Never Let You Down: The Connaghers, Book 4 (7 page)

“Did he tell you about that too? Did he tell you that the first time he kissed me, it was because I beat him with my crop and the damned fool enjoyed it? Worse, so did I. And that was only the beginning.”

Jeb averted his face and spoke so softly she had to strain to hear him. “Did you tell him that when I kissed you, I ended up on my knees?”

“No,” she whispered gently. “That was only for you and me to know. There are so many things you don’t know about me, Jeb. Dark things. Hard things. I’m not a soft and easy woman to know, even in bed. Especially in bed.”

“Good.” His voice deepened. He let go of the steering wheel and gripped his thighs, as though he was fighting to keep his hands from reaching toward her. “There are things you don’t know about me too, Ginny. Dark things. Hard things. Not even Sharon knew, not until the end.”

“Is that why you’re divorced?”

“Partly. But mostly because I finally decided I had to start living. Really living. And that meant I had to find a way back to you.”

Regret swelled in her chest, strangling her. All those years, those wasted, lonely years. It broke her heart all over again. She’d been so alone since Ty’s death. Jeb hadn’t been alone, but he’d been unhappy. All because of a silly, too-proud girl who’d been too afraid to admit to her fiancé that she also had feelings for her best friend.

Feelings. That was the understatement of the century. Because staring at the chiseled lines of his face, his broad shoulders straining at the exquisitely cut suit coat, his hands, so determinedly held in place by will alone…

“What?” Jeb turned his head toward her, but kept his body determinedly frozen in place. His shoulders were tense, his jaw firm, his fingers still locked to hold himself back. “What are you thinking?”

She kept her voice light. “I’m wishing I didn’t have this busted arm, and that we were twenty years younger, and then I’d be half climbing over the console to see for myself.”

“See what?” He took the implied invitation, though, turning toward her and moving closer to make it easy for her to reach him. Jeb would always make it easy for her. Even if that made it hell for him all these years.

Gently, she reached up and combed her fingers through his hair at his crown, dragging and twisting her fingers into the fullness and completely messing up the hair he’d carefully smoothed back. “If this hair is still yours. Still real. I hardly recognized you without the hair tumbling down across your forehead.”

“It’s mine, just a little thinner I guess.”

“Still as wavy and thick as I remembered. Grayer, but then mine is too.” She watched him, the way his eyes never left hers. He didn’t push to take any advantage, even after her admission that she’d lied all those years ago. He didn’t even try to lean in and get a kiss. “I always thought you were too damned polite, but that wasn’t it at all. Before Ty showed up, I kept daydreaming about how you might kiss me. One day, you’d just lean into me and catch me by surprise. I kept waiting, like it was a game, and then I got pissed that you wouldn’t do it. I thought it was our upbringing, the years our families had been friends. But that wasn’t it at all. You’re not just polite. You’re submissive.”

The tension straining across his shoulders bled away. “It went against every bone in my body to start that kiss. I felt like I was forcing myself on you, but I had to try. I had to make sure you knew how I felt. I didn’t know what I was, not then. Not for years.”

“Ty was into pain. What are you into?”

Jeb’s eyes were larger, dark and shining, reflecting the moonlight like deep, secret wells. “Anything. Everything. You.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. You tell me to do something, and I’ll do it, no questions asked. No hesitation. No doubt. If you need something, I’ll give it. Gladly.”

Once, Ty had said something like that. Hoarsely, she repeated what her husband had said the first time they’d kissed. “You’ll never let me down.”

“Exactly.”

She had to look away a moment, fighting down the tumultuous emotions whirling through her. Grief, loss, relief, joy, regret, hope…and yes, love. Gratitude that despite how she’d hurt him nearly forty years ago, he was still willing to give everything he had just to love her the way he’d always wanted. “How can you forgive me after what I put you through?”

“I just want to love you, Ginny. No matter what that means.”

“I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve a second chance. Not when I lied to us all.”

“Right before I went back to Texas A&M for good, I ran into Miss Belle. She said something that I didn’t understand until later.”

“Oh, good Lord, what did she say?”

Jeb smiled. “She said that sometimes we don’t get what we want the most because we’re not able to handle it yet. If we got it then, we’d just lose it, because we weren’t ready. But some things are meant to be and they’d come back when it was time. When I was ready. When you were ready.”

“She said that about me?”

“Not in so many words, but it makes sense to me now. Think about it, Ginny. I didn’t know what it meant to be submissive back then. You weren’t ready either. If we’d tried to marry, we probably would have messed each other up so bad we’d have ended up divorced in a heartbeat, both of us frustrated and confused because we couldn’t get what we needed so desperately. I never was going to be the kind of man you were looking for then. But now…”

He let the question hang in the air between them, waiting for her answer.

She tightened her fingers in his hair and pulled him down to her, making him come to her instead of leaning across the console. And he came, eagerly and gladly, ready to be put where she wanted him. “Now you’re exactly what I’m looking for. What I need.”

She didn’t take his mouth gently. After so long, so many years, she couldn’t. She shoved her tongue deep into his mouth and he opened, groaning, letting her go as far as she wanted.

Dangerous, so dangerous. She made herself pull back, softening to something less an assault and more a kiss. And just like that night in College Station all those years ago, Jeb sagged into her embrace and would have gone to his knees if they weren’t already sitting in his shiny expensive car.

Her skin throbbed, every inch desperate for a touch, for the warmth and weight of his hands. God, it’d been so long since she’d been touched. So long since she’d been held. Since she’d heard a man’s gasp and grunt and groan as she wrung every ounce of pleasure out of his magnificent body that she could. She tried to press up against him, using the cast for leverage, but pain broke through her need. Not the good pain, as Ty would have said, but the grinding broken bone pain that made sweat bead on her lip and her stomach heave.

She broke the kiss, falling back against her seat with her eyes closed, breathing deeply to avoid throwing up.

“Ginny? What’s wrong? What can I do?”

“It’s all right,” she panted, shifting her broken arm off the console and into her lap. “I tried to use my arm a little too much. I’ll just have to be more careful when you take me home to your place after dinner.”

“That’s the plan, then?” His voice rumbled deep and low, his fingers lightly brushing her cheek in a gentle caress. “You don’t want to go back to your place?”

She groaned. “Not as long as Miss Belle’s in town.” He didn’t laugh like she expected, so she cracked open her eyes and searched his face. His hair tumbled down over his forehead, his lips were soft and delicious, but the look in his eyes was guarded. As if he was braced for a blow. “You think I don’t want you in the house where Ty and I lived together all those years.”

“I’m guessing it’ll be uncomfortable for us both. His house. His bed. His wife.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t look away. Jeb deserved every ounce of her honesty. Even if it was forty years late. “Yeah. It’ll be hard. I never could get rid of his things. I couldn’t let go. But it’s time I moved on. He’d want this. In fact, he’d probably laugh and say ‘It’s about damned time, Princess’.”

Jeb’s mouth quirked. “That’s what he called you?”

“Mostly when he wanted to get a rise out of me. I haven’t been with anyone else, Jeb. Ever.”

“Not even since he passed?”

Slowly, she shook her head. His eyes widened, which made her laugh. “Yeah. So it’s going to be a hard ride the first few times.”

A faint shudder rocked his shoulders, his nostrils flaring. “Can we skip dinner and go straight to my place?”

“No.” She laughed though and gave a nod at his door. “We’ve still got some talking to do. I’m going to need wine to loosen your tongue.”

“I’m more of a whiskey man, but if my lady wants me to drink wine, I suppose I can gag it down.”

He took her cue, opening his door and climbing out of the car. She waited for him to come around and open hers, glad he was of the older generation who’d been taught to open and close doors for their womenfolk.
If I’d let Vicki set me up with one of Mal’s boys, I’d probably have had to train him in all this nonsense instead of moving on to the good stuff.

Her amusement faded at the solemn look on his face as he offered his hand. She took a deep breath and slipped her palm into his, letting him help her up out of his car. He shut the door and kept her hand.

And she let him.

Chapter Nine

After the emotional upheaval simply driving to the restaurant, Jeb was grateful they had an easy hour of light and friendly conversation while they ordered their meal and waited for their food. Virginia had a glass of wine and insisted he order Glenlivet, even though he had to drive. Granted it was only another five minutes into town to his rented condo, but he was too old to be stupid. As long as they had a nice, long dinner with even longer conversation, he ought to be fine if he stuck to a single drink.

Settling back in her chair, she looked about the room. The rear wall was a massive stone fireplace reaching all the way to the ceiling. Heavy wood rafters marched across the ceiling, giving the room an old world, intimate feel, as though they were merely pulled up in the corner of someone’s ancient European kitchen. The restaurant even had decent food, though this time of year, they had the place mostly to themselves.

“Oh, I remember this place. Didn’t we eat here together when you were dating Sharon?”

He nodded, wrapping both hands around his glass, though he didn’t take another sip. He wanted it to last as long as possible, plus it gave him something to do with his hands. “Our only double date.”

“I’m glad you let me meet her, though it was a little strange watching you with her. Probably as strange as it was for you to watch me and Ty.”

He smiled sheepishly. “It was indeed. Thought not as strange as when I watched you marry him.”

“I always wondered why you stood as his best man. If that was…hard.”

He risked another sip, letting the velvet smoke roll on his tongue. “It was damned hard, but Ty made a good argument. He didn’t have anyone he’d care to have up there for himself, but I was your best friend, and that was good enough for him. He said there was no one he’d rather have stand by him.”

Her eyes glimmered in the candlelight, so damned soft and tender at the fond memory of her husband. The kind of look he ached to see on her face for him. “Why were you so adamant that we meet her? Were you looking for approval?”

“Not really. I actually hoped you’d hate her.” He smiled again, resisting the urge to throw back the Scotch in one hard gulp. “Petty, I know, but there you go. Mostly, I wanted to see how I felt about her if you were there. If I’d still feel the same way for you.”

“And?”

To hell with it.
He slammed back the last of the Glenlivet. “It was like holding a candle in front of the sun.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hand, but she didn’t say anything, sensing his need to just talk. “I took my time settling my mind on her. We dated casually for years, and seriously for that long again. She steadied me in a lot of ways and had a great head for business. Honestly, I don’t think my practice would have done so well so quickly without her. So on paper, we were a good match.”

“But you didn’t have any passion. You were…”

“Acquaintances. Not lovers.” He sighed, aimlessly turning the empty glass in his hands. “That was her major complaint from the beginning of our marriage. We were roommates. Business partners. But I never had that deeper connection, that sense of knowing what she needed before she needed it, and wanting to give it to her before she could ask.”
Not like with you.

It might have been decades since that first kiss, but deep inside, he vibrated with the need to touch her, see her, smell her. Watch the way her face changed as she climaxed. He could watch that all night and never come himself and he’d be perfectly happy.

“You never had kids.”

He shook his head. “She didn’t want a family. It would ruin her figure and she had a minor acting career. Plus, she just wasn’t a motherly kind of woman. The first ten to fifteen years we just worked hard building our careers. Things were lackluster, but not horrible.”

“Did she know about…me?”

“She picked up on it during our date here and questioned me thoroughly about it later. She was relieved to see how much you loved Ty, and even more pleased when I told her you had two boys and a third baby on the way.”

“That’s right. I was pregnant with Vicki when we were here. But I didn’t say anything and it was still early. We’d just found out a few weeks before. How’d you know?”

The waiter delivered their main course. Jeb nearly cursed because that meant she released his hand to make room for the plates. “I have my ways. I kept tabs on you through my family.”

“They must have all hated me dreadfully when I married Ty.”

“Not at all. Everybody loved Ty. He was too hard a worker, too much of a straight shooter to ever have anyone talk badly about him.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Jebadiah Garrett. I ran into Sissy one day in Crystal Springs when I went over to handle some paperwork with Miss Belle’s property manager and she refused to even speak to me. I swear she crossed the street just to get away from me.”

He cleared his throat, trying to turn the laughter into a cough. “Uh, yeah, sorry about that. Sissy never really forgave you. But Mom and Dad still love you like a daughter and were more than willing to pass along all the old gossip from home, including the Healys’ and Connaghers’ dealings.” He didn’t tell her that he still subscribed to the
Crystal Springs Courier
just to keep up on all the hometown gossip on the slight chance that her name might come up in the news, even though the Connagher ranch was nearly an hour away from their old stomping grounds. Sharon had always sneered at the ridiculous write-ups about who visited whom and told him it was morbid to keep up on who’d died over the years. Deep down, he’d wanted to be sure that he had a chance to come back to Virginia, at least as long as she was still alive.

She lowered her voice, careful to make sure the waiter wasn’t approaching to refill their water glasses. “Did she know that you were submissive?”

“Not in the beginning, because I didn’t know either. As the years went by and things didn’t get better between us, we talked with a marriage counselor. That’s when I started to suspect the truth. She gave me some material to study, lots of questionnaires, that sort of thing, and it all started to make sense. But that’s also when things started to unravel with Sharon.”

“Despite the counseling?”

“
Because
of the counseling.” He picked at his mashed potatoes, stirring them around with his fork but not really tasting anything. “The more I understood about myself, the less she wanted me. In the beginning, she tried to accommodate my burgeoning needs, and at first, things turned around. More passion than we’d ever had sparked. It was new, exciting, and I was relieved that finally I understood why I’d made so many decisions throughout my life, or really, why I’d been
unable
to make certain decisions. Why I hadn’t been able to force the issue with you. Why I hadn’t been able to push harder. It just wasn’t in me.”

Virginia quietly ate her steak, letting him talk. He’d known exactly how to order it for her without having to ask. Medium. She wanted it pink but not bleeding on her potatoes. Her only preference he hadn’t known was her wine choice. They’d been too young back then to gain much familiarity with alcohol. He took note of the label for next time.
If there is a next time. Might as well get it all out before we go too far and she changes her mind. Because I’ll surely end up in my grave this time if I lose her again.

“We started going to a few clubs.” He cleared his throat and took another drink of water, wishing he dared order another Scotch. “BDSM clubs. Sharon went with me at first at our therapist’s urging. Exploration was good for us, she said, so Sharon went, even though she had no interest in it. She learned a few basics, but it really didn’t do anything for her. We agreed that I could visit a professional Mistress once a month or so, as long as I was discreet. The last thing Sharon wanted was for our friends to find out, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have helped my practice any, either. I eventually quit even that, though. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to learn, but in the end, I did most of my exploration elsewhere. In fiction.”

He forced himself to pause and eat some of his own steak, though it tasted like ashes. Virginia pushed her plate away and sat back, watching him, her eyes dark and intent, not missing a thing. He’d ached to have her focused on him, but now, telling this story… It was hard to look at her.

“You’re a writer?”

He nodded and swallowed the bite, willing it to stay down in his stomach. “It was a lark at first. The famous ‘what if’. I started writing about what I wanted, what I’d dreamed about, testing the waters, so to speak. It made me research various techniques, and then I practiced and explored with my characters. Sharon thought it was a cute hobby. Until I started publishing.”

Virginia smiled, her eyes lighting up with what he dared to think might be pride. “That’s quite an accomplishment, Jeb. My middle son’s an English professor, so I know a little about how difficult a job writing can be. Congratulations.”

He nodded, fighting the lump in his throat. It felt like the steak was trying to crawl back up his craw. “Thank you, but I’m really not that well known. I make enough to buy that fancy hat but I wouldn’t be able to live on royalties alone without the sale from my practice. That’s okay—it was always for me, not to become famous or anything. But as I did slowly gain confidence along with my readership, Sharon pulled further and further away. She…” He took a drink again, trying to keep his stomach settled.

“She didn’t support your writing,” Virginia said softly.

Jeb shook his head. “The more I loved it, the more she hated it. She claimed she just didn’t want people to know, but I’d used a pseudonym, so it wasn’t common knowledge or anything, and the chances of running into someone we knew in real life who’d also read my work were slim to none. Yet she started pressuring me to give it up. She said things like, ‘What if people figure out what kind of man you really are?’”

“You were writing about submissive men.”

He pushed his plate away too, unable to tolerate even the smell of food, not when his life and dreams hung in the balance. “Yes, among other things. Then one of my books was nominated for an award, and instead of being happy for me, she didn’t want me to go and accept the award in person. She said if I went, we were done. Finally the truth started coming out about how she felt about me. I couldn’t be a
real
man if I was submissive. She said it would have been better if I’d decided I was gay. That was easier for people to understand. But for a big, powerful-looking man like me to claim he was submissive… People couldn’t see a man like me on his knees, begging, obeying, serving his Mistress. It was ridiculous. When I got back from the conference, she’d already moved out and the divorce papers were waiting for me. I signed them gladly.”

His ex-wife had used more hurtful words than ridiculous.
Wouldn’t it humiliate you to have people look at a man like you and snicker at the thought of you on your knees? Why would you even risk people finding out such a thing? Why would you embarrass me like that?

“A man like you.” Virginia’s low voice drew his gaze up to her face. He was surprised by the hint of what he could only describe as velvet heat in her tone. As soon as he looked up, she leaned closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I’m going to have every inch of you sliding into me as soon as we walk into your apartment. Every thick, delicious inch of that big gorgeous cock you tormented me with all those years ago. It’s not going to be easy getting all that in me, but I won’t be gentle. I assure you, Jebadiah, that there’s no doubt in my mind about what kind of man you are. And I can’t fucking wait another minute.” She glanced around the restaurant and the attentive waiter immediately came toward their table. “Check please.”

Something hammered in his head so loudly he wasn’t sure that he’d heard her correctly. He couldn’t have. For one thing, the Virginia Healy he knew wouldn’t have used coarse language, because Miss Belle would have washed her mouth out with soap.

“How’s your heart?”

He shook his head a little, trying to clear out the thundering drums. Finally, he realized it was his heartbeat thudding in his skull. “What?”

Her lip quirked slightly and she reached for the bill from the waiter. But Jeb wasn’t standing for that. He might be losing his mind altogether, but no way in hell was he letting the love of his life pay for dinner. He had the card ready in his inner pocket, so it was easy to slap it on the bill and send the waiter on his way.

“Do you have any heart conditions? Are you on any medications?”

“No, why?”

“We’re not exactly spring chickens, Jeb. I have to make sure I don’t accidentally kill you.”

God. He added a healthy tip without bothering with math and scrawled his signature on the slip. She was already standing, ready to go. One look at her face told him she was absolutely serious.

It all suddenly slammed into perfect clarity. After all these years, she was going home with him. She was going to take him to bed. She’d heard his dark secret and didn’t care. In fact, by the look on her face, she’d actually been…

Proud. Of him. The submissive man writing trashy, sordid little BDSM stories.

He swayed a moment, so shaken to his core he almost went to his knees right there in the restaurant.

She took his arm. “Are you okay to drive? I can call us a cab.”

He tucked her arm around his and held his other hand over hers, holding on to her for dear life. “No, I’m fine. It’s not the Scotch.”

“What’s your pseudonym?”

His ears caught fire and he mumbled, “Chris Waters.”

She thought a moment and then chuckled as he opened the car door for her. “Crystal Springs, our hometown. I like it.”

He slid in behind the wheel and backed out, fighting the urge to floor it. That’d get him pulled over in a heartbeat. “My agent liked the idea of having a gender-neutral name like Chris. Since I won that award, we’ve been concentrating on building my brand around the image of big, strong, powerful men who just happen to be submissive. It’s important to me.”

“I should say so. It’s important to me too.”