Last Kiss (24 page)

Even with his eyes closed, his face wore the lines of stress. I studied him – studied his long dark lashes, the chiseled sweep of his jaw, the tight line of his mouth. I wanted to press my lips on each feature of his face, wanted to cherish it and distract him from his pain. I wanted to kiss his lips – how long had it been since I’d done that? Forever, it seemed. Since the night he’d made love to me back in Wyoming, when he’d slipped into my room while I was getting in the shower.

That felt like a lifetime ago now. I couldn’t stop staring at his lips. Couldn’t stop yearning for the taste of his tongue on mine.

His eyes opened, and mine flew up to meet his. He knew I’d been staring, I was sure. And the way he was looking at me now, it seemed he knew what I’d been thinking too. I wondered how long he’d stare like that before staring turned into something else.

I had to say something. “Are you okay?”

“I haven’t gotten much sleep lately.”

Because he was worrying? Or because…

The nighttime images attacked me – the ones with Reeve and Amber tangled up in each other. Of course he wasn’t sleeping well. Not with her in his bed.

It suddenly felt hard to breathe, the air lodged in my lungs, unable to recirculate the way it was supposed to. Stuck like I was on this island, in this heartache, in this love.

“Right,” I managed, my voice clipped. “None of my business.” I set the laptop down and scrambled from my perch on his desk. “Anyway, thank you for sharing this information. I’ll e-mail Joe and let you know when you can arrange for me to leave.”

I rushed to leave, knowing he’d call after me.

It was still unbearable and amazing when he did. “Emily —”

I turned around, but I didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Are you going to meet with Michelis?” I honestly wanted to know, but I also just wanted to look at him one last time and asking him the question was a good excuse to keep my focus pinned to him.

He opened his mouth then closed it, and I would have bet money he was trying to decide if he wanted to answer or if he wanted to say something else. After a few seconds, he asked, “Do you still think I should?”

“No. I don’t.” Not at all. It would mean a war, I knew it in my heart, and even if I couldn’t have Reeve for myself, I still wanted him safe. I still wanted him alive. I hoped he understood that from my body language, because I couldn’t say it any clearer without breaking down, but it was something I needed him to know.

“Anyway,” I said, pushing my hair behind my ear, “I was just wondering what you were thinking.”

“I was thinking that if I met with him, I’d have to kill him.”

My stomach dropped. He’d always led me to believe he was the type of man who could do that. But now that I was faced with the possibility that he might, that it would be partially because of me, I couldn’t bear it.

Something about his expression told me he wanted me to give him my opinion. Wanted me to support him or talk him out of it.

I couldn’t be the one to do that.

With my eyes lowered, I gave him the best that I could manage. “You’ll do what you have to. It’s one of the things I admire most about you.”

“Emily —”

I didn’t turn around this time. I wondered if I would ever turn around for him again.

The phone was easier than e-mail, and after the long days of avoiding my island companions, I needed to hear a friendly voice.

“I picked up keys for the place this morning,” Joe said after we’d exchanged greetings. “My guy is coming out to check the alarm system tomorrow.”

“You have a guy?” That sounded more like something Reeve would say, and the idea of Joe having minions made me chuckle.

“Well,” he admitted, “he’s an ex-con with a record for getting past some pretty stellar security. If there’s a hole in the system, he’ll find it.”

“Okay then.” Maybe Joe was more like Reeve than I realized. Both certainly had questionable associates.

“Have you read any of my e-mails?” Joe’s tentativeness put my guard up.

“I haven’t been online much. Why? Is there something else I should know?”

“Nothing like that. I, uh, took the liberty of moving your mother to an institution closer to your new place. There’s one not too far with excellent care. You’d mentioned you wanted to do it sometime anyway, and the facility she was in before didn’t protect the names of their patients as well as I would have liked.”

I rolled my neck from side to side. The mention of my mother made my shoulders tense. I’d come to terms that we were long past any meaningful reconciliation – her alcohol-induced dementia prevented us from connecting on that level. But she required care, and though I couldn’t be 100 percent responsible for her on a day-to-day basis, I wanted to be involved. Just dealing with her was emotionally trying, and I avoided her as much as I avoided most anything. It would be harder to continue that with her close by. It was so much easier to make excuses about how rarely I visited when she was over an hour away.

Joe misread my silence. “I should have waited until you got back to me before doing anything. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” I assured him. “It’s fine. It’s necessary. I just need a minute to get used to the idea.” At least I didn’t have to worry about the mechanics of the transfer. “Thanks for doing that for me, Joe. Thanks for all of it. You’ve been a really great friend.” One of the only ones I had at the moment.

My gratitude seemed to fluster him. “It’s my job,” he said after a few seconds.

It was more than that, but I didn’t need to argue with him about it. He knew I appreciated him. “Anyway. I’ll let you know when my flight is arranged.”

Saying it out loud like that made my leaving a reality. It felt like I kept coming back to this same place. Kept making the decision to go and yet never ended up seeing it through. This time would be different. It had to be.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Reeve a second time in one day so I pushed off asking him to make my travel arrangements. I didn’t bother joining Amber for lunch either, and, after grabbing a sandwich late in the afternoon, I had a valid excuse of not being hungry enough to show up for supper.

When I was sure that Amber and Reeve were dining, I put in thirty minutes in the pool by the master bedroom. I hated being so close to his room –
their
room – but the pool by my room wasn’t heated, and the water was too chilly for my taste once the sun began to set. The rhythm of swimming laps was comforting. It got me out of my head and forced me to concentrate on the basics – my form, my breathing, not drowning.

It was dark when I got out. I wrapped a towel around myself and slumped into a deck chair in the shadows and brought my knees to my chest. My workout had brought me to a Zen state. I felt, not numb, but subdued. The thoughts that had taken front stage in my mind all day were now background noise, eclipsed by the hypnotic sway of wind in the trees and the distant crash of ocean waves.

The sound of splashing water interrupted my daze, and I looked up to find Reeve in the pool, swimming laps at a steady speed. My breath hitched, both because he’d surprised me so completely and because he looked, as always, so damn good in the water. His stroke was perfect. The muscles in his body flexed and stretched fluidly, as if he were a part of the water. He was beautiful to watch, magnificent and strong and graceful all at once.

It felt voyeuristic to watch him like this. He didn’t know I was there – I was sure of it. I was too curled up in the shadows for him to have noticed me easily, and his form was too natural and uninhibited to have been a performance. Which was why it was so hard to look away. I told myself just a few more minutes, just one more lap, and then I’d slip inside without him ever knowing I’d been there.

But one more lap turned into two more. Then three. And I hadn’t left. I couldn’t tear myself away for any other reason than I didn’t want to stop watching him.

Then the curtains at the door of the master bedroom parted, and Amber stepped out onto the patio. I was too late to sneak away unseen.

And I really didn’t want to be here anymore.

Amber took a seat in a deck chair at the pool’s edge, crossing one leg suggestively over the other, and watched Reeve as intently as I had. She was clearly in seduction mode. Her hair was pulled to the side in a loose braid, and the nightie she wore was more sexy lingerie than sleepwear. She looked alluring and provocative and, just like when I’d first seen her in my neighborhood, I felt plain and drab in comparison.

I pulled my knees tighter to my chest, wishing I could disappear. Wishing I could love her enough to truly want this for her. Wishing I could love her enough to forget how much I loved him.

“You look good out there,” Amber said when Reeve popped his head up from the water.

He paused. “Thanks.”

Even from where I sat I could tell he hadn’t expected her to be there when he’d broken his lap. But there’d been some reason he’d come up. Had he expected me instead? Could he sense my presence the same way I’d sensed his when I’d swam in his Palm Springs pool that first day I’d met him?

It wasn’t a good idea to wonder about that. Or him.

“I’ve always loved watching you in the water,” Amber cooed. “I love being in the water with you, too. I could join you.”

My gut twisted as images flashed in my mind of times he and I had been in his LA pool together, naked. But now, like in a dream, I saw them from a distance and she was in my place.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to make those pictures any more real than they already were in my head.

But then Reeve said, “I’m getting out, actually,” and the knot in my stomach loosened ever so slightly.

I couldn’t help but stare as he climbed out of the pool, distracted by the sight of his firm body, nearly completely exposed in his black swim trunks. I didn’t have to look at Amber to know she was as focused on him as I was.

Reeve grabbed a towel from the shelves and began to dry himself off, his back turned to both Amber and me.

She peeked over her shoulder to ask, “Have you heard from Micha?”

“I hate it when you call him that.”

“Sorry. Michelis.”

He was slow in answering. “Nothing recent.”

Had he already told her about the e-mail that had arrived that morning? Or had he chosen not to tell her about it altogether?

She uncrossed her leg and twisted her body in his direction. “You’ll feel better when you decide how you’re going to handle this.” When he didn’t say anything she went on. “You know what I think you should do.”

Reeve’s shoulders fell as he let out a sigh. “You know as well as I do that there would be serious repercussions.” His tone was even despite the irritation in his words. “Every member of my family would be affected. It’s a last resort, not a choice I’m going to make lightly.”

So she wanted Reeve to meet with Michelis. I hadn’t talked to her about it, and, for some reason, it surprised me that this was her position. She knew what her last lover was capable of better than anyone. Why would she want to ask anyone to have to face him?

As though in answer to my question, she said softly, “He’s not going to let me go as long as I’m alive.”

Reeve spun toward her, his head cocked. “But why is that? You told me he wasn’t really invested in your relationship. Petros told me the same thing. Michelis has broken up with other girlfriends without harassing them. Why is he so desperate to hold on to you?”

“He doesn’t want you to have me,” she said, confidently. “You know how he is.”

“Then the solution is to distance myself from you.”

“No. That’s not…” She trailed off.

“It’s not?” Reeve left the question open and crossed to the liquor cart to pour himself a drink.

Amber ran her hand absentmindedly across the base of her neck. “He’ll still come after me, Reeve. He’s afraid I’ll tell people what he did with my father. He’ll silence me the way he silenced that friend of Missy’s.”

“Every one of his ex-girlfriends could testify to his criminal involvement. He’s hung up on you for some reason.” He sank into a chair and slipped his feet into his sandals.

Amber rose and moved over to him. “Bourbon?” she asked, eyeing his drink. “You really must be stressed. We won’t talk about it anymore. Let me help you relax.” She circled around behind his chair and began kneading his shoulders.

The scene that had been beautiful before she’d arrived had turned dismal. I’d been breathless watching Reeve in the water, so taken with his presence, but now the tight feeling in my lungs felt more like suffocation. I willed myself to close my eyes, but I wasn’t that strong.

“Oh, God, you’re tense,” Amber said, her words turning my chest into cement. “You should lie down and let me rub you all over. You need a real massage.”

He scrubbed his face. “I need sleep.” The mere mention of sleep made me want to sob. “I should get to my room.”

And then the desire to cry evaporated, and my ears pricked up.
My room,
he’d said. But his room was her room too. Wasn’t it?

I sat completely still, anxious, afraid to even think. Afraid I’d miss something if I stirred even that much.

She ran her hands over the taut muscles in his neck. “You should stay,” she purred. “I feel bad for taking your bed. It’s the best one in the house.”

Taking your bed.
 

“All the beds are the same.”

“When they’re empty they are. We could make it the best bed. Together.” She leaned forward and stretched her fingers down his damp chest.

“Amber,” he warned as he clamped his hand around her wrist, stopping her from moving her touch lower.

“What?”

He glowered at her, and she drew her hand back with a huff.

I clasped my hand over my mouth, stunned. Relieved. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. They weren’t sleeping together. How was that possible? Amber was most definitely staying in the master bedroom. Where the hell was Reeve staying? Had I misread the situation somehow?

Amber crossed back to her chair and moved it to face him before sitting in it. “I know what you said,” she said quietly. “You think things are over between us.”