Holiday Romance Collection - 6 Books Bundle (Erotic Romance - Holiday Romance) (3 page)

No! No! No!

“Please,” Jacob groaned against her ear. “Just let me—” his finger moved inside her, stroking her deftly. Her hips arched into his touch, her breath sped up.

The customer called out her name again, louder as if he was walking toward the workroom.

“I’ll be right there!” she called out. Then cleared her throat, pushed away from Jacob, or at least tried to.

“Give me five more minutes,” he whispered in her ear. “I want to hear you come. I love the sound you make. I’ve missed it so much.” He stroked her again, more firmly, added another finger. She gasped again, widened her thighs to take more of his intrusion.

And she wanted him to. Wanted him to take her and make her call his name. Make her scream it. It had been three years.

“I can’t.” Her voice throbbed with regret. “I’m at work.”

He paused a long moment, watching her as the fever of passion slowly faded from his eyes. Jacob’s gaze fastened on her lips, on her nipples visible through her bra and tank top. Slowly, slowly he withdrew his fingers from her body and she ached at the empty feeling they left behind. Watching her, he put his damp fingers to his lips, licked them, sucked them.

“I’ll go,” he said. “But I’ll see you soon.”

He stepped back, allowing her to refasten her jeans with trembling hands, shove her hands through her loosened hair, and jump down from the workbench. Jacob was beautiful. He stood barely three feet away from her, his gaze still hot and hungry on her body, his lips glistening from her body’s desire. The front of his jeans bulged with his own want but he didn’t move, didn’t touch himself. Maeve swallowed. Brushed a hand down the front of her tank top and jeans and took a quick breath before stepping through the doors leading to the front of the store.

“Hello, Mr.
Taylor
.” She greeted one of her regular customers, a man who always stopped by the shop on his way home to buy his wife a bouquet of irises sprinkled with baby’s breath. “Sorry about that. Will it be the usual for you today?”

The rest of her day was a wreck. Maeve could barely recall her name much less tend to the task of running the flower shop after Jacob left. It was a good thing she already had Mr. Taylor’s standing order already in the front cooler and ready to go; otherwise she would have probably given him a bunch of grass and a lollypop instead and called it a day.

She hung up from the latest phone call and began to tidy the store, swept the floors, make sure all the vases had the proper amount of water in them.

It still didn’t seem real or possible that Jacob, the man she had married, the man who they told her had died doing some top secret thing protecting the country, was back in her life. And here in
Miami
.

The last time she saw him was the day he was heading to work. He’d been dressed in a suit, his favorite black Armani, and kissed her at the door, told her again that he’d be gone for a while but would be back in time for Christmas. They’d made love all over the apartment the previous night and some of the morning, making up for the time when they would be apart. If Jacob was being honest with her then, neither of them had anticipated that it would be three years until they would touch each other again.

Maeve turned off the “open” sign after the last customer left nearly half an hour before closing time. She couldn’t stay any longer. She had to admit to herself that she was done. Her mind was scattered beyond all retrieval. She wanted to talk with Jacob. She wanted to find out what happened. She wanted him to know what he did to her with his absence. But she didn’t know when she’d see him again.

She drove the short ten minutes home and crookedly parked her car in front of the garage’s closed doors, not trusting herself to navigate the little red
Toyota
hatchback into the garage without damaging something.

As soon as she stepped into the house, she knew Jacob had been there. It wasn’t in anything she could name, there were no footprints on the white square tiles, the lock to the front door wasn’t damaged, and there was no strong cologne smell in the air. But it was something she’d always been able to do, to sense his presence, even when he was trying to be sneaky.

Maeve put her key on the hook by the front door, dropped her purse on the kitchen counter. Except for the soft jazz playing from the radio that she’d left on in the morning, the little two bedroom bungalow was quiet. Still, she walked through every room in the house, her senses on high alert, wishing for him to be there, sitting in her living room and watching the Discovery Channel like he used to in the early days of their marriage, before he left and never came back.

She was fooling herself, but even that illusion felt good in an odd way. He was here in
Miami
. She was furious at him. They still wanted each other, that much was clear enough. A memory of this afternoon, of his hand pressed against her center, burned through her with a thorough flame. Maeve bit her lip.

But was that basis enough to continue their marriage?

Maeve finished her search of the last room and ended up on the couch, watching the barely-there traffic on the street outside. Children rode by on bicycles. One of her neighbors pulled his silver Volvo sedan into his driveway.

She looked away from the window and a flash of green she had overlooked before caught her eyes and held them. It was a little Christmas tree, barely three feet tall. It sat in a corner of the living room, just to the left of the fireplace she’d never used. Jacob had put the tree there, she was sure of it. He’d decorated the tree with small silver stars and red tinsel. The tree was fake but the present underneath it looked real.

Tears flashed behind her eyes.

“Damn you, Jacob.”

She picked up her cell phone and dialed a number she had memorized a long time ago. When the woman on the other end answered, she only said one thing: “Jacob is back.”

“What?!” Gina’s voice squawked from the phone.

But Maeve couldn’t say anything else. Tears rushed down her face and the harsh sobs she had suppressed earlier that afternoon rushed out to nearly choke her.

“I’ll be right there, honey.” A rush of activity sounded from the other end of the phone. “Just don’t hang up. I’m getting in the car right now, okay?”

Gina arrived barely ten minutes later, letting herself in with the key while the phone was still pressed to her ear. Petite, pretty, and long haired, she flew into the apartment, threw her purse toward the nearby kitchen counter and rushed to Maeve, grabbing her in a fierce hug that left her breathless and made her tears come harder.

“Tell me what happened.”

Maeve took a deep, steadying breath and relayed all the events of that afternoon, including the time she and Jacob had spent in the workroom together. By the time she told her friend everything, she felt calmer, her tears had dried up and she was coherent again. Gina brought her a wet rag for her face and sat once again beside her as Maeve patted the cool towel over her hot cheeks.

“And I know he came into the house when I was at work.”

Gina’s dark eyebrows flew up. “You had no hint at all that he was alive before today.”

“None.”

“He looks okay? Maybe they had him somewhere torturing him for information.”

Maeve stared at her friend in horror. She’d never thought of that.

But then she remembered how Jacob looked, how he acted. He was thinner, but everything was the same. His smile, his grace, the way he touched her.

“I think he’s fine,” she said.

“Oh, good.” Gina squeezed her hand. “Or is that bad?”

Gina had been at her wedding to Jacob nearly five years ago. She’d known him as well as any of Maeve’s friends had known him which was not very well. He was sociable and friendly, but kept to himself or stayed in the company of his own friends he’d made through the job. But she knew her friends—Gina and Sasha, in particular—had liked him, and thought he was sexy the first time Maeve brought him around to meet them. They’d even been happy for her as the first of the three to get married.

“I hate this,” Maeve said.

Gina shook her head. “You love this. You’re lucky. No matter what happens, you’ve been given a second chance at your great love.” Gina looked wistful, a touch of envy shining in her brown eyes. “That’s a big deal.”

Maeve bit her lip as she felt new tears burn. She blinked them away before they had a chance to fall. She nodded. “I know that the—”

A loud knock on her door interrupted her. Before she could get up from the couch, Gina patted her hand.

“Relax. Don’t get up. I’ll get it for you.”

Maeve watched her friend walk through the living room, listened to her footsteps against the tile floors as she made her unhurried way toward the front door. The latch released, the door squeaked open. She heard Gina’s low gasp of surprise. Her soft voice. An answering low baritone. The door closing. Then her footsteps once again across the tile.

She came around the corner, her face a perfect picture of conflict. Gina gestured helplessly over her shoulder. Jacob appeared behind her in a pale blue buttoned up shirt and jeans, hands in his pockets, face impassive. Beautiful. His dark hair was damp like he’d just come from a shower. Tiny lines radiated from the corners of his eyes, the only sign of time passing for him. Three years. Three years when her entire world had been turned upside down, when his death benefits had bought her this new house and so much unhappiness. Three years of her barely caring for herself, letting her hair grow wild when she’d have preferred to keep it in a short pixie, her once healthy shape whittled away to barely a hundred and ten pounds of skinny. Three years. And after all that time and so much change, here he was.

Maeve felt the trembling start again. In her legs, her arms, even her heart seemed to vibrate on a new frequency in her chest. She was glad she was sitting down or she would have surely collapsed and smashed her face into the tile floor.

Gina looked at Maeve’s face then turned to look at Jacob. “I think it’s time for me to go.” She gathered up her purse and sweater, clasped Maeve in a gentle hug. “This is the right call, yes?” She smelled like baby lotion and the sun.

Maeve nodded, unable to say anything.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Gina said and she headed for the door.

They both seemed to be waiting for Gina to leave. Once the door closed behind her, Jacob came fully into the living room and sat down on the couch with nearly a foot of space between him and Maeve. She leaned back into the couch and crossed her arms in her lap, relieved he wasn’t trying to pick things up where they left them that afternoon.

“You deserve an explanation,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Although I can’t tell you everything that happened to me over the last few years, I’m going to tell you what I can and hope you understand.”

He looked into her face as if really considering what he was going to tell her and exactly how much of the story to tell. Then he seemed to make a decision.

“I had to do some work in the
Middle East
. Something no one was supposed to know about. The mission went seriously off the tracks, a few people died. My superiors told me to go underground and stay out of the States for while.” Jacob paused. “They warned me not to contact you or it could put you in danger.  I believed them and stayed away. I had no idea they told you I was dead.” His eyes searched her face for some reaction to his words. “They finally let me go. I went home directly from the airport. When your family told me you moved, I came down here for you right away. I asked them not to tell you anything. This is news you had to hear from me.”

The past few years of her life, the other side of it, encapsulated in a few sentences.
My superiors told me to go underground. They finally let me go.
All the while, she had been mourning a husband and losing a life. And those agents on her doorstep on that long ago November morning had lied to her. Maeve swallowed heavily.

“So why are you back here?” she asked. “To do this to me again in a couple more years?” Her hair tumbled around her face as she shook her head. “I can’t take any more of this. Hell, I can’t take it now.” Very deliberately, she did not look at Jacob.

She hugged herself in the warm fold of the couch. The man she’d waited for, longed for, wished back into her life was here in her living room and he might as well have been on Mars.

“I left the agency.” Jacob straightened in the sofa next to her. “There is no next time.”

A sigh left her mouth in an explosion of sound. She felt as if she would fly apart at any moment, like she would separate into unknown pieces and cease to be. Was this relief she felt? Was it anger? Was it betrayal? His job meant more to him than she did. Was that it? Maeve dropped her head into her hands as she felt the tears threaten again. This fragile person was not her. Not at all. She stood up, turned her face from him and rushed from the living room, through the hallway, and to her bedroom. The door closed behind her with a click.

She sank into the bed and allowed the tears, finally, to fall. Maeve remembered the nights she cried herself to sleep from missing him so much; the days of wishing so hard he was near, days when she thought she felt him, imagined him touching her, saying her name one last time.