Reese grinned. “I noticed.” She smoothed her hand over Tory’s bare shoulder and down her arm to clasp her fingers. “My unit was scheduled for recall to the States in a few weeks. Because of my injuries, I most likely won’t be going back.”

“Thank God.” Tory shuddered. “I didn’t even consider that might happen.”

“I wouldn’t be here at home recovering if my father hadn’t arranged it. I might even still be in Germany. But I can’t do much until my collarbone heals, anyhow.”

“I’m really grateful to him for getting you home, and for keeping the press away from us.”

“The military isn’t all that anxious to tell the public all the little details of what’s happening over there. They rescued us so fast, I’m not even sure the embedded reporters with our unit knew what was happening.”

“Still,” Tory brushed a kiss over Reese’s mouth, “I was very glad to have him for my father-in-law this past week.”

“I’m sorry it’s been so difficult. He can be…”

“No, I mean it. He was very helpful, and I’m sure it was hard for him.”

“It’s going to get harder,” Reese said quietly. “I plan to resign, and I’m going to ask him to move the paperwork through.”

Tory closed her eyes, took several long breaths, and then met Reese’s gaze. “Are you sure?”

Reese smiled. “I was thinking about it all the way back in the plane. I realized as I was coming home that I’ve been moving toward that decision for a long time. Even before I met you, leaving active service to come here was the first step in letting go of that part of my life.”

“Reggie and I will be very grateful if you do. It was so hard with you away.”

Reese stroked Tory’s chest and cupped her breast. Most of the fullness from pregnancy had subsided, and she caressed the warm, pliant flesh gently. Tory’s nipple tightened and Reese felt an answering tension in the pit of her stomach. “I know. For me too. A lot of the time I just felt…empty.”

“You’re home now. It will be all right.” Tory covered Reese’s hand with her own and pressed Reese’s fingers firmly into her flesh, stilling the gentle strokes. “I don’t think you want to do that. Not until you’re bet…”

“You don’t have any broken bones, do you?” Reese murmured, working her thumb across Tory’s nipple.

“No, but you do.”

“I’m not going to move much of anything.” Reese slid her hand from beneath Tory’s, clasped Tory’s neck, and drew her close. She kissed her, tasting her lips slowly while she traced the soft junctures with her tongue, replacing another memory with the wonder of the now. “And you don’t have to do anything either. I just want to touch you.”

“Oh God, yes,” Tory murmured. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Whatever you need.”

What Reese needed was to skim her fingers over Tory’s breasts and hips and thighs as she kissed her again. She drank her in, slowly savoring her as she continued her explorations. She watched Tory’s eyes as she caressed her, recognizing the instant when pleasure became need. She smiled.

“You’re so beautiful when you’re aroused.”

“I feel like part of me has been closed up in a dark room,” Tory said breathlessly, “and you just opened a door. The sunlight almost hurts my eyes, but it feels so good to be warm. God, don’t stop touching me.”

Reese nipped at Tory’s lower lip. “I never will.”

“Reese, darling, I need you so mu…oh!”

“It’s all right,” Reese soothed as she swept her fingers between Tory’s thighs. “Let me give you this.”

“I’m afraid I’ll forget and hurt you,” Tory said desperately. “Reese, I don’t know…”

“Shh.” Reese slowly stroked through the heat, massaging the places that made Tory tremble, easing inside, a little deeper with each stroke. “You feel so good. I need you.”

Tory tilted her hips and took Reese in completely, one exquisite millimeter at a time. “Oh that’s so good. Deep. I want you deep inside.”

When Reese was completely sheathed, she lay still, only her lips moving on Tory’s. As her tongue met Tory’s and they gently teased, she felt Tory tighten around her fingers. Still she did not move. As the contractions came faster, harder, she whispered, “I can feel you coming.”

“Yes,” Tory whimpered softly. “Coming. Just for you.”

“I love you.”

“Oh,” Tory cried softly as her orgasm washed over her. “I love you.”

Rica dropped the book she’d been pretending to read as she sat for hours on the sofa. She’d read and reread the same few pages over and over. She regarded the phone on the end table as if it were a loathsome creature rather than an inanimate object. It had rung only once in the last twenty-four hours, and she’d been reluctant to answer it, knowing it was likely to be a call about some problem at the gallery in New York. But then, what else would it be? Carter wouldn’t call. She had sent Carter away, and Carter would respect her wishes. Carter was the first person in her life who had ever really listened to what she had to say, and believed her.

She picked up the phone, finally admitting it was time to do what she’d been avoiding all day, and pressed the familiar numbers.

“Hello,” her father said.

“Papa? It’s me.”

“Hello, Rica. I was just about to call you.”

“I need to see you,” Rica said, feeling an unanticipated surge of relief at having said the words.

“Yes. I have some things to discuss with you, too. Let’s talk tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Why wait. I’ll send a car.”

“But…”

“I’ll see you later, cara.”

Surprised by her father’s oddly abrupt tone, Rica wished that she could see Carter. Just being with Carter made her feel as if she had a real life of her own, one worlds apart from the one she’d been born into. But wishes, she had learned, were only painful indulgences, and she didn’t have time for that luxury at the moment. She needed to get ready for the most important meeting of her life.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was well after midnight when Rica arrived at her family home, but her father was waiting for her in his study, dressed in a suit as he always was and looking far fresher than she felt. He rose when she entered, came around his desk, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Let’s walk in the gardens, cara,” he said.

He wanted to talk outside, Rica realized, and immediately braced herself. Although the house was routinely swept for monitoring devices and the phone lines checked, she knew that her father never took chances when he discussed business. She took his arm and followed him out as if they were going to take a leisurely stroll. He didn’t seem the least bit tense, but she doubted that she had hidden her own anxiety very well from him. It felt as if someone were kneading her insides with an iron fist.

As soon as they were outside, Rica said, “There’s something I want to tell you, Papa.”

“Let’s sit.”

Her father led her along a subtly lighted flagstone path to a secluded seating area with a wooden glider suspended from two tall trees in its center. She had often spent hours during the summer curled up on that very glider, reading and dreaming. She sat next to her father, who extracted a cigar from his inside jacket pocket. She waited while he went through the ritual of clipping the end with a small cigar knife he carried…a gift from her stepmother…and firing it with a gold lighter. Her father smoked a custom blend of tobacco, and the smoke that drifted into the air was vaguely sweet.

“What is troubling you?” Alfonse asked.

“There are things we’ve never talked about that I need you to know,” Rica said. “Things about me.”

“If there is something that concerns you,” Alfonse said, “then I want to know.”

“I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

“And you haven’t.”

“If I do, it’s only because I need you to know how I feel. Because I want you to understand.” Rica realized she’d forgotten the logical things she’d planned to say, and simply said what was in her heart. “I am never going to be any part of your business. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

“I understand that such matters do not interest you,” Alfonse said quietly. “But you are my daughter, and that is a powerful tie that will always be important. Your husband…”

“Papa, there isn’t going to be a husband. I am never going to marry a man. I’m a lesbian.”

Alfonse continued to smoke and slowly swung the garden swing with a foot against the flagstone. “We are all complicated people. Love…desire…it is never simple. There are many reasons to marry, and not all of them are about what we feel.”

“I’m not going to marry someone I don’t love, and I’m never going to love a man. Not like that.”

“What about children?”

“I don’t need a husband for that.”

Alfonse smiled faintly. “No, but it is easier. Would it be so difficult to take a husband who would want children as well, and have the other things you need with someone else?”

“It would be a lie, Papa. I can’t live that way for the rest of my life.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

It was a fair question and one that Rica had thought about for hours…no, for weeks. Ever since meeting Carter. “Because I don’t want secrets between us. And because Enzo needs to understand once and for all that I will never marry him.”

“Enzo. Yes, he thought…we both thought…that would be the natural course of things.”

Rica detected an edge to her father’s voice that hadn’t been there before, even when she’d said she was a lesbian. It surprised her that he hadn’t had more of a reaction then, but now she could sense his anger. “I never gave him cause to believe that, but he always has considered me his.”

“I admit, I gave him cause to believe I supported that idea. I had believed he would make a worthy son-in-law.” Alfonse’s face in the moonlight was as immobile as the statues scattered throughout his gardens. “I realize now that was a mistake.”