Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down Read online

  “She’s twenty-two, you old lech.”

  “Need I remind you that I’m only thirty?”

  Savannah didn’t care. And it didn’t help that he was a stunning thirty, to boot. Did the man never age?

  “You kept her from her job.”

  “I didn’t even know she was there, so how could I have kept her from anything?”

  “That’s not surprising. You always did care for only yourself.”

  “That’s not true and you know it.” A wicked half-grin turned up his lips as he shot a glance at her. “You’re jealous.”

  “Hah!” Oh, she was certainly full of great comebacks.

  “This is priceless.” He shook his head, his smile intact. “Nothing happened with her.”

  “I really don’t care. All I care about are my guests, who very nearly arrived to dirty rooms.”

  “That’s right. You turned your parents’ place into a B & B, and a very successful one, from what I’ve heard.”

  She would appeal to his sense of decency—her business would be in jeopardy if she wasn’t there to oversee things. He didn’t need to know her aunt and brother were in place to take over for her during her two-week honeymoon.

  “So certainly you must see that I have to get back to my guests?”

  A dimple appeared in his cheek. He was laughing at her. “Don’t think to pull the wool over my eyes; I know you too well. Just sit tight. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Where?”

  He wouldn’t answer, damn him. She surveyed him from her captive’s seat, wondering if a full-blown temper tantrum would get him to stop. She doubted it. She knew what a pig-headed mule he could be when he set his mind to something.

  Fine, she would go with the flow. Fighting would only get him hovering over her even more. He had something to say, so she would let him say it and be done.

  His Aston Martin Vanquish turned down a heavily wooded dirt road that sparked a memory in her, a feeling that she had traveled this way a long time ago.

  He slid an unreadable look her way. The woods suddenly opened up to a wide clearing, and Savannah saw the big old plantation house in the distance, sitting on the rim of Crawfish Lake.

  How could she have forgotten this place? They had spent so many lazy afternoons and warm summer nights here, talking, laughing. Making love when it had verged on the forbidden because of their age.

  “Remember?”

  Words deserted her and her heart beat in slow, thick strokes, a heavy lump in her throat.

  The Vanquish came to a purring stop at the front door of Donovan’s grandparents’ old home, Magnolia Hills. His grandfather had died eleven years earlier, his grandmother shortly thereafter—from a broken heart, Donovan’s mother had said at the funeral.

  Donovan’s grandparents had shared a special bond, sixty-one years of marriage. It was practically unheard of. Savannah realized now why the Newsomes, her elderly couple who were visiting for the week, had held such a fascination for her. They had reminded her of Grandma and Grandpa Jerricho.

  Donovan came around and opened the car door for her, putting his hand out. Hesitantly, Savannah took it and stepped around him to look up at the house. At the sight of the old-fashioned porch that wrapped around the front and sides of the house, time turned back for her.

  She could picture the Hills as it was the last time she had been here, whitewashed and gleaming in the late-day sun as she sat in one of the many rocking chairs with Grandma Jerricho sipping a cold, sweet lemonade that never failed to take the edge off the Mississippi humidity.

  She walked to the porch railing, the full moon reflecting on the water and over the eaves like white gold.

  “How many times did I kiss you in this very spot?” Donovan asked in a low, deep tone that sent shivers down her arms.

  “Don’t,” she said as he pulled her into his embrace, the ghosts of the past wrapping around her, taking her back to a time when life had been simple and she had loved him with a young girl’s heart. How naive she had been. How foolish.

  Savannah fought not to close her eyes and lean into his palm as he cupped her face, his eyes sensuous and intense.

  She wet her lips and swallowed the dryness in her throat. “You said you had something to say to me. Please say it so that we can get this over with.”

  “Are you that eager to get back to your fiancé?”

  With a guilty start, Savannah realized she had not thought about Jake since she’d spotted Donovan walking toward her. And worse, Jake hadn’t been on her mind half as much as Donovan since his homecoming.

  “I’m worried about my daughter,” she said.

  “Reese,” he said, surprising her.

  “Yes.”

  “Short for Clarisse, right?”

  Savannah nodded.

  “You told me if you ever had a girl, you would name her Clarisse. Michael if you had a boy.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Some things you don’t forget.” The poignancy in his voice tugged at Savannah’s heart. “So why didn’t you marry Reese’s father? And do you still want that little boy?”

  Savannah had tucked away the dream of having another child. Reese’s birth had been emotional, and the prospects of raising her alone frightening.

  Savannah had been barely twenty years old, and though her family had always been there for her, she had felt utterly alone.

  She slid out of Donovan’s embrace and walked to the corner of the porch, an overhang of honeysuckle scenting the air and making wispy patterns on the glassy surface of the water. “Why didn’t you ever marry?” she asked instead of answering his question.

  She felt him as he moved to stand behind her, his closeness like a caress. “I’ve only been in love once and that didn’t work out.”

  Was he talking about her, or another woman? And did she really want to know?

  Savannah turned to face him, suddenly desperate to leave, to get as far away from him as possible before…

  She shut out the thought. Nothing was going to happen. Tomorrow she would be a married woman. She loved Jake. Perhaps her feelings for him weren’t quite the same as they had been for Donovan, but he was a good, solid man and he loved Reese. He would make a wonderful father. Far better than Reese’s real father.

  “This is not right. Surely you see that,” she said.

  “Do you hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you at all. I feel nothing.”

  “Nothing?” he murmured, moving closer to her, his heat wrapping around her. “Are you sure about that?”

  Savannah forced herself to meet his gaze. “Whatever I felt for you was a long time ago. It’s dead and buried now. You saw to that.”

  He sighed and glanced down. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. There was so much happening then. I wasn’t sure of myself, let alone the two of us.”

  “But you were sure of what I had done, weren’t you?”

  “At the time, I thought so. It all seemed so clear.”

  “And is it still that clear to you now?”

  “If you’re asking if I still think you cheated on me, the answer is no. I didn’t want to believe it even then.” He glanced out at a spot beyond her shoulder. “It’s just that when I saw you in my best friend’s arms, I went crazy. I could barely stand a guy looking at you, let alone touching you. I know that was my own insecurity, but I was still a kid in a lot of ways. A kid with a two-million-dollar contract and way too much hype.” His gaze slid back to her. “I came back to talk to you then, you know.”

  She frowned. “When?”

  “About two months after we separated, once I had gotten up the courage to face you. I had finally talked with Kyle and I knew the whole story. I was prepared for you to throw grenades at my head.”

  Kyle Henton had been one of Donovan’s closest friends since grammar school, and after Donovan had accused them of cheating, Savannah had never seen Kyle again.

  “Talked? I heard y
ou beat each other senseless.”

  He grinned. “Well, we did. But after we had bloodied each other up, we talked. He told me nothing happened, that whatever I thought had gone on was only in my mind. But I had seen a pattern, or what I thought was one. The way you began to stay out after work and didn’t want…” He stopped.

  “Want?” Savannah said, trying to rein in her rising anger at what she was hearing. Because Kyle had said nothing happened, that resolved everything in Donovan’s mind. He hadn’t trusted or loved her enough to ask her directly, to believe in what she would say.

  He shrugged, but his eyes were hot as he looked down at her. “You didn’t seem to want sex.”

  Fury shot up Savannah’s spine. She tried to wrest herself free of his hold, but he wouldn’t release her. “You’re incredible. Because I worked late and was tired, you believed I was cheating on you?”

  He took hold of both her arms, forcing her to face him fully. “I was a stupid kid, Savannah. I loved you so much. I would have given up everything for you, and that scared the shit out of me. We had always been so hot and heavy. We couldn’t get enough of each other.

  “God,” he said with a heartfelt ache in his voice, “I remember all those nights we made love, the way you would slide over me, your body so soft and warm, your mouth hungry against my skin…your hands pumping me. We’d do it in the shower, on the kitchen floor, the hallway, the living room. I remember that time at school when we pushed the emergency stop and did it in the elevator. We just…”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But when it stopped, I thought you didn’t want me anymore and it ate me up inside. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse when I found you and Kyle together.”

  Kyle had become as much her friend as Donovan’s, perhaps closer to her as Donovan got more and more famous, too busy for his childhood friends. And for her.

  She had felt shut out, and he had not been the only one who was jealous. She’d had to watch for years as first the high school cheerleaders and then the buxom college cheerleaders fawned all over him, flirting with him.

  How could she compete with such women? She was just a skinny, unworldly Southern girl, a memory of a life he wanted to leave behind. And all those emotions and fears came to a head the day that Donovan found her in Kyle’s embrace.

  She could understand why he had been angry. Had she found him in another woman’s embrace, she would have felt the same. But the way he closed her out, as though she had never meant anything to him—that she could not forget. Or forgive.

  “Let me go.” She tried to move around him, but he remained firm.

  “I let you go once and it was the biggest mistake of my life. I’m not giving up so easily this time.”

  Without warning, he leaned down and kissed her, and Savannah felt her body instantly respond, just as she had when they were randy college students, unable to keep their hands off each other.

  Her good sense told her to stop, but she couldn’t. Her brain wouldn’t slow down to wonder about what she was doing or feeling; she just wanted it to go on.

  Her hands slid up his soft cotton shirt and twined unconsciously in his hair, still silky and long.

  The newspapers had labeled him one of the top ten most eligible bachelors, a model with a helmet and cleats, an Adonis for that hair and his spectacular physique.

  He was, but it had been the boy who lived inside the famous football hero that she had loved.

  He pressed into her, his arousal a hard, hot length against her belly, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from moving against him, from reveling in the low moan that rumbled up his throat and the way his hands tensed against her sides, gripping and releasing, testing her flesh.

  He pushed her back against the railing, lifting her to sit on the edge, her legs spread around his hips, her pelvis ground against his.

  He took hold of her hair and tugged her head back, his mouth moving along her neck, lavishing kisses on every piece of skin, making her shiver.

  His lips trailed down the V of her blouse, a few small buttons the only thing keeping them from going too far. But it had gone too far already.

  Savannah bit her lip as Donovan’s big, warm hand settled on her breast, cupping, massaging, lightly teasing her nipple, which pressed insistently against the thin, lacy cup of her bra.

  She was a grown, responsible woman with a child and a fiancé, but her mind balked at acting that way now. She had been responsible for so many years.

  Her hand instinctively moved down the waistband of Donovan’s jeans, sliding over his erection, his mouth slanting over hers with urgency.

  He groaned and lifted her off the railing, her feet dangling inches from the ground as he cupped the back of her head and continued to kiss her as he moved to the front door.

  Savannah barely heard the screech of the old hinges as he carried her over the threshold and into the house.

  It brought her back to the time when the house was alive with family and friends, and the days of Mississippi State and future disasters were yet to be seen. They had still been innocent and free.

  The back of her legs brushed against the sofa, covered with a white sheet, which Donovan yanked off before he laid her down.

  Her arms were still looped around his neck, pulling him down with her and over her, his weight heavy but welcomed.

  She felt like a virginal teenager as he shifted to the side so that he could move his hand to the top of her blouse, the first button sliding like butter through the hole, the second giving way just as easily.

  At the third, Savannah covered his hand with hers, her mind fighting to regain some measure of common sense, though her body protested every step of the way.

  She couldn’t allow Donovan to just walk back into her life and turn it upside down. He had done that in college and she had thought she would never recover. She could not risk her entire future—again—on a man who would most likely walk out on her. She needed stability. A home.

  Happiness.

  She deserved it now. And not only for herself, but also for her daughter.

  “Stop.”

  “Just give me tonight, Savannah,” he begged as his fingers feathered over a nipple, making her breath catch in her throat.

  “Why?” she demanded, struggling to her elbows. “So you can come back and ruin my life again?”

  “No.” He brushed a piece of hair from her face. “So I can have one last memory with you, if this is all I’ll ever have. We both need to get this out of our system. There’s still something between us, no matter how much you believe you hate me. I think this moment says differently.”

  “This moment says I temporarily lost my mind. Nothing more.” She pushed at his shoulders and fought to sit up, her head swimming from his kisses.

  His hand slid firmly up her spine and under the hair at the back of her neck, gently sifting the long strands through his fingers, making goose bumps rise on her arms. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I still have feelings for you?”

  Instead of his words being a salve to her heart, all they did was cause pain. “No,” she bit out, rising to her feet and turning to face him. “Not now. Not all these years later.”

  Her body quaked with anger and suppressed desire. “God, you think a kiss and a smile will make everything better? You waltz back into my life when you feel like it and think I’ll stop everything for you? Well, I won’t, Donovan. Do you understand? I won’t. Tomorrow I will be Mrs. Jake Marshall—and you will be forgotten.”

  Chapter Four

  The slow clapping cut Savannah’s dramatic exit short. She whirled around to see Donovan leaning back against the armrest of the sofa, his body negligently draped across it, his jacket having been divested somewhere along the way, exposing his crisp white shirt and the hard plane of muscle beneath.

  “That was a gifted performance of outrage. Oscar-worthy, in fact.”

  Savannah fisted her hands at her sides, struggling to keep from throwing something at him. “You think
this is funny? You could be arrested for kidnapping.”

  “Are you going to press charges, Savvy?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Bother you?”

  More than he knew. “I’m getting married, Donovan. Do you understand? This is not a game.”

  Jake had been there for her when Reese had nearly died from a virulent strain of the flu. He had stayed with her every step of the way.

  During that long night, Savannah had realized she had feelings for him. Maybe those feelings were more of gratitude than love at first, but Jake had become an anchor for her, a safe harbor, and she had needed that.

  “Guess now you’ll live safely behind your picket fence, planting your garden and taking stray cats into your perfect life.”

  His assessment hurt and angered her. “That’s right. So why don’t you let me get back to it?”

  His hands reached up to bracket her face. “Because, Savannah, I still love you.”

  Emotions churned wildly inside her, feelings and needs that she had believed exorcised long, long ago. She pulled back. “You don’t mean it.”

  “I do. The moment I saw you, I knew I had made a mistake in pushing you out of my life. But when I found out you were pregnant…” He shrugged and glanced away. “I figured you had moved on. I was so damn sure I was over you. But I wasn’t.” His gaze slid back to her. “I’m not. I know my timing isn’t good—”

  “Isn’t good?” A bubble of irrational laughter rose up in Savannah. “That’s an understatement. Your timing stinks.”

  She dropped down into a chair and gripped one hand in the other to keep them steady. She would not fall apart now.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked as silence descended. “Do we pretend this never happened? That I never said what I said? Should we go so far as to believe that we were simply a figment of the other’s imagination and that what we shared was just a dream?”

  Savannah leaned her head into her hands. “I don’t know.”

  Donovan kneeled before her, taking her wrists into his hands. “Look at me.”

  Savannah hesitated, then glanced up.

  “Stay with me tonight. One night, Savannah. I can have you back in the morning before anyone knows you’re gone. All I want is this little bit of time with you. A few hours.”