A Charmed Place (35 page)

For a brief second she drew a blank, and then she made the connection. "I used to read these aloud to you on the campus green!" she said, thrilled that he still remembered.

Dan was pleased, too. She saw it in the half-smile on his lips and in the flush of emotion that settled over the high, chiseled bones of his cheeks as he watched her closely for her reaction.

" '
Her eyes were deeper than the depth / Of waters stilled at even'," he quoted.

"Rossetti!" she guessed at once. "Oh, Dan—"

"Read the inscription," he told her.

Nestling the book in the crumple of bedsheets still in her arms, she opened the cover and read:

For Maddie.

No other love,

Dan.

"Of course, like me, the book was in a lot better shape at the time," he explained with that same half-smile. "But we've been around the globe more than once since then."

It was the gift of the book, ultimately, that did Maddie in. How could she treat Danie
l Hawke like an ordinary house
guest, even for a day, when he was the most un-ordinary man she'd ever known? She tried to say something, but an overflow of emotion rose up and drowned the words as they formed.

She took a deep breath, forcing back every other thought but one: "I love you, Daniel Hawke.
I do
."

He took the book from her and laid it gently on Tracey's pine dresser, then took the laundry and tossed it aside on the rag rug.

With infinite, tender care, as if he were lifting a veil to a secret place, he slid his hand under Maddie's hair and held it away from her neck, kissing the warm skin underneath, making it warmer still. Maddie closed her eyes and let him have his way—let him kiss her neck; nibble her earlobe; test her resistance and find out for himself how lacking it was.

"We haven't been
... in a bed together
... since my basement apartment," he murmured between soft tugs at her lower lip. "Don't you think
... it's time?"

"I remember that bed," she whispered. "It was made of
...
water."

The waterbed leaked; it was an old one, left over from the hippy era. But on the concrete floor it hadn't mattered; Dan used to mop up the water now and then and top off the bed with a hose, and it would be good as new.

"Will we have one again?" he asked her, slipping her pink shell up over her head and adding it to the laundry pile.

She caught the hem of his polo shirt and
pulled
it over his torso. "They're supposed to be good for bad backs," she said gravely, "and general aches and pains."

"Glad to hear it," he answered with a grin as she toss
ed his shirt, "because I have a pretty aching
hard-on right now."

To prove it he caught her close, letting out a low chuckle, the same wonderful sound that had excited her as they sloshed around
on the waterbed
to the make-love beat of the Stones
two decades before
.

In a sly voice, she said, "For now, I guess we're just going to have to make do. So-o—which bed do you want?" She slid the palms of her hands up his back in a sinuous motion. "Mine's the biggest."

"This one's the closest."

"Sounds good to m—" She stopped in the middle of the leisurely excursion over his back with her hands. Something new, something different had been built into the corded surface there. "Turn around," she said, curious about the odd grooves and patches she'd felt.

The smile faded from his face, but he did as she commanded.

Maddie sucked in her breath when she saw the scarred skin: a pale patch, obviously from a burn, that covered an area from the top of his right shoulder down over his wing. "Dan! How did this happen?" she cried, running her hand as tenderly over it as if the burn were new.

He turned around to face her—or to turn his scar away from her—and said with a shrug, "I got a little too close to a burning oil well in
Iraq
."

"Truly?"

"Shh. Don't ask so many questions. Shhh. Just let me
love
you," he said, and his voice seemed suddenly more urgent than ever before.

"But—"

He stopped her with a kiss, a hard kiss that had his tongue seeking and probing hers until she thought,
Yes, why do I ask so many questions
? and let herself be carried away in the passion of his embrace. The scar was from the burn he'd suffered saving her father, obviously—the scar of a hero, whether or not he wanted to admit it.

Her response became more fevered; she felt a rush of heat as he hooked his hands under her buttocks, pulling her close again.

He fumbled where her zipper should be until he realized that her jeans had a button fly. He whispered hoarsely, "Are you kidding me?"

Her laugh was dizzy as she hurried to explain. "The jeans I was wearing got sooty from the fire. This is the only other flattering pair I have."

He groaned and said, "Maddie, you could be wearing a sackcloth for all I care—as long as it had a zipper."

They ended up stripping themselves of their own jeans, then sat on the side of the bed in their underthings.

This part was harder for Maddie. Before the baby, she used to think that she had a decent shape: fairly firm, reasonably curved, not too much or too little of anything. After Tracey, all that changed.

"I'm not a kid anymore," she felt constrained to remind him,

"Who is?" he answered with a wry smile. He dropped his chin to his chest and pointed to the back of his head. "See that thin spot?"

"Where?" she said, fanning through his hair with her fingers. "I don't see any thin spot."

He lifted his head back up and said, "When you see my brush in the morning, you'll know," which made her feel overjoyed at the prospect.

The bra she was wearing unsnapped in the front; she was able to see his face as he unfastened it and beheld her breasts in broad daylight for the first time in a long, long time.

"They're lower now," she said with a wince. "I've nursed a child."

"They're a woman's now," he answered softly, and leaned over with something like reverence to kiss the pale skin of each breast in turn.

"It gets worse as you go down," she added, trying to sound gay.

He laughed and said, "We'll see about that," as he guided her onto her back. He slipped off her panties as she pressed on with her extended apology for not being twenty years old anymore. "I had to have an emergency C-section. See?" she asked, patting her stomach above and below the scar.' 'Maybe you didn't notice. The top part somehow doesn't match the bottom part the way it used to."

Dan ran his forefinger with exquisite tenderness along the line of her scar. "A badge of honor," he whispered.

"Well, now you've seen all of me," she said, oddly elated by the fact. "Am I still waterbed material?"

"Oh, my darling, are you ever," he murmured in a voice that sounded eminently satisfied to her.

Maddie was aware that he had changed little. Some of the black hairs on his chest had gone gray, and maybe—maybe—he was a little thicker in the waist. He was no longer lanky, in any case. Solid? Yes, that was the word that came to mind. And sexy; that was the other word.

He bent over her on all fours and she was very, very aware that one part of his anatomy was still exactly the same.

"
What do you want?'' he asked in that same husky voice. "Tell me."

"Dan,
you
know," she said archly.

"Tell me
."

Shameless now, she closed her eyes and said with a sigh, "Start at the top
... work your way down."

"Consider it done."

"Do you want me here?" he murmured, teasing and kissing her
breast
until her breathing came faster and shorter and finally dissolved in one long, ragged sigh. "Do you want me here?" he said, sliding his tongue to a spot between her breasts, inhaling her scent with a deep sigh of pleasure, then drawing l
azy circles with his tongue. "
Or
... maybe
here
," he said,
moving deftly to her other breast
.

"Oh
... oh, either is good
... both are
... good," she said, rippling in response, amazed that she still had the capacity to lie there with no other desire than to soak up the pleasure he was willing—eager—to give her.

"Wait, the little spot inside your elbow; I almost forgot about that spot," he said, going off on a side trip down memory lane with a kissing caress.

And so it went, with him revisiting every charmed place and secret haunt of her youth, marveling that they were all still there, just the way he remembered. He stopped in at her navel, went back to her midriff, wandered back down again, and was delighted to rediscover an easily missed spot
high on the inside of her thigh.

And Maddie? She was like a burbling brook, being rushed along in parts, slowed down in other parts, but aware that every bend and curve was bringing her nearer to her destination. When he focused with his tongue at last on the small nub of flesh between her thighs, making her wild
with desire
, she knew
... she knew. Rapids and white water, and then over the precipice she went, falling, falling, falling, into a deep, deep pool: a serene, utterly still, totally
... fathomless
... pool.

She floated in that pool for a small eternity, perfectly content, hardly aware that someone she loved was standing idly on the shore, waiting for her to come out.

Someone got a little impatient. "Hey, miss," he whispered, touching his lips to hers in a feather-light kiss. "Mind if I join you?"

Maddie smiled and opened her arms to him, inviting him in. He was her playmate, her lover, her friend from way back. And an excellent guide: no one else knew the way to the pool.

The kiss she gave him began in simple gratitude but quickly escalated into something ardent. Dan got all of the credit: he had that profound power over her, to know what she wanted more than she knew herself. Stroking her tongue with his, he coaxed her along, breath by breath and sigh by sigh, until he had her panting in his arms again, and then he slid his hand down to her mound, probing the depth beneath with his middle finger.

"More of this, Maddie?" he asked in a raspy drawl. "Only better? Bigger?"

"Oh, yes
...
yes, yes, yes," she answered, submitting all over again to the profoundly sexual hold he had on her.
"Yes."

He came into her then, sliding easily on the slick of her spend, filling her, driving her forward with the varied pace of his movements, and finally—when he knew she was ready—driving her home, and then collapsing himself on her breast.

Again she floated, with him this time, in the pool.

"So what did your mother have to say?"

"She said, as long as the party was supervised."

"That's all? She left two messages on the machine, and when we got back you were on the phone with her a pretty long time. What about?"

Tracey made a face and said, "You know Mom. 'Don't do this. Don't do that.' Just the usual."

"I forgot to ask:
Is
the party supervised?"

"Dad! The Wiltons' au pair is going to be there, and Rick Wilton. He's Chris's older brother—way older! But
... I kind of told Mom you'd be there for part of it, too."

"And how'm I supposed to do that, when you know that I'll be driving to
Brookline
, doing hours of testing, and then driving all the way back to pick you up? I'll be lucky if you don't end up having to spend the night with the pink flamingos on the lawn while you wait for me."

Tracey giggled and said, "There aren't any flamingos here, Dad. Stop teasing."

Her eyes were bright with anticipation as she watched the mob of kids converging on the main house, most in their own cars but some being dropped off by indulgent parents like him.

Michael lasered in on a model-gorgeous blonde wearing a dress that barely covered her ass. She was standing under the portico and hanging on the arm of some quarterback type.

The guy, a steroid hulk with a chest fairly bursting through his rugby shirt, was pumping his fist in the air at the rest of his teammates, all of them charging across the lawn at the moment and making animal sounds.

Michael turned back to the beauty and her beast. "So who's the charming couple?" he asked his daughter.

Sounding surprised that he didn't know, Tracey said, "That's Frieda, the au pair? And Rick, of course. They are, like,
so
cool. Frieda came to school once to meet Rick, and we're all like: she's
awesome."

"Are you kidding? You're as awesome as she is," Michael said stoutly.