Envy (30 page)

CHAPTER 23

It required all his willpower not to kiss her then. He knew she expected it, which was one reason he didn't. The other was because he was still feeling guilty over suggesting that her motives weren't pure. As though his were.

"Want to go for a ride?" he asked.

"A ride?"

"Down to the beach."

"I can walk."

"You can ride."

He disengaged the brake and navigated the wheelchair down the ramp off the veranda onto a paved path that led through the woods. "This is convenient," she remarked.

"I had the paths laid during the reconstruction of the house."

"Mike said you never even considered using a motorized chair, that you like doing things the hard way."

"Self-propulsion is good exercise. Mike feeds me well. I don't want to go to flab."

"What is that wonderful smell?"

"Magnolia."

"There aren't any fireflies out tonight."

"The _lightning _bugs think it's going to rain."

"Is it?"

"We'll see, won't we?"

The paved path went as far as the sand dunes, where it connected to an elevated path constructed of weathered wood planks. Sea oats brushed against Maris's legs as they went over the dunes. Beyond them, the path expanded into a platform exactly

#eight feet square. Parker stopped and ###521

set the brake on the wheelchair.

The deserted beach spread out before them. From this stretch of it, the mainland couldn't be seen. It looked as primordial as it had been when it was formed. The moon was obscured by the dense cloud cover, but it shed enough light to see the surf as it broke. It left a silvery residue that sparkled briefly before dissolving into the sand. The breeze was as soft as the breath of a sleeping baby, and the only sound was the redundant swish of the tide.

"This is an amazing place." Maris spoke in a reverential whisper usually reserved for church. "Dense forest growing right up to the beach."

"And no high-rise hotels to spoil the view." Rather than appreciating the view, he was rubbing a strand of Maris's hair between his fingers, studying the texture, enjoying the feel of it.

She turned her head to look at him. "What kind of narcotics?"

"Ah. I should've known you'd catch that slip of the tongue."

"I did. And it's been on my mind ever since. What kind of narcotics did you take?"

Her expression wasn't censorious, simply interested. Sympathetic, maybe.

He let go of her hair and lowered his hand.

"Pharmaceuticals. Painkillers. Great big quantities of them. Heaping handfuls."

"Because of your legs?"

"It was a long recovery."

"From what, Parker?"

"My own stupidity." After a short pause for emphasis, he continued. "I underwent several operations, first to reconstruct the bones and replace the missing pieces with plastic or metal. Then the muscles and tendons had to be reattached. After that, the skin. ...

"Hell, Maris, you don't want to hear all that, and I really don't want to talk about it.

Bottom line, I was in the hospital for over a year, then in ... other facilities. I went through years of physical therapy. It was a bitch.

Like hell must be, only worse. That's when I got hooked on prescription painkillers. When the doctors refused to prescribe any more, I bought the pills off the street from independent vendors."

"Drug dealers."

###"With whom I became bosom #########523

buddies." She didn't appear to be shocked, but she might be if he told her the depths to which he had sunk in order to maintain his stash. So he summed it up. "I was a mess."

"But you pulled yourself out of it."

"No, I got grabbed by the balls and yanked out of it."

"Mike."

"Mike," he repeated, shaking his head over the miracle of it. "For reasons I will never understand, he befriended me. He appeared one day out of nowhere. Through the blurred vision of a drugged-out stupor, I saw him standing there amid the squalor, looking at me as though trying to decide if I was worth the effort it was going to take to save me from myself."

"Maybe he was sent to you."

"A guardian angel? Fairy godfather? At least he wasn't the Grim Reaper. Although in the weeks just following his _rescue, I sometimes wished I was dead. Before I knew what was happening, he seized my stash and slapped me into detox."

"That couldn't have been pleasant."

"You don't want to know. Believe me. When I got out, he enrolled me in more therapy, physical _and emotional. Cleaned me up, installed me in an apartment outfitted for the physically challenged, asked what I intended to do with the rest of my life. When I told him I had an itch to write, he set me up with a computer."

"He started you writing."

"He put it in the form of a dare."

"Which gave you a reason to go on living."

"No, by then I had decided I must go on living." __I had a damn good reason _to, he thought darkly.

"Can I ask a very personal question, Parker?"

"You can. You might regret it."

"Is Roark you?"

He'd known she would get around to it sooner or later. She was too smart not to have pieced it together.

A writer writing about a writer. Naturally she would see the parallel and ask. The answer he had ready wasn't a lie, just not the whole truth.

"Not entirely."

"Loosely based upon?"

"Fair to say."

She nodded solemnly but pried no further.

#"Did you start writing the mystery series ##525

right away?"

"No, I tried several genres. Devised and discarded a dozen plots a week for almost two years. Several thousand acres of trees went into my trash can before the Deck Cayton character clicked. He was the first thing that held my interest, that took my mind off my physical limitations.

"When I had what I thought was a publishable story, I retained an agent and told her she could submit the manuscript if she swore on her life and the lives of her children never to reveal my identity to anyone."

"And Mackensie Roone came to be." She touched his cheek. "It was a rebirth for which we can all be grateful. I'm just sorry for the suffering you had to endure to get there."

"In the long run, it's going to be worth it."

The moment the sentence was out, he realized he'd spoken it in the present tense. He feared Maris might notice and question him about his ultimate goal, but she had turned her head away from him and was gazing out across the surface of the water. The lights of a tanker winked on the horizon.

Raindrops began to fall, creating wet dimples in the sand. They fell on the wood platform in light spatters. Parker heard them even before he felt the sprinkles on his skin.

They felt as warm and soft as tears.

"Parker?"

"Hmm?"

"Remember that first day I came to the cotton gin, you suggested that Noah had married the boss's daughter to further his career?"

"That yanked your chain."

"Yes. But only because you hit the nail on the head. Deep down I knew it." She turned and looked into his face. "I caught him this week with another woman." The simple statement was followed by a pause that gave him time to respond.

He kept his expression neutral. "I won't bore you with the sordid details."

"How sordid?"

"Sufficiently sordid."

"Enough to send you scrambling back here?

Payback time?"

"No. I swear that's not why I'm here.

Noah's affair provided me with justification for coming back. But the truth is, I didn't want

#to leave in the first place." #############527

"Then why did you go?"

"It was a matter of conscience."

"Over what? Nothing happened."

"Something happened to me," she exclaimed softly, pressing her fist against her chest. "I wanted to stay with you, and that was reason enough for me to leave. Being around you wasn't healthy for my marriage. What I was feeling for you frightened me.

For my peace of mind, I needed to reestablish myself as a happily married woman.

Ironically, I'd been back in New York only one day when I discovered that Noah had broken our marriage vows."

"He's a fool."

She gave him a smile for the indirect compliment, but it turned rueful. "So am I.

I'm a fool for not acknowledging sooner that our marriage wasn't what I wanted it to be.

Nor was Noah the man I wanted him to be.

He wasn't the hero of his book."

"And now you think of Roark as a hero."

Shaking her head, she said, "I'm not confusing fact with fiction, Parker. I've outgrown that.

You're real. I can touch you." She reached for his hand, studying it as she traced the veins on the back of it with her fingertip. "My marriage, such as it was, is over. Behind me. I don't want to talk about Noah anymore."

"Fine by me."

He gathered a handful of her hair, then wound it around his fist and drew her closer until their faces were inches apart. He hesitated for several heartbeats, then settled his lips against hers, tested the angle, readjusted. He was

moderately controlled until he heard a small whimper from her. He backed off, looked down into her eyes, and recognized a desire that equaled his own.

Control was abandoned. He covered her face with wild, random, artless kisses and she was doing the same to him. Then mouths melded and tongues touched, and they kissed with carnal greed.

Eventually Parker pulled back and caught his breath, then proceeded with more temperance. His tongue stroked her lower lip; he raked it gently between his teeth. He laid light kisses at the corners of her lips before pressing his tongue into her mouth.

He angled his head first to one side, then the other, but he never broke contact. Even when he

#withdrew, his lips remained against hers, ####529

making sipping motions as gentle as the rainfall.

Her lips barely moving against his, she whispered, "The night we met, when you kissed me

..."

"Hmm?"

"I didn't want you to stop."

"I know."

"You _know?"

"Don't you think I felt it, too, Maris?"

In reply, she threaded her fingers up through his hair and played sexy with her tongue. As they kissed, he unbuttoned the row of buttons, untied the knot at her waist, and pulled open her shirt.

Her breasts were proportionately small, beautifully round, and, now, sprinkled with rainwater. Heavier drops beaded on her skin.

Some formed rivulets that trickled over the smooth curves, intersecting and crisscrossing in erotic patterns.

"Parker? You know it's raining."

"Yeah." He cupped her breast and reshaped it with his hand. His thumb whisked a raindrop off the tip. He leaned down and rubbed his lips across it.

"As you told me once, you won't melt."

Then he took her nipple into his mouth.

"I might," she sighed.

Making his dream a reality, she folded her arms around his head and clutched him to her, repeating his name on ragged breaths.

His hand waded through what seemed like unfurled bolts of fabric until he found skin. He slid his hand between her thighs, all the way up, to her center. He touched her through her underpants.

"Okay?"

She made a sound that he took for a yes. Her sex was pliant and very wet. He eased his fingers into her.

"Ohgod, Parker."

His fingers stroked her from within while his thumb drew circles on the outside. Soon she was thrusting her hips up against his hand.

"Just let it happen, Maris."

She relaxed and, although her breathing was still shallow and quick, she stopped working at trying to climax.

He continued to nuzzle her breasts. Her nipples became small and hard against his flicking tongue. The stroking of his fingers intensified and the

#circles drawn by his thumb shrank ####531

to center on one spot.

Then he felt it, that unique tension that claimed her. Involuntary. Imperative.

Impossible to bridle. Uncontainable. Her back arched. Her head fell back and she covered her eyes with her forearm. Her exposed neck begged to be kissed. He bent over it and pressed his lips against the hollow of her throat while sweet sounds vibrated from it. He remained there until the last of the aftershocks had rippled through her and she went limp.

He withdrew his hand from beneath her skirt and smoothed it back into place. He then gathered her close, securing her against his chest by resting his chin on the top of her head.

Weakly she laid her hand on his chest. "You buttoned your shirt."

"For supper. One of my mom's rules."

She undid the buttons and rubbed her cheek against his chest hair, then laid her head against his heart. "Better."

The rain continued to fall on them, soaking their hair and clothes, but neither noticed or cared. He stroked her back, his fingers stopping at each individual vertebra. "He hasn't fucked you worth a damn, has he?"

He felt her stiffen, and for a moment he feared that he'd gone too far, said too much, offended her with his blunt language. But it was an initial reaction that passed quickly. She relaxed against him again and said softly, "I thought so. Until a few minutes ago."

"You were hungry for it."

"I didn't know that until you touched me. My sex life was another self-delusion."

She must have felt his smile, because she raised her head and looked at him. "You must be feeling pretty good about yourself."

His grin was unrepentantly cocky, but it turned into a soft smile. "I feel good." He kissed her lips softly, growling against them, "But you feel better."

They kissed long and deeply. He was

reluctant to end it but eventually did. "We'd better get back to the house before Mike organizes a search party."

He reached for the brake lever to release it, but she stopped him. "What about you? This?" She rocked her hips against his erection. "Don't you

#want me to ... do something?" ##########533

Wincing, he clasped her firmly around the waist and gasped, "Yeah, I want you to stop moving like that."

"Oh. Sorry."