Swept Away (50 page)

She looked up at him, slightly aghast. “That’s reassuring.”
He shrugged as if to say, That’s reality.

“Is this a skill you learned in the FBI—or before?”

He cocked her a quick, chiding look, then opened the door and placed a hand at the small of her
back, ushering her inside. The a/c hit her like a blast of heaven. Odd, the heat hadn’t bothered
her at all on the island with Brock, but just today she’d started finding it oppressive. Maybe it was her life she was finding oppressive.

Vincent came trotting to greet her, and she bent to scoop him into her arms. “Hey, kitty.”
Rising back up, she ran a hand back through his thick fur. “Guess what—we’re not moving
anymore, this is still home.” How good that sounded to her. She smoothed her fingertips over
one declawed paw, soaking up the comfort a cat could so easily provide, then turned to Brock,
who’d stepped in and closed the door behind him. “This is Vincent.”

He nodded. “Glad to see he still has both ears.”

“Pet him hello.”

Brock shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m not really into cats.”
She cast a look of warning. “I’m in a bad mood, Brock. Pet him.”

“Fine,” he said, then reached out to swipe his hand over the cat’s head. Vincent looked
perturbed, and Kat could understand why.

She rolled her eyes at Brock’s pathetic effort, then lowered the kitty to the floor. “I’m in,” she
said, “so I guess you can go now.”

But instead of going, he turned to face her, effectively pinning her to the wall of her foyer. “Kitten,” he said, lifting one large, warm hand to her face, “I just want you to know, back at the
church, when you didn’t say ‘I do’well, now I can sleep tonight, that’s all.”

Her whole body tensed beneath his touch, electrified. As always. But she tried to hold her
mental ground. “So glad I could help you out.”

He ignored her sarcasm, leaned in, and melded his mouth to hers in a slow, lingering kiss that
she felt all the way to her toes. Her body instantly ached for him.

“What was that?” she asked when they parted.

“A kiss good-bye,” he said, warm and dark, but the predatory look in his eyes didn’t give her
the impression he was quite ready to go. “Here’s another one.”

She nearly melted to the floor beneath the weight of her desire as his hot mouth closed again
over her willing, acceptant one. He slid one hand to her waist, and with the other covered her
breast, his thumb stroking over the sensitive peak through the lace of her bodice. His knee
lodged between her thighs, and her whole body weakened further at the shock of pleasure. Her hands rose to his chest, neck, face. She drew him to her tight, kissing heatedly, drinking in this unexpected gulp of him, and relishing the hard evidence of his arousal against her hip. Their
breathing quickly grew labored as they moved together instinctually.

The hand at her side began gathering fabric, more and more, as he tried to work his way
beneath her wedding dress. Finally, his palm found her thigh, gliding swiftly up her stocking until he encountered the lace top and let out a small groan that fueled her with the same
knowledge clearly exciting him—no pesky panty hose lay between them.

Which meant in mere seconds he could be back inside her, where they both clearly longed for
him to be.

But oh God—what was she thinking, doing? She was about to have sex with Brock in her wedding dress!

Collecting all the remaining bits of strength inside her, she pushed at his chest, ending the kiss. “Stop.” She couldn’t do this. Not any more than she could have married Ian today. It was all
suddenly, painfully, clear.

He looked shocked at her rebuff. His words came low, raspy, near her ear. “Why, kitten? I
want you.”

Her breathing remained thready, but she managed to answer, even as his body still grazed hers.
“Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this knowing it means nothing.”

Their eyes met in the shadowy entryway. “Who said it means nothing?”

She pulled in her breath, trying to read him. Was there more than passion in his gaze? She
didn’t understand a man who said he cared, who wanted to take her with such heat, who
implied maybe it did mean something—but still wanted to say “So long” and never look back
the moment it was over. She swallowed the lump in her throat and let herself be brutally
honest. “It doesn’t mean to you what it means to me—what it’s always meant to me—or you
wouldn’t be able to leave. Ever.”

Brock finally pulled back, releasing her thigh, her breast, his eyes looking pained. “Honey, I’ve
explained to you. I’m just not a—”

“Relationship kinda guy—yeah, I know,” she cut in dryly. “But I am a relationship kinda girl.”
Maybe not always. But with you—yes, always. She dropped her gaze to her white skirting. “I
think you should go.”

He stood still before her, and she grew aware of how hard her heart pounded. “Please,” she said. “I mean it. Leave.”

Still staring at her dress, his shoes, the hardwood floor, Kat finally heard his long, slow sigh.
One bent finger lifted her chin until she met his gaze. “Take care of yourself, kitten,” he said,
then kissed her chastely on the cheek and disappeared out the door.

One more painful good-bye.

An hour after Kat’s departure from her wedding, Clark Spencer rang his daughter’s doorbell. Debra and Nina had both come along, but he’d asked them to wait in the car. His heart was
bending in his chest—felt on the verge of breaking. He simply didn’t understand what had
happened and he needed to get to the bottom of it. He and Kat had always been close, and he
just wanted a few minutes alone with her to see if she would open up, tell him what was going
on inside her.

She swung the door wide, clutching her cat in her free arm. Her long hair remained in the fancy
—albeit windblown—curls she’d worn earlier and her makeup remained in place, making her
eyes look large and her complexion luminous. But she’d shed her hand-sewn gown for light
blue stretchy pants with a stripe down the side and a small white top with thin shoulder straps.

“Can I come in, sweetheart?”

She simply stood back and let him enter, then shut the door behind him.

Moving into the living room, he found the curtains drawn, a plate of brownies adorning the
coffee table, and an open bottle of wine next to them.

“Brownie?” She motioned toward them as they both took a seat on her sofa. “They’re left over
from the luncheon yesterday—I had thought Mom might like to nibble at them when she came
to feed Vincent. Or would you like a glass of wine? I actually didn’t bother using a glass, as
you can see, but I can get a couple out if you like.”

Clark shook his head lightly—he hadn’t come here to snack or have a drink, although he
wouldn’t begrudge Kat either indulgence. “No, but you go ahead.”

She obligingly snatched up a brownie and took a bite. When a few crumbs fell to her lap, the
cat quickly relieved her of them. She stroked the cat’s back, and Clark realized that behind the
bridal glow, his daughter looked very tired.

“Do you feel like talking? Can you tell me what happened back there?”

Slowly, she met his gaze. “I don’t really feel like talking, but that’s okay, because I’d rather get
this over with. And besides, I owe you an explanation. I know the wedding cost an arm and a
leg and that we really don’t have cash to blow right now and—”

“I don’t care about any of that, Kat.” He reached out to give her elbow a light, loving squeeze.
“I just want to know what’s going on with you. Is this just some extreme case of prewedding
jitters? Too many people, too much fanfare? Because if it is, we can fix that. Ian loves you, and
he’ll understand. We could have a much smaller wedding, just family, if you’d prefer.”

His daughter let out a sigh, and even before she spoke, he realized this went much deeper. “Dad, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I just don’t want to marry him. I don’t love him. It was
stupid of me to try.” She gave her head a short shake with every sentence.

Her words left him even more confused. “But then why did you say yes when he proposed?”

Another deep, tired sigh. “Because he asked me in front of everyone? Because I knew it would make you all so happy?” She stopped, dropped her gaze back to the cat, then raised it again.
“Mostly for you.”

He blinked. “What? What do you mean?”

Kat looked troubled, like she was about to say something difficult, but maybe, deep inside, he
already knew what it was. He’d just never allowed himself to really think about it before,
because it was too awful.

“Because I knew he had money. And because the gallery isn’t exactly raking it in these days. And because I know that’s really important to you. And I... well, I just thought if there was
something I could do to help you...if it was within my power to make you happy, Daddy, I wanted to do that.”

It wasn’t so much what she’d said as what she’d called him that made the lump rise in his
throat. He didn’t think she’d referred to him as Daddy since her childhood, and now she
seemed wholly unaware she’d just said it. He remembered lamenting the day she’d stopped, the
day he’d become Dad.

And it ripped his heart in two to realize with horror that his little girl had thought she had to
marry someone she didn’t love just to keep him happy. And to realize with even more horror
that he’d pushed it along, willed it to happen.

He’d thought she loved Ian—that’s what had made it okay to accept that her marriage would be fortuitous to him. Okay to think that since they were becoming one big happy family, there was
nothing wrong with letting Ian’s money solve some of his problems. Hell, he’d let this
engagement pull him in directions he’d never have gone in otherwise. And all this time he’d been telling himself it was okay, but now the look on Kat’ s face told him it wasn’t okay. None of it.

“Kat,” he whispered, but his throat was closing up. He didn’t quite know what to say, how to
make something this enormous up to her. “Kat,” he managed again, and that was all. He simply
drew her into his arms, sending the cat pouncing to the floor.

They both stayed quiet until he said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. So sorry.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder. “You’re sorry? For what?”

“For ever making you feel you had to do something that massive for me. For... maybe pushing
you at Ian. I didn’t realize you didn’t feel the right way. But maybe I was just... too blind to notice. Sometimes, Kat...” He looked down at his tuxedo pants, ashamed. For things that went
beyond the last six months. “Sometimes I’m afraid I love you too much. And that it comes out
in ways that...” Ah, hell, he didn’t even know what he was trying to say, so he started again. “I
guess I always think I know what’s best for you—and maybe sometimes I don’t.”