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“And Mackensie Roone came to be.” She touched his cheek. “It was a rebirth for which we can all be grateful. I’m just sorry for the suffering you had to endure to get there.”
“In the long run, it’s going to be worth it.”
The moment the sentence was out, he realized he’d spoken it in the present tense. He feared Maris might notice and question him about his ultimate goal, but she had turned her head away from him and was gazing out across the surface of the water. The lights of a tanker winked on the horizon.
Raindrops began to fall, creating wet dimples in the sand. They fell on the wood platform in light spatters. Parker heard them even before he felt the sprinkles on his skin. They felt as warm and soft as tears.
“Parker?”
“Hmm?”
“Remember that first day I came to the cotton gin, you suggested that Noah had married the boss’s daughter to further his career?”
“That yanked your chain.”
“Yes. But only because you hit the nail on the head. Deep down I knew it.” She turned and looked into his face. “I caught him this week with another woman.” The simple statement was followed by a pause that gave him time to respond. He kept his expression neutral. “I won’t bore you with the sordid details.”
“How sordid?”
“Sufficiently sordid.”
“Enough to send you scrambling back here? Payback time?”
“No. I swear that’s not why I’m here. Noah’s affair provided me with justification for coming back. But the truth is, I didn’t want to leave in the first place.”
“Then why did you go?
“It was a matter of conscience.”
“Over what? Nothing happened.”
“Something happened to me,” she exclaimed softly, pressing her fist against her chest. “I wanted to stay with you, and that was reason enough for me to leave. Being around you wasn’t healthy for my marriage. What I was feeling for you frightened me. For my peace of mind, I needed to reestablish myself as a happily married woman. Ironically, I’d been back in New York only one day when I discovered that Noah had broken our marriage vows.”
“He’s a fool.”
She gave him a smile for the indirect compliment, but it turned rueful. “So am I. I’m a fool for not acknowledging sooner that our marriage wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Nor was Noah the man I wanted him to be. He wasn’t the hero of his book.”
“And now you think of Roark as a hero.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I’m not confusing fact with fiction, Parker. I’ve outgrown that. You’re real. I can touch you.” She reached for his hand, studying it as she traced the veins on the back of it with her fingertip. “My marriage, such as it was, is over. Behind me. I don’t want to talk about Noah anymore.”
“Fine by me.”
He gathered a handful of her hair, then wound it around his fist and drew her closer until their faces were inches apart. He hesitated for several heartbeats, then settled his lips against hers, tested the angle, readjusted. He was moderately controlled until he heard a small whimper from her. He backed off, looked down into her eyes, and recognized a desire that equaled his own.
Control was abandoned. He covered her face with wild, random, artless kisses and she was doing the same to him. Then mouths melded and tongues touched, and they kissed with carnal greed.
Eventually Parker pulled back and caught his breath, then proceeded with more temperance. His tongue stroked her lower lip; he raked it gently between his teeth. He laid light kisses at the corners of her lips before pressing his tongue into her mouth. He angled his head first to one side, then the other, but he never broke contact. Even when he withdrew, his lips remained against hers, making sipping motions as gentle as the rainfall.
Her lips barely moving against his, she whispered, “The night we met, when you kissed me…”
“Hmm?”
“I didn’t want you to stop.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
