She heard the crunch of shoes on gravel and stiffened. Her fingers tightened on the wet chains supporting the swing.
“Marla?”
Her heartbeat accelerated at the sound of Nick’s voice.
He poked his head through the arbor and did a quick scan of the play area. “I wondered where you were.” Wearing a battered leather jacket and a pair of disreputable jeans, he appeared to stand beneath the canopy of a twisted leafless clematis. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Thinking. Or trying to.”
“Figure anything out?”
“I wish,” she admitted with half a smile. “What about you? What’re you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” His face was all angles and planes with a hard jaw, blade-thin lips and a nose that wasn’t quite straight. Standing dead center in the arbor, feet planted as wide as his shoulders, as if he didn’t dare step any closer, he said, “I wanted to catch you alone.”
The muscles in the back of her neck tightened. She met the intensity of his gaze through the morning mist. Forbidden images of kissing him crept stealthily through her mind. For a second she wondered what it would be like to make love to him, to touch his skin, feel his muscles beneath the surface, run her fingers along that square, beard-darkened jaw. Her stomach did a slow roll of anticipation and she mentally berated herself for the lust that raced through her blood. He was her brother-in-law. She was a married woman. Married. She couldn’t have these taboo fantasies. Wouldn’t.
“I knew no one was supposed to be home this morning. Cissy’s at school, Mother is with the board of Cahill House, Alex has a meeting downtown, so I figured that I’d pretty much find you by yourself.”
She cleared her throat and imagined she recognized dangerously erotic thoughts running through his eyes. The same illicit visions that she was battling. “Why?” she asked over the steady drip of the rain and her voice sounded strangled. She told herself it was just because her teeth were wired together, but knew differently. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I had a visitor the other night,” he said. “Cherise. She wants to see you.”
“Why doesn’t she just drop by?” Marla asked, and tried to ignore the fact that his jeans hung low on his hips, and that his shoulders stretched the width of his jacket, or that he was incredibly sexy—treacherously so.
“Alex nixed it.”
“He doesn’t much like her or her brother,” Marla observed, dragging her eyes away from him as she recalled conversations between Alex and his mother about the cousins—bloodsuckers, money-hungry leeches, isn’t that what he’d called them?
“Because they have a bone to pick with him. A sizable bone. Anyway, she asked me to pass the request along.” Nick folded his arms over his chest and his leather jacket creaked as it stretched over his shoulders. Raindrops slid down his bare head and along his throat to disappear beneath his collar. Her eyes followed the motion.
Marla’s mouth was suddenly as dry as the Sahara.
“I figured you had the right to know,” he added.
“I—did. Do.” She took control of her tongue. “Of course she can visit. Any time.”
“She wants to read you Bible passages.”
“Oh. Well.” She cleared her throat then cast him a wry grin. “Maybe God’s trying to tell me something. You know, that I should get some religion or something.”
He snorted. “Cherise and her husband would be only too glad to accommodate you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He dug into his jacket pocket, withdrew a card and walked forward, his boots crunching in the gravel. Handing her the card, he added, “You can call Cherise yourself. No need for me to be a go-between.” Again his eyes touched hers and she knew that if the moment was right, if things were different, she would have reached out, touched him, silently invited him to kiss her.
A few seconds stretched out and she heard the hum of traffic, the steady drip of moisture from the tree branches and the erratic beating of her heart.
“Thanks.” He turned, but she couldn’t let him go. Not yet. Climbing out of the swing she stepped around the puddles that had collected near the play set and hurried to catch up with him. “Nick, wait. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
She saw the cords stand out in the back of his neck before he turned to face her again.
“Yeah?”
“You remember how it was before . . . how I was.”
“Before what?”