After Hours

“If it means anything to you, I feel more for you than I’ve ever felt for any other woman. What just happened between us was the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced.”

“It means something to me,” she whispered, almost unbearably touched. Her eyes felt hot, tear-laden as she lifted her face to kiss him. “It means a great deal to me.”

His hand burrowed into the hair at her nape. “I want you again,” he muttered against her lips. “I need you, Angelique.”

Passion that had been so thoroughly sated ignited again at his hoarse words. Rhys needed her. For now, at least. “Yes, please, Rhys. Love me again.”

RHYS WANDERED curiously around Angie’s house, studying the porcelain figurines, the doilies, the crocheted afghans, the profusion of photographs and memories. “This place reminds me a little of Aunt Iris’s house,” he said at length. “She has things like these everywhere to remind her of the various foster kids she took in over the years.”

Angie had been watching him quietly, thinking with a pang that Rhys seemed so hungry for ties—any kind of ties. Her. own childhood hadn’t been ideal, but at least she’d had a family, had people who’d cared for her. Rhys had had no one except a foster mother who’d been assigned him by chance—and much too late in his youth to give him the security he’d so craved. She could love him, she realized abruptly. She could love him exactly as he needed to be loved. But she couldn’t allow herself to want too much yet. Not until she’d told him everything.

He stood in front of the piano, smiling at the grouping of photographs of Angie in various stages of growing up. “Only grandchild?” he hazarded, holding a five-by-seven print of a smiling little girl with enormous violet eyes, a blond braid and two missing teeth.

“Obviously.” She took the photo out of his hands and replaced it on the piano, wondering if there were any childhood photographs of Rhys. Had anyone cared enough to have them taken? “Do you remember your mother, Rhys?”

His expression went from amused to impassive. “Not… really,” he answered hesitantly. “Sometimes I have flashes—but I’m not sure how valid they are.”

She rested her hand on his arm. “Tell me about them.”

His shoulder shrugged, pulling at the iron-hard muscles beneath her palm. “I think I remember her laughing. Maybe singing. And I remember…” His voice trailed off, his eyes focused somewhere far in the past.

“What?”

“Waking up in the night,” he answered very quietly. “Wandering through dark rooms, calling my mother. Finding her bed empty. Crawling into it and curling under the covers, knowing I was alone.”

Angie was appalled. “She left you alone at night?”

His manner became more brusque. “I think so. As I said, I’m not sure how trustworthy those thirty-seven-year-old flashes may be. And since my mother was never located, there’s no way to confirm them.”

“Do you remember her leaving you at the hospital?”

He shook his head. “No. I think maybe I blocked that particular memory out sometime over the years. I was told that I had nightmares for several years afterward, but I don’t really remember them, either. I believe they were quite—annoying to the people who raised me.”

“Oh, Rhys.” She buried her face in his shoulder, unable to hold back the tears.

His hand tugged at the back of her head, bringing her face up to his. One blunt, strong finger traced the salty path down her damp cheek. “Don’t cry for me, Angelique. It was a long time ago.”

“I’m not crying for you,” she whispered, raising a hand to his cheek. “Not for the strong, successful, honorable man you’ve become. But I can’t help crying for a frightened, lonely little boy.”

The boy had grown up, but the man still craved love, whether he was aware of it or not. He needed so much, and she had so little to offer him. A soiled family reputation, a shallow, pleasure-seeking past in which she’d been too spoiled and self-centered to notice what had been going on right before her eyes. Yes, she was making her own way now, beginning to sort out her values, but would Rhys be able to trust that she’d really changed if he knew the truth? Would he think she was chasing him only because his money could reinstate her into the social circles from which she’d been ousted? Would a man who’d so relentlessly pursued respect, admiration and success be able to swallow the embarrassment of having a father-in-law in prison?

Her eyes widened at the thought, and she buried her face in his shoulder again to hide her expression. Marriage? How could she possibly think of marriage? Had she—oh, yes, she had. She’d fallen in love with Rhys Wakefield. And on top of all her other doubts about becoming involved with him, she wondered if a man who had never known love could ever learn to share it.

Holding her small, sweetly curved body tightly in his arms, Rhys rested his cheek on her silky blond head. She held herself closely against him, but for some reason he had the feeling that she’d pulled back emotionally. Was his past so distasteful to her that she didn’t think she could deal with it? Would she not allow herself to become too deeply involved with anyone whose childhood was so dramatically different from her own moneyed, privileged one? What was she thinking? he wondered in frustration.

She was going to break his heart, he thought bleakly. He’d never really understood that particular, rather dramatic phrase. Now he did. And wished he didn’t.

He could almost feel her gathering her emotions and placing them under tight restraint. And then she pulled away, her expression carefully shuttered, her smile bright and meaningless. “Would you like some lunch?” she asked, automatically smoothing her hair. “Just let me change into fresh clothes and I’ll—”

Something snapped in his head, manifesting itself in a surge of temper. He caught her roughly in his arms. “Don’t do that, dammit! Not to me.”

Her eyes widened in obvious surprise as she braced herself a

gainst his chest with splayed hands. “Don’t do what?” she asked, confused.

“Don’t give me polite little social smiles and speak to me as though I’m someone with whom you have to make pleasant conversation. If you’ve got something you want to say to me, say it.” Tell me it’s over, he challenged her with his eyes. Tell me you don’t want me. I dare you.

But she never reacted exactly as he expected. Her startled expression slowly changed, becoming delightfully willful. “Kiss me, Rhys.”