Coming Home to You (20 page)

“Or some nosy reporter stealing your bacon?”

“Yes,” he said, chuckling. “This freedom’s a wonderful thing after years of having to hide inside my house in Chattanooga. It makes up for not being able to sing and play publicly.”

“Honestly?”

“Yes, but…I have to admit I didn’t realize how lonely this life would be. In some ways I’m still a prisoner, because I’m shackled by the lies I’ve told. And any woman who shares my life would also have to share my lies and honor my decision not to have children. I know it’s not fair to ask anyone to do that, to live with me knowing that at any time my secret could be discovered and our lives could change. She’d have to be pretty special. And she’d have to love who I am
now
and not the rock star.”

His eyes told her he wanted her to be that woman.

“James, I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Yes, you do, but obviously you’re not ready to say it. I can wait.” He took her hand, lightly rubbing his thumb across her fingers. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to spoil the night for you.”

“You haven’t. I’ve loved every minute of it.”

“You’ll love this next part even more. The meteors are really starting to pick up. Want to watch a country boy’s idea of a show?”

“Country boy, I wouldn’t miss it.”

H
E’D BROUGHT
six quilts, enough for padding underneath them and cover to keep them warm. Until she was lying next to him in the makeshift bed, James hadn’t considered how difficult it would be to keep his hands to himself. Within minutes he’d shed his jacket, the heat of his desire making him feel like one of those wieners roasting over the fire.

Bad analogy, he realized as he shifted to relieve the pain of his arousal.

Despite the cold, he could easily make love to her right here, and he sensed that it wouldn’t take much
on his part to persuade her. He was, after all, an expert at talking women out of their clothes. But this wasn’t just some woman he’d picked up to ease his need for sex. This was the woman he loved. He didn’t want to hurt her. Before, when she thought he was Bret, they had moved too quickly toward a sexual relationship. When, or if, they had one now would depend on her.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Her voice broke the silence.

“No, why?”

“You’re so restless.”

Restless
wasn’t the word for it.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Are you comfortable? Not too cold?”

“Too warm, actually. I think I’ll take off this jacket.”

Better leave it on if you know what’s good for you
.

“I’ll help you.”

She sat up and he pulled off the jacket, tossing it at their feet. Settling down under the quilts again, she sighed, “Much better.”

A large glowing light raced across the sky. “Fire-ball!” they shouted in unison.

“I saw it first,” Kate said.

“No way. You only yelled after I did.”

“I did not! I saw it at least a second before you did. I can count more shooting stars than you any day of the week, Hayes.”

“No way, Morgan. You’re on.” Two more shot through the sky and he called them out. She saw the next one first, but then he saw two more. “See, I’m already ahead,” he teased. “When you lose, you have
to cook a special dinner for me. I want something Creole or Hawaiian with a fancy name I can’t pronounce and lots of shrimp in it. And you have to wear a costume to serve it. A very tiny costume.”

She cackled about that. “And if I win, what do you do for me, Hayes? And don’t say cook. You used up the coat hangers, so you’ve exhausted your skills in that department.”

“Anything you want. Just name it.”

She was silent.

“Well, what’s the matter, Morgan? Can’t decide?”

“No,” she said softly. And then she added something that made him certain he would never, ever love a woman the way he loved her. “I can’t think of anything you haven’t already given me.”

S
HE NEEDED
to get some work done, but as she sat that next afternoon at the computer in her motel room, Kate’s thoughts kept drifting to the night before.

James hadn’t brought her back until the wee hours of the morning, and even then, it was much too soon to suit her. What a magical night. She could have stayed forever.

Deciding she wasn’t going to do anything productive today, she shut off the computer. The clock on the bedside table said four-thirty, and already the winter sky was darkening. James expected her at the house by six.

She needed to call Marcus and check in, but that was a daily chore she’d come to dread. Lying to Marcus, pretending she was hard at work following up with additional questions for the book, was killing her.

With a heavy burden of guilt, she called and was relieved to find him already gone from the office and not yet home. “Tell him everything’s fine and that I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” she told his wife, hanging up.

She took her bath and was about to get dressed when the telephone rang. She answered, expecting it to be Marcus calling her back.

“Miss Kate?” a voice said.

“Yes, this is Kate.”

“This is Aubrey.”

“Oh, Aubrey, hi. I didn’t recognize the voice.”

“Miss Kate, I’m sorry to bother you, but…well, somethin’s happened and I didn’t know what to do, who else to call.”

Kate’s heart nearly stopped beating. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Bret, ma’am.”

“Oh, no! Is he hurt?”

“No, ma’am, calm down. He’s not hurt. Well, not the way you think. But I’m pretty sure he needs you to come out.”

“Aubrey, tell me what’s wrong.”

“That Jane lady called, the one who runs the kids’ ranch. Seems Henry’s mama decided to ’fess up to what she done. She’s signed papers sayin’ she don’t want to be Henry’s mama no more.”

“But, Aubrey, that’s wonderful news!”

“Yes ma’am, I thought so, too. At first. Only that Miss Jane said they have a family to adopt Henry and they sent him off.”

“Sent him off permanently?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’s gone already. And poor Bret, they won’t tell him nothin’, not even where the boy’s gone. He’s takin’ it real hard.”

Kate sank to the bed. She’d feared this might happen, but she’d resisted telling James, not wanting to be the one to give him such news. With no claim on the boy, James had no legal right to know where Henry was going or who he’d be living with.

“Aubrey, where’s Bret now?”

“I left him at the house. He asked me and Willie to go home early, said he had to be alone, but, ma’am, he’s hurtin’. He’s in a real bad way. I think maybe you’re the only one who can help him right now. He loves you. You know that, don’t you, ma’am?”

“Yes, Aubrey, I know that.”

“If you have any kind of feelin’s for him…”

“I’m on my way.”

Darkness had fallen by the time she arrived, and no light came from the house. She’d scolded James frequently about never locking his doors, but tonight she was thankful he hadn’t listened to her. She found him sitting in his bed, barely visible in the dark.

When she reached for the light switch by the door, he said, “Please, don’t turn it on.” His voice was flat and lifeless. “They took Henry away, Kate.”

“I know. Aubrey called and told me.” She walked to the bed and sat down. She couldn’t see his features clearly, but she located his hands and held them.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I am alone,” he said in anguish. “Being alone is my hell for what I did to my brother.”

She leaned forward and wrapped him in her arms, laying her head on his chest. His soul was tortured, not only over Henry, but over his brother’s death, and he had a long way to go before he could deal with the grief and guilt. He’d never really faced it, despite what he might believe.

He held on to her, trembling. “You’re not alone,” she whispered. “You have your family. You have me.”

“Don’t pity me, Kate. I can’t stand it.”

“Pity? I feel so many things for you. Admiration.
Awe. I feel more passion and love for you than I could ever express. But pity? No. Never that.”

She felt his tears rather than heard them. They slid silently down his face and fell on her like drops of sweet gentle rain. “You love the cult idol James Hayes,” he said brokenly. “You love an image. That’s not who I am.”

“Yes. I love him. He stole my heart years ago and no man has been able to even come close to taking his place.” She lifted her head and framed his face with her hands. “Until now. Until I looked beyond the image and fell in love with the man. I love you, James. I love the tender side of you that finds so much pleasure in growing your little vegetable garden. I love the way you’ve given yourself to those kids at the ranch, and how you treat that ugly mutt like it has a mile-long pedigree.
You’re
my hero. Not the man I once knew as James Hayes. The love I have for who you
were
pales beside the love I have for who you
are
.”

He didn’t speak and she sensed his turmoil. He wanted to believe her, but he was afraid. So much had come between them. So much still threatened them.

“I guess,” she said, throwing his own words back at him, “I’ll just have to show you.”

H
ER FINGERS WENT
to his shirt to undo the buttons and lay it open. James lost his breath and his voice with the touch of her palms against his bare skin and the tender way she stroked him.

“Your body is so incredible,” she told him. She ran her fingers across muscles formed by years of
digging fence post-holes and tossing seventy-pound bales of hay. “I want to touch and kiss every inch of skin. I want to feel your naked flesh move against my own, to know what it’s like to have you explode deep inside me.”

He could do nothing but wait in tormented anticipation as she bent and kissed his neck…his shoulder…his midriff. She kissed down the center of his chest, then moved lower to gently graze him with her teeth through his jeans.

He almost leaped off the bed.

She unfastened his belt, pulled it from his pants and tossed it aside, then lowered his zipper. “I fell in love with you even when I thought you were Bret,” she said. “It drove me crazy not being unable to separate my feelings for you and him. When the man I thought was Bret kissed me, I saw the face of James from long ago. And when I thought of James, Bret would somehow force himself into his place. That day at the pond. That’s why I called you by your real name. My heart knew who you were even when my eyes couldn’t see it.”

Raising her head, she teased his nipple with her tongue, and still he was so moved by her words of love, her desire for him, that he was unable to respond. Never had he wanted a woman more or felt so unsure of his ability to please her.

“Say you believe me, James. Say you believe that I love you. The real you.”

She kissed him on the mouth, thrusting her hand through the open fly of his jeans to stroke him intimately at the same time.

Like a spark that ignites the flame, her touch ignited
something hot and raw that had been simmering below the surface since he’d met her. “Katie,” he moaned, returning the kiss. He could no longer hold back. He brought her into his arms with an urgency born of passion too long denied.

Clothes quickly came off and were thrown aside until nothing but skin met skin and their bodies were free for each other to touch. He pulled her down beside him on the bed and caressed her breasts and the velvet-soft hair at the juncture of her thighs, his fingers serving as his eyes in the darkness. He wanted to memorize every part of her, to know by heart the shape of her legs, the curve of her hip. He already knew every freckle on her face. Were there freckles elsewhere? If so, he’d find every one. He’d kiss them, commit them to memory.

“God, how I’ve wanted this,” he said, his voice cracking in his attempt to control the desire that threatened to overwhelm him. His mouth followed the trail his fingers had blazed, sucking hungrily at her breast before moving between her legs to open and taste her. His hands and mouth played her like an instrument. Her moans, her words of love and passion, were the music, rising in crescendo toward climax.

He wanted to feel her come while his mouth was on her, but she urged him onto his back. “No, James, you lie there and let me love you,” she said. He protested, but then her mouth closed over him, and he could no longer speak.

Lord help him, it was an exquisite sensation to be treated so by someone you loved. He was an expert
at giving pleasure, but rarely had any woman put his pleasure above her own.

With one swift movement, he picked her up and set her on top of him, easing into her as he brought her down. She gasped as he made his entrance and he nearly spilled into her before he’d even thrust.

She began to move against him and he quickly stilled her. “Kate, wait, I…hell, I don’t have any protection.”

“Too late,” she said with a small breathless laugh. “Now that I’ve finally got you, I’m not letting you go.” She tightened her muscles around him to emphasize the point and began to rock her hips, slowly at first, then more feverishly. He met her passion stroke for stroke as the old bed squeaked its approval.

He turned on the lamp then, wanting the light, wanting to see her face in its soft glow as she moved above him with her long hair a waterfall across her bare skin. Like the rest of her, her breasts were small and beautifully formed. The hair between her legs was pale and he touched her there, finding the hidden bud of sensitivity and rubbing it with his thumb to the rhythm of her movement.

She held his gaze, letting him know without words how she felt about him, how she felt about what he was doing to her. The look on her face sent him to the edge, and he grabbed her hips and moved her faster. The control he’d carefully honed over the years had deserted him the moment he’d felt what it was like to have her close around him.

He tried to hold back, but the powerful orgasm that ripped through him was stronger than his will. His
release triggered her own, and she flung back her head and cried out his name.

She collapsed onto his chest and lay there motionless. He, too, was spent, unable to move.

“Do you believe me?” she said after several minutes, still unmoving.

“Yes,” he said with genuine awe. “I believe.”

He lifted his hand to stroke the back of her head. For the first time in years he felt almost happy. And it was because of this woman who’d fallen in love with him. Twice.

J
AMES JERKED AWAKE
. The bed was empty, but the sheets still held the heat of Kate’s body where she’d lain against him, her feet tucked under his legs to keep them warm and her arm draped over his chest.

“Kate?” he called out in concern.

“I’m here.”

He looked over his shoulder at the window. She was curled on the old padded love seat with a quilt wrapped around her. The night had no moon, but the curtains were open and the yard light filtered through the glass to surround her in a pale, almost unearthly glow.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking. Worrying about Henry.”

“Come back to bed where it’s warm.”

She held the quilt open in silent invitation for him to join her, and he got up and went over, squeezing his long body onto the love seat behind her. He pulled her back against his chest and adjusted the quilt. Her hair was sweet-smelling and soft and he buried his face in it.

They sat listening for a long time to the sounds of the old house and the beating of each other’s hearts, knowing without saying it that these idyllic hours together were the calm before the storm and should therefore be savored.

She let out a sigh. “I wish we could stay like this forever. We could lie here in each other’s arms and forget about the things that have hurt us, that will hurt us.”

He put his face against hers. “You’re not only talking about Henry, are you?”

“No, I was thinking about everything, about our families and what we’re going to tell them about us. And this damn book… I have an obligation to my publisher, but I don’t know how to fulfill it without exposing you, which I won’t do.”

Sorrow tinted her voice, a sorrow that cut him to the quick because he was responsible for it. The enormity of their problems had hit her and she was wondering, like him, how they were going to get past them.

He kissed her cheek. “I don’t have answers, Kate. I hate asking you to lie for me, but James Hayes has to remain dead.”

“I know he does, but it bothers me that people will never have the chance to hear those wonderful songs you’ve composed in the last few years. And they’ll continue to think you were an addict. You’ve been branded a hypocrite for using drugs while preaching against them. That really galls me.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I care. I don’t want them to remember you like that. You’ll spend the rest of your life making
sure the world remembers Bret with kindness and that he leaves the right legacy, but what about you? What about
your
legacy? You deserve to be remembered as the gifted, decent man you are, not as a rock star with a drug habit. I want people to know the love you have for your family, how you tried to help Bret with his problems and the compassion you showed Lauren, despite the fact that she betrayed you. But I don’t see any way to tell those stories without revealing the source of the information.”

“You’re getting yourself worked up and it’s not going to help.”

“I know, but I hate the unfairness of it. I started this project to give you back the respect you’ve been denied, and unless I finish it and tell the truth, I can’t do that.”

“I don’t need what you’re trying to give me, Kate.”

“But
I
need it, James. I need to give it to you. You were right when you accused me of being obsessed with this book. I
am
obsessed, because it represents my love for you. I want to clear your name.”

He understood, he supposed. If their positions were reversed and Kate’s reputation had been unfairly tarnished, he’d want to do whatever he could to set the record straight. But he’d deserved some of the bad things the media had written about him, and he didn’t care what people remembered.