Loving You Always (16 page)

Kerris looked at Ardis, not even bothering to smile.

“Would you excuse us…Ardis, isn’t it?”

“I don’t have to leave.” Ardis settled onto the counter, defiance painted on her face along with the heavy makeup. “If we—”

“Get out, Ard.” Sofie’s eyes never left her own reflection in the mirror as she ran her hands through her trademark silver-blond hair.

Once Ardis left, Kerris wasn’t sure what to do with the lying, narcissistic bag of model bones in front of her.

“You wanted me, so here I am.” Sofie turned from the mirror, facing Kerris for the first time. Her eyes weren’t hard. They were hot and angry. “What the fuck do you want, little maid?”

There was a time when this woman’s words had cut her down, had reiterated all the lies Kerris had told herself and bought lock, stock, and barrel all her life. But something had changed. Was it Dr. Stein, excavating her hurts? Was it Walsh’s unconditional, enduring love? She’d been unsure that she was ready for this alien planet of plenty Walsh occupied, but she would go wherever he went. She would hold her own against the bitches Jo had said were out there. And certainly against this bitch in the bathroom.

“You lied that night.” Kerris knew she was starting in the middle, but Sofie was a bright girl. She’d catch up. “The night of Kristeene’s birthday party, you said Walsh told you he’d marry you soon.”

“Is that why you—” Sofie folded her long, willowy body in half, laughter shaking her slim shoulders. “Did you go off and get engaged because of
that
?”

Sofie laughed so hard she finally stumbled to a bench against a wall.

“What kind of idiot…” More cackling. “Honey, I knew you were in that stall by your little Goodwill shoes. I had no idea I was the cause of all this trouble. You truly are a stupid girl.”

Kerris invaded Sofie’s space, leaning in until their noses nearly touched.

“I was stupid to believe a conniving bitch like you, Sofie, but the mark of a smart girl?” Kerris straightened, walking over to the mirror to adjust the pins securing her hair in an elaborate upsweep. “We learn from our mistakes. I must have done something right because I’m walking away with Walsh Bennett.”

“Why, you little nobody.” Sofie curled her petal pink lips, lunging forward even though she remained seated.

“This nobody is marrying Walsh Bennett.” Kerris turned to face the nemesis she hadn’t even really known was her enemy all these years.

Sofie swallowed and narrowed her eyes at Kerris. For the first time she looked pathetic. An angry girl with sad, hard-as-emerald eyes who probably hadn’t eaten a decent meal in the last five years. Pathetic.

“That night you said you’d marry Walsh Bennett and have his babies.” Kerris walked to the door, turning to give Sofie one last glance over her bare shoulder. “But I’m going to actually do that. Unlike you, I’m not making it up.”

Sofie sat there unmoving, something close to shock on her face. She reminded Kerris of a viper who’d been bitten and felled by a bunny rabbit, and still couldn’t quite believe it.

“Nothing to say?” Kerris asked. “Well, I need to get back out there. It’s kind of a big night for us. Enjoy the rest of the evening. I hear there’s steak.”

Y
ou sure you’re okay?” Walsh asked Kerris a fourth time, watching her eat her steak and snow peas like she hadn’t just emerged unscathed from a death match with Sofie in the ladies’ room.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Kerris took a bite of her potatoes. “Mmmm. These are delicious, baby. You got shafted with the cauliflower. Taste.”

She held her fork to his lips, waiting for him to open and sample. He complied, watching her warily like at any moment she would jerk the fork back and pretend they weren’t even together. She had been amazingly at ease all night. He loved it and just hoped it lasted.

“Remind me never to send you out shopping with my cousin again.” Walsh ran hungry eyes over Kerris’s naked back in the jumpsuit that had him and probably every man at the table hard as cement. “You look…we’ll talk later, when I can
show
you how I feel about the way you look.”

As confident as she had been all night, a little color swiped her cheeks. He, Walsh Bennett, had actually ended up with a girl who still blushed. Minor miracle.

“I think I’ll skip dessert and have you instead. I can’t get enough of you.”

“We have this whole week in New York.” Her smile was made of fairy tales and shooting stars, all the things people teach you not to believe in. But here she sat. Real. His.

“We do have this week, but I leave for Tokyo Sunday.”

“Tokyo?” He heard as much disappointment in her voice as he’d felt when his dad told him earlier.

“Yeah, I just found out today.” He touched a renegade curl that had escaped her updo. “Only for ten days.”

“It’s fine.”

He leaned closer, discreetly nuzzling the spot behind her ear.

“It’s not fine. I ache when I’m away from you.”

He ran his fingers down the fragile chain of vertebrae in her back. He leaned in, brushing her lips with his, never breaking the stare that kept them joined by an invisible, sensual thread. She swallowed his groan at the brief contact, gripping the sleeve of his well-cut sports coat.

“Am I really going to have to ask you two to get a room?” Jo asked from the seat beside him. He’d forgotten his cousin was even at the table. He’d forgotten everyone except Kerris.

“Sorry.” Walsh held Kerris’s hand on his knee.

“No need to apologize,” Uncle James said from the seat across the table. “Young love.”

Walsh searched Unc’s face for any sign of judgment. His uncle hadn’t approved of how things had unfolded with Cam, but ever since Walsh told him about his relationship with Kerris and that he intended to marry her, the older man had been nothing but supportive.

“Mom would be proud of Dad for this endowment Bennett is funding, huh?” he asked his uncle.

Uncle James looked down at his plate, nodding to himself before looking back to Walsh. “She’d be very proud. So am I.”

Walsh considered the range of emotions he’d ever experienced toward his father. Everything from hate to indifference. This emotion was new.

“Yeah, I’m proud of him, too.”

“Maybe you can tell him sometime.” Uncle James grinned as Martin Bennett walked up to the table.

“Well, I see you finally got her, son.”

“Dad, you obviously remember, Kerris. Kerris, my dad, Martin Bennett.”

“Oh, yes, we’ve met.” Martin took Kerris’s hand. “Not under the best circumstances the last time, huh, young lady?”

“I never got the chance to thank you for bringing Walsh home.”

“It was touch and go there for a minute.” Martin looked at Walsh and grinned. “Hopefully, my son won’t hoard your company, though neither of us is known for sharing. He’s already told me he’s holding you hostage this week.”

“A willing hostage.” She looked down at the table for a moment when both men laughed.

“Delightful.” Martin shared a knowing look with his son. “Hostile takeover, huh?”

“I don’t know who’s been taken over.” Walsh glanced over at Kerris. “But it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“So it’s like that?” Martin Bennett asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Oh, it’s definitely like that. As soon as some loose ends are tied up.”

“Loose ends. Is that what you call him?” Martin laughed. “I’m being signaled that it’s time. I’d better get up there. Sorry you have to sit through this speech, Kerris.”

As proud as Walsh was of his father and as excited as he was about the Bennett endowment benefiting his mother’s favorite causes, impatience chafed him for the rest of the night. There was only one thing he wanted now. Only one place he wanted to be. Alone with Kerris.

In their new home.

K
erris fought sleep, dropping her head to Walsh’s shoulder as they whizzed through the streets on their way to his place. She could get used to being driven around everywhere in a limousine if it meant snuggling like this.

She’d seen a side of Martin Bennett that night she had only suspected existed when she met him the first time. He had surprised her and most of the people in the room when he talked openly about his ex-wife’s lost battle with cancer, and the lessons she had taught him about giving back. He’d looked at Walsh, adding that his son had continued his education last summer in Kenya.

“Your father isn’t at all like I imagined him, like everyone said he is.”

“He’s changed a lot since Mom passed.” Walsh brushed one strong hand across her hair. “But he’s still Martin Bennett under it all. Don’t be fooled.”

She opened her eyes long enough to tease him. “And are you still Walsh Bennett under it all?”

“Yeah, that’s who you’re stuck with,” he said, his face more serious than her teasing comment called for.

She perked up when she saw the humor vacate the rugged lines of his face.

“Walsh, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He took her hand in his, studying her in the light provided by the city. “I’m just a lot like my dad, especially when it comes to getting what I want. I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

“I like
you
.”

“That’s good because, like I said, you’re stuck with me.” He paused before saying the next words as if he were weighing each one before it left his mouth. “When my dad retires, if the board doesn’t think I can do the job, they’ll find a way for me not to do the job. There are men older than me who’ve been at Bennett longer than I have, who feel they have just as much right to it as I do. And in many ways they’re right. Except it’s mine.”

The possessive word hung in the air between them. And Kerris could practically see the strands of DNA Walsh’s father had passed on to him.

“My father built that company from nothing, and he wants a Bennett running it when he’s done. And that’ll be me. Make no mistake about it.”

“Are you trying to scare me? Nothing you’ve said makes me love you less.”

“I don’t want to scare you. I want you to know me and to love me in spite of the parts of me that aren’t always good.”

“Oh, you mean the way you love me.”

“Baby, I love you every way there is.” He gently bit the curving bow of her top lip.

“We’re here.”

“This is your place?” She’d envisioned an apartment in the heart of the city. A high rise. Shiny, glass, doorman. This was a townhome. Three stories. Large and imposing, but charming. “Where are we?”

“TriBeCa. And, no, it’s not my apartment. It’s the house where I grew up. Well, at least until my parents divorced.”

“You live here? But I thought—”

“It’s a recent development. Come on.”

It was spacious, yet homey. Luxurious, yet quaint.

“It’s empty,” she said.

“For now. I was hoping…well, I was hoping you’d help me fill it.”

Fill it? With what? Furniture? Laughter? Love? Children? Where had all the bravado she’d shown Sofie gone? Miss “I’m Marrying Walsh Bennett” almost lost her dinner as soon as he mentioned a future. She had to make it through divorce court before she could even entertain “filling” this house with anything. She feigned interest in the gleaming hardwood floors.

“These are beautiful.” She deliberately didn’t look at him, provoking a deep, amused rumble from his broad chest.

“Yes, they’re great floors.” He lifted her chin to look at him instead of the hardwoods, a small smile on his face. “Baby, that wasn’t a proposal.”

Her shoulders dropped with a little relief and a little disappointment.

He took her left hand, stroking the ring finger with his thumb.

“You’ll know when I’m proposing.” He kissed her empty finger. “Let me show you your room.”

They mounted the stairs and turned left. Walsh gestured to the right.

“The room I slept in growing up is that way,” he said. “You’ll be in my parents’ old room.”

“Oh, no, Walsh, you should have the master. I don’t want to put you out.”

“Do you honestly think I’m gonna sleep down the hall with you here?”

“Maybe I’ll lock you out!”

She took off running, and he chased her.

“You don’t even know which room it is.” He laughed behind her.

Kerris skittered down the hall in her precipitous heels, jerking open the first door she came to, dashing in only to skid to a stop. It was a huge bedroom with a large bed at its center. The far wall was made almost entirely of glass, providing a glorious view of the city’s distant skyline. She walked over to the window, pressing her palm flat to the glass. The city really was captivating. She thought of Rivermont, with its quaint shops, busybodies, and the river as its pulsing, life-giving heart. She wished she could live in two places at once, inhabit two worlds.

“It’s beautiful.” She heard the wistful note in her own voice.

“You took the words.” Walsh walked up behind her, feathering kisses down her neck, skimming her bare spine with his fingers. “Don’t wear this again.”

Her breath came in short gasps from the steam his mouth and fingers stoked inside of her. He squatted behind her, possessing the small of her back with his mouth, running his tongue over the base of her spine, licking between the bones.

“I thought you liked it.”

“Me and every other man at the Met tonight.” He rose to his full height, liberating her hair from the pins until it flooded his hands. “I thought I was gonna have to knock some heads together before the night was over.”

Walsh pulled the almost nonexistent straps from her shoulders with his teeth. He scooped his big hands under her arms, lifting her until they were eye to eye. He plunged into her mouth, hungry, seeking, ravishing. Kerris clawed her fingers around his head, clutching him closer, deeper. She felt the cool slide of the silky material against her skin when it finally succumbed to the laws of physics and gravity, pooling on the floor beneath her feet. Walsh held her suspended in the air. He laid her down on the huge bed, locking eyes with her before he discovered her body with worshipping hands—like Magellan or Columbus, exploring a glorious new world, but one of flesh and delicate bone. He licked at the beauty mark above her right breast, a drop of dark chocolate in the silkiest honeyed cream of her skin.

“I never tire of this.” The emotion simmering in Walsh’s eyes sent a wave of heat and then a shiver along her bare skin. “Of tasting you.”

Kerris’s hands, urgent and seeking, pushed the jacket away from his shoulders, glorying in the width, the breadth, of him. She pulled at the buttons of his shirt, forcing her fingers to slow even as her breath came in short pants.

He laved the velvety curve of her neck with his tongue, anointing the skin with gentle bites that had her writhing beneath him as they devoured each other’s mouths and frantically explored each other’s bodies. Her clothes long discarded, chest heaving, Kerris wrapped her legs around his and pushed into him, only his slacks separating her from what she needed more than air. She was hollow. She was an empty ache without him. It wasn’t enough.

“Walsh, oh God. Inside. I need you inside.”

“Kerris.” He pushed her name out, ragged between harsh breaths. He pressed his forehead to hers. “We have to stop. Baby, we can’t.”

“Yes, we can.” She bit his earlobe with delicate ferocity.

“They’re your ground rules. You didn’t want to do that to him.”

Him. Cam.

The name poured ice water on her passion, the steam of shame and guilt rising up off her heated flesh. She sat up, grabbing for the edge of the richly colored duvet, pulling it over her bare breasts.

“Oh, God, Walsh.” Embarrassment watered her voice. “I just…I forgot. I didn’t mean…I didn’t want…”

“I wanted.” He collapsed onto his back, arm flung across his eyes. She heard the deliberate slowing of his breath. “I still want.”

“I’m glad you stopped.” Kerris wished she’d had the willpower and presence of mind to. “You could have…well, I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

“As much as I want you, it wouldn’t have been worth your guilt. And I know you would’ve felt guilty.”

How many men would think like that?

“You’re right. I would have felt awful if it came up in the divorce hearing. If they asked if we…you know…actually had sex, and I had to say we’d…well, you know.”

“Divorce hearing?” Walsh lowered his arm from his eyes to look at her. “When is that?”

“Less than a month away.”

“Will Cam be there?” Kerris heard the strain in his voice.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Kerris tightened her fingers around the cover concealing her naked breasts, working up the nerve to ask a question she had considered more than once. “Do you ever miss him?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Walsh started sitting up, but Kerris pushed him back down.

“Do you?” She leaned over him and searched his eyes for the truth.

“Sometimes, I guess.” His eyes held hers for a few moments before he looked at some point over her shoulder. His eyes turned flinty. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Walsh, one day—”

“Let’s get something straight.” Walsh carefully removed her hand and dragged himself to sit with his back against the headboard. “The only one day I care about is ours. Yours and mine.”

“I don’t want you to wake up someday resenting me for taking away someone who was such a huge part of your life.”

“He left you, abandoned you.”

“He left Mama Jess with me.”

“Are you defending him?”

“No, but I’m not defending myself either. Jo told me about the fight.” Kerris swallowed, not knowing details, but knowing how barbed Cam’s tongue could be. And knowing Walsh.

“What fight?” Walsh stood up and walked to the end of the bed, leaning one shoulder against the bedpost, eyes hedging.

“Between you and Cam.” She crawled to the end of the bed, carefully clutching the covers around herself. She looked up at him. “I know it’s not easy thinking about his time with me.” She reached for his hand.

“You mean about him having sex with you?” His face like granite, Walsh clenched his other hand into a tight fist.

“Yeah, I guess.” She squeezed a small breath into the narrowed passage of her lungs. “I know this is awkward.”

“It’s wrong that he had you, and that I…God, if you had only listened to me that night, we could have—”

“Avoided all this? This is my fault, right? That’s what you want to say.”

She was goading him into an explosion she might regret, but at least all their cards would be on the table once and for all. He jerked his hand away, turning to lean his back against the bedpost.

“I’m not saying that. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Are you telling me that when you think about Cam with me you don’t hate me just a little?” Kerris forced the words past the lump of shame clogging her throat. “Resent me just a little?”

“I could never hate you. Stop it. Don’t do this.”

Even with his back turned, she could see the anger calcifying his posture. He was like a famished tiger held back from raw meat by a strand of floss.

“We have only a few days together before I leave for Tokyo. I’m not wasting time talking about my feelings for Cam.”

“You haven’t thought about it? Haven’t envisioned—”

“I said stop it right now.”

Walsh turned to face her, lips clamped so tightly together the syllables were ground to paste. He strode like a caged panther to the window, facing away from her. He slammed his hand against the glass before turning back to her, the city lights behind him a beautiful spectacle.

“You should have waited, Kerris! Dammit, yes, I resented you. I had to give the toast at your fucking wedding and grin like a monkey the whole day, while my insides were torn up. I told you at the hospital we should have talked to Cam. And after what we shared in that gazebo that night, you did what? Went off and got engaged to my best friend twenty minutes later? Because you
assumed
I was marrying Sofie? What is that? Who
does
that?”

“Walsh, I—”

“No. You will damn well listen now.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his flawlessly tailored pants. He dropped the room temperature with his icy stare. “You don’t poke a tiger unless you’re prepared to get bitten.”

She held back her words, knowing this was what she had provoked. He breathed deeply through his nostrils and out through his mouth before continuing more quietly.

“I was so angry with you.” The ice in his eyes slowly thawed until only pain remained. “And I loved you so much, I loved Cam, and I wanted to do what was right, but everything felt wrong. The only thing that felt right was being with you, but I knew it wasn’t right. Only because you’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t just your life. It was mine. It was Cam’s. Did I resent the decision you made? I did. Do I miss Cam? I do sometimes. Do I ever, ever want to live without you again? I can’t. Not ever. That’s all that matters.”

“But Walsh—”

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or how your choices separated us. I don’t know how not to love you. And a choice between you and Cam is no choice at all.”

Kerris refused to cry. She wished with all her heart that Dr. Stein were here to run interference. They needed an objective third party, a mediator, because now that she had provoked him to the ugly truth, she had no idea what to do with it. No idea what the right thing was to say, so she just said the truth that mangled her security and tugged at the threads of her assurances.

“I’m so scared it’ll always haunt us.” It was something she’d never even admitted to herself, that the damage she had done to his friendship, what she had cost him, would erode what he felt for her. “I’m scared that one day you’ll wake up, see Cam gone and me still here, and it won’t be enough and that you’ll leave.”

“You don’t ever have to be scared of that.”

“Yes, I do.” She said the words with eyes closed, afraid that if she opened them, she’d lose her nerve. “Walsh, this love gives you so much power over me. Something I promised myself no one would ever have again. That I’d never be that vulnerable again. Everyone leaves.”