“It’s admirable.”
“It isn’t, really.” Lainie touched the corners of Hannah’s smile. It had been so long since she’d seen that smile in the flesh. Far longer than eighteen months. “It was...self-preservation. I needed to do something. If I didn’t do something constructive, I would have done something destructive. I was so mad. So angry, and I just...itched for action.”
She bit down hard on her lip. “In drama, you know, and on the screen, it’s all so...clean. The courageous patient, still smiling and joking on their deathbed. Going peacefully when the time comes. It’s not always like that. Not that Hannah wasn’t brave.” She clenched her hand. “She was always brave, even when she was a toddler. She tried to climb the tree outside our house in Clapham when she was three because she wanted to see the bird’s nest on the top branch. But she was angry. She was angry, and bitter, and terrified until the moment she died. And there was nothing to say. How can you possibly make it better? I knew what was going to happen, she knew what was going to happen and there was no way to stop it. And in the end, she’d be alone. I was holding her hand when it happened.”
A different hand, a healthy, masculine hand, reached across and closed over hers.
Slowly, her palm rotated and she curled her fingers around his. “She still had to go alone.”
Richard was stroking her knuckles in slow circles, trying to relax the tension there. She could hear him breathing in the minutes that followed her outburst. The combination of the sound and the touch, both steady and rhythmic, helped bring her back to herself.
She stirred, releasing his hand to self-consciously push back her hair. “Sorry. I didn’t realise that was still bottled up.” She managed a grim smile. “Apparently exercise has an unsettling effect on me. I knew there was a reason I avoid it.”
“No. I’m sorry.” He said it very simply, very matter-of-factly. “I am very sorry, Lainie.”
She studied him. “Yes. I can see that you are.” On impulse, and to their mutual surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips nudged against his jaw, and the stubble there was rough and raspy.
Richard caught her upper arm as she started to pull back. He held her there, poised above him, his eyes—shockingly blue, full of questions—searching hers. She steadied herself with a hand on his belly and could feel a pulse thrumming under the soft fibre of his shirt. He seemed to make up his mind on a silently debated issue, and acted with his usual swiftness once he’d come to a decision. Her startled gasp was lost inside his mouth when he moved his hand up to her head, tangling his fingers in her hair and bringing her face to his in a rough, open kiss.
His other hand shaped the line of her shoulder and upper back, sliding down her rib cage to press firmly at the base of her spine. She gave under the pressure, her body coming down to rest half on top of his. Her leg jerked and she almost bumped her knee into an increasingly sensitive place, startling a muffled grunt from him. Without breaking contact with her mouth, he released her hair to grip her thigh, gently raising it and manoeuvring her leg across his lap. They both made tiny, urgent sounds of need at the new and intimate contact.
Lainie stroked the sides of Richard’s neck, slid her fingers up to touch his earlobes. She cupped his jaw, feeling the muscles working beneath the warm skin, and attempted to angle the direction of his head. His kiss was both demanding and coaxing, playfully daring a response from her even as he took what he wanted.
Her lashes were fluttering as she kissed him back, and she was acutely aware of the barrage of sensation. The fierce, silky friction of his tongue against hers. The shivering stroke of nerves as his fingers burrowed under her fleece jacket, tickling her hip and tummy, sliding upward to brush the side of her breast.
A hint of sanity returned at that touch. Not because she was conflicted about a man touching her breasts. Her feelings were quite clear on the subject. Lovely in a sexual situation. Necessary evil during a medical exam. Sharp uppercut to the jaw in any other circumstances.
But she was usually wearing a lace bra in a sexual situation. Or, at the very least, separate cups of cotton. Not a clammy sports bra that gave her an epic case of mono-boob. Her generous assets were currently squished and flattened into a veritable shelf. It was not a sight she wanted to expose to Richard. And she still needed a shower.
And for God’s sake, she was making out with Richard Troy. In the privacy of her flat. Where there was not the slightest excuse of a lurking photographer, unless the paparazzo had Spider-Man abilities to scale a three-storey building with no handy trees or drainpipes.