Desire After Dark: A Gansett Island Novel (15 page)

“Take all the time you need.”

Her legs were wobbly when she walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her and leaning against it to catch her breath. Images from the mudroom played through her mind like an erotic movie. She already knew that no matter what happened next, she’d never forget it.

Erin cleaned up and changed into one of the sexy nightgowns he’d bought her
at Tiffany’s. She brushed her hair and teeth, examining her reflection in the mirror, noting the razor burn on her neck and jaw that were stark reminders of what they’d done. Erin’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with him.

Emerging from the bathroom, she found him wearing only his boxers, sitting on the edge of the bed, checking his phone. He looked up at her,
his gaze heating at the sight of her in the nightgown. Standing, he tossed the phone on the bed and came to her, his hands warm upon her shoulders, his expression hungry despite the intense sex they’d already had.

“I’ll be quick,” he said, stepping around her to go into the bathroom.

Erin released a deep breath and got into bed, turning to look at the picture of her brother on the
bedside table and trying to remember the last time she’d felt as elated as she did now.

A memory came to her, sharp and vivid, as if it had happened yesterday rather than almost fifteen years ago. She recalled a warm summer weekend at the beach in East Hampton about a month before Toby died. She and Mitch and Toby and Jenny had pooled their resources to rent a small two-bedroom house for
a weekend that had been full of love and laughter and promises of a happily ever after that hadn’t materialized for either couple.

They’d been so excited for Jenny and Toby’s wedding in two short months, and even though it had ended with a disagreement between her and her brother, that weekend was the last time she remembered feeling the way she did right now—happy and hopeful, with every
possibility still open to her. Everything had changed a few weeks later, and her life had never been the same. She’d been spinning, as if caught up in a riptide that she’d been fighting ever since. Only recently had the spinning stopped, and Slim was the reason.

He came out of the bathroom looking sexier than any man had a right to at nearly forty. His chest and abs were ripped with muscles
and covered in a light dusting of dark hair, his jaw chiseled with just the right amount of scruff and his eyes… He looked at her with such affection and desire. A man who looked at a woman that way could convince her to change her life for him.

After he got in bed, the heat of his body drew her to him, and he wrapped her up in his arms.

“Thank you for an amazing Christmas,” he said.
“And for the painting of the lighthouse. I’ll find a very special place for that in my Florida house.”

“I thought you might like a memento of your stay here.”

“I’ll never forget staying here or being with you this Christmas.”

“I love my new necklace, too.” She touched the sterling silver sand dollar to make sure it was still there.

“Glad you like it. Looks as good on
you as does that nightgown.”

She looked up at his handsome face. “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

E
rin wasn’t
sure where the inquiry had come from. All she knew was that she wanted more of him—and not just sex, although more of that would be fine with her, too.

“Like a deep, dark secret?”

“Do you
have
a deep, dark secret?”

After a long pause, he said, “There is one thing that
no one knows, not even my family.”

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal.”

“It’s very personal, and I’ve honestly never told anyone. But I want to tell you.”

Intrigued and insanely curious, she propped her chin on his chest so she could see his face.

“My high school girlfriend got pregnant.”

His grim expression made Erin sorry she’d asked.

“We
were juniors. She was my first, and I was hers. We were crazy about each other until she realized she was pregnant. It all went to shit after that, to put it mildly.”

“Did she blame you?”

“She never actually said that, but I blamed myself enough for both of us. We did it once without protection, and I thought I’d pulled out in time… I’ve never had unprotected sex again.” He sighed.
“It’s hard to talk about even all these years later.”

“You don’t have to. I’m sorry. I never meant—”

He cupped her cheek and stroked her face with his thumb. “It’s okay, Erin. I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t want to.”

“What did you do about the baby?”

“I left it completely up to her. I told her I’d support any decision she made, including keeping the baby. After
a torturous month, she decided to end the pregnancy.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“If I’m being totally honest, I was relieved. We were so young, and the thought of a baby was… It was the most overwhelming thing I could imagine at that time. I gave her the money I’d saved from cutting grass the summer before, and I went with her to the clinic. It was horrible and heartbreaking.
I thought she was never going to stop crying.”

Erin’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry you went through such a traumatic thing when you were so young. Your parents really didn’t know?”

He shook his head. “We went to tremendous lengths to make sure no one would ever know. I didn’t want her to be the talk of our school, so I insisted we tell no one. Somehow we managed to get through
it without anyone knowing. Afterward, we tried to get back to normal, but our normal had been permanently altered. We broke up a couple of months later, which was a second round of heartbreak.” Even as he stroked her hair, he seemed a million miles away. “I think about the baby and who he or she might’ve been. It’s hard to believe he or she would be twenty-four now, a fully grown adult, maybe
a college graduate.”

Hoping to hide her emotional response to his heartfelt words, she closed her eyes and kissed his chest.

“You know what’s funny? When you’re sixteen, you think you’ll grow up and get married and have kids and everything will unfold in a certain expected order. But then life happens and nothing goes as planned, and you wake up at nearly forty and realize you never
again came close to being a father.”

“It’s not too late, especially for guys. Look at Tony Randall, who became a dad at seventy something.”

Slim grunted out a laugh. “Yeah, no thanks on that.”

“Still, it could happen.”

Smiling, he let her hair slide through his fingers. “I told you mine,” he said with a teasing glint in his eye that let her know he was okay after sharing
his secret pain with her. “Now tell me yours.”

Erin knew she was under no obligation to tell him her deepest secret, but after what he’d told her, she didn’t feel right giving him anything less. “Mine is also something that no one else knows.”

He tilted his head, giving her his undivided attention.

“After Toby died, I… There’s just no way I can adequately describe the despair.
And the worst part? We had to share our agony with three thousand other families and an entire nation that was changed forever by what happened that day. But for us, for me, it was so intensely personal.”

“I didn’t know anyone who died that day, but as a pilot and an American, it was one of the most gut-wrenching things I’ve ever lived through. I can’t even begin to know what it was like
for people who lost loved ones.”

“It was a very dark time. A couple of months later, after the initial shock wore off and the insanity settled somewhat, I began to wonder how I’d ever find my way out of the darkness. Part of me didn’t think I had the right to feel that way because look at what my parents had lost and Jenny and all of Toby’s friends who saw him far more often the last few
years than I did. But as his sister, his twin, his only sibling, I simply didn’t know how to
live
without him. I’d never had to.”

“Baby,” he said softly, wiping away her tears with his thumb.

“I began to make plans to stop the pain.”

“Erin… God.”

The distress she heard in his voice made her feel safe to continue. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I know that now. But at the
time, I couldn’t see any other way out. I wanted it to stop. I wrote letters to my parents and Jenny and even one to Toby in which I told him that I couldn’t wait to be with him again. I even set the date. For the first time since it happened, I had something to look forward to.”

“Come up here.” He tugged gently on her arms and arranged her so she was on top of him, his arms wrapped tightly
around her. “What stopped you?”

“My parents did, and they don’t even know it. They stopped by on their way to brunch, which was something they did every Sunday before. It was their first time going back to the place they always went, and they wanted me to come. They said it would make it easier for them if I went, too. I think they came over rather than calling me the way they normally
would so I wouldn’t be able to refuse. I found out later they were worried about how withdrawn I’d become. They didn’t know that I was dealing with the onset of what became severe obsessive compulsive disorder. I was plagued by worries about my safety and theirs. I would get up thirty or forty times in the course of a night to check to make sure the locks were on, that the windows were closed, that
the nightlights were on. I was exhausted from the need to perform these rituals over and over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. I was afraid
not
to do them, that something else awful would happen if I didn’t. It took years of therapy to get me to the point where I only do some of the weird stuff you’ve probably noticed.

“On that day, only because they asked me to, I took a shower,
did my hair, put on some makeup for the first time since the funeral, and I went with them. We saw a lot of people we knew, people who cared so much about us and how we were doing. I remember thinking if my parents could endure this unbearable tragedy, maybe I could, too. And seeing them and the courageous way they were facing their loss made it impossible for me to compound it. By the time I
got home, my plan had lost its allure. I’ve had a lot of really low moments over the years, and I continue to struggle with the OCD at times, but I’ve never again been that low.”

To his credit, he didn’t say anything. He only held her and rubbed her back in tiny circles and made her feel loved and protected. Maybe he didn’t love her, but his quiet support made her wonder if he did. Listening
to the strong beat of his heart comforted her and made her feel less alone with the grief that had never gone away, even if it had become more manageable.

After a long period of silence, she raised her head off his chest to look at him. “I really know how to ruin a mood, don’t I?”

“You didn’t ruin anything. You only made me admire you more than I already did.”

“I’m not proud
of my lack of courage.”

His eyes went wide. “Are you
kidding
me? Your courage was—and is—astonishing. It would’ve been so much easier for you to follow through with your plan. Instead, you thought of what it would do to your parents, and you put them ahead of yourself. You chose to live with nearly unbearable pain. If that’s not courage, I don’t know what is.”

Moved by his emphatic
words, she said, “I realized that day the grief is always going to be with me, that my life was permanently changed, and I had to find a way to live with it or it would destroy me.”

“I’m so glad you found a way.” Holding her face in his hands, he kissed her. “I’m so very glad.”

“I am, too. I would’ve hated to miss out on knowing you.”

Kissing her again, he slayed her with
the tender way he held her and touched her, as if she was the most precious thing in the world to him. Wouldn’t that be something if she were?

“I have other less probing questions,” she said, looking to lighten things up again.

“Hit me.”

“What’s your Chinese order?”

“Kung pao chicken extra spicy. You?”

“Broccoli chicken with fried rice. Your Girl Scout cookie
of choice?”

“Are there any others besides Thin Mints?”

“Very good answer. I buy extras and freeze them so I have them all year long.”

“I’m incredibly turned on right now.”

Erin’s laugh became a moan when he gripped her bottom and pressed his erection into her belly to show he meant it. “So Girl Scouts turn you on. Good to know.”

“Your year supply of
Thin Mints
turns me on. Get it right.”

She giggled at his outrage.

“What else you got?” he asked.

“What do you like on a pizza?”

“Meat. Lots of it. You?”

“I knew you were too good to be true,” she said, sighing dramatically. “I’m a veggie girl all the way.”

He crinkled up his nose. “I can’t work with that. Get off me, and let me out of this bed.”

“I can’t
take care of
that
,” she said, moving subtly over his cock, “if I let you out of bed.”

“Good point. Please continue.”

Laughing, she said, “What’s your favorite word?”

“Clean or dirty?”

“Give me one of each.”

“Let me think… For clean, I’d say it’s
delectable
.”

Erin wondered if there was double meaning in his choice. “That’s a good one.”

“My favorite
dirty word is, understandably, pussy.”

Erin groaned as she laughed. “Why am I not surprised, and PS, female body parts are not
dirty
words.”

“Would you be embarrassed if I used that word in front of your parents? For example, Erin’s pussy is delectable.”

Shrieking, she covered his mouth with her hand. “Don’t you dare do that.”

“Wasn’t gonna, don’t worry,” he said, laughing,
his words muffled by her hand. “What’re your words?” he asked when she removed her hand.

“Moist—clean or dirty—I hate it.”

“
Erin’s moist pussy is delectable
. See? We were meant to be. Even our words go together.”

Her face burned with embarrassment. “I
cannot believe
you just said that.” Though she loved hearing he thought they were meant to be.

“Yes, you can,” he said,
laughing.

“Least favorite punctuation?”

He raised his brows. “You have a favorite and least favorite punctuation?”

“Doesn’t everyone? This is a very serious question, so think carefully before you answer.”

“I’ve never been so stressed out.” He paused before he said, “My least favorite would have to be the semicolon.”

“Oh thank God,” she said with a dramatic sigh
of relief. “Any other answer would’ve been flat-out wrong.”

He blew out a deep breath with equally dramatic flair. “My relief is overwhelming. And just for the record, what’s your favorite?”

“The exclamation point. Isn’t that everyone’s favorite?”

“Of course it is. Why did I even ask?”

Smiling at his reply, she said, “Cats or dogs?”

“Dogs. Cats creep me out.”

“Oh my God! Me, too! Worst job you ever had.”

“EMT. Loved the job, hated the suffering we encountered every day. How about you?”

“My foray into hairdressing was very unfortunate for everyone involved.”

Laughing, he asked, “What about your best job?”

“The one I have now.”

“Being a lighthouse keeper is very cool.”

“It is, but that’s not the job I’m
talking about.”

“You have another one?”

“Uh-huh. I write a nationally syndicated advice column called Ask Erin.”

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “That’s
you
? Ask Erin is
you
?”

“Why? Have you seen it?”

“I read it every day. I’m a huge fan.”

“Come on. No way.”

“I’m not kidding. I love the practical advice and the way you’re nice to even the
stupid people who deserve their problems because they’re too dumb to know that their own behavior is their biggest issue.”

Erin stared at him, agape. “You really
do
read the column!”

“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “How have you never told me this? I can’t believe that’s you. I’m sleeping with
Ask Erin.
”

“You say that like I’m Judge Judy or something.”

“I have a secret
crush on her, too. I love smart, sexy women.”

His use of the word
love
did crazy things to her insides, resurrecting the lighthearted, giddy feeling she’d experienced earlier. She returned her head to his chest, and he resumed playing with her hair.

“Hey, Slim?”

“Hmm?”

“For a very long time my life has been spinning out of control. When I’m with you, the spinning stops.
I thought you should know that.”

“That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”