Within Reach (15 page)

Surely she wasn’t going to call a halt? Because he needed this, needed it so badly.

“Not here,” Angie said. “The children…”

Reality slammed into him. He became painfully aware of exactly where they were, of the fact that his sleeping children were meters away and that he’d been about to push Angie to the wooden floor and plunge inside her.

He tensed, stunned at his own recklessness. Angie’s hands found his face, framing his jaw, and she pressed a fierce, almost violent kiss to his lips.

“Don’t,” she said, and he knew that she meant “don’t think, don’t regret this before it’s even over.”

Her hand grasped his and she led him to his office. The door closed behind them with a solid thunk. Angie pressed his palm to her belly. She squeezed his hand tightly, a silent order for him to keep touching her, then she stuck her thumbs into the sides of her pants and shed them and her swimsuit bottom in one efficient move. The sight of her long legs and the neat patch of dark, silky-looking hair between them drowned out the recriminations already circling his mind. Need once again took over, undeniable, demanding.

She took a step backward and shimmied the rest of the way out of her tankini top, and then she was in front of him, naked and aroused and ready. Without a word he pulled his tank top over his head, then he shucked his board shorts. His erection pulsed against his belly so hard it ached. He closed the distance between them, kissing her, his hands traveling down her slim back to her ass, one hand delving farther, into the hot, wet place between her thighs. Her hand found his erection, stroking him, her movements jerky and urgent.

Her legs started to tremble and together they went down to the rug. Angie lay spread before him like an impossible offering and every thought, every memory, every consideration dissolved and there was only the need to be inside her, to lose himself in the slick warmth of her, to feel alive and to feel pleasure.

He stretched on top of her and her legs spread to accept him. He gripped himself and found her entrance. He slid inside her, into tight, wet heat. And then he really did lose his mind.

* * *

A
NGIE
GRIPPED
M
ICHAEL
’
S
big shoulders and bit her lip as he slid inside her, filling her, stretching her. It felt so good she sobbed, her fingers digging into his skin.

This.
This was exactly what she’d needed. What she’d craved.

She looked into Michael’s face, straight into stormy gray-green eyes. They stared at one another for a long, long moment, then he lowered his head to kiss her and his hips flexed and he started to pump into her, each stroke more intense than the last.

Her hands found his ass and she held on for dear life as he set a punishing, desperate pace. He kissed her neck, passionate, openmouthed kisses, blazing a trail to her breasts. The pull of his mouth on her nipples was almost too good, too much. She lifted her hips, wrapping her legs around him, panting his name as desire tightened inside her.

His body became even more tense, his movements more urgent, their bodies slamming together. His hand found her hips, angling them just-so, and he stroked into her and all of a sudden she was arching off the floor, her climax rippling through her. It seemed to go on and on, Michael coaxing more and more from her, and then he tensed, his muscles turning to granite beneath her hands. He pressed his face into her neck and she felt his breath rush out as he came, his body shuddering for long moments before it became loose and heavy on hers.

Angie blinked dazedly, her palms flat against his back, feeling the dampness of sweat, the sensitive fullness between her thighs where he was still inside her. Tiny aftershocks ricocheted through her as she stared at the overhead light, her breathing harsh, waiting for guilt and regret and self-recrimination to descend.

After all, this was Michael inside her. Billie’s beloved husband. Michael, her friend. Michael, who loved Billie more than he could bear.

Michael who had made love to her with so much desperate intensity that he’d literally taken her breath away.

His face was still pressed against her neck. She could feel his chest expanding and contracting as his breathing slowed. She could also feel the tension creeping into his body, and she knew that he was already regretting what they had done, giving himself a hard time for seeking warmth and comfort and life.

Tentative, she slid her hand to the nape of his neck. She rested it there, wanting to say something or do something to make everything all right for him but unable to find the words.

It was a mistake. He shifted, withdrawing from her and rolling to one side. She braced herself to look into his face but he was already on his knees, his back to her as he reached for his clothes. He stood, his body impossibly big and strong as he towered above her, his muscles standing out as he yanked on his board shorts. He left the room without a word, without looking back.

She lifted her hands to her face, pressing her fingers against her eyelids until she saw bursts of light amongst the blackness.

They had done something awful. They had betrayed Billie, the woman who had been like a sister to her for more than half her life. They had jumped on each other and taken comfort and pleasure despite having agreed that this would never, ever happen.

She was a bad friend. A terrible, disloyal, faithless person.

Are you, really?
Billie is dead. And this would have never happened if she was alive. You would have never even looked sideways at Michael, or he at you. This is not an affair. This is something different.

It was such a self-serving thought she instinctively rejected it, but a second thought came hard on its heels: Michael had needed this.

Angie didn’t know how she knew that, but she did—she’d felt it in him, in the desperate thrusting of his body inside hers, in the way he’d kissed her, in the way he’d pulled her body so tightly against his.

He’d needed the comfort, the visceral confirmation of being alive. He’d needed it very badly.

Tears pressed as she remembered the way he’d shuddered into her. Whatever else happened, right now, right this minute, she didn’t have it in her to regret that she’d been the one to give him what he’d needed tonight.

Which made her sound like some kind of sexual martyr, lying back and enduring one of the most explosive orgasms of her life in the name of all that was good and kind and nurturing, but it hadn’t been anything like that. She’d needed him, too. On some deep, unspoken level, she’d needed the closeness and the passion and the life-affirming intimacy of sex.

She sighed heavily and sat up. Her clothes lay in a tangled heap, her swimsuit twisted with her capris. It took her a minute to separate them, then she dressed. She left the study in search of Michael. He wasn’t in the kitchen, but she hadn’t really expected him to be. She walked toward the master suite.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He looked so broken she had to stop herself from going to him and pulling him into her arms. He wouldn’t let himself accept that kind of comfort from her.

After a long beat he lifted his head and looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, her chest aching for him, tears once again threatening. She cared for him so much. Hated seeing him so unhappy and conflicted.

“You don’t owe me an apology. We both knew what we were doing.”

“I didn’t even think about a condom—”

“It’s okay, neither did I. But I’m on the Pill.”

And, more important, she trusted him.

Michael looked at the floor. He radiated hurt and confusion and regret. She tried to find something to say, but every sentence she framed in her mind felt false and thin.

“Do you want me to go?” she finally asked.

There was a long pause. She knew what he wanted to say—
yes
—but she also knew he was too nice a man to do so.

“I’ll go,” she said, saving him the trouble of being the bad guy.

“Okay.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. “Thanks.”

She smiled sadly. This was such a messed-up situation—and yet ten minutes ago, she had felt as though she was in exactly the right place with exactly the right person.

She left. Every step of the way to the door she expected him to come after her, but he didn’t. She understood why, but a part of her still smarted.

Maybe there was something wrong with her moral compass, maybe she was, at heart, a self-interested opportunist, but she couldn’t regret what had happened. It had been too real, too powerful, too instinctive.

Too necessary.

She collected her bag and keys and headed for her car. She drove home with the windows down, fresh air blowing her hair around her shoulders. She let herself into her apartment, leaving her bag just inside the door, dropping her keys on the little table she kept there. She felt oddly detached, as though some part of her was still at Michael’s lying on the study floor recovering from the intensity of what had happened between them. She stood in the center of her open-plan living space, completely at a loss. Then, suddenly, she knew what she wanted. She crossed to her bookcase and pulled her tattered old photo album from among her art books. Holding it against her chest, she sat on the end of her bed.

The first few pages held pictures of her parents and the homestead where she’d grown up and her old dog, Woofy. She flicked past them until she found what she was looking for.

The picture had been taken in the first year of her friendship with Billie. She couldn’t remember who the photographer had been—one of their teachers, perhaps, or one of their fellow students. She and Billie were standing on the green grass of New England Girls’ School’s sport field, both of them dressed in their P.E. uniforms. Angie’s left leg was bound at the ankle to Billie’s right, ready to run the three-legged race. Billie had compounded their intimacy by hooking her arm around Angie’s neck and smooshing her cheek against Angie’s for the picture. Billie was grinning fit to bust, absolutely delighted. In her own eyes, Angie could see a more quiet but no less sincere joy. Even in those very early days she had adored Billie.

“You know I would never have looked twice at him. You know that,” she told her friend quietly.

Billie stared at her, captured forever in a moment of love and friendship. A warm tear trickled down Angie’s face. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to look at Billie. She shut the book and pushed it away.

Sobs tightened her throat. She went into the bathroom and shed her clothes. Standing under the stinging heat of the shower, she washed away the evidence of those wild, crazy minutes in Michael’s arms, her tears mixing with the water as she leaned against the tile.

All the certainty she’d felt in the immediate aftermath disappeared down the drain. The bleak unhappiness of Michael’s expression wouldn’t leave her mind and a terrible fear gripped her.

It was possible the sex had ruined everything, that by taking comfort in one another they had poisoned their friendship and made it impossible for things to ever be the same. Their easy relationship, her closeness with the children—it might all be gone.

Please, God…
If she lost Michael and the children over this…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

M
ICHAEL
SAT
ON
THE
END
of the bed for a long time. He felt heavy with the weight of his thoughts and feelings. Heavier than at any other point since Billie’s death.

Despite having told himself over and over that he would never lay a finger on Angie, the moment temptation had come knocking he’d folded like a house of cards. There had been no restraint, no thought of anyone or anything apart from him and her and what he wanted.

No thought of Eva and Charlie.

No thought of Billie.

He pinched the bridge of his nose so hard it hurt.

His wife had been dead a year. He’d mourned her, sitting through long days in a haze, desperately clinging to his memories, alternating between fury that she was gone and a bone-deep sense of loss and futility. He’d told himself he’d love her forever, that no one would ever replace her, that the rest of his life would be about the kids and only the kids.

Then this thing with Angie had reared its ugly head and tonight he’d pushed her to the study floor and pushed himself inside her and abandoned everything he thought he knew about himself as a man and a husband.

Even in his teens he’d never been so out of control, so turned on that he’d had no thought of where he was or the consequences of his actions. He’d never gotten carried away like that. Ever.

And yet tonight he’d been nuts. Absolutely nuts. He’d wanted Angie, hadn’t been able to think beyond having her, so he’d reached out and taken what he wanted.

And it had been…mind-blowing. That was the worst part of it. Even sitting here in the dark, awash with remorse, he couldn’t deny the intensity of the experience. She’d been so silken and responsive and abandoned. Their bodies had fit so well, as though they were made for each other. For those few minutes when he’d been inside her, the world had ceased to exist.

Completely different from sex with Billie.

He shot to his feet, acid burning in his gut as everything in him resiled from the thought. He had loved Billie. With every fiber of his being. He had adored and admired and enjoyed and desired her.

Because he didn’t know what else to do, he went into his study to work. It wasn’t until he paused on the threshold that he realized he was, effectively, returning to the scene of the crime. He set his jaw and crossed to his desk, hitting the button to bring his computer to life. He didn’t so much as glance at the rug where he’d made love with his friend and betrayed his dead wife. He called up his design program and started working, forcing himself to concentrate until the thoughts circling his head faded to a background buzz.

He was dry-eyed and stiff by the time he pushed back his chair. A glance at the clock told him it was nearly one in the morning. He went to bed and woke early. Somehow he got the kids breakfast and managed to fake his way through the morning. He made sure he was out in the yard mowing the lawn when Angie arrived to pick Eva up at two. He waved to her and offered her a tight smile and she offered him one in return before returning to the house.

Two hours later, he opened the front door and found Eva on the doorstep. He glanced to where Angie’s car idled in the drive. For the second time that day their gazes locked, but this time neither of them bothered to force a smile.

“I asked Auntie Angie to come in but she said she has lots and lots of stuff to do. I couldn’t even bribe her with pizza.”

“I’m sure we can bribe her with pizza another time.”

If she ever wanted to speak to him again. If they could ever get past the mess they had made of everything.

The rest of the day passed in a blur of housework and homework and he once again worked himself into a stupor before rolling into bed in the small hours.

Monday morning brought thunderstorms and no Angie. He was both grateful and worried as he hustled the kids out the door. Between the two of them they had decided his studio was the perfect place for her workshop. He didn’t want what had happened to interfere with her work. It was enough that it had potentially ruined their friendship.

Which was why he found himself pulling into the driveway at two that afternoon. He’d had a site visit nearby and wasn’t due at the office until later.

He and Angie needed to clear the air. Somehow. At the very minimum he needed to apologize for shutting her out so abruptly the other night. This was important. He really didn’t want to screw it up.

He made his way to the kitchen. He saw Angie the moment he entered—she was outside, sitting on the deck steps, her profile to the house, her hands curled around a mug. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and her expression was pensive, her gaze distant.

Her head whipped around as he opened the French doors, her eyes widening with surprise. “Michael. Is everything okay?”

“I had a meeting nearby.”

The startled, worried look left her face. “Oh. Good. For a moment I thought something was wrong with Eva or Charlie.”

The fact that her first thought was for his children made something tighten in his chest.

“I wanted to talk to you. If that’s okay…?”

She didn’t say a word, simply shuffled along the step, making room for him, and he crossed the deck and sat beside her to contemplate the grass.

“In case you’re wondering, I’m trying to find the words to excuse the inexcusable,” he finally said. “What happened the other night, the way it happened, the way I was afterward… You deserve better, Angie. And so does Billie.”

A small crease appeared between Angie’s eyebrows. “You think I didn’t want it? That I didn’t enjoy it?”

He couldn’t hold her gaze. “I think it should never have happened.”

“But it did. And we both wanted it, exactly the way it happened. I was the one who led you into the study, remember? I was the one who lay down on the rug.”

He was powerless to stop the memory—Angie, naked, her hair a dark halo around her head, her skin creamy against the rug’s ruby tones.

He pushed the visual away, along with the flash of desire that followed hard on its heels.

“Tell me something—you think this would have happened if Billie was still around?” Angie asked.

He flinched. “No.”

“I never looked at you as a man when Billie was alive. Not once. You were her husband, utterly off-limits. And I’m willing to bet it was the same for you with me.”

“You know it was. I loved Billie.”

“I know. So did I. But she’s gone, Michael.” Angie’s voice was soft and sad. Resigned. “What we did… That was just something that happened. Neither of us planned it. God, I don’t know, maybe it even needed to happen, to get it out of the way…” She shrugged, the gesture revealing her own confusion. “But you giving yourself a hard time over it is crazy. Especially if part of that is because you feel you hurt me or used me in some way.”

He honestly had no idea how to separate out all the different ways he was messed up, but part of it was definitely the way it had happened, how out of control he’d felt and how he’d freaked out afterward.

“I can’t tell you how to feel,” Angie said. “All I know is Billie knew that we both loved her. She knew that in her bones. What we did doesn’t take that away from her. Not for a second. Maybe that’s me trying to let myself off the hook, but I don’t think so. I think you’re allowed to be a man every now and then, Michael, and not just a widower and a father.”

His mouth twisted. Rationally, logically, he knew Angie was right. He’d been a good husband to Billie when she was alive. It was only now that she was dead that he was leaking at the seams. Even though he’d been utterly miserable during the darkest days of his grief, there’d been a certain comfort in living a half life, cloaking himself in his loss. Hanging on to his pain was the last sure connection he’d had to her. Letting go of that over recent months had been hard, almost impossible, but it wasn’t as though he’d had a choice. Life hadn’t stopped because Billie died, after all.

But it was one thing to step into the land of the living and another thing entirely to find himself feeling the kinds of emotions he’d been experiencing lately. Lust and liking and happiness and—very occasionally—joy.

He wasn’t ready for that kind of full-color, high-definition living again.

“We might have to agree to disagree on that one,” he said. His phone chirruped and he glanced at it. It was a message from work, a problem with some engineered beams he’d specified. “I have to go.”

They both stood, Angie dusting off the seat of her jeans. He scanned her face, registering the shadows beneath her eyes and the sad tilt to her mouth. She was so damn gorgeous and wonderful. His chest ached when he thought of everything he’d risked when he’d let his worst impulses drive him on Saturday night.

“I don’t want this to screw things up between us, Angie.”

He needed her in his life. It wasn’t until this moment that he’d realized how much. Not only for the kids, but for himself.

“Ditto. Big-time.” Her blue eyes were shiny with emotion as they stared at one another. The need to hold her, to reassure himself that she was okay, that they were okay, was undeniable. She must have been prey to the same instinct, because she stepped toward him at the same moment he stepped toward her. They met in the middle, arms coming around each other in a fierce, intense embrace. Michael pressed his cheek against her hair and squeezed her tightly. She was no slouch in the ferocity department, either, her arms a strong band across his shoulders. After a long beat they parted.

A tear traced down Angie’s cheek and Michael caught it on his thumb. He hated the thought that he’d made her unhappy. They had both had more than enough of that over the past year.

“I’m okay,” she reassured him.

“If you say so.”

“I do. Thanks for dropping by.”

“Thanks for listening.”

She gestured with her chin. “Go. You don’t want to be late for your thing.”

He took a step backward. A part of him wanted to go, wanted to walk away from all of this and put it behind him, chalking it up as a foolish, reckless one-off. The other part of him wanted to stay. To keep talking to Angie. To assure himself that she was okay, that they were okay.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, you will.” Her smile was faint but unmistakable and it did a lot to ease the remaining tension from his chest.

He headed into the house, relieved beyond measure that they had had this conversation and that they were both on the same page. A thought occurred as he was about to close the French doors. He pivoted to face her. The words he’d been about to say stalled in his throat as he watched Angie bend to collect her cup from the deck. Her jeans tightened across her ass and thighs. He tried to remember what he’d been about to say but he was too busy watching the long, elegant lines of her body as she straightened and remembering how goddamned good she’d felt beneath him.

Her skin had been soft and warm and salty from the sea and when she’d come, her whole body had arched against his and she’d sobbed his name, her knees tightening around his body….

Without saying a word he left, heading for his car, away from Angie and all the feelings and memories that he didn’t want to have. Somehow, through a minor miracle, they had managed to navigate the treacherous waters of having slept with each other and still been able to look each other in the eye and like one another.

There was no place for continuing lust and desire in their recent conversation. None at all.

* * *

A
NGIE
WALKED
INTO
THE
kitchen to rinse her coffee cup after Michael left. She felt oddly shaky, as though she might cry at any second. Which was…unnecessary. After forty-eight hours of feeling like crap, marinating in her own guilt and confusion, she’d finally looked him in the eye and listened to him talk and said her own piece.

They were going to be okay. She wasn’t sure how she knew that—it was still very early days—but she did. The worst had happened and they had survived and now they were cleaning up the aftermath and moving on, concentrating on the important stuff—the kids and their friendship.

The fact that they’d had fierce, desperate, deeply intense sex on his study floor was now a historical artifact—one they would wrap in tissue paper and pack safely away for the rest of their lives, never again to see the light of day.

A fitting end for a wildly reckless act—and a hugely fortunate one. Because this conversation could very easily have gone another way. He could have told her he didn’t want her hanging around as much, that he thought it would be best for all of them if they took a break from each other. He could have been angry with her for the way she’d taken him by the hand and stripped her clothes for him. He was more honest than that, a far better man, but it could have happened.

Even though she’d just had coffee, she made herself a cup of tea, taking comfort from the simple act of wrapping her hands around the warm mug. She took it to the studio and sat at her desk and stared unseeingly at the wall, reviewing their conversation again, reassuring herself that the crisis really was over. She’d been living on adrenaline for the past two days, freaking out, lashing herself with guilt and regret—but they had survived.

Which was why she steadfastly refused to dwell on the moment when Michael’s shoulder had brushed hers while they were sitting on the step. And why she would not allow herself to even contemplate sniffing the neck of her shirt to see if any of his aftershave had transferred to her during their embrace. And why she was not going to sit staring into space for another second.

That night in the study was going to remain there—safely under lock and key.

She finished her tea in a couple of big gulps, then picked up her flexi-drill and resumed the task of cutting out reveals from what would eventually become a three-layered wedding ring. She worked on it until it was time to pick up Eva from school, then she did some long overdue banking and tax paperwork on her laptop, sitting at the kitchen counter while Eva watched one of her after-school shows.