So he would be all right. Kai would hold his hand, and they would walk on the beach, and maybe he would tell her all the things wrong with his relationship with his mother, all the things Anne had screwed up.
Or maybe they wouldn’t talk about her at all.
Maybe that might even be for a good reason, because Kurt was holding this moment just now in his own heart.
She wanted Mack, Anne thought.
And her heart eased. Because, here was the wonderful thing—she could have him. He said so. She didn’t even have to wait until their beach walk in the morning.
***
It was midnight, though, before they could escape. Funny, no matter how old your kids got, you wanted to keep in the vicinity, just in case they ever called, “Mommy!” again.
A breeze came off the water, autumn thinking about its approach run. Mack’s mouth was drooping, and he didn’t talk. Jaime and Dom were heading off first thing in the morning for their honeymoon in Papua New Guinea, and Cade would be flying back to Paris with all those chefs who couldn’t take any more time off. Mack’s nest was officially, entirely empty.
“At least you did a good job with them,” Anne said finally. That thing she’d had on her heart all day, waiting for this walk with him. “I was a crappy mom to Kurt, I guess.”
Mack’s head was still bent, inspecting the midnight beach far too diligently for shells, but he slid her a glance. “It shows,” he said dryly. “Successful lawyer, happily married, able to surmount an incredible hurdle and still hold his marriage together.”
Well…yes, but Kurt might be managing that
despite
her. “He’s taking a year off as a lawyer to travel around the world,” Anne managed, finally. Granted, that was a little lame, as an argument to defend her right to feel terrible about herself. Talk to Mack for any length about your problems and pretty soon you couldn’t find a single weak spot in yourself anymore. He’d turn them all into strengths.
Mack grunted and shrugged those broad shoulders. “Look at Cade and Jaime. You think they’re putting career first? But then again—” He took a deep breath, gazed out across the moon-glazed water, and heaved a sigh. “Well, there’s probably not much point them putting making money as a top priority, is there? I mean, you and I have kind of got that covered for them. They’re just…re-evaluating our priorities. Putting their family first. But they can only do that because
we
put them first—gave them as much power and money as we could.” And that bitter, savage twist to his lips that meant,
Much good it did them.
That meant he was thinking of Jaime…and maybe of Anne, too, and her battle against the Justice Department.
Her gaze slid down to his hand in his pocket. They did that so automatically, after so many years—thrust their hands in their pockets to keep from touching each other while they walked side by side. If he thought about it, she was pretty sure Mack would reach out and grab her hand now in that tight, bossy grip that dared her hand to argue.
But he hadn’t thought about it. The habit was ingrained in him so deeply that he couldn’t automatically reach for her hand, when he needed it.
Anne took a deep breath and slid her hand in between his pants and his wrist, nudging her fingers a tiny bit toward the palm hidden in his pocket.
His face brightened up
so much.
“Hey.” His hand slid instantly out of his pocket to take hers, firm and strong. “Hey,” he said again, softly, as if he’d just found a baby unicorn on the beach and didn’t want to scare it into the water.
She snuggled her hand a little in his, astonished by this whole sensation. Of being held, of being cherished. It scared the freaking hell out of her.
As if she could collapse on this beach and vomit at the thought of losing it, and she hadn’t vomited loss and pain out in a long, long time. And sure as hell not in front of someone else.
“Fits pretty well, doesn’t it?” Mack asked smugly, adjusting his grip around hers. “I’m good at this hand-holding business. Just ask Cade and Jaime.”
“I’m not a small girl-child,” Anne said ironically. And she didn’t want to break his heart or anything, but his girls probably didn’t even remember. She was pretty sure Kurt had forgotten all the times she’d held
his
hand crossing a street, just to make sure he was safe.
“I was good with Julie, too,” Mack argued his corner automatically. As always. And then realized, his gaze sliding warily to hers. “That is—maybe I shouldn’t—”
“I’m really not that insecure,” Anne said very, very dryly.
Mack gave a shout of laughter. “No, by God, you aren’t.” He turned her into his arms abruptly. Damn, but he could take control of her body so easily. Only—he made it feel like dancing. She wanted him to dip her. She wanted to dance and be happy. She
wanted to take a year off and travel around the world with him, like Kurt and Kai, and she’d been a compulsive workaholic all her life. She’d actually chosen to go to
prison,
instead of appeal, so she could get the whole damn trial thing out of the way in a more efficient six months and get back to concentrating on her work. “You sure as hell aren’t,” he whispered, his hand coming up to stroke so tenderly over the feathered edges of her hair.
Wonder washed through her. She couldn’t help it—she rubbed her temple against his fingertips.
“You’re so
pretty
,” he said incredulously. “Oh, my God, you’re pretty, in the moonlight, with your lashes lowering like that.
Shit
, Anne.” His hand curved under her jaw, big and warm against her fine bones, and kept her face up so he could enjoy it. “It’s like I’ve captured a star-queen.”
She shivered so much with pleasure it was all she could do not to press against him for his solidity and warmth. “You don’t mean an Ice Queen?” She tried to make that a mocking note in her voice and not a bitter one. All the time she had spent trying to make the world perfect for people, and all the hatred that had poured out on her when that trial started. So many people so happy to see her torn down. Maybe that was another reason she’d chosen not to appeal. Because, you know, fuck them.
“Funny thing about ice.” His fingers shaped her head. “When light hits it, God, how it shines.” His thumb ran over her lips, and she couldn’t breathe. She wanted to do so many things—suck his thumb into her mouth, run into the cold ocean, stand still to savor this. Only she couldn’t stand still—all of her felt as if it was sliding out of her body, into the sand, into his hands, running away from her.
“You make me feel all
liquid
,” she said, frantic with helplessness.
“
Good
.” He kissed her. This hot, sweet warmth rushing straight from his body into hers, melting her everywhere.
She kissed him back, clinging to his shirt with both hands, stretching the cotton into her fists’ shape. Kissed and was kissed until she had to rest her head on his chest. “I don’t think I know how to do this anymore,” she whispered.
His hands rubbed down her back, kneading her body into his. His chest lifted and fell against her head and breasts. “It’s not like riding a bicycle,” he murmured, voice gone gravelly. “You have to learn it new, with each new person, if you want to do it right. You’re the first you I’ve ever kissed.”
She smiled a little into his chest. “We’re like a snowflake.” She could whisper that fancy into this moonlit, ocean-washed night. “No two pairs of lips meet the same.”
“You’re exactly right.” Mack lifted her face to his again. “Anne.” He parted her lips for him, found her tongue. “If you really were an icicle, I’d suck you all over until you melted to nothing in my mouth.”
God. That was so sweet and so erotic both. Her hands climbed up around his neck, and she pressed herself into him, heat against heat.
“It’s a good thing you’re human instead.” He scooped under her bottom, pulling her up until her pelvis fit with his. “So I can suck you all night and you’ll still be left for me to suck on again tomorrow.”
He dropped them down onto the sand suddenly, pulling her astride him and clamping his hands onto her thighs to hold her there as he kissed her more. His mouth by turns fierce and hungry and…sweet. Tender. Fierce again. And tender once more.
Her breath grew shallow, this tenderness undoing her. He found her collarbone and kissed and kissed across that sensitive skin to the hollow of her throat and then he dropped back, lying on the sand under her as she sat astride him. Her slim skirt rode too far up her thighs for this public space, and his jeans pressed too intimately into her thin panties. But she didn’t move. “
Look
at you,” he breathed. “With the moon and the sea behind you. God.”
Her heart thumped so hard it felt—it felt like a heart. Like those fairytale hearts you read about, the ones that lodged in your throat, that hurt you, that tore out of your body and put themselves into someone else’s hands.
Be gentle with my heart. No one else ever has been.
She’d only ever really given it to Clark, Kurt, and her unborn babies before. Clark had been the wrong place to put it. And children didn’t know how to be gentle with their parents’ hearts.
“Look at you,” she whispered. Stretched out on the sand for her. In her power and not humbled by it at all. “You’re one confident man.”
In the moonlight, his blue eyes looked as black and brilliant as the sea. Funny, how the light and darkness playing over the hard planes of his face didn’t make him look a stranger at all. He still looked entirely hers.
“You know when I said I was a self-made man?” He lifted a hand from the sand to stroke from her shoulder to her wrist, leaving grains of sand on her skin. It was growing far too cool for the short sleeves she had worn during the heat of the day, and she shivered toward his warmth. “I made a mistake.”
Her eyebrows went up. “You?”
“Yeah.” His eyebrows drew together in bafflement, as he pulled her hand onto his chest, rubbing himself with her fingers. “I don’t know how I could have made such a stupid mistake. I left out you.”
Her heart caught. And then it just broke. Like an icicle shattered off a tree.
“I left out my daughters, and Julie, and my dad. And
you.
All the ways you’ve helped me grow and—be. Be strong. Be me. Be—big. And be okay. Be sane. Be, you know, the best me I could be.”
That shattered spot where her heart had been filled up with liquid until it leaked into her lungs, making it too hard to breathe, and then it filled up her eyes. She was drowning under it, and she clutched her hands into the muscles of his chest for him to save her.
“Mack. Please. I don’t think I can—” handle this. Be this real. Be this vulnerable.
He sat up again suddenly and wrapped his arms around her, so that she was astride his lap and pulled in tight against his chest.
And suddenly—she was still vulnerable. But she was vulnerable in such a protected spot. He had her covered.
“
I really love you
,” she whispered suddenly, fiercely, and then twisted her mouth into his shirt, trying, too late, to shut herself up.
His body jerked. “Hey.
Hey
.” He caught her chin, lifting her face from his shoulder. “You just—
said
that. I can’t believe you
told
me that.” His face filled with wonder and happiness.
She twisted her chin free from his hand and buried her face in him again. “Damn it, I’m so scared.”
His arms tightened around her fiercely. “
Eight fucking days a month
.” The words ground out of him. “That’s how often I could see you those six months in prison. That’s how often I could check to see that you were okay. And the rest of the time, I could do
nothing.
I lost my wife fifteen years ago. Somebody beat the fucking crap out of my daughter.
You think I don’t know how scary loving someone is?
I got nothing, Anne. But
you
can do this. You’re
Anne Winters,
hell. Just tough it the fuck up.”
She drew a shaky breath, and then another. And slowly, slowly, all that fear in her began to calm. Began to ease its way out of her muscles, slide off her into the strength of his hold, drain away from both of them into the sand. The hush of the ocean washed slowly over her mind. “You say
fuck
to me a lot,” she murmured finally. Because saying inconsequentials made her feel more solid, more grounded in him. As if all of this could become her normal life.
“I’m trying to get you into the habit.” He kissed somewhere near her ear. “You know how much I love it when you say it.”
She pushed herself enough away from him to try to give him a wry, warning look.
“Aww, sweetheart.” He ran his thumb down her cheek. “You really did turn liquid.” He held up his wet finger to her. “And I was right. It shimmers in the moonlight.”
She pushed at the tears on her other cheek. He caught her hand and forced it down, in that battle for dominance that sent a little jolt of eroticism right through her body. His teeth showed like a wolf threatening a challenger. “I thought I told you I needed more salt in my diet.” But when his mouth touched her skin, it was just his lips, as he traced the path of her tears very gently, sucking with infinite tenderness little sips of her tears.
“Damn you, Mack.” She started crying harder.
“They taste…precious. But I might be biased.” He brought them both to their feet and then just lifted her into his arms.
“Mack.” She was slightly horrified, and she was still struggling not to lose more tears. Except—she didn’t mind giving him precious parts of herself. She just couldn’t stand the weaknesses. Were her tears really precious? “You’re going to ruin your back.”
“You overestimate your weight. You always did tend to think your body was as big as your spirit.” He headed toward her house.
“I can walk on my own two feet, you know.” She shifted uncomfortably but didn’t want to struggle more because she really was worried she would throw out his back.
“I do believe you’ve established that already, Anne. Guess what I don’t seem to have proven to you yet? That when necessary, I can carry you.”
“I can’t carry you,” she said stiffly. Physically, she was average height. But she had never liked admitting she was smaller than most men.