Page 6 of Bride for Keeps

She couldn’t bear the thought, and she didn’t know how to tell him. That her heart was breaking. That she was miserable. Wasn’t it obvious? He was miserable too. But if she opened those floodgates, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop and she’d lose him all the same. Afraid he’d confirm all her fears about herself.

She didn’t know the magic combination of words to make him stay without risking that, so she stayed silent.

“Hi,” she finally replied, her throat tight and her eyes burning with tears.

“I, uh, just stopped in to change. Dad asked me to stay over again. Mom’s…struggling.”

Sierra kept her mouth shut, though Mrs. McArthur’s martyrdom of Dr. McArthur’s illness was already old. MS was hardly a death sentence, that much Sierra had gleaned from reading up on the disease. It certainly didn’t foretell Mrs. McArthur’s own death. It made no sense she needed constant support from Carter.

And see—wasn’t that the thing? This would have come between them regardless of the real father thing. The secrets and the silences. Even if things had been good, Carter would always want to support his mother no matter what she was going through, and Sierra would think she was a dramatic jerk.

They weredoomed, regardless of this particular incarnation of that doom.

Carter walked through the living room and toward the hall that led to their bedroom. Sierra followed, though she couldn’t explain why. Panic beat in her chest.

She was going to lose him.

She’d already lost him.

But he was here in their bedroom, shedding his suit jacket as he moved toward the closet.

“Did you need something?” he asked, sounding exhausted and desperate for her answer to be no.

You. I need you. But she didn’t know how to admit it in words. She’d lost all the words in practicing her silences. So, she stood there, desperation clawing at her in an all new way. Five months.Five monthsof no talking, no smiling, no kissing.Five monthsof nothing but shadows.

She wanted that irresistible light she’d seen in him when they’d first met, that amazing, inner warmth that had made her forget everything he was, and everything she was.

It had started with that. Warmth, light, and a kiss.

Maybe there was some way it’d bring him back. She shook as she crossed to him, and she couldn’t have explained why kissing her husband seemed like some revolutionary baring of her soul. Why she felt sick with hope when it would be easier to speak, to ask, to demand.

But words…words could be used as weapons, and she’d used her own as weapons enough. A kiss was the only thing she had that didn’t come with a million other pieces of baggage.

So, she walked right up to him, closer than they’d been in months. She touched his shoulder, watched as his eyebrows drew together as he glanced down at her hand there.

Then she did what she considered the bravest thing she’d ever done. She rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his. Firm, but gentle, her eyes screwed tightly closed to keep her courage up.

When she fell back to her heels and managed the courage to look up at him, he was standing exactly where he had been, his expression exactly what it had been when she’d touched his shoulder. Baffled.

“What was that for?”

But he didn’t say it accusingly, and there was no censure in his gaze. It was all confusion. She didn’t know what to say, so she did it again. Pressed her lips to his, let all of her love and worry pour into that gentle meeting of mouths.

He was still but not stiff, accepting but not responsive exactly, but this time before she could pull away, he touched her. The lightest brush of his fingertips down her shoulder, then the light pressure of his palm on the small of her back.

She shuddered, hope and relief infusing the moment, prompting her to stay here against him longer than she had with the first kiss.

Finally, his mouth moved against hers, a subtle adjustment so his bottom lip brushed her top one, the slightest flick of his tongue against the seam of her mouth.

She wanted to cry with relief, but instead she moved, pressing herself against him fully. Throwing herself into the kiss more wildly, more insistently, and in that moment it was as if something ignited between them. A desperate heat and need she wasn’t sure had ever been there even before all this mess.

She should dissect it, except she didn’t want to. She wanted to burn in it as his tongue swept into her mouth, as his arm banded her tighter to him. She wanted to forgeteverythingand exist where kisses and attraction were simple. Elemental.

They didn’t talk. She had the fleeting thought they should, but then his hands moved under her shirt, smoothing up her abdomen to her breasts and she figured they could talk later. After all, what was more enjoyable? Exposing horrible emotional wounds or the way he devoured her mouth, a starving man desperate for her?

Her. He hadn’t stoppedwantingher at least. And she wanted him. She tore at his clothes, and that seemed to set him off so that he was pulling hers off too.

It was different than it had ever been. Edgy and desperate. Maybe even a little angry. They’d always had good sex, but it had been happy, enthusiastic sex. This was something…darker.

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