Coming Home to You Page 20

  He held on to her, trembling. “You’re not alone,” she whispered. “You have your family. You have me.”

  “Don’t pity me, Kate. I can’t stand it.”

  “Pity? I feel so many things for you. Admiration. Awe. I feel more passion and love for you than I could ever express. But pity? No. Never that.”

  She felt his tears rather than heard them. They slid silently down his face and fell on her like drops of sweet gentle rain. “You love the cult idol James Hayes,” he said brokenly. “You love an image. That’s not who I am.”

  “Yes. I love him. He stole my heart years ago and no man has been able to even come close to taking his place.” She lifted her head and framed his face with her hands. “Until now. Until I looked beyond the image and fell in love with the man. I love you, James. I love the tender side of you that finds so much pleasure in growing your little vegetable garden. I love the way you’ve given yourself to those kids at the ranch, and how you treat that ugly mutt like it has a mile-long pedigree. You’re my hero. Not the man I once knew as James Hayes. The love I have for who you were pales beside the love I have for who you are.”

  He didn’t speak and she sensed his turmoil. He wanted to believe her, but he was afraid. So much had come between them. So much still threatened them.

  “I guess,” she said, throwing his own words back at him, “I’ll just have to show you.”

  HER FINGERS WENT to his shirt to undo the buttons and lay it open. James lost his breath and his voice with the touch of her palms against his bare skin and the tender way she stroked him.

  “Your body is so incredible,” she told him. She ran her fingers across muscles formed by years of digging fence post-holes and tossing seventy-pound bales of hay. “I want to touch and kiss every inch of skin. I want to feel your naked flesh move against my own, to know what it’s like to have you explode deep inside me.”

  He could do nothing but wait in tormented anticipation as she bent and kissed his neck…his shoulder…his midriff. She kissed down the center of his chest, then moved lower to gently graze him with her teeth through his jeans.

  He almost leaped off the bed.

  She unfastened his belt, pulled it from his pants and tossed it aside, then lowered his zipper. “I fell in love with you even when I thought you were Bret,” she said. “It drove me crazy not being unable to separate my feelings for you and him. When the man I thought was Bret kissed me, I saw the face of James from long ago. And when I thought of James, Bret would somehow force himself into his place. That day at the pond. That’s why I called you by your real name. My heart knew who you were even when my eyes couldn’t see it.”

  Raising her head, she teased his nipple with her tongue, and still he was so moved by her words of love, her desire for him, that he was unable to respond. Never had he wanted a woman more or felt so unsure of his ability to please her.

  “Say you believe me, James. Say you believe that I love you. The real you.”

  She kissed him on the mouth, thrusting her hand through the open fly of his jeans to stroke him intimately at the same time.

  Like a spark that ignites the flame, her touch ignited something hot and raw that had been simmering below the surface since he’d met her. “Katie,” he moaned, returning the kiss. He could no longer hold back. He brought her into his arms with an urgency born of passion too long denied.

  Clothes quickly came off and were thrown aside until nothing but skin met skin and their bodies were free for each other to touch. He pulled her down beside him on the bed and caressed her breasts and the velvet-soft hair at the juncture of her thighs, his fingers serving as his eyes in the darkness. He wanted to memorize every part of her, to know by heart the shape of her legs, the curve of her hip. He already knew every freckle on her face. Were there freckles elsewhere? If so, he’d find every one. He’d kiss them, commit them to memory.

  “God, how I’ve wanted this,” he said, his voice cracking in his attempt to control the desire that threatened to overwhelm him. His mouth followed the trail his fingers had blazed, sucking hungrily at her breast before moving between her legs to open and taste her. His hands and mouth played her like an instrument. Her moans, her words of love and passion, were the music, rising in crescendo toward climax.

  He wanted to feel her come while his mouth was on her, but she urged him onto his back. “No, James, you lie there and let me love you,” she said. He protested, but then her mouth closed over him, and he could no longer speak.

  Lord help him, it was an exquisite sensation to be treated so by someone you loved. He was an expert at giving pleasure, but rarely had any woman put his pleasure above her own.

  With one swift movement, he picked her up and set her on top of him, easing into her as he brought her down. She gasped as he made his entrance and he nearly spilled into her before he’d even thrust.

  She began to move against him and he quickly stilled her. “Kate, wait, I…hell, I don’t have any protection.”

  “Too late,” she said with a small breathless laugh. “Now that I’ve finally got you, I’m not letting you go.” She tightened her muscles around him to emphasize the point and began to rock her hips, slowly at first, then more feverishly. He met her passion stroke for stroke as the old bed squeaked its approval.

  He turned on the lamp then, wanting the light, wanting to see her face in its soft glow as she moved above him with her long hair a waterfall across her bare skin. Like the rest of her, her breasts were small and beautifully formed. The hair between her legs was pale and he touched her there, finding the hidden bud of sensitivity and rubbing it with his thumb to the rhythm of her movement.

  She held his gaze, letting him know without words how she felt about him, how she felt about what he was doing to her. The look on her face sent him to the edge, and he grabbed her hips and moved her faster. The control he’d carefully honed over the years had deserted him the moment he’d felt what it was like to have her close around him.

  He tried to hold back, but the powerful orgasm that ripped through him was stronger than his will. His release triggered her own, and she flung back her head and cried out his name.

  She collapsed onto his chest and lay there motionless. He, too, was spent, unable to move.

  “Do you believe me?” she said after several minutes, still unmoving.

  “Yes,” he said with genuine awe. “I believe.”

  He lifted his hand to stroke the back of her head. For the first time in years he felt almost happy. And it was because of this woman who’d fallen in love with him. Twice.

  JAMES JERKED AWAKE. The bed was empty, but the sheets still held the heat of Kate’s body where she’d lain against him, her feet tucked under his legs to keep them warm and her arm draped over his chest.

  “Kate?” he called out in concern.

  “I’m here.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the window. She was curled on the old padded love seat with a quilt wrapped around her. The night had no moon, but the curtains were open and the yard light filtered through the glass to surround her in a pale, almost unearthly glow.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking. Worrying about Henry.”

  “Come back to bed where it’s warm.”

  She held the quilt open in silent invitation for him to join her, and he got up and went over, squeezing his long body onto the love seat behind her. He pulled her back against his chest and adjusted the quilt. Her hair was sweet-smelling and soft and he buried his face in it.

  They sat listening for a long time to the sounds of the old house and the beating of each other’s hearts, knowing without saying it that these idyllic hours together were the calm before the storm and should therefore be savored.

  She let out a sigh. “I wish we could stay like this forever. We could lie here in each other’s arms and forget about the things that have hurt us, that will hurt us.”

  He put his face against hers. “You’re not only talking about Henry, are you?�
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  “No, I was thinking about everything, about our families and what we’re going to tell them about us. And this damn book… I have an obligation to my publisher, but I don’t know how to fulfill it without exposing you, which I won’t do.”

  Sorrow tinted her voice, a sorrow that cut him to the quick because he was responsible for it. The enormity of their problems had hit her and she was wondering, like him, how they were going to get past them.

  He kissed her cheek. “I don’t have answers, Kate. I hate asking you to lie for me, but James Hayes has to remain dead.”

  “I know he does, but it bothers me that people will never have the chance to hear those wonderful songs you’ve composed in the last few years. And they’ll continue to think you were an addict. You’ve been branded a hypocrite for using drugs while preaching against them. That really galls me.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I care. I don’t want them to remember you like that. You’ll spend the rest of your life making sure the world remembers Bret with kindness and that he leaves the right legacy, but what about you? What about your legacy? You deserve to be remembered as the gifted, decent man you are, not as a rock star with a drug habit. I want people to know the love you have for your family, how you tried to help Bret with his problems and the compassion you showed Lauren, despite the fact that she betrayed you. But I don’t see any way to tell those stories without revealing the source of the information.”

  “You’re getting yourself worked up and it’s not going to help.”

  “I know, but I hate the unfairness of it. I started this project to give you back the respect you’ve been denied, and unless I finish it and tell the truth, I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t need what you’re trying to give me, Kate.”

  “But I need it, James. I need to give it to you. You were right when you accused me of being obsessed with this book. I am obsessed, because it represents my love for you. I want to clear your name.”

  He understood, he supposed. If their positions were reversed and Kate’s reputation had been unfairly tarnished, he’d want to do whatever he could to set the record straight. But he’d deserved some of the bad things the media had written about him, and he didn’t care what people remembered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have brought this up now, when you’re still so upset about Henry. I didn’t get the chance to know him very well, but I know you love him. And I came to care for him very much.”

  His arms tightened around her. “You’ve eased the pain by being here, by loving me.”

  “What did Jane Logan tell you about his new family?”

  “Only that the father’s a minister, and both he and his wife are young. Seems they want a big family and they plan on adopting other children and having some of their own.” She didn’t comment, but he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. “Sounds like the perfect situation for Henry, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but little consolation when your heart is breaking.”

  He pushed back the pain as a memory came into his head of that day a few weeks back when he’d taken Henry to buy shoes and the child had insisted on the boots they’d eventually ended up getting. He’d told James in his garbled baby talk that he wanted to be like “Bet.” The boots were meant as a gift to Henry, but James felt he was the one who’d received the true gift that day.

  “I’d give anything, Kate, to have adopted him, but a child deserves a stable home with a normal father and a normal life, not a father who lives in fear of having his life snatched away from him at any time.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the real reason you’re reluctant. I think your unwillingness to adopt a child is a way of punishing yourself for your failure to help Bret. You’ve picked the thing you want most and then denied yourself the ability to have it.”

  He frowned, wondering if she was right.

  “I have to live by this decision,” he told her. “No adopted children. No biological children.” He thought again about their unprotected lovemaking. “God, please tell me there’s no chance I got you pregnant tonight.”

  “No, don’t worry about that.”

  Her answer brought conflicting emotions of relief and disappointment.

  “Kate, I…” This wasn’t going to be easy to say. “I love you and I want us to be together, but I don’t have anything to give you. I can’t give you kids, except the ones from Pine Acres who will come and go from your life. You’ll fall in love with them, think of them as your own, and then have to give them up—always. I can’t even give you my real name. Can you possibly be happy under those circumstances?”

  “I have to be. I have no other choice.”

  “But with another man you’d have a better life, a normal life.”

  “I’ve belonged to you in my heart since I was nineteen, and I don’t want another man. So it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, because anything is better than losing you.”

  “Then you’ll live with me?”

  “Yes, I’ll live with you.”

  “We have so many problems.”

  “And I wish I could say I have answers for them, but I don’t. All I know is that as long as we’re together, I don’t care about anything else.”

  His throat tightened. “Maybe we should go to Chattanooga,” he said quickly, before he lost his nerve.

  She sat up and looked at him. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously.”

  “Are you ready for that?”

  “No, but I can’t put off telling my family about you much longer, and if we’re going to have any chance at a future, I’ve got to deal with the past. If I can find the courage.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” She brought her hand to his cheek. “You can. I know you can.”

  She held him and whispered words of love, and he took her there on the couch in an exquisite melding of body and spirit that was unlike anything he’d experienced before. Afterward they lay with arms and legs entwined, two pieces of a puzzle, a perfect fit.

  Chattanooga. He hadn’t been there since the crash. At first he hadn’t gone because he’d feared recognition. Later he’d realized he couldn’t go because of the memories and pain that awaited him there. He’d hidden away in this house, thinking one day the pain would ease and he’d be able to go home. But it never had.

  Now the time had come to face it. He didn’t know if he was strong enough.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THEY LEFT IN JAMES’S TRUCK the next morning after securing a promise from Aubrey to take care of Sallie and the horses for several days. Although Kate urged James to call his mother and stepfather and reduce the shock of their arrival, he was adamant.

  “Doing that will only cause them hours of grief while they wait for us,” he said. “I’d rather explain to them when we get there.”

  They arrived in midafternoon, following a light rain that had dressed the air with mist broken by patches of returning sunlight. Kate had noticed James’s rising panic the closer they got to the city, and now perspiration beaded his face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Nervous.” He pulled the truck into the parking lot of a convenience store, stopped and stared upward at his parents’ house. “Well, there it is.” The stone structure with its jutting turrets sat perched, like some horrendous bird, on the mountain ahead of them, at complete odds with the beauty around it. “I built it for my mother with the money I made off the first album. I was just a kid and I wanted her to live in a castle. What do you think of it?”

  “Do they really need all that room for the two of them?”

  “Probably not, but she loves the house.”

  “Mmm.” She wondered how that was possible, given what she knew about the formidable Marianne Conner.

  The narrow road up Lookout Mountain gave them a spectacular view of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River that wound through the city like a snake. A few minutes later they turned into the private drive leading to the
Conner house and stopped at the security gate. A guard called the house and James talked briefly with the housekeeper. He got back in the car and for the first time in hours, smiled. “They’re a little excited I’m here,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Ready?”

  She took a deep breath. “As I’ll ever be.”

  James’s mother didn’t wait for him to get to the door but met him in the stone courtyard at the front of the house. She was already weeping, and she flung herself into his arms when he stepped out. Kate stayed in the car, not wishing to intrude on their reunion.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” his mother said, drawing back to look at him. “I’ve prayed and prayed you’d come home someday. I have to call George at the club. And Ellen will want to see you.”

  “Mom, not yet.” He faced the car where Kate sat unnoticed, steeling herself for the inevitable hurricane. He motioned for her to get out, and she came and stood beside him. He grabbed her hand and she clung to it in support. “I’ve brought someone I want you to meet. Mom, this is Kate. Kathryn Morgan. The lady who’s writing the biography.”

  She watched his mother’s surprise turn to recognition, then disbelief, then horror. At that moment Kate knew what it felt like to be someone’s worst nightmare.

  His mother turned to James in panic. “Why have you brought this woman here?”

  “Mom, I want her to talk to you.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I…she knows, Mom. She figured out what we did.”

  “Oh, God, no! She’ll ruin us all!”

  MARIANNE LOOKED DOWN the dinner table at the sullen faces and wondered how they’d gotten through the meal. George was drinking and not even trying to hide it. Ellen, morose and sporting new bruises from the current bastard she lived with, hadn’t said two words since she’d arrived. And James was furious at all of them; it was evident from the way he picked at his food.

  Marianne cleared her throat to get their attention. “Well, I suppose Ms. Morgan and I should talk and get it over with. The rest of you go somewhere and entertain yourselves.”