Whereas Paige had never wanted those things. All Paige had ever wanted was to love a man with a true heart. A good man. A worthy man.
And he'd never felt worthy of Paige.
He still didn't. Especially when he couldn't erase his marriage to Whitney. When Paige would never be able to forget that he'd slept in Whitney's bed, tried to have children with her sister. That Whitney was the sister he'd chosen back then, even if he chose her for all the wrong reasons. He worried that his past and the terrible choice he'd made would forever stand between them like a living, breathing human being.
And yet...
He couldn't turn away from Paige. Couldn't shut down this need, this attraction, this connection. Maybe it was the revelation of what he'd been running from all those years ago. Her beautiful, caring nature. Her pure love. His own feelings of unworthiness.
But even as he lowered his mouth to hers for a good-bye kiss, his gut cried out that it couldn't be good-bye. He needed her, wanted her. Last night and this morning would never be enough. He wanted more beautiful days on the beach with her. More long conversations in his library. More nights in her bed. More of her.
In an instant, the good-bye kiss stopped being sweet or nice...or good-bye. He held her face in his hands and plundered her gorgeous lips. She opened with hunger, taking him with the same desperation he felt, a moan purring in her throat.
Not enough, never enough.
He devoured her. Consumed the air right out of her lungs. And they still weren't close enough.
Bending, he hauled her up against his body, her legs rising to his waist. He cupped her, held her tight, her center hot against all his hardness. She shoved the door all the way open, and with his hands under her butt and her arms anchoring him to her, he carried her inside.
He'd barely kicked the door closed behind them when she tore at his clothes, their lips still locked together. First his jacket, then the buttons of his shirt. He let her feet slide to the entry floor. He heard the suitcase fall on its side as his foot knocked it out of the way.
He threw her coat somewhere, heard the zipper thwack the wall. Then he whipped her sweater over her head. "You are so beautiful." He cupped each gorgeous breast, feasting on them.
"Shoes," she said. "Everything. Please. I want it all off. Now."
Then there were just hands, mouths, gasped breaths, and the rustle of clothing as they ripped and tore and tossed. Something fell off a table and rolled across the carpet as he dragged her down to the floor in her living room. Her scent was a mixture of sea air and chocolate. He buried his face between her breasts and gloried in her moan as he took a tight peak into his mouth.
"Evan. Oh God." She arched against him, riding him.
Never enough. He tore off her panties, the last scrap of fabric between them, needing his hands on her, in her. She was so wet, so hot, and he couldn't think, couldn't breathe with the want so tight in his gut. He crawled down her body until finally he could taste her. Her cries filled the room, filled his head, and she tangled her fingers in his hair, tugging him closer, needing, wanting as urgently as he did.
Her explosion rocked them both, and she was still high when he plunged deep inside her, her body still contracting as he hit home. But he needed so much more, and she urged him on with her hands, her lips, her tongue. Begging wordlessly.
He took her hard, driving their bodies across the carpet, and yet she clung to him, crying out his name, pleading for more, higher, harder, deeper. He lost his mind, he was simply sensation and desire, his need so powerful that it roared in his ears. They were one body, one mind, one heartbeat, one being, and together they flew to the highest peak and flung themselves off, falling into endless pleasure and bottomless bliss.
He held her tight. She was such perfection in his arms. But then thought returned. Realization.
"Did I hurt you?" He remembered the carpet against her soft skin.
She stroked his cheek. "You could never hurt me."
But he could. So badly. "I didn't mean to do that." His words were hoarse, raw from pleasure. And the guilt germinating inside him. He never wanted to hurt her, not physically, not emotionally. "I didn't intend to drag you inside and devour you in your entryway."
"I loved being devoured. And we both did the dragging inside." She kissed the tip of his nose. "But I think we also both need some time and space to process."
His chest tightened. Terror, that's what it was. Terror that she'd think and process...and end up choosing a life without him. She'd promised him otherwise at the hotel, said she'd always be there. But his mother had promised always to be there for him--and she'd vanished like a ghost.
When Paige looked into his eyes, he swore she could read his thoughts--even as mangled and twisted as they were. "Don't overthink it, okay? You. Me. Together. We're beautiful. Remember that."
"I can't forget it."
She touched her lips to his, then started to pull away, but he wrapped his hand around her nape, taking her lips in a long, decadent sip. She opened to him again, so beautiful, so trusting despite everything. And he wanted them to stay here, just like this, forever.
But in the end, though it felt like the hardest thing he'd ever done, he let her go. Rolling to his feet, he put his clothes on. She was dressed too by the time he opened the door, and she went up on her toes, kissing him once more. His heart ached with the gentleness of it, but he didn't beg her to let him stay.
Because he had to let her go. They needed time, just like she said. He'd hurt her all those years ago, and he could so easily hurt her again.
Because Paige loved him.
He hadn't been worthy of her love nine years ago.
Was there any chance that he could be worthy of her now?
*
Paige closed her door and leaned against it. Nothing was certain with Evan, but she still felt dreamy and sexy and giddy--all the things that people in love felt. She could have gotten him to stay the night. She certainly could have lured him into making love to her again.
But where the lovemaking they'd just shared had been instinctive--utterly impossible to resist on both their parts--if she'd angled for the whole night, that would have been manipulation. And though her heart was on the line, she refused to be like her sister, manipulating Evan to her advantage, wheedling to get what she wanted.
He needed time to build his trust--anyone in his situation would. It might take months, maybe even until after the divorce was final. And after he'd worked out his feelings for his mother.
He hadn't said he loved her. And she hadn't expected it.
But she had hoped for it. For Evan to look at her and see everything he'd ever wanted. To tell her she was the woman who had been in his heart all along.
She was lost in her turbulent thoughts when her doorbell rang. She jumped away from the door, joy infusing every cell of her body at the thought that Evan had already done his thinking. That he was back to say he wanted to be with her. That he might even be here to say that he loved her.
She jerked the door open, breathless, excited, hopeful.
And found Whitney standing there instead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Paige's blood roared in her ears like the engines of Evan's jet.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" Whitney's voice was nauseatingly sweet.
Paige couldn't reply. Couldn't get her lips or her voice to work. Not when all her joy in the weekend, in the perfect beach date today, in every beautiful moment she and Evan had shared together, was dying a nasty, brutal death beneath her sister's gaze. But though her tongue couldn't move, her legs did what they always had before--stepped back to let Whitney in.
Her sister wore an elegant black dress with gold trim. Her auburn hair caught the light, her brows were perfectly arched, and her lipstick was an exact match to her red-tipped nails. In her stiletto heels, she towered over Paige in her bare feet.
Whitney was glamorous, Paige wasn't. Just like usual.
And yet an insistent v
oice inside her head cried out that it was her body, her skin, and her heart that still sang from Evan's kisses, his caresses. From his total possession.
"You've been ignoring my calls since I returned from the south of France."
"I've been busy." She'd ignored Whitney's calls since that first glorious, wonderful kiss with Evan in Chicago before the wedding.
The kiss from her sister's husband who was an ex in every way but the legal one.
"Where have you been?" Whitney drawled, looking pointedly at the small suitcase on the floor. The one Evan had kicked on its side before he'd ripped Paige's clothes off.
Her purse lay beside the case, and her jacket was still on the floor where Evan had thrown it. A bowl on the living room side table had fallen, rolling across the carpet. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. Paige could only hope Whitney was too busy drilling her about why she hadn't taken her calls to notice.
She barely avoided putting a hand to her hair to straighten the locks Evan had run his fingers through. "I just returned from a trip to see Susan and Bob."
"Weren't you just there for the wedding?" Whitney widened her eyes beneath her perfect makeup.
Paige's mind strove furiously for an explanation. The same way she always reacted to Whitney, defending, rationalizing. But that voice inside her was louder now.
You don't have to do this anymore. You never did.
Paige stood taller, her shoulders straighter. "Why I went there isn't your business."
Instead of unleashing her wrath, Whitney smiled as if she'd just reeled in a fish who hadn't put up much of a fight. "But it is my business why you were with my husband, isn't it?" She batted her thick, false eyelashes.
Whitney paused. Waited for Paige to understand her true meaning.
Like an ice pick to the heart, the realization hit Paige that her sister must have seen their tumble through her door. And then, a good while later, she'd watched Evan leave, his clothes hastily donned, his hair a mess after their lovemaking.
Just as Paige's was. Whitney had seen everything, from the suitcase tipped sideways, to the jacket, to the bowl in the middle of the living room floor.
No. God, no. It was the very last thing Paige and Evan needed, for Whitney to plunk herself down right in the middle of what was already such a complicated--and tentative--new relationship.
"You're screwing him." Whitney's voice turned malicious, her face lined with rage. "Aren't you, you dirty little slut?"
Paige's fierce response was instinctive. "Don't call me that." Her legs might have stepped aside to let her sister in...but her heart refused to do the same.
Whitney wasn't listening. She'd never listened to anyone.
"How could you betray me like this? Your own sister." Moisture glittered in Whitney's eyes. On anyone else, Paige might have thought the tears were real, but she knew her sister too well. The tears were designed to make Paige feel guilty, to drive home the guilt as Whitney injected a pathetic wobble into her voice. "I've needed you so badly since he left me." She pointed her finger in Paige's face, all pretense of tears vanishing. "But you. Weren't. There." She punctuated every word with fury. "Instead, you were off screwing my husband." Venom smeared every syllable. "What would Mom think of that after you promised her you'd take care of Daddy and me?" Then she hit Paige with her worst. "But you let Daddy die. And now you've stolen Evan from me."
Paige knew exactly what Whitney was doing. Her sister was a master at making a person squirm, at pushing just the right button to make her opponent cry or scream or give in. Paige knew.
Yet the accusations still cut her to ribbons. Her heart felt raw and bleeding, flayed open as if Whitney had the skill of Jack the Ripper.
Paige had failed her mother. She'd failed her father. She'd even failed Evan, because she'd never told him what Whitney was like beneath all the glitter and elegance and lies.
But her parents were dead. Evan wasn't. He deserved another chance at happiness.
And--goddammit!--Paige deserved to be happy too.
Nine years had been way too long to wait for Evan. But thirty years had been an absolute eternity of being Whitney's emotional slave. That story she'd told Evan about the rope swing had been one tiny glimmer of decency in years of bondage. And Paige wouldn't let one more second pass playing the role of protector that her mother had given her. Just as Evan had to deal with the bad choices his mother had made, so did Paige with her own mother.
Guilt and duty had been her constant companions all these years. This moment brought righteous anger. Hopefully, the future would bring forgiveness.
But it was anger that gave her the strength to hold her own and say, "What would Mom think of what you did, Whitney?"
Whitney sniffed haughtily. "You mean be the best wife I could to Evan and still keep my sanity?"
"No." Paige's voice was sharp enough to cut through Whitney's smugness, her eyebrows rising in surprise. "What you did to Evan was horrible. Unthinkable. Unforgivable. You lied, not just once, but three times." She held up a finger when Whitney opened her mouth. "Oh wait, four times, when we count the tubal ligation you never told him about."
"It's my body. I can do what I want with it."
"Except lie about it to your husband." She advanced a step and Whitney actually backed up. Paige had never challenged her sister before. Never gone head to head like this. It was so hard. But so incredibly satisfying. To finally speak up with a voice that she'd held in for far too long. "Mom would have been really upset by what you did."
"She would have supported me because she loved me."
"You're right. She would have pretended you made a mistake and told herself that what you did wasn't deliberate. But I know it was." Paige steeled everything deep inside and said the things she should have said years ago. "I don't support you. I don't support what you did. And I'm not giving you any sympathy. Unless you can admit how wrong you were and ask Evan's forgiveness, I'm not taking your calls, and I don't want to see you."
Whitney stared as if Paige were ready for the asylum, all wrapped up in a straitjacket. "You don't mean that." Shock threaded her words.
"I do." Paige crossed her arms. "Every word."
The storm built on Whitney's features, her cheekbones reddening, her eyes narrowing, and her lips pursing into a thin, ugly line.
"You bitch." A tiny fleck of spittle flew out of her mouth. She crowded Paige, backing her into the living room. "He might enjoy screwing you. He might have fun being worshipped by poor little Paige who always wanted him but couldn't have him. But do you actually think he could ever love you? Because he'll never stop loving me." Whitney stabbed a finger into her breastbone with an audible thud. "You're a fool if you let yourself forget that the moment he saw me that first day, he forgot all about you. It was so damn easy to take him away from you. But you still hung around all these years, begging for scraps, always underfoot, always hoping he'd notice you. It would actually be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. My friends and I used to laugh about it all the time." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "Poor Paige, the pathetic little puppy dog drooling after my husband. Did you really think you could steal him away from me? I can have him back with a simple snap of my fingers. I just haven't tried. But now you've given me a reason to do it."
Whitney's gaze was rabid, her features a mottled blue-red with her rage.
But Paige's rage was just as potent. "You knew how I felt about Evan back then?"
Whitney rolled her eyes. "I know everything about you. How you think. What you'll do. You're so pitifully transparent."
Whitney had used Paige to prop up her own ego, to make herself feel superior. She'd taken Evan simply because she could. Because Paige wanted him, and Whitney couldn't stand to let her sister win. "You never really loved him, did you?"
Whitney waved that away, as if the whole question of love was preposterous. "You didn't deserve him. You were too weak. He needed me to push him. To help him become the billionaire he was supposed to be. Lord knows if he'd ended up
with you, he'd probably be tossing a baseball to a snotty-nosed kid in a little yard somewhere." She looked disgusted by the image. "He was meant for bigger things than just being a father."
Paige had always known about Whitney's ugly traits, that she could trample people like they were ants in her path. But this was diabolical.
Purely malicious.
As a psychologist, Paige should have seen it. That was part of the reason she'd chosen her career, to figure it all out. But she never had, not truly. She hadn't been able to see the truth right in front of her. Hadn't wanted to see, because the truth was too close. It was too difficult to admit that the monster was real, that her sister was a sociopath who had never loved anyone but herself.
Until Whitney shined a spotlight and forced her to see.
"You've lost him," Paige told the woman who was no longer her family. Blood had bound them together...until poison destroyed that bond. "Not because of me, but because he finally sees what you really are." She looked at Whitney in her designer dress and towering high heels. Really looked for the first time. "He won't ever be back."
Whitney laughed, a hollow, grating sound. Like the wicked witch. Then she snapped her fingers. "That's how easy it'll be to get him back." She shrugged, a rude and careless shift of her shoulders. "Or maybe I'll just take every penny he has after I prove he was screwing my very own sister behind my back."
"Then all your friends will call you the drooling idiot, won't they, Whitney? You wouldn't want them to know your pathetic, puppy-dog sister stole him away from you, would you?"
Whitney growled, tossed her hair over her shoulder, opened the front door, and slammed it on the way out, shaking the whole building.
Paige looked at the door, feeling like an earthquake had just rumbled through her. Or a tornado had snapped her up and spun her hard and fast.
And yet, she was lighter too.
For her whole life she'd kowtowed to her sister. But she never would again.
Paige's career was helping people achieve freedom after years of emotional oppression. Finally, she'd done it for herself.