The Promise (14 page)

“I really like this place,” she murmured, drawing her knees up to her chest and gazing out at the sea. “It has a cozy, secluded feeling to it. Thank you for bringing me here. And thank you also for the picnic. It was very thoughtful of you.” Listening to her, he realized that despite the softness of her voice there was a formality to what she was saying. It was as if she were a guest thanking her host. The idea made him angry, and he tried to understand why.

He
was
playing the part of host, he supposed, but under the circumstances, surely it seemed normal. After all, he knew SwanSea and she didn’t. He could show her things she wouldn’t otherwise know existed. Still, the normal roles of guest and host implied a certain distance between them. Could that be why he was angry?

“You know,” Sharon said reflectively, “family lore has it that my great-aunt Clarisse never visited SwanSea. I wish she could have.”

“Do you know why she didn’t?”

“Apparently she had the opportunity and turned it down. Her relationship with Jake pretty much ended when he graduated from Harvard. Her choice, not his.” Her mouth twisted, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “I remember my father yelling at me how inconceivable it was to him that two women from the same family could have
both
bungled landing a Deverell man.” Her bark of laughter expressed anything but amusement.

Conall’s expression hardened. “I don’t want to upset you, Sharon, but I think what your father did was despicable. Turning your back on your own child at a time when they desperately need you is beyond my comprehension. If he wasn't dead, I think I would kill him myself.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“He was my father, Conall, no matter what he did.”

“That’s right, and you were his daughter, dammit. You shouldn’t have had to go through what you did alone.”

His vehemence surprised her. “It's over.” 

“Maybe, but you still seem pretty much alone to me.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He turned to her, obviously troubled. “I know the baby wasn’t mine, but shortly after I beat the hell out of Mark, someone told me that he left the country. I—” He broke off.

“Yes?” she prompted, uncertain what he was trying to say.

“I knew nothing about the situation with your parents, but knowing that the baby’s father was gone as I did, I should have checked on you to make sure you had everything you needed. It would have been the decent thing to do.”

She shook her head. “There was too much anger and pain between us for either of us to try and do the ‘decent’ thing.”

He took her arms in a hard grip, his eyes glittering. “But don’t you see? I should have done more for you. If I had, maybe you wouldn’t have lost your baby.”

She raised her hand and curved her palm along his jaw. “No, Conall. The doctor said it was no one’s fault. Nothing I did or didn’t do. Nothing anyone did or didn’t do.” Sadness entered her voice. “He said when a woman miscarries that early In a pregnancy, there is usually a good reason, and that I shouldn't allow myself to agonize over it.”

“And were you able to take his advice?”

“As time went on, it got easier.”

“Dear God, but I wish things could have been different!”

She was stunned. Never in a million years would she have Imagined that they would be having this conversation. Never in a million years would she have imagined that
she
would be trying to comfort him.

“Don’t dwell on it, Conall. I don’t.”

“Don’t you?”

She shook her head. “No. I went forward and built a new, shinier life.”

His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to understand something. “But you’re here with me now. Isn’t that, in a way, going backward?” 

She'd wondered the same thing more than once. “If that’s what I’m doing, it’s only for a very short while and for a definite purpose.”

Irritation crept along his nerves, but he pushed his annoyance away in favor of asking her something he’d been wondering about for some time. “Do you think what we felt for each other back then was really love?”

This question was easier for her to answer. “Absolutely. Just because it was a first love didn't make it any less love. There’s nothing more intense and wondrous than a first love. We were caught up in a whirl of excitement and expectation. The whole world looked different back then.” His lips curved softly as he thought about what she’d said. “It did, didn’t it?”

Old resentments were fading. Old pain was breaking apart and dissolving. And she wasn’t sure if that was good. “It was a time that will never come again,” she said firmly. “Nor should it.”

A helplessness swelled up inside Conall, but he told himself he had to be mistaken about the emotion he was feeling. The only time he had ever truly felt helpless was when the doctor had told him he would never be a father. He’d figure it all out later—the irritation, the helplessness. Right now he had the greatest urge to make love to her.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just concentrate on the present.” He took her hand and brought the palm to his mouth. “Did you know there’s a sweetness to your skin,” he murmured, “and a perfume?”

Her heart jerked against her rib cage. “Is there?”

“Yes, and you know what else? I think we went too fast last night.”

“Do you?”

“All three times,” he said huskily. “This time I want to go slowly. I want to reacquaint myself with your body, relearn you until I know you blind. Then I want to learn new things about you that I never knew before. ”

He lowered her gently onto the blanket and stretched out beside her, his body touching hers. Propping himself up with his elbow, he slipped his hand beneath her sweater and rested it on the firm flesh just below her breasts.

"The inferno we were caught up in last night is out,” he said huskily. “Now let’s rebuild it, degree by degree.”

On the surface he appeared completely controlled. His face showed composure, his voice sounded calm, his hand rested lightly on her. But in the depths of his eyes there was a burning so fierce, she felt it all the way to her toes.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” she murmured. She pulled her sweater up her body, rose slightly, brought It over her head, and tossed It aside. Her bra followed. She lay back down; holding his eyes, watching their color deepen with his every heartbeat and her every movement, she reached down and stripped off her shoes and socks, then unbuttoned her jeans and peeled them off. Finally all that was left was her panties.

In moments she was completely naked.

He sucked In a hard breath. “And here I thought I wanted to undress you slowly. You knew better than I did what I really wanted. You amaze me.”

A wave rolled into shore, and several more; then he lay beside her as bare as she.

He threaded his fingers through hers and raised their joined hands until they rested on the blanket behind her head.

“Last night you told me you wanted me,” he said, his voice thickening with every word. “Tell me again.”

“I want you,” she whispered.

"Tell me again,” he muttered.

“I want you, Conall,” she said softly, as if she were stroking him with her voice. “Now you tell me.”

“Dear God, don’t you know, can’t you see?” His hand rubbed compulsively over her, from below her breasts to down past her navel, then back again. “I’m in pain, I want you so much. But I’m still determined we're going to take this slowly. We have all the time in the world. Last night we were starved for each other. Now we’ve fed.” He bent his head to her breast.

She’d never been in such an erotic situation, she thought hazily, a heated quivering beginning in her. Even the otherworldly tennis court couldn’t match this setting. A cashmere blanket over smooth golden sand. A glorious blue sky dotted by soft white clouds. A cool autumn breeze, a hot driftwood fire. The strength of the ocean. The grace of the sea birds.

Here there was nothing to confine them, no half-shed clothes to hinder their eagerness, no couch to restrict their zeal and energy. No walls to enclose their passion. No glass roof to muffle their cries.

He slid inside her, suddenly and so easily it was almost as if he hadn’t withdrawn from her last night or this morning. It was as if he were a permanent part of her.

Slowly he began to rock inside her. She had intended to do as he had said and set a leisurely pace, to savor him and this lovemaking to the ultimate, like a miser with his gold, like an art student in the Sistine Chapel, like a lover of all that is beautiful standing on the north rim of the Grand Canyon at sunset.

But the pleasure didn’t come leisurely. At his first gentle thrust it tore through her and threatened to rip her apart. She gasped, then moaned, and he covered her mouth with his.

"I love the sounds you make when I’m inside you,” he murmured raggedly, his breathing rough but his strokes even and steady. “I’d like to make a tape of them. I’d play them over and over.” Agony racked his body; sweat glistened on his skin. Like fire burning through a forest, his ever-increasing passion was eating its way through his discipline and restraint at raging speed. “But if I taped those sounds—ahhh!—I could never be apart from you, because I’d stay in a perpetual state of heat for you. Pretty much as I’ve been since you came back into my life.”

A whimper escaped from her as she writhed beneath him.

“There, like that! If I heard that and you weren’t with me, I’d tear down buildings to get to you.” He was pushing himself beyond his endurance, but somehow, he told himself, he had to hold on. He wanted this to last and last and last.

Her lower body was engorged with a feverish need. Her sanity hung by threads. Urgently, she arched up to him, but nothing she did seemed to change his tempo. He continued to move in and out of her with sleek animal grace and measured strength.

“You’re driving me mad,” she said, and wrapped her legs around his waist.

He ground his teeth together until he felt pain. “Dammit, we should be able to make it last!”

“Next time,” she said, raising her head to press her mouth to his ear, ready to promise him anything. “Next time we will.” Her voice choked. “Lord, Conall—”

He let himself go and pumped into her with all his might.

She reveled in his ruthless hunger and all-encompassing need. It matched hers.

He was power, he was passion.

And at that moment he was hers.

Day followed day, and Sharon reveled in each one. The idyllic times she and Conall were sharing were beyond her imagination. In some ways they seemed more like a dream than reality.

If occasionally she heard a soft warning voice in her head, she ignored it. And anyway, there was never any time to listen. She was too busy playing with Conall, swimming, riding, frolicking on the beach, engaging in midnight tennis matches.

And then there was the lovemaking. Every time they came together, it was more incredible.

She had been at SwanSea just over a week when the voice in her head began to grow louder, more insistent.

You’re in love with him,
the voice said.

Of course I’m not, she replied.

You’re in love with him.

No, no, no. It’s natural that I respond to him. He’s a very accomplished lover. But I’m not in love with him.

You’re in love with him.

No 
— Her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. Dear Lord, she was hopelessly, completely, irrevocably in love with Conall.

And then she knew what had been worrying her about her plan. She had completely overlooked this mind-blowing possibility.

She had fallen in love with him despite the fact that he still did not believe the child she had conceived ten years earlier was his. She had tried to prepare so carefully for these two weeks with him. Mentally, she had believed she could handle their time together with cool detachment, and then when the time was up, leave him without so much as sustaining a single bruise or a hurt.

Somewhere along the way she had lost control of the situation. And, she acknowledged with sorrow, her loss of control might be traced to the day she had presented Jake's note to Conall at his office.

This love for him seemed to have come out of nowhere. But had it really? Maybe that love had been in her all along. It had occurred to her that unconsciously she might have had another reason to ask him to father her child. Now she knew the real truth was she didn’t just want the child, she wanted Conall too.

Maybe she wanted him most of all.

You’re not following any of the procedures that would make getting pregnant easier,
she whispered to herself.

It was true. She forgot for long stretches of time the reason she had come to SwanSea, and when she and Conall made love, getting pregnant was the last thing on her mind.

It won’t matter, she told the voice in her head. I became pregnant the first time without all the careful planning. I’ll do it again.

But what if you don’t?

What?

What if you don’t become pregnant?

Her breath caught in her throat and ice slid down her spine. Oh, dear heaven. If she didn’t become pregnant, she would never be able to convince Conall that she hadn’t betrayed him by sleeping with Mark.

Conall insisted that they be together all the time; it was obvious he enjoyed being with her. And the intensity of his lovemaking showed more than words that he desired her. Lifetime relationships had been built on less than these two things. But if by chance they could work out some kind of future together, he would never be able to trust her. Not if she couldn’t get pregnant.

The doctor had told him he had a very small chance of fathering a child, yet they had conceived a child together. Looking back on it, she realized her pregnancy had been something of a miracle. But when you were eighteen, scared, and all alone, miracles were not on your mind. Apparently ten years hadn’t changed anything.

Dear heavens, why hadn’t she realized before now what a ridiculously long shot it was for her to become pregnant?

Because you love him, have always loved him.