Beautiful Lies (44 page)

“No,
this
was the garden, Cullen. Pikuwa Creek. And you were the one who offered me the only thing I really wanted, but when I reached for it, I was locked out.”

“What did you really want?”

“Just love.”

“You had it.”

“At the end, I didn't know it anymore.”

“You had it. You have it still.”

For a moment she wasn't sure she had heard him. The last words had been spoken so softly. “You can't mean that.”

“I do.”

She couldn't seem to look away. “We haven't seen each other for ten years.”

“I'm not saying I've spent them wasting away. I had as much work to do on my heart as I did on this house and Southern Cross. But when I was done, I knew you were still in it. I've known for some time, and I've tried to make peace with it.”

She was so stunned she couldn't speak. He stepped closer, until he was just in front of her. He touched her cheek, and he smiled sadly. “I'm not asking for a second chance. I don't expect anything just because I've told you I still love you.”

She closed her eyes. It was the only way she could break the intimacy of his gaze.

“But you wanted love,” he said quietly. “You needed it. And you ought to know you've always had it.”

She could feel his fingertips stroking her cheek. She knew she had to move away or she would be lost. Here in this place, here with this man, she was in danger of reaching for love again.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

She did. His were sad. “We'll go on from here, Lee, just like nothing's changed. Because nothing has, except that now you know the entire truth of it.” He dropped his hand. “It's still not too dark to go outside. I'll light the lanterns.”

She took his hand and placed it between her breasts, so that he could feel her heart thundering. “No, this is the entire truth of it, isn't it? That you can still make me want
you with a few well-chosen words, that my heart still races whenever you touch me?”

“The words are
poorly
chosen. They're the truth, and the truth isn't always pretty, and it doesn't automatically bring happiness. Do you think I want to love you? That I haven't wished a thousand times I didn't? That I don't pray every night to fall in love with another woman and make a life with her?”

“Then do it, Cullen. Because if you do, I won't be tempted anymore, will I?” He started to speak, but she stopped him with a desperate shake of her head. “No, God, that's not true, and now I'm telling lies. Because I would be. My heart would beat just this way. I'd want you no matter what. Even if you were married. Even if I thought you hated me.”

They stared at each other, neither breathing. Then she was in his arms with no idea who had moved first. He crushed her against his chest, and she embraced him with every part of her. Hips grinding against hips, breasts flattened, hands moving hungrily across his shirt. His lips were hard against hers, but hers gave no quarter. She kissed him back, tongue against tongue, lips grazing lips, releasing, testing, tasting, demanding.

She moaned, because she was suddenly a creature of deepest, purest need. She needed to soar far and free with him, as she had in the earliest days of their marriage. She needed no assurances, no contracts, no collateral. She thought briefly of Matthew, but tonight all she could do for her son was love his father. In the very depths of their mutual hell, they could give each other solace.

“Say no, and say it now,” Cullen said, his lips against her throat. “Or it will be too late.”

“Yes.”

He swept her off her feet, lifting her easily. Even as a young man, when the flames of desire had licked at every part of their lives, he had never carried her to bed. He did so now, as if even the moments it would take to walk together were too many and too dangerous. He didn't know that she wouldn't, couldn't, change her mind. She felt his fear in the strength of his arms and the grip of his hands.

They undressed each other, or she thought they did. Their clothes were on and then they weren't, belt buckles clanking against the floor, fabric balled at their feet. The bedspread was soft against her back because neither of them took the time to pull it down. His skin was warm, his muscular body taut against hers. They filled their hands with each other's flesh, searching for the familiar and the new. He pinned her body to the bed with his, his weight welcome and seductive, then she was on top of him, limbs sliding along limbs, hearts slamming in the same desperate rhythm.

If sometimes in the deepest sleep she had remembered their lovemaking, if sometimes in the moment before dawn she had ached for his touch, now the man, the waking dream, was so much more than memory had made him. He knew her body, yet he took nothing for granted. Wordlessly he told her how he felt, each touch, each kiss, like rain to parched soil.

The greatest pleasure she had ever known arrived with the least subtle of victories. If for ten years she had yearned silently, shamefully, for Cullen, now she knew he had yearned as often and intensely for her.

There was no final moment of union. In the ways that mattered most, they had united at the first touch. When he finally sank deeply inside her, it was only the culmination and the beginning of release. She cried out when she could not sustain the pleasure even a moment longer.

 

They ate dinner in bed, Liana draped alluringly in Cullen's unbuttoned shirt, he with nothing but a sheet tangled at his waist. They didn't talk, but they touched frequently. The brush of fingers against a thigh, lips seeking out the curve of a throat or the arch of a shoulder. When they had finished eating, they snuggled under the covers, Liana's hair spilling over his arm as she lay facing him.

For so long Cullen had told himself that making love to Liana again was out of the question, and now he could hardly believe it was true. She touched his cheek with her knuckles, drawing them down to his chin.

“We took a chance, Cullen. Unless you've had a vasectomy?”

Birth control had been the furthest thing from his mind. “You're not on the pill?”

“It's not a good idea at my age.”

He was silent, trying to form an apology in his head while his body continued to sing in jubilation.

She sighed. “I didn't think of it, either.”

“The last time we didn't think of it, we got Matthew.”

“If all the mistakes we made had turned out as well as our son, we'd still be together, wouldn't we?”

“Lee, we are together.”

Her hand came to rest between them, no longer touching him. “We're in bed together. That's different.”

“Acquaint me with the subtleties, would you? We just made love. We're lying in bed after ten years apart, and it feels like you never left. And even though it's unlikely, we may have just made another baby. Is that together or not?”

She reached down and pulled the sheet higher around her breasts. A breeze had not swept the room, but one swept his heart as she covered herself. She sat up and
moved farther from him, tucking the sheet under her arms. “Sex was always great for us. Sex was never the problem.”

“And if we'd paid attention to how easily we could please each other in bed, maybe we would have tried harder to please each other out of it.”

“There's a lot more to a relationship than orgasms.”

“Do you think that's what I'm saying?”

“I don't know what you're saying.”

He sat up, propping himself against pillows and the headboard. “I'm saying whatever you want to hear. We can take this a step at a time. I'd say we took a big one tonight. But if that's as far as you want to go at the moment, that's as far as we will.”

“At the moment…”

“I want more. I want you back, on whatever terms you'll come. I can wait months. I can wait years. We can sleep together or not sleep together while you sort this out. I'll make you a partner in Southern Cross, or I'll buy property in Broome and live there, if you don't want to live out here in Woop Woop. If you want to spend part of each year in California, I'll find a way to do that, as well. But what I won't do is give you up again.”

“What you
won't
do?”

He told himself to walk softly. The most valuable lesson he'd learned as a gambler was that a serene face and a warm word could turn a losing hand into a winner.

“I won't do anything you don't want me to.” He raised her fingers to his lips. “But, Lee, you're not the only one to wish the last ten years hadn't existed. If I'm pushing too hard, it's only because I don't want to live another ten without you.”

“You don't know what's at stake here.” The sleepy look of pleasure was giving way to agitation. He watched her tense, and as she did, his own chest tightened in anxiety.

“What is at stake?” He kept her hand in his and his voice calm. “Tell me. What's at stake, besides a chance to start over?”

“I have a life.”

He was confused. There seemed to be something important she wasn't saying. “Too right you do. But not the one you want. You said so yourself.”

“But I can't just give it up, Cullen. Maybe ten years ago I should have stayed here and tried to work things out. And maybe if I had, it would have destroyed us both. I don't know anymore. Maybe none of my choices were good and I did the only thing I could.”

He could see her moving rapidly away from him. He cursed himself. “This is the wrong time to talk this over. First let's find Matthew. Then things will fall into place. We have the rest of our lives to work this out. Let's just be glad we found each other again and take it from there.”

She pulled her hand from his, as if she hadn't heard him. “If I leave California, everything I've worked for will vanish. Maybe I shouldn't have gone home. Maybe I shouldn't have taken my place at Pacific International. But I did. And now you're asking me to give up everything.”

“That's not what I'm asking.”

“If I come back here to live with you, I lose my home, my job….”

“But you'd always have a job here. You could do what you love. You could design jewelry again. If you didn't want to design for me, you could design for Paspaley or Broome Pearls. Any of them would fight to have you.”

“I haven't designed a thing since I left you!”

He hadn't known that for sure, although he had suspected. “Why not?”

“I have a different life and no time for hobbies.”

“Hobbies? You're an artist.”

“Not anymore.”

He could hear himself saying all the wrong things, but he didn't know the right ones. “No worries, then. It doesn't matter. Because I can take care of you and Matthew. You don't need a job, and you have a home. Here, where you belong.”

“You're missing the point.”

She was right about that. There was still something just out of his grasp, something that he
was
missing, but Cullen knew he was growing too upset to see it. “Bloody hell, we're just making a mess of things again. Let's call a halt to this, before we say things we don't mean.”

She looked as if she wanted to say more, but at last she nodded.

He forced an uneven smile. “Will you sleep here, with me tonight? No promises, no pledges. Just sleep beside me?”

For a moment he thought she would refuse, but she nodded again. He slid down and adjusted the pillows, turning to face her. She slid down, too, but she turned her back to him.

He knew he was taking a chance, that he might send her away for good, but he moved closer and settled his arm over her waist, gently positioning her to curl against him. He kissed her hair. “She'll be right, Lee. Whatever it is, we'll make it right.”

She didn't move away, but even as he drifted off to sleep, he realized that she was still lying stiff and sleepless in his arms.

 

Liana wasn't sleeping deeply when she felt Cullen's hand on her breast. Desire infused her again, fed by the fogginess of dreams. She turned to him before she realized
what she had done, then she didn't realize anything again as they came together in the relaxed, indulgent sex of long-time lovers. During their marriage they had often made love this way, as if only in sleep could they bury their problems deeply enough that love and passion could be reborn.

“I love you,” he whispered against her hair as he fell asleep again. Her body was satiated, but her heart was too full of emotion to drift off with him. She lay awake, watching him in the half-light of dawn. His brown hair fell over his forehead, and his face was at peace. He was older, but just as desirable now, a man who had emerged from the crucible stronger, and confident in his power.

And who was she? A woman still molded by the flames. A woman who knew what she wanted but was too afraid to reach for it. She had found a tolerable life and a place at Pacific International. She had gained security and an enviable future for their son.

But what had she lost? And what would she lose if she denied her heart?

She stole out of bed as the sky lightened, slipping her arms through Cullen's shirt again and buttoning it as she left. She was drawn by the room she hadn't yet faced, as if within its walls she would find the answers she sought.

Inside, the house was silent, but outside, a cacophony of bird calls greeted the sun. When she had lived here she had done her best work in the early morning hours, while the house was still tolerably cool and the bird chorus sang cantatas to the new day. She remembered the first piece she had created in her studio, the lily-of-the-valley pin that she had given to the homeless man on California Street. She was sorry now that she had parted with it. She hoped the pin had helped him make a new start, the way that once upon a time its creation had made one for her.

The short hallway leading to the southwest corner of the house was wider, she thought. It was foolish to imagine that Cullen hadn't renovated this part of the house when he undertook the rest. She steeled herself to find the studio gone. There were two doors leading off the hallway. She opened the left and found the utility closet that had been there ten years ago. She rested her hand on the doorknob at the right and stood without moving, unable to make herself turn it.