With Her Last Breath (20 page)

“I feel awkward,” Maggie admitted as she moved away from him.

“If it helps, so do I. I haven’t made breakfast for a woman in a long time.”

He rubbed his hands roughly on his jeans, trying to push away the need to feel her skin, her body beneath his fingers. The shaving cuts on his face were from seeing his stubble in the mirror and realizing how it must have chafed her. His hands had trembled then, and the razor had nicked him. He turned his hands now, studying the width and strength and callused roughness. There in the shaft of sunlight a vision of her breast pale in the cup of his hand seemed to turn, tightening his gut and lower, with the need to have more—to carry her back to bed.

A man who had abstained for twelve years had indeed been bottled and cellared long enough to reach ripe maturity. So ripe that he couldn’t resist Maggie’s impatience to make love.

So much for his control and taking steps one at a time. Maybe he was feeling unsteady and vulnerable, and those were emotions he didn’t like at all.

Maggie scanned the clutter in the kitchen, the contents of shelves and drawers heaped on the counter and table. The rest of the house looked much the same, the aftermath of
Maggie battling her emotions. Now those earth-green eyes were troubled, Maggie fighting too many battles alone. “I got carried away. But I don’t regret anything.”

“Neither do I.” He loved when she got carried away, forgetting everything but him. Nick didn’t want to remind her of her passion just now. Not when she looked as if she would bolt at any minute.

Just as his best wines benefited from cellaring for years, Nick wanted all the generous layers open, the rich, soft depths that came from finesse and maturation of a trusting relationship. On another level, Maggie seemed so alone, fighting wars in which he couldn’t help—and feeling helpless wasn’t pleasant.

She turned to him, and time slanted and hovered and breathed with possibilities and warmth. “You look so grim…You’re upset.”

“We can’t undo this, Maggie. I was planning to spend more time getting to know each other. Now we’re here and now I’m wanting you, not exactly thinking straight. I didn’t intend to go after you like a starved man. I’m sorry that I didn’t know you’d be scared when I stepped into the shower with you.”

Her eyebrow hitched up as she studied him. “I’m not a bottle of wine. You were planning to let the flavors mature, weren’t you? Now you’re upset because your schedule is messed up. You were planning to seduce me, weren’t you? Dinners, dating, that sort of thing? You did have protection ready,” she reminded him.

He wished the irritating warmth wasn’t rising in his cheeks. She made him sound inflexible and old-fashioned. Maybe he was. He needed courtship and the sweetness that came from discovering each other. “Something like that. This is new to me, too. So is my hunger for you. I didn’t know it could be so strong.”

Nick lifted her in his arms, watching her. Surprised, Maggie tensed, but she didn’t hit him. He considered that a good sign, because last night, he had learned that in her hunger, she
was a very, very strong woman with an appetite that surprised him. Right now, his own raging hunger frightened him.

He felt her putting distance between them, reclaiming whatever she’d given him in those burning storms, and he couldn’t have that. If sex was all they had, then he would take what he could get. “Are you going to pull any of that self-defense stuff on me, like you did that day on the beach?”

He adored that smug curve of her lips. “You went down like a brick building.”

“All I want to know now is, yes or no.”

“Yes.” This time, the game had changed, Maggie thought distantly as Nick carried her to the bed and lightly tossed her onto the rumpled sheets.

He moved with certainty, touching her just right and then claiming her so fast that her own aftermath left her breathless and stunned. He took her quickly, hungrily in that storm, and caught in it, she sensed his frustration. She managed to turn her head on the pillow and look at Nick, her hand over his still-racing heart.

Those sultry, heavily lashed black eyes returned her stare, a muscle tensing in his jaw, the set of his mouth tight and grim. Then he was off the bed, big and strong and jerking on his jeans. “I’m taking Scout down to the beach. Do what you want.”

He stopped and looked down on Maggie as she drew the sheet over her body. His hands went to his hips, and the leaping fire of his anger shot into the cool shadows, quivering and hot. That deep voice was uneven and low, sizzling the distance between them. “So here we are. And I don’t know that much more about you than when we met. I don’t know why you shut doors when I come too close. Apparently, I have no resistance to you, but I’m not paying for the man who hurt you. I didn’t do it, Maggie. You’re all tangled up in something I can’t understand and yet it spills over to me. You don’t want to talk. Fine. Don’t.”

Maggie sat up slowly and drew the sheet around her, tak
ing her time. Nick had laid out his mood for her, no holds barred. He wasn’t threatening her. Caught between the afterglow of a storm of lovemaking and an obviously frustrated man seeking answers, Maggie fought for balance.

“I don’t like being pushed. I should be going,” she stated cautiously.

Nick’s hand slashed the air. “Fine. Go. Hit and run. Run away. What’s the matter? Hasn’t anyone ever asked you why you’re on the move? Why you haven’t found a place that suits you? Have they asked what you’re looking for?”

No one had. She hadn’t allowed anyone close enough. While Maggie struggled with how to answer calmly, keeping her past locked inside, Nick shook his head. “You just turned pale, and those eyes are big and haunted. It’s right there, Maggie, whatever you’re running from. I’d like to help.”

Ryan’s betrayal pounded her and she swallowed, unable to speak.

Nick frowned at her a minute as an icy wall slid between them. “I guess that’s my answer.”

After Nick left the room, Scout sat looking at Maggie. “Go on. Go with him. I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

But she wasn’t. And she’d hurt Nick.

Beth’s smirk said she knew.

In the shadows at Journeys, amid the soft scents and clutter, Maggie turned her face to hide her blush and pretended to sample the lavender foot and leg lotion. “What are you gawking at?”

“You and Nick. You’re all lit up and rosy and jumpy. You had sex with Nick, didn’t you?”

Maggie turned to burn a stare at Beth and found Celeste’s gentle, knowing smile as she served herbal tea in her best china cups—almost as if she were celebrating. “She doesn’t know what to do with him yet. He’ll not take the sex without wanting more. It’s the more that she fears.”

Beth’s derisive snort raised Maggie’s temper a notch. Did
the whole world know she’d made love with Nick? “Stop it. He helped me out. That’s all.”

“I’m glad that Nick and Dante turned up before Leo could put the moves on you. Celeste said that Leo was planning a private party and wasn’t happy that they’d ruined it. She said she thought it was a good idea for you to stay with Nick for a while. Ed had a hand in it. Celeste won’t tell you, but I will. Ed came to her house for me—I’m staying there now. He backed right off when Celeste told him that you were with Nick. But don’t trust Ed. He’s thinks you’re the reason I left him, and maybe you are,” Beth stated earnestly.

“Thank you for telling Nick about what Leo might have planned,” Maggie said, glad that Beth did not have the complete story.

Fire nudged against her leg, and automatically Beth reached down to collect the cat, holding her close. “Maybe you’re the reason I started thinking that I might be a real person and that I was worth fighting for.”

Maggie noted Celeste’s approval as the other cats came rubbing against Beth’s legs; crooning softly, Beth sat to gather them all up into her arms. The easy affection was there, for Celeste and for her animals, and in a pretty short print skirt and a black vest, Beth looked young and fresh. The scent of light spring flowers had replaced the heavy musk perfume Ed had preferred.

Celeste put her arms around Maggie. “I want you both to remember that I’ll always be with you,” she said gently.

Beth rose to her feet and frowned at Celeste. “She’s weirding me out, Maggie. She says things like that, like she knows something we don’t. There’s all this weird stuff about Lorna, like someday she’ll realize that she is a good person and to give her a chance. Sometimes Celeste looks at me and she’s sad. And she keeps telling me how to tend her gardens and her shop.”

“It’s a thing a mother tells a daughter,” Celeste said easily.

“It’s truly weird,” Beth groused. “I don’t like it. And I don’t like her roaming alone all hours of the night, either.”

Maggie returned the squeeze Celeste had just given her. “It’s a wonderful gift, Beth, that she cares.”

“You’re the element that has changed our lives, Maggie—that will change our lives.”

Maggie studied Celeste, and the psychic returned a sad smile. “It’s just time, Maggie. There’s a time for everything. We three will always be together—and Lorna, too. Fate has joined us. Four pieces, maybe more, all women, of our private puzzle, complete when joined, and very strong—remember that.”

Beth’s curse hissed around the room, and Celeste smiled knowingly. “Get over it, okay? You’ll see.”

“It will be a cold day in hell when I think that Lorna is okay. She’s sneaking around with some man now—everybody knows it, they just don’t know who. Probably some married guy.”

But Celeste just smiled.

Maggie wouldn’t like it, but he had to know she was safe. Images of her helpless on that ship’s bed had haunted his morning.

Nick crossed the street to where Scout was tethered to a park bench, her head on Mrs. Friends’s lap as the elderly woman petted her. “’Morning, Nick.”

“Mrs. Friends. How’s the arthritis?”

“Better now that the summer is here. Thanks for plowing my little garden. Dante came and helped me work it. Maggie is looking very pretty this morning. Different and bright as a new penny.”

He cleared his throat and bent to pet Scout. He hoped he sounded casual, when he hoped he was the reason Maggie seemed “different and bright.” He needed all the encouragement he could get. “I can help you with that climbing rose trellis, if you want. It could use a little sturdying up.”

“Thank you, but Eugene came early this morning and worked on it. He said you were feeling chipper for some reason.” She patted his head, taking him back to the third grade.
Her smile was kind and knowing. She’d seen him court his wife and lose her, and now she hoped for the best. “Bring Maggie for tea sometime, will you?”

Eugene was never one for keeping secrets, Nick decided, as he stood and looked through the Journeys window to find Maggie’s pale face. So, she would give him sex and nothing more, would she? His anger and frustration, bright and crisp, licked around him like sparks of fire in the early morning sun.

“She’s in the shop,” Mrs. Friends said gently.

“So she is.” Then Nick found himself strolling through the open Journeys door, trying to look casual, when every nerve he possessed had focused on the woman who’d shared her body and not herself with him. He skipped pretending to study the bottles on the shelves and turned to Maggie. The worn T-shirt did little to hide her curves, and the frayed hem of the cutoff shorts only emphasized the length of her legs, legs that had wrapped around him last night, cradled him. Nick could still feel the sweep of that reddish hair along his chest, the soft way she panted for breath. He could still hear the high keening sound of her pleasure and with the memory of her taut body squeezing his, he heard his own frustrated groan.

Amid the layers of gentle scents, he found the one that was Maggie’s and locked onto it. The scent of her flesh, sweet between her breasts, in the hollow of her throat and the inside of her elbow. The fragrance clung to where she was hot and moist and tight—

Was she so untouched by their lovemaking? Was he so easy to have that his cork could be popped that easily? That she could come strolling out of the shower, hips swaying, eyes shadowed with mystery and hunger, and have him with only a few words between them?

Aware of his size in the diminutive, feminine shop, Nick nodded to the three women, standing close together, watching him—the man who had had Maggie. Who had been had by Maggie.

“’Morning, girls,” he said casually, and wondered if he
could play her game, if he could be delectable and tasty and leave her drooling, just as she had left him.

He didn’t care for Beth’s saucy grin and turned to Celeste. “It seems I need a good furniture polish. What can you recommend?”

Her smile told him she knew what he really needed—Maggie’s kiss to take the edge off his uneasiness, to let him know that she remembered their lovemaking. Nick turned to Maggie and hooked his hands in his back pockets to keep from reaching for her. He saw no need to talk, because the night, hot and stormy, had just leaped between them. Nick noted the pulse in Maggie’s throat, the skin fine and slightly marred by his last night’s stubble. The softness of her lips parted and the flick of her tongue knocked aside his plans for revenge.

She met his stare boldly, not denying what had happened between them, but not giving him more, either. She’d flattened his plans for dating and letting their relationship ripen, and gave him nothing of herself. The wound stirred within him, as well as the bitterness that she could hurt him so deeply and yet seem unaffected.

Celeste seemed to flow across her shop and returned to hand a bottle to him. “Beeswax and more. Rub it on and then wipe it off.”

Without releasing Maggie’s stare, Nick said, “Thanks. There’s one thing more—”

He tucked the bottle beneath one arm and raised his hands to frame Maggie’s face. He breathed in her surprise, taking the token of their morning-after warfare as his prize and fused his lips to hers, ruthlessly taking what he needed, a taste of Maggie.

Only when her lips softened and her body leaned toward his did he release her. A narrowed glance at her flushed face and parted lips, those drowsy witch eyes upon him, and Nick knew she wasn’t unaffected.