Forbidden

But if there was one thing he’d come to understand during his thirty-two years—and especially in the past year and a half—it was that outer trappings had very little to do with basic human wants and needs. And if the past thirty minutes were any indication, he wanted…needed Leah on a level he couldn’t begin to understand. All he knew was that he had to explore what it was. If for no other reason than to tuck her and whatever existed between them neatly into the past, where so far it had refused to rest.

Water dripped down over his face, soaking his T-shirt, running over his jacket, but still he couldn’t bring himself to move. What he’d experienced with Leah before had been profound. But what had passed between them a few minutes ago had shaken him to the bone. He hadn’t had sex in a car since he was eighteen. And, curiously enough, it had been with Leah. He’d been a hairbreadth away from taking what Leah had just so generously, hungrily offered. Had known such a ferocious desire to bury himself in her sweet, hot flesh that in that one moment everything else had emerged irrelevant.

Even his freedom.

His gaze cut to a car entering the parking lot from the opposite direction. A white and blue cruiser emblazoned with the words Toledo City Police Department. J.T. shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, then turned and made his way toward his bike. He heard the cruiser slowly pass by him, then continue on as he put on his helmet. He watched as the officers turned at the end of the lane then he straddled the wet Harley. He was less than a mile away from the city line. The cruiser exited the parking lot onto Secor Road, then disappeared from site. But the significance of his reaction to it lingered on, pounding against J.T. much like the rain.

If he’d needed a reminder of how much he was putting on the line by coming back to Toledo, by staying in one place for longer than he knew to be safe, the innocuous drive-by was it. While the cruiser and the officers in it hadn’t been looking for him, they might be tomorrow. Or the day after that. Which didn’t leave him much time to accomplish what he needed to.

The powerful bike started up with a quiet roar, echoing the emotions pulsing through him. So much at stake. With no guarantees. But he needed to find out if she was a bored middle-upper class housewife seeking a bit of fun with a bad boy from her younger days. Or if Leah Dubois Burger loved him. And he wasn’t leaving until he found out.

3

“I NEED THAT PERMISSION SLIP for the class trip today. And I can’t find my blue volleyball shorts.”

Leah squinted against the early-morning sun slanting in through the French doors as she stacked thinly sliced pieces of turkey breast onto a whole-wheat slice of bread. Bread that she had picked up at the market the night before last. Bread that had been the cause of long, restless nights filled with yearnings for a man she shouldn’t be yearning for.

“You can’t find your volleyball shorts because they’re in the laundry room waiting to be washed.” She tore lettuce apart and added it to the sandwich. “And what class trip?”

“You didn’t wash my shorts?”

Sami finally stepped out of the glare of the light. It never ceased to amaze Leah that an eleven-year-old girl could have so much to be angry about. Her daughter’s blue eyes flashed and her light brown hair seemed to crackle with electricity.

“No,” Leah said carefully, cutting the sandwich into two even halves then putting it into a baggie. “I didn’t wash your shorts, Sam. And you didn’t answer me about the trip.”

Her daughter continued to ignore her question, turning on her heel and stalking to the laundry room just off the dining area. Leah put the sandwich into a backpack along with a pear, carrot sticks and a juice pack and watched Sami pick through the laundry basket for her shorts. The navy blue material was wrinkled but otherwise unsoiled.

“I can’t possibly wear these!” Sami cried.

Leah stretched her neck, looked at her watch and asked again, “What class trip?”

Sami glared at her, stalked back across the kitchen to the crowded desk built into the cabinets, then fished out a slip of paper in among the bills. “This one.”

Sami slapped the paper onto the counter into a dollop of mustard then stalked from the room. Leah read the slip as she wiped the mustard from the back of it. It seemed two weeks ago her daughter’s History teacher had requested permission for Sami to go on a class trip to the Toledo Museum of Art. Leah was pretty certain she didn’t remember her daughter saying anything about the trip. And she’d gone through the bills stacked on her desk two nights ago and hadn’t seen the slip. But considering her own state of mind as of late, she couldn’t bring herself to lay the blame completely on her daughter. To say she hadn’t been on top of things recently would be akin to saying coffee was black.

Speaking of coffee…

She stared longingly at the empty carafe on the counter behind her, then winced at the sound of her daughter’s bedroom door slamming.

Leah briefly closed her eyes, trying to remember that it wasn’t all that long ago that she and Sami had been best friends. Well, okay, not best friends. But there had been a level of respect and trust and warmth there that Leah had once shared with her own mother.

Now it seemed she could do nothing right in the eleven-year-old’s eyes. If she breathed, she was doing it wrong. And on some days she found herself teetering between wanting to lock the girl in the basement or run away entirely.

Of course, she’d known the exact moment when the tides had turned. The night nearly a year and a half ago when she had sat Sami down and told her that she and her father were separating.

And the reason for their separation had been the very man who was causing her distraction now.

Two days had passed since she’d run into J. T. West at the market. Two days since he’d climbed into her car and she’d remembered all at once what it was be like to just…be. To feel like a woman. Not somebody’s mother. Not somebody’s daughter. Not somebody’s ex working toward reconciliation. Then she’d practically mauled him in the front seat.

It had been two days since she’d heard from him and was left to wonder if he was still in town. Two days since she’d told herself that nothing had really happened between them. They’d merely kissed. Nothing more. Nothing less. And there was nothing wrong in that because, technically, she and Dan weren’t reconciled yet. They were still divorced. He didn’t live in the house.

And her arguments weren’t making a dent in the enormous guilt that coated her insides like thick, black tar.

Leah squeezed her eyes shut. Worse than the guilt, though, were thoughts of J.T. that could be called nothing but carnal. And burned in her mind was the memory of his face when she first caught sight of him in that supermarket. At that moment it had seemed like barely a day had passed since she’d last seen him, rather than sixteen long, brutal months. Months when she’d tried to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and her broken life and glue them back together, even though she was convinced there wasn’t enough superglue in the world to handle the monumental job.

She slowly licked her lips, remembering that when she’d kissed J.T.’s mouth her desire had skyrocketed, dampened not at all by the time that had passed, by everything that had happened between then and now. If anything, she wanted him even worse now than ever.

And for two full nights she had twisted and turned in bed, wanting him with an intensity that left her breathless.

“I’m borrowing your blue sweatpants for the game.”

Leah blinked Sami’s angry face into focus. Her daughter narrowed her eyes at her as she shook the pants in question. The jersey pants were part of a lounge set, not true sweatpants, but she wasn’t up to arguing the point that Sami had at least two pair of acceptable shorts tucked away somewhere in her own dresser drawers.

Leah signed the permission slip then put it in the front zipper of the backpack. She handed the pack to her daughter. “Fine.”

“You’re not driving me to school this morning?”

The day was warm and sunny. The elementary school Sami attended wasn’t a third of a mile away. Yet she normally did drive her daughter.

She turned and gathered her own lunch, which consisted of a tuna salad. “No, I’m going in the opposite direction. I have an early class.”

Sami sighed and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you have to go to school. School is for kids. And you’re not a kid.”

Like she needed to be told that.

But shortly after Dan had left, while she’d still been trying to figure out her affair with J.T., she’d decided she wanted to go back and finish the business degree she’d given up when she’d married Dan and had Sami.

“Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older,” she said. “You’d better get going or you’ll be late.”

“I can’t wait until Dad comes back so this house can get back to normal,” Sami mumbled, then grabbed her sweater from the coatrack near the front door and slammed out of the house.

Leah stared after her, suppressing a full body shudder. Normal? She wanted to ask her daughter what exactly constituted normal. Leah living her life strictly for her husband and child? Making sure jerseys and shorts were clean, appointments kept, the gas tank full so she could run errands to pick up their things, do their errands, take them to school and to work?

It appeared she and Sami were overdue for another talk. Not that she thought it would make a difference. Leah had the sinking sensation that her daughter and she would never see eye to eye again.

She grabbed her own jacket and shrugged into it while holding her books and lunch and juggling the keys to lock the door after herself. The Lexus SUV sat in the driveway instead of the garage because Sami had decided to paint her bike and the still-wet bike in question was sitting where Leah’s car usually sat.

She opened the back door of the car and dropped her lunch and books onto the seat, then she slid into the driver’s seat. She started the car, her gaze drawn to the passenger seat where J.T. had sat two nights before. But he wasn’t sitting there now. Instead a small white bag bearing the logo of a nearby bakery along with an extra-large cup of coffee and a single peach-colored rose sat in the middle of the seat.

Leah’s heart turned over in her chest as she breathed in the aroma of fresh pastry and coffee filling the car. The sound of a motorcycle motor pulled her attention to the street behind her. Was J.T. there? Was he watching to see her reaction to finding his little surprise? She didn’t see anything but the regular morning activity of neighbors leaving for work, kids walking to school, the newsboy delivering newspapers.

She knew a moment of anticipation so overwhelming her thighs trembled.

J.T. was still in town….

And the prospect of seeing him made her hot all over…and more than a little scared.

J.T. SAT PARKED UNDER A TREE and behind a minivan a half block up and watched Leah scan the street, undoubtedly looking for him. He knew from having gotten some idea of her routine the past week that she had an early class this morning. And after watching her light go on and off every half hour between eleven and one before he’d headed home last night, he suspected she needed a jolt of caffeine this morning. Seeing her daughter storm from the house, glare at the closed door then stalk off, told him his efforts were likely doubly appreciated.

J.T.’s fingers tightened on the handgrips of the old bike. Of course the surprise had been more than a thoughtful gesture. In truth, he’d wanted Leah to know that he was still there, and that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Since kissing her again after so long, and discovering that the explosive attraction that had originally drawn them together was still there, he realized that his mission might take more time than he’d thought. It was going to be a challenge to dig deep beyond that molten attraction and see if something more substantial, more significant, more binding existed. And time was what he intended to give himself. Despite the deep craving that burrowed inside him every time he thought of her, saw her, what he needed transcended the physical.

They’d gone that route before. And it had left them both standing right where they were now. Leah divorced and considering reconciling with her ex-husband. Him wanting her so badly he had night sweats. And both of them wondering what if.

Basically it left them nowhere.

Leah backed out of the driveway of her mammoth brick colonial-style house and drove in the other direction. An older man wearing a wool housecoat opened the door to the house in front of him, bent to pick up his morning paper, then stared at J.T. with open curiosity and suspicion.

J.T. gave him a small nod, started up his bike, then turned around and went in the opposite direction from where Leah had gone, the morning air brisk against his skin, the sun making him squint.

Not ready. Completely in the dark. Ill-prepared. All three descriptions fit where he stood right now. When it came to relationships, his experience was between zero and nil simply because never in his life had he had the chance to learn the art. Lord knew his father, Delbert, had done all he could. As the son of a mechanic, Delbert had grown up without much use for a dictionary and more than a handful of words. And he’d raised his own son the same way, making J.T. forever the outsider when they traveled from town to town in search of a better job, a better life. To J.T.’s way of thinking, the only time they had achieved that goal was during that brief stretch the summer of his eighteenth year when he’d met fiery, sixteen-year-old Leah and had been given his first taste of the woman who would haunt him from then on.

J.T.’s mind circled back to his father. Del hadn’t said one way or another whether he approved of J.T.’s decision to go on to college when he was offered a scholarship, but J.T. had suspected he’d been disappointed his son hadn’t followed in his footsteps and became a mechanic. And the old man had merely nodded when that road had became a dead end two years later, leaving a young woman dead, sending a falsely accused J.T. on the run and destroying any future he might have imagined for himself.

Over the course of the next ten years he’d ridden from place to place, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks at a time, a way of life his father’s own traveling had well prepared him for. In the beginning he’d worked various minimum-wage jobs to cover his expenses, but that required lying about his social security number, his name. Then he’d rented a room from an old man, not unlike his father, who had taught him carpentry. And he’d found the perfect job for a man who couldn’t afford to stick around long. A free agent, he was paid a flat fee, erasing any need for uncomfortable questions about his past and his identity.

He smoothly shifted gears, resisting the urge to increase his speed when traffic opened up. Considering his resistance to ending up a mechanic, he was surprised to find he liked working with his hands. More than that, he enjoyed the feel of a virgin piece of wood under his fingers, watching as it slowly told him how to cut it, then gave in to his will and became furniture that was not only functional but bore the mark of its original beauty.

Not all that unlike the way Leah opened up under his hands, freeing the girl he once knew as spunky and smart and gutsy, afraid of nothing. Passionate, greedy, demanding. So unlike the Leah of today whose eyes were devoid of any emotion at all and whose movements seemed automated, uninspired.

She had once told him that she loved the feel of his rough skin against hers….

J.T. set his jaw. Of all the women he’d been with in his life, including the one that had ended up stealing his freedom, he had yet to determine what it was about Leah Dubois Burger that touched him so profoundly.

But if there was one thing he planned to do before leaving Toledo, Ohio, it was not only to unearth if she felt the same way about him, but whether or not she could accept who he had become.

4

“MEET ME AT TEN TONIGHT.”

Leah stood outside her car in the University of Toledo parking lot later that day, the midday sun warm against her face, her fingers trembling as they held the small piece of paper that had been under her windshield wiper. The longing that had been burning through her veins for the past week sent a warm shiver careening through her body. J.T. had written the name of a small bar and where it was just outside the western city line. He hadn’t signed his name. But she didn’t think any of the twenty-year-olds in her classes had left her the note. No, it was definitely J.T.

She stuffed the paper into the pocket of her slacks then unlocked the door to her car and climbed in, sitting for long moments staring through the window.

She swallowed hard, the sound loud in the confines of the closed car. She couldn’t go. Wouldn’t.

Her watch chimed off the hour and she absently glanced at it. It took her a moment to register that she was due to meet Dan at the therapist’s office in half an hour, the one time a month when they met at lunchtime as opposed to after five.

She picked up her cell phone, lightly rolling her thumbs over the numbers. She’d never cancelled a session before. But how could she possibly go and face her ex-husband and the counselor feeling the way she did?

And how did she feel?

Flustered. Needy. Alive. Like the woman she’d once been who hadn’t expressed her sexiness through lingerie hidden under her clothes, but in everything she did.

Stupid.

She blinked at the last word, her movements even more sluggish than they’d been recently. Hadn’t she gone this route before? Hadn’t she put everything on the line for a man who had a history of disappearing? Who offered her nothing beyond the moment, only the here and now? Hadn’t she sacrificed her marriage, her relationship with her daughter and the only way of life she had known for a few hours of escape in another man’s arms?

She reached to slip the cell phone back into her purse and it vibrated. She looked at the display. Her sister, Rachel.

Leah idly considered not answering.

Rachel was a year younger and a whole world happier than she was. In two months she’d be marrying the man of her dreams. A man with a past even darker than Leah’s was, but a heart as big as Ohio. All you had to do was look at Gabe Wellington to see how much he loved Rachel.

Had Dan ever looked at her that way? She briefly closed her eyes, trying to remember. No, he hadn’t. Maybe. Way back in the beginning.

“For a minute there I thought you weren’t going to pick up,” her sister said when Leah finally answered just before the call would have rerouted to voice mail.

I wish I hadn’t. “Class ran over.” Liar.

“What are you doing for lunch?”

She glanced at her watch again though she didn’t have to. She knew what time it was every moment of every day, if only because it seemed to drag by. “I have to be at the counselor’s in twenty minutes.”

“Oh.”

Leah caught the flat tone of her sister’s voice as she said the simple word. “And that would mean what, exactly?”

A pause then, “You don’t sound like yourself. What’s going on?”

Rachel. The smarter of the two sisters who had not only made it through college, but had gone on to law school to become an attorney and a city councilwoman.

Sometimes Leah hated her.

But she’d always love her.

“Nothing. I guess I just didn’t sleep well last night. And Sami read me the riot act this morning for not washing her volleyball shorts.”

“And you’re going to counseling like that? May be you should cancel and meet me for a margarita.”

Leah sighed and relaxed slightly into the driver’s seat, wondering if the muddled emotions crowding her chest would ever leave. “I can’t tell you how good that sounds.”

“So do it then. And meet me at Carmel’s in ten.”

Leah opened her mouth to refuse but Rachel had already hung up.

She absently pushed disconnect and stared at the cell for a long moment. She’d never canceled a session before. Surely this one time couldn’t do any harm.

She called Dan’s office first only to learn he’d already left.

Maybe she should go. Dan was probably already on his way, if he wasn’t already there. Either way, he would have his cell switched off.

She dialed the therapist’s office next and told the assistant she couldn’t make it but that she’d be there for their regularly scheduled meeting.

She disconnected, put the cell back in her bag, then pulled it back out again to switch the receiver off, routing all incoming calls directly to voice mail. The instant she did it, she felt ten pounds lighter, though it did nothing to stop the moths fluttering around in her belly.

Oh, boy, did she ever need this margarita.

“GABE WANTS ME TO MOVE into his place after the wedding,” Rachel told her from where she sat across from her at Carmel’s Mexican Restaurant.

Leah fingered the coarse salt lining on her extra-large margarita glass then licked her finger. She’d never been much of a drinker and knew from experience that she wouldn’t be able to drink more than a quarter of the concoction before her, but somehow it made her feel better to sip from a mammoth glass than a smaller one.

“And the problem is?”

“The problem is I just bought my own house, had it completely renovated and just moved into it three months ago. I don’t want to move again.” She sipped at her own margarita then crossed her arms on top of the table. “Besides, the thought of living in the mausoleum he calls home gives me the creeps.”

Leah cracked a halfhearted smile. “It can’t be that bad. The Wellington place is a part of Toledo history.”

“Then Gabe should turn it into a museum or something.”

Leah didn’t know much about the Wellington estate beyond the sweeping grounds and the towering castlelike spires. She’d fished for an invitation from her sister once or twice, but it sounded like Rachel spent as little time at the house as possible and was trying to find ways to get out of going to the dark manor instead of inventing reasons to have to be there. “It’s not all that much bigger than where we grew up.”

“Yes, but our house is different. Even when it was just Dad and us there, it still seemed…I don’t know, like home.”

Leah cocked her head to the side and considered her pretty sister. “Don’t you think that’s how Gabe feels about his house? Especially since he doesn’t have any family left?”

Rachel ran her fingers through her short, spiky brown hair and made a face. “God, I knew I’d live to regret you seeing a therapist. You’re even starting to sound like one. The next thing you know you’ll be diagnosing my condition and prescribing me Xanax or something.”

Rachel glowered at her, making Leah glad that she could forget about her own problems for a precious stretch of time and focus instead on her sister’s. Why was it so much easier to fix other people’s problems than your own? Maybe because the emotion factor didn’t figure into the equation. Maybe because as an outsider your opinion was a little more objective.

Maybe because you knew that your own problems were easily solved and you were purposely ignoring them for that very reason.

Rachel narrowed her eyes at her. “Uh-oh. I know that look. What’s going on?”

Leah blinked. She’d forgotten that Rachel had been the first one to pick up on her affair with J.T. nearly a year and a half ago. And here she was having an escapist drink with the only person who could finger what was going on.

“Actually,” Rachel continued, “now that I think about it, you’ve been acting strangely for a few days now.”

Leah cleared her throat. “I have not been acting strangely.”