The Forbidden Marriage

Nursing Zak was something else again. She didn’t know how long she could keep up a pretense of indifference when everything about him set off her latent hormones.

It wasn’t just that he was a beautiful man according to the male order of beauty. After all, he’d been a very attractive teen. It was more than that. There was something in the way he moved, talked—his unique outlook on life—that aura of confidence and self assurance he’d always possessed—

All of it had combined to make him incredibly appealing to her and undoubtedly to any woman who knew him.

As if they had a will of their own, her eyes met his while he was drinking his Coke.

“You always did know what I needed,” he said between swallows.

Michelle could scarcely breathe. The only thing to do was put distance between them.

“As long as Graham is on his way, and you’ve got your sister to help you, I’m going to leave for my house and come back for you in the morning. There’s a lot I have to do.”

She felt Zak’s penetrating glance. “Don’t forget your swimsuit.”

While the blood was still pounding in her ears she heard a voice ask, “Where are you going?”

To her shock, her niece had come in the bedroom and Michelle hadn’t even been aware of it.

Sherilyn stared in dismay at her daughter. “No hello first?”

Zak rested the can against his powerful thigh. His eyes still held Michelle’s. “I’m taking Florence Nightingale home with me tomorrow. Technically speaking she’ll be driving me, but it amounts to the same thing.”

Michelle was aware that if Lynette could wish her to the other side of the ocean, she’d be there now.

Poor Lynette. No male students her age or any other could possibly compete with her uncle Zak.

“Michelle? When should I take his temperature again?”

Heat swamped her cheeks to realize Sherilyn had been asking her a question.

“This afternoon,” she said. “Hopefully by then the fluids and medicine will have settled his stomach. If it’s still elevated, give him some Ibuprofen. Get him up every hour to use the bathroom or walk around the room for a minute. I’ll be by at nine a.m.”

“In that case you’d better have an early night.” Zak’s unmistakable reference to her date with Mike reached her ears even though she’d disappeared from the bedroom.

CHAPTER TWO

“THANK you for dinner, Mike. I’d invite you in, but I still have some packing to do.”

His arm was stretched out across the back of the seat. He toyed with the natural curl of her blond hair that curved beneath her jawline. To her chagrin she felt no accompanying shiver of excitement.

“That’s all right. Carlsbad’s close to my grandparents’ beach house at San Clemente. Before we leave for Australia we’ll have a lot of nights together after your brother-in-law has gone to sleep.”

His words conjured an image of Zak lying on top of the bed this morning. Just remembering how he’d looked, how he’d made her feel, sent a flood of heat through her system.

Desperate for Mike to create that same kind of yearning inside her, she leaned toward him and pressed her mouth to his. It was the first time she’d taken the initiative in their relationship.

On a moan, he pulled her close and kissed her hungrily.

She should have expected this explosion of need on his part. They’d spent the last two months together while she’d helped him with his therapy. He was a normal male with normal desires.

She tried to get into it, but it seemed like the more she tried, the more it became the clinical experiment that it was. Before he started enjoying this too much, she pulled away guiltily.

“Good night, Mike. No—stay where you are.”

He reached for her hand and kissed the palm. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He looked too happy.

With a quick nod, she opened the door of his sports car and got out. It only took a second to reach the lighted front porch of the house. She waved to him before letting herself inside.

Long after the purr of the motor had faded, Michelle was still standing in the middle of the living room, immobilized.

She should never have kissed Mike like that.

He’d been very patient with her so far. She knew he was hoping they’d become intimate in Australia. After reaching out to him just now, he was counting on it. But the whole situation had backfired on her because she couldn’t imagine kissing him again.

In truth, she couldn’t bear the thought of him touching her. The chemistry wasn’t there. It never would be. She knew that now.

Mike was a wonderful man. If he didn’t reconcile with his ex-wife, then he deserved to find a woman he could set on fire by her just thinking about him. Michelle wasn’t that person.

After her disturbing response to Zak who’d done absolutely nothing to make her come alive, she realized she couldn’t go on giving Mike hope. It wouldn’t be fair to him.

When he called her tomorrow, she would tell him Zak’s injury was more serious than she’d realized. Her brother-in-law was going to need her help for an indefinite period, so she wouldn’t be able to fly to Sydney with him after all.

The sooner Mike learned the truth, the sooner he could deal with his disappointment and move on. With a golf tournament coming up in a month, he needed to focus on his game.

Her gaze wandered around the room of the modest ranch style home where she and Rob had lived. It was here she’d nursed her husband until the last month when he’d had to be in the hospital.

After his death she’d liked getting away from it for weeks, even months at a time, then returning for a few days’ rest before another job came along.

Now a new job had come along. One she couldn’t have turned down without raising questions she couldn’t answer.

But this was a job different from any she’d had before.

She buried her face in her hands. How was she going to handle living with Zak day and night for the next month and not give herself away?

Until this morning she’d thought maybe she’d never feel the desire for physical intimacy with anyone again.

But one minute in Zak’s presence and she’d turned into a trembling mass of needs he’d ignited without even touching her or being aware of his effect on her.

She drew in a ragged breath.

Was it because Zak was so much younger than her husband or the men she’d been dating who were closer to forty, like Mike?

Rob had been thirty-seven to her thirty when she’d married him. They’d enjoyed a satisfying love life when he wasn’t too exhausted from being up in the night with sick children. She’d tried to get pregnant but it hadn’t happened.

After he fell ill, they mostly held each other. Some days and nights he felt good enough to make love, but those times grew less frequent as the disease took over.

Could it be she was one of those needy, over-the-hill widows whose senses only responded to the virility of youth anymore? She’d be thirty-six next March with a marriage already behind her.