What would be the sin?
Her marriage was a facade. She didn't even sleep with her husband.
Why not take a step on the wild side, discover the woman she sensed was hiding in Marla Cahill's life, in her house, in her skin?
Opening her lids a crack, she watched Nick from the corner of her eye. Rugged. Male. All honed features. Sinew and muscle. Tensile strength and quick mind. She bit her lip. As if he had somehow divined the turn of her thoughts, he slashed a look at her that cut right to her center. Blue eyes found hers and locked for a heartbeat. He felt it, too. Here in the confines of his damned truck with the city pulsing around them, oncoming headlights daring to breach the intimate darkness of the truck's interior, Nick felt the fire. The want.
In that split second, she respondedâimmediate and incendiary, hot as a devil's breath and far more dangerous.
Don't go there,
she warned herself and hugged the passenger door.
You have too much to think about right nowâsomeone might be trying to kill you. You don't really know who you are. Kissing Nick would only lead to more. Touching. Caressing. Pressing hot skin to hotter flesh. Just like last night, when you were nearly caught. You would be making the worst mistake of your life and you could lose everything: your husband, your children, your home, your own self-respect.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tamping down the unwanted emotions.
“Don't worry,” he said as he slowed the truck. When she opened her eyes, she found him hunting for a parking space. “You're safe with me.”
Oh, yeah, right. About as safe as I would be with a lit match in a pool of gasoline!
She smiled at the thought. “Maybe you're not safe with me, brother-in-law.”
“That, lady, is a given.” He parked not far from the waterfront, half a block from Ghirardelli Square where the brickfaced buildings surrounded a courtyard and clock tower.
Nick zeroed in on a coffee shop that specialized in exotic flavors. They ordered to go, sampled from a tray of muffins and scones, then carried their steaming cups outside. Fog curled in gentle wisps through the streets that were guarded by old warehouses now housing shops and boutiques. Thousands of tiny white lights glimmered in the trees while lampposts gave off a bluer, more ethereal glow.
“Maybe you should tell me about us,” she said as they walked together around a mermaid fountain in the square. “You know, where we met. What we did.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Try to roll back the years, will you? One of us would like to catch up on her memories.” Cradling her cup in her hands she took a sip of the warm latte and licked a bit of foam from her lips.
Nick caught the motion and glanced away. “I guess you've got a point.” Sipping from his paper cup, he looked down at her. “It all really started about oh, sixteen, maybe seventeen years ago. We were in our twenties and we'd known each other all our lives because our parents ran in the same social circle.
“I was always getting into troubleâone thing or another. Usually booze or women or both were involved. I had trouble staying in school, and didn't like it, much to my mother's embarrassment and my father's disgust. He had to bail me out time and time again, but I just never quite fit into the Cahill mold.”
“The rebel.”
“Yeah, well, at the time, you seemed to like it.” Together, in an ever-dwindling crowd, they walked along the sidewalks.
“It's seductive,” she admitted, hating to think she was the kind of woman who liked to step onto the wild side, who found dangerous men who lived by their own rules attractive, but knowing there was a grain of truth to it.
“You changed your mind about me.”
“How?” She took a long swallow of coffee, felt it warm her from the inside out as she studied the lines of his face, the hard angle of his jaw and the way his dark hair fell over his forehead.
He scowled into the night. “I guess you finally decided you wanted to settle down. You started making noises that way but I wasn't ready. About that time Alex decided you'd be the perfect wife. For him.”
“And I just went along with it?”
He snorted. “You never just went along with anything, Marla. But you were a flirt and got your kicks out of pitting the two of us against each other,” he said, his words tainted with a never-forgotten disgust. “I got sick of it and you got married.”
“So you didn't come to the wedding.”
“Didn't see any reason to be a hypocrite.” His nostrils flared slightly. “I couldn't envision myself toasting best wishes to the bride and groom, so I was a no-show.”
“And that was that?” she asked.
“The short and abbreviated version. Didn't want to bother you with details. Besides, it's all water under the bridge now.”
“Is it?” she asked, lifting a doubting eyebrow as she recalled the passion of the night before.
“It has to be.” His eyes turned a darker shade of blue. He grabbed her left hand suddenly and lifted it up so that her wedding ring glimmered in the lamplight. She gasped and nearly sloshed her coffee onto her coat. “Last night aside, you're still a married woman, Marla.”
That was the damned truth. “I know,” she said. “Oh God, how I know.” Wrestling her hand from his, she added, “We both agreed we made a mistake. But I still want to know everything, Nick. Everything about us.”
“Jesus.”
“I mean it,” she insisted, turning her face upward, feeling the mist against her cheeks, daring to meet his angry gaze with her own.
He finished his coffee, then crumpled his cup in his fist. “There's no reason to dredge it all up again.”
“Isn't there?”
“Nope.” He tossed his cup in a trash basket and she linked her arm through his as they walked along the shop-lined street, dodging other pedestrians and cars, smelling the salt in the breeze.
“Don't you think I deserve to know the truth?”
“What good would it do,
Mrs.
Cahill?”
“Maybe none, but I keep getting mixed signals from you. One minute I feel like you want me, the next you're pushing me away.”
“Let's get something straight, okay?” he said. “I always want you.” Her pulse leaped at the admission, at the anguish she saw in his features. “And I'll always push you away.” Her heart ached and guilt sliced through her soul, the same brutal guilt she saw reflected in his night-darkened eyes. So this is what it felt like to be star-crossed lovers, to be fated to never be with the one man she loved, to feel the intense heartache that would certainly follow her like a shadow for years to come.
At that thought she closed her eyes and tried to get a grip. She didn't love Nick. Couldn't. She didn't even know him. Or herself. What was wrong with her? And why in God's name did she feel such pain to think she threw away a future with him? “I understand what you're saying, believe me, and I'm not trying to be difficult or to open old wounds, old pain, but I think it's important that I know everything about myself,” she said earnestly, studying the lines of his face, the ravage of emotions that pulled his skin tight over his bones and caused his mouth to curve downward. “Everything,” she repeated, refusing to back down. “No matter how hard it is to take. No matter how painful. I want it all. The good, the bad, the ugly.”
“You might not like what you see.”
“It has to be better than imagining and fantasizing and fearing and just plain not knowing.” Determined, she grabbed his elbow, her fingers locking over the rough leather of his jacket. “Tell me the truth, Nick. No matter what it is.”
“Everything?” he asked, and she saw something shift in his gaze; noticed the change from stubborn refusal to something far more treacherous. The air between them seemed to sizzle as his gaze dropped from her eyes, to her mouth and then lower to the hollow of her throat where she felt her pulse pounding wildly. Erratically.
“Yes. Everything. I want it all.”
“Christ, Marla. You always have.”
“I figured that's what you'd say.”
“Don't you remember what happened last night?”
Her fingers clenched around his sleeve. “Help me, Nick.”
His jaw slid to one side as he studied her. His lips flattened in self-deprecation. “For the record, I think this is a big mistake, but what the hell, as you said, you want it.” In an instant he stepped into the doorway of a closed shop and in that tiny alcove, he wrapped his arms around her, gathering her close to his body, squeezing her tight. Lowering his head, he slanted his hungry lips over hers in a kiss as brutal as it was desperate. Hard. Unyielding. Breathtaking. Firm and demanding, his mouth rubbed insistently against hers and she felt a second's pain where the wires in her teeth had been removed. She caught her breath and in that precise moment, his tongue slipped between her teeth, the tip intimately, forcefully probing. He tasted of coffee, his skin was warm, the stubble of his beard rough against her cheek.
Pain diffused into pleasure.
Deep inside she quivered. Her blood ran hot. The night disintegrated around them. She closed her eyes and ignored the warnings screaming through her mind. Her blood tingled, her heartbeat thundered and she was lost to him. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she held tight as his tongue touched and mated with hers.
She couldn't get enough of him, clung to him, to this moment on the crowded street.
Heat, wild and hot and anxious, began to run through her veins. Her skin flushed in the cool air. Images of lying naked with him flashed through her brain and she saw in her mind's eye his bare muscular body straining over hers, his tongue running deliciously down her throat, to her breasts and lower still, along the flat slope of her abdomen, to taste the most intimate regions of her, to plunder her body and soul. She moaned softly, imagining the feel of his body joining with hers, of him thrusting deep . . . so hot, so hard, so . . . He lifted his head from hers and she blinked back the erotic images to face the cold reality of the San Francisco night, the fog, the other pedestrians, the sounds of traffic zinging past on the wet streets.
“I knew it,” he muttered, his eyes mirroring the guilt of her own despair. “I knew it would be like this with you.” He dropped his arms and she was suddenly standing alone. Bereft. Her heated skin cooling with the breeze that tossed dried leaves into the gutter and brought the scent of rain. “Damn it all to hell, Marla, we just can't do this.”
“Don't you think I know it?”
“Then don't push it.” Angrily he grabbed her hand and started for the truck. She yanked her fingers from his and shoved her fists deep into her pockets as she half ran to keep up with his longer, swifter strides.
“Don't blame me, Nick,” she said as they crossed the street and she had to duck past a woman with a huge umbrella.
He cast her a hot, unguarded look. “I don't.”
“You sure as hell act like it.”
“I just don't want things to get any more complicated than they are.” He took her hand to help her sidestep a man in a wheelchair. Then Nick let go.
“You were as curious as I was,” she insisted. “You wanted to know if the spark was still there. Admit it.”
“No way. I already knew. Last night proved a lot.”
She didn't believe him and was about to tell him so, when he looked over his shoulder and stopped short. “Hell!” She nearly ran into him.
“What?” Whirling, she searched through the mist to see what it was that had caught his attention. Nothing but the lamppost and the crowd on the sidewalk.
“Come on.” He grabbed her wrist and this time there wasn't any warm familiarity in his touch. Now he was running fast, dragging her with him, dashing through pedestrians and bicyclists, nearly tripping over a young mother pushing a stroller in the opposite direction.
“What is it?” she yelled, nearly breathless.
“I think we were being followed.”
Her blood was suddenly frigid, her heart a tattoo. “By whom?”
“I don't know, but I intend to find out. Come on. Let's see if we can catch him.” He darted through the side streets and around corners of buildings, cutting across traffic and causing more than one driver to slam on his brakes or honk his horn.
“Hey, watch out,” one man in a cap and overcoat reprimanded from the open window of a van.
“Where's the fire?” another one joked.
Marla raced to keep up with Nick, her lungs burning, her legs beginning to cramp. All the while Nick's eyes were trained ahead, focused on the back of a tall man in a black parka who cut in and out of the crowd. The stranger darted unevenly as if he favored one leg. “You're crazy,” Marla wheezed as they sprinted past the Cannery to Jefferson Street and finally, just when she was certain her lungs would burst, around a final corner, across a street against the light, and into the throng milling along the piers of Fisherman's Wharf.