Used-To-Be Lovers

New York Times Bestselling Author

Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Sharon Harrison and Tony Morelli were never able to control the powerful chemistry between them. It led first to heart-stopping passion, then to marriage and children. They thought they had it all, but under pressure their happy home became an explosive battleground.

Even divorce, however, can’t completely separate them. Spending alternate days in their home with their children, they have an unorthodox arrangement that keeps them in close contact. And keeps the desire alive….

For Jean and Ron Barrington,

living proof that romance is alive and well

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

1

Trying hard to concentrate on her work, Sharon Morelli squinted as she placed a wispy chiffon peignoir exactly one inch from the next garment on the rack. This was a standard antiboredom procedure reserved for days when almost no customers wandered into her lingerie shop, Teddy Bares. She was so absorbed in the task that she jumped when two dark brown eyes looked at her over the bar and a deep voice said, “Business must be slow.”

Sharon put one hand to her pounding heart, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out again. Clearly, Tony hadn’t lost his gift for catching her at a disadvantage, despite the fact that their divorce had been final for months. “Business is just fine,” she snapped, hurrying behind the counter and trying to look busy with a stack of old receipts that had already been checked, rechecked and entered into the ledgers.

Without looking up she was aware that Tony had followed her, that he was standing very close. She also knew he was wearing battered jeans and a blue cambric work shirt open halfway down his chest, though she would never have admitted noticing such details.

“Sharon,” he said, with the same quiet authority that made him so effective as the head of a thriving construction company and as a father to their two children.

She made herself meet his gaze, her hazel eyes linking with his brown ones, and jutted out her chin a little way. “What?” she snapped, feeling defensive. It was her turn to live in the house with Briana and Matt, and she would fight for that right if Tony had any ideas to the contrary.

He rolled his expressive eyes and folded his arms. “Relax,” he said, and suddenly the shop seemed too small to contain his blatant masculinity. “We’ve got a project a couple of miles from here, so I stopped by to tell you that Matt is grounded for the week and Briana’s with Mama—the orthodontist tightened her braces yesterday and her teeth are sore.”

Sharon sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. She’d worked hard at overcoming her resentment toward Tony’s mother, but there were times when it snuck up on her. Like now. Damn, even after all this time it hurt that Briana was Carmen’s child and not her own.

Beautiful, perfect Carmen, much mourned by the senior Mrs. Morelli. Eleven years after her tragic death in an automobile accident, Carmen was still a regular topic of lament in Tony’s extended family.

To Sharon’s surprise, a strong, sun-browned hand reached out to cup her chin. “Hey,” Tony said in a gentle undertone, “what did I say?”

It was a reasonable question, but Sharon couldn’t answer. Not without looking and feeling like a complete fool. She turned from his touch and tried to compose herself to face him again. If there was one thing she didn’t want to deal with, it was Maria Morelli’s polite disapproval. “I’d appreciate it if you’d pick Bri up and bring her by the house after you’re through work for the day,” she said in a small voice.

Tony’s hesitation was eloquent. He didn’t understand Sharon’s reluctance to spend any more time than absolutely necessary with his mother, and he never had. “All right,” he finally conceded with a raspy sigh, and when Sharon looked around he was gone.

She missed him sorely.

It was with relief that Sharon closed the shop four hours later. After putting down the top on her yellow roadster, she drove out of the mall parking lot. There were precious few days of summer left; it was time to take the kids on the annual shopping safari in search of school clothes.

Sharon drew in a deep breath of fresh air and felt better. She passed by shops with quaint facades, a couple of restaurants, a combination drugstore and post office. Port Webster, nestled on Washington’s Puget Sound, was a small, picturesque place, and it was growing steadily.

On the way to the house she and Tony had designed and planned to share forever, she went by a harborful of boats with colorful sails bobbing on the blue water, but she didn’t notice the view.

Her mind was on the craziness of their situation. She really hated moving back and forth between her apartment and that splendid Tudor structure on Tamarack Drive, but the divorce mediators had suggested the plan as a way of giving the children a measure of emotional security. Therefore, she lived in the house three days out of each week for one month, four days the next, alternating with Tony.

Sharon suspected that the arrangement made everyone else feel just as disjointed and confused as she did, though no one had confessed to that. It was hard to remember who was supposed to be where and when, but she knew she was going to have to learn to live with the assorted hassles. The only alternative would be a long, bitter custody battle, and she had no legal rights where Briana was concerned. Tony could simply refuse to allow her to see the child, and that would be like having a part of her soul torn from her.

Of course he hadn’t mentioned any such thing, but when it came to divorces, anything could happen.

When she reached the house, which stood alone at the end of a long road and was flanked on three sides by towering pine trees, Matt was on his skateboard in the driveway. With his dark hair and eyes, he was, at seven, a miniature version of Tony.

At the sight of Sharon, his face lighted up and he flipped the skateboard expertly into one hand.

“I hear you’re grounded,” she said, after she’d gotten out of the car and an energetic hug had been exchanged.

Matt nodded, his expression glum at the reminder. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It isn’t fair, neither.”

Sharon ruffled his hair as they walked up the stone steps to the massive front doors. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she teased. “Exactly what did you do?”

They were in the entryway, and Sharon tossed her purse onto a gleaming wooden table brought to America by some ancestor of Tony’s. She would carry her overnight bag in from the trunk of the roadster later.

“Well?” she prompted, when Matt hesitated.

“I put Briana’s goldfish in the pool,” he confessed dismally. He gave Sharon a look of grudging chagrin. “How was I supposed to know the chlorine would hurt them?”

Sharon sighed. “Your dad was right to ground you.” She went on to do her admittedly bad imitation of an old-time gangster, talking out of one side of her mouth. “You know the rules, kid—we don’t mess with other people’s stuff around here.”

Before Matt could respond to that, Mrs. Harry, the housekeeper, pushed the vacuum across the living room carpet and then switched off the machine to greet Sharon with a big smile. “Welcome home, Mrs. Morelli,” she said.

Sharon’s throat felt thick, but she returned the older woman’s hello before excusing herself to go upstairs.

Walking into the bedroom she had once shared with Tony was no easier than it had been the first night of their separation. There were so many memories.

Resolutely, Sharon shed the pearls, panty hose and silk dress she’d worn to Teddy Bares and put them neatly away. Then she pulled jeans, a Seahawks T-shirt and crew socks from her bureau and shimmied into them.

As she dressed, she took a mental inventory of herself. Her golden-brown hair, slender figure and wide hazel eyes got short shrift. The person Sharon visualized in her mind was short—five foot one—and sported a pair of thighs that might have been a shade thinner. With a sigh, Sharon knelt to search the floor of the closet for her favorite pair of sneakers. Her mind was focused wholly on the job.

A masculine chuckle made her draw back and swing her head around. Tony was standing just inside the bedroom doorway, beaming.

Sharon was instantly self-conscious. “Do you get some kind of sick kick out of startling me, Morelli?” she demanded.

Her ex-husband sat down on the end of the bed and assumed an expression of pained innocence. He even laid one hand to his heart. “Here I was,” he began dramatically, “congratulating myself on overcoming my entire heritage as an Italian male by not pinching you, and you wound me with a question like that.”

Sharon went back to looking for her sneakers, and when she found them, she sat down on the floor to wrench them onto her feet. “Where are the kids?” she asked to change the subject.

“Why do you ask?” he countered immediately.

Tony had showered and exchanged his work clothes for shorts and a tank top, and he looked good. So good that memories flooded Sharon’s mind and, blushing, she had to look away.

He laughed, reading her thoughts as easily as he had in the early days of their marriage when things had been less complex.

Sharon shrugged and went to stand in front of the vanity table, busily brushing her hair. Heat coursed through her as she recalled some of times she and Tony had made love in that room at the end of the workday….

And then he was standing behind her, his strong hands light on her shoulders, turning her into his embrace. Her head tilted back as his mouth descended toward hers, and a familiar jolt sparked her senses when he kissed her. At the same time, Tony molded her close. Dear God, it would be all too easy to shut and lock the door and surrender to him. He was so very skillful at arousing her.

After a fierce battle with her own desires, Sharon withdrew, wide-eyed and breathless. This was wrong; she and Tony were divorced, and she was never going to be able to get on with her life if she allowed him to make love to her. “We can’t,” she said, and even though the words had been meant to sound light, they throbbed with despair.

Tony was still standing entirely too close, making Sharon aware of every muscle in his powerful body. His voice was low and practically hypnotic, and his hands rested on the bare skin of her upper arms. “Why not?” he asked.

For the life of her, Sharon couldn’t answer. She was saved by Briana’s appearance in the doorway.

At twelve, Briana was already beautiful. Her thick mahogany hair trailed down her back in a rich, tumbling cascade, and her brown eyes were flecked with tiny sparks of gold. Only the petulant expression on her face and the wires on her teeth kept her from looking like an angel in a Renaissance painting.

Sharon loved the child as if she were her own. “Hi, sweetie,” she said sympathetically, able now to step out of Tony’s embrace. She laid a motherly hand to the girl’s forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy,” the girl responded. “Every tooth in my head hurts, and did Dad tell you what Matt did to my goldfish?” Before Sharon could answer, she complained, “You should have seen it, Mom. It was mass murder.”

“We’ll get you more fish,” Sharon said, putting one arm around Bri’s shoulders.

“Matt will get her more fish,” Tony corrected, and there was an impatient set to his jaw as he passed Briana and Sharon to leave the room. “See you at the next changing of the guard,” he added in a clipped tone, and then he was gone.

A familiar bereft feeling came over Sharon, but she battled it by throwing herself into motherhood.

“Is anybody hungry?” she asked minutes later in the enormous kitchen. As a general rule, Tony was more at home in this room than she was, but for the next three days—or was it four?—the kids’ meals would be her responsibility.

“Let’s go out for pizza!” Matt suggested exuberantly. He was standing on the raised hearth of the double fireplace that served both the kitchen and dining room, and Sharon suspected that he’d been going back and forth through the opening—a forbidden pursuit.

“What a rotten idea,” Bri whined, turning imploring eyes to Sharon. “Mom, I’m a person in pain!”

Matt opened his mouth to comment, and Sharon held up both hands in a demand for silence. “Enough, both of you,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere—not tonight, anyway. We’re eating right here.”

With that, Sharon went to the cupboard and ferreted out the supply of canned pasta she’d stashed at the back. There was spaghetti, ravioli and lasagna to choose from.

“Gramma would have a heart attack if she knew you were feeding us that stuff,” Bri remarked, gravitating toward another cupboard for plates.

Sharon sniffed as she took silverware from the proper drawer and set three places at the table. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she said.

There were assorted vegetables in the refrigerator, and she assuaged her conscience a little by chopping enough of them to constitute a salad.

After supper, when the plates and silverware had been rinsed and put into the dishwasher and all evidence of canned pasta destroyed in the trash compactor, the subject of school came up. Summer was nearly over; D day was fast approaching.

Matt would be in the third grade, Briana in the seventh.

“What do you say we go shopping for school clothes tomorrow?” Sharon said. Helen, the one and only employee Teddy Bares boasted, would be looking after the shop.

“We already did that with Gramma,” Matt said, even as Bri glared at him.

Obviously, a secret had been divulged.

Sharon was wounded. She’d been looking forward to the expedition for weeks; she and the kids always made an event of it, driving to one of the big malls in Seattle, having lunch in a special restaurant and seeing a movie in the evening. She sat down at the trestle table in the middle of the kitchen and demanded, “When was this?”

Matt looked bewildered. He didn’t understand a lot of what had been going on since the divorce.

“It was last weekend,” Briana confessed. Her expression was apologetic and entirely too adult. “Gramma said you’d been under a lot of strain lately—”

“A lot of strain?” Sharon echoed, rising from the bench like a rocket in a slow-motion scene from a movie.

“With the shop and everything,” Briana hastened to say.

“Quarterly taxes,” Matt supplied.

“And credit card billings,” added Briana.

Sharon sagged back to the bench. “I don’t need you two to list everything I’ve done in the past two months,” she said. Her disappointment was out of proportion to the situation; she realized that. Still, she felt like crying.

When Matt and Bri went off to watch television, she debated calling Tony for a few moments and then marched over to the wall phone and punched out his home number. He answered on the third ring.

Relief dulled Sharon’s anger. Tony wasn’t out on a date; that knowledge offered some comfort. Of course, it was early….

“This is Sharon,” she said firmly. “And before you panic, let me say that this is not an emergency call.”

“That’s good. What kind of call is it?” Tony sounded distracted; Sharon could visualize his actions so vividly—he was cooking—that she might as well have been standing in the small, efficient kitchen of his condo, watching him. Assuming, that is, that the kitchen was small and efficient. She’d never been there.

Sharon bit down on her lower lip and tears welled in her eyes. It was a moment before she could speak. “You’re going to think it’s silly,” she said, after drawing a few deep and shaky breaths, “but I don’t care. Tony, I was planning to take the kids shopping for their school clothes myself, like I always do. It was important to me.”

There was a pause, and then Tony replied “Mama thought she was doing you a favor.”

Dear Mama, with a forest of photographs growing on top of her television set. Photographs of Tony and Carmen. Sharon dragged a stool over from the breakfast bar with a practiced motion of one foot and slumped onto it. “I am not incompetent,” she said, shoving the fingers of one hand through her hair.

“Nobody said you were,” Tony immediately replied, and even though there was nothing in either his words or his tone to feed Sharon’s anger, it flared like a fire doused with lighter fluid.

She was so angry, in fact, that she didn’t trust herself to speak.

“Talk to me, Sharon,” Tony said gently.

If she didn’t do as he asked, Tony would get worried and come to the house, and Sharon wasn’t sure she could face him just now. “Maybe I don’t do everything perfectly,” she managed to say, “but I can look after Briana and Matt. Nobody has to step in and take over for me as though I were some kind of idiot.”

Tony gave a ragged sigh. “Sharon—”

“Damn you, Tony, don’t patronize me!” Sharon interrupted in a fierce whisper, that might have been a shout if two children hadn’t been in the next room watching television.

He was the soul of patience. Sharon knew he was being understanding just to make her look bad. “Sweetheart, will you listen to me?”

Sharon wiped away tears with the heel of her palm. Until then she hadn’t even realized that she was crying. “Don’t call me that,” she protested lamely. “We’re divorced.”

“God, if you aren’t the stubbornest woman I’ve ever known—”

Sharon hung up with a polite click and wasn’t at all surprised when the telephone immediately rang.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” Tony raged.

He wasn’t so perfect, after all. Sharon smiled. “I’m sorry,” she lied in dulcet tones.

It was after she’d extracted herself from the conversation and hung up that Sharon decided to take the kids to the island house in the morning. Maybe a few days spent combing the beaches on Vashon would restore her perspective.

She called Helen, her employee, to explain the change in plans, and then made the announcement.

The kids loved visiting the A-frame, and they were so pleased at the prospect that they went to bed on time without any arguments.

Sharon read until she was sleepy, then went upstairs and took a shower in the master bathroom. When she came out, wrapped in a towel, the kiss she and Tony had indulged in earlier replayed itself in her mind. She felt all the attendant sensations and longings and knew that it was going to be one of those nights.

Glumly, she put on blue silk pajamas, gathered a lightweight comforter and a pillow into her arms and went downstairs. It certainly wasn’t the first night she’d been driven out of the bedroom by memories, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

In the den Sharon made up the sofa bed, tossed the comforter over the yellow top sheet and plumped her pillow. Then she crawled under the covers, reaching out for the remote control for the TV.

A channel specializing in old movies filled the screen. There were Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers, gazing into each other’s eyes as they danced. “Does Fred Astaire know about this?” Sharon muttered.

If there was one thing she wasn’t in the mood for, it was romance. She flipped to a shopping network and watched without interest as a glamorous woman in a safari suit offered a complete set of cutlery at a bargain price.

Sharon turned off the television set, then the lamp on the end table beside her, and shimmied down under the covers. She yawned repeatedly, tossed and turned and punched her pillow, but sleep eluded her.

A deep breath told her why. The sheets were tinged with the faintest trace of Tony’s aftershave. There was no escaping thoughts of that man.

In the morning Sharon was grumpy and distracted. She made sure the kids had packed adequate clothes for the visit to the island and was dishing up dry cereal when Tony rapped at the back door and then entered.

“Well,” Sharon said dryly, “come on in.”

He had the good grace to look sheepish. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, as Briana and Matt flung themselves at him with shouts of joy. A person would have thought they hadn’t seen him in months.

“We’re going to the island!” Matt crowed.

“For three whole days!” added Briana.

Tony gave Sharon a questioning look over their heads. “Great,” he said with a rigid smile. When the kids rushed off to put their duffel bags in the station wagon, the car reserved for excursions involving kids or groceries, Sharon poured coffee into his favorite mug and shoved it at him.

“I was going to tell you,” she said.

He took a leisurely sip of the coffee before replying, “When? After you’d gotten back?”

Sharon hadn’t had a good night, and now she wasn’t having a good morning. Her eyes were puffy and her hair was pinned up into a haphazard knot at the back of her head. She hadn’t taken the time to put on makeup, and she was wearing the oldest pair of jeans she owned, along with a T-shirt she thought she remembered using to wash the roadster. She picked up her own cup and gulped with the enthusiastic desperation of a drunk taking the hair of the dog. “You’re making an awfully big deal out of this, aren’t you?” she hedged.

Tony shrugged. “If you’re taking the kids out of town,” he said, “I’d like to know about it.”

“Okay,” Sharon replied, enunciating clearly. “Tony, I am taking the kids out of town.”

His eyes were snapping. “Thanks,” he said, and then he headed right for the den. The man had an absolute genius for finding out things Sharon didn’t want him to know.

He came out with a payroll journal under one arm, looking puzzled. “You slept downstairs?”

Sharon took a moment to regret not making up the hide-a-bed, and then answered, “I was watching a movie. Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers.”

Tony leaned back against the counter. “The TV in our room doesn’t work?”

Sharon put her hands on her hips. “What is this, an audit? I felt like sleeping downstairs, all right?”

His grin was gentle and a little sad, and for a moment he looked as though he was about to confide something. In the end he finished his coffee, set the mug in the sink and went out to talk to the kids without saying another word to Sharon.

She hurried upstairs and hastily packed a bag of her own. A glance in the vanity mirror made her regret not putting on her makeup.

When she came downstairs again, the kids had finished their cereal and Tony was gone. Sharon felt both relief and disappointment. She’d gotten off to a bad start, but she was determined to salvage the rest of the day.

The Fates didn’t seem to be on Sharon’s side. The cash machine at the bank nearly ate her card, the grocery store was crowded and, on the way to the ferry dock, she had a flat tire.

It was midafternoon and clouds were gathering in the sky by the time she drove the station wagon aboard the ferry connecting Port Webster with Vashon Island and points beyond. Briana and Matt bought cinnamon rolls at the snack bar and went outside onto the upper deck to feed the gulls. Sharon watched them through the window, thinking what beautiful children they were, and smiled.

Briana had been a baby when her bewildered, young father had married Sharon. Sharon had changed Bri’s diapers, walked the floor with her when she had colic, kissed skinned knees and elbows to make them better. She had made angel costumes for Christmas pageants, trudged from house to house while Briana sold cookies for her Brownie troop and ridden shotgun on trick-or-treat expeditions.

She had earned her stripes as a mother.

The ferry whistle droned, and Sharon started in surprise. The short ride was over, and the future was waiting to happen.

She herded the kids below decks to the car, and they drove down the noisy metal ramp just as the heavy gray skies gave way to a thunderous rain.

2

Holding a bag of groceries in one arm, Sharon struggled with the sticky lock on the A-frame’s back door.

“Mom, I’m getting wet!” Briana complained from behind her.

Sharon sunk her teeth into her lower lip and gave the key a furious jiggle just as a lightning bolt sliced through the sky and then danced, crackling, on the choppy waters of the sound.

“Whatever you do, wire-mouth,” Matt told his sister, gesturing toward the gray clouds overhead, “don’t smile. You’re a human lightning rod.”

“Shut up, Matthew,” Sharon and Briana responded in chorus, just as the lock finally gave way.

Sharon’s ears were immediately met by an ominous hissing roar. She set the groceries down on the kitchen counter and flipped on the lights as Bri and Matt both rushed inside in search of the noise.

“Oh, ick!” Bri wailed, when they’d gone down the three steps leading from the kitchen to the dining and living room area. “The carpet’s all wet!”

Matt’s response was a whoop of delight. His feet made a loud squishing sound as he stomped around the table.

“Don’t touch any of the light switches,” Sharon warned, dashing past them and following the river of water upstream to the bathroom. The source of the torrent proved to be a broken pipe under the sink; she knelt to turn the valve and shut off the flow. “Now what do I do?” she whispered, resting her forehead against the sink cabinet. Instantly, her sneakers and the lower part of her jeans were sodden.

The telephone rang just as she was getting back to her feet, and Matt’s voice carried through the shadowy interior of the summer place she and Tony had bought after his family’s company had landed a particularly lucrative contract three years before. “Yeah, we got here okay, if you don’t count the flat tire. It’s real neat, Dad—a pipe must have broke or something because there’s water everywhere and the floor’s like mush—”

Sharon drew in a deep breath, let it out again and marched into the living room, where she summarily snatched the receiver from her son’s hand. “‘Neat’ is not the word I would choose,” she told her ex-husband sourly, giving Matt a look.

Tony asked a few pertinent questions and Sharon answered them. Yes, she’d found the source of the leak, yes, she’d turned off the valve, yes, the place was practically submerged.

“So who do I call?” she wanted to know.

“Nobody,” Tony answered flatly. “I’ll be there on the next ferry.”

Sharon needed a little distance; that was one of the reasons she’d decided to visit the island in the first place. “I don’t think that would be a good idea…” she began, only to hear a click. “Tony?”

A steady hum sounded in her ear.

Hastily, she dialed his home number; she got the answering machine. Sharon told it, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of its high-handed owner and hung up with a crash.

Both Bri and Matt were looking at her with wide eyes, their hair and jackets soaking from the rain. Maternal guilt swept over Sharon; she started to explain why she was frustrated with Tony and gave up in midstream, spreading her hands out wide and then slapping her thighs in defeat. “What can I say?” she muttered. “Take off your shoes and coats and get up on the sofa.”

Rain was thrumming against the windows, and the room was cold. Sharon went resolutely to the fireplace and laid crumpled newspaper and kindling in the grate, then struck a match. A cheery blaze caught as she adjusted the damper, took one of the paper-wrapped supermarket logs from the old copper caldron nearby and tossed it into the fire.

When she turned from that, Bri and Matt were both settled on the couch.

“Is Daddy coming?” Briana asked in a small voice.

Sharon sighed, feeling patently inadequate, and then nodded. “Yes.”

“How come you got so mad at him?” Matt wanted to know. “He just wants to help, doesn’t he?”

Sharon pretended she hadn’t heard the question and trudged back toward the kitchen, a golden oasis in the gloom. “Who wants hot chocolate?” she called, trying to sound lighthearted.

Both Bri and Matt allowed that cocoa would taste good right about then, but their voices sounded a little thin.

Sharon put water on to heat for instant coffee and took cocoa from the cupboard and milk and sugar from the bag of groceries she’d left on the counter. Outside the wind howled, and huge droplets of rain flung themselves at the windows and the roof. “I kind of like a good storm once in a while,” Sharon remarked cheerfully.

“What happens when we run out of logs?” Briana wanted to know. “We’ll freeze to death!”

Matt gave a gleeful howl at this. “Nobody freezes to death in August, blitz-brain.”

Sharon closed her eyes and counted to ten before saying, “Let’s just cease and desist, okay? We’re all going to have to take a positive approach here.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, the power went off.

Resigned to heeding her own advice, Sharon carried cups of lukewarm cocoa to the kids, then poured herself a mugful of equally unappealing coffee. Back in the living room, she threw another log on the fire, then peeled off her wet sneakers and socks and curled up in an easy chair.

“Isn’t this nice?” she asked.

Briana rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Mom. This is great.”

“Terrific,” agreed Matt, glaring into the fire.

“Maybe we could play a game,” Sharon suggested, determined.

“What?” scoffed Bri, stretching out both hands in a groping gesture. “Blindman’s buff?”

It was a little dark. With a sigh, Sharon tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Memories greeted her within an instant.

She and Tony had escaped to the island often that first summer after they bought the A-frame, bringing wine, romantic tapes for the stereo and very little else. They’d walked on the rocky beaches for hours, hand in hand, having so much to say to each other that the words just tumbled out, never needing to be weighed and measured first.

And later, when the sun had gone and a fire had been snapping on the hearth, they’d listened to music in the dark and made love with that tender violence peculiar to those who find each other fascinating.

Sharon opened her eyes, grateful for the shadows that hid the tears glimmering on her lashes. When did it change, Tony? she asked in silent despair. When did we stop making love on the floor, in the dark, with music swelling around us?

It was several moments before Sharon could compose herself. She shifted in her chair and peered toward Bri and Matthew.

They’d fallen asleep at separate ends of the long couch and, smiling, Sharon got up and tiptoed across the wet carpet to the stairs. At the top was an enormous loft divided into three bedrooms and a bath, and she entered the largest chamber, pausing for a moment at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sound.

In the distance Sharon saw the lights of an approaching ferry and, in spite of her earlier annoyance, her spirits were lifted by the sight. Being careful not to look at the large brass bed she and Tony had once shared—Lord knew, the living room memories were painful enough—she took two woolen blankets from the cedar chest at its foot and carried them back downstairs.

After covering the children, Sharon put the last store-bought log on the fire and then made her way back to the chair where she rested her head on one arm and sighed, her mind sliding back into the past again, her gaze fixed on the flames.

There had been problems from the first, but the trouble between Tony and herself had started gaining real momentum two years before, when Matt had entered kindergarten. Bored, wanting to accomplish something on her own, Sharon had immediately opened Teddy Bares, and things had gone downhill from that day forward. The cracks in the marriage had become chasms.

She closed her eyes with a yawn and sighed again. The next thing she knew, there was a thumping noise and a bright light flared beyond her lids.

Sharon awakened to see Tony crouched on the hearth, putting dry wood on the fire. His dark hair was wet and curling slightly at the nape of his neck, and she had a compulsion to kiss him there. At one time, she would have done it without thinking.

“Hello, handsome,” she said.

He looked back at her over one broad, denim-jacketed shoulder and favored her with the same soul-wrenching grin that had won her heart more than ten years before, when he’d walked into the bookstore where she was working and promptly asked her out. “Hi,” he replied in a low, rumbling whisper.

“Have you been here long?”

Tony shook his head, and the fire highlighted his ebony hair with shades of crimson. “Ten minutes, maybe.” She wondered if those shadows in his brown eyes were memories of other, happier visits to the island house.

She felt a need to make conversation. Mundane conversation unrelated to flickering firelight, thunderstorms, music and love. “Is the power out on the mainland, too?”

Again, Tony shook his head. There was a solemn set to his face, and although Sharon couldn’t read his expression now, she sensed that his thoughts were similar to hers. When he extended his hand, she automatically offered her own.

“I’m hungry,” complained a sleepy voice.

Tony grinned and let go of Sharon’s hand to ruffle his son’s hair. “So what else is new?”

“Dad, is that you?” The relief in the little boy’s voice made Sharon wonder if she’d handled things so badly that only Tony could make them better.

Tony’s chuckle was warm and reassuring, even to Sharon, who hadn’t thought she needed reassuring. “One and the same. You were right about the floor—it is like mush.”

Bri stirred at this, yawning, and then flung her arms around Tony’s neck with a cry of joy. “Can we go home?” she pleaded. “Right now?”

Tony set her gently away. “We can’t leave until we’ve done something about the flood problem—which means we’re going to have to rough it.” Two small faces fell, and he laughed. “Of course, by that I mean eating supper at the Sea Gull Café.”

“They’ve got lights?” Bri asked enthusiastically.

“And heat?” Matt added. “I’m freezing.”

“Nobody freezes in August,” Bri immediately quoted back to him. “Blitz-brain.”

“I see things are pretty much normal around here,” Tony observed in wry tones, his head turned toward Sharon.

She nodded and sat up, reaching for her wet socks and sneakers. “An element of desperation has been added, however,” she pointed out. “As Exhibit A, I give you these two, who have agreed to darken the doorway of the Sea Gull Café.”

“It doesn’t have that name for nothing, you know,” Bri said sagely, getting into her shoes. “Don’t anybody order the fried chicken.”

Tony laughed again and the sound, as rich and warm as it was, made Sharon feel hollow inside, and raw. She ached for things to be as they had been, but it was too late for too many reasons. Hoping was a fool’s crusade.

Rain was beating at the ground as the four of them ran toward Tony’s car. Plans encased in cardboard tubes filled the back seat, and the kids, used to their workaholic father, simply pushed them out of the way. Sharon, however, felt an old misery swelling in her throat and avoided Tony’s eyes when she got into the car beside him and fastened her seat belt.

She felt, and probably looked, like the proverbial drowned rat, and she started with surprise when the back of Tony’s hand gently brushed her cheek.

“Smile,” he said.

Sharon tried, but the effort faltered. To cover that she quipped, “How can I, when I’m condemned to a meal of sea gull, Southern-style?”

Tony didn’t laugh. Didn’t even grin. The motion of his hand was too swift and too forceful for the task of shifting the car into reverse.

Overlooking the angry water, the restaurant was filled with light and warmth and laughter. Much of the island’s population seemed to have gathered inside to compare this storm to the ones in ’56 or ’32 or ’77, to play the jukebox nonstop, and to keep the kitchen staff and the beaming waitresses hopping.

After a surprisingly short wait, a booth became available and the Morellis were seated.

Anybody would think we were still a family, Sharon thought, looking from one beloved, familiar face to another, and then at her own, reflected in the dark window looming above the table. Her hair was stringy and her makeup was gone. She winced.

When she turned her head, Tony was watching her. There was a sort of sad amusement in his eyes. “You look beautiful,” he said quietly.

Matt groaned, embarrassed that such a sloppy sentiment should be displayed in public.

“Kissy, kissy,” added Briana, not to be outdone.

“How does Swiss boarding school sound to you two?” Tony asked his children, without cracking a smile. “I see a place high in the Alps, with five nuns to every kid….”

Bri and Matt subsided, giggling, and Sharon felt a stab of envy at the easy way he dealt with them. She was too tired, too hungry, too vulnerable. She purposely thought about the rolled blueprints in the back seat of Tony’s car and let the vision fuel her annoyance.

The man never went anywhere or did anything without dragging some aspect of Morelli Construction along with him, and yet he couldn’t seem to understand why Teddy Bares meant so much to her.

By the time the cheeseburgers, fries and milk shakes arrived, Sharon was on edge. Tony gave her a curious look, but made no comment.

When they returned to the A-frame, the power was back on. Sharon sent the kids upstairs to bed, and Tony brought a set of tools in from the trunk of his car, along with a special vacuum cleaner and fans.

While Sharon operated the vacuum, drawing gallon after gallon of water out of the rugs, Tony fixed the broken pipe in the bathroom. When that was done, he raised some of the carpet and positioned the fans so that they would dry the floor beneath.

Sharon brewed a fresh pot of coffee and poured a cup for Tony, determined to do better than she had in the restaurant as the modern ex-wife. Whatever that was.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” she said with a stiff smile, extending the mug of coffee.

Tony, who was sitting at the dining table by then, a set of the infernal blueprints unrolled before him, gave her an ironic look. “The hell you do,” he said. Then, taking the coffee she offered, he added a crisp, “Thanks.”

Sharon wrenched back a chair and plopped into it. “Wait one second here,” she said when Tony would have let the blueprints absorb his attention again. “Wait one damn second. I do appreciate your coming out here.”

Tony just looked at her, his eyes conveying his disbelief…and his anger.

“Okay,” Sharon said on a long breath. “You heard the message I left on your answering machine, right?”

“Right,” he replied, and the word rumbled with a hint of thunder.

“I didn’t really mean that part where I called you an officious, overbearing—” Her voice faltered.

“Chauvinistic jerk,” Tony supplied graciously.

Sharon bit her lower lip, then confessed, “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it in exactly those terms. It was just that—well, I’m never going to know whether or not I can handle a crisis if you rush to the rescue every time I have a little problem—”

“Why are you so damn scared of needing me?” Tony broke in angrily.

Sharon pushed back her chair and went to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for herself. When she returned, she felt a bit more composed than she had a few moments before.

She changed the subject. “I was thinking,” she said evenly, “about how it used to be with us before your construction company became so big—before Teddy Bares…”

Tony gave a ragged sigh. “Those things are only excuses, Sharon, and you know it.”

She glanced toward the fire, thinking of nights filled with love and music. Inside, her heart ached. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said woodenly.

“You’re a liar,” Tony responded with cruel directness, and then he was studying the blueprints again.

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” Sharon asked after a few minutes, trying to sound disinterested, unconcerned, too sophisticated to worry about little things like beds and divorces.

Tony didn’t look up. His only reply was a shrug.

Sharon yawned. “Well, I think I’ll turn in,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Tony responded in a bland tone, still immersed in the plans for the next project.

Sharon fought an utterly childish urge to spill her coffee all over his blueprints and left the table. Halfway up the stairs, she looked back and saw that Tony was watching her.

For a moment she froze in the grip of some unnamed emotion passing between them, but her paralysis was broken when Tony dropped his gaze to his work.

Upstairs, Sharon took a quick shower, brushed her teeth, pulled on a cotton nightgown and crawled into the big, lonely bed. Gazing up at the slanted ceilings and blinking back tears of frustration, she wriggled down under the covers and ordered herself to sleep.

But instead of dreaming, Sharon reviewed the events of the evening and wondered why she couldn’t talk to Tony anymore. Each time she tried, she ended up baiting him, or sliding some invisible door closed between them, or simply running away.

She was painfully conscious of his nearness and of her need for him, which had not been assuaged by months of telling herself that the relationship was over. She put one hand over her mouth to keep from calling his name.

From downstairs she heard the low but swelling strains of familiar music. Once, the notes had rippled over her like the rays of the sun on a pond, filling her with light. They had flung her high on soaring crescendos, even as she clung to Tony and cried out in passion….

Sharon burrowed beneath the covers and squeezed her eyes shut and, an eternity later, she slept. When she awakened the room was filled with sunlight and the scent of fresh coffee.

After a long, leisurely stretch, Sharon opened her eyes. A dark head rested on the pillow beside hers, and she felt a muscular leg beneath the softness of her thigh.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, “we made love and I missed it!”

A hoarse laugh sounded from the pillow. “No such luck,” Tony said. “Our making love, I mean. We didn’t.”

Sharon sat up, dragging the sheets up to cover her bosom even though she was wearing a modest cotton nightgown. She distinctly remembered putting it on, and with a quick motion of her hands, she lifted the sheet just far enough away from her body that she could check. The nightgown was still in evidence.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing, Tony Morelli?” she demanded furiously.

He rolled onto his back, not even bothering to open his eyes, and simultaneously pulled the covers up over his face, muttering insensibly all the while.

“You guys made up, huh?” Briana asked from the doorway. She was all smiles and carrying two cups of coffee, hence the delicious aroma.

“No, we didn’t,” Sharon said primly.

“Not a very diplomatic answer,” Tony observed from beneath the covers. “Now, she’s going to ask—”

“Then how come you’re in bed together?” the child demanded.

“See?” said Tony.

Sharon elbowed him hard, and crimson color flooded her face. “I don’t know,” she said with staunch conviction.

Briana brought the coffee to the end table on Sharon’s side of the bed, and some of it slopped over when she set the cups down. There were tears brimming in her eyes.

“Damn you, Tony,” Sharon whispered, as though there were no chance of Bri’s not hearing what she said. “Explain this to her—right now!”

With a groan, Tony dramatically fought his way out from under the blankets and sat up. “There’s only one bed,” he said reasonably, running a hand through his rumpled hair and then yawning again. “The couch is too short for me, so I just crawled in with your mom.”

“Oh,” Bri said grudgingly, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

“She didn’t understand,” Sharon lamented.

Tony reached past her to collect one of the cups of coffee. “Kids don’t need to understand everything,” he said.

If the man hadn’t been holding a steaming hot cup of coffee, Sharon would have slapped him. As it was, she glared at him and stretched out a hand for her own cup.

After a while Tony got up and wandered into the adjoining bathroom, and Sharon didn’t look to see whether or not he was dressed. When he returned, he crawled back into bed with her, rolling over so that one of his legs rested across both of hers.

His mouth descended toward hers, smelling of toothpaste, and he was definitely not dressed.

“Tony, don’t—”

The kiss was warm, gentle and insistent. Sharon trembled as all the familiar sensations were awakened, but she also braced both hands against Tony’s chest and pushed.

The motion didn’t eliminate all intimate contact—Tony had shifted his weight so that he was resting lightly on top of her—but it did make it possible to speak.

“No,” Sharon said clearly.

Tony slid downward, kissing her jawline, the length of her neck, her collarbone.

“No,” she repeated with less spirit.

His lips trailed across her collarbone and then downward. He nibbled at her breast through the thin fabric of her nightgown.

Her voice was a whimper. “No,” she said for the third time.

Tony’s mouth came to hers; his tongue traced the outline of her lips. “You don’t mean that,” he told her.

Sharon was about to admit he was right when there was a knock at the door and Bri called out in sunny tones, “Breakfast is served!”

Tony was sitting up, both hands buried in his hair, when Briana and Matt entered the room carrying trays.

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