‘YOU missed your interview,’ her father said, reaching to switch off the TV as they came back into the room.
‘Well, I know what happens, Dad,’ Kirsten said with a smile, ‘and it’s a load of Hollywood twaddle.’
‘You looked beautiful,’ her mother said dreamily. ‘That dress was stunning.’
‘Yes, she did look beautiful, didn’t she?’ Cal agreed from behind her.
‘I think I’ll go and have a shower, put my night things on, before my head swells too much,’ Kirsten said mockingly.
‘I’m going to turn in as well,’ her father said, getting up from his chair.
‘Yes, me too.’ Lynn also got to her feet and started to tidy things up. ‘Would you like anything to eat or drink, Cal?’ she asked politely.
‘Don’t worry, Lynn, I’ll make myself at home—if there’s anything I want, I’ll get it.’
‘Good.’ Lynn smiled and reached to kiss him. ‘Well, good night, then.’
Kirsten was pleased to note that as they all said goodnight Cal sat back down on the settee. Hopefully he was going to wait down here and allow her to use her own bedroom to change. It was the least he could do under the circumstances, she thought; after all, he was taking her room and leaving her down here on the cold, hard settee.
Her parents’ bedroom was on the ground floor, but Kirsten’s was up under the eaves of the house. She hurried up the wooden stairs and pushed open the door.
The room was painted white and was furnished with antiques that had been bought mostly from garage sales and lovingly restored by her father. It was really a single bedroom but her parents had put the double bed in there soon after Kirsten got married so that she and Cal would be more comfortable when they came down for weekends.
Going into that bedroom always brought back memories. It had been her room since she was eleven and her parents had moved here from Yorkshire in England. Although she had missed England at first, she had fallen immediately in love with this quaint cottage and the countryside around it and she had quickly made friends. She remembered the sleepovers when her friends had slept on the pull-out settee, the giggles and the midnight feasts.
Then she remembered the laughter and the different kind of midnight feasts when she had come home for the weekend and brought Cal with her and the two of them had squashed into her single bed.
Life could change so quickly, she thought as her eyes moved over the cosy patchwork quilt. Now she couldn’t even bear to sleep in the same room as him.
She picked up her case and took out her nightdress, dressing gown and sponge bag. Then zipped the bag back up again and slid it beneath the bed, out of the way.
She sat down at her dressing table, emptied the contents of her sponge bag and then cleansed her face. She looked tired, which was no wonder, considering the turmoil of the day and the fact she had hardly slept last night. Pulling her hair free of its pony-tail, she gave it a vigorous brush. Then lifted up her nightwear and headed for the bathroom next door.
She was surprised when she walked into the bathroom to see Cal standing at the sink, shaving. He had nothing on apart from a large bath sheet wrapped around his middle.
Obviously he had just come out of the shower. His honey-tanned skin gleamed with water and his hair was still damp. She tried not to allow her gaze to move over his body, but she couldn’t help herself; she was only human and his physique was as perfect as ever.
She dragged her gaze away from the tautly muscled six-pack and the powerful sweep of his shoulders and tried to look him in the eye without blushing. ‘I’m…I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were in here.’
‘That’s OK.’ He grinned at her, totally unperturbed. ‘I’m nearly finished.’ He turned back to his reflection in the mirror, carefully running the razor under the water and then running it skilfully over the white foam. She didn’t know why, but she stood there for a moment, watching him. The scene was so familiar, so normal to her…and for some bizarre reason that very familiarity was completely unsettling.
Cal looked around at her when she didn’t leave, his eyes questioning.
‘Sorry…sorry.’ She backed out and shut the door, wondering if her face was as red as it felt. Retracing her steps to her bedroom and looking at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror, she saw with dismay that it was. She was as orange as a traffic cone.
Hell, what’s the matter with me? she wondered hazily. So he has a fabulous athletic build; you’ve always known that. So what’s the big deal?
And why was she burning up with sudden desire? She raked a hand through her hair and hated herself for even acknowledging that fact. Was it very sinful to lust over a man you didn’t love? she wondered.
The bedroom door opened behind her. ‘Bathroom’s all yours,’ Cal said, coming in.
He still had nothing on except for the towel; Kirsten averted her eyes hastily as she stood up.
The room was too small and far, far too intimate a place for the two of them. She tried to sidle past him, without watching him pulling back the covers of her patchwork quilt.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK downstairs?’ he asked. ‘I can always pull out the settee.’
‘I’ll be perfectly all right.’ She reached the bedroom door and escaped outside with a sigh of relief.
‘’Night,’ she heard him call lazily through the door.
‘’Night.’ She went into the bathroom, closed the door and leaned back against it. A cold shower was what she needed, she thought angrily, a cold shower and medication. He was her ex-husband, he had ‘Danger, I’ll break your heart’ written all over him in huge letters. She must be completely mad.
She wasn’t quite brave enough for the cold shower. She set the temperature on medium and then sneaked back down the stairs in her nightgown, a pillow and a blanket tucked under her arm, feeling a little bit better.
Candy was lying sleeping by the dying embers of the fire. She lifted her ears and opened one eye to look at Kirsten, and she could have sworn there was a look of surprise on her canine face, a ‘What on earth are you doing? You must be crazy’ look. Then she closed her eye and went back to sleep.
The dog was right; she probably was crazy, Kirsten thought as she lay on the hard settee and tried to get comfortable, no mean feat on a settee only big enough for a pigmy to lie on.
She adjusted her pillow for the fifth time to try and avoid a crick in her neck and settled down again.
She thought about her dad, and prayed he would be all right. Then she thought about what he’d said to her before dinner. He’d accused her of lying to herself, of still being in love with Cal. That was utter nonsense. All right, she admitted there was still a chemistry between them, and she still found him very attractive, but that was sexual, nothing deeper. You couldn’t build a life together on just good sex…although it had been very good…and she did miss it. She missed Cal as well, she acknowledged suddenly. He used to make her laugh…he used to hold her so tenderly.
She turned over again and pummelled the pillow, trying not to remember hot, steamy nights of passion upstairs in that bed where Cal was lying now…naked.
Candy started to snore.
Hell, this was torture. Kirsten sat up; she wasn’t going to be able to sleep down here at all. She wondered if she would be better taking the cushions off the settee and lying on the floor? That seemed like a good idea.
She was just starting to arrange them when Candy sat up, then ambled over to her and lay down on the cushions. ‘They’re not for you, Candy.’ Kirsten tried to push her off, but she wouldn’t budge.
‘Can’t you sleep?’ Cal’s cool voice from the doorway made her jump.
‘No,’ she admitted, straining her eyes to see him in the dark. ‘Can’t you?’
‘No. Your snoring was keeping me awake.’
‘That wasn’t me, it was Candy!’
‘Are you sure?’ She could hear the amusement in his tone now and realised he was teasing. ‘What the heck are you doing anyway?’
‘Playing musical cushions with Candy. When the music stops I’m hoping to be able to lie down.’
Cal flicked on the overhead light, making her blink. She pulled her dressing gown a little closer around her figure, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Heaven only knew what she must look like with her hair all over the place, sitting here on the floor at midnight, she thought.
Cal looked as wonderful as ever, even though his dark hair was a bit ruffled. At least he was wearing a dressing gown, she noted with relief.
‘Looks like Candy has won to me,’ Cal remarked with a grin as the dog raised her head to look at him, but didn’t budge from the cushions.
‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Only for the fact that I know I’d sound paranoid, I’d be blaming Dad now…thinking he’d trained Candy specially to make me go upstairs with you.’
‘Maybe you should just give in,’ Cal suggested quietly. ‘And come upstairs with me.’
Kirsten pushed at Candy’s heavy body one more time, but she wouldn’t budge.
‘Come on, Kirsten, it’s late and you’re being a bit ridiculous now. You can’t sleep down here.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ She stood up, deciding she was going to have to be adult about this. ‘Are you sleeping in the bed or the pull-out settee?’
‘The bed, but you can take it; I’ll be a gentleman and move to the settee.’
‘Better late than never,’ she said drily.
‘Hey! I was doing the decent thing—I came down here to get you, didn’t I?’
‘The decent thing would have been for you to sleep down here in the first place,’ she told him tersely.
He smiled at that. ‘I’m a creature of comfort, Kirsty, I have my limitations.’ With that he turned around and went back upstairs.
Kirsten stood where she was for a moment, unsure if following him was the right thing to do. It seemed really odd, following him to bed…even if it was a separate bed.
Candy looked at Kirsten with her ears pricked. ‘Don’t look at me like that with those innocent eyes,’ Kirsten told her. ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for.’
Taking a deep breath, she switched out the light and made her way slowly back up the stairs.
Her bedroom was almost in total darkness and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust when she walked in. She could just about make out Cal in the bed-settee; he looked as if he was lying on his side, facing her bed.
Trying carefully to avoid the settee, she managed to stub her toe on a chair and winced with pain. Then she knocked against her dressing table and a few bottles fell over.
‘You sound like a baby elephant,’ Cal remarked drolly from his bed. ‘Why don’t you just switch the light on and be done with it?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said stiffly. Reaching her bed, she took off her dressing gown and crawled thankfully beneath the covers. It was still warm from Cal’s body and when she buried her head in towards the pillow she could smell the scent of his cologne. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was the same cologne she had bought him for his birthday one year. He must like it to be still using it. She liked it herself, she thought wistfully; it was warmly sensual, a provocative reminder of its wearer.
‘Do you remember the first time you brought me here for the weekend?’ Cal asked her suddenly.
‘Of course I do.’ She rolled over onto her back and stared up into the darkness.
‘We had fun, didn’t we?’
She didn’t answer him; instead she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and tried to prevent her mind from going down that avenue.
‘Do you remember that first day we went out on the boat?’
At least he wasn’t thinking about the great sex, she told herself wryly, which was where her mind had been.
‘We stopped the engine and just drifted for a while on a sea that was silky smooth, not a breeze to ruffle even a few feathers, let alone a sail.’ Kirsten remembered the moment vividly, the warmth of the sun, the languid sound of the water lapping against the sides of the boat. They had been so happy together then.
‘And we started to dream about what we wanted from the future,’ Cal remembered. ‘You said you were going to concentrate on your singing career for three years then get married and have three children.’
‘You said you’d like a house overlooking the ocean like this one, but with a big yacht, so you could sail around the Caribbean.’ Kirsten smiled.
‘That wasn’t such a bad dream…you liked it so much you asked if you could sail away with me, as I recall.’
Kirsten closed her eyes as she remembered his response, whispered softly in her ear, ‘I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without you…’
‘Good job we couldn’t see into the future and all that choppy water,’ she said softly. ‘I was arrogantly confident back then, thought I could control my destiny.’
‘No, you weren’t. You’d gone through your fair share of rejection in your career but you’d made it to the top. That takes guts.’
‘Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt since that conversation it’s that you can’t plan the future. Life has a habit of biting back.’
‘Better to at least try and make plans than to drift,’ Cal said softly.
She hadn’t made any real plans in a long time, hadn’t dared to dream… I’m drifting now, Kirsten thought. I’m alone on a sea that’s wild and choppy and somewhere along the way I’ve dropped the compass overboard. She rolled on her side away from him. ‘Goodnight, Cal.’
Sleep was elusive, yet she was so tired. Her mind raced backwards and forwards over the different conversations of the day…then lingered on that moment in the garage when she had realised how wrong she had been to underestimate what Cal had been feeling.
What was it she had said? ‘Maybe you were sad for a while, but let’s face it, Cal…. what happened…left you free to pursue your career.’ She cringed and hated herself for those words.
‘Cal, are you asleep?’ She rolled over.
‘No.’
‘I’ve been thinking….’
‘Always dangerous.’
‘No, Cal, this is serious.’ She sat up.
‘What is it?’ He rolled over to look across at her.
‘I keep…I keep thinking about what I said to you outside…’
He waited silently for her to continue.
‘You know…when I said that Bethany dying left you free to pursue your career. I didn’t mean it.’ She stared over at him in the darkness.
‘I know you didn’t.’ His voice was gentle.
‘Oh, God, Cal…don’t be nice to me.’ She sat up in the bed. ‘I don’t deserve it… It was a horrible thing to say…’
He got out of bed and came to sit on the edge of hers. ‘You were upset, Kirsten,’ he said softly.
‘That’s no excuse.’ Her voice wobbled precariously. ‘Now when I think back about…about Bethany I’m wondering if I didn’t give proper consideration to how you were feeling…’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake Kirsten—’ He reached to put on the bedside light, but she caught his hand, stopping him.
‘No…leave the light, let me finish. There’s something I need to tell you.’
He dropped his hand back to the bed but caught hold of hers, holding it tightly.
‘I never blamed you for not being with me the night Bethany died. I blamed myself.’
She was glad that it was dark and that he couldn’t see her face; it made it so much easier to say those words.
‘How could you blame yourself?’ She heard the puzzlement in his voice.
‘Because it was my fault.’ Her voice was earnest, pleading with him to understand. ‘Don’t you see, it was all my fault? I wasn’t feeling well that day and yet I told you to go, told you I was perfectly all right. If I hadn’t done that…then maybe…maybe everything would have been all right.’ Tears prickled behind her eyes and started to fall. ‘So you see it wasn’t your fault, it was mine…’ Her voice broke.
‘Oh, honey, it wasn’t your fault.’ He reached to pull her close in against him, holding her tightly, his voice husky and gentle against her ear. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’
‘It was. If I’d gone to the hospital sooner…’
‘You can’t think like that.’
‘There’s no other way to think,’ she said brokenly. ‘I failed. I failed you and I failed Bethany and then I wrapped myself up in my own grief and I was selfish and I didn’t even realise until today how much you were hurting and I just want to say I’m sorry—’
‘Hey!’ Cal cut across her firmly and held her a little bit away from him. ‘Take it easy, Kirsten. You know I’m…very…very fond of this woman that you are lambasting into and I’m telling you now that she doesn’t deserve to be spoken about like that.’ Gently he wiped the tears away from her face. ‘The Kirsten that I know doesn’t have a selfish bone in her body,’ he said gently. ‘And she has nothing to blame herself for.’
‘So why do I feel like this?’
‘Because you’ve bottled things up too hard, too long.’ He stroked her hair back from her face with a tender hand. ‘And your dumb husband didn’t know what to say or do to make things any better.’
She smiled shakily at that. ‘Of all the adjectives in the world that I could think of to describe you, Cal, dumb wouldn’t be one.’
‘Don’t be too nice to me now,’ Cal warned, a teasing note in his voice. ‘I’m not above taking advantage of the situation.’
She rested back against his chest. His dressing gown was damp from her tears and she moved, so that instead of her head lying against the material she was resting against his torso. His body felt warm and infinitely comforting. She breathed deeply, loving the scent of his skin.
It was wonderful just to be held like this…how many times over the last two years had she longed for this? she wondered hazily.
She slipped her hand beneath the material and stroked over his ribs, then higher towards his shoulders, feeling the powerful network of muscles that tensed beneath her touch.
‘Kirsten.’ She heard the note of warning in his husky tone, but hazily decided to ignore it.
‘Kirsten…?’
‘Maybe I don’t mind you taking advantage of this situation, Cal…’ she murmured. ‘Just for old times’ sake…just for tonight.’
She raised her head and met his lips. She tasted the softness of them tentatively. He didn’t return her kiss immediately and she groaned with a kind of pent-up longing that came from the very depths of her soul as she pressed closer to him, her hands stroking the dressing gown back.
‘Make love to me, Cal,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I need to feel warmth…I need you.’
She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back with a fierce need. The sensation made the pit of her stomach dip with sensual desire so heavy that her body seemed to scream for him.
She leaned back against the pillows and felt his hands stroking against the satin material of her nightdress, pulling it upwards and then over her head with an impatience that ignited a wild thrill of excitement inside her.
She was no longer thinking coherently; she was just dealing in desire, allowing her mind to switch off from everything except the touch and the taste and the scent of him. For so long she had felt nothing, any needs buried so deep she had almost denied their reality in the first place. But now she felt as if she was coming alive again as warmth and feeling sizzled through her body like the first rays of sun after a long, cold winter.
His hands stroked over her body and caressed silkily over her breasts, until she felt them tighten and harden beneath his fingers.
He groaned and bent his head to them and a dart of red-hot fire struck through her as his mouth moved to cover them, licking and tasting her so that she moaned with a desire that was so extreme it was agonisingly blissful.
His dressing gown had been discarded and he was lying over her, his naked body touching every part of her. She felt the power of his body, felt as if she wanted to melt into him, become him, as she writhed in his arms, her hands stroking down over his back, loving the feel of his skin and the sheer majesty of his body.
They were lying sideways across the bed now. She was aware of her head hanging over the side and he slid his hands under her waist and pulled her firmly down so that she was directly under him again.
She shuddered as he moved inside her, closing her eyes on a wave of emotion so intense it threatened to drown her.
Cal was a masterful lover. He had always known how to turn her on, exactly how to make her gasp with exhilaration and tremble with need. She had almost forgotten the wild excitement of being in his arms.
As he moved against her he kissed her, his movements slow and teasing. His hands cupped her breasts, his fingers tantalising her.
‘That feels so good.’ She murmured the words against him, reaching for his mouth, running her fingers through his hair, loving the texture and the feel of him, the drugging hardness of his body and the tantalising sensuality of his kiss.
Then suddenly his movements stilled and he pulled back from her, and the shock and the disappointment were almost as great as the pleasure of a few moments ago.
‘Cal…?’
‘Tell me again that you want me,’ he commanded huskily.
She sat up slightly so that her breasts were pressed against the rough hair of his chest. ‘I want you so much it hurts.’
She didn’t want him to stop, her body was crying out for satisfaction, and it was an ache so deep that it overruled all other sensible thoughts.
He kissed her again, a sensual, intoxicating kiss that turned her to liquid inside. She reached out and put his hands back on her breasts, willing him to continue, to stroke her, to caress her, to make her feel whole again.
Then he was inside her again and his movements became fervid, forceful, taking her with a dominance that sent waves of pleasure lapping through her body.