“It’s a cliche gift.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ve got gold dust all over your nose now.”
“Pollen, they call it,” she whispered as she dabbed at her nose and giggled. “All gone?”
“Not quite.” He dusted the tip of her nose for her.
Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close in the shadows of the trees. After another kiss, this one brief and undemanding and tender, he said, “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”
The press corps waiting for them at his pillared mansion were held at bay by a team of security guards, so Zach drove around back where they could run inside without having to face questions.
Locking the door of the little sitting room where they’d entered, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard. So urgent were his kisses as they skimmed her lips, her throat, her breasts. She began to tremble violently. Then he lifted her skirt and found that soft place in between her thighs.
“You’re not wearing panties, I see.”
His tongue made contact and she gasped.
“No…”
She was wet and breathless and dying for more as he peeled off the rest of her clothes.
“Am I bad?” she whispered as he undid his belt and began tearing off his jeans and shirt.
“I like bad.”
When they were naked, he shoved her against the wall and held her close. “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.”
When she complied, he put on a condom and ground himself into her, scraping her back and shoulders against the wall in his eagerness. She didn’t mind. She cared only for him as he rode her fast and hard. Arching her pelvis to meet his thrusts, she cried out. Again, he took her to that strange, wild world that was theirs alone. Clinging to him fiercely, her heart pounded in mad unison with his.
Afterward, their bodies drenched in perspiration, they sank to the floor with their arms still wound around each other.
“I don’t know if I can ever stand up again,” Summer whispered breathlessly.
“Not to worry, sweetheart. You don’t have to.”
He lifted her and carried her through the house to the bed in the room she’d used that first weekend. Then he lay down beside her and stared at her hot, damp body gleaming in the moonlight.
When she was with him like this, she felt almost sick with pleasure and terror of losing him. She thought about her secret and how he might react when she confided in him. How, when could she tell him?
The long, lonely years without him had taught her what loss felt like, and she dreaded anything coming between them again. But something would. All it might take was her confession about the baby.
She’d been young when she’d loved him before. People like Thurman, who’d been wrong in all the advice they’d given her, had told her she’d been lucky to have lost their baby girl, lucky a lowlife like Zach was out of her life, lucky that she could start over. They’d said she would meet someone else, someone respectable, have another baby, that all would be just fine.
She’d learned better. Thurman had been wrong about almost everything, but he’d been especially wrong about how she felt about losing Zach’s baby and about losing Zach himself. Yes, she had her career, and she’d enjoyed national, even international, acclaim. But never once in all those years had she felt this alive.
Zach was special. When she’d been a foolish, naive girl, he’d lived in a shack. He’d been considered beneath her by the kids at school, and she’d still thought he was the one. Until Thurman and his cohorts had twisted and turned their love into something ugly and sordid and had driven them apart.
Now Zach rolled over, took her hand and interlocked his fingers with hers. When he looked at her, her blood beat with a mixture of desire and fear. When she kissed him, she realized she was going to take the easy way out…at least for now. They could talk in the morning. The happiness she felt was simply too precious to risk.
That night they made love several more times, but early Saturday morning, when they might have talked, Zach had to go to the site because his contractor had encountered a new challenge. Then he wanted to see Nick. He said they’d had a minor quarrel earlier in the week and he wanted to make things right on his way home.
“I hope you didn’t quarrel about me.”
His eyes narrowed, and she knew that they had.
“I see. Okay, then,” she agreed, feeling a little relief at the reprieve, deciding it was probably best for him to handle Nick as he saw fit. “You’d better stop by. Last week I was terrible in rehearsals, so I really need to go over the script.”
But no sooner was he gone than her whirling emotions centered on her secret and him and she was unable to concentrate. Her need to confess made her as uncertain as a young girl in the throes of first love, and she could do nothing except worry about what Nick might say against her.
Hours passed. Unable to focus, she stared at the daisies and her script.
Her phone rang. When she saw it was Gram, she answered it, glad of the distraction.
“I’ve got some news. I was calling to invite you and Zach over to dinner. I could tell you then.”
“I’ll ask Zach… See what he says.” If they went out to dinner, it would be more difficult to find the perfect moment to confess.
“Tell Zach I’m cooking chicken and Andouille gumbo, crawfish etoufee and a shrimp salad. Oh, and those chocolate-chip cookies he loves so much. Maybe after dinner we could play Hearts.”
When Gram hung up, Summer remained as unfocused as ever, even as she comforted herself that it was all right not to work, that sometimes procrastination was part of any actress’s process.
Finally, Zach’s car roared into the drive out back. Jumping up, breathing hard, she ran to a tall window where she stood until she saw a reporter. Only with the greatest effort did she tiptoe back to the table, pick up a pen and sit down before her script. But when Zach walked through the front door and called to her, she answered with her next breath.
“In here! Working!” She giggled at that last.
He strode inside the kitchen and kissed her. “Sorry it took so long. I hope you got something done.”
“I tried,” she said evasively.
Her frustration must have shown because he ran his knuckles up the curve of her neck. “Sounds like somebody needs a holiday.”
“Right… It’s your fault I couldn’t work. I was thinking about you the whole time you were gone.”
“Ditto.” He swept her into his arms and devoured her mouth in a dizzying kiss.
As eager as he, she tore off her clothes while watching him do the same. They ended up making love on the kitchen table-but only after she’d removed the precious daisies for safekeeping.
“Oh,” she said, while they were dressing afterward. “I almost forgot and Gram would have killed me…”
“What?”
“She said she had something to tell us, and she invited us over for dinner tonight.”
“It must be nice, having family to share things with,” he said.
She realized it was, even if Gram had her own ideas about how Summer’s life should be and never stopped pushing for her own agenda.
“I take it that’s a yes,” she said.
Zach would never know exactly at what point that night he knew for sure that no matter what she’d done in the past, no matter what the masses believed, Summer was the one woman who was essential to his happiness. Nothing spectacular happened; it was simply a very special evening.
To elude the paparazzi, he had a pair of doubles drive away in his Mercedes so he and Summer could slip out the back to the dock and take his airboat. As they sped along the glassy water, laughing like children, the sun glowed like gold in the cypress trees, turning the bayou into a gilded ribbon of flashing darkness and light.
Summer’s hair whipped back from her pale face, and her heavily lashed blue eyes shone every time she glanced at him as if she were as exhilarated by his nearness as he was by hers. She wore a navy dress with tiny white buttons and held the filmy skirt down with hands pressed against her knees.
