From This Moment On

She looked up at him. “Have you?”

His mouth tightened. “Not too long ago, actually.”

She couldn’t help but be somewhat comforted by that. “Unfortunately, I made mine in front of the world. Thus the wild image.”

“Couldn’t you change that, if you really wanted to? If you let people see who you really are?”

Nicola had actually asked herself that question many, many times during the past year, every time her stylist brought her skimpier and skimpier outfits that were barely a few strips of fabric. If she were talking to her manager and record label and publicist, it seemed she couldn’t. None of them were blind to the fact that her career had absolutely exploded after Kenny had betrayed her. She’d ended up on the cover of more than one magazine, had suddenly been hot property for late-night talk shows. Her popularity hadn’t waned since. In fact, she’d only gotten bigger.

“I don’t know,” she said, and then, “Maybe.” Another shrug. “My career has never been better. Maybe wild isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“No, wild isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” he agreed. “But it isn’t you, is it, Nicola?"

How, she wondered a little helplessly, did he already know her so well? When their bodies were coming together last night, this morning, when he’d been pulling every ounce of pleasure from her, had he also been reaching into her heart to find the truth she’d been hiding from everyone else?

When she didn’t say anything, he continued to hammer her in his gentle way. “I’ve only heard one song so far, but it was great. Seems to me you’re talented enough to let your songs speak for themselves.”

All of this was hitting way too close to home. For a relationship that was just supposed to be about sex, it sure felt like Marcus was going a whole heck of a lot deeper.

Simultaneously wanting to deflect his attention from her—and deciding it wasn’t fair for him to be the one asking all the questions—she said, “Enough about me. During our dinner break today, Lori was telling me about your winery. How did you get started with that?”

Instead of answering her question, he said, “My sister likes to talk, doesn’t she?”

She grinned. “You’re her hero.” Her smiled slipped as she softly said, “She told me that you basically raised her and her twin, along with a couple of your brothers who are just a bit older than she is."

Lori had almost been offhand about the fact that her father had died when she was two, leaving her mother with eight kids to raise on her own. Nicola had immediately wondered how much of the burden had fallen on Marcus’s shoulders. Looking at him, knowing after only two nights how steady, how strong he was, she felt that she already knew the answer.

Marcus shifted her weight so that he could better reach her other foot. She groaned with pleasure as he began to press into the sensitive skin.

“Too hard?”

“No, it’s just perfect.”

The air sizzled after the word perfect, taking her right back to those moments when he’d been pounding into her and she’d been begging for more, for harder, for deeper. She knew he’d been afraid of hurting her.

But, oh, what little pain there’d been that first time had been so worth it.

“My father was a big backyard gardener,” he said as he began to work his way from her foot to her calf. “My first memories are of digging in the dirt beside him as he planted tomatoes and strawberries.”

Her insides went all gooey at the thought of Marcus as a toddler, jamming his shovel in the dirt. She tried to tell herself that she was just reacting like that because she loved babies, but she knew it was Marcus himself that had her melting. Of course, the fact that he was getting closer and closer to her thigh, nearer to the part of her body that was throbbing in anticipation of his touch, was definitely contributing to her overall meltability.

“I’ve always admired people who have a green thumb.” She looked at her own. “I’m afraid mine are the black thumbs of death. Plants run screaming when they see me coming.”

She loved his grin as he said, “I don’t think my thumbs are any greener than yours. It’s really just math and science.”

He made it all sound so easy, like he didn’t have anything to do with it, but she didn’t believe him. “That’s like saying songs are just combinations of notes and words.” She shook her head. “They are, but I’ve always thought what makes a song really special is some indefinable magic that’s either there or it isn’t. I’ll bet your grapevines are like that.” She smiled a small smile. “And that you’re the magic that makes them grow so well.”

“I’ve never thought of it like that,” he said slowly. “As magic.”

She was waiting for him to discount what she’d said, to go back to his whole quantifiable math and science thing. Instead, his eyes were intense, filled with that hunger that had her blood racing.

“You know, I think you might be onto something.”

In an instant, the magic that had existed between them from that first moment in the club leapt back to life as if some sex faery had just flown over with her wand.

Chapter Thirteen

“Put your arms above your head, Nicola.”

She swallowed hard at his low-pitched command. After taking a shallow breath that didn’t even come close to filling her lungs, she leaned into the pillow behind her back and slowly did as he asked.