The Millionaire's Secret Wish (12 page)

He balled his fists to keep from touching her. His body clamored with the need to feel her against him, but he denied himself. Her soft sigh made him ache, but he rubbed his lips against hers once more, then pulled back.

He heard her intake of breath, and she licked her mouth as if she liked the taste of him. The erotic, involuntary gesture nearly sent him over the edge. “Good night Alisa,” he said, instead of throwing her over his shoulder and taking her to bed.

“G’night, Dylan,” she murmured, and walked away from him, leaving him with a longing that wouldn’t quit.

The following day the sun shone brightly, so Alisa and Dylan repeated a visit to his estate with horseback riding, a swim in the pool and playing with Tonto. Although the high activity level suited the children, Alisa could tell they were missing Justin and Amy.
She began to talk about how they would need to get ready for their return on Monday by cleaning the house and perhaps baking some cookies. By nighttime the children had straightened their rooms and were primed to start baking in the morning.

Alisa read an extra story to Emily while Dylan sang again. Afterward she followed the sound of soft music downstairs and found Dylan in the den with two glasses of wine. His feet propped on an ottoman, he waved her into the room. “A toast,” he said, apparently anticipating her question. Rising, he brought her a glass of wine. “The kids survived and so did we.”

She laughed in agreement, and he clinked his glass to hers. Alisa took a sip of the cool, clear liquid. It was so good she drank it quickly and was surprised to feel a little buzz.

“More?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It was very nice, but I think one glass is enough.”

“I’ll only have two,” he said. “I may have to give an encore presentation. I sang down to eighty-three bottles of beer on the wall.” He set down his wine and stood in front of her. “Dance with me,” he said.

Off guard, Alisa didn’t know what to say. Her instinct was to say no. And yes.

“Just one dance,” he said. “I’ve always liked this song.”

He took her in his arms and Alisa tried to listen to the song over the beating of her heart. A woman’s pure voice floated over a guitar and mandolin singing
about a love that was spoken more from action than words.

She fought the spell moving over her. She tried to cling to logic and good sense, but Dylan’s arms felt solid and secure around her. His scent was familiar in a wholly sensual way. She closed her eyes, and for a few moments the music and the man transported her away from pain, away from herself.

His longing for her hung in the air around them, reassuring her, seducing her.

“Come with me to Belize next weekend,” he murmured in her ear.

Surprise raced through her. She opened her eyes. “What?”

“Go with me to Belize. It’s a long weekend, and I want to be with just you.”

Her heart hammered in her throat. Another adventure with Dylan. She wanted to go. She wanted to be with just him, but a slice of doubt and pain cut through her. What if she trusted him and shouldn’t? What if she believed in herself and shouldn’t? Her chest felt tight and heavy, and she was filled with contradictory thoughts.

“I can’t,” she finally said, pulling back from him and hating that she was hurting him. “I could trust you with a million things. I wish I could trust you with me.”

D
ylan’s invitation dangled seductively in the back of Alisa’s mind. Even after Justin and Amy returned from their trip clearly refreshed and she and Dylan parted, Alisa couldn’t stop thinking about his invitation to go to Belize. When they were children, the invitation could have been to go stomping through mud puddles, but the idea was the same. Another adventure with Dylan. For Alisa he had been the ultimate adventure.

She wrestled with good sense and doubts all week. She deliberately made herself remember how terrible she’d felt all those years ago when she’d seen him with that college coed. For some reason, though, she was unable to hang on to the hurt and sense of betrayal quite as easily as she once did.

Friday arrived and she was still conflicted. She watched the clock pass the time he’d told her he would be leaving. Although he’d made it clear he wanted her to come with him, he’d also made it clear he was going with or without her.

She was nowhere near the airport, but she could see him boarding the plane and fastening his seat belt. The flight attendant would pay him extra attention, she thought with a trace of darkness. She could hear the roar of the engines and feel him soar into the air. Without her.

The phone rang and her heart raced. Maybe it was him? Alisa snatched it from the cradle. “Hello?”

“Alisa, darling, Mother, here. When are you coming home so I can see that you are totally okay?”

Alisa swallowed a sigh. She’d been in touch with her mother over the past two weeks since her mother’s return from Europe. Her mother had been appalled to learn of her accident and had wanted to visit Alisa to make sure her daughter was fine, but Alisa had wanted a little more time. “Soon, Mom. Maybe next weekend.”

“What’s wrong with this weekend? It’s Labor Day, after all, and I bet you have an extra day off on Monday.”

“I do, but I thought I’d avoid the travel headaches. How is Louis?” she asked, referring to her stepfather.

“He’s fine when he takes his blood pressure medication.” Her mother paused. “Darling, I don’t want to pry, but you don’t sound happy.”

Alisa smiled sadly to herself. Her relationship with her mother had certainly had its ups and downs, but even so, she could hide very little from her mom. “Dylan invited me to go to Belize with him.”

“Oh,” her mother said and the one word oozed heavy disapproval.

“I said no.”

“Well, I think that was wise. You’ve been through a difficult time and you’re still a bit vulnerable. Dylan just can’t be counted on.”

Alisa chafed at the words. “He has actually been very good to me since the accident. He visited me in the hospital every day and insisted I recover at his home.”

“I know, but in the long run, who knows what he’ll do?”

Her mother’s doubt echoed her own, but she felt compelled to defend him. “He’s a good man. He has grown in a lot of ways.”

“He hurt you terribly,” her mother reminded her.

Alisa felt the familiar stab of pain, but she just couldn’t wallow in it like before. “He did hurt me, but that was one time, a long time ago.”

“But you deserve better,” her mother said.

“That sounds snobby, Mom,” Alisa said.

Her mother sighed audibly. “I wish you had gotten married when—”

“I didn’t want him enough,” Alisa said, and the rest of her sentence hung between them. She hadn’t
wanted her fiancé, but she did want Dylan. “I need to go. I’ll talk to you later. Okay?”

“I need to see my daughter,” her mother said.

“Soon,” Alisa promised, and hung up the phone. She needed to talk to someone with some perspective. Someone who didn’t dislike Dylan but knew he had flaws. She glanced at the clock and knew Kate and Amy would be busy with their families. Maybe she could try to see them tomorrow. She called Amy first, and the woman must have sensed Alisa’s distress. She immediately offered to meet her that night at a bar close to her house.

Alisa was surprised to see Kate at the table with Amy as she walked through the door.

“Ladies’ night out,” Amy announced with a wide smile.

“I feel guilty taking you two away from your families on a Friday night,” Alisa said.

“Don’t,” Kate said. “The guys put in a video for the kids in one room while they sneaked into another room to watch a Braves game. Amy had us over for dinner.”

“I would have invited you, too, but I wasn’t sure if you would end up in Belize,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “So do we need to get you tipsy or are you ready to talk?”

“If ever I needed a clear head, it’s now,” Alisa said.

“Okay, I’ll order a cosmopolitan for myself,” Amy said and leaned back in her chair. “So tell us why
you’re in St. Albans instead of Belize. I can testify from personal experience that it’s a wonderful place to go.”

Tense and uneasy, Alisa pushed her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what to do about Dylan.”

“Do you love him?” Kate asked.

“Yes.”

She blinked, then smiled. “Have you checked the airlines?”

“He has never said he loved me,” she confessed.

Amy looked surprised. “Hmm. You mean aloud?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Dylan may have never said he loved you aloud, but if you look at his actions, he has screamed it.”

Alisa took a moment to digest that.

Kate leaned toward Alisa. “These guys are so confident and successful it’s easy for us to forget that as children they never had anyone they could count on. Commitment is scary for them because they’ve never seen it work out in their own lives.”

Alisa felt a surge of her own fear. “I’m afraid to believe in him,” she confessed.

Kate looked at her with sympathy. “But you love him. So, what’s the alternative?”

“Protecting myself, distancing myself, trying to get past him,” she said, although she didn’t know if she’d ever truly succeed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to live without Dylan. The mere idea felt as if she would be cutting out a huge part of herself.

“Is there any chance you could find what you have with him or something better with someone else?” Kate asked.

Alisa thought for a long moment, but the answer came right away. “No. I need to check the airlines, don’t I?”

Amy nodded. “The feelings I had for Justin scared me so much all I wanted to do was run in the other direction. When I finally ran to him, I wasn’t scared anymore.”

Her heart in her throat, Alisa left on a flight the next morning at the unearthly time of 5:30 a.m. and schlepped through three connections. The last was a puddle jumper from Belize City to the island of Amber Gris Caye.

The island was filled with couples, and the horrible thought hit her that he might not be alone. Banishing the notion from her head, she reminded herself this trip was a risk she was willing to take. Her nerves coiled into a tight knot. Armed with the address of Dylan’s condo, she rode a golf cart from the tiny airport through the dirt streets until she arrived at a well-kept property of white two-story buildings with red roofs. Bougainvillea bloomed at every turn. The island breeze beckoned her toward the ocean, and she decided to look for Dylan there.

Dylan knocked back the last of his third Beliken beer, put the bottle beside him and leaned back in his
lounge chair. Belize offered the best breeze in the world. He was convinced it was therapeutic, and if he was lucky it would temporarily blow thoughts of Alisa from his mind. Every time he thought of her, he ached. He deliberately closed his eyes.

“Just tell me you’re here by yourself,” a woman’s voice said.

Alisa’s voice. He was imagining things. He shook his head. Hell, he’d needed this trip more than he’d originally thought.

“I said just tell me you’re here by yourself. They told me the puddle jumpers back to Belize City don’t fly after dark.”

Dylan opened his eyes and saw her standing at the end of his lounge chair. She was holding a piece of luggage in one hand, and she might not know it, but she was holding his heart in the other. He blinked. “If you’re a mirage, baby, keep talking,” he said, and rose from the chair.

“No mirage. I’m real,” she said, and added, “real scared.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. Don’t ever be scared with me.” He pulled her into his arms, unable to believe she’d come. “When did you change your mind?”

“After I argued with my mother and told her what a good man you’ve become.”

Dylan’s heart squeezed so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. He damn well couldn’t speak.

“After I realized you’re the curse that is my cure.
I still haven’t sketched Tonto yet because I used all my paper on you. I thought I was exorcising you from my soul.”

He pulled back to find tears in her eyes. “But you didn’t.”

“No.” She shook her head, her voice breaking. “My soul was trying to tell me how much I love you. You are the one man who has been everything to me, my brother, my friend, my protector, my lover.”

“Omigod,” he said, because it couldn’t be true. She was the wish he couldn’t make, but she’d somehow come true. His own eyes filled with tears. “Omigod,” was all he could say.

He kissed her and their tears mingled on their cheeks. He tasted the salt and wanted to taste her the rest of his life. Suddenly, holding her against him wasn’t enough. He swept her up in his arms and strode to his condo just a few feet away. Pushing the door open, he kissed her again, then kicked the door shut behind him.

There was too much inside him to say, too much not to show. She kissed him as if she meant forever, and Dylan felt a volcano of passion roar through him. They didn’t make it to the bedroom. He pulled off her clothes and she hastily helped rid him of his swimsuit. Her urgency drove him on.

“I love you, Alisa,” he said, following her down on the sofa. “I want to be your everything forever.”

Watching her precious face, drinking in her no-
doubts gaze, he thrust inside her and sealed his declaration.

Two months later Dylan and Alisa were married in the chapel at Granger Hall where it all started. Justin, Amy and their crew were there along with Michael, Kate and Michelle. Happiness was bubbling over. Even Alisa’s mother had accepted Dylan as a son-in-law. After they said their vows, the guests adjourned to a lavish hotel reception.

They ate, they danced, and when Alisa tossed her bouquet, it fell into Horace Jenkins’s hands. The befuddled, brilliant researcher hadn’t known what to do.

Dylan sneaked her away from the party into a closet for a few moments alone. Alisa glanced at the linens piled on the shelves and started to laugh. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Yeah. This day is a miracle for me,” he said. “Nobody’s ever loved me enough to make a promise to stay with me forever.”

Alisa’s throat knotted with emotion. There was so much she still wanted to give him. So much she would give him. “I guess that makes me the luckiest person in the world, doesn’t it?”

His eyes grew shiny with unshed tears, and he shook his finger at her. “You weren’t supposed to do that,” he told her.

“Do what?”

“This was supposed to be my turn to tell you how much I love you and how important you are to me.”

“Oh,” she said, touching his cheek. “When do I get my turn?”

“Tonight in your bed in that little black silky thing I saw in your lingerie drawer.”

She smiled. Even though they’d made love in her bed several times, Dylan had insisted they spend their wedding night there. “Does that mean you want me to stop telling you how much I love you?”

“Never,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Never stop. And I never will, either.”