CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Thank you for bringing me here.” Cordelia looked down the long stretch of sand in front of them. “I can’t believe we’re the only ones on the beach.”
“That’s because everyone else in New York is stuck in the office,” he said with a grin.
Both of them had plenty of work to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Not after Alec had sent her soaring in pretty much every way he could. First with his plane and then with his body.
She slid her hand into his, loving how natural it felt to be close to him. Friends to lovers wasn’t something she’d ever thought would work for her. She knew better now. “I’ve been to Long Island before, but never to Fire Island. Now that I’m here, I realize I’ve been missing out. You’re going to have to drag me back to the limo to fly us home.”
“You’d miss your garden too much even to stay the night.”
She laughed, knowing he was right. “True, but that doesn’t mean I won’t appreciate every single second we’re here today.” She kissed him then, just because she felt like it. “How many times have you been here?”
He looked out to sea. “Not much in recent years. But when I was a kid, we used to come a lot.”
She was touched that he’d brought her somewhere that obviously held deep meaning, and history, for him. “Your whole family?”
His hand tightened on hers. “My father—” When he paused, she thought he might not continue. “He made a lot of money with his paintings of my mother. Sometimes, if her mood was good, she’d decide out of the blue that she wanted to see the ocean, and he’d hire a plane. Just like that, we’d be here, playing on the sand.”
Alec had grown up with private planes and a family fortune. A week ago, she would have assumed all that money and privilege made him untouchable. But now she knew that all the money in the world couldn’t have protected Alec from pain.
“My mom loved the water.” He’d stopped walking, his gaze reaching beyond the crashing waves, beyond the blue that stretched into the horizon. Almost as though he was looking into the past instead. “She loved to play in the surf, no matter how cold or rough. My father would worry that she’d hurt herself. He’d ask her to come back to the shore. Beg her to come back. But she wouldn’t. She’d simply laugh and tell him she was happy.” Alec swallowed hard. “Finally happy. Until we got in the plane and headed back to the city, where she’d close up into herself again.”
Cordelia was glad that Alec was sharing his memories of his parents with her, even if they weren’t easy ones. As far as she could tell, he’d kept it bottled up for far too long. “Was she not a city person?”
“The way you love your garden, that’s how much she loved the ocean.” His deep voice was hushed now, barely audible above the surf. “My father must have known that the city was killing her. I don’t know why he didn’t just move us out here. Maybe then she wouldn’t have died.”
“Or maybe,” Cordelia said, “it wasn’t that clear-cut.” From the little Alec had said about his mother, Cordelia visualized a complicated woman with more shades and contours than even a world-class painter like Alec’s father could have seen. “Maybe her emotions weren’t tied to a place.”
“Or to people either.” Bitterness swamped his words, and she longed to soothe him. “She was there for us when she wanted to be, then gone the rest of the time. Even when she was in the same room, or at the dinner table, you’d have to fight to get her attention.”
Cordelia’s heart broke for Alec, for the man who had survived being a little boy who didn’t know how to get his mother to see that he needed her. No wonder that as an adult he was so intent on living without a woman’s love. She couldn’t blame him for closing himself off to ever being in a similar position with a woman again.
“You looked after your brothers and sister, didn’t you? When she was there but not there?”
“They’d get too close to a hot stove or be about to fall down the stairs or be hungry or dirty,” he said. “Someone had to take care of them. Someone other than a maid or a nanny. Someone who actually cared about them, who wasn’t being paid to be there. My father was too busy painting, too busy obsessing over her to step in.” Alec’s face twisted into an expression of disgust, different from the sadness of talking about his mother. “Hell, I don’t even think he noticed us. Because he couldn’t see past her.”
Alec hadn’t needed only his mother’s attention, he’d needed his father’s too. But he’d had neither. “Have you and your father ever talked about it?”
He dropped her hand, then ran his through his hair. “This is supposed to be a fun afternoon, not a therapy session.”
Despite his deflection, his answer was clear. No, he and his father hadn’t talked about a thing. Cordelia wasn’t surprised, given how reluctant Alec had been to get involved in his father’s birthday party.
In any case, he was right that this morning’s press conference had been more than enough strain for one day. She wasn’t going to give up on helping him repair his relationship with his father, but she could let it rest for the remainder of the day.
She picked up a branch that had washed up on the shore and doodled with it in the sand. “Tell me about your siblings. I realized when we were all in my cottage yesterday that I don’t really know anything about them.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his shoulders relax. “Harry’s fifteen months younger. Like he told your parents, he teaches medieval history at Columbia. He was always a big reader, happy to sit by himself in a room full of dusty books, and learn. He’s a hell of a teacher too. His students love him, and I’ve been to enough of his lectures to get why. He doesn’t just tell you about what happened in the past, he brings it to life.”
She looked up from her sand drawing. “How does he do that?”
“He’s been jousting since he was a teenager—with a horse and armor and everything.”
Harry looked so mild-mannered, but somehow that fit. And explained a surprisingly broad and muscular physique for an academic.
“Can you joust?” she asked.
“I couldn’t resist the chance to take on my little brother. One day I hope to best him at it, even though I haven’t yet. Harry’s a fierce competitor,” he said with obvious pride.
“Takes one to know one,” she said with a smile. “What about Suzanne?”
“Brilliant doesn’t even begin to cover Suz. I swear she understands things about computers and networks and electronic systems that haven’t even been invented yet.”
“Is that what she does? Invent things?”
“Security is her specialty, but if she sees something else that needs to be done, she’ll put her mind to it.”
“What about her boyfriend, Roman? He seems like a really nice guy.”
“He worked for me a few years back and we became friends. When she got into some trouble last year, we needed someone to watch over her, to make sure no one hurt her. Roman is the first guy I thought of.” Alec looked like he was grinding his teeth as he added, “I never thought he’d make a play for her, though. If I had…”
Hiding her smile at what an adorable protective older brother he was, Cordelia said, “I know it wasn’t what you planned, but they seem good together.”
He blew out a breath before nodding. “They are. He treats her right and she seems really happy. And he knows what would happen to him if he ever took a wrong step.”
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “You’d make him regret it.”
He nodded, perfectly serious. “I would. And Harry and Drake would be right there with me.”
With brothers like these, she was surprised Suzanne had ever managed to date at all. Speaking of brothers—“My mom practically fainted yesterday when she realized one of her favorite painters was sitting in my living room.”
“She’s right to be impressed with Drake.” Alec looked just as proud of his youngest brother as he was of Suzanne and Harry. “He was always drawing or painting. Right from the start, his talent was obvious. Staggering, really, even as a little kid.”
“I’d love to see his work.”
“You already have. It’s the first painting you see when you walk into the S&W Aviation lobby.”
Her eyes went big. “That incredible mountain vista?”
“Drake will be pleased to know your mom isn’t the only fan of his work.”
She was floored. Not only by Drake’s gifts, but by all of the Sullivans she had met. Four extraordinary people who were all so nice, so giving, even to a virtual stranger like her. “You have quite a family, don’t you?”
“People always think so, especially when you start counting my cousin Smith and his Academy Awards and my cousin Ryan and his World Series wins.” He shrugged. “But to me, they’re just the people I grew up with, people I know will always have my back, just like I’ll always have theirs.” He pointed at her sand drawing. “Did you mean to draw a flower?”
She hadn’t really been paying attention to what she was doing, she’d been so absorbed by what he was telling her. “I guess you’re right—I’m never really far from my garden, am I?” She handed him the stick. “It’s your turn.”
The waves had started to wash away her sand sketch by the time the outline of the plane he was drawing became clear. The best part of it, though, was the stick-figure woman flying the plane with her hair blowing back and a huge grin on her face.
“Not bad,” she said, glad to see him relaxed again.
“You think you can do better?”
Laughing, and more than up for the challenge, she took the stick and focused on her second drawing. “How’s that?”
He shot her a look when she was done with her fish—scales, gills, fins and all. “You were playing me with your simple flower drawing. You’ve done this before.” The wave lapped at her fish, taking away its tail. “Your fish looks real enough to swim away.”
“I’ve taken a few classes,” she admitted. She gave him the branch. “Though I have to say, your stick figure was brilliant. Do another.”
As he took the branch from her, she thought she saw something spark in his eyes. Something that looked like joy. And maybe even pleasure from her compliment.
Soon, she found herself looking at a stick-figure Sullivan family temporarily imprinted in the sand. Suzanne was sitting behind a computer, Harry was astride a horse holding a lance, and Drake was painting.
“Those are fantastic.”
She was sad that the waves were already washing his pictures away, although maybe that was part of what made them so special. You knew they weren’t going to last forever, so you had to appreciate them in the moment. Just the way she and Alec were appreciating each other. With no worries about the future. Only the sweet time they were able to spend together now.
“Draw yourself too,” she suggested. What would he sketch into the sand? The billionaire businessman that the world saw? Or the man she’d been so privileged to get to know behind the dark suit and the cynical expression?
But she was surprised when he said, “You do it. Draw us both.”
His eyes were dark now, as intense as that moment when he came into her and watched pleasure explode through every cell in her body from his touch. And yet, somehow this moment felt bigger than that. More important even than when they were making love, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, heart to heart.
Alec wanted to know what she saw when she looked at him. And she wanted to show him. Show him all the ways he was special.
Special not just to her, but to everyone who loved him.
She took a few steps back from the water, wanting a few extra minutes to work on her drawing before the surf washed it away. She bit her lip, concentrating on the press, the slide, of her stick into the sand. Alec stood silently beside her, and she knew his eyes weren’t on the sand, but on her. No one had ever looked at her the way he did, with such focus. As though he was endlessly fascinated by her.
She smiled at the thought—what woman wouldn’t want Alec Sullivan to be fascinated by her? It was a nice daydream, but she knew better than to dwell on it. She wouldn’t have him forever, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate every moment of now.
Pieces of both of them came together bit by bit on the sand. She didn’t draw one of them first and the other person next—that just didn’t make sense. Because when she saw Alec in her mind’s eye, she saw herself there too.
“There.” She propped the branch in the sand at her side. “The two of us are now immortalized.” She grinned at him. “For the next sixty seconds, that is.”
But he wasn’t grinning as he stared down at her drawing. She’d drawn them both in her garden. He had just picked a carrot from her vegetable bed, only to have it promptly stolen by a bunny. Alec’s expression as the bunny took the carrot was her favorite part of the drawing. Because he was clearly happy that the rabbit had gotten such a prize. So happy, in fact, that when you looked at the picture you had to wonder if he’d pulled the carrot for the bunny, rather than for dinner. She’d drawn herself standing nearby, holding a fistful of just-picked flowers, laughing at the scene playing out before her.
“No one else would have drawn me like that.” His voice was low, his tone serious. “You’re not seeing the real me.”
She looked down at her sand-sketch, the surf already beginning to blur its edges. “Of course I am.” She turned back to him, needing to touch him as her hands went to either side of his face. “I’ve never seen anything but the real you, Alec.”
His mouth was on hers before she could take her next breath, his kiss so passionate, so full of need, that she knew if there had been a bed nearby, they would already be in it, clothes off, limbs tangled, bodies connected. On and on he kissed her, like he’d never get enough of her. And she felt exactly the same way. As though he was everything—the beginning, the middle, and the end all at once.
Finally, he lifted his lips from hers, but he still held her tightly, her cheek to his chest, their breathing ragged, their hearts racing against each other. The sun was starting to fall in the sky now, beginning its slow descent toward the blue water below.
“We should get back to the plane. In case the weather changes.”
His words rumbled through from his chest to hers. She didn’t want to leave, didn’t ever want this day together to end, even though she’d known all along that it would.
* * *
Alec couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so good.
He’d given Cordelia the joy of flying, pleasure in the limo, and the sand and sun—but she’d given him back even more. With only a broken branch, the sandy beach, and her brilliant eye for everything around her, she’d shown him she understood him in a way that no one else did.
Because he didn’t allow anyone close enough to see it. To see him.
But Cordelia hadn’t needed him to let her in. She’d found the lock to his heart and opened it without even trying. With every word, every question, every smile, every laugh—even her tears—she’d drawn him deeper, uncovered more.
With more time, what else would she unearth?
And would he be able to live with what she found?
For more than thirty years, Alec had been careful. Deliberate. At first, he’d focused on just getting through. Later, he’d concentrated on making his mark. He’d allowed himself to feel pleasure, both in bed and out, but moments of true joy had been few and far between. His sister’s and brothers’ successes, the birth of each of his cousin’s kids, seeing his siblings and cousins find happiness—those were all things to celebrate.
But for himself, Alec knew better than to ask for too much. Knew how pointless it was, how frustrating, to ask for things you could never have. As a child, he’d made dozens, hundreds, thousands of silent wishes, endlessly hoping that his mother would feel better. He’d vowed to be a better son, to be perfect, to do whatever it took, if only she would stop crying. He’d been so angry with his father for not knowing how to make her smile. For not knowing how to make her happy. If his father truly loved his wife, shouldn’t he have been able to make everything okay?
When Alec’s wishes, his hopes, hadn’t come true, they’d all been replaced with anger. At his father for failing. At his mother for taking her life. And at himself, most of all, for not being able to do more than stand by helplessly while his entire family crashed and burned.
This past week with Cordelia was more than Alec had ever thought to have. He wouldn’t ask for more. Couldn’t risk asking for more. Not when she’d already given him so much already, so freely.
If they spent too much more time together, he’d hurt her. Hurt the best friend he’d ever had. Hurt her the way he’d been hurt all those years ago—by making her hope, making her wish for things that could never be. By making her think she could change him, change his mind, change his future.
The flight back was smooth. Cordelia had been full of wonder on the way out, vocal with it too. But they were both silent, not only during the flight and landing, but also when he helped her out of the plane and walked her to her car.
“Thank you for the beautiful flight,” she said.
He couldn’t resist pulling her into his arms, even as he prepared to say good-bye. “I just wanted to make you happy.” He hadn’t planned on saying anything that honest, but with Cordelia he never seemed to have any choice in the matter. From the start, he’d known she deserved his honesty. Even if it hurt.
“You made me very happy today, Alec.” She reached up to brush his hair away from his forehead. “I hope I made you happy too.”
He had to kiss her then. Not only to forestall any more words—he knew he didn’t have any of the right ones—but also because kissing Cordelia was the fastest way he knew to get to happy. He wanted nothing more than to take her home and make love to her. To listen to the sounds of her pleasure all night long, until she fell asleep, sated, in his arms.
Instead, he made himself give up her mouth and force his hands from her waist. Made himself step back. “I’m sure you’ve got to check on things at your store.”
She didn’t reply right away to his obvious brush-off, holding his gaze for a few moments longer than was comfortable. “I do. And I’m sure you’ve got a lot to deal with at the office too.”
He drank in her big, honest eyes. The beautiful flush on her cheeks. Her just-kissed mouth. “Roman texted to let us know he’ll have security outside your cottage day and night, all week.”
“I don’t need bodyguards, Alec.”
“With news from the press conference just hitting, I need to know you’re safe.” Last night he’d made sure of it by staying with her in her cottage. In her bed. But he couldn’t do that another night. Not if he wanted to make sure they were clear about only being friends. Clear, most of all, with himself.
He was glad when she didn’t argue with his reasoning, even more glad when she put her arms around him and held him tight. But when she let him go, gave him a kiss on the cheek, then got into her car and drove away, he was anything but glad.
And full of more helpless wishes, more foolish hopes, than he’d had in thirty years…