And if she knew Reg, duty would win.
Regretfully, she pulled back, breaking the kiss. “Later,” she said. “After we call Libby.”
He eyed her thoughtfully, then nodded and pulled out his cell phone. “Battery’s dead,” he said, then rolled his eyes. “April first.”
She passed him her phone, and he dialed the number, then sat silently for a moment, his eyes on her and the phone pressed to his ear. After a moment, he left a name and number on Libby’s answering machine and asked her to call back at her earliest convenience. Then he passed the phone back to Anne, their fingers brushing with the transfer, and the contact sending an electric current dancing up her arm.
“Now we wait,” he said, moving closer. “And I think I know the perfect way to pass the time.”
4
REG HELD HIS BREATH, knowing that he was being bold, acting only on his own desires and what he hoped—prayed—that he saw in Anne’s eyes.
She had every right to shoot him down, every right to tell him to take a fast train to a hot hell, but he really hoped she wouldn’t.
And then, as if he were a better man than he was—a man who deserved good things, a man who wasn’t cursed this particular day—she stepped closer to him, her expression glowing and her eyes defiant, yet at the same time soft with expectation. “What?” she whispered. “What can we do to pass the time?”
There was no invitation in her words. But in her tone…
Oh, dear Lord, her tone held both an invitation and a demand, and Reg accepted both gratefully. Helplessly. With a desperation borne of three long years apart.
“Anne,” he whispered, his voice raw as he took her hand and pulled her close. “Dear God, Anne.”
She didn’t answer, instead tilting her head up to look at him as a wisp of a smile touched her lips. “No curse,” she whispered. “The opposite, I think. You’re here, aren’t you?”
His heart twisted with the words, and with the knowledge of all the time they’d been apart because of the curse. Right then, though, she was right. At that moment, they were together, and there was no bad luck pushing them apart. It was just Anne and Reg and a passion between them he’d known he would never forget, but hadn’t believed he would ever experience again.
“Thank God I came,” he said.
She laughed, apparently delighted by the desperation in his voice. “We’ll send Jean Michel a thank-you gift.”
“Hell, yes. We’ll buy him a small country.”
“Reg?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
That was one idea with which he wasn’t about to argue, and he pulled her close, his palm cupping her face as his lips closed over hers. She tasted as he remembered, as he’d known she would, like mint and coffee, and the memory fired his senses as much as her touch did. His body was tight with need, desperate to rekindle what they’d had and, more than that, to make it grow. To make it fresh and new.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, meaning every word. Her dark hair and dark eyes fit the house like an exotic ornament. Her skin, so light it was almost translucent, gave her an ethereal quality and hid a bone-deep strength of conviction that he admired—and that had often flummoxed him.
“God, Reg, I’ve missed you. I…I want—”
“So do I,” he said, then saw the devious curve of her lips, as her hand slid down his back, then around his hips to cup his firm erection.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I guess you do.”
“Anne.” He hoped to never stop saying her name.
“My bedroom’s upstairs.”
“Too damn far.”
“There’s a couch in the parlor.”
Laughing like teenagers, they moved hand in hand to the parlor. She sat on a plush red velvet couch, then patted the space beside her for him. He didn’t take the offer. Instead, he knelt in front of her, his hands on her thighs. He eased her legs apart, then inched closer until his body pressed against the edge of the chaise, and his hands stroked upward, finding her shirt. He tugged it free, then let his hands graze upward, watching in rapt fascination the way her muscles twitched and her skin tightened, listening in awed rapture to the small, soft noises she made as his fingertips brushed her bare skin. “Reg…”
“Hush,” he said, then went to work on the buttons of her shirt. They were small, and his fingers felt large and clumsy, but he got them open, then pulled the halves of her shirt apart. Her nipples were hard beneath the lace of her white bra, the aureolas brown and puckered, as if waiting for him to kiss them.