Obsession (Magnetic Desires Book 4) (16 page)

I chuckled, arching beneath him as he pulled the unravelled threads of my orgasm back into a tight ball in my core. “If I remember correctly you didn’t think it was
no big deal
back then.”

“You broke my dick, woman. It was one of the most painful days of my life.”

“You were so pathetic about it.” I cupped his ass, pressing him deeper. “You thought the doctors would want to cut it off.”

“I overreacted,” he grumbled. “But you kept me from getting worked up about it. Why the hell didn’t I remember that when I found out I had cancer?”

He wasn’t really looking for an answer, instead kissing me deeply while he surged inside me, building my orgasm back to its peak and keeping it going until I was boneless beneath him. Then he came, too.

Pulling us onto our sides, in the middle of the broken bed, he held me, my head resting on his chest. “Things could have worked out so differently.”

They could have, but maybe we wouldn’t have made it even then. But perhaps we could now. If I could only be who I wanted to be and not like the man whose genes haunted me.

Mike

Rolling over, I brushed the hair from her face. Always such a bird’s nest in the morning, especially after she let me love her over and over. Hard and fast until the headboard had cracked from the frame and we’d ended up on the floor. And then we’d done it again, slow and lingering, heedless of the broken frame around us, completely absorbed in one another. “We should probably get up, sexy legs.”

“I don’t want to,” she murmured, stroking her cheek against my palm. “Can’t we stay here for a little longer?”

I lifted the sheet on her nakedness, tempted by the line of her ass to slip inside her and make love to her again. Finding her clit, I brushed a finger over it, making her ass press to my erection.  “A couple of days and I’ll let you stay in bed all day if you want. Hell, I’ll join you.”

“You will? You don’t sleep in.” She pouted and rolled into me, opening her sleepy eyes.

“I didn’t say anything about sleep, love.”

“Mmm, okay.” She smiled, lifting her face so I could kiss her.

She made staying in bed damn near irresistible. It would be so easy to stay here with her and forget why we’d come to this place in the middle of nowhere, but the sooner we got started, the sooner we could put this day behind us, and I could convince her to move back into my house, and spend the rest of her life with me. That was far more tempting than temporarily staying in this broken bed. “Let’s get dressed.”

***

I left Mellie in the dining room while I went to reception to take care of the bill. The woman’s eyes had widened when I explained about the bed and offered more than enough compensation to cover the damages. Then I organized a new room with a hefty deposit. I could feel her gaze burn into my back as I swaggered away. Let her think what she wanted. She was probably right.

“Are you ready to go?”

“Mmm, yeah,” Mellie mumbled around a mouthful of banana muffin as she stood up. “How did she take it, about the bed?”

“All sorted.” I ushered her out of the house. “Is there anywhere you want to go first, or straight to the cemetery?”

“There’s nothing here I want to remember, but could we see if there’s a flower shop? I’d like to take her something.” She climbed in the truck.

“Sure.” I patted her knee and drove away from the bed and breakfast. “That sounds nice.”

We found potted flowers at the feed store. She took her time examining the selection before picking out a pot of tulips. “She loved these.” Putting her face to the flowers, she crinkled her nose. “I want them to last for her.”

“There’s a trowel in the truck you can use to plant them.” I scraped her hair back from her ear, kissed the shell. “I think she would love them.”

We walked back to the truck in silence, my hand on the small of her back in a show of support.

She held the pot in her lap, her arms curled around it, while we drove out to the edge of town to the small cemetery. Pulling up in front of the gates, we sat for a moment, staring at the rows of headstones we could see from the road. Unclipping her seat belt she leaned over to touch her lips to my cheek. “Thank you for always being there to save me.”

I held her hand, pressed it. “Always.”

***

I trailed her through the cemetery, past the rows of marked and unmarked graves, until she stopped at a small concrete headstone. Her shoulders sagged as she surveyed the final resting place of her mother. “I’m so much like her it scares me. I mean I’m not an alcoholic or anything. But I thought I was like him, you know. I thought I didn’t need anyone. But I’m not like him. I’m stuck in the past, like she was. Look at what I did to us.”

“It wasn’t just you. You should know that by now.” I settled a hand underneath her elbow. “We both played our part.”

“True, but I didn’t make it easy on you to open up, not when you had to worry about whether I would fall apart.”

“We’ve both learned from it. We’re stronger now.”

She nodded. “I don’t want to remember her like this. I don’t want to live my life her way, or my father’s way, anymore.”

Weeds grew through the cracked concrete, and she slumped to her knees, her fingers feverishly yanking at them. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back, Mom. I was so angry at you for leaving like that after, after dad took off on us.” She dusted off the concrete with careful sweeps of her hand. “I bought you some tulips. You used to like them. I remember the rows of them along the path to our front door.”  

She glanced up at me with overly bright eyes and held her hands out for the pot. “She had a green thumb. Used to spend hours amongst her tulips while Lola and I played in the yard.”

Shifting her focus to the cement grave marker, her voice cracked. “Oh, Mom, Lola came back. You would be so proud of her now. She’s married and has the most beautiful little girl. Runs her own business, too. People come back. I only wish you had stuck around to see it.” She reached up to me, and I crouched behind her, my hand squeezing her shoulder as I passed her the trowel. She dug in the dirt beside the headstone, turning it over until the hole was deep enough. Turning the bottom of the pot over, she tapped it with the trowel and pulled it away from the flowers. Her hands covered in dirt, she tickled the roots before slipping it into the hole and patting the soil back down around it. “I wish I could have done something to help you.”

She sobbed, placing the back of her hand over her mouth, her head dipped. “I was hurting, too. I was so lost, and you…” My chest aching, I held her tighter while she simply breathed for a while.

“You all left me. But people come back, Mom. And some people…” She took my hand in hers, both of our hands covered in dirt, and squeezed it. “Some of them don’t ever leave, even if you don’t realize it, even if you try to push them away.”

“You’d like Mike. I know you would.” She smiled, and splayed her hand over the concrete in front of her. “It’s been a long time, and I’m sorry I didn’t come back until now, but I wanted to tell you I’m okay now, happy.”

Getting up, she brushed her palms together loosening the dirt before slipping her hand into mine. “I’m happy, Mike, with you. I can leave this behind me for you.”

I cupped the back of her head and pressed my lips to her forehead. “Shall we go home?”

“Yes, let’s go home.”

While I’d been engrossed in her, an old lady had approached the row, hovering close by. She limped closer, nodded at Mellie’s mother’s grave. “Did you know her, dear?”

“She was my mother.” Mellie’s brow furrowed as she stared at the woman. “Do I know you?”

“You probably wouldn’t remember me.” The old lady moved closer. “The name’s Agnes. I used to babysit you and your sister when you were knee high to a grasshopper. It was so sad what happened.” She cocked her head. “What happened to your family was a tragedy.”

“It was something.” Mellie held out her hand to Agnes, who took it between both of hers. “After Lola disappeared and our father left, I guess she couldn’t handle it any longer.”

“Your mother had a hard life. Don’t blame her too much. Stronger people than Jinny have succumbed to giving up.”

Mellie glanced at me over Agnes’s head. “That’s true.”

“Well, dear, come to my house for lunch and tell me what you’ve been up to. It really is good to see you, all grown up and with such a handsome husband.”

She might have been elderly, but her gaze was sharp as she ran it over me. “I bet he’s the romantic type like my Bert used to be.”

“He’s not my husband,” Mellie stuttered.

I cleared my throat, and squeezed Agnes’s hand. “I will be.”

***

I cradled the glass of lemonade in one hand, my other around Mellie’s waist, while I rocked the porch swing we were sitting on. Agnes sat across from us in an old wicker chair, her cocker spaniel resting on her feet. Every now and then he’d lift a droopy eyelid and check out the situation before falling back asleep.

“You do remind me of my Bert, young man. He passed away a few years back, but he was a romantic old fool, bless his heart.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Mellie said, and I squeezed her hip, knowing her own loss hung thick around her.

“Never mind that, dears. He was old.” She placed her glass on the mosaic tabletop. “Losing his hearing and not very good in the sack anymore.”

Mellie darted a glance up at me. I could almost read her thoughts in her eyes. She was a blurter, and I had no doubt she was wondering if she’d be still divulging things like that when she was older. I certainly hoped so.

I winked and brushed my thumb along the inside of her palm. “That’ll be me one day, Mellie. What will you do with me then?”

Agnes chuckled. “You two are young, strong, so in love. You have plenty of time before the weakness of old age creeps up on you.” She sharpened her gaze on me. “You and that sister of yours were like mini tornados. Always finding trouble and competing against one another. I remember one time your sister had worked out how to climb the trellis on the side of the house. Well, you had to go and beat her, didn’t you? Only when you got to the roof, you screamed blue murder, unable to work out how to get down.”

I chuckled at the image she created, and Mellie dipped her head, grinning, no doubt at the memory Agnes conjured, and said, “My niece is a bit like that, now.”

“Oh, I bet she is. All children are like that. It’s a shame we lose that as we get older.” Agnes took a sip of her lemonade. When he rolled over, she rubbed at the spaniel’s exposed belly with her foot.

“Mellie is still very much like that.” I pressed my lips to her hair, my chest swelling as I breathed in the sun soaked cocoa and cinnamon smell of her silken hair. “It’s one of the things I love most about her.”

The old woman’s gaze danced. “So what brought you back to Hollyfields after all this time, Melanie?”

“I’m not really sure,” she stuttered, picking at a loose thread on her top. “I left so quickly, so angrily. I’ve carried her death around with me for years. I thought coming back here, saying goodbye properly, might help.”

“You poor thing. It was devastating, your sister disappearing like that, and then what happened with that man and his secretary. What was her name again?” Agnes bent to scratch at the spaniel’s drooping ear. “Delilah, I think if memory serves.” 

“It pushed Mom too far,” Mellie said. “She started drinking. It was too much for her to recover from.” She settled into my side, and I smoothed my hand over her elbow, giving her my strength while her acceptance weighed her down.

“Your sister’s disappearance was hard on Jinny, as losing any child would be. She’d be happy to know you and Lola found one another after all these years. But she was a drinker long before that.” Agnes leaned forward, her sun-spotted hand gripping the wicker arms of her chair. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she’d been an alcoholic for as far back as I could remember. Started after you and your sister were born. She was what they like to call a ‘high functioning alcoholic.’ ”

Wide eyed, Mellie shook my head. “That isn’t right. I would have known, wouldn’t I? She only started after Lola left.”

“Oh, you poor dear. You were only a child, and she had some restraint back then. I’m not surprised you didn’t know. When your sister up and disappeared like that it was too much for her to bear and she stopped pretending. Lola’s disappearance ate at her, poor woman.” Agnes adjusted a pleat in her skirt.

“Dad leaving was the icing on the cake, I suppose.” Mellie shrugged, her voice wavering and fading away.

“Oh no, dear. My guess is she would have been glad to see the back of that man. He dragged her name through the mud with his sleeping around. I don’t think they were married six months before he slept with the clerk at the post office. That woman left town awful quick.”

“I don’t understand why she stayed with him. Fifteen years of infidelity? Who would let someone treat them like that?” Mellie asked.

Agnes’s kindly eyes twinkled. “We did wonder for a long time why she put up with him. Didn’t really find out the answer until a couple years back. Turns out the doctor wasn’t your father.”