by Angela Evans
A timid knock at his door stopped him in his path to the bathroom. He paused to slip the Beretta from the holster before he crossed the room and looked through the peephole again. This time Leslie stood there wearing faded pajamas and a timid smile. He set the pistol in the coat closet and pulled the door open so fast he startled her, afraid if he left her standing there for one-second longer, she might disappear again.
“Oh, um, hi,” she mumbled nervously.
He took her hand and pulled her inside, closing the door behind her even as he was backing her up against the wall. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is fine,” she answered, her eyes distracted by his bare chest.
He tossed the T-shirt that was still in his hand on the chair and wrapped both arms around her. He kissed her, letting his tongue find its way into her mouth. Her hands were on his back, brushing across his shoulders and down to his waist, where they found his shorts slack. He’d unbuttoned them on his way to the shower, and now the fabric did little to impede her. She slipped her hands inside the waistband and splayed her fingers onto his ass.
They were moving way too fast.
He lifted his head and rested his forehead against hers. Her breath was coming just as fast as his own, and she hadn’t opened her eyes yet.
He glanced down and remembered she was in her pajamas. A tank top and soft-looking pants with some kind of pattern on them.
“You came in your pajamas?” he asked with a smile.
That got her eyes open and a grin on her face. “I was being impulsive. I don’t do it very often.” She laughed. “I heard you on the phone before I knocked.”
“I was on Skype with Dani. She sandbagged me.” He didn’t want to think about that though, which should have sent a warning bell off in his head. He always thought about work.
“What does that mean? She was flirting with you.” She pointed it out as though maybe he hadn’t noticed he was being flirted with by one of the women the paparazzi stalked for bikini pictures.
“Oh trust me, that was hard to miss. It was weird. I’ve known her for years, and she’s never done that before.”
He couldn’t help but compare Dani and Leslie. The two had nothing in common. While Dani might be what the world held up as a sex symbol, to him, Leslie ran circles around Dani in that department. Spare him the false eyelashes, hair extensions, spray tans, and makeup put on with a trowel. Leslie was real and soft and warm. She had no need for all that bleach-blond artificial beauty because her real beauty shined far brighter.
“She sandbagged me because she didn’t tell me that Baxter has a kid and I’m responsible for the kid’s security too.” But he didn’t want to talk about work with her warm and willingly in his arms.
“I didn’t think Dani and Baxter had any secrets from the paparazzi.”.
“You and me both.” He kissed her again but kept it short. “Tell me why you’re here before I forget myself and drag you off to the bedroom.”
“Well, about that…” She blushed and ran her finger down his chest.
That was the moment he realized he was in big trouble. She’d come all the way out to Barefoot Bay in her pajamas with the intention of letting him take her to bed, but after today, he knew that one taste of her sweetness would never be enough.
* * *
She’d come close to chickening out and rushing back home before Michael knew she was there when she’d heard his conversation with Dani. The flirting had been hard enough to hear, but then the way Dani had described her had been downright painful. Only his strong, steady voice responding in the most professional of tones kept her where she was. He was everything she’d never had in a man before, and that thrilled and terrified her at the same time.
“As much as I want that, and trust me when I say I want that”—he pressed the length of his hardness against her stomach to drive home his point—“it occurs to me that I did all the talking this afternoon. You got my secrets out of me without sharing any of your own.”
Her stomach dropped. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want Daniel’s memory or the memory of her own failures to touch this night.
Her chin fell and her eyes drifted across the expanse of his chest. The muscles she’d only felt under his T-shirt earlier were now on display and tempting her. She wondered for a fleeting moment if she could distract him from the conversation and into the bedroom. There was no need to share secrets or form bonds that went beyond the here and now because they had no future, only what happened inside this room.
“I did want to thank you for what you did this afternoon with Lucas. I know I kind of lost it when we got the call, and a lot of guys would have been mad, but you were amazing.” She ran a finger across his muscles and watched them twitch.
His hand caught hers and stopped it in its tracks. “Any guy who would be pissed in that situation is a jerk.”
His emphatic response caught her by surprise. She couldn’t think of a single man she knew who wouldn’t have been irritated at being interrupted in that particular moment.
He held her hand gently in his warm, much larger hand and led her out of the entry of the hotel room and into the small sitting area that held a couch, a loveseat, and an overstuffed chair. He settled onto the couch and pulled her down on his lap. She sat sideways with her back against the armrest and her feet up on the cushion next to his hip. Her arms had nowhere to rest that seemed natural, so she put them around his neck. His bare chest was still oh so temptingly on display, but she tried to control herself.
“Spill it,” he ordered, trailing a hand down the back of her tank top and settling on the waistband of her pajama pants. His command was softened by the fact that his warm smile made her feel completely at ease.
“There’s not much to tell really.” She downplayed the story because she felt as if it was being made into a much bigger deal than it was, and definitely a bigger deal than she wanted to talk about.
“Okay, then it won’t take long to tell and we can move on to other things.” His fingers played on the sensitive skin on the inside of her arm, so achingly close to her breast it was all she could do not to lean into his hand.
“I met Daniel when I was young. I was twenty-two, he was twenty-five. Daniel was a whirlwind, always looking for the next party, a bigger rush, the most fun possible.” She tried to think of how to describe her husband in a way that would make sense to Michael when it barely made sense to herself. “I thought at first he was just young, still sowing wild oats, but it seemed like as he got older, he got more and more wild.”
His expression was concerned now. “In what way?”
“It was like each adrenaline rush he got only led to the next one being bigger and better. If he drove a car crazy fast, then next he wanted to drive a motorcycle even faster. If he went to a great party tonight, then tomorrow night he wanted to find a bigger, better, louder party that would give him even greater stories to tell.” She was frustrated from trying to put into words how crazy life with Daniel had been.
“How old were you when you got married?” Michael asked, his hands resting on her shoulder and stomach, giving much-needed comfort.
“I was twenty-three, he was twenty-six. He seemed so exciting, and I thought eventually that craziness would disappear and he’d settle down, but he never did. I was stuck at home with two boys, one a newborn, while he partied and pulled one crazy stunt after another.”
“What did he do for work?” Michael asked.
Leslie laughed. “I worked, he partied. He did odd jobs sometimes, but only if we were desperate. For the most part, he was always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme. Always convinced that if he gave someone every penny we had, then we’d never struggle for money again.”
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Michael could have been quoting her, she’d said that line so many times to Daniel over their short relationship. “Exactly! I told him that over and over again, but it never mattered.”
Leslie toyed with the hair at the back of his neck, cut short but just long enough she could play with the ends of it. His chin was covered in a shadow of a beard that had scratched when he kissed her. She remembered feeling so alone in her marriage, the only one worried about bills or jobs. Sometimes now, she wondered if Daniel had robbed her of the ability to be fun, to have fun, because she’d spent so much time trying to force him to grow up.
“In the end, all I had done was marry a child with no interest in settling down or raising children. He chased one adventure after another until finally, they caught up with him. The night he died, he was racing another car on the highway and lost control. So stupid.”
“Have you ever wondered why you were attracted to someone like that, someone so different from you?”
His question surprised her. She’d wondered it millions of times but never been brave enough to voice the question.
“I think I’m so dull-as-dishwater predictable that he seemed exciting to me. I think that I thought maybe together, we’d find some kind of happy medium. In the end, I was just stupid to think that anyone as exciting as that would be happy to stay home with someone as plain and boring as me.” Leslie saw no reason to say it differently. She knew who she was, and she wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. It was the benefit of age, she surmised, figuring out exactly who you are and who you aren’t and finding contentment in it.
In a second, she was flipped over on the couch and landed on her back with Michael’s bare chest pressed into her own. His mouth came down hard and fast on hers, giving her no room to refuse, which was fine with her. All too quickly, he lifted his head and pinned her with a piercing gaze.
“You are so damn real, and beautiful, and sexy all you had to do was knock on my door and I wanted you. Do you have any idea what you do to me?” His voice was lower, full of gravel and emotions. “Hell, just before you knocked on my door, I was fantasizing about having you here
She stared at him with her mouth open, completely stunned. “You were?”
“Hell yes.” His gaze softened and his arms relaxed slightly, but he still held her under him on the couch, which was exactly where she wanted to be.
“I’ve always thought that was why he had a wandering eye, and well, a wandering everything for that matter,” she confessed without even thinking. She’d never told another person, not even her mother, that Daniel had cheated on her.
“He cheated on you?” Michael asked, his disgust and shock clearly etched on his gorgeous face.
His eyes pinned her and wouldn’t let her deny the truth. She wouldn’t have anyway, but he gave her no room to soften anything with half-truths or kind words.
“Oh yes, he cheated with anything in a skirt as often as he got the chance. Which was pretty often once I was at home with the boys and he was out running around by himself.” She’d often wondered if things could have been different if she hadn’t gotten pregnant or had left the boys with her mother more often so she could go out in the evenings with him. But he hadn’t just wanted evenings out. He’d wanted daytime parties, nighttime parties, all-night-long parties.
“Then nothing else you tell me matters. The guy didn’t deserve to lick your shoes, let alone call you his wife.”
There was no doubt in Leslie’s mind that Michael would never leave his wife sitting home with their children while he tried to get in some other woman’s pants. Her heart was thudding so hard against her ribs, she was afraid it might actually come through her chest. Nerves and excitement combined to send her adrenaline sky high.
“Can we be done talking now?” she begged.
“One more question. Why did you stay?”
Leslie sighed. “When we got together, everyone said it wouldn’t last, even my friends and my mother. In the beginning, I was determined to prove them wrong. Call it stubborn, call it pride, call it stupidity. Then I got pregnant and stupidly thought things would get better.” She avoided Michael’s eyes for the last part of her confession. “The truth is, the night the cops showed up to tell me he was dead, I had my bags packed. I was waiting for him to come home so I could tell him the boys and I were leaving.”
Michael pulled her tightly against his chest in a gesture of comfort. “And you felt guilty?”
“Yeah, for a long, long time. I’ve never told anyone else most of that.” She traced his face with her fingertips. “Now can we go to bed?”
* * *
Hell yes! That was what he wanted to say when she begged him to take her to bed, but common sense prevailed. As it always did with Michael. Did he want to take her to bed? Absolutely. Did he want a quickie that got her back out the door in time to be home before the boys got up? Hell no. The question was how to make her understand that he wanted more without sending her running for the hills.
“Leslie, you know I want you, babe. I want you so bad my teeth ache from holding back.”
She nearly came undone underneath of him. “No, don’t you dare tell me that and then send me away. You want me so bad you can’t stand it, but you won’t take me to bed?”
She was desperately trying to get out from under him, and as gently as he could, he held her in place and made damn sure she felt the proof his desire for her. Her legs were pressing against the couch cushion, which only served to drive her hips up into his groin and make him grit his teeth as he fought the urge to press into her warm, soft curves.
“You’re killing me. Please just sit still for one second,” he bit out harsher than he intended, and she froze.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked, apparently realizing what had been happening as she squirmed.
“No, you didn’t hurt me, but yes, it does hurt.” He chuckled. He was so damn hard, he was surprised he could even carry on a conversation. There had to be barely enough blood left in his brain to remind him to breathe.
She didn’t say anything, just lay there looking at him with wide eyes, and he wondered what else had happened in her marriage that she hadn’t shared with him. If he found out her husband had laid a finger on her in anger, it would be all he could do not to dig the guy up and kill him all over again.
“Just be still for a second. I’ll be fine.” The two of them lay twisted together, breathing heavily for a solid minute before he could muster the strength to put together an intelligent sentence. “When I take you to bed—and trust me, that is going to happen and very, very soon—I don’t want a quickie. I don’t want to make love to you with one eye on the clock so you can get home before the boys wake up and come bounding into your room. I have to be at the airport early so I can make a meeting in New York tomorrow morning. I want to take my time with you. I want to make you come over and over again. I want to lose track of time and space, and I want you to do the same thing. Nothing else will do.”
She said nothing, just blinked slowly, her right eye closing almost imperceptibly slower than the left. Her tongue darted out and licked her lips, and he resisted the urge to suck on her bottom lip.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” she finally answered.
He smiled. “Yes, will do.”
“Does anyone ever say no to that?”
“I’ve never asked anyone else, so I don’t know.”
Her own honesty deserved some from him. He prayed she didn’t bolt, but there was no lying about how he felt. She had become far more important to him than he’d expected or intended.
Chapter Five
Eight days, that was how long had passed since she’d lain on Michael’s hotel couch and listened to him talk about how he was going to make love to her. Eight nights was how many nights she’d lain awake thinking about his hands, and his mouth, and his words. She wanted all of them.
But she had three more days to wait until he was back in Mimosa Key. A handful of days until Dani and Dexter’s wedding. The paparazzi was already here, trying to blend in with the locals and the tourists, but their gigantic cameras and rental cars gave them away. Michael had told her that it was likely Dani or
Baxter themselves had leaked details about the wedding to create buzz and publicity. That made Michael’s job ten times harder, but it was apparently more common than she would have guessed.
Leslie knew that Michael would have his hands full with security when he got back, and as much as she didn’t want to come off as desperate, she was quickly becoming just that. He’d called her every day. They’d talked about their mundane, everyday lives. They’d talked about the boys, and Michael had offered a man’s perspective on creating boundaries they would respect. They’d talked about life in Mimosa Key and New York.
She didn’t know where this was going. She didn’t know if whatever they had would end after the wedding when he had no more business in Barefoot Bay, or if they’d figure out a way to make a long-distance relationship work. All she knew was that the sound of his voice through the telephone was the highlight of her day and that being in his arms was the most exciting thing she’d ever experienced.
“What day does Michael get back to town?” Amelia asked. Her swollen belly made decorating the cake on the table in front of them nearly impossible.
“About the same number of days until we get to meet Baby Dexter over there.” Leslie pointed at her friend’s belly.
“I know, it’s ridiculous. He’s waiting for Daddy to get home, I know he is, but I just hope neither of them waits too much longer.”
Amelia’s husband was currently undercover with the FBI. He was due home any day, provided the case went well. She knew Amelia was nervous, as any new mother would be, but having her husband away and in danger this close to the baby’s arrival was making things that much harder. Dex hadn’t even been able to contact his wife for the last few days or risk blowing his cover.
“Just remember if things start and Dex isn’t back, you are to call me. No waiting, no trying to Superwoman this on your own. I’m your backup plan, and I’m not taking no for an answer,” Leslie reminded her friend for what was probably the hundredth time, but they both knew that Amelia would wait until the last possible minute in hopes that Dex would make it. After this case, Dex was taking paternity leave, twelve weeks off work with Amelia and their newborn. Leslie just prayed Dex made it home safely and in time.
