As they lay wrapped in one another’s arms with nothing between them but the occasional tangle of sheets from the bed, Andrew found himself wanting to explain about Blair. He had never told another woman about Blair and never thought he could bring himself to tell the story, to repeat what she and his parents had done.
As with everything with Jill, things he thought he could never do simply happened.
“Her name was Blair.” Andrew felt Jill’s breath catch and he knew that she understood immediately who he was talking about. He felt her hand run up and down his back in slow, steady strokes but she made no move to pressure him for the story or try to lure details out of him.
“We met when I was at Yale Business School. She worked on campus at one of the coffee stands. She was so beautiful and she had me convinced that I was in love, that we were in love, before I knew what hit me.
“Somehow, I never saw her for what she really was. She was conniving and manipulative, but I didn’t see any of that until it was too late. Later I learned Blair had me targeted from the beginning, knew my family had money.” Andrew let out a rough burst of laughter but there was no humor in it.
Jill didn’t answer, but her hand kept up the steady support on his back. The calm patience he needed as memories of a pain he knew he’d never fully recover from washed over him.
“We were attracted to each other from day one. I liked the joking and flirting every morning when I picked up my coffee, but it was all a setup. She told me she was on the pill, but I found out later that was a lie. In the beginning we used condoms anyway but as soon as I told her I loved her, she told me we shouldn’t use them anymore because we were in love and would only be with each other.
“I can’t believe what an idiot I was. I was in graduate school for God’s sake. It’s not like I was in high school, or even college. I was an adult. I should have been able to read her better. To see the lies for what they truly were.” Andrew was surprised at how dead and flat his voice sounded as he talked about Blair.
“As soon as Blair got pregnant, she went to my parents. She never even told me she was pregnant. My parents told me two days later that they had ‘fixed my problem’ for me. They paid her $500,000 to abort the baby and leave town. They knew I would want to marry her if she was going to have my child and they never considered Blair to be good enough to be a Weston. Blair never wanted a child. She wanted leverage.”
Andrew didn’t tell Jill about the nightmares. He didn’t have them very often anymore but for a long time after Blair’s abortion, he woke in a cold sweat. He remembered flashes of the dream, his baby crying as he ran from room to room looking for it but he could never find it. He didn’t even know if the baby was a boy or a girl.
“I was a wreck for a week. Jack and Chad came and managed to get me out of my drunken stupor and brought me here to Nora’s. Nora and I both cut all ties with them. We haven’t had any contact since then.”
Andrew finally chanced a glance at Jill’s face and saw tears.
“Don’t cry sweetheart, don’t.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks as he held her in his arms.
Andrew had always believed what happened with Blair was only partially his fault, but on some level, he supposed he always felt like a fool for letting Blair string him along that way. For not seeing how manipulative and cold she really was.
Now, as he told Jill about her, he didn’t feel that way at all. For the first time since news of the abortion, he felt free of it. Free of the guilt.
He would always feel the pain of losing his child and not knowing what could’ve been, what it would have felt like to hold his baby. To raise his son or daughter. But lying there with Jill, Andrew felt as whole and complete as he ever had.
Jill ran her hands through Andrew’s hair, trying to soothe, to stop the pain. As she listened to his story, she couldn’t imagine the betrayal, the anger and hatred, the sadness he must have felt when he found out what Blair and his parents had done behind his back.
He’d lost it all. The woman he thought he loved, his child, and his parents.
Jill’s problems with her marriage and her emotional state after her divorce seemed pale in comparison to what this incredible man had been through.
She was amazed that Andrew still had so much love in him, despite what had happened. She’d seen the love he gave to his friends, the bond he had with Nora. She knew how fun and happy he could be, how much he made her laugh and how much he cared about what she was feeling, and she loved that he still had that in him despite what he’d been through.
Jill and Jake had never had children but Jill had miscarried once. The pain of the loss she felt had threatened to swallow her for a long time after. She could only imagine what Andrew’s loss was like. To find out about the baby after it was too late, must have torn him apart.
She cupped Andrew’s cheeks and placed a soft, tender kiss on his lips. A kiss that Jill hoped spoke to him of all that she was feeling but couldn’t say to him. She wanted to be able to wash away his pain.
She threaded her fingers in his hair and trailed slow, sensuous kisses across his cheek and down the strong line of his jaw. She kissed his neck, feeling the scratch of stubble against her skin. She stopped to brush her lips across his neck, tickling and teasing.
“Jill,” Andrew breathed. There was a note of pleading in his voice and suddenly the air was no longer filled with pain and sympathy. She was no longer trying to ease his hurt or make up for past cruelties. Even with all that Andrew left unspoken – when he said her name, he turned the air to heat and passion.
His hands came around her waist and he lifted her up to straddle his hips. She pressed down, feeling the hard length of him tease her as she continued her exploration of his body. Every kiss she laid on him sent shivers back through her. She reveled in the feeling of Andrew’s hard muscles under her lips.
She stopped to tease his nipples with her tongue and then continued down to the hard plates of his stomach, the taut plane that led to his groin. She nipped at his skin, and listened as Andrew’s breath hitched beneath her. With each kiss, each lick, every teasing lick, she hoped he was forgetting all about Blair’s betrayal. Of the memories she’d raised.
In the blink of an eye, her play was interrupted as Andrew rolled them, hoisted her under him and came down over her body with a growl that told her he didn’t have the patience for anything more. He reached in the bedside stand and rolled on a condom before entering her quickly and burying himself to the hilt.
“God, what you do to me,” he groaned. He lay still for a moment letting them both catch their breath.
She laughed, but it was thready and needy. “I know the feeling.”
He moved languidly inside her, rocking his hips into her again and again as he stared into her eyes. Slowly, teasing, Andrew drew himself out of Jill and then deliberately plunged to the hilt again. Her eyes closed but he whispered to her to open them.
“I want to see those gorgeous eyes. I want you to be looking into my eyes when I make you come,” he said as he drove into Jill again and again. Within minutes she was calling his name just as he was crying out to her.
She wrapped her arms and legs around him and held him afterwards. She trailed her hands over his back and marveled at the feel of his strong, hard body in her arms. They stayed that way for a long time before rolling to the side and drifting off to sleep and she knew she was dangerously close to losing her heart to this man.