Unforgiven (23 page)

“I remember,” she said quietly.

The flashlight beam flicked away from her face to the ladder leading up to the loft. “Let’s go,” he said.

She went up first while he held the beam steady on the rungs, then he followed her. The light swept over first a heater, then a battery-powered camping light Adam turned on. The weak light brightened the space enough to reveal a bed made of an opened sleeping bag and several blankets in the middle of the loft.

Memory and longing, that most potent mix of emotion and desire, shivered through her as she stood by the ladder. Seeing this, Adam turned on the space heater. “Sorry it’s so cold,” he said. “I didn’t want to turn it on earlier and burn down your barn.”

“I’m not cold,” she said quietly. Uncertain. Touched. Aroused. Very aroused, as the state of her nipples had nothing to do with the temperature. “When did you do this?”

“Between the ceremony and the reception. It didn’t take long. It’s not exactly the Palmer House,” he said, looking around at the makeshift bed, the dark, silent space. She heard only the rain on the roof. In here there was no trace of the wedding, no lights or laughter or music. Just her and Adam, wet and torn by desire, back where it all began.

“Is this some kind of revenge thing, to get back at Delaney?” she asked.

Hands deep in his pockets, rain clinging to his hair and face, he looked at her, unsmiling. “This is about you and me, Ris,” he said. “It’s always been about you and me.”

Intrigued by the purpose in his voice, she lifted her chin and met his gaze, but despite the longing cracking in the air like static electricity, she made no move toward him. Twelve years ago she’d drawn him up the stairs and down on the floor. She’d stripped off his shirt, and hers. Unzipped his jeans, and hers. This time, in this place, with the reality that was oh-so-real outside the door, he would have to come to her. Waiting for him made her heart slam into her breastbone and her breathing go shallow.

He crossed the slight distance between them and turned her so she faced the dim light emitting from the camping lantern, then stood behind her. Another shiver coursed down her spine when his warm fingers gathered her hair and sent it tumbling over her shoulder, then found the ties holding up her drenched halter. Two tugs and the fabric dropped forward. Adam unzipped her skirt, then pushed both skirt and halter to the floor. Light illuminated her bared torso while his body heat radiated against her back.

She wore nothing but black lace panties, her hair, and the shadows hovering all around them. His breath huffed warm and soft against her collarbone as he looked down at her body. His breathing deepened, rough and slightly unsteady as he looked at her. Her nipples hardened and he cupped her breasts, rolling the hardened tips between his thumbs and forefingers before sliding one hand up her throat to turn her mouth to his.

One hard, demanding kiss and she opened to him. A little whimper escaped her before she lifted one hand to his nape and the other to his ruthlessly shaved jaw. A deep kiss, another slick and hot and teeth-clicking and wet, then he turned her so she faced him. She went up on tiptoes to press the length of her nearly naked body to his and kiss him like she’d kissed him when they were young, without hesitation, without reservation. Holding nothing back.

His hands skimmed down her back and slid into the black lace boy shorts she wore. He cupped her ass, pulling her tight against him, and for a moment she thought they might set the barn on fire with their peculiar, potent chemistry. But he lifted his head to break the kiss, then shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and draped it around her shoulders. She smiled and slipped her arms into the sleeves. The rain hadn’t penetrated the lining, so the jacket was warm and heavy around her nearly naked body. While he unfastened his cummerbund and dropped it on the floor, she examined the black tuxedo studs fastening his shirt, figured out how they worked with the buttons, and began to undo them, dropping the released studs into his jacket pocket.

“Ris,” he said.

She flicked a glance at his face to see him focused on her. The open jacket revealed more than it hid as it brushed against the curves of her breasts and her hip bones. She got the front of the shirt open, fumbled with his cufflinks until they came free in her hands, and got the shirt and white T-shirt underneath off as well.

He went to his knees on the sleeping bag and pulled her down with him until he was flat on his back. She straddled his hips, shook back her hair, and kissed him. His hands roamed through her hair, fisted, tugged, then swept down her back to her ass, again and again, until she was undulating against his erection. It was like no time had passed at all. Different season, different decade, two seemingly different people, but it was the same. The heat, the passion, the need, the sense of total rightness; and this time he held nothing back. He rolled her, pushed the jacket to the side, baring her body to his gaze, his hands. His competent, strong fingers trembled when he hooked in the waistband of her lacy boy shorts and tugged them off.

On his knees between her legs, he planted his palm beside her shoulder and moved his finger in slow, tight circles around her clit. Heat blasted at her, from the space heaters, from his body. Open to him, utterly helpless, she stared up into his eyes as the heat built, tightening muscles and setting fire to expectant, desperate nerves. She could feel pleasure washing up her body in ever-growing waves, felt her own gaze grow desperate and demanding and molten all at once. And still she looked at him, fighting the urge to close her eyes and go deep inside her body, wanting, needed to see what was happening in his own eyes.

He didn’t look away, either. He didn’t look down at his hand, working so intimately between her thighs, or at her pink nipples, or at the way her abdomen tightened and flexed as the pleasure built. He looked at her, no longer avoiding what they felt for each other or how it came out, right there with her in the storm. Rain slapped at the roof in wind-tossed sheets. She arched and gasped under his hand, the noise high-pitched, needy, and almost inaudible over the downpour.

“Go under, Marissa,” he commanded.

She did. At the next slow stroke of his finger she let the waves and the rain take her. When she subsided into the padded sleeping bag his hands went to his waistband and unfastened his pants. His erection sprang free as he shoved the black wool down to the tops of his thighs, then dug in the jacket pocket by her hip. When he pulled out a condom, she gripped his wrist.

“Adam,” she said. “It’s okay. Go under with me.”

He went still above her, and for a moment the only sound in the loft was the steady patter of rain on the roof as she looked at him and he looked at her.

His eyes were dark, mossy green from heat and lust. She could drown in his intense hazel eyes, clear and unguarded in the lantern’s steady light. “No unplanned pregnancies,” he said. “No mistakes.”

No lives ruined.

Her throat tightened. Tears stung her eyes. “Adam,” she whispered. She cupped his stubbled jaw and stroked her thumbs over his mouth. “This isn’t a mistake. We were never a mistake.”

Long moments passed as he remained poised above her, emotions scudding under the blank surface he wore like armor. Her thighs glowed in the light, his hair-roughened legs between hers, his erection above her dark curls. She slid her hands down his ribs to his hips, stroked the soft skin there with her thumbs. “I’m asking. Please. Give me something more than a facade, more than a dream. Give me something real. Give me you.”

His gaze searched hers as he lowered his chest to hers. They pressed together, breath to breath, sex to sex, thighs to hips. “Adam, I love you. It’s all right. We’re all right.”

He froze, and long moments passed while his gaze searched hers. She’d never said the words to him before, never told him that truth. But she could, now. Finishing the house made her strong. He made her strong. She could wait for him to finish whatever he’d come home to do.

Time held its heated breath. His response was to align himself with her entrance and push inside. The slick, gliding pressure against sensitive inner walls made her gasp and coil around him. Her heels dug into the backs of his thighs, her arms slid under his to grip his shoulders. “God,” she whispered as her eyes dropped shut. “Adam. Oh, Adam.”

Still watching her, he withdrew, then did it again. He reached down and adjusted the cant of her hips. Again. Again. Lightning streaked through her, and she tightened around him even more, calling a harsh gasp from his throat.

“Ris. It’s too much.”

“It’s never too much,” she whispered with what little air remained in her lungs.

Perfect synchronicity, skin to skin in every way possible, every cell in their bodies working together . . . she buried her face in his neck to stifle her noises, and his hand cupped the back of her head to hold her safe as she cried out and came. Utterly helpless under him, the pleasure wracked her in sharp pulses, sensation heightened with his relentless thrusts until he went rigid above her, and his release joined her own.

He eased down on top of her, taking enough of his weight on his elbows to avoid crushing her, but the heft of his body against hers eased her shudders into trembling, as if trapping the waves and sending them back in on themselves in a physical and emotional feedback loop.
So that’s what it could be like
, she thought.
When you get everything aligned, when love welcomes the longing, accepts it, learns to live with it, you make love.

She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat, inhaled shakily.

“You okay?” he murmured against her hair.

She nodded, unable to do anything more complicated, like talk. Her fingers loosened their death grip on his shoulders, scudded down the damp length of his back, and patted his ass tentatively, prompting a chuckle. He pulled out and reached for a travel pack of wet wipes in a plastic bag by the camping lantern, prompting a chuckle from her as she sat up.

“What’s the Marine Corps saying?”

“
Semper Fi
,” he said with a grin, then hunkered down beside her.

She plucked wipes from the packet and cleaned up as best she could while he did the same. He found her panties in the darkness and handed them to her, then fastened his pants.

“I’m going into Brookings early next week to look at apartments again,” he said as he pulled on his slightly wrinkled shirt. “Want to come along?”

She looked up from stepping into her skirt. “You know, I’m starting to believe you’re really staying.”

“I’m staying, Ris. I’ll graduate, join a firm in Brookings or Sioux Falls, but I want to open an office here in Chatham County and focus on rural sustainable design projects.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Brookhaven would make a great space for a home office, and it’s always good to have a reputable contractor to recommend to clients.”

She felt her heart stop dead in her chest. “You want us to be business partners?”

“I want you to be aware I’ve thought about it.”

She pulled the halter top over her head, then presented her back to Adam. “You don’t have to say that because I said I love you,” she said, proud of her even tone.

He tied the tapes, then wrapped his arms around her, engulfing her in his warm, solid embrace. “I’m not saying it for that reason. It’s always been about you and me, Ris,” he said into her hair.

The edge was gone, whatever had simmered under his skin when he arrived from the church, and maybe for the first time their being together made things better for him, not worse. “I know,” she said quietly. Always. It had always been Adam, would always be Adam. Forever. And it would be a good life. A very good life. People made very good lives out of far less than the love of a lifetime and honest, important work in the community where her roots ran deep and wide.

Isn’t this what you wanted?

Yes, when I didn’t dare want anything else!

As if he could hear her thinking, he said, “We’ll travel. Not as much as I’d like while I’m in school, but after that, we’ll make the time and find the money.”

“I know,” she said again. It was a storybook ending, the fairy tale she’d never dreamed she could have. Twelve years ago all she’d wanted was Adam, a life with him, whatever life they could scratch together from Dakota dirt and dreams, from sweat equity and passion. But then he’d left, and in the cool, gritty darkness his absence created, different dreams took root and flourished.

She could go back to the old dreams. For Adam she could, and she would. She took a shuddering breath and relaxed back into his heavily muscled body. They stayed like that for a long moment, breathing together. Eventually he kissed the top of her head.

“I should get back,” she said. “God only knows what crisis Stacey’s handling without me around.”

“Stacey could take over supply logistics for an entire battalion and not lose a beat,” Adam said, but he let her go.

“Are you staying tonight?” He nodded. “The door to my apartment’s unlocked,” she said. “Wait for me?”

“Sure,” he said, then gave her a crooked grin. “It’s my turn to wait.”

21

T
HE SUNDAY AFTER
the wedding was like every other Sunday in Walkers Ford, slow, quiet, traffic on Main Street picking up in time for church, but not before. Adam went home to dig through the last of the boxes; Marissa joined him and his mother at the Heirloom for brunch. The mood in the restaurant was subdued, as if the whole town was suffering from a wedding hangover. Marissa certainly was. They let Adam’s mother do most of the talking, a steady stream of chatter about customers and orders, the kind of seemingly trivial background noise that cemented people together. After he took his mother home they went back to Brookhaven and slept for six hours, waking up only for supper and a hot bath that turned into a leisurely, sweet evening in bed.

On Monday, Adam drove his mother to Sioux Falls to pick up a fabric order, and set up appointments with apartment managers in Brookings while Marissa caught up on her books. It was one of the rare fall days when the sun played hide-and-seek with the low gray and white clouds, gilding the very air. Delaney and Keith were off on their honeymoon in Fiji, and Adam was due in a few minutes to pick up Marissa for another apartment-hunting trip to Brookings.

Up to her ears in invoices and billing, the knock on her apartment door surprised her. Even more surprising was the shape in the window, backlit by the first sun in weeks, too short to be Adam, the shoulders too broad to be Alana.

She opened the door to Don Lemmox, the county’s most successful real estate agent. His agency brokered many of the larger land deals in the area, and also auctioned estates like Mrs. Edmunds. She could think of no good reason for him to show up at her door.

“Mr. Lemmox,” she said, blinking with surprise. “What can I do for you?”

“Miss Brooks,” he said formally, his hat in his hand, “Can I have a moment of your time?”

“Of course,” she said, and stood back to let him in.

“I’d like to have another look at the house,” he said.

She should have felt a pleased surprise. He could only be back to investigate Brookhaven as a possible reception site for his daughter’s wedding, and this was a good thing. The income would help pay the house’s operating costs, and pay down her home equity loan more quickly.

“Of course,” she said, striving for a smile. “I’ll meet you at the front door.”

He nodded and resettled his hat on his head. She hurried through the door connecting the servants’ quarters to the kitchen, through the great room to the front door. The hardwood floors, efficiently mopped by Stacey and her cleanup crew, gleamed in the intermittent sunlight as Lemmox walked around, examining the plaster, the flooring, the mantel as closely as he had the night before.

“Candlelight hides flaws,” he mused, peering at the paneling.

“There aren’t many to hide,” she said.

“You’ve done quite a bit of work to the house,” he said mildly. His gaze went to the stained-glass windows. “Did you do it yourself?”

“Much of it,” she said. “The windows were designed by a visiting artist at SDSU, and Billy did the wiring and the HVAC. Adam Collins helped me with the woodwork. The rest of the interior and exterior work is mine.”

“Where did you find the paneling?” he asked, examining the newly restored south wall in his careful way.

“The Meadows, owned by the Edmunds family.”

“Same architect as Brookhaven, correct?” he asked, his two-pack-a-day voice echoing in the empty room.

“Yes.”

“It’s a good match. That property goes up for sale next week,” he said. “She had a stroke last Friday.”

She froze, mid-breath, because she and Adam had removed the last, best piece of her house just days before. “I didn’t know,” she murmured. “Was she . . . ?”

“Apparently she’d had a series of ministrokes last year. It was only a matter of time.” He stopped in front of the west-facing windows looking over the meadow that led to the creek. “How much land comes with the property?”

“Twenty acres. All that’s left,” she said before the odd nature of the question registered. “Why?”

“Last year a woman from Connecticut contacted me, asking about properties in the area,” he said, still looking out over the meadow. “She had a Wall Street job and got downsized in one of the recent economic downturns. Apparently she’s into yoga and Buddhism, and she got it into her head to open a retreat center, but they’re thick on the ground on the East Coast, so she decided to look for untapped markets. She had a business plan,” he said with a slightly mocking smile. “I figured her for an East Coast fly-by-night and told her I didn’t have anything to sell.”

“Okay,” she said, not sure what this had to do with her and Brookhaven.

“Last week I got another call from her, asking if anything new had opened up. ‘Somewhere with a little space, so we could build rustic cabins for long-term retreatants,’
she said. ‘Near water,’ she said. ‘Something with character,’ she said.” He looked around the great room. “Something like Brookhaven. I sent her pictures yesterday. She liked it, and authorized me to make you an offer.”

He named a sum so astonishing that for a minute all thinking ceased. Lemmox mistook her reaction for disbelief. “I asked around to find out what you’d put into the house, figured I knew what the land was worth in dollars, but not in family value. This was your family’s home for nearly a hundred and fifty years. I told the buyer you probably wouldn’t want to sell, so she’s making an offer based on the house’s newly renovated condition, historical value, and character. It’s a fair offer.”

He had no reason to lowball her. He’d make a percentage on the sale, so the higher the price, the more he made. But swindling the buyers wasn’t in his best interests, either. If the business failed, he’d cheat himself out of an opportunity to sell Brookhaven again. The fair offer, the little voice in her brain told her, was enough to pay off the home equity loan, buy a small sailboat, and leave enough left over for a couple of years of supplies, if she were frugal.

Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know how to sail. It’s a dream. It’s not meant to become reality.

“I got them a good loan through Walker’s bank. You’d get a cashier’s check on signing.” He gave a phlegmy cough, then added, “She wants to take possession as soon as possible.”

In one stunning moment the
why
became clear, why she’d felt so driven to finish the house. Restoring Brookhaven wasn’t intended to tie her to Walkers Ford. It was intended to set her free.

No angels sang a hallelujah chorus; if anything, the house sat unusually silent. She could leave. She could leave Brookhaven, Walkers Ford, South Dakota, and the entire Midwest; and the thoughts, coming hard and fast, sent a cresting wave of joy through her chest. Thanks to Adam, she now knew what it meant to want something, to desire it, long for it out of the depths of her soul, not out of a desperate loyalty, or worse, fear. Restoring Brookhaven was her duty, one she’d fulfilled without complaint.

Sailing was her desire. That’s what Adam taught her, the difference between duty and desire.

A car door closed outside the front door, sending another thought eddying through her frozen brain. Adam was staying. Adam was back home, for good, about to start graduate school, planning their future in eastern South Dakota. Planning it. Not dreaming it.

Your timing always was shit
said that oh-so-helpful little voice.

He came through the open front door, his face clearing when he saw her and Lemmox standing in front of the mantel. She gestured him in, and he closed the door, then crossed the wide space, his booted feet loud in the vast, echoing space that was the great room, and her mind.

Adam and Mr. Lemmox shook hands, exchanged greetings. Then Adam turned to her, wary curiosity in his hazel eyes.

“Mr. Lemmox has just made me an offer for Brookhaven,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

Lemmox repeated his story about the woman from Connecticut that wanted to open a Great Plains retreat center, get back to the simple life. The concept of life in Walkers Ford as “simple” made her laugh, the sound startling her back into the chilly room, where she found both men looking at her. She blinked, came back to the oddly lit day, sunlight streaming in patches along the creek and meadow, lighting up one or two windows, then disappearing behind the calico clouds. She came back to Adam, backlit in the windows, his face hidden to her.

The straight spine and squared shoulders told her all she needed to know.

“I need to think about this,” she said gently to Mr. Lemmox.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, see what you’ve decided.”

He walked to the front door and let himself out while she and Adam stared at each other. She couldn’t see his face, just the nimbus of sunlight around his head, and she couldn’t tell what her own expression was.

“Say something,” she said.

“I got the apartment. In the 1921 building,” he added. “The guy who rented it got into law school at Michigan. The property manager called today.”

“Timing,” she said. “It’s all about timing, and mine’s always been shit.”

“Wrong. Your timing’s perfect. I’ve seen that look on your face one other time,” he replied. “When we were sailing and Nate gave you the wheel. Right now you look exactly like you did then. You look alive.”

“I can’t do it,” she said. “The house holds a hundred and fifty years of Brooks memories. I belong here. My family is here, buried in the cemetery—.”

“Exactly, Ris. They’re
buried
here. You’re alive. Live!”

She shook her head. “It’s an incredible offer, but I can’t take it.”

“Why not?” He folded his arms across his chest. Braced to do battle with
I can’ts
. “Why not take it and get out of here?”

“I don’t know how to sail a boat! One afternoon on Lake Michigan, that’s all I’ve got! How am I going to buy a boat and sail it across the ocean?”

He flung his hand toward the stained-glass windows in the great room as he strode toward her. Now she could see his face clearly, and it was alive as well, passionately intent on making her see what he saw. What he believed. “How did you learn to do any of this? Plaster walls? Plumb bathrooms? Craft windows?”

“Someone taught me,” she said quietly.

“Wrong,” he said again. “You went after it. You did what you had to do to make your dad’s dream come true. Now it’s time to make your own dream come true.”

The complete reversal in their situations would have been funny, if it wasn’t going to destroy them. “You’re part of my dream, Adam. I love you. It’s always been you. Not you alone, but you’re a part of me. Come with me.”

“I can’t,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you.”

“Wrong,” she said slowly, arms folded, spine straight. “That’s what
this Marine
would do, because that’s the logical thing to do. You don’t have to make up for what you’ve done, not to me, not to Brookhaven. I need you to love me, to let yourself feel what you felt that spring, what you feel now. Defer enrollment for a year and come with me.”

“It’s not just you.” He shoved both palms over his hair, then turned toward the windows framing the town of Walkers Ford. “I’ve made more mistakes than walking away from you. I can’t keep running from this place. You’ve done what you had to do to get right with this town. I haven’t. I have to stay. Leaving again isn’t the answer.”

He stood solid and unmoving in the great room. Maybe it was the unusual silence, maybe it was the shift in her internal landscape, but something clicked into place inside her. She finally asked the question she’d avoided asking for the last month. “Why did you break up with Delaney? Why did you come back so early for the wedding?”

He answered without hesitation. “Eight months ago I got an anonymous e-mail. Attached was a picture of Delaney, naked in a hotel room I’d never seen. The picture quality was really good. The sex flush on her face and neck was just starting to fade.”

She blinked, not quite comprehending what she heard. “Delaney was cheating on you?”

“So it appeared.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure. In the picture her hair was the length it is now. She cut it shorter a year or so ago, so sometime in the last year. It may have been the first time, but I doubt it. Delaney wouldn’t have let someone take her picture that way unless she was totally comfortable with him.”

“Who was she with? Who took the picture?” she asked, her voice rising with disbelief. “Who
sent
you the picture
while you were deployed to Afghanistan
?” Adam didn’t say anything, didn’t move, and she made the connection. This was the problem with clearing the fog away. Realizations came out of the blue, hard and fast, things she’d known deep down but didn’t want to acknowledge. About herself, about Adam, but not about this. “Keith. She cheated on you with Keith, and that son of a bitch sent you the picture.”

“The e-mail address was an anonymous Yahoo! account, but a buddy of mine traced it back to the IP address for Keith’s office.”

“No one here knew,” she said, still in disbelief. “I’m sure of it. Gossip like that would have been all over town.”

“It didn’t have to happen here. They both have plenty of reason to be in Brookings or Sioux Falls at the same time.”

“Did you confront him? Her?” she asked, losing her footing in the conversation as easily as she’d found it. “Who asked you to be the best man?”

“He did.” Adam was braced now, legs spread, arms folded across his chest, unmovable. “He never came out and asked me what happened. He was careful about that. Just said he was sorry things fell apart. Then he e-mailed and said they’d been spending time together, and he wanted to know how I’d feel if he asked her out. Would I mind. I knew by this time, knew he’d sent it, knew what he was doing. I wanted to see how far he’d take it, and he took it all the way.”

“You never confronted him? You just let him think he’d won?”

“I brought it up in the vestry before the wedding started. Asked him why he’d done it.”

A short laugh burst from her lungs. “Because he’s a manipulative, self-centered, insecure asshole who gets off on bringing other people low.”