by Joanne Rock
“I don’t think I’d discovered the merits of red polish until law school. Back then I was still pilfering whatever my mom happened to have on her nightstand.” She nibbled a few bites of cheese and missed Kentucky for just a few seconds.
“Do you ever go back?”
“My grandfather died last year and he was my only real connection to the place. My mother…well, she and I don’t have much of anything in common.”
“I’ll bet you intimidate her.” His hand moved to her ankle. Skimmed over her bare leg for the briefest of moments before he moved away again.
The imprint of his fingers remained, her skin mourning the loss of his touch. She gulped her vintage merlot like a shot of cheap Kentucky bourbon and reminded herself they weren’t going to sleep together tonight.
“And just what makes you say that, when you’ve never even met my mother?” Though she had to admit, it might not be such a bad guess. As Lainie had grown older she’d learned to see her mother’s behavior with more mature eyes. And she had wondered if her mother wrestled with self-esteem issues that went far deeper than Lainie’s own insecurities.
Maybe her divorce made her more sympathetic to what man trouble could do to a woman.
He rolled his eyes. “You intimidate everyone.” Tipping the bottle of wine toward his glass, he refilled his cup and moved the container toward her. “More wine?”
She moved her glass away. “Actually, I think I need to learn moderation around you, but thanks anyway. And I don’t intimidate everyone.”
“Ha. You forget I’ve been keeping my eye on you for the last month.” His stare made her feel short of breath.
What little wine she’d had was starting to feel warm in her veins. Either that, or the thought of Nico watching her all the time was making her hot and bothered. She let her gaze roll over him, his tall, athletic body half sprawled at her feet. His crisp white shirt at odds with his easy manner that could turn fierce with just a little provocation.
“Oh no.” He edged away from her a few inches.
“What?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” Swigging the rest of his drink, he stared back, his dark eyes never leaving hers.
“Like what?”
“As if you’re remembering everything that happened between us out on your balcony today. In detail.”
“Arrogant man.” She smoothed a hand over her hair and lied through her teeth. “I wasn’t thinking any such thing.”
“Like hell.” Rising, he shoved aside the remnants of his late-night snack and backed away. “Listen, I’ve got to go find a bed where I can lie awake and think about you without having the option of touching you. Can you tell me where you want me to sleep before I start compromising those damn boundaries of yours left and right?”
Disappointment curled through her as she moved to her feet.
“You can have either bedroom.” And you don’t have to sleep alone. She didn’t say it, but she sure thought as much. “You know, I didn’t mean to get on your case about looking out for me today.” The conciliatory words stuck in her throat just a little. “For the record, I appreciate all the help you’ve given me.”
He stopped his backward shuffle toward the bedroom door, his feet rooted to the spot on the decorative cobblestone path. Looking down at the floor for a long minute, he finally wrenched his gaze up to meet hers, shaking his head.
“I want to be over there by you so badly right now.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, fingers knotted into fists.
She licked her lips, wishing they could go back to sex for the fun of it. But somehow he’d moved beyond that, had decided things were getting too serious between them.
And damn it, she’d just been starting to really appreciate the idea of having fun.
“But I can’t. We can’t.” He leaned into the door frame. “I know I said that I could handle a rebound relationship, but being with you today made me realize I was lying.”
Lainie gripped the back of a nearby chair and squeezed it until she feared she’d snap the wooden frame.
“Lying?” Her head spun with the ghosts of her past. All of Robert’s lies. She fought to conjure any words that might make it sound as if she didn’t care, but came up blank.
“Yeah. I realized I can’t keep things simple or superficial. It’s just not in me.” He pounded the door frame of the smaller bedroom with his fist. Once. Twice. “I can’t afford to sleep with you, Lainie, because I’m already starting to care about you.”
And as if that hadn’t shocked her right off her high heels enough, Nico disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
She might have pursued the matter if she could have convinced herself all she wanted was the sex. The heat. But as her disappointment turned into an all-out sting, she realized that, despite her best efforts, she’d come to care about him just a little bit, too.
And the notion rocked her world every bit as much as today’s explosion.
11
ALONE AND LONELY and really resentful of the fact an hour later, Lainie stared at the closed door to Nico’s room and wondered how she’d ever get through the night.
The late news on the plasma wall screen depressed her. The snacks from the minibar didn’t taste good without someone to share them with. She was debating going to bed when a soft knock sounded at the hallway door.
Should she wake Nico?
Tiptoeing to the door first, she peered through the glass peephole and found a mass of platinum curls sprinkled with clip-on pink braids.
“Summer!” She flung open the door, grateful for the unexpected company.
“Hi there.” Dressed in a shimmery turquoise dress with a strand of colorful crystals around her neck, Summer held a trayful of decadent desserts, the same kind of sample tray one of the restaurants downstairs used to show off that night’s sweet-tooth offerings. “I found a few leftover desserts in the kitchen. I don’t think Death by Chocolate goes bad after two days, do you?”
“Definitely not.” Mouth already watering, Lainie helped Summer balance the tray, prettily decorated with flower petals and a lit pink votive candle, as she made her way inside. “But how did you know where to find me?”
“I tried your suite, and when you weren’t there, I called the front desk to ask if you’d moved to another room.” Summer frowned as she settled her offering on a cocktail table. “I kept getting a really unsettling vibe about you tonight. I know you think my intuition is a crock, but can you deny that you needed a friend tonight?”
“Well…that is…no.” Lainie peered over her shoulder at the closed door where Nico slept. “Nico and I seem to be communicating at cross-purposes.”
Summer plunked down on the carpet to sit beside the food. “I knew I needed to bring chocolate. When there’s man trouble afoot, chocolate always helps.” Shuffling aside a dish of crème brûlée, she snagged the Death by Chocolate plate and handed Lainie a fork. “You like this guy?”
Settling on the floor alongside her, Lainie decided just this once her need for a confidante outweighed her desire to be seen as a woman who had it all together. “I can’t believe you’re eating junk food again. Haven’t you been on a health-food kick all year?”
“I still am.” Summer reached for the flourless chocolate cake drizzled in raspberry sauce. “Which is why I’m opting for the dessert with a nutritional fruit serving. But no fair changing the subject. Do you like Nico?”
Lainie stabbed a forkful of seven-layered heaven and munched a fortifying bite. Girl talks had never come naturally to a woman who liked to maintain a certain facade of business capability. Especially girl talks with someone as whimsical as Summer.
But times were tough considering Lainie was sleeping alone tonight. Maybe she needed a little feminine wisdom to help her figure out what to do next.
“I like him,” she admitted, unable to deny the truth to herself any longer. “Don’t ask me why, because I don’t understand it, either. He’s very he-man traditional and he doesn’
t respect personal boundaries at all. He’s very opinionated and in-my-face when I’m accustomed to keeping guys at a distance.” Not that she wanted another relationship like she’d had with Robert. Far from it.
She’d known early on that they didn’t connect on any deep level, but she’d been okay with that because she was insecure about a lot of things in her past. She’d never found a way to reconcile her Kentucky roots with who she had become.
“Sometimes it’s good to have someone push your boundaries. If Jackson hadn’t completely ignored mine, I’d still be a rootless wanderer with no clue what I was looking for. I thought I wanted a tattooed surfer who was as unconventional as me, when what I really needed was a straitlaced politician.” She grinned as her eyes turned dreamy. “Well, sort of straitlaced. Did I ever tell you he was sporting a tattoo all along? He just put it somewhere that isn’t immediately obvious.”
Clearing her throat, Lainie reached for one of the bottles of water on the serving tray. She wasn’t about to discuss Jackson Taggart’s tattoos. “But what made you realize Jackson was the one? How did you know he was right for you and Paul Bertoldi wasn’t? And please don’t tell me it was intuitive, because you know damn well I don’t have any crystals or sixth sense, okay?”
“Oh yeah?” She jerked a thumb toward the miniature coffee service complete with coffee filters, tea bags and mugs. “I could always read your tea leaves and tell you whether or not Nico is right for you.”
“Not funny.”
“Okay. Honestly? My first clue was Jackson’s sense of honor. He kind of tricked me into meeting him in the first place, but he came clean about it as soon as I confronted him with it, and he offered to leave right away. Paul had a sneaky, underhanded side and he wouldn’t have admitted to it if you threatened to singe his favorite tattoo.”
“Nico’s painfully honest,” Lainie admitted, wondering if seven-layer chocolate cake had seven times as many calories as plain old devil’s food or, if by some cruel dieting math, it had seventeen times as many calories. “I’ve never met a man who says whatever he thinks. You know, I don’t think it even occurs to him to censor himself.”
“Sounds like the ideal man for a woman divorced from one of Miami’s most notorious liars.” Summer set aside her half-eaten dessert and toyed with one of the crystals around her neck. “And as for the cake, don’t worry about it. Calories don’t count when you’re dishing about men. It’s an unwritten rule you’ll grow to appreciate as we initiate you into the rites of girl talk.”
Lainie nearly dropped her plate. “Don’t even tell me you just read my mind.” Had she been thinking anything really incriminating about Nico? Like how much she wanted to crawl into bed with him later?
“Okay then. It was just a guess because you were studying your next bite so intently.” Summer glanced at her watch and stood. “I’d better get back home since Jackson is catching a late flight from a meeting he had in Orlando today. And for the record, I think Nico seems like a great guy. He gave Giselle a hard time about working here because he was really protective of her, but it was always obvious he adored her.”
Lainie’s cheeks turned warm. What could she say to that?
After clearing their dishes and picking up the tray, Summer moved toward the door, taking all her bright colors and funky intuition with her. “I’d never tell you what to do, but maybe it couldn’t hurt to get to know him better before writing him off as all wrong for you. He might be more right than you ever expected.”
Hurrying to open the door for her, Lainie realized she’d just survived a girl talk complete with chocolate and dishing about men. And it hadn’t been goofy or silly. It had been fun.
“Thanks, Summer.”
“My pleasure. And if you change your mind about the tea leaves—”
“I know who to see.” Smiling, Lainie promised herself she’d try to do what Summer suggested and get to know Nico a little better. Find out more about him.
Then she could decide if she wanted to distance herself from him altogether, or if she’d put all her energy into making sure he never shut her out of his bedroom again.
THE HOTEL DOOR LOCKED automatically behind them as Daisy entered Bram’s room with him. Tamping down an attack of nerves, she told herself she wasn’t worried about being alone with Bram in the Harem Suite.
“Come on in.” Bram wandered deeper into the room toward a stereo tucked into a walnut-colored bookshelf. “What are you in the mood for—jazz? Pop? You name it.”
Would she be showing her roots too much if she asked for Lynard Skynard? Of course she would. Bram didn’t strike her as the beer-in-a-can, Southern-rock type.
“Anything is fine.” She smiled and hoped he didn’t think she was about as interesting as milktoast. She had zero experience being a good girl, but with this decent, nice guy, she really wanted to try.
“This suite is gorgeous.” She’d heard rumors about the decadent hotel room at Club Paradise, having never actually seen it, since she got fired before the rooms were all refurbished. She knew this suite was booked up to a year in advance because of its fantasy appeal. And although she’d tried to tell herself the room was probably so popular because of its high sex factor, like the Fun & Games Chamber, she had to admit once she saw it that it was also just plain beautiful.
White silk and satin draped everything from the bed to the walls to an elegant chaise. Gossamer-thin curtains surrounded the bed, the fabric gathered and tied back with purple silk. Heavy wood furnishings and dark rattan baskets grounded the prevalence of white, while richly colored Persian rugs provided color and texture. Eastern-inspired, jewel-tone lanterns hung from the ceiling on dark metal chains, casting colorful patterns throughout the white room.
Daisy could see herself whipping off her dress for an impromptu belly dance if she wasn’t careful. What better setting to show off her belly button piercing? But she refused to be a Miss Fast and Easy tonight.
“It’s a little too uptown for me,” Bram admitted, his quicksilver eyes taking in the elegant surroundings as an old reggae tune drifted through the speakers. “Every time I come up from the beach I feel like I’m adding another few pounds of sand to the carpet, but it’s definitely easy on the eyes.” He gave her a wolfish grin. “Come to think of it, you fit right in here.”
Tempting as it might be to trade sexy lines with a major superstar, Daisy bit her tongue. “Thank you.” How was that for demure? Still, knowing she wouldn’t be able to make demure conversation for more than ten seconds, she changed the subject. “You said you wanted to rehearse tonight?”
“Yes.” Nodding slowly, Bram seemed to be taking stock of her low-key demeanor. “I’ll go grab an extra copy of the script.”
Maybe he was used to having women jump him as soon as they were alone with him, but she would not be that woman.
Watching him walk away, Daisy patted herself on the back for her ability to redirect. She still couldn’t believe she—Daisy Stephenson, the high-school dropout with the bad-girl reputation—was a guest in Bram Hawthorne’s hotel room. Obviously, some sort of celestial miracle had taken place to line up so many stars over her bottle-blond head.
As he disappeared into an adjoining room, Daisy told herself all she had to do now was get through the script reading without drooling on him and she would have undisputed proof that she could be a nice girl.
In the other room, Bram had no clue what happened to the flirty waitress he’d met this morning, but she’d somehow morphed into a more reserved, sweet female he barely recognized. What happened to the bad girl? Had he read her wrong this morning when she’d been smiling and leaning so close that her impressive breasts had loomed inches from his cheek?
No. She was probably just waiting for him to make a move. A piece of cake now that he had the Diva’s Last Dance script in hand. If she showed the least little sign of being resistant, of course, he’d abort the whole mission faster than an agent dropped a fading movie star. Not in a million years would he upset Daisy. Besides
, those good-old-boy manners the press swooned over weren’t just for show. He was a Southern gentleman, damn it, even if he was keeping a big part of his life secret from her along with the rest of the world.
He ducked out of the small parlor area and waved the papers as he ambled closer.
Eyes moving over Daisy and her slightly stiff posture, he remembered that some women liked guys to make the first move. In practice, he always found it easier to wait for a woman to show interest in him first. But given that Daisy was the woman he wanted—unpretentious, down to earth, non-silicone-enhanced—then he’d make his move and hope like hell he hadn’t read her wrong earlier today.
Handing her his copy of the script, he pointed out the scene he’d be filming tomorrow with Rosaria.
“It starts off as a dance scene.” He wouldn’t tell her where it ended up. “And it would help if we could dance our way through it so I could get a feel for the blocking.”
Taking the pages as reverently as if they were a holy text, Daisy read over the first few lines of setting and nodded. Then frowned. “So dance with you while I read?”
Yes, ma’am. He couldn’t wait to touch her again, to feel her in his arms. He didn’t know what he’d done to chase away her flirty side, but he would do his damnedest to bring it back.
“Yes. That way I get a better feel for my positioning while I’m talking.” He held out his arms to her. Waited. “If you can just feed me the heroine’s lines, it will help me make sure I know my own.”
Stepping into his arms, she looped her own around his neck, still clutching her script to read over his shoulder. Her soft, clean scent drifted about him—honeysuckle, maybe. Or some other unassuming flower that flourished in the heat.
His hands moved to her waist, situating themselves as low as possible on that seductive curve without being too forward. He pressed her close, covertly feeling through the thin fabric of her dress for any hint of panty lines.
