Sinful Seduction (9 page)

All of which should be great news.

Except that the idea of leaving here—leaving Sandro—filled her with a growing dread that tiptoed right along the edge of despair. If only she had a little more time for…

For what, Skylar?

She didn’t know.

If she left now, would she ever see him again?

Would never seeing him again be the worst thing that could happen to her, or the best?

If she stayed…if she stayed…if she stayed, then…

What, Skylar?

Her mind’s eye squinted, peering into the future, but it was shapeless and dark, as scary as the overgrown path into the woods in Disney movies.

It didn’t make sense, and she couldn’t explain it; all she knew was that, for now, she belonged here.

No, that wasn’t it.

She belonged with Sandro. That was it.

As though he sensed her turmoil, Sandro glanced down at her.

“We’ll have you out of here in no time, Skylar,” he murmured.

He wasn’t smiling, but there was a gleam of something in his eyes, and she read it as grim triumph. Because weren’t they in a battle here, she and Sandro, and weren’t they hunkered down in their positions?

Her job was to wear him down, break through his resistance, get him to overcome his misguided sense of honor and admit that he wanted her more than he wanted to be true to Tony’s memory.

His job, on the other hand, was to hold his line until he could get rid of her, and then he could go back to his brooding and lonely life.

And what did all that mean?

It came down to this, she decided.

If she won, then they both won.

If he won, then all was lost, for both of them.

Then why was she being coy and beating around the bush? How many chances did she think she was going to get if she didn’t break out of her comfort zone sometime soon?

Sometime…like now?

Bolstered by her growing determination, she looked him dead in the eye. “You don’t want me out of here,” she said, “and we both know it.”

Something unidentifiable flared in his expression—Surprise? Panic? Passion?—and then a shout from one of the men jarred them back to their surroundings.

“Look out!”

For one suspended second, nothing happened. Skylar and the others glanced wildly around, trying to come up to speed and wondering what the alarm was for. The branch was off the car, dangling at the end of the crane, and there was nothing terrifying about that.

Only it wasn’t the branch that was the problem. It was the trunk.

The workers scrambled for cover.

With a protesting groan of splintering wood and pulled roots, the damaged tree tipped, falling across the road. It took forever for the huge oak to crash, as though it didn’t want to let go of the earth and its life.

She watched with utter disbelief as it landed with an endless shudder of branches that sprayed water in every direction and reverberated in the ground beneath their feet. The massive and muddy root ball was the last to settle, with blackened tips dangling like octopus tentacles at the far end.

They all stood there in astonished silence, surveying the damage.

The smashed car was now free, but they were otherwise right back where they started, with the road blocked by several tons of tree. Even the rescue equipment was on the wrong side for any getaways.

Skylar blinked and realized, with a flash of purest joy, that that tree had just bought her another day or two right here where she was, with Sandro.

Judging by his thunderous expression, Sandro knew it, too.

Their gazes locked, and she felt the thrum of electricity prickle over her skin and pool deep in her belly.

“Interesting,” she said. “I guess it’s not quite time for me to leave, after all, is it?”

She walked off before he could answer.

Chapter 9

S
andro went inside and took a quick shower that did nothing to help him decompress from his growing agitation. He was so full of Skylar—the way she looked, smelled and smiled, not to mention the alarming new fact that she wasn’t leaving yet—that he couldn’t sit still.

He felt crowded and tight, as though she was inside his skin with him and there was nowhere for him to go and no avenue of escape that wouldn’t do him serious physical damage.

It was getting so that the thought of her staying crazed him more than the thought of her leaving and—

No.

He wouldn’t go down that road. Not ever, if he could help it, and certainly not now. They’d passed a point of no return, he and Skylar, and his sanity now seemed to be inextricably intertwined with the need to never examine his feelings for her.

What if he discovered that he was falling for her?

What kind of man survived the explosion that’d killed his brother, and then became involved with his brother’s woman?

He had just enough honor left to know that he wasn’t willing to be that man.

So his plan was really simple: he’d continue to avoid her while she was here (as much as she’d allow, anyway), she’d leave as soon as possible, and life would, eventually, revert to normal.

Otherwise known as Operation Ostrich.

She’d been right about his relationship with Nikolas, though, and that was why he was at this end of the hallway, near the damaged mural. Man, what a mess. The water had really done a job on it, reducing scenes from the Trojan War and
The Odyssey
to streaks of running color and puckered drywall. The carpet, meanwhile, was still soaked and probably incubating some lethal form of mold.

He sighed. Problems for another day.

He gave the boy’s bedroom door a hard knock so he’d be heard against the ear-damaging thump of bass coming from the sound system.

It was Jay-Z again; the hard-core stuff.

Every now and then, Sandro thought about bursting the kid’s subversive bubble and telling him that he and his men had listened to Jay-Z all the time in Afghanistan, and Sandro therefore knew many of the words to most of his songs, but he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to disillusion the kid like that. Didn’t all teenage boys need to believe that their dads were the biggest dorks in the world?

“Who is it?” Nikolas called.

“Your father,” Sandro said, eyeing the collection of signs on the door. This kid was a regular welcome wagon. Caution: Radiation Area said one; Warning: Zombies Ahead said another. Then there was the obligatory red Stop sign, one that said No Trespassing! Violators Will be Shot. Survivors Will be Shot Again, and Sandro’s personal favorite: If the Music’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old.

“Ah…hang on,” Nikolas said after a long (and probably horrified) pause.

Then came sudden silence, the thud of a body hitting the floor, and the muffled thunder of large feet moving across a rug.

The door swung open, and there stood Nikolas, looking simultaneously guilty and defiant. His chin was stuck out at that stubborn angle he did so well, but his shoulders were hunched in, as though he expected a beating and was prepared to duck and run if the situation degenerated.

“Aah,” Sandro began parsing his words.

One of the problems in dealing with Nikolas was that Sandro could never get the words that came out of his mouth to match his intentions. For example, he might be thinking,
Wow, Nikolas got a good grade on that trigonometry exam,
but what came out of his mouth was, “Why don’t you study harder so you can get
A
s in all your classes?”

Every conversation, no matter how trivial, turned into a minefield, and, unfortunately, Sandro hadn’t seen a mine-sniffing dog since he returned stateside. Nor did he have any measurable skills in dealing with kids, especially his kid. His supply of patience was far too depleted.

Still, every conversation was a new chance, and Skylar had faith in his ability to become a good father, and her faith seemed important and auspicious. And he desperately wanted to heal this tattered relationship with his son.

So he opened his mouth, treading carefully. “I, aah, just wanted to tell you something.”

Uh-oh. Even that was wrong. See? There Nikolas went, crossing his arms over his chest and narrowing his eyes, gestures that were the body-language equivalent of pulling out a pistol and clicking off the safety.

“I did clean my room, okay?” Nikolas snapped. “And I can fold my clothes and put them away later. It’s no big deal.”

Sandro tilted his head a little, peering over Nikolas’s shoulder into the pit in question, which looked pretty much the same as it had the other day, when Sandro had issued the
clean your room or else
edict.

Shoes were still strewn over the floor, textbooks were still piled on the desk, the laundry basket was still mounded with three tons of clean clothes, and the bed was still unmade.

No, wait. The pillows were up off the floor and on the bed now, and the comforter, though still rumpled, had been flapped once or twice so that it covered up most of the white sheets.

It was cleaner, but nowhere near clean.

Sandro thought back on all the terrifying dorm inspections he’d endured during his tenure at West Point and bit back several potential sarcastic replies, choosing to focus on the task at hand.

Connect with your son, Davies.

Anyway, the kid had attempted to make the bed, and there were fewer pairs of shoes on the floor. That was progress, right?

“Yeah, I, aah, see that,” Sandro said. “Good job. And there’s, aah, no rush on the clothes.”

Nikolas’s jaw dropped.

“But that’s not why I came,” Sandro continued. “I just wanted to, aah, mention that you really helped with the yard cleanup. We couldn’t’ve done it without you. So, I, aah…thanks.”

Nikolas gaped at him.

Sandro waited, just in case there might be some reply.

Nikolas continued gaping.

O-kay, then.

Well, silence was better than a furious rant, right? And any conversation that ended without a furious rant was a complete victory, right? Right.

Time to exit the battlefield.

“So.” Buoyed by this step in the right direction, the first they’d had in months, possibly years, Sandro clapped the boy on the shoulder and strode off before the fragile peace collapsed. “I’ll see you later.”

A few minutes later, Sandro braced his palms on the granite counter, leaning into his rising frustration with enough force to move the entire kitchen six inches closer to the beach. His shoulders bunched; his gut churned; his jaw flexed. The flow of his blood had changed into a thrum so loud that it drowned out any other sound that he might hear.

Skylar…Skylar…Skylar…

The sky outside was darkening. So was his mood. The thrill he’d felt at having an argument-free conversation with his son was long gone. Worse, his tenuous grip on sanity was slipping, inch by inch, breaking him into two separate but distinct men.

The one who wished Skylar gone forever and the one who looked for her when she was out of sight.

The one who wanted to do the right thing and the one who could no longer recognize the right thing.

The one who hated Skylar and the one who…

Don’t go there, man,
he warned himself, tightening his grip on the counter until the muscles in his fingers screamed in protest.
Don’t look at her.

Naturally, he looked. Again.

Raising his head, he stared out the window. She’d made progress in the last couple minutes and was now at the far end of the pool, swinging along on those crutches like a pro, probably heading for the boardwalk where she could watch the sunset.

He watched her, paralyzed by the needs she’d awakened inside him.

He needed her spread-eagled beneath him in bed, her body his for the touching, licking and taking. He needed the thrust of her tongue deep in his mouth and the hot pulse of her slick sex milking him dry. He needed to see her eyes cloud with passion and then, when she was spent, he needed her limp and sweaty body draped over his.

And then he needed it all again. And again and again, until infinity met the horizon, and, more than that, he needed her laughter in his ears, her light in his house and her warmth in his icy heart.

And what about Tony?
asked the insidious little voice in the back of his mind that refused to grant him a moment’s peace.
What about the man who’d died loving Skylar?

What about poor dead Tony, your twin brother, you bastard?

Tony?
came the answer.
Forget him. Screw him.

Anyway, wasn’t he in Heaven with God? Wasn’t he therefore far beyond any petty cares about who was getting with whom down here on earth?

Those were pretty good points, yeah, but the accusatory voice wasn’t done with him yet.

What about your honor?
it wondered now.
Don’t you have any left?

Hell, those weren’t even the right questions. It all boiled down to this:
What do you want more, Sandro?

The tattered remnants of your honor, or Skylar?

Right now, he wasn’t sure he could even scrape together a rudimentary definition of honor. Why was honor so important at this late stage of the game, anyway? Hadn’t he lost some when men in his command got killed, then more when he lived but his brother died and then more again when the army shipped him home with a medal and a polite discharge because it couldn’t use him after he’d been injured?

Why not forget about honor altogether?

Maybe then he could finally be happy.

“You should go talk to her, Cap.”

Startled, Sandro wheeled around to discover Mickey in the kitchen with him, sitting right there, his expression filled with the kind of quiet compassion that didn’t do Sandro’s aching heart a damn bit of good.

Embarrassed, Sandro cleared his throat, straightened, reached for a glass from the dish rack and filled it, pretending that all he’d been longing for was a glass of water.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do.”

Sandro didn’t trust his voice, so he shook his head and raised the glass to his mouth with an unsteady hand, trying to drink.

“Tony’s dead, Cap,” Mickey said.

“I’d noticed.”

“We’re coming up on a year he’s been gone.”

“Do you think I need the reminder?” Sandro snapped.

But Mickey wasn’t finished with him yet. “You’re alive. She’s alive.”

Sandro could barely get the words out. “Is there a point to this?”

“Tony would want you to be happy, Cap.”

“The question is whether he’d want us to be happy
together,
Mick.”

To his pained astonishment, Mickey reached out, caught Sandro’s wrist in a hard but comforting grip, and squeezed.

“There’s no shame in living, Cap.”

With a snarl, Sandro yanked his arm free, not ready to forgive himself or to accept forgiveness if it was offered. It was too damn hard, and he was too damn unworthy.

“Bullshit, Mick,” he said quietly.
“Bullshit.”

Sandro couldn’t stay away from her, of course.

Wasn’t that a foregone conclusion?

The sun was sitting on the horizon by the time he caught up with her on the boardwalk. The sunset was an impressive ambassador for the beauty of this stretch of beach, the glittering gray ocean and his home.

Even so, she was the most spectacular thing in sight, by far—so beautiful that just looking at her sanded the rough edges off his sullen mood. The breeze blew strands of her hair across her high cheekbones, making the ends brush her smiling lips, and the golden light hit her at just the right angle, making her external glow almost as stunning as the one inside her.

“Hi,” she said, her gaze focused on the waves.

On his way out the door, he’d paused long enough to grab the living-room throw, and he wrapped it around her shoulders now, over her jacket, because the air was cool and she was precious.

“Are you trying to catch pneumonia on top of everything else?” he grumbled.

He’d expected a lecture about her not being an invalid, and so on and so forth, but she merely caught the edges of the throw and pulled them tighter.

“Thanks.”

It took him too long to answer, probably because he was riveted by an unwelcome idea. What if he slipped under that blanket with her, and they stood here together, warm in each other’s arms, watching the sunset?

What would that be like? Heaven? Heaven squared?

He cleared his hoarse throat. “You’re welcome.”

“So I’ve been wondering,” she said after a while. He thought she was going to mention her assertion earlier that he didn’t want her to leave, but something else was on her mind. “What do you do now that you’re out of the army?”