“There’s something I haven’t told you. About Lauren.”
She kept her head down, sensing it was better for him if she didn’t look at him while he talked. Her hand rubbed gentlyback and forth over his smooth firm skin, rough hair.
“Lauren was pregnant when she died.”
Now her head snapped up. “Pregnant?” She blinked at him.
“Yes.” His eyes closed against her searching gaze. “We’d just found out a couple of weeks before. We hadn’t told anybody. Wanted to wait a while make sure everything was okay.”
She gave a jerky nod. She felt seized by…fear. Anxiety. Jealousy? Emotions churned inside her.
“But…”
“Yeah. Big ‘but’.” He rubbed his eyes. “I already told you she’d been having an affair. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I was all happy and proud…excited to be a father, but also scared shitless.”
She nodded again.
“When I read her journal after the accident, she talked about her lover. About how—how she didn’t know who the father was. How she’d talked to him about that. What they were going to do.” His voiced deepened. “I’ll never know if that was my baby, Krissa.”
Pain stabbed through her heart. “Oh, Nate.” She stared at him in horror.
“I couldn’t deal with that. After the funeral, everyone was so sympathetic. They kept talking about how wonderful Lauren was, how much she loved me, blah blah blah. I couldn’t stand it. I just…couldn’t.” His voice cracked. “So I left. I just wanted to get away from anyone who knew about it, anyone who knew Lauren. I couldn’t tell anyone how goddamn pissed off I was at her…” The words came out rough and gritty. He squeezed his eyes shut. “How much I hated her for what she’d done. I couldn’t tell people that. I couldn’t tell people how guilty I felt for hating her—she wasdead. It was so hard to keep it inside me every time they talked about what an angel she was.”
Krissa moved over him, laid her cheek against his rough one, put her hand on his neck. She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, wished with everything inside her she could make thatpain go away for him, wished he’d never had to endure that.
What could she say to him? She, too, had thought Lauren perfect, faithful, in love with her husband. She, too, felt betrayed by Lauren’s infidelity, her shocking, sordid secret affair. And now, that she’d maybe even been pregnant by another man, while married to Nate. Dear God.
And if the baby had been his, how tragic. Well, it was tragic no matter whose baby it was…but she felt Nate’s despair as if it were her own, sharp and deep. And he would never know the truth now.
Her tears wet both their faces and she kissed his mouth, tasted salt, stroked the hot skin of his neck and jaw. Desire to comfort him swelled inside her, engulfing her, a wrenching helplessness dragged at her. Words of comfort and love rose to her lips.
But she couldn’t say them. She could only show him how she felt with her mouth, her hands and her welcoming body.
They made love again, this time slow, lush and impassioned. When Nate moved down her body to kiss her between her legs, she felt as though he were worshipping her. His small, suckling kisses over her sensitive folds held reverence and awe. His gentle licks and sighing breaths against her clit spoke of care and tenderness. Tears filled her eyes even as an agonizingly sweet tension tightened in her, a swelling heat. Everything inside her constricted, pulled up, up, up into a sharp peak of excitement and when she came, she came hard and long. Shudders wracked her body, and she held his head at her pussy while pleasure exploded through her veins. She cried out, bit her lip to keep words from spilling out of her.
When he moved over her, Krissa pushed him to his back and poured everything she felt into each stroke of his face, every caress, her clasp of his erection. She took her time to explore his body, every dip and hollow, every hard muscle and strong bone, with her mouth, her lips, her tongue. She inhaled his scent, warm and male, licked his balls, tasted his cock. She pressed kisses to his quivery belly, sucked and licked at his sharp nipples. When she moved over him and they cametogether, a shimmer of white heat surrounded them. Their eyes met and held, Krissa on top, riding him, hands on his chest, taking him deep.
The connection between them sparkled and flashed, a coalescence of intense emotions neither of them could—or would—name. Krissa swallowed the words that rose up in her throat, let them shine through her eyes instead.
She cried when she came, tears stinging her eyes, tracking down her face. She blinked through them, wanting to watch Nate, looking for a reflection of her feelings, and when she saw it, she lost her breath, lost her mind…lost her heart.
In the morning, when she awoke, she watched Nate sleep. He was so beautiful. She studied the slant of his thick eyebrows, the full curve of his lower lip, the perfect wedge of his nose. Something inside her soul was tearing in a long, painful rip, the pain almost making her gasp. Her eyes still gritty from last night’s tears, she refused to weep again.
He shifted in the bed, and his eyes fluttered open and found hers. They gazed at each other. She sensed him holding back, felt the emotion gripping him too. When his mouth opened to speak, she put her hand over it. Her eyes remonstrated him, begged him, stopped him.
When pain darkened his eyes and he closed them, she rolled away. She lay on her back, stared with burning eyes at the ceiling, then got up and went into the bathroom.
While Nate had breakfast with his family in the hotel restaurant, she left the hotel and walked the sidewalk sightlessly. After a couple of blocks, she realized she was in front of a small coffee shop, so she went in and ordered coffee and a muffin. She sat in the front window, the morning sun warming her chilled body. She didn’t taste the coffee as she sipped it, ignored the muffin.
Was it possible to love two men?
She crumbled the muffin as she pulled it in half, then stared out the window blindly. She was married. Her marriage wasn’t perfect, but she loved her husband. Shehadto love herhusband. But now Nate had entered their lives—no, more than that. He’d entered her heart.
And her world had transfigured into a bewildering tangle she couldn’t begin to unsnarl.
Chapter 27
Nate and Derek sat on the deck that evening while Krissa worked on dinner in the kitchen. Nate itched to be inside with her, helping her, laughing with her, debating over whether to steam or roast the vegetables, reliving the excitement of the show the evening before.
