Lovers' Reunion

She didn’t look at him again, simply linked her fingers in her lap, and he heard the rustle of silk sliding over silk as she crossed her legs. His gaze dropped and he studied the shape of her slim thighs in the pretty royal-blue skirt that matched her jacket. She probably hadn’t lost very much weight, but what she had lost had enhanced the natural beauty that she’d always possessed and trimmed her womanly curves to hourglass proportions.

Then the service began, and guilt tore his gaze away from her. He might have gotten away from the church too much to suit his folks, but he had the superstitious feeling that a lightning bolt might just seek him out for thinking lecherous thoughts in a house of worship.

Sophie managed to ignore him during the exchanging of peace between members of the congregation by darting up to the pews ahead of them to greet members of her family. It was, to his mind, a telling sign that she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she’d appeared on her mother’s back porch the other day.

As he spoke the familiar responses, something inside him relaxed. His mother’s soft voice on his right side and Sophie’s on his left, the shuffle and hush that accompanied the rituals of worship...it felt right in a strange way, a way he’d never realized he missed, but needed now that he’d found it again.

When he finally limped back to the pew, he couldn’t kneel. Instead, he had to sit like the little old ladies who were too feeble to get on and off their knees any more, shifted to the edge of the seat with his back bent forward and his right leg stiffly stuck out before him. His prayers consisted mainly of a single desperate plea: Lord, please get this over with.

And his prayers were answered. The service was concluded swiftly. Sophie was out of the pew like a shot when the postlude began to play. She immediately immersed herself in the crowd made by her large family, moving as far from him as she could get.

He wasn’t a particularly patient man, but he knew she couldn’t avoid him forever, so he allowed her to move ahead of him down the aisle and out of the church. He suffered through the welcomes of other members of the congregation, watching her to be sure she didn’t sneak away, and when he saw her break off and head across the parking lot toward her little car, he went after her.

He was slow. He had refused to bring the cane along this morning because he was well rested, he reasoned, and getting stronger every day, and the doctor had told him to start doing without it from time to time. It was frustrating as hell not to be able to stride across the macadam and catch her at her car door. Instead, he forced himself to move carefully, and by the time he reached her car, she was buckled in and had started the engine.

She saw him coming. But until he walked around to her driver’s door and tapped on the glass, she simply sat there with the windows rolled up. He put a hand on the door latch and then she punched a button, rolling down her window and smiling at him, though it didn’t reach her eyes and he suspected it was only for the benefit of others around them.

“Hello again,” she said. “Thank you for the seat this morning.”

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” he said, ignoring her casual words. “How about dinner tomorrow night?”

But she shook her head. “No, thank you.”

It was a bald, simple response, delivered in a calm, almost flat tone of voice, and he lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, we can make it Tuesday if tomorrow night doesn’t suit.”

Sophie made an impatient sound, lifting her hand to rest on the open windowsill. “Marco, tomorrow night would suit just fine—if I wanted to go out with you. I don’t.”

“Is it because of the baby?”

Her eyebrows rose, and he thought he detected a hint of shock. “Excuse me?”

“We could take it along if you like.” He’d never minded kids, enjoyed them, in fact, and though he didn’t want to think about his Sophie in the arms of another man, he was intensely curious about her child.

She was frowning slightly, not looking at him. Her thumbs were rubbing back and forth along the edges of her steering wheel, and when he glanced at the small motion, he realized she was gripping the wheel hard enough to make the tips of her fingers white. “I didn’t realize you had a child,” she said.

Now it was his turn to frown. “I don’t.”

She looked at him then, and her gaze was cool and clear again. “Whose baby, exactly, are we discussing, then?”

Marco drummed his fingers against the side of his thigh. “Yours. I don’t mind—”

“I don’t have any children,” she said. Silence lay like a wet towel for a long pause, and he thought she seemed upset. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“Your mother,” he said shortly, not particularly liking the feeling of relief that coursed through him. He wanted her, badly, but it wasn’t as if he couldn’t live without her. “She came out the door the other day and asked you about feeding the baby. If it wasn’t yours, then whose was it?”

“Oh, that baby.” Her eyes momentarily softened and he caught a glimpse of something sad in her eyes before she stifled it. “That was a foster child who was waiting for a temporary placement. I’d picked her up the night before and couldn’t place her until later Saturday, so she was stuck with me for a night.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.” At her questioning frown, he added, “Being stuck with you for a night.” He leaned down until their faces were only a foot apart, trying to ignore the relief that had flowed through him when he’d realized she wasn’t a mother. “Have dinner with me, Sophie.”

Her eyes were wide and her full, lush lips slightly parted. She ran her tongue around the edges of them, and her breasts rose and fell with the rhythm of her quickened breathing. The air between them seemed to hum with a powerful current of attraction, and he let his gaze drop to her mouth, lifting a finger to lightly press against her bottom lip.

She quivered for a moment, and he felt a small gasp escape her. Then, just as he was about to lean forward and seal his position with a kiss, she took his hand by the wrist and drew it firmly away from her mouth, all but flinging it out the window. “Thank you for the invitation but I’m not interested.”

Though a lick of something—anger, mixed with a scary dose of panic—shot through him, he forced himself to smile lazily. “You used to be interested,” he said softly. He reached in again and picked up her hand and brushed his thumb back and forth across her palm, trying to read her eyes.

But now she wasn’t giving anything away. Her eyes remained cool, hiding any hint of what she was thinking. “That was a long time ago,” she said. “I’ve grown up since then.”

“Ah, c’mon, Sophie. Just dinner.” He ran his eyes down the length of her body, chuckling when she pulled her hand away. “A little conversation, a little reminiscing...”

“No.” She dropped her guard and shot him a look of such bitterness that he mentally staggered back from the heat, singed by the anger in her eyes. “I’m not interested in being your entertainment when you come to town anymore.”

“It wasn’t like that.” He didn’t care for the way she made his actions sound so ... callous. He’d done it for her, dammit! “You were a lot more to me than just—”

“It’s not important now,” she told him, and the chilly finality in her tone infuriated him even more. “I have a life of my own now, and it doesn’t include you. That was your choice, remember?” And before he could come up with a response, she slipped the car into gear and started forward, forcing him to remove his hand or lose his balance and be dragged along with the vehicle as she drove away from the church without a backward glance.

His youngest sister Teresa was calling his name, and slowly, taking deep, calming breaths, he turned toward her, reaching for a smile though what he really wanted to do was punch something. Hard.

Okay, fine. Sophie didn’t want to go out with him. He could work around that, and he would. He’d figure out another way to get her to accept his presence in her life. She didn’t remember much about him if she thought he was going to give up and go away so easily.

Three

The knock on the door of her apartment startled Sophie.

She was sitting on the floor of her extra bedroom with a year’s worth of photographs spread around her. She always had taken lots of photographs, too many, really, because then she felt compelled to organize them in albums. So she’d spent the evening sorting them into piles of family, friends and work photos, and she was just about to begin the unenviable task of sliding them into sleeves in the appropriate albums when a hard rap at her door had her jerking her head up and pressing a hand to her heart.

Hastily, she rose to her feet and tiptoed through the piles of pictures. It was eight o’clock at night. Who could it be?

She’d had Sunday lunch with her family after church and spent a pleasant hour with the members of her big clan that were present, but around two she’d made her excuses and slipped out, feeling the need for some breathing room.

Maybe she’d forgotten something, she thought, as she put her hand on the knob and pulled the door the small distance it would open with the chain on. Or more likely, Mama had dispatched someone to drop off more food. Like she hadn’t already sent enough—

“Hello, Sophie.”

Marco was standing on her doormat. He was smiling, a crooked grin that reminded her of a little boy who’d been caught red-handed in an act of orneriness. But this was no little boy. He wore a light blue jean shirt tucked into a darker pair of jeans. The shirt emphasized the width of his shoulders, and at its open neck, dark, silky hairs curled out of the vee where the buttons weren’t fastened.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach and landed with a jarring thud deep in her abdomen. Speech deserted her, and she simply stood there staring, trying desperately to keep her eyes on his face and not examine the rest of him the way she had longed to since she’d heard he was home.

“Are you going to invite me in?” His voice was low and amused, and she felt herself flush. He probably knew exactly the effect he had on her. He certainly had at one time.

That thought stiffened her spine, and she cleared her throat. She unbolted the door and pulled it open, but she didn’t move aside to invite him in. “Marco. What are you doing here?”

He smiled again, easily, dimples creasing his cheeks, and a tiny fanwork of lines crinkled the corners of his dark eyes. “Visiting you.”

“I don’t want a visitor,” she said, too shaken to be diplomatic. “Go away.”

But before she could close the door in his face, he’d wedged his broad shoulders against it and pushed inside.

Her pulse sped up and she told herself the only reason she was breathing faster was because she was annoyed. But that didn’t explain the heat building in her belly and radiating down to warm the apex of her thighs.