha was three, George was
