A few months ago, she might’ve had cause to worry. For the first time since finding the other woman in bed with her husband, Kelsey offered her a big smile. She swept her arm in the direction of Todd’s hospital room.
“He’s all yours.”
Chapter Eleven
Evan burst through his office door like a whirlwind, tossing down his briefcase and shedding the jacket that was stifling him. It took every ounce of self-control he could muster not to slam the door behind him, but that might incite a parade of staff members asking if everything was all right. They were a close-knit bunch, sometimes too much so. He’d already been an ass to his assistant this morning, prompting her to ask him if he needed another week off. He only wanted to start the previous one over…the good parts, at least.Finally in the silence and solitude of his office, he took a breath and stared at the bleak scene beyond his tall, narrow second-floor windows. Rain drooled down the glass, and the sky was leaden and dismally gray. Matched his thoughts perfectly. It was one of those days he’d told Kelsey about, when it had taken everything he had to walk into that courtroom.
Today was shaping up to be a nightmare, and he didn’t know if the judge was really riding his ass that hard or if it was just that he was ready to snap. Or if it was that Kelsey had been sitting across the room, the weight of her gaze following his every move.
Normally her court attire was conservative and demure and, while nothing she was wearing today was revealing at all, something about the way her black skirt clung to her ass had his blood boiling. Whenever she walked up to the court clerk, he wanted to jump up and thrash every bastard in the room for daring to watch her.
But how could he blame them? Her skirt, her pumps accentuating every muscle in her calves, her hair cascading in gorgeous spirals down her back… A man would’ve been out of his mind not to look. And he could swear the bewitching glow of a woman well fucked still lingered in her face. She looked amazing while he had hardly slept for two days and it showed. The judge had probably taken one look at the dark smudges under his eyes and concluded he’d been on a bender all weekend. This wasn’t how his fantasy was supposed to play out, not at all.
He’d wanted to call her. The thought of her at the hospital, sitting at Todd’s bedside holding his hand had stopped him dead. That man had already made a fool of him once, he’d be damned before he’d willingly go and let him do it again.
His desk phone gave a shrill chirp, slicing through the tumult of his thoughts. He should’ve told Delilah to hold his calls. Court didn’t resume for another two hours and he needed them to recuperate. He was off his game. Dammit, he was never off his game.
Dropping heavily into his chair, he stabbed the intercom button. “Yeah.”
“Kelsey’s here to see you.”
Fuck. The last thing he needed was her in here spewing apologies or excuses or whatever she had in mind. He crammed the heels of his hands into his eyes, fighting the urge to growl out loud.
“Evan?”
“Send her in.”
He sounds horrible.
Kelsey watched as Delilah frowned down at the phone on her desk. “I really don’t know what’s gotten into him today. After a week in Hawaii, you’d think he’d have mellowed out.”
“Withdrawals, maybe,” Kelsey said, striving for cheerfulness. “I mean, you get a week on the beach and then you have to come back to this place on a rainy Monday? That would give anyone the blahs.”
Delilah nodded and laughed, then leaned forward conspiratorially, speaking in hushed tones. “Hey, you would know. Who did he go with? We’ve decided it was a woman because he never would say.”
God, she should have suspected the tongues were wagging. Delilah’s, especially. She was the gossip of the courthouse, on top of all the scandals. Kelsey feigned innocence, cocking her head to one side as if contemplating the matter. Hopefully none of the DA’s staff knew Kelsey had been off last week, too, or they might put two and two together. But did she really care anymore? “Hmm, must be really top secret.”
“Must be, if he didn’t tell you. Anyway, you can go on back. You know where his office is, right?”
“Yeah.”
Left on her own again, her courage nearly failed her. If he still maintained that distance, she didn’t know what she would do. Oh, God. What if she could never bridge it? What if that terrible politeness—or if this morning was any indication, outright hostility—would be the extent of their relationship from now on? She clutched the file she was carrying to her chest like a shield as she navigated the hallways.
His office was down the first hall to the right, second door on the left, and it was closed. Holding her breath, she tapped on it, bracing herself for a brusque reply. But Evan only sounded defeated when he mumbled for her to come in.
It crushed her. Her easy-going, roll-with-it Evan had been replaced with a man who looked tense and unhappy, and it was her fault. She slipped inside the door to find him at his desk, every iota of his attention focused on the laptop in front of him. The glare of it caught in his reading glasses, and for all his brooding, he was sexy as hell. She doubted there was anything on that screen that had him looking so intense. He was just avoiding meeting her eyes. She closed the door behind her.
“Hi,” she said. Finally he raised his head, and she would have been relieved when he smiled, but it looked forced. Like everything else about him.
“Hey, there. Did Jack send you over to gloat about his petty victories?” He winked as he said it, but it was true that he’d had a hard morning. The judge had shot down almost every objection he’d thrown out there, and as time pressed on Evan’s frustration had been evident. But she’d seem him handle far, far worse than that, had seen him shake it off like it was nothing and laugh about it later.
Standing here now, she couldn’t quite get rid of the ridiculous feeling that he was the authority figure behind his massive, imposing desk, and she the shamed underling pleading her case. No begging, she ordered herself. Have some damn dignity. “No, of course not,” she said. “I wanted to see you.”
She stepped farther inside the room, feeling self-conscious despite herself as his gaze swept her up and down. Of all times, she thought about the naughty things he’d said about having sex in here, and her cheeks began to heat up. “I’m sorry for what I said at the hospital. I just…wasn’t prepared to answer questions about us yet. It’s all so new. And we haven’t exactly discussed where this is going.”
He pulled off his glasses and tossed them on the desk. “I thought it was pretty damn apparent where it was going.”
“It went to the bedroom. I didn’t know if it was coming home with us, or if it was a ‘what happens in Waikiki…’ thing.” His office was spacious, and neat as always. His law degree was elaborately matted and framed on the wall behind him. Pictures of his family adorned the shelves. It struck her then, perhaps more than ever before, just how much she wanted to be a fixture in his world. The wound in her heart yawned wide at the thought that she’d utterly mucked up her chance. “After what happened to me, I need something concrete. I need it laid out in black and white what’s going on, because I’m not going to take the risk of sparking off yet another scandal in my life by speculating in front of a roomful of people. Can you understand that?”
“All right, we should’ve talked openly about it. Point taken. But I wasn’t too keen on making any declarations of love and devotion while you’re obviously still upset about your ex.”
Love?
“No, no,” she said, trying to hide her desperation as she dropped into the chair on the other side of the desk from him. She had to make him understand. “I’m not upset about him.”
“The opposite of love is indifference, and you’re not indifferent to Todd. You’re still mad as hell.”
“Mad at what he did to me, to my life. I saw him yesterday, and I feel nothing whatsoever for him, even when he’s lying broken in that hospital bed. I hope he heals, I wish him the best, but…honestly, you have
to believe me. I’m putting it all behind me. I told him that.”
“You did? You said those exact words?”
“I told him this was the last time he would cause me heartache or turn my life upside down. I guess I just needed to get those words out, you know? I just needed…closure. I never could get it before.” She looked him in the eyes. “He knows where you and I have been. He wanted you to know he misses you, and wanted me to thank you for everything you’ve done. It felt pretty damn good, getting all that out there. Like I’m…free.”
“Then I’m proud of you,” he said, sincerity in the words. His expression had softened when she told him what Todd said about him. But his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Do you not believe me?” she asked miserably.
“I just don’t think it’s been put to the test yet.” He sighed. “What happens the next time we’re away and he needs you for whatever reason?”
“Nothing. I told you Sandra—”
“I know what you told me, but is Sandra really the reason you flew three thousand miles to be here when he got hurt? Or was it that you got scared and jumped at the first opportunity to run away from me and back to the familiar?”
She just stared at him. It was probably the closest thing to the truth in existence, insane as it sounded, and she hadn’t even thought of it herself.
He went on. “I didn’t mean to scare you. And I want Todd to be all right, don’t get me wrong. I’m trying not to be a jealous asshole about it. But I did lose one girl to the guy and this…it just wasn’t cool. It exacerbated all this other stuff I’ve been stewing over all week.”
“Like what?” she asked in a tiny voice.
His mouth twisted, as if words were pressing in behind it and he was trying to rein them in. “All those tears you shed over him…it’s bothered me from the first night we were together.”
Her brows drew together and she shook her head. “Evan, those were for you. For the feelings you were showing me that I’d never felt before. For…all the years I wanted you and never thought I would have you.” Her eyes were welling even at the mention of it.
He looked as if his world had just spun. “What?”
“How could you honestly not know?” Drawing a deep breath, she reached into her manila file and pulled out the two sheets of paper she’d copied at the office that morning. She stood and dropped them on the desk in front of him, emotions threatening to sweep her away at what she was doing: showing him the confession forever captured in her teardrop-splattered handwriting on those pages. It was everything she’d ever wanted to say to him and never had the guts to. “There. There is my heart laid open for you, okay? I wrote this in my journal one night back in college, and after last week I know that not a word on those pages has changed. So read it, and if it isn’t proof enough of how I feel about you, and if you can’t forgive me for one hasty decision, maybe it’s best we’re over before we ever really began.”
He stared down at what she’d written, but she couldn’t tell if he actually read the words. “Look, I knew, but I didn’t know… I didn’t know you felt like that. That deeply.”
“Now you have it in black and white.” She was shaking all over, tears streaking her cheeks. When had she walked around his desk to stand beside his chair? Her heart was threatening to choke her. Taking a breath, she straightened and smoothed her damp palms on her skirt. Dignity, right. He probably thought she was an insane stalker now.
“If I humiliated you, I’m sorry, but I was a walking pile of humiliation over you for two years until I met Todd, and he managed to pick me up somewhat before slamming me right back down. That will never happen to me again. I told Todd he couldn’t hurt me anymore, and now I’m telling you that if you want me, get off your ass, because I love you, Evan, more than anything”—she paused to sob, those words wrenching her soul—“but I refuse to live like this anymore.”
He cleared his throat and lifted his gaze to hers. “I have so much to say to all that it’ll take the rest of the day to get it out.” He glanced down at her journal entry, at the words that had flown from her hands the night she’d watched him with the girl at the frat party. She’d wanted to be that girl so desperately she might have sold her soul for it that night. “But since we’re a little strapped for time, consider this me…getting off my ass.”
He stood, and she had no time to brace herself before he jerked her to him and scalded her lips with his own. She shook, went limp and groaned helplessly against the onslaught, disbelief fogging her senses along with a desire so strong she could scarcely contain it.
He was real and solid and hot in her arms, burning her even through all their layers of clothing. Layers she couldn’t wait to strip through. She clenched his shirt in her fists, feeling his back muscles tense beneath her fingers, feeling his thigh surge hard between hers until her skirt rode up her legs, higher and higher until he must have felt he heat of her pussy through his pants. The edge of his desk bit into the flesh of her ass as he planted her against it.
“I need to lock my door,” he murmured, his lips scarcely leaving hers as he spoke.
“I did it when I came in.”
“So certain of your powers of persuasion?”
“Something like that.”
Breathing labored, Evan grasped the lapels of her jacket and stripped it down her arms. When she moved to help him remove it completely, he held it just at her forearms, trapping both limbs useless behind her back. He pulled away to look at her and when she lunged forward to claim his mouth, he eluded her, holding her still.
“Please,” she whispered.
“You said you loved me.”
“I do, I love you.” It rolled so naturally off her tongue now, as if she had been saying it all along. It didn’t even matter if he said it back. “I swear to you, if it had been you who got hurt, I couldn’t have even waited for a flight. I’d have swum the ocean to get to you.”
“Remember when you asked me what makes me hurt?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“You know the party when I first introduced you to Todd?”
“Yes.”
“I have a confession, too. I was waiting for you to show up there because I’d made up my mind that I’d messed around long enough and I wanted to be with you. I knew, even back then, that you and me would be forever. As a twenty-two-year-old that scared the hell out of me, until I realized the thought of you not being there after graduation scared me far more.”
Her trembling intensified. He was going on. “I only made the mistake of introducing you to my best friend before I could take you away to tell you this. And I saw you guys stare at one another a little too long, and then you talked all night and finally left together… I decided maybe it was a sign we really weren’t meant to be. It was the only consolation I could find.”
“Evan…”
He shushed her with a finger to her lips. “Let me say this. The one thing I’m thankful for is that being with him kept you in my life all these years. But I can’t forgive myself for not giving us a chance sooner. I was always in one meaningless relationship or another and none of them were worth hurting you like that.”
“It’s okay. If it ends with us here, like this, it’s all okay.”
“Nothing is ending here.” He kissed her, as she’d been dying for him to do. Emotionally, she was numb, in shock, but her physical need for him hadn’t suffered. It eclipsed all other thought.
The finger he’d pressed to her lips had trailed down over her chin, following the hollow of her throat to the V-neck of her teal blouse. She panted, wanting to thrust her breast into his hand, but his fingers busied themselves deftly working her buttons. She wiggled her hips closer to him, needing more contact. He tasted so heavenly she couldn’t get enough of his lips, of the teasing way his tongue swirled with hers.
Cool air caressed her breasts when he freed her shoulders of her blouse and her bra straps, and it was unbelievable to her that she was actually bare-chested in
the workplace. Dear God, she’d never been so wanton. A mere month ago, the very thought would have mortified her. But Evan’s lips slipped over her nipple and there was no room for anything except raw sensation. Still trapped and helpless, she ached to touch him, to clench his silken hair in her fingers. He licked and sucked until she was as wet between her legs as the flesh he kissed, her hips undulating to his rhythm.
His hand trailed up her thigh, under her skirt, to grasp her panties and give them a sharp tug. She moaned and shifted to help him pull them all the way down, feeling them slip off over first one high heel and then the other. His fingertips brushed over her clit and she melted in agony as he rubbed. “Mmm. God, I can’t wait to get you home,” he murmured.
She giggled. “I thought you wanted to do it here?”
“Oh, we will. But to have you naked in my bed…at home. It’ll just seem more real. More…permanent.”
Permanent. Had a single word ever sounded more beautiful to her?
He pulled her away from the desk then and wrenched her jacket off, his movements now nearly uncontrolled. Arms finally free, she clutched at him in relief. With both hands, he pushed her skirt so far up her legs she was naked from the waist down.
“I’ve wanted to do that all morning,” he said, before lifting her and setting her precariously on the edge again, spreading her legs to accommodate his hips. She was so eager to feel him wedge into her she was dripping, panting, her pulse frantic. But he dropped to his knees.
How could she have ever lived the rest of her life without this? She cried out when his tongue speared her, lapping at the cream she wept just for him, just from his nearness, his touch. He groaned and her face burned but she was beyond embarrassment. God knew he’d seen every bare inch of her in every position imaginable over the past few days. She’d gone through too many emotions today, and now that it was over she wanted him to fuck her until she was numb. But he wouldn’t lick her in a rhythm that would bring her any relief, and she was caught at the precipice of ecstasy, writhing against him.