Legacy of Lies (26 page)

“G
oddammit, Alexandra!”

He'd been panic-stricken when her call had come. All during the nerve-racking drive to the winery, thoughts of Alex lying in the roadway, broken and bleeding, had billowed in his mind like dark and deadly smoke from a sugarcane field fire.

Wanting, needing, to get to her as quickly as possible, he'd disregarded personal safety and all state speed statutes, racing into the mountains, planning to take her into his arms, to soothe her, to love her.

But then he'd found her sitting coyly atop that bar stool, sipping wine as if she were in some damn nightclub, flirting with that blond beachboy, who in turn looked as if he'd been struck by lightning, and every one of Zach's good intentions had disintegrated.

He was, admittedly, furious. Furious at her for risking her life, furious at himself for allowing loyalty to Eleanor and responsibility toward Lord's to prevent him from simply saying the hell with the company and his marriage and taking what he wanted.

And what he wanted, dammit, was Alex.

“Dammit, Alexandra,” he complained, driving slowly along the edge of the road, “would you quit acting like a spoiled brat and get back into this car?”

She didn't answer; nor did she so much as spare him a glance. She just kept walking, her hooded cardinal slicker brightening the dismal gray day.

“It's another ten miles to the house.”

“I run ten miles all the time.”

“Not in weather like this.”

She turned. “It just so happens that I like walking in the rain. And for your information, Mr. Know-It-All Deveraux, if you check with a mechanic after the tow truck driver pulls the car out of that ditch, you'll discover that the brakes gave out. I wasn't speeding.”

“Are you saying the brakes failed?”

“Got it on the first try. I guess the famed German automotive engineering isn't all it's cracked up to be.” She turned away and began marching down the road again.

This was ridiculous. He couldn't follow her all the way back to Eleanor's. Muttering a string of pungent curses, he pulled the car over to the side of the deserted roadway.

He moved quickly, planning to drag her, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the car.

She didn't look back when she heard the car door slam. Nor did she pause as his long, determined strides brought him alongside her.

“Go away. And leave me alone.”

“The hell I will,” he snarled, his temper approaching boiling point. “You're coming with me.”

But he'd no sooner grabbed her arm when Alex surprised them both. Swinging her fist wildly, she connected firmly with his jaw.

“I said, leave me alone!” she shouted, her words whipped away by the driving wind.

“Too late.” It was the last straw. Ignoring the surprising pain in his jaw, he grabbed hold of the front of her slicker and pulled her toward him. Water streamed down his furious face.

“I'm sick of this,” he shouted. “I'm fed up with this entire fucking charade.”

A lesser woman would have been intimidated by the savage gleam glittering in his midnight dark eyes. Alex tilted her head—disregarding her hood as it fell backward, exposing her head to the driving rain—and met his dangerous gaze with a challenging glare of her own.

“What charade?”

“For starters, my sitting in my office, drinking in your scent, trying to keep my mind on facts and figures when all the time I'm wondering what you're wearing beneath those outrageously sexy outfits you insist on wearing, instead of proper little pinstriped dress-for-success business suits.

“I'm sick and tired of spending some of the most miserable nights of my life lying alone in bed, imagining you across town—so near, and yet so impossibly far away—and wondering what you're doing. Or worse yet, who you're doing it with.

“I'm sick of remembering that night, when I held you in my arms and wished that I possessed the power to stop time. I'm sick of going to sleep so horny my balls ache and having to take cold showers every morning to get rid of the goddamn hard-on that comes from dreaming about you.

“And mostly I'm sick of having spent all this time wishing for what might have been and kicking myself for not having made love to you when we had the chance.

“I've wanted you more than I've ever wanted any
woman in my life. But because I care about you more than I've ever cared about any woman in my life, I've been killing myself trying to keep from hurting you. And what the hell have all these good and noble intentions gotten me?

“A punch in the jaw from a snotty, stubborn female who doesn't even have enough common sense to come in out of the rain!”

He was definitely on a roll. Alex, who was finally seeing the fire she'd always suspected dwelt beneath that infuriatingly remote exterior, stared up at him in awe. She knew she should find such violent emotion frightening. But knowing that Zach would never actually harm her, she was finding it thrilling.

His head swooped down and Alex cried out as his mouth captured hers in a hard, rapacious kiss.

She began kissing him back, desperately, hungrily.

The rain sluicing over their taut, straining bodies went ignored as they consumed each other with deep kisses. They were caught in the unrelenting grip of something powerful and ageless and primal. Something that could no longer be denied.

“If that wasn't an earthquake,” she said breathlessly, “we're in trouble.”

“It was no earthquake.” His lips skimmed hotly up her face; he pulled her hard against him.

Zach wanted to take her here and now. He wanted to drag her to the side of the road and bury his throbbing shaft in her silken, welcoming warmth. Deep, then deeper still. Until he could touch her womb.

Alexandra wanted him to do exactly that. And more.

“Do you have any idea how long I've wanted you?”

“How long?” Her shaky laugh was half seduction, half promise.

“Forever.” His declaration was half wonder, half certainty.

A rush of warmth flooded through her, so deep and hot she was amazed that steam wasn't rising from her skin. She rained kisses, stinging, avid kisses all over his wonderful, handsome face. She continued to kiss him as he carried her back to the car.

He set her down on the back seat, impatiently ripped open her slicker, then covered her body with his. He was hard and aroused, and the movement of her hips against his aching groin created a building pressure that made him feel on the brink of exploding.

One final last voice of conscience, lurking in the far reaches of his mind, struggled to make itself heard. He pushed himself up on his elbows. Her cheeks were flushed the deep, pink hue of the Old Blush blossoms in Eleanor's rose garden, her lips were slightly parted, her hair was a gleaming wet tangle. Her eyes shone with a dazzling gold light.

She was, as always, the most beautiful, alluring woman he'd ever seen. But as his
grand-mère
had always told him, and he'd learned the hard way with Miranda, beauty was only skin-deep. Alex's true beauty, Zach knew, was a deep-seated, inner beauty of heart and spirit that would make her still stunning on her one-hundredth birthday.

“I don't want to hurt you.”

Caught up in ancient, primal needs, Alex misunderstood his concern. “You won't.”

He decided to try one last time. Then he wouldn't be responsible for the consequences. “I can't give you what you want, Alexandra. What you need.”

She smiled at that. A slow, fatally seductive smile that beautiful sirens had been using to lure men to their doom since the dawning of time.

“Oh, I think you're wrong about that,” she murmured silkily. Lifting her hips, she rubbed her pelvis against the placket of his jeans.

When her hand moved in the direction of his painful tumescence, Zach grasped it and lifted it to his lips. “That's not what I meant.” He kissed the soft, delicate flesh at the center of her palm. “You deserve a man who can promise you a future.”

She didn't want to think of that. Not now. Not when every nerve ending in her body felt as if it were on fire. “You talk too much.” Dragging her hands through his hair, she pulled his head down and gave him another long, heartfelt kiss.

“I don't want to think about the future,” she insisted against his lips. “I only want to think about now. And how much I want you.”

For months, he'd fought his feelings. Fought her. And now he wouldn't, couldn't, fight any longer.

Consequences be damned. Zach surrendered to her husky voice trembling with pent-up emotion, the seductive movement of her hips, her lips, plucking so enticingly at his. He surrendered to the inevitable.

He pulled down her jeans, saying something pungent and profane when the wet denim clung to her smooth legs. Today's panties were the bright blue color of cornflowers, tied low on her hips with narrow white satin ribbons. He cupped his palm against her silk-covered mound and elicited a soft, shuddering moan of pleasure.

“Christ.” Edging his way beneath the lace-trimmed leg band, he eased a finger deep inside her. Her voluptuous flesh was as hot as hellfire, as wet as her lusciously ripe mouth. “You are so hot,” he rasped. “So ready for me.” He kissed her again, tasting the rain. Tasting her.

“More than ready.” Leaning up on her elbows, she be
gan tearing with urgent frenzy at his zipper. “I want you, Zach.” She knew she was begging. But she didn't care. She'd have gotten down on her knees if necessary, if only to end this agonizing torment. “Now. Please.” A sob of relief escaped her ravished lips when his penis burst free, as hard and smooth as polished marble, rampant with vitality.

When she stroked it wonderingly, from its base amid its nest of crisp ebony hair to its silken tip, spreading the gleaming bead of cream with an innocently seductive fingertip, reason shattered.

Zach ripped at the satin ribbons and tore away the scrap of blue silk. Their lips fused again as together they fought to pull down his own wet jeans. He plunged into her, taking her with a ravenous hunger he feared could never be quenched.

All thought evaporated. Passion burst from their hot, wet pores. When her body went rigid beneath him, he buried his mouth in her throat and moved his hips in one deep, final thrust. She cried out, clinging to him as they came together, proving to Zach that sometimes fantasies really did come true.

A
lex had known this would happen. Just today, she'd admitted the inevitability of making love with Zach, little suspecting that the opportunity would come so soon.

No,
she reminded herself,
this was not making love
. This was sex. Hot, fast and thrilling. But it was not love. At least not on Zach's part.

His passion had been born from anger and jealousy, and perhaps, she conceded, from a fear she'd been injured in her accident. But none of those reasons, as understandable as they were, equaled love.

He was lying on top of her, their legs tangled, their hearts still beating in unison even as the shared rhythm gradually slowed. He lifted his head and looked down into her face, his dark eyes as grave as his expression.

“Alex—”

“No.” She caught his hand as it brushed away the tangled damp hairs clinging to her cheek. “If you dare apologize—”

This time it was he who cut her off with a quick, hard
kiss that would have sent her reeling had she not already been lying down.

“I wasn't going to apologize. Well, maybe I was,” he allowed when she gave him a knowing look. “But not in the way you think. I'm not at all sorry this happened. But I
am
sorry that when I finally did get around to doing what I've wanted to do for months, for years, what I should have done that first night…”

He frowned and shook his head in obvious self-disgust. He hadn't even bothered taking off her raincoat or sweater.

“Lord, Alexandra, never in my wildest dreams did I envision making love to you in the back seat of a car like some oversexed teenager.”

His tender gaze threatened to be her undoing. Afraid that her love for him was written across her face in bold, black script, Alex wiggled out from beneath him and began struggling to locate her clothes.

Her panties had landed atop the back of the front seat; they were, she decided, observing the torn ribbons, a lost cause.

“I'll buy you a new pair.”

“That's not necessary.” She shoved them into her slicker pocket and started working on turning her jeans right side out.

“I said I'll buy you a new pair.”

“Fine. Do whatever you want.” She began to struggle into the tight jeans, which wasn't all that easy, from a sitting position, with Zach watching her with those steady, unblinking eyes.

If she kept wiggling her little ass like that, he was going to end up stripping those jeans back off again, Zach mused, as he felt an all too familiar tightening in his groin.

She'd encased herself in enough ice to cover the North and South poles. Silently working his way through every
curse he knew, both in English and the Acadian of his roots, Zach jerked his own pants up and wished he hadn't given up smoking during football training in his freshman year of college.

His renewed frustration gave birth to an urge for a cigarette. Or a drink. Jack Daniel's, straight up, no ice.

“Look,” he said, deciding to try again, “I said I was sorry. What else can I say to try and make this right?”

“I told you, you don't have to apologize.” To Alex's aghast humiliation, fat hot tears started flowing down her cheeks. “I understand, Zach.”

Unable to bear the pity she thought she was reading in his expression, she turned her head away and stared out unseeing into the rain, trying to calm her whirling mind and soothe her aching heart.

“Dammit—”

“We got carried away. It happens sometimes.” She took another deep, shuddering breath. “No harm, no foul. Besides—”

“I love you.” He ran his hand impotently across her hunched shoulders.

“—you certainly didn't do it all by yourself. You know what they say, it takes two—”

“I love you.”

“—to tango. And to tell you the truth, I wanted it every bit as much as you did.”

His words, stated so calmly and matter-of-factly, finally sank in. Hope was a hummingbird—no, Alex considered, a giant golden eagle—flapping its wings inside her heart. “Are you saying—”

“What I should have told you a long time ago. I love you, Alexandra Lyons.”

She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him deep and hard. “I love you too, Zachary Deveraux.”

“I know.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“Not really. In fact, you've been driving me crazy trying to figure out exactly how you felt. Until earlier, when you finally let down your guard.”

She'd hoped that, caught up in his own explosive orgasm, he hadn't heard her cry out her heart's most closely guarded secret. But whether loving Zach was wise or prudent, or even particularly moral, given his marital status, love him she did. She'd grown weary of hiding her feelings every time they were together.

“I'm still sorry I was kind of rough. And fast,” he tacked on reluctantly.

“Actually,” she said with a sassy grin, “I rather liked that part.” It had been incredibly exciting. But it had also been more than that. It had been, in its own remarkable way, an epiphany.

As she sat in the back seat of Zach's car, watching the rain stream down the fogged-up windshield, Alex realized that what she'd experienced with Debord had been purely sexual.

It, too, had been exciting. But somehow, she'd always remained detached, as if watching herself perform for his pleasure. Even at the moment of orgasm, there had been no real emotional connection; instead, Alex had always been aware of her reaction through Debord's eyes.

But making love to Zach had been so very, very different. It had taught her that sometimes love didn't have to be soft and gentle. It could be hard and even a little frightening. And though she knew it was wrong, the blazing lovemaking she and Zach had just shared had left her wanting more.

Zach was stroking her shoulders and making a futile but
endearing attempt to finger-comb her tangled hair. “We need to talk.”

She opened her mouth to argue, to assure him it wasn't necessary, then decided there'd already been enough lies and evasions between them. “Yes.”

After they returned to the front seat, Zach placed a call to a worried Eleanor from the car phone, assuring her that Alex was safe and sound, but that it was going to take a while for the tow truck to arrive.

That much was the truth. What he didn't tell his employer and friend was that he had no intention of waiting around for the truck. Not when he had more important things to do.

“I don't know about you, but I'm starved,” he said after he'd hung up. “I'll admit to having things backward, but I think I owe you dinner.”

His smile was that warm, uncensored one she hadn't seen since his mother's wedding. “I'm not exactly dressed to go out.” She plucked at her damp sweatshirt and wrinkled damp jeans.

“That wouldn't matter at one of the little hole-in-the-wall seafood places on the pier,” he pointed out.

She wasn't eager to have such a long-overdue private conversation in a public setting. Nor was she quite prepared to share Zach with anyone. Not yet.

“We could get takeout,” she suggested. “And talk in the car.”

“Brilliant.” He leaned across the space between their leather seats and kissed her, a brief, feathery meeting of lips that sent warmth shimmering through her. “Takeout it is.”

Which was how they came to be parked in a deserted lot overlooking the crashing surf, sharing french fries, Big
Macs, cherry turnovers and a bottle of Dom Pérignon Zach had picked up at the liquor store next to McDonald's.

“I always promised myself that the first time we made love, we'd have champagne.” He popped the cork with a flair that told Alex he did it often, then poured the sparkling golden wine into two paper cups. “And music.” The car radio was tuned to a local jazz-and-blues station. “Unfortunately the liquor store didn't have any candles.”

She took a sip of the champagne, enjoying the way the bubbles danced on her tongue. “This is perfect,” she said, meaning it.

“Are you always this easy to please?”

“I'm a cheap date,” she said on a laugh. “A Big Mac and I'm all yours.”

He smiled and refilled her cup. “Next time I think we can do better.”

Next time
. Alex's yearning heart leapt upon the words, holding them close like a talisman.

They sat there for a long, comfortable time, sipping champagne and watching the waves roll unceasingly onto the shore. The sky was a misty gray curtain; in the distance came the lonely sound of a foghorn, a counterpoint to the voice of Billie Holiday singing of love and heartbreak.

“How long?” she murmured.

“Have I loved you?”

Alex nodded.

“I don't know,” he answered honestly. “It snuck up on me over time. I was attracted to you that first night, but to be perfectly honest, I think that might've been my hormones talking.”

“Thank God for talkative hormones,” she murmured, grateful he hadn't turned down her invitation for that drink.

“Ain't that the truth.” He took a sip of champagne and looked thoughtfully out to sea. “I knew I was getting into
trouble at my mother's wedding. Because, if it had been just lust, I probably would've done something about it—either that night, or after we got back to L.A., instead of letting you walk out of my life.”

“You wanted to keep from hurting me.”

“That was the plan. Unfortunately I think all I succeeded in doing was delaying the inevitable.”

“Lucky for us, fate threw us back together again.”

“I didn't mean what I said earlier.” Zach ran the back of his hand down the side of her face in a slow, warming sweep. “About fate and my lousy karma.”

“I know…. I think I've loved you from that first night,” Alex admitted.

“Why didn't you tell me before now?”

“Did you really not know how I felt?” At times she'd thought it had been so obvious that everyone in the Lord's offices must have seen it.

Zach shrugged. For the second time in a few hours, he was feeling uncomfortably like a teenager again.
She loves me. She loves me not
. It had been years—aeons—since any woman possessed the power to make him feel so insecure.

“I thought, sometimes, you did. But whenever we'd start to get close, you'd back away.”

“You were married.”

“I still am,” he felt obliged to say.

“I know.” She sighed. “But somehow, as horrible as this sounds, back there in the mountains it just didn't matter anymore.” Besides, she mused in an effort to justify her behavior, it wasn't as if Zach had a real marriage.

“No,” he agreed. “It didn't.”

His flat tone worried her. “I hope I didn't complicate things.”

He heard the uncharacteristic insecurity in her soft voice and hurried to reassure her. “Things were already compli
cated before we met.” Her hair had dried into a riotous halo of red-gold waves around her lovely, too-somber face. Zach tugged on the bright ends. “You are the best thing that's ever happened to me.”

He kissed her again. For a long, glorious, heart-swelling time. “It's not going to be easy,” he warned after they could breathe again.

She laughed at that. “It couldn't be any harder than it's been all these months, trying to keep my feelings from showing.”

“That's just it.” He took her hand and kissed her fingertips, one at a time, with an exquisitely sweet tenderness. “I wasn't exaggerating when I told you that things were complicated,” he began slowly, reluctantly.

It wasn't easy admitting he'd made a major mistake in getting involved with an emotionally unstable woman who only wanted to parade him around on a leash in front of her society friends. But after the unintentional pain he'd caused Alex, Zach felt he owed her the truth.

“Miranda's beautiful. And sexy,” Alex murmured. “Any man would be attracted to her.”

“For a kid who came out of bayou Catholic schools, the kind of uninhibited sex Miranda offered was a definite turn-on,” he admitted grimly. “But I guess some of those youthful catechism lessons took, after all. Because it didn't take long to realize that sex without emotional commitment isn't fun at all. It's depressing. And lonely.”

“I learned the same lesson,” Alex murmured, thinking back on that last, sad night with Debord. “The hard way.” She was surprised and relieved to realize the memory no longer hurt. “So, why did you marry Miranda?”

“Because despite my success, I couldn't quite stop thinking of myself as the nearly indigent son of a Louisiana bayou sugarcane farmer. Miranda was beautiful, but more
importantly, she was filthy rich. And she had status. And social standing.”

“And that was important to you?” Alex was surprised.

He shrugged and wished again for a cigarette. “I thought it was. At the time.”

Unable to believe he'd been so shallow, Zach dragged his hand through his hair. “The ugly truth was,” he muttered in a voice thick with self-revulsion, “Miranda went on one of her infamous shopping sprees at a time when, as much as I hate to admit it, I'd definitely been for sale.”

Alex placed a palm against his cheek and felt the muscle jerk. “You shouldn't be so hard on yourself,” she said quietly. “We all have dreams. The problem is that sometimes, when we finally get to where we've always thought we wanted to be, it's an entirely different place from what we'd imagined.”

Like her dream of working with Debord, she knew. “Everyone makes mistakes, Zach.”

“Yeah, but some mistakes take longer to sort out.”

He wasn't exaggerating. Alex listened with a sinking heart to Zach's explanation of the outstanding stock, of the raider who was threatening a takeover, of Miranda's threat to sell her own inherited stock if necessary, to keep Zach away from Alex.

“I knew she suspected we were having an affair,” Alex said. “But since there wasn't anything concrete for her to be jealous about…”