Barefoot by the Sea (36 page)

“Obviously your mother isn’t going to be here,” Lacey said, “but do you have some music we can play that reminds you of your dad?”

“No.” She looked up at the waitress, head buzzing along with a roll of unexpected queasiness. All this lying was actually making her sick. “Just…an ice water,” she said.

“Nothing at all?” Jocelyn prodded.

“Water’s fine.”

“I meant with your father.”

“I don’t. I don’t…”
Even have a father.
“I can’t…”

“Honey, what is it?” Lacey asked, reaching across the table. “You are pale as a sheet and, oh my God, you’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

Her throat closed as she looked from one to another. “I’ve been lying to you.” The words actually felt good on her tongue, but, holy hell, now what?

They continued to stare, all of them waiting—for the truth.

“Well, that’s not like you,” Jocelyn said after a long, awkward moment. “Want to come clean?”

She did, but she couldn’t. “Um…I would, but I can’t.”

“You can’t.” Zoe leaned closer. “But you will.”

This was all it took? Fifteen minutes in the Toasted Pelican with her three best friends and she was ready to spill the beans? What kind of promise had she made? How flimsy was her loyalty to Ian? How could she expect to withstand the pressure when he disappeared and they demanded to know what happened?

“Tess.” Lacey squeezed her hand. “You know we’re here for you, no matter what.”

She nodded, grabbing hold of that absolute unassailable fact.

“We always have been and always will be,” Jocelyn added. “We love you, so no matter what you want to tell us, it’s okay.”

Tessa waited for the classic Zoe zinger but only got a heartfelt smile. “We’re your family, baby girl. And we don’t pass judgment on each other.”

It all welled up, erupting like a little emotional Vesuvius. “I have a secret,” she admitted with a catch in her throat. “And I don’t know how to tell you guys.”

Zoe moved closer. “You simply tell us. The same way we do everything.”

They were her family. They were the one real, true, forever family, these three beautiful, honest, trustworthy women and, by extension, their loved ones. They were all she needed, which was good, because they might be all she ever had.

But she could not betray her trust to Ian.

“I lied about my parents,” she finally said. “And I’ve been carrying around this secret since we met in college.”

They exchanged a look of surprise and all three, whether they realized it or not, closed in a little like a tight circle of support.

As Tessa looked around and chose her first words to finally tell them the secret she’d kept about her mother all these years, the only thing she could think was just how lost she’d be without these three women.

Tessa didn’t open her eyes but stayed suspended in that magic pre-dawn bliss when sleep fades but reality doesn’t quite crash. Ian’s arm braced her against his body, one hand flattened possessively against her bare breast. His morning erection nestled into her backside, his thigh pressed against hers, his breathing soft against the top of her head.

She could stay like this forever.

Except that she couldn’t.

Opening her eyes, she guessed sunrise about a half hour away based on the pale blue light sneaking between the cracks of the shutters. Without moving at all, she let her gaze drift down to the powerful forearm that locked her in place, studying each individual golden hair and the deep purple tattoo that swirled over his skin.

He’d teared up when he’d told her about all those nights in Singapore, when his personal hell drove him to drink and ink, as he called it. Even his lilting British accent hadn’t masked the torture he’d been through.

Life in a witness protection program was no picnic.

And yet…

Her heart climbed up its familiar path into her throat, as it did every time even the whisper of the possibility blew through her mind. He’d never really asked her to go with him—not like on-one-knee kind of asking—but she knew what Ian wanted. If she said yes, then…

She’d give up her life. She’d give up her gorgeous gardens and fabulous friends. Just thinking about the three women she considered “sisters” made that lump in her throat even bigger. When she’d told them the real story about her parents, it had been nothing but anticlimactic. True to character, Jocelyn was fascinated, Lacey was sympathetic, and Zoe called Ken Donnelly an asshat.

And that made it even more devastating to even think about leaving. How could she do it? Explain before she left? Write a note? Disappear? They’d move heaven and earth looking for her, and that was exactly what Ian didn’t want to have happen.

Their story was worked out, more or less. When Henry gave Ian the word—which could be any day now—he’d take off for Canada and Tessa would miss her lover, but blame his departure on wanderlust and her heartbreak on a bad choice of men. Quietly, the UK government protection people would have the secret marriage annulled and no one would be the wiser. The girls wouldn’t know the wedding hadn’t been “fake” because they’d sign the certificate away from everyone, with only the mayor as witness.

Then, Ian would go—
somewhere
—with his beloved Shi and Sam, and Tessa would…

“You’re upset.”

The words startled her, spoken by a man she’d have sworn was sleeping. “How could you know that?”

“Heart rate goes up.” He gave her left breast a soft squeeze; she’d forgotten he had his hand there. “Muscles tighten.” He rocked into her thighs. “And, of course, that heavy sigh was a dead giveaway.”

Had she sighed?

His hand traveled up her chest, over her throat, and rested on her cheek, stroking under her eyes. “At least you’re not crying.”

“Why would I cry?”

“Because you’re getting married tomorrow and the whole thing is a—”

She whipped around, not able to bear him calling it a sham or charade or fake-out one more time. “That’s not why I’m upset,” she said. “I know what we’re doing and why.”

He searched her face. That gentle, appreciative light in his blue eyes always made her feel like he was seeing her for the first time. And he liked what he saw. “Then what has you all tense?”

Did he really have to ask? A few safe answers to the question floated around, but they were drowned out by their solemn promise to never, under any circumstances, lie to each other for the rest of the time they were together.

“Losing you,” she admitted.

His eyes closed like she’d shot him.

“Ian.” The name was still precious on her lips, spoken only when they were like this. The problem was, they’d spent so much time like this, she thought of him as Ian now. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” His voice was gruff, his eyes still closed. “I don’t want to lose you, either.”

She drifted closer, not that they could get too much deeper under each other’s skin. He responded instantly, wrapping his leg around her, tunneling his fingers in her hair, his hard-on pressed against her belly.

Sparks flared over her, mini–lightning bolts between her legs and fireworks deep inside her body. She let out a soft moan, already moving against him, wanting that pressure in the pleasure point he always found.

“Every time,” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss her throat.

“Every time what?”

“Every time I touch you, I get hard.”

“You woke up hard.”

“I touched you all night.” He caressed her breast, leaning her back into the pillow to get on top of her. “Anyway, every time I think about you, I get hard.”

They started to move in perfect rhythm, going to the place they’d both found exciting and comfortable—and the perfect escape when the conversation moved from their past and present to the future.

But the future loomed and the call from Henry would come very, very soon.

Tessa closed her eyes and erased the thought, instead letting feelings win this round. The pressure of his big, hard body over hers. The pleasure of his strong hands stroking her. The delicious, tickling, fluttery sensation that traveled from her toes to her eyelids when they started to make love.

This was when he whispered with his accent, when all the walls were completely torn down, when all the secrets and lies and history were silenced by their strangled breaths and precious moans of delight.

This was also when he reached to the drawer, sheathed himself, and entered her.

“Spread your legs, pretty Tessa,” he urged, his fingers already working to make her weak and wet.

She did, of course, bracing for him to lift off her, but he slid his tip right in the spot where his finger had been, making her gasp a little and open her eyes in question.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He lifted a brow.

“Get a condom.” Except for the first time, they’d never made love without one.

“I don’t want to.”

Her heart did a roll and dip, landing low in her stomach. “Ian, we talked about this.”

“You want—”

She gripped his shoulders. “Forget what I want. We’ve already got the most screwed-up, impossible, complicated, unreal relationship in the history of love. We’re already going to long for what we’ll never have, wonder about the missing person in our lives…” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want that.”

“You do,” he insisted, but didn’t go any deeper. “You want a baby. Could you get pregnant now?”

She almost laughed. “I’m pretty sure I can’t get pregnant at all, but if I were normal and functioning, yeah, I could. So, don’t.”

“Let me give this to you. Tessa. You’re doing everything for me.”

“I’m going through the motions of a wedding and letting you leave without a fight. Hardly everything.”

He crushed her with a little more weight. “It’s everything to me.”

“This.” She gestured between them. “Is not a sacrifice for me. I’ve had a few weeks of the most fun, the best sex, and the sweetest guy I’ve ever known. It’s not a sacrifice, trust me.”

“But if you had my baby, you’d never be alone.”

Tears welled up that he knew her weak spots so well. No one had ever known that about her. Not Billy, not even her friends. Only this man.

“It would be worse,” she whispered. “If I had your baby, I’d never forget you. He’d have blue eyes and a sweet smile and”—she fought the physical pain of it—“he could calculate Pi to twenty digits without a calculator.”

“See?”

See what? She didn’t see anything but a tear-blurred beautiful man that she—“No.”

“That first night, you were looking for a sperm donor. If I’d have said yes, you could be pregnant now.”

“I was looking for one to go in a test tube.”

He moved ever so slightly, a centimeter deeper into her. “Screw the test tube.”

“Ian!” She inched away. “Don’t you know I’d writhe in absolute agony if I couldn’t tell you about your child? Not to mention that I already have to lie to my friends and act like I’m a little bit brokenhearted because I’d fallen for a man with wanderlust who was bound to disappear.”

Pain crossed his face—that same misery she used to see before she knew his true story. “But you’d have a baby.”

Probably not. “But I wouldn’t have you.”

“You’d have a piece of me.”

“I don’t want a piece.” She wanted it all. The whole of him, his heart, his life, his world, his children. She stroked his face, wishing she didn’t deeply love and hate the idea at the same time. “And how would you feel, knowing that you have yet another child in the world you can’t see?”

“I’d feel…” He shook his head. “This isn’t about how I feel.”

“This isn’t how I wanted it to be, Ian,” she finally whispered. “The baby isn’t supposed to make me hurt because I love his father, the baby—”

“You love me.” There was nothing but awe in the statement.

For a second, her mouth hung open. Had she said that?

“Well, I…” She closed her eyes, caught by her words and her promise not to lie. “Yes, I—”

He cut her off with a kiss, hard and deep and soul-rocking. Clutching her, he nearly broke her in half, devouring her mouth and sliding right back inside her, even deeper.

“Ian, I—”

He finally lifted his head, his eyes moist and sparking with emotion. “I love you, Tessa.”

She swallowed her own admission, letting his wash over her.

“I love you so much.” He covered the crack in his voice by smashing his face into her neck and hair. “I never thought I could love anyone or anything again, but I love you, Tessa Galloway. I love you.”

All the heat of the kiss disappeared, replaced by a wholly different sensation. An ecstasy she couldn’t quite grasp, like soaring down a rollercoaster with all her breath stolen and a scream trapped in her throat.

When he looked at her, all she could do was nod. Words simply wouldn’t form.

She’d take that piece of him; it wasn’t such a big risk. She couldn’t get pregnant.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He slid into her all the way, filling her, thrilling her, loving her. Slowly at first, looking into each other’s eyes, lost in love, they rocked in perfect timing. Her body floated and rolled, each thrust twisting pangs of pleasure deeper into her, his manhood swelling and pulsing as far into her as he could get. His skin was on fire, his body taut, his face transformed by the moment.

Every stroke took her closer to release, but she fought it off, wanting to be a hundred percent in the moment when he lost control. Grasping his shoulders, she forced him in deeper, watching for the moment when he cringed and cried and exploded into her.

“Tessa. Tessa.” His body froze for a second, his breath caught, almost as if he were waiting for permission.

“I love you, Ian,” she whispered. “And I’ll never, ever forget you.”