‘ARE you sure, Faith?’ Quinn asked, even as every hormone in his body screamed at him for delaying one second longer. Doing nothing more than standing with his arms wrapped around her was already stretching his restraint to the limit.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she answered with a provocative little wiggle that nearly sent him over the edge. ‘I love you, Quinn, and we’re engaged now, remember?’
She held her hand up so that the facets of the diamond caught the candlelight and fractured it over them in myriad tiny rainbows.
‘I know,’ he said, still hardly daring to believe that she’d accepted his proposal and his ring. ‘But if you’d rather wait until we’re married…?’
In spite of his clamouring hormones, he half wished that she’d take him up on the suggestion. He certainly wasn’t confident that he had enough experience—or restraint—to make Faith’s first time into something memorable.
Her eyes were dark velvet and serious beyond her years as she gazed up at him, her absolute trust humbling.
‘In a way we’re already married, Quinn,’ she said softly, tracing his lips with a tantalising finger. ‘We’ve made our promises to each other and I’m wearing your pledge, so we belong to each other, for ever.’
‘It sounds so uncomplicated when you put it like that,’ he said, and for the first time in his life the turmoil inside him was still. He held his breath for a moment to savour the feeling, knowing that he’d finally found the place where he was supposed to be and the person who was supposed to share it with him.
‘That’s because there’s nothing complicated about it,’ she said simply, and reached up to kiss him so that their bodies pressed so closely together that there was only one way they could be closer. ‘I love you and you love me. It’s perfect!’
‘It’s you that’s perfect,’ he whispered against her lips, his hands cupping the soft curves of her face as she shrugged the straps of her dress over her shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sapphire satin slither fluidly down her body and out of sight.
He took a step back to gaze his fill and couldn’t catch his breath. All his heated fantasies during their special meal were true. She had obviously thought about what she wanted to happen after their meal this evening because she hadn’t been wearing a single stitch under the sleek fabric.
She was a goddess come to life, every slender curve and enticing hollow highlighted and shadowed like a rare sculpture in the buttery candlelight.
‘One of us is definitely wearing too many clothes,’ she whispered, but for all her provocative words she couldn’t hide the tell-tale quiver of nervousness.
‘That’s easily remedied,’ he said huskily, reaching for the buttons on his shirt, then changed his mind and dropped his arms to his sides, hoping she wouldn’t notice that his hands were trembling. ‘Perhaps you’d like to help me?’
Evening surgery was busy and Quinn felt as if every patient took twice as long as usual to come to the point of their visit—or was it just that he couldn’t get Faith’s tearstained face out of his mind?
For a moment he’d been surprised that she should have been so deeply affected by the child’s death. He’d had so many years of thinking about her as Faith Adams, the international star, that he’d all but forgotten Faith Adamson, the person. Then he’d remember all those long conversations they’d had at school about their reasons for wanting to become doctors and it was Faith Adamson he saw—the woman who could have been his wife and the mother of several children of their own by now.
Was that, in part, the reason why she’d been so devastated by Fliss’s death? Had she secretly been wishing that the youngster was hers, and was now mourning her as a daughter?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t forget his last sight of her this morning when he’d left her in Laura’s office. She’d looked so defenceless somehow, her face wan and tear-streaked, her swollen eyes hidden behind dark glasses as she’d stared sightlessly out of the window at another incongruously sunny day.
It hadn’t been until he’d made the decision to call on her at the end of surgery that he’d been able to concentrate fully, excusing the trip to the Barton as a doctor’s understandable concern for a fellow human being and not the fact that he couldn’t stay away from her any longer.
It was a good thing he’d got his mind working properly, because his next patient was Sara Dean.
She was so altered that he barely avoided exclaiming out loud, hardly recognising this unkempt, emaciated-looking woman as the smartly dressed, happy mother-to-be he’d first met.
‘Hello, Sara,’ he said gently, feeling almost as if he was dealing with a fragile injured bird. ‘Please, take a seat.’
She silently obeyed, but her descent onto the functional upholstery looked more like a collapse than a voluntary act, as if she’d just run out of the energy needed to stay standing.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked with a degree of trepidation, remembering the bitter words she’d thrown at him that night for failing to save Jamie’s life.
‘Nothing,’ she said dully, the effort of speaking visibly draining her. ‘I just came because…because I needed to apologise.’
‘Oh, Sara, you don’t have to worry about—’
‘No!’ she interrupted with a welcome flash of spirit. ‘I said some dreadful things to you…blaming you for Jamie’s…’ She shook her head, apparently unable to say the word.
‘Sara—’
‘Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true,’ she interrupted, as if unaware he’d even tried to speak. ‘You’ve always been so good to me, all the way through the pregnancy and when he was born…You were almost as happy as we were.’ She paused a moment then met his eyes for the first time. ‘You ought to have children,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’d be a wonderful father.’
Quinn was startled by the sharp pang of loss her words sent through him.
He and Faith had talked about the family they would have one day. He’d been uncertain that he’d know how to be a good father—his own had hardly been a sterling example—but she’d given him confidence, pointing out that he would have learned from the things he’d gone through as a child and therefore wouldn’t make the same mistakes.
Over the years since then, with his many dealings with children both during his training and since, he’d realised that she’d been right—his instincts were very different from his father’s.
The trouble was, he’d never been able to envision having the children he craved with anyone else.
‘The coroner’s report said exactly the same thing as you did,’ Sara said, breaking into his trip down memory lane. ‘It said that Jamie had developed an overwhelming respiratory infection and that he’d probably…gone…in his sleep just after I put him down after his last feed.’
Quinn already knew the details. He had a copy of the report in his file, but he knew that Sara needed to tell him what she’d come here to say so he waited silently for her to finish.
‘Anyway, I know you couldn’t have done anything for him, no one could. I just wanted to thank you for coming so quickly and to apologise for screaming at you like that and…’ She finally ran out of steam.
Quinn waited a moment to see if she would continue, taking the time to catalogue her sallow skin, unwashed hair and the dark shadows under her eyes. Her clothes were hanging on her, several sizes too large at least, as though she hadn’t eaten since Jamie had died.
‘Sara, you’re not looking after yourself,’ he said gently. ‘You’re making yourself ill.’
Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’m not doing it deliberately, Doctor, but…I just can’t keep anything down. Even the smell of food makes me feel sick. It feels almost as bad as when I was pregnant…I know it’s impossible,’ she added quickly when he would have spoken. ‘That’s why we had to have the IVF, because I couldn’t get pregnant on my own, but feeling like this…as if I’m…well, it just makes it worse…’
Deep, racking sobs shook her body, leaving Quinn feeling helpless. What could he say to a woman going through such misery and despair? He’d never gone through the loss of a child so he couldn’t possibly know what she was—
Suddenly, he remembered the crippling pain he’d felt when Faith had left him and knew there was something he could say.
‘Sara, I know that nothing can take away the pain of losing Jamie. There’ll be an empty place inside you where he should be and you’ll always miss all the memories you should have made with him—the first tooth, the first word, the first step.’
Her sobs had abated slightly as his voice registered and he knew that the words were striking a chord with the look of misery in her brimming eyes.
‘But there’s the other side to it, too,’ he continued, hoping fervently that he wouldn’t sound patronising, because that certainly wasn’t his aim. He wanted to give her something to hang on to when she felt as if she was drowning—a feeling that had once been all too familiar to him. ‘There’ll also be a special place in your heart that’s filled with the memories of the time you did have with Jamie, starting with your determination to have him in the first place. Do you remember the first time we met? I do, vividly. It was just after you’d discovered you were pregnant.’
She nodded, a wan smile briefly flitting across her face.
‘You were absolutely brimming over with joy, and that never wavered right through the pregnancy, in spite of all the ups and downs you went through.’
‘It didn’t seem important, as long as the baby was healthy,’ she said simply. ‘I could have put up with anything to make sure he was safe. And when he was born and they put him in my arms for the first time…’
This time he knew they were joyful tears.
‘And that was just the first of the happy memories,’ he pointed out. ‘If you think, you’ll remember hundreds…thousands of special moments in just those few weeks. The fact that the time was so short doesn’t make them any less precious, does it?’
‘Of course not, but…but sometimes it seems that if…if I’d never had him, then I wouldn’t have lost him and I wouldn’t be hurting so much now.’
Something that Laura had said during their meeting at the Butterfly Garden teased at Quinn’s memory, suddenly seeming very appropriate to Sara’s situation.
‘Sara, if you could get rid of all the butterflies in your garden, would you do it?’
For a moment she stared at him as though wondering whether she’d heard right, clearly confused by the strange turn their conversation had taken.
‘Butterflies?’ she echoed.
‘Yes,’ he said with a smile. ‘You know…those fragile, beautiful creatures that appear every summer. Some of them only live for a day. Would you rather not see them at all?’
Comprehension quickly spread over her face but, then, he’d known she was intelligent enough to pick up his meaning.
‘I would never have thought of Jamie as a butterfly,’ she said softly as she mopped the last of her tears away, her shoulders already seeming less bowed. ‘But you’re right. I couldn’t possibly wish he hadn’t lived, even if I couldn’t have him for very long.’
‘Just take it one day at a time,’ he suggested. ‘The pain is very fierce at the moment and you can’t see beyond it, so just concentrate on getting through today, hoping that tomorrow will be just a little easier.’
He hesitated as she gathered herself together and stood up, not certain whether he should mention the Butterfly Garden to her—whether seeing the other children’s plight would be too much too soon, or whether it would help her by taking her out of herself.
In the end, as she reached door he settled for being just a little enigmatic.
‘And, Sara, when you’re ready to hear where the idea about the butterflies came from, just ask me.’
It was much later than he’d intended when Quinn finally drove up the imposing driveway that lead to the equally ostentatious front door.
Surgery had overrun as usual, caused in part by the length of time he’d spent with Sara Dean—not that he regretted a single minute of it. The person who had entered his room had been very different to the one who’d left it. All he could do was hope that his words would still help her tomorrow and all the days after that.
No, the biggest problem had been the thunderstorm that had suddenly blown in out of nowhere and the tree felled by a lightning strike that had demolished the electrical sub-station that served the Rookmere area.
The Barton was no more immune to power failures than the rest of the populace, he noted when there wasn’t a single light to be seen.
‘Either that, or there’s no one home,’ he muttered as he climbed the steps and grimaced at the pang of disappointment that tightened like a fist around his heart.
He was about to ring the bell when he heard the sound of music…a piano playing a heartbreakingly familiar tune.
Automatically, his feet took him back down the steps and around the corner of the building towards the wide lawn that stretched away from the back of the house to the very edge of the nearby woodland. In spite of the darkness, it was easy to find his way with the vast dark bulk of the Barton on one side and the lighter grey of the late evening sky on the other.
It wasn’t the first time he’d approached the French doors this way and the memory of that first time was enough to stop him in his tracks.
She’d been playing the piano that time…the same tune, too. But it was what had happened when she’d finished playing that had replayed over and over in his memory ever since, keeping the pain of loss alive. He’d never been able to watch the piano scene in the film with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts for the same reason.
She was playing in the dark, he realised when he finally reached the French doors, surprised that there wasn’t at least the glow of candles to show that she was really there. Not that it could be anyone else playing that melody in just that way. He’d played each one of her CDs so many times that every note was permanently imprinted in his memory. But even the most sophisticated technology couldn’t reproduce the sound of Faith Adams playing in person. And as for Faith Adamson playing that particular composition…
He reached for the handle, anticipation doubling his pulse rate.
He’s here!
Faith’s hands hesitated momentarily over the keys, startled by the sudden knowledge, but long years of practice and too many public performances to count had schooled her into playing on no matter what the distraction.
As to how she knew Quinn was there when she couldn’t possibly see him, well, it was just one of those things that she’d always known, right from the first. There was just something…some special connection between them, perhaps. Whatever it was, she was able to sense his presence when he was near—like now.
She lifted her head and stared towards the French doors, knowing that he was out there somewhere. Or was it just wishful thinking, remembering that long-ago time when he’d slipped in through the open doors that night, his eyes sending shivers of anticipation through her as soon as they’d met hers across the length of the room.
Her hands grew still on the keys just in time for the familiar click to tell her that he’d opened the door.
‘Hello, Quinn,’ she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice. She’d known that this moment of reckoning would probably have to come one day and her dread had increased with every day since her mother’s bequest had made it inevitable.
‘Couldn’t you find any candles?’ he asked, the sound of his footsteps getting closer. ‘I’m sure Molly would have some somewhere.’
‘Molly’s not here tonight and, anyway, I don’t need light to be able to play.’ She closed her eyes to focus on his presence, feeling the air move over her bare arms as he stopped beside her, drawing in the unforgettable mixture of soap and man that could only belong to Quinn.
‘What about DJ?’ he prompted, dragging her out of the spiral of memories that had started to draw her in.
‘DJ?’ Her pulse hitched as her guilt weighed heavier than ever on her conscience. Was this really what she had wanted? Now that the time had come, she wasn’t so sure. What would Quinn think of her when he knew…?
‘He could have found some candles for you,’ Quinn said impatiently. ‘You can’t afford to have a fall, stumbling around in the dark. You’ve got concerts to play, remember?’
‘DJ’s away, too,’ she said, almost floating with unexpected pleasure when she realised that it was concern for her safety that had prompted his question. ‘And I don’t need candles to find my way around the Barton. I’ve lived here all my life.’
Suddenly she didn’t feel quite as brave as she’d thought she was, not quite ready to destroy these last few minutes together. Surely it wouldn’t matter if she prolonged them by offering him a drink before she finally admitted what she’d done and why she’d had to do it.
She stood up and turned and with her first step ploughed into hard male warmth.
‘Oh!’ she gasped, flailing her arms to try to regain her balance.
‘Careful!’ She felt strong warm hands descend on her shoulders to steady her, rescuing her when she would have fallen ignominiously onto her bottom.
They both froze for several endless seconds, and just that quickly everything changed.
‘Faith?’ he whispered, snatching his hands away almost as if the contact had burned him. But in the dark her senses were more acute. In his voice she’d heard the ache of longing—the same longing that had tormented her for the last seventeen years.
It had been more than sixteen years since she’d last felt his touch and suddenly she couldn’t bear the thought that she might never feel it again.
Even as she reached out to find his face in the darkness the voice of reason was telling her that he would never forgive her, but her desire was far too strong to listen to the warning.
‘Quinn?’ she whispered as she savoured the prickle of his emerging beard against her sensitive fingertips.
She felt the tension that froze him under her touch and was afraid that he would brush her away at any second, but then she found the corner of his mouth and when she touched his lips, drew a questing thumb over the remembered curve and heard his breath shudder in response, her heart leapt.
It nearly stopped altogether when he took control, wrapping powerful arms around her even as he sought her mouth with his.
Oh, she’d missed this, she thought, willingly parting her lips to admit his plundering tongue then challenging him to a sensual game of give and take in the dark warmth.
Quinn’s shoulders were even broader than they’d been when he’d been eighteen, she realised as her hands began their frantic exploration. Her fingers fought with shirt buttons in their quest to feel the silky heat of his naked skin, desperate to know if that had changed, too.
It hadn’t, unless she counted the fact that it felt even better…hotter and silkier than ever stretched taut over muscles that had fascinated her far more in the flesh than they ever had in an anatomy book.
‘Faith,’ he gasped when she raked her nails through the thick pelt of dark hair and found a tight male nipple then ducked her head to tease it with her tongue.
‘Enough!’ he groaned and swept her off her feet. ‘We need to find—’ he began, then swore when he crashed his shins straight into the piano stool.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked in concern, knowing just how much that could hurt from her own encounters with it. In fact, she was surprised that he hadn’t dropped her. He was going to have some colourful bruises by the morning. ‘What were you looking for, anyway?’
‘A flat surface,’ he growled fiercely, sending shivers up her spine even as he slid her down his obviously aroused body until her feet finally reached the wooden floor. ‘What did you expect after teasing me like that? I’m going to explode if we don’t…’
Desire radiated from every syllable and the heat burned away any qualms that might have urged caution.
‘You’d better follow me, then,’ she suggested, stretching one hand out to the piano in the darkness to tell her in which direction to go to find the door. ‘I know where all the flat surfaces are.’
Unerringly, she made her way out of the room, every nerve singing with awareness that Quinn was right behind her. When they reached the bottom of the broad sweep of stairs he took her by surprise, swinging her up into his arms again.
‘Stairs I can manage,’ he said tautly, setting off two at a time. ‘Just tell me which direction when we get to the top.’
‘Second door on the left…In a hurry, are you?’ she teased, tightening her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. She was startled by her own daring until she remembered that she and Quinn had always carried on like this. Still, it was a definite boost to her ego that he should be so eager.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he muttered, and she wasn’t certain she was supposed to hear the words. Before she could comment they’d reached her bedroom.
His arms tightened around her as he leaned back against the door, and in the sudden silence she heard the latch close with an unexpectedly loud click.
He stayed still for so long that she was afraid he was having second thoughts. Her heart sank at the idea, but she could understand it if he was. After all, a man with such a prominent position in the community couldn’t afford to…
‘I hope you haven’t changed your mind,’ he said, and she marvelled that they were already on the same wavelength.
‘Not in this lifetime,’ she whispered with a flood of relief. ‘I was just wondering what was taking you so long. The bed’s straight ahead of you, about five paces—’
The rest of her words were lost, forgotten as Quinn began a searing kiss that continued even as he set about ridding her of every stitch of clothing.
Without a word he lowered her to the bed and she only realised that he was equally naked when he covered her body with the searing heat of his own.
If she hadn’t already been so aroused she would have blushed when he discovered just how ready her body was for his possession, then he sank deep inside and nothing else mattered than the meteoric explosion that shattered them both.
It was pitch dark when Quinn woke from one of the most erotic dreams of his life.
Then he realised that Faith was still sprawled bonelessly across his body and he knew that it hadn’t been a dream at all. None of it. They really had done all those deliciously decadent things to each other, over and over again until they’d finally been unable to stay awake any longer.
He hardly dared breathe in case Faith woke, needing a few minutes to assimilate the impossibility of what had just happened.
For seventeen years he’d alternately mourned the loss of the woman he’d loved so deeply and hated her for the way she’d left him. And in all that time, in spite of the vivid memories that had haunted his nights, he’d never dreamed that he would ever know again the pleasure of holding Faith while she slept after sharing the most intense fulfilment that two people could know.
What he didn’t know was whether Faith would regret what they’d done.
She certainly hadn’t regretted it while they’d been pleasuring each other, as avid to touch and stroke and caress as he had been.
He stared up towards the ceiling and swore silently, wondering if he’d just made the same monumental mistake as he had so long ago.
It had been more than sixteen years since he’d last touched her silky skin but even the innocent contact of catching her before she’d fallen had been enough to set off a chain reaction that had started at his hands and ended several burgeoning inches below his belt. After that, instinct had taken over. Instinct and hormones.
What sort of a fool was he?
He could lie here with his arms around the only woman he’d ever loved and know that he still loved her, every bit as much, but he still didn’t know why she’d left him. And because he didn’t know, he had no idea whether she would do it again.
Just the thought of going through that agony a second time made his heart clench with dread.
All his old insecurities reared their ugly heads.
Had it been his fault that she’d left? Had he done something…said something…that had driven her away, driven her so far away that she’d completely abandoned her chosen career?
He’d never been able to make himself believe that her vows of love had been nothing more than lip service to an ideal when all she’d really wanted had been a teenage fling. He might have been gullible, but Faith hadn’t been that sort of girl…and if she had been, there had been boys infinitely better suited to her family’s position in Rookmere than the son of the town’s latest drunk.
No, the longer he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that only something serious could have forced her to have such an abrupt change of heart and he’d been determined, when he’d heard that she was returning, that he would finally get some answers.
He’d ostensibly come to the Barton last night to find out if Faith had recovered from her desolation at Fliss’s death, but he’d fully intended using the time to ask some far more pointed questions.
Faith whimpered in her sleep and his heart leapt when she burrowed even closer to him.
Quinn stifled a groan at his body’s instant response, knowing that there was no way he was ever going to be able to grill her, not when he felt a pain at her slightest whimper and became aroused by her sleeping body draped over his.
So what use was it to decide that he was going to pin her down for some answers? Even if she looked him straight in the eye and said she didn’t want him in her life…didn’t ever want to see him again…he wouldn’t believe her. Not after the way she’d responded to him tonight.
In fact, he was no further forward than before, except…Except this time he was going to ask her, point blank, why she’d left him that way, and why she’d abandoned the career that she’d set her heart on. Hopefully her answers would tell him what he needed to know so that he could fight for her, because he was going to fight for her, tooth and nail. His heart had belonged to Faith for seventeen years and he knew that he would never be happy if he didn’t have her in his life.
‘As soon as she wakes up,’ he whispered softly, brushing a kiss to the top of her head. ‘As soon as it’s light enough for me to see her expression and read her eyes…’
As if she was tuned into his thoughts, Faith stirred again and so did his body. This time she didn’t settle back into sleep and when she woke enough to realise just how intimately their bodies were positioned, the only thing on Quinn’s mind was the mind-blowing pleasure they could bring each other.