CHAPTER SIX

THE PHONE WOKE Melanie Wellers at what felt like the crack of dawn. Opening her eyes, she stretched lazily…and came in contact with a warm, hard, undeniably male body.

Oh, yeah, nice way to wake up.

Those male arms tightened on her, and a low growl sounded in her ear. “Mmm, you feel good.”

Yes, yes she did. She always felt good with a nice warm body to strain against.

Jason, no, Justin…yes, Justin, she remembered with a fond sigh, had so gallantly offered her a ride home from the bar last night where she’d gone after work in need of a stiff drink.

Her boss had been a son of a bitch all day, she had bills coming out the wazoo and she hadn’t gotten the raise she’d counted on. And yet Jason-damn it, Justin-had promised to make it all go away for a night.

Lord almighty, he’d kept his word.

The phone kept ringing, and it started to grate on her nerves. “Gotta get that, sugar,” she said, slapping his bare ass playfully as she stretched across him for the cordless on the nightstand.

Then she caught sight of the time. Ah, shit! Late for work, again.

Can you see me now, Dad? With a sardonic twist of her mouth, she glanced heavenward. Or maybe she should be looking down toward hell, as that was a far more likely place for her father to have ended up. Late for work, Dad, and proud of it. Roll in your grave over that one.

Hoping it wasn’t her boss, she grabbed the phone.

“Aunt Mel?”

A smile broke out onto her face, and only part of it was relief. “Hiya, Emmie, baby.”

“Are you busy?”

Mel glanced at the extremely gorgeous, extremely naked man in her bed. He rolled over and shot her a come-get-me smile, making her laugh. “A little. What’s up? How’s your mom?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you, she’s good. She’s great. So great you don’t need to take any time off this weekend to come down here, we’ll be fine.”

Mel’s relief became tinged with something a little sour. She was the older sister and, stupid as it was, she had this bone deep need to be needed by Rachel.

Rarely happened.

Still, for weeks she hadn’t taken a spare breath, going back and forth from Santa Barbara to South Village, and not only had it crimped her social life, she really needed to rack up some extra hours at work. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Mom says do what you have to do, we’re fine.”

“You got a nurse, right?”

“Things are really, really fine. So, uh, we’ll just see you next weekend. Or the weekend after.”

“Next weekend for sure…” Melanie narrowed her eyes and paused. As the Queen of Liars, Cheaters and Manipulators, she could smell a con a thousand miles away. “You didn’t say, Em. Did you hire a nurse?”

“Yeah, it’s, um, working out just great. Really great.”

Apparently tired of waiting, Justin ran two hands up Mel’s legs, slow and lazylike, toying with what he found between them.

Melanie’s eyes crossed with lust. Did she really want to grill her niece when she had this gorgeous man ready and willing to worship her body?

Then that gorgeous man slid a finger into her. “Okay, then,” she managed to say. “I’ll call you in a few days to check up on you. Bye, sweetie-”

Justin disconnected for her and tackled her flat to her back, holding her still while he smiled wickedly into her face.

“What are you going to do with me now?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“This.” Then he put his mouth where his fingers had been, scattering her thoughts like the wind.


B EN HAD GOTTEN her pregnant. Seventeen years old, the world finally, finally, at his fingertips, and he’d really screwed up this time. He reached for Rachel’s hand and found her fingers icy. “It’s going to be okay.”

Choking out a laugh, she pulled her hand free. “Really? How is that Ben? I’m having a baby, for God’s sake.”

Yeah. A baby. His stomach rolled, but that could have been hunger given he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Nothing new in that. He’d planned never to be hungry again on the other side of the planet.

With Rachel at his side.

Looking at her in the moonlight, with her long hair and haunting eyes, his heart constricted. God, he loved her. Ridiculously so. Who’d have thought the no-good, black-hearted nobody had it in him to feel this way, as though he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything if she wasn’t in his world?

And they’d made a baby. By accident not design, they’d come together and created a life, a perfect little life, and suddenly his panic turned to something much lighter, something much closer to…joy. “Marry me.”

“Ben-”

“Look, I love you, that’ll never change. And we’d have gotten married eventually, we’ll just move the plans up a bit.”

“But…where will we live?”

“Well, we’ll start out in South America, but-”

“Ben.”

“We’ll have to hit Africa in the fall, and then-”

“Ben.”

He was losing her, he could hear it in her voice, so he kept talking, fast as he could. “And then we’ll go to Ireland, because-”

She grabbed his hands, brought them to her heart. Her eyes were huge and wet, her voice so low he had to lean close to hear her. “Ben, listen to me. You love me, and that’s my own miracle, believe me, but I can’t. I can’t become Mrs. Asher.”

“So don’t change your name,” he said deliberately misunderstanding her. “I don’t care, Rach, I just want you.”

She let out another choked sound, this one a sob. “I can’t…I can’t give you what you want. We’re too different.”

“Different doesn’t matter.” He was going to have to talk her into wanting him. His stomach rolled and pitched again. No one had ever just wanted him, no questions asked. “Look, I’m going. You’re coming with me. We love each other-”

“No! God, you don’t get it!” Her face twisted. “I…don’t love you. Okay? I don’t love you.”

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry.” Drawing in a deep breath, she stood. Her eyes were still wet but inscrutable now, hiding herself from him. She was good at that. “I won’t see you again before you go.”

With the words I don’t love you echoing in his head like a bad refrain, he could just stare at her.

“Goodbye, Ben.”

“Rach-”

“Go. Please,” she whispered brokenly. “Just go.”

It was a hauntingly familiar request for him. She didn’t love him and she wanted him to go. Fine. He wouldn’t beg. “Goodbye, Rachel,” he said, but she’d already walked away, vanishing into the night.

In hell with the memories, Ben woke up with a gasp. He lay in a white bed with white fluffy pillows, sweat streaking his body, air chopping in and out of his lungs as if he’d been running a marathon.

Nope, not hell, but close enough. The walls seemed to close in on him, strangle him.

How fast could he get out of town? Out of the country? Asia should be far enough for today. Surely he could get to Asia. With a vicious oath, he scrubbed his hands over his face, just as someone leaped onto the mattress at his side. Battle-ready, he whipped around.

Emily sat at his hip, with a wide cheeky grin. “Morning, Daddy.”

And just like that, his heart sighed. Sagging back against the mountain of fluffy pillows, he let out a shaky breath. Asada. Rachel.

Emily.

Revise. He was in hell. “Morning, sweetness.”

She wore cargo pants low on her hips, a tank top in neon yellow that made his eyes vibrate with the brightness, and held her laptop in her arms. She bounced a few times for good measure.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” she wanted to know.

“Fine.” Not fine, not really. Late last night he’d gotten a call on his cell phone from one of his editors. They’d received a letter at the magazine’s head office, forwarded from his last job. It’d been handwritten on fancy, stiff, olive-colored paper. “I’m still going to make you pay,” it had said.

Obviously Asada, but that it’d come to Ben in South America gave him hope-Asada still didn’t know where he was.

Or whom he was guarding.

When Ben had finally gotten into bed there’d been the nightmares of Asada finding this precious woman-child right in front of him, of losing Rachel and Emily now, in the present, as he’d lost Rachel so long ago.

Bounce, bounce. “You looked tired, Dad.” Bounce, bounce. “Maybe you should sleep some more.”

Bounce, bounce.

“Em, you’re scrambling my brain.”

“Sorry.” She stilled-a momentary miracle, he was certain. “Mom’s still sleeping. Wanna go out to breakfast and get artery chokers before I have to go to jail?”

“School isn’t jail, Em.”

“This school is.”

“No luck getting your mom to home school you yet, huh?”

“None,” she said on a dramatic sigh.

“What are artery chokers?”

“Scrambled eggs, a mountain of bacon and the best hash browns you’ve ever tasted. It’s at Joe’s, a sidewalk café right around the corner. Mom hates the place, but she doesn’t know how to enjoy herself.” Hopeful smile. Bounce, bounce. “Oops.” She stopped bouncing. Again. “Sorry.”

Cracking a glance at the clock, he managed to contain his groan when he saw three fives all lined up. “It’s not even six.” In his body’s time zone-God knows which one that was exactly-it felt like the middle of the night.

“Duh. That’s why Mom’s still sleeping. Come on, she’ll never know.” Leaping off the bed, she grabbed his arm and tugged. “We can get a milk shake to go with it, double chocolate. They’re huge.”

Ben rarely ate before noon unless it was a hunk of bread or cheese on the run. And it’d been so long since he’d been in the States, much less in a civilized country with sidewalk cafés that served huge chocolate milk shakes and “artery chokers,” he supposed he couldn’t blame his stomach for quivering hopefully. “Give me five minutes to shower-”