With This Kiss (20 page)

“He loves you. That’s not complicated.”

He knew what was coming next. She was going to ask about his mother. Thank god the preservation council building had just come into view.

“We’re here.”

Two hours later, Rebecca felt like a limp dishrag as she and Sean walked back to his car.

“I had no idea it would be like that.” She slumped on the leather seat beside Sean. On the drive out earlier that afternoon, she’d been nervous about being in the small space with him. Now, she was too tired for nerves.

“Meetings like that call for one thing,” he told her.

“A short rope and a tall tree to hang it from?”

Another time she would have appreciated his low chuckle, especially since she’d wanted so desperately to see one of his rare smiles turn into a full-blown laugh.

“A stiff drink.”

She wasn’t big on booze, but if ever there was a time for alcohol, this was it. The council had allowed them to say their piece. They had dutifully taken the documentation she and Sean had put together. They had asked approximately a zillion questions.

And they’d promised nothing.

Zilch.

Nada.

Ten minutes later, Sean pulled into the kind of roadside dive she never would have had the guts to come to on her own. A dozen motorcycles were parked outside and they were almost entirely surrounded by forest.

“I’ve driven past here a dozen times,” she said, “but never thought to come inside. Have you ever been here before?”

Before he could answer, she heard someone call out, “Damned if I ever thought I’d see this day. Sean Murphy live and in the flesh.”

Sean nodded at the heavily tattooed man behind the
bar. “Rebecca, meet Dick. We’re in need of two of your specials.”

Despite her shock that the two men knew each other—she’d assumed Sean lived solely in a world of suits—she couldn’t help but smile back at the man who was grinning so widely at her.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dick.”

“Same here, pretty Rebecca.” She blushed as Dick handed them their drinks. “Good to see you back home, Sean. You’ve been missed.”

They headed over to a small booth in the corner of the dark room. “He seems nice.”

“You like everyone, don’t you?”

“Until I see a reason not to like them, yes.”

“That trust is going to get you hurt, Rebecca.”

“That’s so cynical.”

“But true.”

More frustrated now by what Sean was saying to her than she’d been for the two hours they’d done their pointless song-and-dance for the council, she picked up her glass and took a huge gulp.

Her eyes were watering when she put it down. “My god, what’s in this?” Surprisingly, she realized after the initial shock wore off, that it was quite good. Really good, actually.

“No one’s ever been able to get Dick to give the recipe up.”

She should have been angry with Sean for poisoning her with this way-too-potent, yet yummy, drink. Maybe she should have even been crying over the fact that their big shot at convincing the council to let her have her festival was a big goose egg.

Instead, she found herself laughing over the way everything in her life had spun so totally out of control. It was either laugh or cry.

She was afraid if she started crying, she might never stop.

“I’ll be right back.”

Amazed by how unsteady she felt on her feet after only drinking a few ounces of Dick’s concoction, she was back sixty seconds later.

“Got it,” she said, triumphantly.

“Dick told you what he puts in this?” Sean asked incredulously.

“I asked nicely,” she said with an impish grin.

“Only you, Rebecca, could make a man spill a secret he’s been holding onto for decades.”

She took another smaller sip of the—really surprisingly delicious—drink.

“If you ask me, he was dying to have someone to tell, but everyone’s been too afraid to ask him all these years.” Bolder for the drink, she leaned across the table. “Now it’s your turn to tell me a secret, Sean.”

She wasn’t expecting Sean’s expression to change so quickly from teasing to deadly serious.

“This drink was a bad idea. I’m sure you want to get back to the inn.”

He was pushing his chair back, about to stand as she put her hand on his arm to halt him. She wished she could be inside his head, wished she could understand what had cause this abrupt change in him when they were finally relaxing with each other.

But since she couldn’t read his mind, she had to say, “I thought we were having fun. What did I do wrong, Sean?”

His eyes were dark, his jaw was jumping. She felt the air change, knew everything between them was on the verge of shifting, a split second before he said, “This, damn it.”

And then his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers and he was kissing all of the air from her lungs.

Perhaps she should have been shocked, and maybe she should have pushed him away, but she’d wanted this kiss for too long to do anything but reach right back for him and deepen the sweetest, most sinful kiss she’d ever tasted.

And when he finally pulled away and she could figure out how to form words again, she whispered, “That was my secret, too.”

A
fter his abrupt loss of control, Sean made sure there were no more kisses in the bar or during their drive back to the inn. There was no more conversation either, not from either of them, as the miles ticked by slower than they ever had before.

He knew he should apologize to her for snapping like that, for taking something she hadn’t offered. But how the hell could he ever be sorry about kissing Rebecca? Especially when she was softer, sweeter than any woman had ever been.

Only, the way she’d flat out asked him to tell her his secrets… well, it had cut straight to the core of him. Almost as if she knew things she couldn’t possibly know.

He’d almost made it, had almost taken himself out of the path of temptation, when she’d touched him… and he’d lost it.

And kissed her the way he’d been wanting to kiss her since practically the first moment he’d set eyes on her.

“Sean?”

They were getting out of his car in the empty employee lot behind the inn. The moon was barely a sliver and it was dark. So dark he should have been safe stealing another glance at her beauty without being caught out as a thief.

“Are you sorry you kissed me?”

He should have known she would ask him something like that, the exact question that most people would never dare say aloud, but instead he found himself surprised every single time.

Sean worked to remind himself that she couldn’t possibly be as much of an open book as she seemed to be, the same reminder he’d been repeating to himself for days.

Only this time, with the taste of her kiss still on his lips, even though he knew she still hadn’t come completely clean about Stu with him, he just couldn’t get himself to believe it.

He opened his mouth to say yes, they shouldn’t have kissed.

But the lie wouldn’t come.

“No.”

“Oh.”

The one word from her lips was more breath than letters. He saw the way the faint moonlight illuminated her shiny hair.

“Aren’t you sorry you kissed me back?” he had to ask.

“I know I should be,” she said softly, “but how could I possibly regret that kiss?”

It was too close to what he’d been thinking for either of their sakes and when she followed up with, “Could I ask you something?” he knew better than to do this.

They both did.

Because just as Sean didn’t believe in ghosts, he had never believed in fate.

So then why did Rebecca feel inevitable? From that first moment he’d seen her at Andi and Nate’s wedding he’d been inexplicably drawn to her.

And no matter how many times he tried to pull away, in the end he’d found he couldn’t ever actually do it.

“What is it, Rebecca?”

She paused, and he swore he could almost hear her heart beating, that even the owls in the trees and loons on the lake were waiting for what she had to say.

“Would you please kiss me again?”

Sweet Jesus.

No one had ever asked him to kiss her like that. With such sweet need.

No wonder Dick had given up his drink recipe to her.

Rebecca was irresistible.

And then she was putting her hands over his shoulders and tilting her mouth up to his and the fact was that even the strongest man in the world couldn’t have stopped himself from kissing her.

Her lips were soft and she tasted like a mixture of the sugar in her drink and something that was uniquely Rebecca. One kiss wasn’t enough and so he kept going back for one more, had to see if anyone could really taste this good.

Only, with every moment that passed, with every kiss Rebecca so willingly gave him, images of his brother touching her the same way grew larger, bigger in his head.

Sean had never been a jealous lover. He’d never been possessive. But now, with nothing more than a few
of Rebecca’s kisses on his lips, all he could think was,
Mine.

He dragged his mouth from hers. She was panting, and in the faint moonlight he could see that her mouth was faintly swollen from his kisses. He’d never wanted a woman this much, had never been on the verge of throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her upstairs to his bed.

“Did my brother kiss you like this?”

The vision sent him all the way over the edge, straight to a place he’d never gone before, hurtling to a place he knew he shouldn’t go but couldn’t possibly stop himself from heading toward.

Rebecca’s eyes immediately widened with shock. “Excuse me?”

He knew he needed to stop, needed to take a step back and apologize for his jealous question. Instead, he did just the opposite.

“Was this how he held you?” He ran his hands down from her shoulders to the rise of her hips. Her hands had moved from his shoulders to his chest and she was pushing against him.

“You’re acting like a child in a sandbox fighting over a prized toy.”

He forced himself to release his hold on her. Damn it, he wasn’t acting any better than her bastard ex-boyfriend had. But now that the dam had broken, now that they were admitting the truth of their attraction to each other, he could no longer deny that visions of Rebecca and his brother together had been playing around the edges of his mind all week. And they were visions that had his stomach clenching.

“I’m going crazy thinking about the two of you,” he
admitted in a rough voice that he barely recognized as his own.

He was standing in the parking lot of his inn pleading with a woman who used to be his brother’s fiancée, begging her to tell him she wasn’t thinking of anyone but him when they were making out.

“He never kissed me like that. He barely even touched me.”

Sean wanted so badly to believe her. But how could he when he knew firsthand that she was utterly irresistible?

“That’s impossible, Rebecca. How could he have been with you and not touched you?”

“What else do you want from me, Sean? I just told you the truth and now you’re saying you won’t believe me.”

“How can I believe you? You were engaged, Rebecca.” Sean shouldn’t have reached out for her again, shouldn’t have let a silky strand of her hair thread through his fingers. “How could any sane man possibly keep his hands off of you?”

“I swear,” she said in a raw whisper. “We barely even kissed in all the months we were together.”

Sean knew he should have been ecstatic to hear it—and he was—but in some crazy way he was angry, too, on Rebecca’s behalf. How could a woman this sensual, this passionate, have been on the verge of marrying a man who didn’t desire her?

“How could you have accepted that? Didn’t you think you deserved to be with a man who wanted you?”

She looked stunned, enough so that she wasn’t moving any farther away from him.

“How long did you think you were going to be able to keep your desires buried?”

“Stu was kind. I knew he loved me. Maybe not as a woman, but as a person. It was more than anyone else had ever given me. I thought that dating a married guy was my stupidest moment, but I managed to up that by almost marrying a gay man.”

She spun away from him and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh god. I promised him I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Stu.” He needed to process what she’d just said. “Jesus, Rebecca, why didn’t you tell me that the first time I asked you why he left, instead of letting me think he could be hurt somewhere?”

“He told me he needed time.” She still looked horrified. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

In some small corner of his brain, Sean knew there was some sense to what she was saying, but he wasn’t able to heed that. Not when it felt like everything was splitting apart, breaking down, in his perfectly ordered world.