Anything for Her

chapter SIX



IF NOLAN HAD kissed her any way but tenderly, Allie might have been able to resist. As it was, his arms wrapped her tight, but his lips were exquisitely gentle. Demands frightened her, but this was a “please.” Please feel the same way I do. Please don’t say no.

She did. She couldn’t.

His big hands were so careful, as they moved over her back and hips, one settling on her nape, the other continuing to rove and knead, sample, tempt. Her arms circled his neck and she rose on tiptoe to fit against him better. To hang on, too. Her legs didn’t feel as reliable as usual.

The kiss gradually deepened. His tongue was in her mouth, not thrusting hard but stroking. She sucked on it, and felt his big body jolt. With a groan, he half lifted her and his hips rocked against hers. Heat rocketed through her. So much, so fast.

He tore his mouth from hers. “Allie.” He sounded shaken, his voice rough. “If you don’t want this, tell me now.”

Old fears knocked for attention, but she seemed helpless to stop herself from rubbing against him. And she wanted this. She wanted him.

“I’m not on birth control.” Kill the mood, that would do it.

A nerve jumped in his cheek. “I’ve been carrying a couple of condoms since the first time I kissed you.”

“I do want you.” Then, “Please.”

“God.” Relief transformed his face before he bent his head and rested his forehead against hers. “Your bedroom.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He took her hand and led her, as if she didn’t know the way. She saw his gaze sweep over the room and was momentarily self-conscious. There was more of her in this room than anywhere else in her life. No one else had ever been in it. She’d always thought she’d have time to tuck away her few keepsakes. Panic had barely stirred when his glittering blue eyes locked onto hers again.

“Pretty,” he said thickly.

Her bedroom?

“Let me pull back the quilt.”

She flushed, but was grateful. Sex could be...messy.

“Hearts and Gizzards.”

Nolan stopped, still gripping the covers. “What?”

Her cheeks were probably blazing now. “I... That’s what the pattern is called. This is...” Why would he care? Oh, she was making an idiot of herself, she knew she was. “It’s the first quilt I made that truly satisfied me.”

She saw him look more closely.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, voice gruff. “Everything you make is beautiful.”

“It was the quality of the piecing and quilting that...” Allie stopped. “Why am I talking about a quilt?”

He laughed and tugged her up against him. “Because you’re nervous?” He seemed to think about that. “I guess I am, too. But why are you?”

“It’s been a long time. And I wasn’t very good at sex. Or something...” She trailed off, her humiliation growing.

“Not good at it?” He cocked his head. “You mean you didn’t enjoy it?”

“It was...okay.” She’d only gotten this far with a couple of boyfriends over the years, one in college, and one a year or two after she’d graduated.

She suspected she’d gone to bed with them because of social pressure. A relationship reached a certain point, that’s what you did. Only, she’d been dating as much to be normal as because she actually felt anything special for either guy. She had never really and truly wanted a man before, not with this heat that curled inside her, weak knees, shaky certainty.

His mouth had a wry quirk. “I can’t claim to be the world’s greatest lover. I’ve had a few girlfriends over the years, but that’s all—a few. I’d like to promise you a sublime experience, but, uh, if it’s all in technique, I don’t know if I can.”

Now she’d killed the mood. And she quite desperately didn’t want him to retreat.

“I’m sort of guessing satisfaction isn’t about technique,” she said, still probably blushing. With her skin tone, she did that well. “Maybe it’s about how you feel about someone.”

“Well, it could be a combination.” He swallowed. “If it’s anything about what I feel, maybe I can promise sublime.”

Allie released a huge breath. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

He said something under his breath, fervent, almost harsh, and then was kissing her again, and it didn’t matter that they’d stopped to talk about quilt patterns or previous sexual experience. Nothing mattered but touching him and being touched by him, the hard beat of his heart beneath her hand and the dizzying speed of her own pulse.

He lifted his mouth from hers long enough to peel her T-shirt over her head and make a sound of pleasure. Her hands slid under the hem of his T, finding warm, hard flesh and smooth skin until they encountered soft chest hair. Impatient, she was the one to pull back so she could divest him of his shirt. He took the opportunity to undo her bra hook and slide the straps from her shoulders.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, although her self-consciousness returned. She had rather small breasts. In fact, none of her curves were all that inspiring. Subtle was the best that could be said about them.

Her shoulders hunched. “I’m not very...”

“You’re gorgeous.” His hands enclosed her breasts, and ever so gently rotated, sensitizing her nipples.

Allie closed her eyes, lost in the extraordinary sensation. There he was again, being so careful, and yet his tough calluses scraped her skin and sent a rush of heat arrowing between her legs. A sound escaped her, a moan or even a whimper.

Nolan said something rough and shaken, then lifted her and laid her back on the bed. She heard her sandals hit the floor. His knee came down between hers, and he bent to place his mouth where his hands had been. He kissed and licked and nuzzled before suckling her. Allie was groaning nonstop now, arching to make herself more accessible to him.

He eventually tore himself away from her breasts long enough to strip Allie of her jeans and panties. As he surveyed her, dark color streaked his cheekbones. She was stunned to see that he’d meant it when he said she was beautiful. The way he looked at her almost made her believe she was.

Suddenly she wanted to see him, too. As she reached for the button of his jeans, Allie had a flash of memory: being an almost-teenager and feeling enormously curious about the bulges—some more substantial than others—outlined so conspicuously by the leotards that the male dancers wore. Her father was modest enough that she’d never even caught a glimpse of him without clothes on. She’d seen her brother naked, but only when they were young. She couldn’t quite picture how what he had down there could have metamorphosed into anything that...large.

A giggle bubbled in her chest now, a little like champagne fizzing on its way down. The fact that she hadn’t wanted to look closely at male genitals the other times she’d had sex should have been her first clue that something was wrong. Because she very definitely did want to see now.

Stripping him wasn’t as easy as stripping her had been, though. The hard ridge beneath his zipper made pulling it down potentially perilous. His face contorted a couple of times while she oh-so-carefully proceeded, and he made some interesting sounds, too. Her apprehension faded when she realized the sounds expressed pleasure, not distress.

Her eyes widened at what she found when she pulled his underwear down. He lifted his hips to cooperate when Allie tugged jeans and briefs all the way off before she crawled back up to...explore.

His size was daunting. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to her that their relative sizes mattered. She’d liked feeling petite, dwarfed by his powerful body. But now... Her fingers couldn’t close around him, and she raised alarmed eyes to his face.

He lifted his head. “You look freaked.”

“Is this going to hurt?”

“What?” He looked stunned. “No! Why would...? You’re not a virgin?” Now, he sounded alarmed.

“No, but...I think maybe those guys weren’t so big. And I’m not very big.” Her voice wasn’t, either. It was shrinking into nothingness before she finished.

Nolan’s head dropped to the mattress and he gave a choked laugh. “Damn it, Allie. No one has ever said... I’m not huge, you know. You’re just small.”

“I know that,” she said indignantly.

“We’ll fit.” He reared up and cupped her face, the curve of his mouth tender. “I can promise that much.” He kissed her gently, nibbling at her lips.

She closed her eyes and let him wash away her fear. Not all her fears, nobody could do that, but this one, yes.

The next thing she knew, she was on her back, and he was kissing her passionately and stroking one calloused finger between her thighs, where she was wet and aching. She was utterly lost from that point on; she surfaced only long enough to be aware he’d torn open the package and was putting on the condom. She had to watch that, in fascination. A part of her wished he didn’t have to wear one.

If we stay together, I could get a patch, or go on the pill, and he wouldn’t have to.

The memories of those questions he’d asked in the kitchen, wanting to know about her mother, her father, where she’d lived, everything, flickered through her mind, and her heart contracted with a different fear that was more real. If this went on, she’d get more and more muddled, more unsure of what she could say and what she couldn’t...and what she’d already said.

But he was back, touching her again, kissing her, his weight half on his elbows as he nudged between her legs and she couldn’t help lifting her hips in pleasure and welcome, letting apprehension about the future go.

He eased barely in, then out, and an outraged cry slipped from her lips. He might have laughed, she wasn’t sure, but the next time he pressed deeper, another inch or two, before retreating. By the time he slid home, she was begging him, had one leg hooked over his and the other foot braced on the mattress so she could lift to take him as deep as he could go.

They found a rhythm that felt both amazing and familiar. And so good. She coiled tighter and tighter as he thrust harder. His eyes held hers when she broke, spasming around him, clutching him with her entire body. His teeth gritted and he let himself go, too. He bucked against her, pulsing inside her, which seemed to prolong her pleasure.

At long last he sagged, barely catching himself on his elbows, then rolled to the side, taking her with him.

Allie cuddled close, grateful for his strong arm wrapped around her. His heart slammed under her cheek, and she felt more shaken than she could ever remember being. I had no idea, she thought in astonishment.

His breathing gradually slowed. She felt the moment when he lifted his head enough to kiss the top of her head.

“We fit.” There was a smile in his voice.

The earlier giggles must have been trapped in there, because they popped out now. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Should I be insulted?” Nolan asked in mock indignation.

“No! No. I was just thinking...it was sublime.” A rush of shyness overcame her. “At least, it was for me.”

“Me, too.” This time his voice was deep, slow and filled with some emotion that confounded her. “I don’t think that was sex, Allie.”

“What?” She separated herself from him enough to be able to see his face.

His eyes were different now, the same dark blue but more solemn, watchful. “That was making love. I don’t think I’ve ever done it before.”

Oh, dear God. A huge, painful lump caught in her throat and she stared at him. Was he saying he loved her?

But he didn’t, the Allie who wasn’t Allie protested. He couldn’t. He didn’t really know her. No one did. But if he thought he loved her...

What do I feel?

That was the scariest realization of all, because she had a very bad feeling she wanted him to love her. She thought he was the first and only man she’d ever met whom she could love.

But could she trust him? Was she allowed ever to trust anyone?

Her skin seemed to be cooling at shocking speed and she shivered.

Nolan sighed and tucked her back in his embrace, where she couldn’t be anything but warm. He didn’t say anything else.

* * *

NOLAN HADN’T GOTTEN half an hour’s work done when he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. He loosened his fingers to silence the saw.

Sean stopped in the open doorway, Cassie trying to shove past him. He said something Nolan couldn’t hear.

He lifted the ear protectors from his head and pushed up the goggles, rubbing with his forearm at the deep creases they left.

“You’re here,” Sean said. Or repeated?

Nolan had the impulse to wince, and suppressed it. “Where else would I be?” he asked mildly. He’d be fine as long as he didn’t start grinning. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop, not with his body feeling so replete.

“I thought... Nothing.” His face brightened. “Cassie was waiting at the door.”

The dog’s tail lashed happily at the sound of her name.

“I’m afraid she spent all day there. I’ve taken her out several times, though.”

“Oh. That’s cool. Did you let her off the leash?”

“Yeah, threw the ball for her. She was good.”

“Cool,” he said again.

Nolan waited through several twitches and the beginnings of a squirm. “You need something?”

“No, I just wanted to tell you... But it’s no biggie.” He started to retreat.

“I’m already stopped. Tell me.”

“Oh. Well, see, there’s this meeting tomorrow night. At school.” He was apparently checking for parental comprehension. Nolan nodded encouragement. “It’s about basketball. The coach wants to talk to parents of freshmen before they go out for the team.”

“What time?”

“Seven.”

“Good.” He grinned. “I’m glad you decided to try out.”

“You weren’t planning to, I don’t know, see Allie tomorrow night, were you?” Sean asked in a rush.

“No.”

“Oh. I mean, it’s okay if you can’t...”

“I said fine. We’ll talk about it over dinner.” He pulled down and adjusted his goggles. “I need to get back to work now.”

Sean watched him for a minute even as he donned the ear protection again and picked up the circular saw with the electroplated diamond blade, necessary to cut granite.

With a good grip on the handle, Nolan gently began, letting the blade do the cutting. When his mind tried to summon the picture of Allie sprawled on her bed, her slender, lithe body naked, he ruthlessly shut it down. This work was too dangerous to allow himself to daydream.

He kept going until later than usual, trying to make up for the midday interlude. Even so, he was far from satisfied with what he’d accomplished when he finished. Usually he’d have been frustrated, but today... Nope, no regrets. Cleaning the guts of the saw with compressed air, then running it briefly to release more debris, he was grinning foolishly and damn glad Sean wasn’t here to see.

* * *

CHLOE KICKED AT the sand with her bare feet. The soles of her feet were baking, so she veered toward the incoming waves, grateful for the cool, wet, hard-packed sand left behind by swirls of foam. She didn’t want to be here. Resentment sizzled. Her parents could have left her in New York. Nobody cared if she was here. She couldn’t afford to miss two whole weeks of dance classes and rehearsals. While she was plodding along, the other girls were soaring.

And there they were, first dashing away from a wave then soaring above the beach and foamy fingers of water, bodies perfectly positioned. Jessica doing an exquisite cabriole, Rachel a grand jeté. They were both making harsh, cawing sounds, which seemed normal even as Chloe glowered at them. What made her maddest was that they didn’t fall back to earth as they should have.

And...there was Hunter, too, the absolute hottest male dancer who was once in a while called in to demonstrate lifts to the younger girls. He was performing the tour en l’air, leaping straight into the air and making not only one complete turn, but two, three, four, an impossible five, and still he didn’t come down, either, even though part of the jump was the finish in the fifth position.

Chloe refused to look at them anymore, although as she stalked away, she could still hear them calling to each other in those harsh voices, as if they’d found something disgusting to eat, like a dead fish or something. Or maybe they were laughing at her.

Madder and madder, she broke into a trot then started to run. She kicked one leg in the air and leaped into a jeté, then another and another, ending in the grand jeté that required her to do the splits in the air. But she couldn’t defy gravity, no matter how high she leaped. It tugged her down, and she landed hard on the wet sand.

I hate Mom and Dad. I hate them. If all they’d wanted to do was argue about...whatever it was Mom had to decide, why had they insisted she and Jason come?

Hate them, hate them, hate them... Her rage beat like every stomp of her feet, getting harsher and harsher until it became the unmusical cries of the seagulls, and, disoriented, she rolled over in bed and hammered at her alarm clock.

Even once Allie had silenced it, she kept hearing the ugly sound. Caw, caw, hate them, caw, hate them. With a moan, she covered her face with her hands.

Dreams usually faded the moment she opened her eyes, leaving behind wisps of mood that could color her day, but not images so clear they hurt. She’d never seen Rachel or Jessica again. Or Hunter, for whom she’d nursed a thirteen-year-old’s desperate crush.

She had never truly danced again, either, because that was how people were traced, she and her family had been told. To be safe, they couldn’t hold the same kind of jobs, or pursue hobbies that were too unusual or that had resulted in any of them being in the public eye. Nobody had quite looked at her when the U.S. Marshal said that, although he was talking about her, and they all knew it.

Already there had been half a dozen newspaper articles about her as a rising young dancer. Even among the many talented girls in the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School program, Chloe Marr had stood out. The Daily News had done a big spread, the reporter having followed her through a typical week. A role in Firebird had resulted in a feature on television.

Her parents had explained to her that, if a young dancer of her talent and training should suddenly appear elsewhere in the country, it would draw attention. Someone would recognize her. They were very sorry, but she had to give up dance.

Only for now, her mother had hastened to add, although her eyes didn’t want to meet Chloe’s. Once the trial was over, well, it might be possible...

“But dance is my life,” she had cried, and begged to be left behind. She could live with the family of one of the other dancers, or Grandma. She was sure she could. “I won’t go!” she had tried storming, and her father’s expression had cracked to show real anguish, but Mom’s was only set and white.

“You have to. If it’s at all possible, later...”

But Chloe had known perfectly well that “possible” was a lie. Months or years lost in a young dancer’s training and experience were gone forever, never to be regained.

As things turned out, that later never came anyway. Chloe Marr had died when the entire Marr family fled in the night. Allie hadn’t even dreamed about her, not in a long time.

Dragging herself out of bed, showering until the hot water ran lukewarm, getting dressed, she felt stiff and every movement mechanical. She was unable to escape the residue of the dream, weighing her down like a hangover.

It was telling Nolan she’d lived in Florida that had done it, even though she never exactly had. But Dad’s parents did, and her family had gone there so often for family vacations, it had just slipped out even though that wasn’t Allie Wright’s background. Allie Wright had lived in Montana and Colorado and Idaho, never staying long enough in any place to develop any sense of belonging. That’s what getting flustered did to her. It made her open her mouth and say something careless and stupid. It was exactly what scared her mother. I’m lucky, Allie thought, that people hardly ever ask.

“Did you graduate from high school around here?” They asked that, or where she’d gotten her college degree. But not since she was seventeen, a senior in high school who’d had to transfer midyear, had anyone cared where she came from. Back then, the newest lies were memorized fresh, and teenagers weren’t really that interested in anyone but themselves anyway. They didn’t push, not the way Nolan had. Would keep doing.

Telling him about Florida wasn’t that big a deal. Lots of people had lived there at some point in their lives, and at least she really had been there.

What had most paralyzed her was the fear that she’d run into someone who had actually lived in one of the places she was pretending she’d come from. Or that she’d get her stories tangled.

She’d been sure she would, even after her family’s first move, when there had only been the one new background to memorize and recite when required. That easily, she’d been made nearly mute from panic. It only got worse after they were wrenched away again, and she had yet another new name and completely different story to recall.

Well, she’d had other issues then, too, like losing Dad and Jason and what pretense of a life they had built after giving up their real lives.

I am all tangled up inside, she thought miserably, picturing what happened to three delicate silver or gold chains, stored loose in a box for too long. Seemingly all by themselves, lying loose, nobody moving that box, they still somehow wound together in a confounding snarl that defied the deftest of fingers. That’s me. The three of me, intertwined and knotted. And...I don’t know what would happen if I could be untangled, separated into three. There is Chloe, there’s Laura, there’s Allie. What would happen to me?

Wow. Split personality, anyone?

No, she knew better. She couldn’t be separated into three. That was her trouble, at its heart. She had spent eleven years now trying to live as Allie alone, and she couldn’t. Not really. But recovering all of her, even privately, could be dangerous.

Her parents’ voices whispered in her ear, so stern. We’re starting all over. You can’t ever forget our new names. Never, never, never tell anyone who we used to be. Remember. Never.

The dream, she decided, was like a crack in a dike. A trickle had made it through. How to keep it from becoming a stream and then a flood?

The easy answer was: cut Nolan out of her life. This was his fault. And hers, for not listening to her mother. For not keeping to herself, the way she always had.

Allie checked the clock, and saw that she had to leave if she was to open the store on time. That was safe enough. Unless Nolan stopped by with lunch today, of course. But surely he wouldn’t, when he’d seen her yesterday and lost so much time on his work.

Not only seen her—made love to her. I don’t think that was sex, Allie.

She didn’t think it was, either. And she didn’t want to live without whatever it had been. Without Nolan. Because she saw suddenly that all her efforts to piece and layer and stitch together a past, a self, accomplished absolutely nothing if she didn’t have a future. If she never married, had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. What was she staying safe for if not for that?

By halfway through the day, Allie had let go of most of the strain, although a headache lingered. She’d been indulging in melodrama, she concluded. What did it matter where she’d lived as a kid, or gone to middle school? So she’d had different names. There were cultures where people acquired different names for each phase of their life. She could think of it that way. Some of the names were secret, that’s all.

Chloe was the child, the dancer, Laura the muddled teenager, Allie the adult. They are all me; I am them. Telling forbidden truths wouldn’t make that any more so. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t talk about childhood experiences. The time she’d fallen from the monkey bars at school and broken her arm, Nanna’s snowflakes, Lady the family beagle and, yes, her lost dream of being a ballerina. All she would have to do was...edit. No, we never, never, never lived in Queens, and all I did was take dance lessons like many thousands of other girls my age, and did anybody care who Laura Nelson, tongue-tied, had been, except that it was Laura who had discovered quilting? And that went to show how silly she’d been, didn’t it, because that meant Laura and Allie were certainly integrated.

That calmed her, as she chatted with Libby Hutchins, an occasional customer. “Yes,” she said, “we’re displaying miniature quilts starting on the fifteenth. Do come see them. They’re all gorgeous, and some are really extraordinary. Marybeth Winters—do you know her?—made the most astonishing basket quilt with appliqué flowers. The blocks are only three inches square. You almost have to use a magnifying glass to appreciate the detail.”

Libby, who was starting a crib quilt for her first grandchild, promised to stop by.

Allie’s mini-quilt shows, one a quarter, were a big draw. Customers loved having their own quilts featured.

Sometimes she chose to show quilts all using the same pattern in multiple variations, perhaps tied into a class held at the same time. Last spring, the local historical society had been delighted to have a chance to show off quilts of the 1920s from their collection, and they were talking about a turn-of-the-century display next spring.

Once the bell tinkled as Libby departed, Allie climbed back on the ladder to finish hanging one of her own quilts to replace the Feathered Star quilt just sold. She had made this one right before the Lady of the Lake that was on the frame in back. This was one of her favorite patterns, Bear’s Paw, done in subtle shades of cream and rust and rose. At last she put away the ladder and stood back to admire the full effect. Oh, yes, very nice—and nicely coincidental that the fabrics for sale below it were the complementary browns shading into rusts and then peaches and pinks.

She was pleasantly surprised to realize her headache was gone. She was even able to laugh, a little, at last night’s dream. Rachel and Jessica, with the ugly voices of seagulls... Hah! Maybe I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did.

Smiling, she decided to measure out and cut the deep purple fabric she intended to use to bind the Lady of the Lake quilt, which was nearing completion. And then—oh!—she’d have the fun of creating something new. She’d had a sort of vision of what she could do with Wild Goose Chase, which wouldn’t really be a chase at all....