Unfinished Business. Inglath Cooper

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.

      They fell back onto the bed, heads colliding with the mound of pillows beneath the headboard, most of which Culley quickly swept away. Their hands reached for buttons, zippers, yanking, pulling, breaths fast and harsh, as if to stop for the briefest moment would allow reason and logic a chance at protest.

      His hands transformed her from a woman whose self-image had hit bottom with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity to a woman who at this moment, felt, from the deepest part of her, wanted, desired.

      It wasn’t only his touch, but the way he touched her. He made her feel as if this was something he had wanted for a very long time. Could that be true?

      Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was the way he lifted her up, up, way above any place she’d ever been before. Too soon, the air got thin, and she thought surely her lungs would burst. At that last moment, Culley kissed her again and said, “Are you sure, Addy?”

      She could have changed her mind then and there.

      Her choice.

      Yes or no.

      But for the first time in months, the pain inside her was gone. And all she wanted was to stay here in this place where there wasn’t any hurt. So she kissed him again. And he kissed her back.

      There in the darkened hotel room, the radio continued on with its salute to Sinatra, and somewhere below the raised window, a horse nickered.

      CULLEY AWOKE TO a strip of sunshine that sliced the bed in half. During the first second of wakefulness, a distinct wave of well-being rolled over him. As if he’d been rehydrated after a week without water. Replenished. Renewed.

      And then he remembered. He sat up. “Addy?”

      He swung out of bed, checked the bathroom only to find it empty. Glanced in the closet. No clothes. No suitcase.

      He searched the bed for a note, then gave the desk across the room a similar perusal. He went to the window and stared down at the already congested traffic.

      She’d left.

      It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant.

      He anchored a hand to the back of his neck. He should have just walked her to her room last night. Left when he’d seen things were getting out of hand. That’s what a friend would have done.

      But the truth was he hadn’t wanted to leave.

      The truth was last night had been the first time in longer than he could remember when he had been something of who he used to be. For a few hours, he’d closed the door on his guilt and simply enjoyed being with a woman who had once been his best friend.

      In his regular life—the one where he wasn’t falling into bed with newly disillusioned women, the one where he was a reliable father of one and a small-town doctor known for taking the time to listen to patients who needed to talk about their problems—he would have paid attention to his own normally demanding voice of reason. It would seem he’d deliberately tuned it out last night.

      But it was back this morning with a megaphone to his ear. That, combined with his stinging conscience, lit a flare of urgency inside him.

      He would call her. Go see her in D.C. He’d made enough mistakes in his life to know he didn’t want this to be another on the list.

      MISTAKES, WHY DID they have to feel so obvious?

      By the time the plane landed in D.C. shortly after ten that morning, Addy’s regret had reached fever pitch.

      She’d left the hotel room just before six, slipping out without waking him. Every time she started to remember what they’d done last night, she closed her eyes and blanked the thought.

      Of all the people in the world, in New York City, why had she met up with Culley last night? A conversation and a couple glasses of wine, and she’d practically jumped him.

      Heat torched her cheeks.

      She had just wanted to forget for a little while. To find a place where pain couldn’t reach her. To stitch back together what felt like a permanent tear in her heart. On that, she had succeeded. For a few hours, anyway. A short-term gain with a long-term price tag.

      And now came regret. A big black cloud of it.

      If she could just flip the clock back a dozen hours. Just twelve hours. She would have taken the shuttle home last night. Painted Georgetown red with Ellen. Sat at home eating Ben & Jerry’s. Anything but what she had done.

      Regret, real as it was, didn’t change a thing.

      At least in leaving before he woke up, she’d saved them both the embarrassment of admitting what they already knew.

      It should never have happened.

      It