Inglath Cooper - Unfinished Business

Warning signals blared in Addy’s ear. Here she sat shoulder to shoulder in the booth of a seductive hotel bar with an alarmingly attractive man who had once been a very big part of her life.

Time to go, Addy.

She glanced at her watch. “Twelve-thirty. I didn’t realize it was so late. I better get going.”

He caught the waiter’s attention, asked for the bill, wouldn’t hear of splitting it. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you up.”

“That’s all right, really. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, no. I insist. You’ll tell your mama about my bad manners, and then I’ll have to hear about it from my own mom for weeks.”

Addy smiled. “Fair enough, but just to the elevator.”

ONE OF THE lobby elevators stood empty and waiting. Addy popped on a polite this-was-really-terrific smile. “Thank you,” she said. “It was great seeing you.”

“I’ll see you to your door.”

Before she could think of a reasonable-sounding protest, he took her elbow and steered her inside. She pushed the button for her floor, then stood awkwardly to one side, Culley to the other.

The danger alarms were going off again, awareness surrounding them like a force field.

The elevator slid to a stop, and they stepped out. Her room was at the end of the corridor. “You don’t have to go all the way,” she said, even though something inside her screamed too late. “I’ll be fine.”

“Addy, I’m not going to leave you standing out here in the hallway,” he said and took her elbow once again.

To insist otherwise would have been silly—for heaven’s sake, he was just being polite—and she could not deny that his hand on her bare arm made her feel protected and secure, temporary as it was.

At her room, she pulled the key from her black leather clutch. He took it from her, but didn’t open the door.

“I’m really glad we got to see each other,” she said. “This night ended up very different from what it started out to be.”

His blue eyes were steady, intense, some emotion there clearly at war with itself. “For me, too.”

The elevator dinged, opening on the floor once more. The married couple from the bar stepped out and headed to the opposite end of the hall, their voices low, hushed, intimate. The key clicked in the door lock, a soft rush of laughter following.

The air in the hallway was suddenly thick. Addy drew in a quick breath, mesmerized by the man standing before her with questions in his eyes. She had no answers. Only knew herself to be spellbound by the moment and a very real desire to invite him into her room.

The thought was shocking in its clarity. She’d been married for eleven years. And she had been a faithful wife. By thought and deed. She’d had colleagues call her old-fashioned because she hadn’t bought into their so-what’s-the-big-deal-about-an-office-affair outlook, which they pushed like an illegal but socially acceptable substance. Addy’s was a live-and-let-live philosophy, but she had never bought into that kind of casual.

Culley reached out, brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, the touch gentle, tender, yet at the same time, tentative, uncertain. “I’d take the hurt away if I could, Addy.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek then, just a whisper of contact against her skin. Consolation had been his intent. Of that, she was sure. But the gesture pulled at something inside her, stirred up longings for something very different. Something that might make the awful ache inside her disappear.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should,” she agreed. Seconds passed while she grappled with the opposing forces of reason and need. Reason lost the struggle. “But I don’t want you to.”

She slipped a hand up his chest, rested it there with deliberate intent.

“Addy.” Her name came out with ragged edges and a reluctance impossible to miss. “You’re hurting.”

He hadn’t moved, and yet she could hear him backing away. He was right. She was hurting. Had been hurting for so long now that she was tired of being in this place, wanted very much to feel something different. Was that why she wanted him to kiss her? Did that explain the fact that if he turned around and left her here alone, she felt as if something inside her would break into a thousand pieces?

“Tell me to leave, and I will,” he said.

Before them lay two turns in the road, one the end of which she could clearly see: friendship, run-ins every few years. The other road was hidden and nothing could be seen beyond the immediate.

Addy wanted immediate. Nothing more than that. Just here and now. Just this night. Because more than anything she wanted to feel something. To want and be wanted.

“Stay,” she said.

An inch of space separated them. She leaned forward and kissed him. She, Addy Taylor, who had no experience in the brazen department, made this first move. She had this awful fear that he might laugh. Think her incompetent. After all, her own husband had strayed. There must be a reason.

But suddenly his arms were around her waist, pulling her to him. And he wasn’t laughing. He kissed her back with the kind of quick and urgent depth that lets a woman know a man wants her.

Blind need whirled up, clouding everything except the pinpoint of focus that was the two of them wrapped around one another, into one another.

Addy wound her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her, not giving herself another chance to consider what they were doing. Where this would lead. To think would be to stop. She didn’t want to stop. She only wanted to erase the awful numbness inside her, this feeling of failure without understanding. Replace it with the very real feelings of needing and being needed.

Culley gathered her to him, strong arms encircling her waist, binding her to him. And there in the middle of the Plaza Hotel’s fourth-floor hallway, they indulged themselves in the kind of kiss that made all intentions clear.

The gentleness of those first moments fell away under the weight of raw need. And there were some serious forces propelling them along: long ago what-if’s and basic lust.

Very basic. And very real.

Culley walked her backwards to the wall. His knees dropped a couple of inches as he leaned up and into her.

Addy forgot to breathe. No longer needed to because he was air.

The elevator dinged again and brought them back to a short space of reality. Culley slid the key in the lock, pushed the door open and steered her into the room, still kissing her, his foot kicking the door closed.

Darkness engulfed them. From the window Addy had left cracked, traffic sounds echoed up from the street below, horns honking, car doors opening and closing. Her perfume lingered in the air where she had sprayed it earlier.

And with the privacy of the room came another level of intimacy, urgency and haste marking each kiss. She had never known this kind of need, this sense of inevitability, as if the night had been planned long ago, in another lifetime.

The housekeeper had been in to turn down the bed and left the clock radio playing on the nightstand. A DJ’s voice crooned, “And for all you night owls, we’ll pay a tribute to an old favorite, Frank Sinatra.”

There in the darkness, her fingers found the buttons of Culley’s shirt, undoing them with fumbling inaccuracy. He jerked the knot of his tie free. She slipped a hand inside his shirt, exploring the smooth, muscular warmth there.

Culley said her name, the sound low and hoarse in his throat.

The song played on around them, something about flying to the moon, and that was exactly how Addy felt, as if part of her were soaring with this purely potent mixture of want and need.

Culley’s hand went to the back of her neck, pulled her closer against him, his mouth seeking hers with a need as quick and bright as the igniting of a match. She drew in an unsteady breath, wrapping her arms around his neck, appreciating with startling awareness the hard, very male imprint of him.