Midnight Promises

His softly spoken words lit a fire in her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be going to pick up Daisy and Mack?” she asked. “They shouldn’t be out too late on a school night.”

“They’re being safely tucked into bed at my mother’s right this minute,” he assured her. “And since it seems we’re past the point when you intend to banish me to spend the night over there with them, I was hoping we could make the most of having the rest of the night to ourselves.” He searched her face. “You have forgiven me, haven’t you?”

“Mostly,” she conceded.

“But not entirely?”

“I’m going to need proof that you’ve learned your lesson,” she said.

“I doubt I can come up with the proof tonight,” he lamented.

“True. Only time will tell.”

He ran a finger along her jaw, felt her pulse scramble. “And until then?”

Slowly, her arms circled his neck, and she molded herself to him. The way they fit together was enough to have his blood pounding.

“Until then,” she said slowly, her lips touching his, “we can try this whole dessert thing and see how it goes.”

He smiled against her lips. “I already know how it’s going to go,” he told her. “I’m going to make love to my wife until she screams and begs for more.”

She leaned back and regarded him with amusement. “I never beg.”

“Bet I can change that,” he said, already dipping his hand inside her panties, watching as her eyes drifted closed and her body responded to his touch.

Even when her breathing turned shallow and her skin glowed with a soft sheen of perspiration, to her credit, she didn’t beg.

Instead, she clung to his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him until he was the one ready to beg for mercy.

As he walked to the bedroom with her in his arms, he thought for the thousandth time how lucky he was to have found her. She was sugar to his spice, sweetness to his passion.

And, then, just when he least expected it, she turned the tables on him, showing him unexpected heat that took his breath away. The give-and-take between them, at least in this area, was the kind that every man dreamed of.

As for the other give-and-take, the kind of communication and sharing that kept a marriage solid, he still had work to do on that, as today had shown. But for this, to keep this woman happy and content in his arms forever, he’d do whatever it took.

* * *

Karen still had questions, a lot of them, in fact, but just as she’d noted earlier, Elliott had a way of making her forget everything except the way it felt to be the center of his world.

She’d been terrified of the passion he stirred in her when they’d first met. She hadn’t been ready to let herself fall so completely, head-over-heels in love, not when her experience with marriage had been so disastrous. She’d kept Elliott at arm’s length, had almost lost him because of it, in fact. In the end, though, it had been Frances who’d made her see that he was her second chance.

She’d had a lot of second chances back then. Helen had negotiated one for her at Sullivan’s when Dana Sue had been about to fire her. Helen had also rushed to the rescue when stress had brought Karen close to an emotional breakdown that could have cost her the children. Helen had taken in Daisy and Mack, seen to it that Karen got the support she needed, then reunited them when the time came.

Then, during that terrible time when she’d been at her absolute lowest, she’d met Elliott, a man not only strong, but quietly confident, persistent and with a generous, open heart. While he’d built up her physical strength during workouts at the spa—a gift from Helen, Dana Sue and Maddie—he’d also built up her battered ego whenever she’d let him.

It had been so hard for her back then to trust that what he’d felt for her so quickly could be real. She hadn’t trusted her own feelings at all. And when his mother and sisters had objected strenuously to his involvement with a divorced woman, she’d seized it as the perfect excuse to run.

Thank God, he hadn’t let her run far. Surprisingly, the love between them had given her the confidence to face down his mother, to win her over and make her, if not a friend, at least an ally.

Now, lying beside him in bed, still warm from their lovemaking, she felt his gaze on her.

“What’s on your mind, querida?” he asked, studying her intently as his hand rested on the curve of her hip. The touch was gentle, possessive.

“Just thinking about how we got here,” she admitted. “How did you know we belonged together?”

He smiled at the question. “The first time I saw you, you stole my heart,” he said simply. “You were in my blood.”

“Why didn’t I know it that first instant, too?” she wondered. It had always bothered her that he’d been so sure, while she’d been so scared.

“You did,” he corrected.

“Absolutely not,” she argued.

His smile spread. “People only run so hard when they’re afraid, querida. And they are only afraid of feelings so powerful they can’t control them.”

She met his gaze, laughing. “Now, you’re just being smug.”

“No, I am being smart and right,” he teased. “Admit it. You were at the very least in lust with me from that first day at the spa. You didn’t want to be, but you were.”

Still chuckling, she nodded. “Okay, I’m like every other woman in there. Maybe I was just a little in lust.” She studied him. “But it was more than that for you, and I still can’t figure out why. What did you see in me? I was a wreck back then.”

“You were like no wreck I’d ever seen before,” he said. “You were beautiful and vulnerable and I wanted to be a part of making you strong again.”

She lifted an arm, flexed her biceps, then sighed. “Still not so strong.”

He tapped her chest. “It’s your heart that’s strong again.”

“You can say that after the way I freaked out today?”

He smiled. “You stood up to me, didn’t you? You said your piece, insisted on answers. You didn’t back down.”

“Not until you got me into this bed, anyway,” she said.

“We’re not here just so I can distract you,” he said. “If you have more questions, I’ll answer them until you’re satisfied.”

She grinned at that. “The questions can wait,” she told him. “I’d rather you satisfy me again the way you did a little while ago.”

His eyes darkened at once. “With pleasure,” he murmured. “Always with pleasure.”

3

Frances could not for the life of her recall where she’d left her apartment keys. They weren’t on the hook by the kitchen door where she usually left them, or on the counter, none of the obvious places. If she was late getting to the senior center, Flo and Liz were going to worry. She’d always been the most punctual of all of her friends.

She searched high and low, digging in the bottom of her purse, under the sofa cushions, checking in the bathroom, on her dresser. She eventually found them in, of all places, the freezer. She must have put them in there when she’d been getting her lasagna dinner out.

Holding the ice-cold keys in her hand, she frowned. Didn’t they say that one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s was leaving things in odd places? Just the thought was enough to frighten her.

“Stop it this minute,” she told herself sternly. “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. It’s not as if you do something crazy like this every day.”