Shock Waves (27 page)

Through the deepening shadows, Brenna stared up at him. There was confusion in her eyes. “I … I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I. Not at first.” He’d been in some serious denial. “I’d quit believing in things I couldn’t see or touch.” Evidence, he’d believed. Tangible facts and clues. He’d staked his whole life on them, never realizing they, too, could be distorted or misread. “I refused to let myself trust the kind of emotion that could twist me up inside and strip away my ability to think.” He slid his hand to cup the side of her face. “Until you.”

Her eyes went dark. “Me?”

He looked down at her and let himself see the truth he’d been trying so hard to deny. “I was drawn to you immediately.” From the moment he’d first heard her voice, her intriguing invitation. “Compelled to seek you out.”

“Because you thought I worked for Jorak.”

“That’s what I told myself,” he admitted. “At first.” But no more. He lifted his other hand to her waist and pulled her against his body. “You’re not the only one who’s been having dreams, angel.” His words were slow, purposefully thick, as he let the heated images wash through him. Sleep had not come easily, despite the fact he’d come to crave what he found there. Brenna, always Brenna. Bathed in moonlight and nothing else. Smiling. Extending an arm toward him. “I’ve had a few of my own.”

* * *

That was her cue. It was time to go. She’d heard enough. She’d seen what she needed to see. Him, she’d told herself. She just needed to see him one more time. The dreams would go away, she’d convinced herself. She’d quit waking in the middle of the night, her body hot and damp and burning from the lingering feel of his touch. His mouth.

His love.

The woman she’d trained herself to be, the woman who walked on the outskirts of the world, who didn’t believe in tomorrow, told her to walk away. Now. Fast.

The woman she’d become that night in the abandoned hotel, when she’d given herself to Ethan and the promise of his touch, refused to let her move.

It was hard to look at him, hard to meet his penetrating green eyes and see the heat burning there. But it was impossible not to. In the weeks that separated him, she’d tried not to let herself see him, tried not to remember, but here, now, seeing him in an old T-shirt damp with his perspiration and the same shorts he’d worn that first night, despite the frigid temperatures, the tousle of his hair, and whiskers darkening his jaw, the raw glint to his eyes, it was impossible not to remember.

Not to want.

“What kind of dreams?” she asked with a mild curiosity that pleased her—but how her heart pounded against her chest.

A slow smile curved his mouth, inviting her to stare at his lips, lips she would swear she could still feel against her skin. “Dreams about you,” he said, and his voice was pitched low. “Dreams that pick up where we left off in Mexico.”

The wind whipped like icy needles against her skin, but she felt only a surge of heat.

“Except we’re not in an abandoned room this time,” he said, and if possible, his eyes went even more smoky. His hand was still on her face, not moving, just sending his imprint deeper into her. “There’s a bed,” he said. “Silk sheets.” His smile turned wicked. “Sometimes we use them.”

Her mouth went dry. “And other times?”

“There’s the shower,” he said softly. “A hot tub.” A naughty light glinted in his eyes. “The floor.”

Brenna wasn’t sure how she stayed standing. If his hand hadn’t been on her, she might not have. His words stirred some place deep inside, and too easily she saw, she felt, everything he described, because, heaven help her, she’d had those dreams, too.

“You,” he said, and suddenly the gleam was gone from his eyes, replaced by a seriousness that wrapped around her heart in a tight squeeze. “You, angel. You’re the woman you saw. The one on the beach. The woman I’d give my life for.” His eyes burned hotter than the stars fighting with the high thin clouds. “That’s why I risked everything to get you out of the line of fire—because I couldn’t let my thirst for revenge touch you. Hurt you.”

Never in a million years. Never in a million dreams. She’d seen Ethan and she’d seen the scene on the beach, but she’d never seen herself. “That’s not possible.”

He laughed then, a low, rich sound that seared into her bloodstream. “Don’t you see?” He pulled her closer, sharing with her the hot, hard planes of his body. “In trying to prevent what you saw in your dream, you only made sure it came true. If you hadn’t walked into my life, if you hadn’t tried to warn me, there would have been no woman on the beach.”

No. Denial vaulted through her, but the truth of his words glowed brighter with every beat of her heart.

“And I might have died,” he added quietly.

And for a moment all she could do was stare. And remember. “Gran…” she whispered, staring up into his eyes. “She always said the future isn’t etched in stone. That it’s fluid, ever changing.” Tears thickened her voice, burned her eyes. “Something to be cherished, not feared.”

Ethan answered by drawing her close and leaning down to put his lips to hers. “I cherish a lot, angel,” he murmured. “It took losing you for me to realize what you’d been trying to tell me, that if I couldn’t trust myself, I had nothing.”

She lifted a hand to his face, welcomed the tickle of his whiskers.

“I love you, Brenna,” he said, and her heart lost a beat on the words. “I love you more than I knew possible.”

“Ethan, you don’t know—”

“Yes, I do,” he said quietly, cutting her off with his words and another soft kiss. “And so do you. That’s why you’re here tonight, whether you admit that to yourself or not. That’s why you walked into my life.” He put his mouth to the corner of hers. “You told me you don’t believe in tomorrow, but everything you’ve done proves that you do. It’s not etched in stone, Brenna. It’s a blank canvas waiting to be painted.”

For years she’d taught herself to live in a cocoon, to pretend she could watch the world go by and not want to join it. To believe she was better off not getting involved, that loving only led to heartache. But as she opened to Ethan, invited him in, the truth streamed through her. It wasn’t loving that hurt, but losing that love. Tomorrow didn’t have to be a dark place.

“Tomorrow, angel,” he murmured, pulling back to meet her eyes. She smiled at him through the moisture in her own, stunned to see the same moisture in his. “That’s what I want to give you. Tomorrow, and every day afterward.”

And when he put it like that, it all seemed so unbelievably simple. “Starting with tonight,” she whispered, returning her mouth to his.

He kissed her back, long, slow, gentle kisses that heated her blood and sent an entirely new kind of shock wave trembling through her. “Tell me about these new dreams of yours,” he murmured as he nibbled her lower lip. “I want to know what I have to look forward to.”

She pulled back and smiled, reached for the bottom of his T-shirt and slipped her hands inside, flattening them against the warmth of his stomach. “I’d rather show you instead.”

Epilogue

«
^

”
D
ance with me.”

Miranda Carrington Vellenti looked up from an elaborate spray of heavily scented lilies and magnolias to find her husband of one hour and twenty-two minutes watching her with mischief glimmering in his dark, dark eyes.

Over eight months had passed since the storm-washed morning in Portugal when he’d walked into her life wearing black and carrying a briefcase that was really a machine gun, but still, the sight of him gave her heart an immediate lurch. At the time, when she’d looked at the stranger wearing the dark sunglasses, she’d never in a million years imagined that come the following January, she’d walk down a red-carpeted aisle dotted by white rose petals, to the altar where he stood in a breathtaking black tuxedo, watching her, waiting for her.

The reality still had the power to jam the breath in her throat.

“It’s not time yet,” she said, glancing around the restored plantation home they’d chosen for their wedding reception. “The music hasn’t started yet.”

A slow smile curved his lips, revealing startling white teeth against olive, Mediterranean skin.
“Bella, bella, bella,”
he said in that low, raspy voice of his, one of the few reminders of the violence of his former life. “How many times do I have to tell you not all music comes from radios or compact discs?” He glanced toward the far corner of the parlor, where a jazz band had just begun to set up, then put his hand to the small of her waist and drew her against his body. “Don’t you hear it?”

The memory washed over her and through her, of the first time they danced, that long-ago night in a musty wine cellar. There’d been no official music that night, only the purr of the wind and the whisper of candles, and—

She lifted a hand and opened her palm against the black lapel of his tuxedo, felt the heat, the intensity, the rhythm, clear down to her bones. “Drums?”

Against hers, his body started to sway. “The next best thing.”

Staccato, she remembered saying that night. Just like the rhythm of her own heart. Impossibly content, she melted against him and let the music of their hearts carry her away.

Her wedding day. She’d dreamed, but never had she imagined a love could be so perfect, so pure and blinding and right. With her cheek resting against his chest, she glanced around the parlor, noted that many of the guests had stopped mingling and now only stared. She saw her parents, icons of propriety and dignity, but they were smiling as they watched their youngest daughter dance with her husband, to music no one else heard. And then there were Sandro’s parents, estranged from him for so many years, standing at the edge of the makeshift dance floor, arm in arm, watching their son with love and pride glowing in their eyes. Through love and time, all those broken fences had been steadily repaired, and now there was only the future, stretching endlessly before them.

Time to live again, she remembered Sandro telling her the morning he’d walked back into her life, and she knew that truly it was.

* * *

“Dance with me.”

Elizabeth Carrington turned from the sight of her sister and new brother-in-law dancing to music no one else heard, to find her fiancé watching her through butterscotch eyes that had the power to stop her heart. For a moment she said nothing, did nothing, just drank in the sight of him in his outrageously sexy black tuxedo, with his dark blond hair queued behind his head and emphasizing his wide, flat cheekbones. It was impossible to see him like this and not remember another night, another request for a dance. Not in a parlor filled with wedding guests or even on a dance floor, but in an elaborate ladies’ room of white marble.

“It’s not our turn,” she forced herself to say, even though her body burned to be pressed against his, to feel his arms holding her close.

He lifted a hand to finger the strand of black pearls at her neck. “I thought you weren’t afraid of taking chances,” he reminded.

Once the words would have ignited her temper, prompted her defenses to snap into place. Now she only smiled. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I just don’t want to take Miranda’s moment.”

“Ah.” The word was deep, smooth, a sound uttered from low within his throat. Then he lifted a hand to her face, not to touch her cheek as she expected, but to snag a bobby pin from her hair.

“Wesley!” She swatted his hand away, but not before the damage was done and a wisp of hair fluttered free.

“You know I prefer your hair down,” he drawled.

And she smiled. She did know that. “Can’t always get what you want, though, can you?”

His eyes went dark. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he drawled, taking her hand and dragging her toward the back of the room.

Laughing, she went with him. “What are you doing?”

He tugged her into the big hall and then to the sprawling staircase, didn’t break stride when he swooped her into his arms and took the steps two at a time. “You said you weren’t afraid.”

A wicked thrill twirled through her. Dear God, he wasn’t really—

But this was Wesley “Hawk” Monroe, who tore through life with no regard for rules or propriety. And of course he was. That was only one of the reasons she loved him.

“We can’t,” she said, but already her body hummed.

He pulled open a door and strode inside, then kicked it closed and turned the lock. “I warned you what would happen when you wore that dress,” he reminded her.

Grinning, she glanced down at the sapphire sheath her sister had chosen for her bridesmaids, and automatically remembered the first night she’d tried it on for Wesley, the low light that had come into his eyes. He’d tucked a finger under one of two thin straps, much as he did now. Slowly he began to slide. “I told you what this dress makes me want,” he drawled.

In another lifetime, the lifetime before Wesley had blazed into her
life
and taught her what it mean to live, truly live, the words would have terrified her. Now they thrilled. She wasn’t afraid anymore. She knew how to let go and savor each moment. How to love.

Eager, she lifted her hands to his chest and slid the tuxedo jacket from his shoulders. “To take it off.”

* * *

“Dance with me.”

Brenna turned from watching Miranda and Sandro dancing to music no one heard, to where Ethan stood behind her, watching her with an awe he no longer fought. “Soon,” she said, smiling up at him. “Soon.”

He plucked two flutes of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter and handed one to her, kept the other for himself. “Then to moments yet to come,” he said, lifting his glass to hers.

A slow smile curved her lips and touched his heart. “To times yet to come,” she echoed, clinking her glass to his.

This was his baby sister’s day, and she looked radiant in her silk dress of shimmering white, but to Ethan, Brenna outshone even the bride. She wore black much as she had the night she’d stepped from behind a sycamore and walked into Ethan’s life, but rather than helping her to blend with the shadows, the sleek dress she’d chosen emphasized her curves and accentuated the fair coloring of her face and hair. Her eyes, those whitewashed pools of sapphire ringed by cobalt, glowed with a joy, a peace he’d never imagined he’d see from her.

Never imagined he’d feel.

But he did feel them, intensely, hammering through every inch of his body. Because of her and the love she’d brought to his life. For so many years he’d been driven by the need for evidence and fact, things he could see and touch, but she’d taught him the greatest gifts in life were those that which could not be seen with the eye or felt with the hand, but rather those that emanated from deep inside, like the love that had led him to purchase the ring waiting deep in the pocket of his tuxedo.

“Look,” she said, taking his hand and tugging him toward the verandah.

He let her lead him outside into the crisp air of a January evening. The day had dawned cloudless and blue for Miranda’s wedding, but now with the approach of dusk, the sky had dimmed, and clouds pushed close.

“Do you see them?” she asked.

He followed the direction of her gaze, expecting to find her staring at the army of stately old live oaks guarding the plantation or the elaborate gardens adorning the grounds, but her face was tilted upward, and yes, he saw. “Shape-shifters,” he murmured.

“What do you see?” she asked.

Once the question would have struck him as simple, maybe even foolish. Naive. Once he would have barked out the obvious. He saw a violet sky and cumulous clouds.

But then, once he’d been a fool.

Now he looked up at the twilight sky and slid a hand into his pocket, fingered the ring. He saw so much—a future with her by his side, children, birthday parties and picnics, summer vacations and anniversaries. But for the first time since he was a little boy, he also saw…

“Sailboats,” he whispered, trusting the thrum of his heart more than he’d ever trusted any piece of cold hard evidence or concrete fact. “I see sailboats.”

* * * * *