Hard To Handle

Out of habit, she immediately shoved that unpleasant thought back into the closet where it belonged. Opening the clasp on her evening bag, she searched for the pack of emergency cigarettes she always carried with her. She and Nolan hadn’t always been at each other’s throats or circled like wary hounds afraid to say the wrong thing. There’d been a time when they hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. She missed those lazy Sunday mornings they’d spent in bed, making love most of the day and only surfacing long enough to regain their strength. She missed how they used to debate case law or talk about the future—before he’d ruin it by bringing up the subject of family. At first she’d change the subject or remain noncommittal, but after a while he’d to become more insistent until she’d finally told him the truth—she wouldn’t ever have a child with him. She hadn’t offered an explanation beyond she wasn’t the mothering type.

She hadn’t always felt that way about children, and whether or not her fears were unreasonable, in her opinion, she had no business having babies when she was having trouble controlling her addiction to alcohol. Besides, she already had two strikes against her: an abusive father and a mother who’d abandoned her. Everyone knew three strikes and you were out.

Suddenly she felt much older than her thirty-two years. She slipped a long slim from the pack, then dug out the disposable lighter and lit up. She inhaled deeply, taking the smoke into her lungs, waiting for the familiar calm to wash over her to curb the need for a drink. But the substitute failed to provide on all counts. No vice in existence was capable of calming her rattled composure tonight.

Studying the reflection of the twinkling lights on the surface of the water below, she smoked her cigarette and listened to the sound of the rising tide. Not even the gentle lap of water against the thick pylons could sooth her.

When she thought of everything she’d thrown away to protect her secrets…the lies she’d told to the one person she should’ve trusted the most…

She let out a regret-filled sigh. She’d been twenty-three and at the start of her second year as law student at Berkeley when she’d met Nolan. With no interest in another messy romantic entanglement after her last disastrous relationship, she’d initially tried to ignore him. Except her dismissal had made him even more relentless. Only a woman without a pulse could’ve held out when he poured on the charm, and she’d caved. Within six months she’d fallen helplessly in love with him, with his tenderness, his gentleness and the way he’d made her feel safe and cherished. The fact that he’d enough sexual energy to power up the lights at Candlestick Park hadn’t hurt, either, she thought with a wry grin.

They’d moved in together within a year and midway through their final year of law school, they’d eloped. After graduation, they’d both worked as law clerks while awaiting bar results. Nolan had clerked for an appellate court judge and she’d been essentially downgraded from paralegal to law clerk at the legal aid office where she’d worked her last two semesters. Even after they’d both passed the bar exam, they’d been broke much of the time, but it hadn’t made a difference because they’d been happy. Or so she’d believed, until her past had reared up and bitten her so hard she’d panicked.

Regardless of how much they had loved each other, in the end she’d known it would never be enough. Rather than face her fears, she’d pushed him away with the determination of a defensive lineman out to sack the quarterback. She couldn’t blame Nolan, only herself, and she’d used the excuse of his accepting the job offer from Turner, Crawford and Lowe—one the state’s largest law firms—without consulting her as the perfect excuse to pick a fight. Rather than trust him with the truth about her past and admit she’d been lying to him all along about who and what she was, she’d told him to get out and to never come back.

Her life had spiraled out of control shortly thereafter. To numb herself from the pain of losing Nolan, she’d open a bottle of bourbon and start drinking until she literally could feel no pain. But the hurt had kept coming back and so she’d kept drinking until, almost a year later, she didn’t know how to stop.

One night after leaving a downtown bar at closing time, she’d made a serious mistake and climbed behind the wheel of her car. Luckily a cop had pulled her over before she’d driven more than a block from the parking lot and she thanked God she hadn’t hurt anyone but herself. She’d jeopardized not only her life and the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the road that night, but she’d risked her career and shattered any remaining hope she’d secretly harbored of a reconciliation with Nolan because she’d never wanted him to have to live with the shame of having an alcoholic for a wife.

Mortified by what she’d become, she’d driven the final stake through the heart of her marriage when she’d called Nolan to insist he fly down to Mexico for a quickie divorce. They’d argued fiercely several times, until she’d finally lied and said she didn’t love him, that she didn’t know if she ever really had, blaming him because she’d been too young when they’d married. She would’ve gone to Mexico herself, but she’d been unable to leave the state since the judge had ordered her into rehab and placed her on probation for two years.

Two days before she’d entered rehab, Nolan had finally agreed to the divorce. The next day she’d hired the first attorney from the border town of Mexicali willing to make an appearance on her behalf on such short notice. Nolan, luckily, never found out that his wife had become an alcoholic. Twenty-eight days later she’d returned to her apartment and a notarized copy of their dissolution had been waiting for her amid a stack of bills, junk mail and periodicals.

Mikki flicked a length of ash and blinked back the sudden moisture blurring her vision. Who would’ve thought after all this time tough-as-nails Mikki Correlli could still tear up at the thought of a failed marriage? Sure as hell not her. She no longer allowed her emotions to control her actions.

She hadn’t always been so resilient. The truth was, if it hadn’t been for her family, she honestly didn’t know if she would’ve survived the aftermath of Nolan once she’d sobered up. When the strength she’d always prided herself on had come close to deserting her again, her sisters and mother were there for her, offering their support without judgment, even if they hadn’t agreed with the choices she’d made.

The urge to go home suddenly hit her hard. Not to her cozy apartment in the Marina District, but to the comfort of her mom’s place on Garrison Street near Haight and Ashbury.

Suddenly she craved the gentle scents of cinnamon candles and strawberry incense, the strains of the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez or the Doors lingering in the background. The solidity of the spindle-back oak chairs at the ancient oak table in the spacious kitchen decorated with chickens and roosters, where she could sit and sip one of her mom’s specialty herb tea blends and regain a proper perspective of her own role in the universe.

Tonight she wanted to listen to Emma reminisce about Haight-Ashbury, the Summer of Love, how she had traveled across the country in a VW bus to Woodstock and about the Oregon commune she’d lived in and where Rory had been born. Maybe Mikki would get lucky and recapture her own sense of calm. Although, she thought with a teary smile, she did often wonder if Emma’s always sage advice wasn’t peppered by the occasional acid flashback. Emma had experienced a few wilder moments in her free-love, mind-expanding days.

Her smile faded the instant she sensed Nolan’s presence behind her. Once again she wondered at his reason for returning to the city. The last she’d heard he’d been busy setting legal precedent in several landmark cases. Some rulings she had silently applauded, others she’d vehemently cursed when reading about them in the quarterly supplements to the California Reporter. Because she read the periodicals faithfully to familiarize herself with new decisions in regard to matters related to her area of expertise, it was difficult not to notice the Baylor name when it appeared with such regularity.

When he joined her, she quietly asked, “Why are you here, Nolan?”

Facing her, he rested his hand on the railing. He wore one of those rascal grins she’d always adored. “To unlock a few possibilities.”

She didn’t appreciate his humor. “I’m serious.” Thank goodness the odds of that happening were one in at least two hundred and fifty. More, possibly, judging by the size of the crowd that had turned out to support Baxter House.

His grin deepened, as if he knew something she didn’t. “So am I,” he arrogantly countered.

Not comfortable with all that cocky self-assurance aimed at her, Mikki’s defensiveness became more pronounced. “You never did know how to be serious.”

The smile faded and he let out a rough sigh. He pushed off the railing. “Can we sheathe the claws for a while?” He moved closer, eliminating the distance between them. “I came to talk to you, not fight.”

Unless she was prepared to climb over the thick round base of the planter to escape him, which she wasn’t—yet, he’d managed to effectively corner her. “So, now you’ve seen me,” she said with a careless shrug she had no hope of believing was real. “Curiosity satisfied?”

He swept the length of her with his gaze, his eyes lingering a moment too long on her breasts. The way he was blatantly staring at her with such unmistakable desire caused her nipples to bead and tighten.

Some things never changed.

“God, you look so good.” He took the remains of the cigarette from her fingers and tossed it into the Pacific before gently dragging the back of his hand down her cheek.

The lump in her throat tripled in size.

“But,” he added, his voice dropping to a low, husky timbre, “you always did.”

Awareness stirred within her. She stared at his mouth. “So do you.” The admission slipped out before she could stop herself. An overwhelming urge to kiss him gripped her—hard. She trembled.

He continued to hold her gaze as he tipped her face upward with the pad of his thumb. Anticipation sizzled between them. Just as it always had, she thought.

Slowly he lowered his head.

“Nolan.” Her soft whisper sounded remarkably reminiscent of an invitation rather than a protest. And honest, she decided. Regardless of how insane and stupid it was, she wanted him to kiss her.

The first feathery brush of his lips against hers instantly ignited her senses, taking her by total surprise. She hadn’t known what to expect, but she sure as hell hadn’t counted on her heart pounding or her insides turning to mush from an overload of sexual excitement.

She really did know better. With Nolan, indifference ceased to exist. He’d always made her feel too much. Too much love. Too much anger. Too much passion. Too much pain.

Damn you.

When he settled his mouth more firmly over hers and deepened the kiss, she tried to tell herself the only reason she responded, the only viable excuse for slipping her arms around his neck, stemmed from the shock of seeing him again. Clearly she wasn’t capable of thinking straight. Under normal circumstances, she never would’ve dreamed of plastering herself against him.

But she did and he tugged her even closer. He pulled her into a tailspin of sensation no woman who prided herself on calling the shots would ever dare welcome—or tolerate.

God help her, it wasn’t nearly enough.

In one step he had her up against the rough stucco wall, surrounding her with the heat of his body. Flaming, steamy memories flashed through her mind. His hands, his lips, the thick, hard length of him pulsing in her hands, in her mouth, thrusting relentlessly into her until the control she never could maintain with him shattered and she flew apart.

The insistent ache of desire dampened her. She wanted to recreate those memories with a desperation so fierce it left her as breathless as his hot, wet kiss.

No. She would not, could not, go there again. Ever. He was her drug of choice, her fix. She’d plummeted to rock bottom once and had barely survived the experience. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d risk that kind of pain again, not when she couldn’t be certain she possessed enough strength to crawl back the next time.

With every last shred of willpower she could summon, she planted her palms firmly on his chest and shoved him away. “No.” The command sounded as ragged as her breathing—and about as convincing. “This is not going to happen.”

Not again. Not ever again.

He took a reluctant step back, jammed his fingers through his hair and stared at her. She found no comfort from the fact he appeared as shaken as her by the heat that had flared up so quickly between them.

She prayed for numbness. Her body continued to hum defiantly with desire.

Just one more in a long line of unanswered prayers, she thought cynically. As if she should be surprised.

“What do you want, Nolan?” she asked him again. Her terse question fell short of rudeness due to the distinct tremor lacing her voice. Her trembling hands didn’t help much, either. “And I want an answer this time.”

He scrubbed his hand down his face. The wariness in his expression immediately filled her with dread.