“I’ll do it,” she said.
His smile had such savage pleasure in it that she regretted her decision. She was on the point of changing her mind when pride and common sense stepped in.
I can’t go back on my word. Besides, I’m safe. Cain is a traveling man to the soles of his fret. He won’t be around long enough to break my heart.
Somehow the thought didn’t comfort her.
Chapter Eight
The following day Shelley looked over the battleground. Cain’s residence was a large penthouse atop a Century City condominium high-rise. The view was limited only by the curve of the earth or smog, whichever came first.
Today the Santa Ana winds were blowing, bringing a desert clarity to the Los Angeles basin’s often murky air. Viewed from Cain’s residence, the city was a gently rumpled green-and-white tapestry thrown between the pale blue shimmer of the ocean and the cinnamon thrust of the San Gabriel Mountains.
The view was the only thing compelling about the penthouse. The interior was expensively finished and not at all individual. Obviously it had been done by a decorator who was competent and uninspired in equal parts. Stark white, dusty black, and an odd, dull red dominated the living room.
“Did you choose the color scheme?” she asked.
“No. I just told the decorator if there were any pastels I’d cut his fee in half.”
“Yet you liked my house.”
“You didn’t have any pastels.”
“Cream, buff, wheat, toast, sand, eggshell,” she said, ticking off colors quickly. “I have all of them in one room or another.”
“Those aren’t pastels.”
She turned quickly. He was watching her with a patient look on his face.
“When you say pastel, what do you mean?” she asked.
“Pink, baby blue, lavender, that sort of thing.”
“Easter-egg colors.”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “You’re right. They wouldn’t suit you at all.”
“Thank you.”
“Does this?” She waved her hand at the living room.
“What do you think?”
“I think if you ever stayed here for more than a few weeks at a time, you’d have the whole thing redone.”
He smiled crookedly. “Know any good decorators? I can’t stand the place after jet lag wears off.”
Frowning, she thought of all the decorators she knew. Every one of them was excellent in his or her own way . . . and not one of them would be right for Cain. She sighed and broke her rule about never becoming involved in paint chips and carpet samples.
“Me,” she said. “That is, if you’d trust me. I don’t have any formal training.”
“I’d trust you with anything I have.”
The quiet statement startled her. She focused on him instead of the room. As always, she was caught by the changeable color of his gray eyes. Against the bleak blacks and whites of the room, his eyes were alive with light, like fog just before the sun breaks through.
He is too damned attractive to me, she realized again.
Cain smiled gently, as though sensing her sudden uneasiness, and its cause.
“Want to see the rest?” he asked.
She accepted the change of subject gratefully. “Lead the way.”
As she followed him through the penthouse, she mentally tried out different color schemes. By the time he led her back to the living room, she had decided on subdued background colors in a variety of textures; a natural setting for the art she would add to bring focus and individuality to the rooms.
“You’re frowning,” he said. “Is it that bad?”
“I was just thinking about the odd-colored turquoise tiles in the bathroom. The Jacuzzi is beautiful, and the sunken tub is big enough to swim in. I’d hate for you to go through the inconvenience and expense of replacing it all just for the sake of color . . .”
“Do it. That particular shade of turquoise isn’t one of my favorites. All I ask is that you get the contractor to do the work while I’m gone.”
She looked away before Cain could see the sudden downward turn of her mouth.
“When will you be going?” she asked evenly.
“I’m not sure. I left a real mess up in the Yukon.”
“What happened?”
“Two of my mining engineers are arguing over Landsat interpretations, maps, and ore samples. Both of them drink too much, and there’s a woman, too,” he added, raking his fingers through his hair.
“A woman who drinks too much?”
“No. A woman they’re fighting over. Hell, Lulu drinks too much, too, now that I think of it.”
“Sounds, um, interesting.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair again.
“Compared to Lulu, JoLynn looked like a piece of cake,” he admitted. “Besides, Billy needed someone to look after him. In the past, Dave always took the brunt of JoLynn’s behavior, protecting Billy. But he’s in France, so I came back. I’ll stay here as long as I can.”
“And then?” she asked, walking over to the west-facing windows.
“I’ll come back as fast as I can.”
She looked out the windows without really noticing the magnificent view.
“Seen enough?” he asked after a moment.
“Yes.”
He had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t referring to the view, but to his lifestyle.
“Shelley—”
“Call me before you fly out,” she said professionally, cutting across his words. “If you feel comfortable leaving me a key, I’ll oversee the work here while you’re gone.”
“What if l don’t leave? May l call you anyway?” he asked with biting politeness.
“Of course.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it.”
She pulled her notebook out of her purse and began writing.
“You’ll have to approve the paint and carpet samples,” she said as she made notes. “Then there’s the question of furniture.”
His hand moved in a savage, cutting gesture. “Whatever works is fine with me. Just so it’s big enough for me to be comfortable while I’m here.”
She looked up from her notebook. Her expression was that of an attentive professional listening to a client. Her eyes were very dark beneath the dense shadow of her lashes.
“ ‘Whatever works’?” she repeated. Then she shrugged elegantly. “Whatever you say. It’s your home, after all.”
“It’s my house. A home is built with love, not paint and carpet samples.”
The slender gold pen gleamed as she waved her hand in a vague circle that included the penthouse.
“A home is lived in,” she said. “This isn’t.”
In the silence that followed Shelley’s statement, the click of her retractable ballpoint pen was very distinct. She returned pen and notebook to her purse and walked to the door.
“I’ll call you when I have a selection of samples for you to look over.”
“Not so fast, Miss Wilde.”
She hesitated. Then she turned around. One mink-brown eyebrow formed a questioning arch.
“Yes, Mr. Remington?”
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way. Paint chips, carpet samples, panels of wallpaper, pieces of tile, the whole tortilla.”
“I thought you trusted me.”
“Oh, I do,” he retorted, gliding toward her with his soundless stride. “I trust you to show me all the things this penthouse has been missing. Starting now.”
For an instant she was certain that Cain was going to fold his arms around her and teach her again how unnerving a man’s kiss could be. But he didn’t. He simply smiled and held out his arm for her to take.
The extent of her disappointment dismayed her.
“Shall we?” he murmured.
She thought of endless rows of color wheels and swatches of cloth
and carpet. Smiling rather savagely, she put her arm through his.
“This,” she said distinctly, “will bore the pants off you.”
“I can’t imagine that having my pants off around you would ever be boring.”
A pale wash of rose heightened her color. She knew that she had to do something to cool off his sensual heat—and her own futile response to it.
“Trust me,” she said, her voice utterly neutral. “It would be boring. Ask my ex-husband.”
Cain’s arm tightened beneath her hand until his flesh felt as though it had been carved from wood.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.
“Think of it as a friendly warning. I’ll gild your house, but if you’re expecting fireworks in the bedroom, you came to the wrong woman. Is that clear enough, or should I set it in tile and put it in your hail entrance?”
“Did your ex-husband bore you with his pants off?”
Shelley shrugged and didn’t answer.
“Can’t remember?” he suggested.
Suddenly she remembered too much, too vividly. None of her usual defenses against the past were working. The pain and humiliation were surprisingly intense.
“What I do or do not remember about my marriage is none of your damned business.”
“In short, you were bored.”
She closed her eyes and tried to think of another way to describe how she had felt about her former husband’s infrequent attempts to make love to her. From the start of their marriage, his cutting comments about her small breasts and lack of sexiness in general had made her so self-conscious that passion had been all but impossible. Later, the marriage counselor told her that her husband’s belittling of her body was simply his way of dealing with his own feelings of inadequacy as a man.
Maybe, Shelley thought unhappily. Maybe, maybe, maybe. And maybe he was right. Maybe I’m just not much of a woman.
After the divorce, she hadn’t been eager to test the counselor’s theory or her ex-husband’s opinion. She had stayed well away from men in any but a business capacity.
Until Cain came along, tempting her. And then frightening her with his temptations.
What if my husband was right? What if I give myself to Cain and he’s disappointed?
Or worse. Scornful.
As her husband had been.
“Did I bore you, Shelley?”
Her eyes flew open.
Cain was only inches away.
The heat of his body radiated out to her in a tantalizing, teasing caress. His eyes were heavy-lidded, intent, almost silver with suppressed emotion. The immense male vitality of him made her hunger for things she couldn’t name.
“It would be impossible for you to ever bore a woman,” she said, her voice husky and sad.
“Tell that to my ex-wife.”
She looked from his thick chestnut hair down the hard length of his body to his feet.
“At least,” she said tightly, “your ex couldn’t complain about the basic equipment. Unless she was as blind as she was neurotic.”
He looked startled, then speculative. “Was your husband?”
“Neurotic? In a man it’s called something else. A need for variety.”
“Was he blind, too?”
She didn’t bother to evade or to ask if Cain meant what she thought he did. She knew he meant exactly that.
And she knew that she was going to tell the truth. As her husband had taught her, there was nothing quite like a cold splash of truth to drain the heat from passion.
“He complained about the basic equipment.” With an immense effort, she shrugged casually. “He had cause. I’m not Playmate of this or any other month.”
“Is that what it took to turn him on? Big tits?”
The blunt question made Shelley wince. It sounded so much worse spoken aloud, even more harsh than her memories.
Truth like ice water, chilling her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Did he measure up?”
She didn’t know how to answer.
Callused fingertips traced the line of her cheekbone. She made a helpless gesture, regretting her idea of using truth like a weapon to defeat his sensuality.
“Did he measure up?” Cain repeated softly.
“Not with me.” There was no color left in her face now, only memories, cold and white and bloodless. “But I’m told he was an upstanding regular on the meat-market circuit.”
Cain’s smile was almost cruel.
“I wonder if he ever met my wife. God, I hope so. They were meant for each other. Makes me wonder if Fate didn’t mix up the cards a bit, dealing us exactly the wrong partners at the wrong time. We were both vulnerable as hell when we married, weren’t we?”
“And dumber than a roomful of ratted hair,” she added bitingly, remembering her own naive dreams.
There was an instant of silence. Then he exploded into laughter. He gathered her against his chest and rocked slowly, laughing.
She could no more resist his gentle, undemanding embrace than she could his deep laughter. Both surrounded her, sinking through protective layers that had been built over the lonely years. Laughter and gentleness and the sheer heat of his body reached into her, finding the woman buried beneath the shame and disappointment and fear. She hung on to him and laughed until she cried.
Then she simply hung onto him and cried.
“Even your tears are sweet,” he whispered.
With catlike neatness, his lips and the tip of his tongue took silver drops from her cheeks.
“Oh, Cain—what am I going—to do with you?” she asked between broken breaths, defenseless against the man who rocked her in his arms, a stranger no more.
“I have a few suggestions that would shock you.”
He looked down at her with an utterly male smile that made her want to bawl again. Her laugh was as soft and broken as her crying had been.
“Cain, Cain,” she whispered, holding him tightly, rocking him as he had rocked her. “I’ll only disappoint you.”
And then, she added silently, you’ll disappoint me. Traveling man, we’re all wrong for each other.
“Kissing you was the first thing in years that hasn’t disappointed me,” he said.
He rubbed his lips lightly, slowly, across hers. His tongue flicked out, tasting and adding to the moisture of her tears.
“If I make you mad, will you stick out your tongue at me?” he asked hopefully.
The last of her tears vanished in quiet laughter. She rubbed her cheek against the resilient muscles of his chest.
“You’re a renegade,” she said. “But a very gentle, very intelligent one.”
His hand fitted around her throat with exquisite care. Slowly, he tilted her face upward.
“I’ve never been accused of being gentle before. I like it.”
His lips moved softly over her mouth, the hollow beneath her cheeks, the gleaming darkness of her eyelashes still wet with tears.
“And I love the taste of you,” he whispered.
His arms slid down and tightened around her, holding her hips against his. There was no mistaking his intent or the extent of his arousal.
“I want to take off your clothes and taste all of you,” he said. “I’ve never wanted to do that to a woman before.”
He looked down into the wide, dazed hazel eyes that were watching him with a combination of wariness and the beginning of desire.
“I know,” he said simply. “You think it’s too soon. But I want you to know what you do to me. I want you to think about it. I want you to know beyond any doubt how hungry you make me. You’re the most exciting woman I’ve ever touched. Whatever lies that bastard ex-husband told you are in the past. We live in the present. And this isn’t a lie.”
Cain lowered his head. Slowly, inevitably, he took Shelley’s mouth with slow strokes of his tongue. The sensual rhythm was reinforced by the equally slow movement of his hips against hers.
After the first instant of shoc
k, she returned the kiss hesitantly, almost shyly. She felt the tiny tremor that ripped through his body when her tongue moved against his. Knowing that she had an effect on him was more heady than breathing heated cognac. Her arms crept around his neck and she stood on tiptoe, instinctively straining to match the soft fulfillment of her body to the hard need of his.
He felt the change in her, felt the womanly promise of her caressing mouth and body. With a thick sound, he lifted one hand from her hip to her breast.
Instantly she froze.
“No,” she said, her voice raw as she tried to twist away.
“I’m not going to drag you into the bedroom,” he said, moving his hand soothingly down her ribs to her waist, then slowly back up again. “I just want to touch you.”
Her hand intercepted his. “No.”
There was no mistaking the desperation and panic in her voice.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“What I have in that department isn’t worth fighting over. Take my word for it.”
Her voice was as flat as the line of her mouth.
“I think,” he said grimly, “that I’m hearing echoes of the past.”
“Think what you like. The answer is still no.”
She stepped back and freed herself.
Cain could have held on to her, but he didn’t. He opened his mouth as though to argue, then thought better of it. His teeth clicked shut. He looked at her tight expression, saw her uneven breathing, and remembered the exciting softness of her breast against his palm in the instant before she had twisted away from his touch.
“Am I likely to meet your former husband any time soon?” Cain asked almost absently.
“Not unless you have business in Florida.”
“I don’t.” He flexed his hands. “It’s just as well. Likely I would probably lose my temper and hurt him.”
The matter-of-fact statement shook Shelley as deeply as his kiss had. His predatory smile while he looked at his strong hands did nothing to make her feel more at ease.
“Cain?” she asked hesitantly, almost afraid.
Silence, then a long sigh.
“It’s all right, mink. Wanton cruelty makes me angry, that’s all.”
Where the Heart Is Page 10
