Lawyers In Love: Bittersweet Homecoming by Ann Jacobs Read Free Book Online

heated. She should have thought before opening her big mouth. She also ought to have realized last night why he hadn’t jumped at the opportunity of coming here right then. “I’ll be glad to drop Brett off—”
    “Whoa, there. You’ll have to stay, too. Well, you really don’t. I can hire someone to make sure Brett doesn’t drown when we’re on the beach. But you’re welcome. I’d like to spend time with you, too. I imagine it will be easier for him, at least the first few times he stays with me, if you come with him.”
    It was pure instinct that made her bend and brush her lips across Gray’s cheek, over the scar that disappeared beneath the patch. “I’d like to spend time with both of you, too. We’ll come over after I get off work on Friday.”
    “Good. When can I call and talk with Brett?”
    “Anytime.” She laughed. “Well, anytime before his bedtime, which is usually around
eight o’clock
.”
    He squeezed her hand then released it. “Until Friday, then. Thanks, Andi. For everything.”
    Andi wasn’t about to let him go like that. Not when every cell in her body ached for more than that tame sisterly kiss. Bending, she took his mouth, ran her tongue along the seam of his lips until he took over control, thrust his tongue deep in her throat. It was his kiss now, his hands holding her face to his. A hello kiss, much like the goodbye tongue-fucking he’d left her with so long ago.
    Confused, she pulled away. It was now, not then, and she’d just made a prize fool of herself. “Well, Gray, that was just as good as I remembered,” she said, making an effort at levity. “We’ll see you on Friday.”
    When she stepped back, he started the car. For a long time she followed his car with her gaze, remembering…and wanting. Wanting a man the way she hadn’t wanted one for eight long years.
    “Mom, I like Daddy. Why wouldn’t he stay with us?” Brett asked when Andi finally went back inside.
    She reached down and tousled her son’s blond curls. “I imagine he had things he had to do. He’s invited us to spend next weekend with him at the beach, so you’ll get to spend some more time with him.”
    Late that night, after Brett had gone to sleep, it came to Andi that she, too, had wanted Gray to stay. She wanted more than was smart, more than she sensed Gray was ready to give—and she wanted to give him far more than she dreamed he might accept from her.
     
    * * * * *
    He’d wanted to stay. If he had, though, he’d have had to reveal more than he imagined any woman would want to know about the logistical challenges he faced. Somehow his therapists’ claims that he was one of the lucky ones held no water, not when he still couldn’t make do in bathrooms that didn’t come with grab rails and raised toilet bowls.
    As if he could hide the truth. Well, at least he could keep from slapping Andi and their kid in the face with the gory facts. For a while, anyhow. Maybe he’d prove the doctors wrong, gain more mobility than they thought he could, manage to make some kind of a life he’d be willing to ask them to share.
    Gray laughed out loud. There was nothing like meeting the playmate he’d never forgotten and the son he never dared imagine he might have, to make him start dreaming impossible dreams.
    That night he tossed in restless sleep, his body tangled in smooth cotton sheets, his breathing ragged. His cock rock-hard and ready, his body broken out in a cold sweat, he reached for a lover who wasn’t there.
    Something didn’t fit. Smooth clean sheets in this hellhole of a prison?
    Strange. He couldn’t hear water dripping down the walls, or the usual pathetic moans from prisoners in the cells next to his own. Had their captors silenced them? Gray strained to hear the sound of booted feet against hard-packed clay, smell the pungent odors of cheap rum and high-grade Colombian ganja.
    Expecting more poking, prodding, perhaps another beating at the hands of the animals who were his jailers,