One Wild Wedding Night_ No Way Out - Leslie Kelly [11]
“No, just a man.” His good humor disappearing, he added, “One who apparently owes you an apology. Vanessa, I swear, I had no idea about what my grandmother did.”
He hoped she believed him, wondering why it mattered so much after all these years, but knowing it did. Not just to her, but to him, too. She wasn’t the only one who had regrets.
Vanessa sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, as if, of all the things she’d expected him to say, that was not one of them.
“I didn’t tell anyone what happened between us,” he swore, reaching out and taking her arm. “Not a soul.”
“Then how…”
“My brother found one of your letters. The one where you said you were, uh…late.”
She closed her eyes briefly, moaning as she brought a hand to her face. “Oh, Lord, what a fool I was. Two days late and I panicked. I should never have written that to you.”
“I’m glad you did. I loved your letters. Hell, all my other friends had computers and e-mail and barely even knew how to write a sentence.” He smiled, trying to tease her out of her sadness. “We were good practice for each other, with our writing.”
“And with other things,” she admitted, her voice husky.
Oh, yeah, they’d definitely helped each other learn other things. Things he’d only ever fantasized about in his young life until Vanessa McKee had made them a reality.
As if wishing she hadn’t said it, she quickly returned to the subject at hand, “I can still remember being in such a panic about being late. But there was also this silly girl’s dream…” “Of?”
She turned away, shaking her head in reminiscence. “Of you, me, creating a new little family that would be just like the one I grew up in, only the parents would be there.” She trembled slightly and he saw the tiny movement of the sleek muscles in her back. “They wouldn’t have died.”
“Amen to that,” he murmured, knowing from experience how hard it was to lose a parent. He couldn’t imagine losing both in an accident, the way Vanessa had when she was only six.
She quickly shook off the sad mood. “It was obviously a false alarm.” She watched him through half-lowered lashes. “So, what about your brother?”
“He took the letter to my father.”
“That little shit,” Vanessa muttered, making him laugh. Because it was the truth, his brother, even younger than Vanessa, had been a complete pest.
“He’s in med school, can you believe it?”
“Probably needed to learn how to heal his wounds from getting his butt kicked over and over for being such a tattle-tale brat.”
The words held no heat. She was, in fact, smiling as they left her mouth. He smiled back, unable to resist her. As if they were friends. As if she hadn’t punched him an hour ago.
As if she wasn’t standing here in a towel making him nearly break out in a sweat with the need to tear it off her and taste every inch of her womanly body.
But his apology wasn’t finished. Afterward, well, maybe after he’d said what needed to be said, he’d see about that towel. See whether her skin would taste as sweet on his tongue as he remembered.
“I had no idea Dad sent my grandmother around to check on you. That must have been hell.”
She nodded once.
“Then you didn’t hear from me anymore….” He didn’t say anything else, didn’t continue, because he wasn’t sure how much to say without sounding like some whiner looking for sympathy, especially after what she’d gone through in her childhood.
Vanessa had stiffened, how could she not? But then she admitted something he’d long ago realized. “You were every bit as much a kid as I was. We were playing games we weren’t ready for, neither of us.”
“True.”
“And both of us went on to do some good things.”
He wondered what she’d done, but didn’t ask. There wasn’t a ring on her finger and there wasn’t one on his. That was all he needed to know right at this moment.
Maybe there would be time for more later. But for right now, he’d had enough of talking. It was all he could do to hold himself together while standing a foot away from her, smelling the sweetness of her skin, seeing the curls drying around her beautiful