by Jill Shalvis
Wes nearly jerked out of his seat.
Casually, ignoring his shock, Serena lifted her wine to her mouth and whispered behind it to Kenna. “I just put my toes on his thigh. I was going for his lap but you’re in the better spot for that.” She slid down another inch. “There, now I can— Oh my, someone’s built impressively.”
Wes jerked again and glared at…Kenna.
Horrified, Kenna stared at her cousin. “Stop it. He thinks it’s me.”
“Christ, men are so stupid.” Serena tried to catch Wes’s eyes, but he was busy staring in shock at Kenna.
Kenna busied herself with her plate of food, even though the wait staff appeared to clear the dishes. Around her, everyone headed toward the dance floor, but she grabbed her plate and held on to it to keep it from being whisked away.
“I’d like a word with you.”
Wes, of course. He’d come around the table. “Um…” She looked at her plate full of delicious food.
He wrapped his fingers around her arm and started to pull.
“I’m pretty hungry, Wes.”
“Now.”
Kenna started shoveling garlic mashed potatoes into her mouth. Maybe the garlic would protect her. “I’m eating right now, but—”
“Now, Kenna.”
Since he’d already turned and stalked toward the door of the ballroom, she sighed. “Thanks a lot,” she hissed to Serena on her way out.
Serena watched Wes leave. “Oh, shut up.”
“Wait a minute.” Kenna laughed. “You’re mad at me because he thought the toe thing was me? And I thought I needed therapy.” With that, she followed Wes out of the ballroom, intending to tell him exactly what she thought of his interrupting her dinner when it was Serena who’d done the toe thing, only to be roughly grabbed by the wrist and pulled into…a storage room?
The place was dark, made darker still when the furious Wes—at least she hoped to God it was Wes—slammed the door, pressed her back against the wall, holding her there in the complete dark with his warm, rugged, hard body.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded.
Definitely Wes.
“You’re driving me crazy, Kenna.” Hands cupped her face. “Looking at me as if you want to gobble me up, making me so hot I can’t see straight. Touching me—”
“Yeah, about that touching part—”
But that was all she got out before his mouth swooped down and took hers.
14
WES WANTED to devour her, and since her mouth was soft and sweet, and…and opening for his, he was well on his way.
He paused only to rip off his glasses, then resumed the hot, wet kiss. With her tongue tangling with his, thinking became impossible, and not just because of the blood loss from his brain for parts south. It was the taste of her, the feel of her arms banded around his neck, her hands holding his head captive as if she was afraid he’d change his mind and pull away.
Fat chance. She was in his arms, practically climbing up his body, warm and pliant and receptive, this woman he refused to fall for. He pulled her closer, ran his hands down her slim spine, up her legs…and oh man, found the bare flesh above her thigh-high stockings. “Kenna—” He skimmed his fingers over the backs of her bare thighs, and kissed her again. Kissed her until they had to come up for air or suffocate.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. “What…what was that?”
He set his forehead to hers. Against his chest he could feel her heart pounding. Her nipples, hard and pebbled, bored holes into his flesh.
“You know what? Never mind,” she said, lifting his head by the fistfuls of hair she gripped. “Let’s just do it again.” And she pulled his mouth to hers.
Yes. Again. And again… Somehow in the wild kiss—wild kisses—his hands became full of her soft, round breasts. The thin straps of her dress slipped down, then so did the bodice, and he bent, filling his mouth with her.
He heard a thunk. Her head hitting the wall. “Oh my…” she whispered, then her nimble fingers unzipped his pants and wrapped around the biggest erection he’d ever had. “Wes?” She teased him with her fingers, stroking, until he actually thought he might humiliate himself right then—
“It wasn’t my toes,” she said, and rimmed his ear with her tongue.
When her words sank in, he froze. “What?”
“I tried to tell you.”
He gripped her wrist and pulled back. “Not your toes. I hauled you in here, and it wasn’t you—”
“Are you saying you’d have hauled Serena in here if you’d known?”
“Christ, no. Kenna…are you sure it wasn’t you, because—”
She sighed and straightened her dress. “Trust me, I’d never start something I couldn’t finish.”
“And…now?”
“I didn’t start this.”
Right. He had. He’d say he was sorry, but other than not being able to walk, he wasn’t. The only thing he was sorry about was that the mood had been broken. Kenna—”
“They’d better not have cleared my plate.” She turned away. “Give me a few minutes before you follow, okay?”
A few minutes. No problem.
For much longer than that Wes stood in the absolute dark, still fully aroused, unable to stop thinking about how she’d felt in his hands, his mouth. How he’d felt in her hands.
How much more he wanted.
BY THE TIME Kenna made her way back into the ballroom, she’d missed dinner and dessert, and she placed the blame firmly on Serena.
Or she would have, if she’d been looking for someone to blame. The truth was, she didn’t regret the closet incident.
In fact, she wanted another.
Wes eventually came back into the ballroom, looking subdued and bearing a plate of strawberry cheesecake, which he handed to her.
If they’d been alone, she’d have kissed him again.
She ate every bite. By the time she was done and looked around, he was gone.
She left shortly afterward as well, heading for her room. Surprisingly enough, she slept.
The next morning, Saturday, she lay in bed and stared at her fancy ceiling.
She hadn’t thought about what had brought her here in a while, that being the little matter of proving her worth to the family while remaining one hundred percent true to herself. She still wanted that, but she was afraid that there were some places she would just never fit in, that maybe there were places she just didn’t want to fit in. The job was fine, but fine just wasn’t enough anymore. People didn’t think liberally here, they weren’t open to trying different things, to accepting something outside the box.
And maybe she was getting tired of beating her head against the proverbial wall of their resistance.
Maybe she needed to find something for her, something that would stir her soul and keep her going every day, and maybe that something wasn’t the hotel business.
But for now she had a whole weekend, and she needed out, needed to revitalize. After three weeks of paychecks, she could have gone anywhere, but armed with a check equal to one of those weeks, she drove to the Teen Zone.
There weren’t kids in the yard this time, but two men on ladders painting the house, one of them Josh from work.
The other…she blinked in the early sunlight, sure that she was hallucinating.
Or fantasizing.
Because high on the second ladder, alongside Josh, stood Wes.
At the sound of her sandals on the concrete, the two dark, handsome heads turned to look at her.
Josh smiled his reception.
Wes did not.
Shading her eyes with her hand, Kenna tilted her head back and studied them both in jeans and T-shirts, thinking it was a shame they didn’t allow such dress at work because they certainly looked mighty fine in faded, soft denim. “What are you doing?”
“Painting.” Josh had a streak across one cheek and his shirt, and for a guy she knew only as the Mallory Enterprises resident computer geek, he looked to be having
a fabulous time.
Kenna glanced at Wes and couldn’t help but yearn and burn with memories. He had paint spattered across his T-shirt and jeans, too, but he didn’t grin. He simply lifted one brow and shot her a look that had her thoughts going straight to the gutter.
Every time she thought about how he’d kissed her, touched her, everything, she got hot and cold at the same time. Even now, her thigh muscles tightened. Her nipples hardened.
A simple, hormonal reaction to an extraordinary-looking man, she assured herself. Normal.
“Want to give us a hand?” Josh asked.
Kenna was still looking at Wes, who was looking at her right back, the sun reflecting off his glasses so that she couldn’t get a feel for what was happening behind the lenses.
Josh backed down the ladder so he could talk without yelling. “It’s a good cause, you know. I once spent a lot of time in one of Sarah’s Teen Zones.”
“You did?”
“Between that and my brother—” He hitched a shoulder toward Wes. “I managed to stay on the straight and narrow when I wasn’t headed that way by myself.”
Kenna stared at him for a moment before whirling back to Wes, who was still high above her on the ladder. “Josh is your brother?”
“The one and only. Original troublemaker, reformed rebel, now computer wizard Josh Roth.”
“Not too reformed,” Josh said proudly, wiggling his eyebrows. “I can still raise trouble as needed—Oops.” His cell phone was ringing. One look at the caller ID had him going very still. “Well, look at that. She finally realized she wants me.”
Kenna blinked. “Who?
“The fickle Mallory.”
“We’re all fickle.”
“I’m talking the master of fickle.”
“Serena.” Surprised, Kenna watched as Josh answered the phone.
“This is my day off, princess, so unless you finally have the word yes on your tongue—” Josh went quiet, listening, then laughed. “I’m not falling for that little sniffle, so go call some other fool to come fix your home computer. I only work on Saturday for women who at least pretend to like me.” Clicking off, he put the phone back on his belt and strode toward the house.
“Where are you going?” Wes called after him.
“I need sustenance.”
“She’s messing with him,” Kenna said.
“Better him than me,” Wes muttered.
“Wes—”
“He’s a big boy, he can handle it.”
Yes, she was sure Josh could handle it. In fact, they’d actually be good together, if Serena would ever admit such a thing.
“Why don’t you grab a brush and start on the trim?” Wes asked.
“I didn’t plan on…”
“What, you don’t want to get your manicure all messed up?”
“What?” She stared up at him. “What did you just say to me?”
“You don’t want to get your—”
“I heard you.”
“Then why did you say what?”
“For your information, I’ve never painted before.”
Wes smiled. “Big surprise, Ms. Mallory.”
“Okay, Mr. Know-It-All.”
“I am not Mr…. Know-It-All.”
“You are. You took one look at me on my first day and thought you knew me. You think you know everything. Now, I’ll give it to you that most of the time you actually do know everything, but not all the time, Wes. Not when it comes to me. I’m not the spoiled woman you think I am. I’m my own woman, with my own ideas, but I’m not a joke.”
He stared at her, then backed down the ladder and sat on the porch step. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and she refrained from telling him he now had a green streak of paint across his nose.
“You’re right,” he finally said.
“You should know, those are my favorite words.” She grabbed a paintbrush and started on the trim. “But that’s okay, as I’m a fairly big know-it-all myself.”
He just stared at her.
She smiled as she started painting. “By the way, this’ll be your fault if I do it all wrong.”
JOSH CAME BACK out and they finished the trim, then started on the siding. Later Sarah came out with a tray of cool drinks. “I’m finished with the counseling sessions for the day,” she said cheerfully. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all this help.”
Wes grabbed a soda. Painting in the sun had made him thirsty.
No, correct that. Staring at Kenna painting in the sun had made him thirsty.
And hot as hell. It wasn’t that she knew what she was doing and was art in motion to watch.
It was that she didn’t know what she was doing and was a disaster in motion to watch.
She’d looked so adorable in her fierce concentration, with her lip between her teeth, her eyes narrowed, paint splattered all across the front of her short dark-blue denim skirt and bright-red tank top and matching sandals.
He figured out about thirty minutes in, why he couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was because she painted as she appeared to do everything else in life. No matter if she knew what she was doing or not, she jumped in with both feet, with no hesitation…with all her heart.
“Lyssa and Debbie asked when you’re coming back,” Sarah said to Kenna. “They liked talking to you.”
She’d been here, talking to the kids?
“Right,” she said with a laugh. “They said that, that they’d liked talking to me about smoking and smart choices.”
“Well, not in those words,” Sarah acknowledged. “They said they thought you were ‘tight.”’ She lifted a shoulder. “I just translated for you.” Sarah patted her hand. “They liked you, said you didn’t preach.”
Kenna laughed. “I don’t have much to preach about.”
“You’d make a great role model,” Wes said. When both women looked at him, he opened his mouth to say more, but Josh, who’d turned on the water to wash his hands, squirted Sarah.
A very wet Sarah laughed. “Oh, you’re going to pay,” she promised Josh, and reached into her cup of soda for the ice cubes. “Big.”
Josh ran into the house, followed by Sarah, and Wes laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Kenna asked him.
“My brother’s about to get his ass kicked.”
“So are you.” She brought her hand out from behind her back and used the paint brush she’d held to make a large diagonal line across the front of his white T-shirt. He was actually shocked enough to stand there, and she made another line, intersecting the first one so that he was marked with a large X.
Then she wisely whirled and ran. He went after her, but she swooped down for the hose and held it like a weapon.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned.
“Oh, I’m thinking. I’m always thinking.” She lifted the hose and squirted him.
The first thing he did was gasp for breath, as the water was icy. Then he took off his glasses and swiped at his eyes. Water dripped off his nose while he tried to blink the blurry, feisty, laughing woman into view.
She squirted him again, in the chest this time, making him gasp again as the cold water ran down to more vital areas.
Turning his head to the side to avoid the water in his eyes, he stepped forward into the spray and got lucky enough to grab the hose. “Kenna? You’re going to want to run from me now.”
With a squeal, she did.
Despite the fact he had to put his glasses back on to aim better, he was still much quicker than she. He decided squirting her was too easy so he tackled her down to the grass, making sure she got as wet as she’d made him.
The hard part came as his senses kicked in. He was sprawled over the top of her, both of them as wet as can be, their limbs entangled, their breath co-mingling…
Stunned to his very core at the sudden surge of affection and yearning that bubbled up, he stared down into her face.
Her smile slowly faded, too. Her fingers lifted, sank into his hair.
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He tossed the hose aside and cradled her jaw, a thumb stroking her full bottom lip. He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. “You remember what happens when we’re this close.”
Her chest rose and fell more quickly now and she arched into him. “Yeah.” Her eyes were glossy with excitement, and also bafflement. “Wes. What are we doing?”
“Hell if I know.”
She went still, her eyes on his. “I can’t do this if we don’t know.”
Right. She couldn’t do this if he didn’t know. But he couldn’t if he did. Drawing a deep breath, he slowly moved to his feet, offered her a hand. “You’re a mess.”
Kenna searched his face, then slowly added a smile. “You’re a bigger one.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
15
AFTER THAT, Kenna spent whatever spare time she had at the Teen Zone. It wasn’t much because she worked hard at the hotel, harder than she could have ever imagined. But at Sarah’s, she could destress. She felt useful and she enjoyed the company. As for the kids…well, being with them did something for her, too, something deep inside. In a way she’d never imagined possible, she liked herself when she was there. She forgot her problems, and instead concentrated on others.
In fact, she felt far more…satisfied being there than she did at her paying job, which she knew she’d have to think about.
But with a good five months left on her verbal contract with her father, there wasn’t much she could do for now. She’d made a promise and didn’t plan to renege on it.
The days flew by, and before she knew it, the next board meeting was nearly upon them. It was to be held at the Los Angeles property, and all the management of all the hotels were required to attend. It was an overnight affair, but what had Kenna sweating was the actual meeting.
Wes had finished his report on the status of the new hotel. It was sharp, to the point and brilliant—she knew because he’d given her a copy. He’d also asked about her report, twice, but though they’d talked about it and what she was working on, she hadn’t yet showed him, because she hadn’t finished. In a move completely unlike her, she’d drafted three different versions and thrown each away.
