Page 46 of Dangerous Lover

“Funny. He was very funny but he only allowed us to see it.” The words were out before she could stop them. “Everyonethought he was this sober businessman but he had a very ironic take on life. He hated hypocrisy and politicians. He did a wicked imitation of the Governor, but only in the family and only when he’d had some whiskey. I knew exactly when to take things seriously and when not to, thanks to him. I could always count on him to put things in perspective when I was a girl. Once?—”

She stopped, a tear trickling from the corner of her eye. She couldn’t wipe it away herself, her hands were on his shoulders, so he did, with his thumb. “Once?” he asked quietly.

She sniffled a laugh. “Once this candidate for the Senate came to the house, trying to get Dad to become a fund-raiser for him. He was a businessman, real rah-rah, and dumb as a rock, only less interesting. He thought that since Dad was a businessman, all he’d care about was tax cuts and deregulating. So he and his horrible wife sat there smugly talking about incorporating in the Virgin Isles to avoid taxes, and how he’d raided his company’s pension fund to pump up the stock price and how he’d eliminated five thousand jobs.” She gave a little laugh, remembering. “So Dad met Mom’s eyes and started talking about their plans to liquidate, give everything to charity and move to an ashram in India. The candidate and his awful wife were so horrified they didn’t stay for dessert. Mom and Dad opened a bottle of champagne when they left and drank it all in front of the fire. I caught them necking and laughing.”

She met his eyes. “I’ve never told that story to anyone. And now I’m the last person on Earth to remember that.”

He wasn’t smiling, the deep grooves bracketinghis mouth dug even deeper. “Why haven’t you told anyone that story? It says a lot about your Dad. It’s the kind of story that automatically makes you like the guy. I think I would have liked him a lot. I like no-nonsense people.”

“Maybe.” It was an unusual thought. But who knew? Maybe theywouldhave got along. Jack seemed the opposite of her father, who’d been a man who’d liked to live large, who’d liked his comforts and his pleasures, who’d enjoyed life with gusto, even better when it was first class.

He’d enjoyed elegant clothes, fine wine and cooking, expensive Cuban cigars, single malt whiskeys. Her Dad flew first class, always stayed in 5 star hotels and always got the best seats in the house when they went to the theater.

Jack was a soldier, a hard man, a man used to living rough. He wore old clothes and down at heel boots, and had been so incredibly grateful for the meal, she was sure he didn’t eat well on a regular basis. Not much in common there.

But her father had hated bullshitters and snobs and plastic people. He’d despised Sanders once he got to know him, though at first he’d tried to hide it.

Dad might have liked Jack, after all. Jack never pretended to be anything he wasn’t, hadn’t tried to impress her in any way.

“And your mom? What was she like?”

“She was wonderful.Ah!”He suddenly changed the angle of penetration, doing something with his body, his hips, so that he bore down on her clitoris with every slow stroke into and out of her. The pleasure was almost electric in its intensity. A couple of those honeyed, electrifying strokes and then he stopped.

“Tell me more. She was wonderful. What else?”

“Beautiful.” Her body was so pleasured, she didn’t have the energy to weigh her words. They came from somewhere deep inside her. “Mom was such a beautiful woman—inside and out.”

He bent to nuzzle her neck. “I know,” he whispered against her skin. “I saw the pictures. You look just like her.”

Caroline smiled. She’d been told that often enough. It pleased her.

“Dad loved to show her off. He loved pampering her, buying her expensive gifts, it made him happy. And I think Mom loved making a nice home for him. Toby and I would catch them kissing when they thought we weren’t looking. I’m glad they died together. That’s what they would have wanted.” She tightened her hands on Jack’s biceps and looked deeply into his eyes. “You know, after—after the accident, no one would let me talk about my parents. No one wanted to hear me grieve, and no one wanted to hear me reminisce. I’ve heard every possible permutation of ‘find some closure’ that exists. It was as if talking about them was somehow… in bad taste. I could just see it in people’s eyes, they’d listen impatiently and then change the subject as soon as they decently could. All I wanted to do was—was remember them and no one would let me.”

“And Toby? What was he like?”

This was without a doubt the weirdest conversation Caroline had ever had. He’d started moving in her again, the movements slow and heated. Her entire lower body was taken up with the sex. But then he was engaging her head, too. They were having two conversations at once. Heated sex below thewaist, their bodies talking to each other loud and clear, and a deep conversation above the neck.

“Toby. Before the accident, Toby was a real little boy, you know? A scamp. He was always getting into trouble and then getting out of it because he had this big wide grin and you just melted. You forgave him everything, until his next trick. I even forgave him the frog in the bed that nearly gave me a heart attack.” Caroline watched Jack’s face as he listened to her. No one had ever listened to her so intently before, completely focused on her.

What hadhebeen like as a boy? A scamp? Overactive and mischievous? Probably not. He’d probably been quiet and serious. Though there was something in his face, thinking about him as a boy, something almost …familiarabout him, which was ridiculous.

“After the accident, he was in a coma for three months. He never walked again. And for six years, he never once complained, even when he was in excruciating pain. He loved company, but no one came. His school friends came for a while, then they stopped coming. Toby was in a wheel chair, he had seizures and that frightened people. No one wanted to see Toby, be reminded that he was what could happen to them. My best friend from high school once said to me that she didn’t understand why I didn’t put Toby in a h-home.”

Caroline looked up at the dark face an inch from hers, dark eyes boring into hers. While she’d been talking, he’d stepped up the tempo of the love-making, making the bed creak.

Caroline began the long free fall into climax, but somehow, she couldn’t stop talking.

“Toby was so incredibly brave.” Tears filled her eyes as she watched him watching her. “He couldn’t walk and, at the end, h-he could barely move, but he always kept his spirits up. He keptmyspirits up. I think the past two years, he knew he was dying, but he never said anything. I was so p-proud of him, I thought he was braver than any soldier who ever won a medal, and—and every time I brought a friend home, or a date, they always behaved as if Toby weren’t there. Or they’d talk too loud, as if he were brain-damaged. And always, they behaved as if I should be—sh-should be ash-ashamed of him when I—. Oh God, Jack.Oh!”

Shaking wildly, Caroline started coming, in long liquid pulls, so strong even her stomach muscles clenched. It was as if the pleasure cracked her wide open. Even before her sheath stopped its convulsions, she buried her face against Jack’s neck and burst into tears.

There was no stopping them, she couldn’t fight them if her life depended on it. The hot sex, and her climax had simply blown away any defenses she might have mustered and had left her raw and vulnerable, open to her deepest sadness.

She wept until she could barely catch her breath, then wept some more. She wept out her grief, and anger and fear. She wept for the long lonely nights in which she didn’t dare weep because Toby would see her swollen face in the morning, and know. She wept for three wonderful lives cut so tragically short, leaving her on the other side of the wall between life and death. And she wept because, at times, it had felt like she wasn’ton the living side of that wall, but on the other side. How many times had she felt so dead inside, it was a surprise to remember that she hadn’t died with them?

She wept until her throat was raw, until her chest ached with every shaking breath, until, finally, there were no more tears left to cry.

Throughout, Jack held her tightly, still inside her, but unmoving. He didn’t try to talk to her, perhaps realizing she was beyond words. And she’d heard all the words, anyway.

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