CHAPTER 35

"Can't this wait until morning?"

What? Oh, she quickly reined in her wandering thoughts. "It's about Alice."

He was instantly alert. "Is she sick? What's wrong?" He made to get out of the bed and she caught his arm, and then wished she hadn't. His naked skin felt so smooth...

"She's fine." She bulldozed into speech before she made a fool of herself. "I hope you won't be upset, but I talked to her about her insistence that she's not a girl."

"And?" His voice didn't sound angry, just curious.

Relaxing, she told him what Alice had told her.

"Those interfering old biddies. They had no right. Why didn't Alice tell me?" He swung his feet to the floor. "I have to talk to my daughter."

"Wait." Charlotte grabbed him and pulled him back onto the bed. "I promised Alice it's our little secret. I don't want her to know I told you because I know she trusts me."

"Like hell. Alice has to hear from me that I love her and nothing or no one will ever take her away from me."

"We talked and she knows that. Give her time and I believe you'll see a change."

"She's not your daughter. She's mine." She felt his anger like a slap in the face as he leaped from the bed and reached for his jeans, which lay over a chair.

"If you break the trust she has in me, you'll hurt her. And you'll hurt me."

He stared at his jeans for a moment and then threw them into the chair, knocking it over with a resounding thud. "I don't understand why she wouldn't tell me."

"Because she's eight years old and afraid."

He sank onto the bed. "Sarah and I had our lives all planned, except we never planned on Sarah not being here."

It was the first time he'd ever volunteered anything about his wife to her. She scooted to sit beside him.

"I know the feeling. I never believed my dad wouldn't be here to guide me with his wonderful advice. He won't walk me down the aisle, either, something we both dreamt about."

"Does it get any easier?"

"For me, at last, it has." She smoothed the T-shirt over her thighs. "Since I've been here in Horseshoe, facing reality, I haven't felt that awful pain. I've been genuinely 'facing' my life and that's helped. I'm embarrassed to say my dad would have been disappointed in me for acting how I was, but the truth is he was the king of pampering and I milked that for all it was worth."

"You're very honest."

"Yeah, when you have to wash dishes and clean toilets it kind of brings everything else into perspective."

There was a pause between them. Not awkward, but neither seemed to know what to say next. Or they were reluctant to admit their thoughts. Charlotte finally jumped right in. To her, it was all or nothing.

"How do you think Sarah would feel about the way you're living your life?" She braced herself for his anger, but it didn't come.

"We promised to love each other forever and I intend to keep that promise."

Her heart rocked with pain. But she refused to give up. "So you think she'd be happy that you're not living, just existing?"

He stood, his pajama bottoms low on his hips. She could see that from the moonlight sneaking through the blinds. "You don't understand the relationship we had."

"No. Not if it's destroying you now?" She gulped at her own audacity. "If Sarah was the type of woman you say she was, then I know she would want you to be happy. She'd certainly want her child to be happy."

He remained silent and simply gazed at the subdued moonlight's crossing patterns. Then his voice came from somewhere deep within him. "So many times I wished it had been me, instead of her, and then Alice would have had her mother."

Charlotte got out of bed and moved towards him, suddenly seeing a lot of things she hadn't before. "Stop punishing yourself for being alive."

"Charlotte---"

"That's what you're doing."  She touched his bare arm with her hand. "I feel a living, breathing man who has punished himself for far too long."

He stiffened. "Please go back to your room."

"Why?"

He looked at her then and she felt the heat and the restrain! he was putting on himself. "You know I want you."

"I want you, too."

"Charlotte." He sighed heavily.

"I'm not asking anything of you." She ran her hand up his arm to his shoulder. "But to just let yourself feel again."

His arm snaked out and he pulled her to him, and the moment her skin touched his, they forgot everything else.

With moans and sighs they fell backward on to the bed. Her Tshirt and his pajama bottoms landed on the floor, and then there was nothing between them but that veil of the past they'd managed to penetrate.

John was a starving man and he ate and drank his fill of the most sensual woman he'd ever touched. Her skin was softer, her sighs deeper and her kisses so intoxicating that he wasn't sure he was sober.

"Protection," he managed in a moment of lucidity.

"Sorority girls are always protected." A bubbly laugh escaped her throat and the world as he knew it spun away.

She wanted him to feel. And he did. Every scintillating inch of her. When her cries of fulfillment reached his ears, he trembled from the pleasure and followed her into the release that his body had been craving.

And not once did he think of Sarah.

Only Charlotte.