“I thought this called for a celebration,” he said.
“Do you intend to celebrate like this whenever you get your way?” she asked, unable to resist the tart question.
“If I do, will you give in more often?”
She grinned at the teasing note in his voice. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Somehow I thought that would be your answer,” he said, sounding surprisingly pleased. He held up the negligee. “Want some privacy while you change into this?”
She snatched it from his hand and headed for the adjoining bathroom.
“Don’t take too long,” he pleaded in a voice that had grown husky.
“You can keep busy opening the champagne,” she said, wishing she had a glass to take along with her. She wasn’t sure where she’d get the nerve to emerge from the bathroom in that revealing gown without it.
She recognized as soon as she’d closed the door behind her that she would collapse with a bad case of stage fright if she didn’t hurry. She was all thumbs as it was as she stripped off her clothes, took a hurried shower, then pulled the filmy gown on. She stood in front of the steamy mirror and marveled at what she saw.
There was a faint hint of curl in her tousled hair. Her cheeks were bright with becoming color. Her eyes were sparkling with anticipation. She looked...like a bride, every bit as radiant as the picture-perfect bride Peg had described for her with such longing. Dear heaven, she told herself with a sense of amazement, after what seemed to be an eternity of waiting, she really was about to be a bride in more than name only. Luke’s bride.
Drawing in a deep, trembling breath, she finally opened the door. She had to cling to the frame for support when she saw Luke standing at the window, wearing only his dark trousers. The well-defined muscles in his shoulders and back seemed to beckon for her touch. His skin was more bronzed now than it had been when he’d first arrived back in Clover. He looked even more breathtakingly masculine than he had six years ago.
Yet she knew exactly how he would feel if she stroked her fingers over his bare flesh. The skin would be supple, and it would burn wherever she dared to caress. She absorbed all of this in the space of a heartbeat.
At the sound of the door opening, he turned, facing her, his expression avid as his gaze swept over her. The hunger and electricity charging that gaze could have lit up the entire town of Clover, maybe the entire state of South Carolina.
Since Katie couldn’t seem to move, he picked up the two flutes of champagne and came slowly toward her. She accepted the glass. Her pulse skittered wildly as their fingers brushed.
“You look...breathtaking,” he said in a voice that had turned low and seductive.
“I feel...” Katie found she couldn’t begin to describe the sensations rippling through her. She felt slightly breathless, slightly anxious and deliciously aroused all at once.
Luke carefully set his glass down and reached for her. “You feel,” he began, turning her words around and filling in the space she’d left blank, “like fire and silk.”
His fingers skimmed along her arms, leaving heat in their wake. That same delicate stroking over sheer chiffon made her skin tingle with shivery awareness. Her nipples hardened at once, responding to the repeated return of tormenting touches. When he lowered his head and took one sensitive, thinly covered peak into his mouth, she shuddered, reaching for his bare shoulders and clinging just to remain upright.
The sensation was exquisite, sweeter than she’d recalled in her wildest memories of that other time, that other tender claiming.
Unfortunately, rather than adding to the provocative sensations Luke was stirring in her now, the memories suddenly cooled her ardor. Oh, her body was his, responding to his touches with predictable abandon. She couldn’t have prevented that if she’d tried. She’d waited far too long for this moment.
But her heart withdrew into a protective shell. Even as Luke entered her with a slow, thrilling stroke that filled her and lured her toward an explosive release, somewhere deep inside she remained aloof and terrified.
Terrified that once again their love was an illusion, that once again it wouldn’t last.
And when Luke saw the silent tears spilling down her cheeks, when he asked what was wrong in a voice that shook with concern, Katie couldn’t answer. She simply wrapped her arms around him and held on for dear life, hoping that somehow, some way she would never have to let go.
* * *
Ironically, after all his sneaky conniving to make it happen, Luke found that making love to Katie was bittersweet. As perfectly attuned as they had been in bed, as sweetly erotic and wickedly demanding as the night had been, something had been missing. Something had gone terribly wrong, leaving Katie in tears she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain.
A few weeks ago, absorbed with his single-minded pursuit of marriage, not love, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the lack at all, but now he recognized it for what it surely had to be. Katie had made love with him, but she wasn’t in love with him. She had held something back, some essential part of herself.
Sitting in the kitchen at dawn, drinking a cup of coffee, he couldn’t help thinking about the first time they had made love. Katie had been totally inexperienced. He had been young and anxious. But love had made every touch magic, every kiss joyous. There had been no holding back for either of them.
Last night, with Katie asleep in his arms, he’d felt a fleeting sense of triumph. This morning, after hours of lying awake analyzing it, he realized that it had been a shallow victory. Katie had shared her body, but not her heart. He wondered bleakly if he would ever get that back again.
It
