Chapter Six

She sat out in her private garden that night, long into the early hours of the morning. Listening to the birds, watching the fountain gurgle, hoping it would penetrate the buzzing, the roaring force field around her. But it wasn’t the sounds of nature that broke through. Without direction, her mind chose its own compass. It pictured her here with Tyler next to her, his fingers laced with hers, his shoulder handy for her to lay her head.

His smile created a warmth inside her. She recalled the look on his face when she’d exposed her pain, her truths to him. A protective rage. No pity, no revulsion. When he kissed her lips, she felt as though he held her heart in both hands. And she was beginning to believe, just maybe, that there was no safer place for it. That he wanted her, no matter what she could or couldn’t give him.

He hadn’t shared what memories formed his nightmares yet, but as if they’d shared a secret handshake she knew he’d been places where he watched hell become reality.

And he hadn’t turned and run. He’d stood, accepting the blame and the responsibility, and done what he could.

He wanted her. Not just because he’d as much as said it to her but because she felt it whenever she thought of him, saw him.

I’m asking you to think it through. If you accept what we both understood well enough last night, then you come to me. Please come to me.

So she thought about it. Thought about it for two weeks. The tears had loosened up some things inside her, given them room to move around and she wondered at them.

The way her feelings would dance through her chest when she thought about Tyler, bringing a smile to her lips if she let them. His bare heels treading on the cuffs of those loose drawstring pants as he’d moved around his kitchen. His hair when it was disheveled. The way his gaze focused on her when she spoke. The picture Sarah had painted of him sitting on that landing.

How would it feel to sit there with him, her hand in his, two people avoiding their nightmares as they shared a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise? Maybe together they could stave off the nightmares and the morning would be about nothing more than enjoying the beauty of a sunrise, following a night of making love.

“Chloe.” She spoke through the open door of her office before she could lose her nerve. “Could you pack me up a little gift box for a pot’s worth of the new Ceylon we just got in and some of those lemon bars? I’m headed for the Gulf tonight.”

“Yes!” She jumped as Chloe and Gen did a high five over the counter. Marguerite leaned forward from her desk to study them.

“The two of you should go out and find a social life of your own, instead of meddling in mine.”

Gen held up a hand. “Don’t encourage Chloe. She’s dating a biker now who does tattoos and piercings. She wants me to go on a double date.”

“Maybe we could go out with you and Tyler?” Chloe’s eyes danced. “Interest Tyler in a Prince Albert, maybe?”

“Oh my God.” Marguerite toed her door closed on a burst of their laughter. She felt an answering chuckle in her stomach, mixed up with something lower, coiling tight with her resolve. She’d decided. She wasn’t turning back. Now it was time to get dressed.

She hadn’t spoken to him directly for those two weeks. He’d called her work number after hours to leave her warm, intimate voice mails, telling her his whereabouts, his schedule from day to day. A short trip to New York, his cell phone number. Back to Tampa for a day or so to work on a project. A party tonight at his house at the Gulf for some industry contacts, a favor for a friend. He was respecting his own rule, the one he’d set when he said goodbye to her on her front steps, not forcing direct contact until she made the first step. And despite his resolve, she’d been warmed to hear the edge of male impatience in his voice as the days passed. She wondered how long her knight would have waited before attempting to storm her castle again. She’d kept all the messages, downloaded them so she could hear his voice on her digital recorder as she lay in bed at night. Let them keep her company in the car as she made the drive to his Gulf home.

When she drove up his driveway, there were about twenty cars there, most of them luxury models. All the lights were on, a welcoming, warm vista. She could easily imagine those elegant cars as a group of carriages a hundred years ago, the same welcoming sense of graciousness projecting from the home, that enduring classiness that Tyler complemented with his own style.

As she got out of the car, she heard the warm chatter of voices and laughter that heralded a party where people were enjoying themselves. From the direction of the sound, it seemed they were outside at the pool house. She imagined that the glass doors had been thrown open so people could wander in and out, enjoy the grounds as they made new friends in an industry where success lay largely in who one knew and impressed. She had no doubt that Tyler had guests here that could turn an aspiring actress’s or screenwriter’s dreams into reality. He’d likely carefully chosen a handful of talents to be here to take advantage of that opportunity. Being invited to such a party would have been enough to make one of those hopefuls spend a month’s salary on the right outfit and agonize over accessories days before the event.

Moments like that were turning points. Most of them went unnoticed as such until they passed into hindsight. But sometimes, like now, the significance of the moment was immediately apparent. Something would change forever when the eyes that mattered fell on you. And in that second the aspiring dreamer knew, in order to give the performance of her life, she couldn’t perform. She had to give a part of herself to her audience and pull them into who she was.

All of Marguerite’s senses were honed for that one person who mattered. As she moved across the lawn, oblivious to the curious looks, the dead physical stop of some of the men she passed, she picked out his voice among the others before she saw him. His polite chuckle. It ran a shiver of pure, hard wanting through her. She actually stopped herself to let her heart rate calm. Goddess, she’d really missed him. She didn’t know if he was an obsession or something more, but she didn’t care. She just needed to be near him, if it was only to sit across a room from him and stare.

He was sitting just inside one of the pool house doors in a deep man-sized wicker chair. His forearm rested along the curved arm, a drink loosely dangled off the end of it in his hand. One ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his favored pose, his khaki slacks casually adjusted. No coat, just a navy blue silk shirt that only enhanced the breadth of his shoulders, the mixture of the dangerous and the aristocratic in his features. With surprise, she noted that he was wearing his wedding ring on his right hand as a widower would. It made her wonder if he normally wore it but took it off when he was at The Zone or with a female houseguest to avoid questions, or perhaps out of respect for his wife. Respect for the oath he had made even if somewhere along the way the reality of it had become something terrible, unexpected.

Otherwise he was the picture of the relaxed and urbane host, the focal point for many of the women she saw milling around. They watched him with surreptitious glances, gauging their chances for a night or maybe more than a night, or perhaps just fantasizing.

Back off, he’s mine. He said so. It startled her, coming so abruptly out of her mind and heart. Spoken with the hope of a submissive as well as the absolute certainty of a Mistress. All of it was rolled together into herself. Her. Marguerite. What she wanted.

Still, she stayed where she was, taking this moment to study him without his knowledge. Each time he lifted his arm to respond in the conversation, she saw down the short shirt sleeve, the soft hairs under his arm, a three or four-inch length of his bare side. The early evening sunlight shone through the shirt, giving her the outline of his upper body, a simple thing that rendered her motionless, unable to breathe.

He was just…gorgeous. Perfect. She wanted his hands on her, his mouth. She needed him. Now.

He was talking to an intense-looking younger man who’d pulled the ottoman for the chair just beyond the range of Tyler’s long legs to sit on it. The man was perhaps in his early thirties with brown and black hair streaked with blond, revealing that he spent a good deal of time in the sun. His gray eyes shifted restlessly. She suspected it wasn’t abstract boredom, but because that was his nature. He was not sitting on the ottoman as much as he was perched on it. She also noted that he was dressed more casually than the partygoers, in loose torn jeans and an untucked cotton shirt, only several buttons fastened. Celtic design tattoos were around his wrists and the suggestion of more body art was shadowed within the folds of the almost open shirt.

His wire-rimmed glasses increased the unusual intensity, but made him more boyish and sensually appealing at once. The hair was disheveled, carelessly shoved away from his face. That and his clothing gave the impression of having rolled out of bed to come down and join the party. He was beautiful, the kind of man…

His gaze shifted to her and she picked up on it like the scent of a Darjeeling in the mist-covered foothills of India. Someone she would have snapped up in a heartbeat in The Zone. Perhaps even resorted to throwing elbows to get him if need be. This one knew pain, had the look in his eyes combined with the sweet sensual innocence of his mouth that so strongly appealed to her. But she sensed he was also one who had found peace for his demons. The focus of his eyes was unsettling, the way they examined her not exactly sexual but as if he were devouring every feature. It was obvious that he’d recognized her nature in the same blink of time she’d recognized his.

Jesus Christ. His lips moved in the words, probably said it, but the only voice she could hear was Tyler’s as he broke off and turned to see what had drawn his companion’s attention so abruptly.

She moved at last, made her way across the thirty feet of lawn left between them.

She didn’t let herself falter though she was afraid, more so with every step. She was about to go somewhere she’d never thought possible, trusting all her dark corners to someone else.

Tyler had given her that, the awareness that there was a black hole slowly spreading within her that would eventually take away everything she’d built. The things that she’d thought would compensate for the lack of true healing. He wanted her to accept a relationship where she’d have to have the courage to believe the darkest, deepest betrayal would not be lurking around the corner for her again. And there were no guarantees. Remembering her father’s eyes—what they’d once reflected, what they’d become—she faltered.