Rachel Gibson: Lola Carlyle Reveals All

“And for your information,” she said as she turned around and tied the belt around her waist, “I fell in love with you before your performance here tonight. I fell in love with you for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with sex.”

He was sitting up in bed with his elbows on his raised knees, holding his head in his hands. “I don’t think you’re stupid or a fool, Lola,” he said in a voice gone so low she almost didn’t hear him.

“Forget it.” She turned to the closed door of the bathroom. “Forget I said anything. I take it back.” Just as she pulled the door open, he was behind her, slamming it shut.

With one hand planted in front of her face, Max said next to her ear, “You can’t take it back now.”

“Yes, I can.”

“No.” He leaned his big body into her and shoved her up against the door. “I heard you.” His hot breath brushed her temple. “You love me, Lola. I won’t let you take it back. You can’t ever take it back.”

Something in his voice cooled her anger. A deep yearning. An unspoken plea. It was in the depths, if not his words. It was in the hand caressing her hip and sliding around to her stomach.

“Don’t leave.” He leaned his forehead against the door next to hers. “I’m a real bastard, I know, but don’t leave, Lola.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just going to get my suitcase.”

“Oh.” He eased away from her and she turned and looked up at him.

“Funny, though. When you thought I was leaving, you sure jumped off the bed fast.”

“Charley horse.”

“Sure. I think you care about me more than you want to admit. I think it scares the heck out of you. I know it scares the heck out of me.”

“What scares you?”

She looked into his eyes and said, “That I have fallen in love with you, and there is no future for us. That you burst into my life suddenly only a short time ago. That it’s too fast, too soon, and you will leave the same way you came into my life. I’ll turn around one day and you’ll be gone.”

He shook his head and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after or next week. I only know that when I’m not with you, I think about you. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you. And it’s not just physical.” He placed his hands on the sides of her face. “I love the smell of your skin and the tangle of your hair around my fingers. I love your courage and your tenacity.” He pressed his forehead into hers. “I love being with you, and we’re good together. And I think we’re only going to get better.”

Yes, but for how long ? she wanted to ask. The thought of him alone somewhere, getting beaten and shot at, ate a little hole in her heart, but what could she do about it? She couldn’t stop him any more than she could stop loving him.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he said just above a whisper. “I’ve tried and I can’t. The thought of it twists me in a knot.”

“So, don’t let me go.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know.” Then she spoke her biggest fear out loud. “I’ve fallen in love with a man who puts himself at risk as if his life is meaningless. But your life means something to me, Max, and I don’t know how long my heart can stand it.”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, his gaze was filled with passion, and he lowered his mouth and kissed her because there was nothing left to say. He was a man who didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to keep. He tore at the black robe and seemed to touch her all over at once. He worshiped her with his hands and mouth and carried her back to his bed. He made love to her again. This time more desperate than the last, almost frantic, as though, if he kept her in bed, he could keep the world away.

And it worked. Within his arms, and tangled in the sheets that smelled of him, nothing else existed. By the sheer force of his will, he kept reality at bay.

But for how long?

Two days after Lola and Max broke into Sam’s house, they were questioned separately by the Baltimore police. She’d been back home for less than twenty-four hours when she’d had to place a call to her lawyer and make plans to meet him at the police station in Durham. Max and his attorney had answered the same questions in Alexandria, and since there was no evidence tying either of them to the crime, both had been cleared.

Her problems with Sam were finally over. Taken care of just as Max had predicted. He was her hero, but loving Max was both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. And each day that passed, she fell more in love with him. They spent every weekend together, and each hour she lost herself a little more in the pleasure of being with him. The pleasure of his hot mouth and strong hands. The solid wall of his chest against her breasts. Wrapped up in the warmth of Max, she felt safe and protected, as if nothing terrible could ever happen as long as they were together. Each time Max kissed her goodbye, his arms held her a bit tighter than the time before. Closer, as if he were trying to absorb as much of her as possible.

He hadn’t told her he loved her. Not yet. It had only been three weeks since she’d blurted out that she loved him, but she was fairly sure that he did love her. No man could look at a woman, and touch her the way Max did, and not be in love. Still, she longed to hear the actual words from his lips.

During the weekdays when they couldn’t be together, he telephoned her every night and during the day while she was at work. Sometimes just to ask if she was designing edible underwear.

“Are you hungry, Max?” she would ask.

“Yes,” he always answered. “I’m hungry for you.”

In a very short amount of time, she grew to live for and fear his calls. The sound of his voice brought a glow to her heart, even as she held her breath. With each call, she half expected that he’d phoned to tell her he was off to Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Although, she supposed, he wouldn’t tell her where he was headed, just that he was going away.

How Max lived his life was out of her hands. Out of her control. She wouldn’t ask him to change for her. She could only hope and pray that he was in so much trouble from the Nassau fiasco that the government had taken away his decoder ring and had crossed his name out of their secret black book.

She knew he carried a pager at all times, and she hoped the government had lost his number. But deep down inside she knew it was only a matter of time before it beeped. There was no doubt in. her mind that it would happen.

It just happened sooner than she was ready, over breakfast the weekend she and Baby had driven up to see him. He’d toasted her a muffin and made coffee and they were supposed to spend the day steaming the horrible wallpaper from his kitchen. She’d brought him a photograph of her and Baby, and she’d put it in a silver frame with engraved and enameled dog biscuits. She’d brought her camera so she could take pictures of him, too. So he’d have a picture of them all together. Her, him, and Baby. Like a real family.

She never got the chance. His pager went off during his second cup of coffee as he was feeding Baby a hunk of bran muffin. Across the kitchen table, their gazes met and she knew. This was it.

Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs, he rose from the table and walked to the office at the back of the townhouse. The second Lola heard the door shut, her stomach turned and she felt sick. Her head pounded and her heart raced. Her chest felt as if it were caving in, and her gaze flitted here and there around the kitchen. On his coffeemaker, blender, and the magnet bottle opener stuck to his refrigerator. On the wallpaper that would not get replaced.