Can't Hurry Love (18 page)

“Wait!” This time it was Giuliana chasing Liam through the vineyard. She put on a burst of speed at the same time that he gave up the race. Her feet stuttered in the dirt as he halted, his back to her, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

Wary, she approached him slowly. When she’d gone outside to find the men following that second phone call, Penn had told her Liam had taken off . . . after he’d overheard her conversation with Allie.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still four feet away.

He twitched. “Oh, shit.” His right palm swiped over his face. “Stevie and Jack lost their baby?”

“No!” She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “No. Jack called. She and the baby are fine. They recommend a few days rest as insurance.”

“All right.” He nodded, his back still turned. “Okay.”

She took another step closer, her gaze on his wide back and the masculine jut of his shoulder blades. Sometimes she forgot he was the companion of her childhood, the young boy who’d been the acknowledged leader of their little band. His style was never the ruthless dictator. Little Allie always got her turn. If there was some special treat to share, he’d established the rule that whoever divvied up the pieces had to take the final portion. You’d never seen such equal-sized slices.

Before he’d become the man whose bed she’d been sharing for the past weeks, he’d been the teenager who walked her across the chasm between girlhood and womanhood. Her passionate nature had advocated flinging herself across the breach, but Liam had kept a gentle hold on her. Never taking too much when she would have given him all much too soon.

For the first time she wondered, what had she ever given him in return?

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“For what?” He turned to face her.

“For telling Allie . . . for Penn overhearing . . . for sharing a secret that was private between us.”

He was already shaking his head. “Don’t apologize. I’m beginning to see that keeping secrets hasn’t done either one of us any good.”

The sale of the Tanti Baci land. In all the upheaval she’d forgotten that everyone knew about that now.
Oh, God.

Liam lifted a hand, then. Good-bye? He turned away.

“Wait!” she called again.

His back stiffened. He glanced back. “Why?”

She remembered what he’d said after that other vineyard pursuit. “Because it’s time.” It was a repeat of his words. “Because we can’t go on like this. You just said it, the secrets aren’t doing either of us any good. Neither is not talking about . . . what we lost.”

“It’s too late, Jules.” He sounded tired. “So many years have passed. You’ve made decisions, I made huge mistakes . . . what will dredging it up do?”

“I don’t know what for you,” she answered, honest. “For me . . . I think I’ll get back something I’d let myself forget.”

This is what she needed, she realized. Coming back to Edenville and Tanti Baci had reminded her of happy years that she’d banished from her memory in order to banish the pain of that one single summer. But there’d been so many good times and she figured if they could get past this that she’d be able to cherish that happiness once again.

Her hand lifted to touch him, but she let it drop. “You weren’t just the man who left me in Tuscany. Until these last few weeks, I’d forgotten the boy who taught me to fly a kite. The one who was more patient than my dad and let me learn to drive a stick shift on his precious BMW Z3. You were protective and tender and careful with me, always.”

To ensure she kept her hands to herself, she shoved them in her pockets. “What happened that summer, Liam? Where’d that person go?”

His head dropped. “When we were in Tuscany . . .”

“By the time we arrived, you were already turning inward. But after . . . after the miscarriage, you seemed almost uninterested in me. You let go of our marriage so easily.”

He spun to face her. “It wasn’t easy.”

“What was it then?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I made huge mistakes, I admit to that. Let it go.” He turned and started striding off again.

But she’d made that mistake herself before, so, gritting her teeth, she caught up with him. When he glanced over, she avoided his eyes and took up the sunglasses she’d hooked over the neckline of her shirt. Slipping them on, she kept stride with him. Two people headed in the same direction.

On the path that they’d worn when she’d believed their lives were destined for the same road forever.

She scanned the vineyards surrounding them, the organized rows masking the capricious nature of creating wine. She’d not truly understood that, she supposed, until she went to Tuscany and experienced her own failed growing season.

“That girl loved you so much,” she said. “I was devastated when I lost the baby.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think it didn’t kill me that I wasn’t there for you?”

Stretching out her right arm, she let her fingertips tickle the leaves as she passed along the vines. They were both the gatherers of light for the vine and the guardians of the fruit, acting as a natural canopy from the sun’s heat. What fabulous romantic partners they were—being providers as well as protectors.

Liam had been those two things to her, and she’d thought, then, that she
did
know him. So what came after didn’t add up. It never had.

“Were you ashamed of me?”

He stopped short. “What? No!”

“Then why did you want us to keep our marriage a secret? Because I was too young, you said.” Which, in hindsight, didn’t make a lot of sense. But she’d thrown herself forward without thinking too hard, being her impetuous Italian self.

“You
were
too young,” he muttered, starting to walk again. “I should never have come up with that stupid idea to go to Reno.”

“If I recall, it was my stupid idea.” She felt her mouth curve into a smile. “Face it, Liam, we should have just had sex and not worried about a marriage certificate first.”

“I was trying to do the right thing.” He slid a look at her and it held a spark of amusement. “But you were hot-blooded. Insistent. Dissatisfied with anything but everything.”

“You say it like it was a bad thing.” She could be kind, she found, to her younger, ardent self. That girl had suffered the devastating loss of her mother and then found such joy again in life with the person she loved. “Did my passion embarrass you?”

He let out a wry laugh. “Clearly, you have never been a twenty-year-old man.”

“And yet you didn’t want anyone to know we’d eloped.”

He hesitated.

“After everything, I think you owe me an explanation.” She steeled herself, unsure what to expect.

His head ducked. “You’ll think I’m a fool.”

“It’s better than me thinking you’re snobby, arrogant, conceited, self-important, egotistical—”

“You can stop now.”

“—condescending, bigheaded, overly proud—”

“I wanted to keep it safe.”

“It?” She held her breath.

“Us.” He hesitated. “If it was a secret, it belonged to us alone. No one could screw it up, no one could pass judgment—”

“Now you’re thinking about your parents.”

He retreated into silence for a moment, then spoke again. “I was afraid my father was going to fuck up my marriage, just like he’d done with his own.” Liam’s voice was bitter. “Looks like I was right.”

Giuliana thought back to that summer in Italy. “You said your dad wanted you back in the States. Just a few days, you said.” Now that she knew more about Liam’s relationship with his father, she could guess why he’d returned. “He wanted you to—what? Cover for him again?”

“Something like that.” They’d reached the side gate at his house, and Liam unfastened the latch and held it open for her. They crossed into the courtyard and the breeze moved the fountain’s shower of water so that the veil of drops shifted right and then shifted back, like a swarm of bees operating in unison. Liam stared at the feature as if he’d never seen it before. “Dad’s latest paramour was threatening to tell my mother about the affair. I was supposed to come home and soothe the waters.”

Giuliana stilled. Something about what he’d said and the angry thread in his voice . . . She glanced at him, but, as usual, could read nothing in the carved mask that was his profile. “Soothe . . .” She felt a little sick as a thought invaded her mind. “Soothe
her
waters? The other woman’s?”

“I told you!” he burst out. “I told you I worried he’d dirty what we had, somehow.”

“Liam, you wouldn’t—”

“I didn’t.” His hand slashed out and he moved away from her. When his calves hit the edge of one of the chaise lounges, he dropped onto the cushions and put his head in his hands.

“Liam . . .” She sat beside him. This wasn’t her childhood friend or the love of her teenage years. This stranger was the man she’d never allowed herself to know. The hot-blooded, reckless young woman she’d been had hurt too much to stick around long enough to meet him. “You said that maybe losing the baby was for the best.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. That you thought so . . . that maybe I let you think so . . . that was just another of my mistakes.”

She lifted a hand to touch him, then let it fall to her lap. “What
did
you mean, Liam?”

“That it was best we didn’t stay together.” He drew his fingers through his hair, then turned his head to look at her. Control was written in the stark lines of his face. His expression was composed, his blue eyes a cool glacial lake. They were fixed on her face. “That summer I came back early from Tuscany so he wouldn’t hurt my mother—and what happened? I hurt you instead.”

“Liam . . .” Her hand crept toward him.

He jerked away. “Don’t. Don’t touch me. I’ll screw that up, too. Don’t you see? I’m so much like him, hurting the people I care for, messing up my very own family.”

Her mouth was dry. “Losing the baby wasn’t your fault.”

“Failing you was. I’m so like him. That’s what I worried about and why I let you go. I’m so fucking like him!”

His eyes blazed blue and it took her a moment to realize there were tears in them.

And in that brightness she saw the stark emotion that he’d disguised for the last year. In them was raw pain, boundless disappointment, a river of regrets she supposed they both deemed impossible to ford.

She’d been angry at his icy control, but she’d give her soul to not see beyond it now. Liam’s inner life sliced hers open. Love leaked out, and her head went dizzy with it.

I’m still in love with him,
she thought, and the knowledge was like an old toothache returning. Familiar. Painful.

She loved him so much that it was a very good thing she’d taken such drastic steps to move out of his life. Leaving meant she couldn’t put her already-damaged heart on the line again. Leaving meant that this time she’d be turning her back on Liam instead of the other way around. It was for the best, just as he’d said.

But her gaze didn’t stray from his tense shoulders as he strode off. And she discovered she was still reckless enough to rise to her feet and follow him. Perhaps they both might feel better if she offered the comfort they could have used ten years before.

17

In the steamy shower stall, hot water cascaded over Liam’s body. It rinsed the soap from his skin and suds circled the drain at his feet. He’d lathered up three times already and still didn’t feel clean, but the unwanted emotion that had welled up in the courtyard had receded once more to its dark place. He could breathe again.

Once the valves were flipped off, he stepped out and grabbed two towels. One went around his waist, the other he ran over his chest and then through his hair. The bathroom door opened into his bedroom with a pop.

In her jeans and T-shirt, Giuliana was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the big unmade bed, her feet bare of anything but cherry pink toenail polish. He shifted back, then rethought his retreat. Taking another few steps forward into the room, he crossed his arms over his chest and trained his gaze on her face. “What are you doing in here?”

She lifted a delicate shoulder. “This is where I’ve been sleeping.”

He assumed that was over. He wanted that to be over, didn’t he? The closeness of sex and sleep was something he couldn’t risk anymore, not when all that old pain was finding it so easy to slip its locks. “We’ll move you back to the guest room.”

“It won’t change anything,” she said.

He was afraid she was right, but he didn’t want to go there with her. When he’d left the courtyard, he’d hoped to leave all the revelations of their conversation there, too. Revisiting it was just asking for trouble. So he played dumb. “Change what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her eyebrows drew together and her nostrils flared in a dramatic fashion. It was one of those expressive, Baci faces that used to make him laugh. Giuliana could communicate whole stories with just a flutter of her extravagant eyelashes, and it had fascinated him, accustomed as he was to silent family meals where no one said really anything, even when their mouths were moving.

Clearly she was irritated with him and a little impatient. “Liam,” she said. “You can put me out in a storage shed, but it won’t change . . . Never mind. I just thought you could use a friend right now.”

He didn’t need anyone for anything. He’d made damn sure to become self-sufficient in the last ten years. “We’re not friends, Jules.”

“We used to be.”

“We used to be a lot of things and ‘used to be’ is the operative phrase, isn’t it?” He had the icy tone down pat.

But it didn’t scare her off. She scooted on her cute little ass, bringing herself closer to the end of the bed. “Look. We have a history. Nobody could understand that history better than me. I thought if you needed to talk . . . I could listen. Maybe . . . maybe I could . . .”

She’d run out of fuel, probably due to his impersonal, implacable stare. Perfect. The quicker she gave up and got out, the quicker he could get on with his life. The more she was close to him, the more she rubbed against him, the more he discovered his personal demons were able to escape that place where he’d bottled them in the back of his mind.

“While I appreciate the offer, Jules,” he said, walking toward the door that led into the hall, “no.” With a flip of his wrist, he turned the knob and held it open. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

She climbed off the bed. “Fine,” she said, visibly wounded by the rebuff.

He didn’t want to feel regret about that, either. So he tamped it down, too, and watched her cross the carpet. For just a second, he allowed the image of her in his bedroom to imprint on his memory, like the indentation of her head on the pillow beside his. His lungs inhaled her scent as she passed.
Good-bye,
he whispered inside his mind, crowding close as she crossed the threshold so he could take in a final breath of her.

She whirled then, her dark hair winging outward. “You don’t have to be this way—” she started, her voice hot. Her wild hand gesture caught on the towel around his waist.

It started to slip. Too late, he reached for it but missed the falling fabric.

Giuliana didn’t seem to notice. “I only wanted to make you feel better . . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze dropped, taking in his nudity. “Oh.”

Her scent, her nearness, her entire pretty package had already acted upon him. His cock was rising as she watched and he was helpless to stop it. Damn! He wasn’t supposed to be this vulnerable. So she had to go. Now.

With deliberation, he palmed the stiff jut of his flesh, knowing just how to get rid of her. “If you want to make me feel better,” he said in a hard voice, “there’s just one thing I need.”

Her eyes still downcast and her attention on his moving hand, she flushed.

His voice hoarsened. “It’s the only thing I want from you, sweetheart.”

“Really?” She sounded wistful.

“Only.” He had to be strong.

For another moment, she looked. Then her gaze rose. They stared at each other for a second, longer moment. He continued stroking his cock, doing what he must to drive her away.

Her tongue slipped out to moisten her lower lip. “It would be my pleasure,” she whispered, moving his hand to replace it with hers.

He swallowed his groan. “Giuliana . . .”

“Shh.” Her other palm pushed against his chest and he stepped backward. She kept the pressure on his breastbone and he continued moving, until the back of his legs hit the end of the bed. She pushed again, and he fell to the mattress, his erection sliding through the circle of her fingers.

Before he could take a breath, she was crawling over him. Her mouth fastened on his. Without thought, his hands found her waist, slid down to her hips, applied enough pressure to bring her flush against him. The denim of her jeans abraded the skin of his groin, a gentle but cruel pleasure.

He rolled, reversing their positions. Now he was between her parted thighs, his weight flush to her pelvis, his upper body propped on his elbows. “This is how we play this game,” he said.

Her mouth trembled. “Oh, Liam. It’s not a game. It’s never really been a game.”

Of course it was. It had to be.

He slid his hands under her shirt to cup her breasts. The lace of her bra tickled his palms and he quickly found the middle clasp. With a twist of his fingers, he had her silky skin in his possession. Her naked flesh was hot, her nipples budding as he brushed them with his thumbs.

She moaned. The sound galvanized him. He stripped the shirt from her and untangled her arms from her bra straps. Then he mouthed her skin, tasting all the scented sweetness from her throat to her breasts. He ringed them with kisses and then sucked on her nipples, trying to ignore the way her twisting lower body enflamed him.

But he had to taste more of her. The flat of his tongue circled her areolas and then traced a path down the middle of her torso. Kneeling to the side, he laved her navel while he yanked open her jeans and slid them lower on her thighs along with her panties.

He moved to the end of the bed and slipped her clothing all the way off. Then he stroked her legs with the flat of his hands, starting at the top of her small feet, working past her ankles, and smoothing up her calves. He pushed gently on her knees and then her inner thighs, creating a place for himself on the mattress between them.

“Liam . . .” She moved restlessly.

He ignored her, still taking that slow journey over her skin, like a man learning her by touch alone. His fingertips found the hot creases at the juncture of her thighs and she jerked and moaned again. He notched his fingers and thumbs in those sweet crevices and pushed outward to open her more fully to his gaze.

The sound she made was anxious and he soothed her by running one thumb across her clitoris. “It’s going to be so good,” he promised her. “Better than ever.” The last time ever.

She dug her heels into the bed and lifted herself into his teasing thumb. “Don’t make me wait.”

He leaned down to kiss that tender skin between her hipbone and mons. He tongued the heated warmth of it, then sucked there, lightly. She lifted into the stinging kiss and he sucked harder, knowing he’d leave a mark behind.

Wanting to mark her forever.

Forever his.

He kissed the little bruise, then shifted to the other hip. As he kissed her delicate skin, he let his finger slide through the folds of her sex. As he slowly penetrated her slick opening, he deepened the kiss. She lifted into his possession again, impaling herself deeper and pressing her skin into the hot suction of his mouth.

He laved the second mark, his heart pounding against his ribs. It thumped harder as he lifted his head and took her in: flushed face, tight nipples, splayed legs. His hand at her sex, his finger nestled inside her. He drew it out, mesmerized by each emerging wet inch, and then took her again, with two. Her dark curls were damp with her arousal and he ruffled the fingers of his free hand through them, delicately brushing the hard button of her clitoris with each stroke.

Her palms were pressed tight to the sheets at her side. She was trembling, her breasts quivering as desire took her higher. “Liam,” she whispered again, a warning note in her voice.

She was close to climax.

“Not yet.” He took his fingers from her body and brought them to his lips. Her brown eyes were fixed on him as he drew off their wetness into his mouth, tasting her. He savored the flavor and reached for more, curling his fingers as he breached her body again.

Giuliana moaned as he withdrew them and he paused with their glistening length poised over her belly. He could hear his own harsh voice on that day that she’d run from him in the vineyard.
I want to write my name on your belly with your come
.

He saw those possessive marks he’d made inside her hipbones. He saw her tousled hair, her swollen mouth, her breasts.

Her belly, where their child had, so briefly, slept.

Shaking his head, he tried putting that from his mind. This was not a moment for reflection, but for sex. Her skin turned him on, her slender limbs, her taste . . . He put his fingers to his mouth again and sucked it off.

I want to write my name on your belly.

Ten years ago he’d made her pregnant. Now he’d marked her, those kisses flaming against her skin.

Her pretty skin, he reminded himself. Those rounded breasts. The triangle of curls that shielded her pussy.

His gaze traveled up to her liquid brown eyes and he couldn’t separate her anymore into those sexy parts. She was Giuliana, the girl, the woman, the one he’d never been able to forget.

“Liam,” she implored. “Come inside me. Come inside me now.”

But he had one thing to do first. A final secret to tell. His fingers dipped inside her body again. She cried out, her inner muscles clamping down to hold him there. Recognizing that the crisis had arrived, he placed his other hand over the top of her sex, applying steady pressure to her pelvis even as he curled his thumb inside the open petals to stroke the sensitive center.

His breath soughing harshly in and out of his lungs, he watched her gather and make the final leap. Crying out, she tightened around his penetrating digits, bathing them with more fluid.

Her eyes closed as she calmed. He was gentle as he withdrew from her body, but she shuddered anyway and opened her eyes. “I don’t want it to be over,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“We’re not over.” Not yet. He would take her up again, this time with his cock inside that heated channel. But he had something to write first, and he started at that first red passion-bite on her hip, moving across with his forefinger toward the other. She watched through half-closed eyes, her gaze languid.

She didn’t ask what he was doing. It only took a moment. Then he reached for a condom. With a little smile, Giuliana sat up and took it from him. He saw the liquid on her belly glisten as she rolled the rubber over his rock-solid shaft.

And then he was on top of her again, their bodies shifting against each other. She cried out as he entered her. He gathered her closer and buried his face in the shiny length of her hair.

That dark place in his mind opened. Each thrust seems to release another flow of pain from it to mingle with the consuming pleasure of this last episode of sex with his wife. A tender anguish clutched at his heart and that was hurting now, too, so much that he had to hide the dampness in his eyes against Giuliana’s silky locks as he sealed his secret message with the weight of his body against hers.

She was already planning on leaving Edenville. He had no faith that he’d make a better husband now than he had ten years before. But neither fact changed what he’d written across her flat belly, in that place where there could only be honesty between them.

I’ll love you always.