During the long, passion-laden hours of the night before, Tyler had whispered love words in her ear. They had been poetically tender and shockingly bold. They had stirred her to ecstasy and lulled her to sleep. But he had never said, “I love you,” plainly and simply. His reaction to her speaking the words would forever remain a mystery, for she intended to leave first thing in the morning. She couldn’t pursue a love affair with Tyler when Faith’s happiness was at stake. Tyler couldn’t either.
Hauling herself to her feet, she trudged back to the house. The door to Faith’s bedroom was still closed, but she could hear faint murmurs of conversation. Going into her bedroom, she closed the door behind her. She was surrounded by a cold, dark loneliness. It was no stranger to her. She had lived with it for years. Only it was more noticeable now that she had had a glimpse of the other side.
Lethargically she prepared for bed, her mind and body exhausted. Knowing she should stay up and think about what she would do about her job at Serendipity—could she continue working for Tyler?—what she should do about Ellen, what she should do with the rest of her life without Tyler Scott in it, she couldn’t resist collapsing onto the soft linens. She tried to tackle the problems tumbling through her brain, but her mind refused to cooperate. Within a few minutes after her head touched the pillow, she was asleep.
The first thing she saw when she sleepily opened her eyes the following morning was a denim-clad knee inches from the edge of the mattress. Following the length of sinewy thigh to its apex, she confirmed her lazy observation that the possessor of the knee was male. The sheer masculinity …
She sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the sheet against her “Serendipity sizzles!” T-shirt. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded.
“Sitting in a chair watching you sleep,” Tyler said. His posture was little more than a slouch. He looked as disheveled as Hailey felt. His eyes were brooding under the broad slash of dark brow across his forehead.
“That’s not funny,” she said.
“It wasn’t meant to be. You asked me what I was doing in here and I told you.”
“How did you get in this room? I locked the door last night.”
“I picked the lock.”
Hailey cleared her throat and asked, “Faith? How is she?”
“She’s fine,” Tyler said, smiling for the first time. “In fact, she’s a terrific person.”
Hailey felt tears pricking her eyelids, thankful that their relationship hadn’t been jeopardized by her bungling. “Did you spank her?”
“Yes,” he answered slowly. “I also made her call the police and apologize to them for causing such a ruckus. And then we talked. She told me that she wished I had been around to spank her a long time ago.” He laughed ruefully. “She didn’t know I loved her, Hailey. I can’t understand that, but she swears she didn’t.
“From the viewpoint of a child whose mother was more interested in her social calendar, whose father was absorbed in his business, who has never been on a picnic, I guess I
can
see how she might think she was not loved. Time and again I assured her she was and that I intend never to let her forget it. She won’t be perfect from now on, but I think we reached the crisis point last night.”
Nodding her head, Hailey smiled. He continued to stare at her, making her nervously aware of his dominating presence in the room. She gnawed her bottom lip and looked away from him. “What do you want?”
He ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Did you mean what you said last night just before Faith came in?”
For a fleeting instant she allowed her eyes to lock with his, then she concentrated on the ribbon-edged blanket as she said offhandedly, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He came out of the chair with a lunge to grab her by the shoulders. His knee dug a giant crater in the mattress. Grabbing a fistful of hair, he pulled her head back and leaned over her. Hailey stared up at him in fearful fascination.
“You have the most annoying habit of saying something doesn’t matter when it matters a helluva lot.” She had come under that same intimidating force of will earlier in the infirmary when he had wanted to know what happened to Faith. His whole countenance demanded an answer when he repeated, “Did you mean what you said?”
“Yes.”
His mouth came down on hers, insistent and provocative. He parted her lips with a probing tongue. It swept her mouth with an ardency that left her breathless. When he raised his head, she fell back against the pillows, taking in great gulps of air.
One arm bridged her stomach as he leaned over her. “When we came out of her bedroom last night, Faith couldn’t wait to apologize to you. She wanted you to know that she hadn’t meant anything she’d said. We found you asleep and decided you needed that more than explanations. Later today she intends to tell you just how much you mean to her.”
Hailey shook her head, staring unseeingly down at the pleats she had made on the sheets with nervous fingers. “I’m leaving, Tyler. I think that would be best.”
“For whom?” he asked, tilting her chin up, forcing her to meet his steady gray eyes.
“For all of us.”
“No. Not for Faith. Not for me.”
“I think—”
“You think too much, Miss Ashton. That’s your main problem.” He kissed her again. This kiss lacked the ferocity of the former one, but was far sweeter. Lifting his head, he impaled her with his eyes. The intensity with which he had looked at her last night when she told him she loved him was there again.
“Our timing was off, Hailey, when you spoke of love. I never got to tell you how much I love you. At least not verbally. You
do
know, don’t you, that I love you?”
Speech was beyond her, so she simply shook her head. “How could you not, Hailey?” he asked, genuinely perplexed. “Why do you think I pursued you so relentlessly? Why do you think I couldn’t bear to have you out of my sight for more than a few hours at a time?”
“You led me to believe that your interest was in physical conquest and nothing else,” she said, toying with the buttons of his shirt. One by one they began to slip free of the buttonholes.
“Maybe initially, but not after that business trip when I learned that having met you, I couldn’t live without you. I knew then that you were no passing fancy in my life. Actually, I knew it the first time I saw you when you gave me such a hard time.” He smiled tenderly and took her chin between his thumb and index finger. “I love you, Hailey. Say you’ll marry me.”
“Tyler,” she breathed, reaching up to encircle his neck with her arms. She kissed him fervently, daringly, aggressively. “I love you, I love you, I love you. For so long I’ve wanted to tell you that.”
“Since when?” he asked against the soft, satiny flesh of her neck.
“I think since I first saw you.”
“How could you fall in love with a rude boor like that?”
She laughed, ruffling his hair with her fingers. “I don’t know, but the ruder and more boorish you became, the more I loved you.”
“You’re going to help me in my business, aren’t you? You’ve done so well at Serendipity, I can’t wait to turn you loose on the few kinks within the corporation.”
“Won’t your other employees resent interference from the boss’s wife?”
“We can always live in sin,” he said, winking lewdly. “Then you’d only be the boss’s mistress.”
“Not on your life. From now on, I’m going to be like a ball and chain around your neck. Besides Faith—Oh, Tyler, where is she?”
He laughed at her guilty expression. “Despite the tumult last night, we both woke up early. She suggested that I talk to you before she offered her own apologies for the things she said last night. I called the Harpers, gave them a purely fictitious story, and imposed upon their hospitality. They were happy to have Faith as a guest until we pick her up later this afternoon. Tomorrow, we’ll get married. I hope Faith can keep the secret that long. She’s bursting to tell someone.”
Hailey lay back huffily and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, you certainly were confident of my answer if you told Faith we were getting married before you even asked me.”
“Faith assured me you’d accept. She said she had a woman’s intuition that you would.”
“Is she really happy about it?”
“Almost as happy as I am.”
She smiled as she ran her fingers along his lips. “And today, what do we do until it’s time to pick up Faith?”
“Didn’t I tell you? You have to go to work,” he said, getting off the bed. His eyes ran the length of her body as he began removing his clothing slowly. “Your job assignment for today is to make the boss happy.”
“What chores could I possibly do to make him happy?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.
“We’ll take them in alphabetical order.”
Lean and naked and hard with desire, he lay down beside her and took her in his arms. His kiss was deep, his tongue making promises of things yet to come.
“Do you get rid of this, or do I?” he asked, referring to her T-shirt.
“You do.”
His smug grin warned her that she had made an ill-advised choice. His hands found the hem of the long shirt and eased it over her waist, up her rib cage, to the bottom of her breasts. He lowered his head and used his nose to nudge the soft cotton over her ripe flesh.
The slowness with which his lips skimmed over her skin maddened her. Her hands plowed through his thick dark hair. Her thighs tightened against his broad torso as he lay between them. Slowly he caressed her smooth skin, still warm from sleep. Only occasionally letting his tongue dart out for one quick taste, he nibbled at the underside of her breasts.
Then his kisses grew more ardent, his mouth more demanding, his tongue less fleeting. His hands came up to examine what had been made damp by his kisses. He lifted her breasts, raising her nipples to aching peaks of longing with the finessing of his thumbs. He circled slowly, rubbed gently, tantalized, tormented, soothed.
Desire bloomed deep inside her, radiating outward until it weakened her limbs, tightened her chest and became an audible whimper in her throat. Answering her entreaty, he enclosed her nipple with his mouth. His tongue and teeth brought her to a greater height of arousal.
“Please, Tyler. Please.”
“Not yet, my love.” He peeled the T-shirt over her head. “I don’t want to rush today. We’ve got the rest of our lives to love each other. Let me indulge myself.”
“You’re beautiful,” she murmured, combing her fingers through the hair on his chest. She lifted her head to kiss his feverish flesh, to honor with her lips and tongue his hard, flat nipples. Her hands inched over the muscles of his hips and down the backs of his thighs.
“Perhaps I taught you too well,” he groaned. “You make me weak with loving you, Hailey.” His eyes devoured her nakedness. “Beautiful.” Kneeling, he leaned forward to kiss the valley between her ribs. His breath was a caress in itself as his lips moved downward. He treated her navel to gentle love bites.
When he met the fragile barrier of her panties, he caught the lacy garment between his teeth and dragged it down over her obliging hips and thighs. Her breath escaped in a rapturous sigh when his lips paid homage to what the veil had screened. Neglecting nothing, he loved all of her.
The pleasure was too intense for her to sustain. She was perilously poised on the brink of either death or rebirth. Just before she fell into the abyss, she called his name.
Rising above her, with one swift thrust he filled the aching void in her body that he had created. “I love you, Hailey. I love you.”
The stars fell around them and yet they survived, more alive than they had ever been. They were attuned to each sight, sound, taste, and touch of one another. Even when it was over, he didn’t leave her, but stayed nestled in her entrapping warmth to savor her.
He kissed her behind her ear. “Do you mind living in Atlanta?”
“Not if that’s where you’re going to live.” His eyebrows were studied by fondling fingers.
“We’ll find a house we all like, where we’ll make a new life together. The three of us.” His lips skipped playfully across hers. “Or four. Or more.”
She pushed against his shoulders. “Tyler? What are you saying?”
He laughed. “That Faith is already planning a slew of brothers and sisters.”
“But I don’t know if I can have a baby.”
“Of course you can,” he murmured softly, tenderly. “You do everything well, Red.” Love was shining in his eyes as he whispered against her lips, “Some things you do exceptionally well.”