Carolina Home (24 page)

He couldn’t wait.

He spread her thighs wide, opening her to his gaze, to his body. She squirmed, her hips arching to meet him. He took himself in hand, pulling aside the stretchy bit of lace to rub against her, giving her a taste of what she wanted, he wanted, teasing, tormenting, pleasuring them both. She writhed, wrapping her strong legs around him, and he slipped briefly, too briefly, inside her.

His mind blanked. Her heat scorched him. He was dying here, she was killing him, the denial and discipline of sixteen years going up in smoke. She melted around him, both of them burning up. Playing with fire.

Her eyes opened wide. “Condom?”

He froze, desire a hard ache. He had to…He needed…
Damn it.

He withdrew from her—
agony
—and almost fell off the bed grabbing for his jeans, digging for his wallet. She reached for him, stroking his back, touching his thigh, shaking with muffled noises of laughter and impatience as he wrestled with the damn latex, making him feel better even before he got the job done. He lunged for her, sliding thick inside her laughter and her heat, roughly, no holding back, taking her, reclaiming everything he’d lost sixteen years ago. He thrust inside her as her body closed around him, shuddering under him, taking him, too, making him forget the day and all responsibility. Until at last he spilled deep inside her, spent.

Home.

A
LLISON’S PHONE ALARM
chimed on the bedside table. 6:00
AM
. She reached quickly to turn it off, careful not to disturb Matt sleeping beside her.

Matt.

She turned her head, her heart doing a little dance, her inside parts a squeeze.

He sprawled beside her, sated and relaxed, the faint light from the bathroom illuminating his tanned features. With his bare, hair-roughened chest and the stubble on his jaw, he looked less like a charter boat captain and more like the “gentleman pirate” the room was named for.

She grinned.
Yo ho ho.

For a moment she entertained a fantasy of the two of them sailing the high seas on a voyage of discovery, locked alone in a cabin for days on end while Matt plundered her body and she explored his. New worlds…

She smiled and shook her head. The reality was different but just as novel. Exciting, even. In the real world, Matt’s world, there was a family, children in the house who had to be fed and readied for school. She sobered abruptly, thinking of Taylor. Children who needed her.

She needed to be needed. She wanted to help.

She gathered her clothes and dressed in the bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later, she was spreading peanut butter onto sandwich bread when she heard something over the gurgle of the coffeepot.

She turned her head. “Hey, Josh. What are you doing up?”

The boy stood in the kitchen door, barefoot and disheveled. “I heard a noise. I thought maybe Dad was home.”

“He got in really late last night. He’s upstairs sleeping now. Your grandfather’s at the hospital with your grandmother and Aunt Meg.”

Josh’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Is Grandma…?”

“She’s going to be okay,” Allison said firmly. “Still in ICU, but your dad wouldn’t have left if she weren’t going to be okay. He can fill you in when he wakes up.”

Josh ambled forward. “What are you doing?”

“Making lunch for you and Taylor.” She dropped apples into their bags. “I’m going home to shower and change and then I’ll be back in about forty-five minutes to take you both to school, all right?”

Josh regarded her thoughtfully. “You know, you don’t have to do all this.”

He sounded like his father.

She smiled. “I want to do it.”

“Grandma taught me to pack my own lunch when I was seven.”

Heat flushed her face. “I wasn’t…I’m not trying to take anybody’s place.”
His grandmother’s. His mother’s.
“I just want to help.”

He leaned against the counter, looking at her with Matt’s blue eyes. “That’s cool. But I’ve got this. It won’t kill me to walk Taylor to school today.”

“Oh.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel, jarred from her fantasies for the second time that morning. “I guess I’ll see you at school, then.”

“See you.” He waited until she was almost to the door before he added slyly, “Allison.”

Oh, boy.
She turned. Maybe she couldn’t take the place of his mother or grandmother. Maybe nobody could. But she was still his teacher. She needed his respect. “At school, it’s Miss Carter.”

He nodded, accepting that. “What about here?”

What
about
here? she wondered. She couldn’t take advantage of the Fletchers’ situation to push in where she wasn’t wanted. This was about what they needed, not about her playing a role. She winced. Playing house.

“What do you think is appropriate?” she hedged.

His eyes gleamed between thick blond lashes. “Not Mom.”

Ouch.

“Of course not.”

“Because she never packed my lunch for me.”

“Never?” Allison asked before she could stop herself. She knew—because Gail had told her—that Josh’s mother had walked out on them when Josh was a baby. She had the opportunity to get details here, but she was pretty sure that pumping your lover’s teenage son for dirt on his mother carried a penalty, like going to hell. “She must have sometime. Maybe when you visited her.”

“I don’t. Visit,” he explained. “Not since I was eight.”

Allison’s jaw dropped in distress.

“She still sends checks.” Josh smiled wryly. “Every year, on my birthday.”

Allison didn’t know what to say.

Matt was all about family. What must it have done to him, to be married to a woman who could reject family so completely, who could ignore her own child?

“Checks are always nice,” she said faintly. Her own parents used money as the currency of affection.

“Yeah. The thing is…we’re used to not having her around.”

“Right,” Allison said, not feeling any better.

“Last night…when you came over…” Josh said and stopped.

He’d cried in her arms. He was probably mortified, remembering.

“You were great,” she said. “You took good care of Taylor.”

“Thanks. But it was nice.” He met her gaze. “You being there.”

“Oh.” A wave of emotion seized her by the throat. His admission was acceptance on a level she hadn’t expected, validation of a kind she hadn’t known she needed. It made
her smile. It made her hope. All her life, she’d been searching for her true calling, her true course. And now suddenly her future rose in front of her like land on the horizon, growing brighter, closer, clearer with every moment.

It took her breath away.

She cleared her throat. “Anytime.”

Fifteen

T
HE SNOW FELL
faster and faster, big fat flakes swirling in the darkness beyond the windshield, trapping Tess in the cold shell of her parents’ car on Lake Shore Drive. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t get home. All she could hear was the rasp of her breath, foggy in the stale air, and the howl of the storm, the hiss of black and white as scrambled as the signal of an old TV. Even her fear was muffled, smothered in blankets of white.

She thought vaguely that there must have been an accident. That’s why she was stuck here on the bridge in a blizzard. She had a memory of flashing lights and urgent voices, gone now, all gone. Now there were only drifts and the abandoned cars of panicked commuters trying to get home.

She shivered, alternating between hot and cold, searing blasts from the heater, icy shafts from the windows, her toes freezing, her chest burning up. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to swallow and gagged. Pain swirled, white and thick as the snowflakes.

Something moved up ahead, a flicker in the storm, a young woman, a girl, translucent, shifting in and out of the storm, under the bridge lights, her long hair lifting in the wind. She should really wear a hat, Tess thought, just as the girl turned, smiling, and she recognized her, pretty seventeen-year-old Dawn Simpson.

Tess shuddered, floating between weightlessness and dread, the cold sinking into her bones. That wasn’t right. Dawn must be in her twenties now.

Dawn was dead.

Tess opened her mouth to call out, to ask Dawn what she was doing dancing in a snowstorm in Chicago, but her voice made no sound. Her mouth was cracked and painful, her chest on fire. She tried to move away from the pain, and the fire flared and reformed, consuming her from the inside.

Someone rapped on her window.

Tess almost shrieked.

But it was Tom, appearing in his dress blues out of the snow, handsome as the day they married.
My hero.
Somehow he’d found her through the storm. He stood beside her rattletrap car, peering through the foggy glass.

“You’re doing great, Tess. I’m proud of you.”

A compliment. Despite her pain, Tess almost smiled. That was different. Nice. She tried to roll down her window to tell him so and frowned. She couldn’t move her arm.

Lights hummed. Machinery beeped.

She felt a touch on her hair, light as snow.
“The surgery went great, babe. They got you all fixed up now, plates, pins, screws, the works.”
He cleared his throat.
“You got yourself a regular hardware store in there.”

Beneath the joke, the encouraging tone, she heard the strain tightening Tom’s vocal cords.

Poor, dear, taciturn man. He never had been any damn good when one of the kids was sick or in the hospital.

Hospital.

She opened her eyes, remembering.

Her husband hovered over her bed, feathering her hair from her forehead with trembling fingers, his face lined and worried. Old. She blinked sudden moisture from her eyes, sadness pooling in her chest. When had they gotten so old?

“They took the tube out of your throat now, too,” he said, holding her hand in his strong, rough, callused hand, his touch warm and familiar. “You can breathe on your own now. And talk. Can you talk to me, babe?”

The tube down her throat had been replaced by soft prongs under her nostrils. Clear lines ran into the back of her hand and the crook of her elbow, soft restraints bound her wrists. So she wouldn’t tear at the tubes in her sleep, she remembered the nurse saying.

She moved her lips without sound.

Tom scowled. “How do you feel?”

Like hell, she wanted to say. Like she’d been hit by a truck. Or an SUV. Pain radiated from her chest, throbbed in her hips. She felt battered, bruised, taken apart and manipulated.

She licked her cracked lips, swallowed the lump in her aching throat. “Fine,” she croaked and coughed.

Tom looked stricken.

She squeezed his hand, doing her best to smile. “Feel…fine.”

Her husband’s fierce gaze flooded with sudden tears. “Glad you’re back, babe.”

He laid his gray head beside their joined hands on the mattress and cried.

“H
I, LITTLE GIRL
.”

“Dad. Hi.” Allison juggled her phone as she stood in line
at the bakery. Her father never called. “Is everything all right? Mom?”

Taylor pulled on her arm. “Can I have something to eat now?”

Allison covered her phone. “You can pick out one snack.” Catching Josh’s eye, she held up one finger and then pointed toward the bakery case.

He nodded in understanding. “Come on, brat.”

“…misses you, of course,” her father said. “She was very disappointed when you canceled your visit.”

Guilt needled her. “I miss you guys, too.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear my news.”

Allison kept an eye on Taylor as the woman behind the counter wrapped up two enormous bear claws. Was she ruining the kids’ appetites for dinner? “News?”

“I’m here in North Carolina visiting a project, a mixed-use development outside Wilmington. The Riverside Club. Herb Stuart, the architect, is an old friend. Your mother is flying down for the weekend. I’ve reserved an extra room so you can join us.”

“I…What? When?”

“We have dinner reservations for eight. And then tomorrow you can entertain your mother while Herb and I check out the golf course.”

Taylor was back, squinting up from under the brim of her Marine cap. “I want to pick out the cupcakes.”

“Fine. You have to choose a variety, though. Three dozen minis, please,” Allison said to the counter lady.

“What?” her father asked.

“Daddy, I can’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s all arranged. Riverside will be a new experience for you.” Richard Carter chuckled. “I know how you like new experiences.”

“Dad, you should have asked me before planning something like this.”

“Your mother wanted to surprise you. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“It’s a lovely thought. I appreciate it, I do. But I have another commitment.”

“Well, of course I wouldn’t want to interfere with your plans,” her father said stiffly. “You can come down tomorrow.”

“No, I can’t. Not anytime this weekend, I’m afraid.” She covered the phone again. “Not
all
chocolate, Taylor.”