Wintergreen

“No,” she whispered fiercely. Don’t move away, her heart cried. She knew all the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this. She had been cautious and careful for years, backing out of every relationship long before she risked getting hurt. She knew better than to take such a risk with Matthew; she was conscious that he had the capacity to hurt her. It didn’t make sense. “Just for a minute,” she murmured.

His answer was a ghost of a smile as his lips descended on hers again, this time courting her pleasure with tenderness. With a lazy, slow movement, his palms traced the shape of her, molding, exploring her hips and then her waist. One hand slid up to cradle the orb of her breast, then trailed higher to simply caress the soft skin of her throat. Simply? The hollow in her throat suddenly felt as soft as satin, as fragile as a rose petal, as sensitive as the pulse that beat so erratically within it. His lips tasted, savored, promised, deliberately coveting her response, taking pleasure from it. “Always so loving, Misha,” he murmured. “So much love in you. So sweet…”

He slid the back zipper of her dress halfway down, then pushed the material aside, baring her neck and shoulders. He kissed the hollow above her collarbone, his lips so smooth and warm on that sensitive skin that a shudder rose from deep inside her. His tender mastery stirred sensual yearnings so strong that all her blood seemed to rush to her head. She felt dizzy, lightheaded, feverish. She couldn’t seem to keep her hands still, wanting to touch him, wanting to explore his skin. “Misha,” he murmured, “you know damn well what you’re asking for…”

Yes. Him. Matthew. An hour with him, a day. She felt richer where he touched; her skin felt cherished; she felt a freedom to touch and explore that she had never felt before, a need to please and to know… Her lips clung to his, groping to tell him. It was not just sex, but she didn’t know what it was. She was a little frightened and very, very high, and she drank in his warmth, her hands roaming his back.

His breathing was harsh and labored. “God, I want you,” he groaned. He unzipped her dress completely, and his hands stole inside, kneading the flesh of her back, making sensual circular motions on her thin silk slip…

“Just what do you think you’re doing to my mother?”

An electric volt shot through Lorna as she heard the belligerent voice of her son. Matthew stiffened, and they both jerked around to face Johnny, who was standing in the doorway to the hall.

“I wasn’t hurting your mother, Johnny,” Matthew immediately assured the boy. Lorna could not believe how calm his voice sounded. Her throat was dry and her fingers trembling, her body not at all prepared to cope with the abrupt withdrawal of Matthew’s touch.

“It sure looked to me like you were.” Johnny’s sleep-laden eyes were nevertheless furious; his chin jutted forward with all the aggression of a man twice his size. “Nobody hurts my mother, mister. You better just get out of here.”

“Johnny!” The child had his fists clenched as if ready to take on the grown man. A year later, she might remember that instant and smile; but at this precise instant she was afraid of what would happen. “He was not hurting me. Honey, go back to bed-”

“Mom, don’t lie. I can take care of him-”

If she had been looking at Matthew, she might have seen a half smile on his lips. But she was looking at her son, groping for the proper words. Her maternal instincts had never failed her before; but now she stood as if paralyzed. Her flesh was still warm from Matthew’s touch, her heart still beating wildly. She shivered violently as Matthew zipped up her dress and rested a quietly supportive hand on her shoulder.

“Johnny, I would never hurt your mother,” Matthew assured him quietly. “You have every right to be concerned about anyone who might. I’ll be leaving the house within the next five minutes. You can keep your door open when you go back to bed.”

There was a silence. “Well…” Johnny’s fists slowly unclenched, but he aimed a look of total distrust at Matthew.

“Matthew wasn’t hurting me, honey,” Lorna echoed, and took a long breath.

Johnny wasn’t looking at her. “You’re leaving soon?” he insisted to Matthew.

“I’m leaving soon,” Matthew agreed.

The child stalked back through the dark hallway. When Lorna turned around again, Matthew was bending over to pick up his coat, but his eyes met hers. A twinkle of something dark and private passed between them. “That’s quite a chaperon you have there. It’s pretty impossible to believe he’d take it kindly if he woke up one morning to find someone in bed next to you.”

“Well, of course, I wouldn’t…” Her first impulse was to defend herself. Of course she wouldn’t allow some strange man in bed with her while her half-grown son was asleep in the next room! But she didn’t finish the sentence, aware from the way Matthew’s eyes pierced hers that he’d already come to that conclusion. A conclusion, she thought fleetingly, that should be none of his business.

He adjusted his collar, buttoned his suit jacket and reached for the overcoat he had tossed on a chair. Suddenly, he was all control and authority again; he faced her as Matthew Whitaker, the imposing attorney, and she could no longer read any emotion in his dark eyes. “Misha, whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t come here to seduce you. That had nothing to do with my brother, with your boy. If you’re angry…”

She sucked in her breath, feeling shaky inside. “No.” But she was frightened by the feelings he’d evoked in her. Because all the same, his brother and her child made even the simplest touch between her and Matthew far too complicated. She looked away from him and crossed her arms as she followed him to the door.

He opened it, letting in a sudden chill and the glow of moonlight on snow-covered street. The night had turned silent; the afternoon snowstorm had worn itself out, and the wind had abated. He looked out and then turned back, raising his hand to her cheek. She curled her face into his palm, aching inside, as her eyes searched his. “I don’t see how it can possibly work, Misha.”

She nodded, unable to deny it.

“My father and your son are involved, and they’ve already been hurt.”

She knew it all. And worse, she knew also that Matthew still believed she had been unfaithful to Richard. The trust so vital to any kind of meaningful relationship could never be there for him.

“Do you want me to call you?” he asked quietly.

No, said her every instinct of self-preservation. But she nodded, and he turned to go out into the black, still night.

Lorna had checked on the sleeping Johnny, turned off the lights and locked the door, and was now immersed to the shoulders in a steaming-hot bath, her eyes closed and a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. She thought of Matthew, and then she thought of her son, and then she thought of Matthew…but finally, almost inevitably, her thoughts settled on Richard’s friend and mentor, Ron Stone.

She’d fallen in love with Richard when he was studying for the bar-terrible timing, any attorney would have told her, but then, Lorna had grown up in an academic atmosphere. Richard was immersed in law books seven days a week, but when he did come up for air they were together… They seemed to live on fast food and late-night conversations after the rest of the world had long been asleep, the two of them isolated in a very private world. Richard was her first love, her only lover; within a week after he at last passed the bar, he put a wedding ring on her finger, and their life was abruptly turned upside down.

Ron Stone was older than her husband by ten years. He was tall and blond, as Ivy League as alligator shirts, as smooth as whipped cream, and as good-looking as a tennis pro. An attorney, naturally. Divorce was his specialty, although he didn’t seem to favor divorcees. He liked young, beautiful and unforgivably stupid married women.

He liked Lorna.

Richard had turned into a stranger the day he was admitted to the bar. He worked for the law firm sixty, sometimes seventy hours a week; at night he and a reluctant Lorna partied with a fast-moving crowd, some of whom swapped mates to keep from being bored. Ron Stone headed that pack. Lorna considered him a vulture, but Richard thought him an irreplaceable key that would unlock the doors Richard wished to enter. Ron Stone knew all the right people, could help Richard make all the right contacts. Coming from a successful family, Richard wanted to make his own name in his own way, and now. If that meant using people…well, Ron Stone was a master at that game. From the first he took on Lorna as his own personal little cause. There was no talking to Richard about Stone’s lifestyle or her uneasiness at his innuendos, especially since his behavior toward her was impeccable whenever Richard was within sight.

Her husband would change back to the man she’d fallen in love with, Lorna told herself a thousand times; all he needed was a little confidence under his belt, some successes he could call his own. Any new marriage requires adjustments, and she desperately wanted her marriage to be successful…but it wasn’t. Critical, jealous, possessive,