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  No. If something was bothering Fletcher, he would confide in Cleo eventually. He loved her. He trusted her. He had said so himself the night he proposed.

  And since then, whispered a sly voice in her head, he hasn’t said he loves you again.

  He hadn’t. Not once. Except for during their wedding vows, obliquely, when he’d promised—as all grooms do—to love, honor and cherish his bride.

  “Shut up,” she said aloud to silence her own negative thoughts.

  Sheesh. What was the matter with her? Had marrying the man she loved turned her into a whiny clinging vine? Was she suddenly someone who needed constant reassurance that her man adored her and would never stray?

  Uh-uh. She was a self-sufficient person with a job she loved and a fulfilling life—even before you added her gorgeous, sexy husband and adorable stepdaughter to the mix. Whining and clinging simply weren’t her style.

  She brushed her hair and put a big smile on her face and went out to the kitchen, where she found Fletcher and Ashlyn already at the breakfast table.

  “There you are, you sleepyhead Cleo.” Ashlyn held out her arms. Cleo went over and gave her a quick hug. She sent Fletcher a bright smile. “Mornin’.”

  “Good morning.” He didn’t smile back—but his eyes said he remembered the heat and wonder of a few hours before. Cleo took a seat and Mrs. Dolby served her the usual poached eggs on toast.

  That day, since Fletcher had to work, Cleo took Ashlyn to her house in Summerlin.

  “We are packing things up today,” Cleo explained once she’d led the little girl inside.

  “Packing things up,” Ashlyn repeated with great seriousness. Then she frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I live with you and your daddy now.”

  “And I like that!”

  “Me, too. But it means I don’t need this little house anymore. So I’m going to put a lot of my things in boxes and tape them up and sell some and give some away—and store the rest. And then I’ll put the house on the market.”

  Ashlyn was frowning again. “Cleo, even if it’s not a big house, I think it will still be much, much too heavy.”

  Cleo constantly marveled at the literal nature of the five-year-old mind. “You mean, too heavy to lift and put on the market?”

  “Yes.” Ashlyn nodded, very solemn.

  So Cleo explained what the phrase on the market meant, after which the two of them got to work.

  They started in the kitchen. Cleo assigned Ashlyn the job of boxing up the drawers of utensils and the pots and pans in the lower cabinets—all easy-to-reach sturdy stuff that wasn’t likely to suffer at the mercy of eager five-year-old hands.

  There was much clanging of pots and clinking of flatware, but within an hour Ashlyn had packed four boxes in her own enthusiastic but not in the least organized style. About then she started losing interest. So Cleo led her to the living room and turned on the Disney channel. Ashlyn perched among the sofa pillows and Cleo returned to packing up the kitchen.

  At the back of a high cupboard she found a blue mug with Danny printed on it in bold red letters. He’d brought it over last fall and teased her that it was his own personal mug and she’d better never use it….

  The memory kind of tugged at her heartstrings. He was such a great guy. She’d forgotten the mug that final evening when she’d been gathering up his things for him. Not a big deal. She would mail it to him.

  When she started in on her bedroom, she found an old T-shirt of his with Head Mechanic on the front of it in gothic script. She also found a pair of flip-flops he’d left and a studded black leather belt. It made her feel sentimental to see those things of Danny’s, to gather them up and put them in a box to send to him.

  He’d been a good friend. She hated to lose him, but sometimes you had to make choices in life. You couldn’t have everything, that was just the way it was. She knew that she’d hurt Danny. And also that the best thing she could do for him—and for herself—was let him go and move on.

  She worked until noon, then she and Ashlyn returned to the penthouse at Impresario. They’d left Fletcher at work in his study. He was gone when they returned.

  Mrs. Dolby had a message from him. “He said to tell you he had a few things to take care of that just couldn’t wait.”

  Ashlyn shook her head. “My daddy is so busy.”

  “He certainly is,” Cleo agreed. She put on a bright smile for her stepdaughter. “Well. Shall we make ourselves some sandwiches?”

  “Okay,” said Ashlyn. “And then, after lunch, I think I’ll write another book.”

  Again that night Fletcher didn’t come home until late. Cleo woke when he pulled back the covers. He reached for her. She wrapped her arms around him, breathed in the masculine scent of him….

  And realized as she did it that she was checking for the scent of another woman.

  But no. There was nothing. Just Fletcher and his heat and his wonderful kisses. She looked in his eyes while he was loving her and all her nagging doubts flew away.

  He was her husband. She loved him and he loved her and everything would be okay.

  A little later, after the loving, as they lay side by side and she was just drifting toward sleep, he turned his head her way. “There’s a box addressed to your old boyfriend on the table in the foyer….”

  She tried to read his eyes through the shadows: jealous? Suspicious? Merely curious? She couldn’t have said. “I found some things of his while I was packing up over at my house. I’ll mail them back to him tomorrow.”

  “You miss him?”

  She told the truth, though she knew a lie would have been easier. “A little. He’s…a good person. He was a good friend.”

  “Yeah.” Somehow he made the word just a little bit threatening. “He seemed like a real nice guy.”

  “He is—and Fletcher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I haven’t seen him since he broke it off with me. And I won’t see him. I think it’s, um, better that way.”

  He reached across and clasped her shoulder, pulling her toward him, guiding her onto her side. He shifted, too—and they were facing each other. “I not only think it’s better,” he whispered, “I know it is.”

  She gave him a quivery smile and pressed her body to his, reveling as she always did in the very feel of him. At the cove where her thighs met, he stirred and hardened. She felt her own body melting, yearning, readying for him all over again.

  He dipped his dark head and captured her mouth. She gave her kiss willingly, opening to the wet thrust of his seeking tongue. His lean, knowing hands cupped her breasts….

  Oh, this truly was heaven, making love with this man. This was when she really knew him, when she never felt cut off or distant from him, never wondered if he kept secrets he would never share.

  Those magic hands of his went wandering, stroking, arousing. His mouth left hers to kiss her neck, the hollow of her throat, the wings of her collarbones.

  He pushed back the covers, called her beautiful and kissed her all over, finally lifting her thighs and settling them over his shoulders to give her the most intimate kisses of all. His tongue claimed her, stroking her, knowing her.

  She shattered in seconds with a sharp cry. Then he swept up her body and she knew he meant to bury himself deep in her eager wetness.

  But she didn’t let him. Oh, no. She pushed on his chest until he gave in and lay back.

  And then she exacted her erotic revenge. She kissed him as he’d kissed her—all over, with great care. Then she took him, so hard and ready, in her hand and she lowered her mouth slowly down over him. He let out a low cry then, and she smiled as she lifted her mouth— and lowered it down over him once more.

  Groaning, he caught her head between his strong hands, fingers splayed in her hair. She lowered her mouth again—and again he cried out.

  “Can’t wait.” He groaned. “Now, Cleo. Here, with me. Now…”

  So she moved up his body, claiming his lips, and slowly, by agonizing
degrees, she lowered herself onto him.

  They didn’t last long. Behind her eyelids she saw stars. And then he was grabbing her, rolling her beneath him.

  They sailed over the edge together, flying, soaring— and coming to rest at last in their own bed, held close in each other’s arms.

  Close.

  Yes. She did feel close to him then, in those glorious moments when they found ecstasy together. But the rest of the time?

  No.

  The next day it was the same. He worked late and got home after she was asleep. Tuesday, the same thing again. And Wednesday, as well.

  His absence was becoming routine. There was never time to talk, never an opportunity to discuss what seemed to be happening between them—the distance that yawned greater each day.

  At night, late, when he finally came to bed, he would take her in his arms and love her, and for those too-brief shining moments, held close in his arms, she would be certain that this was just a phase they were going through, that his workload was extra heavy right now. That soon things would settle down and they’d get a little quality time together.

  Somehow, though, it never happened. Two weeks went by during which she knew him mostly in the dark, as the passionate lover who woke her from sleep to work his seductive magic on her willing flesh.

  When she did see him during daylight hours, it was usually at the breakfast table, with Ashlyn. And that wasn’t the right time to bring up the way they seemed to be drifting apart—or rather, the way they’d never quite found each other in the first place.

  Cleo ran her business. She packed up her house in Summerlin and got it listed with a Realtor. And she took care of her stepdaughter.

  Ashlyn…

  That relationship, at least, was going well—better than well.

  Cleo felt that she and her stepdaughter were forming a true and unbreakable bond. Fletcher’s little girl was the child of her heart. Cleo stopped thinking of Ashlyn as Fletcher’s. She easily slipped into the lovely habit of treating Ashlyn as her own.

  On a Saturday evening near the end of March, three weeks after the wedding, Cleo and her stepdaughter were playing Old Maid on the floor in the family room.

  Ashlyn glanced up from her cards. “Cleo?”

  Cleo studied her hand, rearranging the cards. “Hmm?”

  “I think you’d better just be my mommy, okay?”

  Cleo’s throat clutched at those words. She set her cards aside and put all of her attention on Ashlyn. She looked into those dark eyes, scanned that wonderful oh-so-serious little face. “Honey, I am your mom. Your stepmom.”

  “Well, but I just want to call you Mommy. Will that be okay?”

  What a moment. The kind a mother cherishes forever. “I would love it if you called me Mommy.”

  Ashlyn smiled, a slow smile, a smile made all the more precious by its rarity. She tossed down her cards and threw herself into Cleo’s open arms. Those small, soft hands went around her neck and held on tight.

  “Big hug,” said Ashlyn squeezing hard. Then she craned back in Cleo’s embrace. “Mommy,” she said firmly, with feeling, and smiled again. Cleo grabbed her close once more, rocking back and forth, holding on tight. And then Ashlyn whispered, “Don’t you ever, ever go away.”

  “I won’t,” Cleo promised. “Not ever.”

  As she made the vow, she found herself thinking of Fletcher, of their marriage that didn’t feel much like a marriage at all. Where had it gone wrong?

  Or rather, why wouldn’t he give it a chance to be right?

  She loved him. She truly did. And she loved his daughter as her own.

  But he was hardly ever with them. It wasn’t right. One way or another, this absentee-husband thing just had to stop.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That night, when Fletcher finally came home, Cleo was sitting in the bedside chair, fully dressed and waiting for him. With the lights out.

  She watched him come in. He opened the door slowly, slipped through and closed it with care. Then he approached the bed, not exactly tiptoeing but almost.

  He was halfway through the sitting area before he saw her. “Cleo.” He stopped in midstep. “What are you doing up?” Through the shadows she couldn’t make out his expression, but his voice was as careful as his steps had been.

  She reached back and flipped on the floor lamp by her chair. “Waiting for you.”

  In the wash of lamplight his face gave nothing away. “In the dark?”

  “I was afraid if I left the light on, you might not come in.”

  He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  She shrugged. “You tell me.”

  Something flashed in his eyes—and was quickly banished. He went to the bed and dropped to the edge of it. “What a night. I had to hang around in the casino. Tokuru was talking dinner at midnight. And what he wants, I try to make sure that he gets.” Machu Tokuru was a Japanese businessman. A whale to end all whales. When he gambled, he’d been known to drop millions a night playing blackjack or craps.

  Fletcher’s tux was midnight-blue, with silk shirt and satin tie to match. He stretched his neck the way men do and fiddled with the lustrous tie until it fell loose. He took off his tux jacket, laid it on the bed. Then came the cufflinks and the shirt studs. He took off his shirt. And then, bare to the waist, he gathered up the clothes he’d taken off and disappeared into the walk-in closet.

  When he came back out, he was naked. He strode toward her, all lean muscle and sleek male grace. When he reached her chair, he put out his hand. “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  A pause. Then, low and rough, he said, “To bed.”

  She looked up at him, saw the heat in his eyes, the promise of lovely, dark pleasures. And she wanted to simply put her hand in his, let him undress her, share with him the beauty of the night. At least they had that— incredible sex.

  But no. It wasn’t right. There should be more. And there had been more—at first. Hadn’t there?

  Sometimes lately she found herself wondering if it had all been some kind of terrible mistake. They’d been lovers for less than two weeks when he proposed. Nine days. How could you really know a person in that time?

  Right now she felt that she didn’t know him at all and she had no idea how to begin to know him. How could that be? It had all seemed so easy, so effortless, at the beginning, so perfect and right.

  From that Thursday they’d met in the hallway and ended up here in his bedroom as lovers—from then until the night he proposed—she’d been stunned by the wonder his mere touch could bring. She’d never given a thought to the idea of marriage. Loving Fletcher had been her ultimate guilty pleasure, something that could never last.

  And then he’d proposed, said he loved her, said he trusted her….

  Yes had seemed the only answer at the time.

  But since then she’d become slowly aware that she was climbing a glass mountain, getting nowhere with him. One step upward—and then a quick slide to the bottom again. Never making any real progress.

  As Andrea Raye had warned her.

  As Caitlin Bravo had intuitively known.

  “Fletcher…”

  His outstretched hand dropped to his side. “What?” The single flatly spoken word did nothing to bolster her confidence.

  She forged ahead anyway. “It seems like since we got married I hardly see you. Is there…something wrong?”

  He stood very still before her, his lean-muscled body gloriously naked, his heart and mind a complete mystery to her. “Nothing’s wrong. I know I’ve been busy. But you know how my work is.” He sounded so logical, so perfectly reasonable. And so very far away. “Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day….”

  “It’s not only that.”

  “Oh?” He looked…tired. As if he only wished she’d give it up and let him lead her to bed.

  Again she considered doing just that, letting the tough subject go, rising, taking off her clothes, turning off the light.

  Bu
t no. She did want more from her marriage than a man who could love her with his body alone. She wanted his heart. She wanted to give him all her secrets and for him to share his with her.

  She said, “It’s more than just that we hardly see each other.”

  “What else?” The words were guarded.

  “Look, I know your job is demanding. I can accept that. My job is, too. Still, there ought to be a little time every day just for the two of us. Time when we’re really together. But I don’t feel…together with you. I haven’t since we got married. You seem to avoid me, avoid any situation where we might be alone, just the two of us, unless it’s the middle of the night and we’re making love. It’s as if you don’t want to talk to me, as if you’re afraid to get caught alone with me if there’s a chance we might end up saying things that matter, as if you’re…hiding something and you’re afraid I might find out.”

  Did he blink? Had she hit a nerve, gotten close to whatever it was that kept them apart? She couldn’t be sure. The strange, frantic look in his eyes was already gone—if it had ever really been there at all.

  “You’re saying you want more time with me?”

  Well, duh. “Yes.” She felt a smile quiver across her mouth and then fade. It wasn’t only the time. “Oh, Fletcher. It’s…the closeness. The talking, the sharing…”

  “All right,” he said flatly.

  She wanted to leap up, grab those big shoulders, give him a hard shake. But she only swallowed and gently asked, “All right…what?”

  “Whatever you want. Just tell me. It’s yours.” He extended his hand again. “Now come to bed.”

  With a long sigh she laid her hand in his. Though she knew she hadn’t gotten through to him in the way she’d hoped she might, she wanted his lean arms around her. She needed the reassurance of physical contact right then. He pulled her up against his broad, warm chest.

  She rested her hands on his powerful shoulders and she looked up into those incredible eyes. “Oh, Fletcher. I love you.”