From This Moment On (20 page)

Nicola loved being with Marcus like this, sharing meals and sitting together, their legs touching as they ate and kissed between bites. She was frankly amazed to find that their picnic was in some ways even more intimate—and scary—than making love in the ocean had been.

When he’d been holding her, driving her insane with his kisses and caresses, she’d been so close, barely another kiss away from spilling what had been growing deep within her heart. But now, she had a feeling it might not take more than one of his beautiful smiles to send her all the way over the edge, way past no-strings to turning into one of those girls she’d teased him about earlier, wearing the wedding dress and knocking on his door
.

Somehow, despite the fact that she was having the best day of her life, despite how sweet he’d been when he was telling her that her ex hadn’t deserved her, she needed to remember to keep a firm hold on her heart at all times.

“So,” she asked as she tore another chunk of bread off and dipped it in the red-pepper hummus, “how do you know about this place?”

“This was my father’s favorite beach.” She followed his gaze down the beach to a pretty cottage perched on the rocks. “His best friend from college owned that house and this stretch of sand.” A shadow passed over his face as he said, “Joe died a few years ago. He left my mother this place in his will, told her his best memories had been of all of us playing on the beach when we were kids. And that he hoped our grandkids would play like that one day, too.”

Nicola had to move closer to Marcus, had to take his hands in hers and hold them over her heart as though she could give hers up for his if it meant she could take away all of the pain he’d had to deal with at such a terribly young age
.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He was great. There was never a day when we didn’t know how much he loved us, how glad he was to have us all. Even when a bunch of us were fighting and yelling and calling each other names, he would sit back and let us work it out until we reached the point of no return.”

“What did he do then?”

She was pleased to hear him chuckle softly. “He’d walk into the room and say ‘It’s over.’”

“That’s it?”

He shot her a crooked grin. “He walked softly but carried a big stick.”

“Sounds a lot like you.”

“I used to think so.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean? You don’t think you’re going to be a great father?”

“I used to think that. I’m pretty much over the whole wife and kids thing right now.”

There was absolutely no reason for his statement to hurt her. But the fact that the pop star he’d been boning could never possibly be under consideration for that role made her feel—for the very first time since she’d met him—cheap.

The sudden pain that slashed in past her breastbone made her careless enough to call him on what he’d just said. “So, just because some bitch you were dating cheated on you, you’re giving up on having a family?”

His eyes flashed a warning that she decided to ignore. What the hell, the hole she was digging was already so big she could pretty much bury herself in it. Why stop now? Especially if she was never going to see him again come Monday morning. She might as well try to help...even if Marcus really didn’t want her to.

Yes, she decided, it was a purely altruistic thing she was doing by pointing  this out to him. It wasn’t at all that he’d hurt her and she wanted him to pay for it.

“All I’m asking is if it’s occurred to you that maybe you chose a totally worthless ho to date so that you wouldn’t have to face actually marrying her and starting a family? So that you wouldn’t have to risk losing a woman you loved, the mother of your children, like your mother lost your father? You know, so you could use your ex as the reason to hide from love?” She shrugged, tried to act nonchalant. “Heck, that’s probably why you chose me, too. Because it’s easier to sleep with a totally inappropriate singer there is absolutely no chance of having a future with.”

The silence was thick, almost cold, after she finished her point-by-point analysis of his life. Suddenly, she realized she’d never seen Marcus look at her like this before.

He was angry.

Angry with her for having told him what she thought.

Finally, he said, “What about you?” His eyes were narrowed, his jaw tight. “You could have anyone, Nicola. So why did you date a worthless liar that you probably knew would end up hurting you? Is it the same reason you think you need to fill some sex-kitten image? The same reason you hide behind your body and your pretty face rather than letting people see how smart you are? And isn’t that why you chose me, too, because I’m fun for a couple of nights, but we both know you’d never consider sticking it out with a boring old guy in a suit in a million years
?"

She hadn’t expected him to come back at her with that, with any of it, and she tried to take her hands from his, but he held them fast.

“You have no right to say those things to me.”

“Don’t throw stones if your own fucking house can’t take it, kitten.”

Oh God, she hated hearing him use that endearment now, when he was angry with her.

“Seems to me you’re the expert on hiding,” he told her in a low, hard voice. “Hiding from the press. Hiding how smart and talented you really are. Even in the bedroom, the last place in the world you should have been trying to hide yourself from your lover, I have to push every one of your buttons to get you to drop your walls for a split fucking second.”

She understood that she’d upset him with what she’d said, so much that he was actively trying to push her away. But that knowledge did nothing to douse her pain. If anything, it only made it worse
.

Because she’d stupidly trusted him not to hurt her.

She yanked her hands from his grip and got to her feet in the sand. “Fine! You don’t want me to hide anymore, then how about I stop right now
?"

He stood up, too, facing her. “I dare you to try.”

As the gauntlet crash down between them, she blurted, “How about I face up to the fact that I’m still the world’s biggest idiot for believing that we could actually do this with no strings. How about I tell you that I knew better than to start falling in love with a guy who would never want me for anything more than a couple of days of hot sex.” Her breath was coming too fast and her vision was blurring with tears as she yelled, “How’s that for smart
?"

She had to turn away from him, couldn’t bear to let him see her cry. Not now that everything was ruined and her perfect day had been crushed to smithereens
.

And not after she’d actually gone and confessed her stupid feelings to him in the perfect way to make sure that he would never, ever return them.

Not, she knew, that he would have anyway.

“I need to go,” she told him in a tight voice that she willed not to break. “My crew is going to be expecting me at the venue for sound check soon. I can’t be late again like I was yesterday.”

She headed toward the path between the pine trees that would take her back to his car. In the surf when he’d been holding her in his arms, despite how cold the water swirling around them had been, she’d felt so warm.

But now, with the warm sun beating down on her back, she’d never felt colder.

* * *

It wasn’t just the shock of knowing how deep her emotions for him ran that had Marcus reeling
.

It was the fact that here he’d been going on about her needing to treat herself as more than a sex kitten, when that’s the way he’d been treating her all along. Like she was a piece of ass that was good enough to fuck senseless...but when she actually turned that big brain on his life, to analyze the decisions he’d made, he’d lost it on her.

Throwing everything into the picnic bag, he moved quickly through the trees to find her waiting in his car. Her back was straight, her hands were on her lap, and she was staring straight ahead as he got in behind the wheel.

“I’m sorry
."

He wanted to reach for her hand, but he knew how she’d react, that the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her. The irony wasn’t lost on him that the very thing she didn’t want was now what he needed most—to reconnect with her even in that one small way
.

“I’m sorry, too
."

Marcus was surprised to hear her say those words to him. He’d been planning to say so much more, needed to let her know how wrong he’d been to hurt her like that, that he hadn’t realized what a sensitive topic his father’s death was
.

But when her eyes met his, flat and empty, he knew he was too late.

“I shouldn’t have pressured you for these extra days together
."

He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes, but when he looked again they were clear. And still so flat his gut clenched at the memory of the passion, the joy, that had been there just minutes before
.

“You were right to want to end things after that first night.” Her mouth moved up at the corners, into something no one would ever call a smile. “Lesson learned. One-night stands should stick to the number in their name.”

Marcus had always been the steady Sullivan, the one who knew what do in any situation. However, from the first moment with Nicola, he’d been completely out of his depth. More so now than ever before. But even though he’d known all along that their relationship was going to end in the very near future, he hated the thought of it ending this way.

“You’ve never been a pop star to me, Nicola. You’ve always just been you. A woman I wanted and liked from the start. If I’ve ever treated you like you were nothing more than a sex kitten, I’m truly sorry.”

She was silent for a several very long seconds. Finally, she said, “It’s nice of you to say that
."

He waited for more, waited for her to tell him she thought he was more than just some guy in a suit who knew how to make her scream with pleasure when she came, but she simply pulled her cell phone out of her bag and looked at the time
.

“How long will it take to get to the Warfield?”

Suddenly, he felt like he was bending over backward to try to get her to listen to his apologies, but she wasn’t willing to bend at all.

Hadn’t he spent two straight years bending over for Jill, doing whatever he could to make her happy? Look how that had turned out. If he’d been too boring, too emotionless for Jill, then surely one day soon, even if he and Nicola found a way to patch things up today, she would surely end up bored with him, too...and eventually he’d have the extreme non-pleasure of walking in on her fucking some exciting guy with piercings and a goatee, knowing he’d been a fool one more time
.

“About an hour.”

“I hope there’s no traffic. If you know any short cuts, I’d appreciate you taking them.”

How had it come to this so quickly? From making love in the ocean to sitting in his car while Nicola spoke to him like he was a stranger
?

But his pride wouldn’t let him beg her again for forgiveness. He’d tried. She’d pushed him away.

They were done.

“Don’t worry,” he told her in a voice that was just as distant as hers had been, “I’ll make sure you’re there on time.”

Chapter Eighteen

Thank God she’d done a thousand shows like this one, Nicola thought as she went through the motions of sound checking and joking around with her band. She might have been smiling, laughing, but she felt hollow. Empty
.

And really, really sad.

The things Marcus had said to her kept repeating over and over in her head, so loudly that she actually forgot the lyrics to one of her songs and had to stop in the middle, apologize to her band with a joke, pretend she didn’t see the way they looked at her, at each other, with questions in their eyes
.

One slip. She was only ever one slip away from people assuming late nights and drugs and wild parties
.

Of course, she wasn’t exactly helping herself by playing into the wild image with her videos, the clothes she wore onstage, the fact that she let herself be photographed with people whose wild images were earned, not simply imagined
.

It was as much as Marcus had said to her out on the beach, when they were angrily throwing words at each other
.

She knew that was a large part of why she’d been so angry. Maybe if she could have taken one breath, and then another, she could have let herself admit to him—to both of them—that she was tired of the sexy-girl image. That she’d been wondering more and more why she was bothering with it. And that she wanted to let her songs stand for themselves
.

Just the power of her music, sink or swim, without the silent promise of sex to sell them to the world.

But she hadn’t taken that breath, had she?

Instead, she’d barreled headlong into the stupidest, most idiotic confession of her life.