“I didn’t mean to be cruel.”
His gray eyes widened in surprise. Then his expression changed, as gentle now as it had been savage a moment before. His fingertip traced the line of her mouth. He smiled when he felt her lips soften beneath the caress.
“Not you,” he said. “That bastard you were married to. He did his best to ruin you, didn’t he? And you know why?”
Numbly, she shook her head, listening to Cain ask the question that had tormented her for a long, long time.
“Because you’re all woman and your husband wasn’t even half a man.”
Tears magnified her luminous eyes. She knew that she was on the edge of crying again, yet before today she had not cried since her husband’s last, humiliating attempt to have sex with her.
“I think,” Cain said, his voice husky, “it’s time we look at paint chips. Either that, or I’ll forget my good intentions.”
She blinked back tears and tried to smile. “You mean if I don’t take you up on it right now, you’ll wiggle out of having to look at all the boring samples?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I mean that if I don’t get you out of here right now, I’m going to take you down on this ugly carpet and teach you things about yourself and me that you just aren’t ready to accept.”
She started to say again that he would be disappointed, then realized that her words would sound like a challenge or an invitation or both at once. She didn’t want that, despite the heat uncurling in her core.
He’s right. I’m not ready to accept him—us—right now. And then she remembered that he was a traveling man. I’m not ready for anything more with Cain.
Ever.
Quickly she opened the door and walked out of the penthouse she was going to transform into a home.
“We’ll take my car,” she said distinctly. “I parked just across the street.”
“I don’t mind driving.”
“Your Jaguar shouldn’t be trusted to public parking lots. Your bike isn’t big enough for carpet, paint, and tile samples. Besides, I know my way around. I’ve lived in the city for years. You’ve only visited it.”
Cain shut up and followed her to her car. He wasn’t surprised to find that she handled L.A. traffic with the same quiet skill she had handled Squeeze.
“Do you want to rent furniture?” she asked as she drove.
“No. Rented things are for houses. This will be a home for me.”
“Whenever you’re here.”
She tried to keep the edge out of her voice. She wasn’t very successful.
“Whenever I’m here,” he agreed, watching her intently. “I own the company, Shelley. I can be wherever I please a whole lot of the time.”
“And you please to roam,” she said, her voice relentlessly casual, her eyes on the traffic. “I understand that. There are some beautiful places way off out there.”
He listened to the unconscious softening of her voice when she talked about “out there,” and smiled with satisfaction.
“You love them, too, don’t you?” he asked.
“What?” she asked, throwing a quick glance in his direction.
“The wild places of the earth. The Sea of Sand and the pampas, the outback and the Tibetan plateau, mountain ranges as tall as God and abandoned cities as old as time.”
She heard the resonance in his voice, memories thickly layered, beauty haunting him, calling to him, making him roam.
Traveling man.
“I love my home more,” she said.
Her tone was a complex mixture of despair and fear, longing and desire, loneliness and hunger; and more, emotions as thickly layered in her voice as memories had been in his.
Different emotions. Different needs.
“This is the only place I’ve ever really belonged,” she said. “This is my home.”
He heard the accusation in her words, and the defiance.
“Who told you that you can’t have both a home and the world?” he asked.
“Life,” she said succinctly.
With that she downshifted and came to a smooth stop at a red light.
“Not everything you learn is true,” he pointed out. “Look at what your husband taught you—a load of bullshit if there ever was one.”
“You can’t be sure about that,” she said, feeling cornered again, not wanting to talk about it.
“My wife tried to teach me the same thing.”
“What?”
“That I was worthless as a lover.”
Shelley turned and stared at him, her mouth half open, disbelief clear in her expression.
“It’s a miracle you stopped laughing long enough to sign the divorce papers,” she said finally.
It was Cain’s turn to be startled. Then he smiled slowly. “I take that as one hell of a compliment.”
She flushed and looked away.
“It’s the truth and you know it,” she said, sticking to her point.
“I didn’t know it then. I went through a lot of women, finding out what was true and what wasn’t. You didn’t do that, though.”
“Go through women?” she said flippantly. “No. I’m hopelessly old-fashioned in some ways.”
He smiled but refused to be distracted from his pursuit of her past. “You didn’t go through men, looking for your own truth.”
It was a statement rather than a question, but she answered anyway.
“No.”
“Old-fashioned or afraid?”
“Try finicky.”
“And just a bit afraid of what you might find out?”
“Yes, damn you!” she said tightly, angry again. “Are you satisfied now?”
“Far from it,” he said, smiling slightly.
She remembered the deep, rhythmic kiss they had shared and the hardness of his body moving against her belly. Her mouth flattened and she looked away.
“That’s the problem with me and sex,” she said bitterly. “No satisfaction for anyone involved.”
“Wrong. Your husband didn’t have the first idea of what to do with a real woman.”
Cain’s voice softened as he ran his fingertip down the tight line of her jaw, down her neck, to the soft hollow where her life beat visibly, quickly.
“And I’m glad you’re finicky, mink. Very glad. I’ve been that way for a long time. It’s part of growing up.”
A horn honked, telling Shelley that the light had turned green. She went through the intersection with unusual speed and a high flush on her cheeks.
Determined to give him no more openings for too-personal conversation, she drove quickly to the Design Center, talking about colors and textures and tiles every block of the way.
He listened politely, commenting from time to time.
As long as she didn’t look at him, she could keep the illusion of having a businesslike exchange of views with a client. But when she looked at him, his eyes and his mouth reminded her of all the shimmering, treacherous feelings she was trying to forget.
She was relieved when she drove into the acres of parking lots surrounding the Design Center. The Center itself was a huge, long, glass-walled building that held a boggling variety of furniture. Every designer who had aspirations to national and international celebrity had a showroom in the Center. A few of the designers did retail business out of their showrooms. Most did not. That wasn’t a problem for Shelley, who had a wholesale license.
“We’re off,” she said, locking up the car.
Cain didn’t look nearly as delighted at the prospect as she did.
Two hours later, he dug in his heels and refused to look at one more piece of furniture. He had seen hundreds of things, each distinctive, each demanding attention, each asserting a completely different set of aesthetic values.
“I feel like I’ve been on one of those European economy tours of the great churches,” he said. “If you show me one more chair, I’ll turn into a babbling idiot.”
She grinned. “Perfect! Now you’re ready to do some serious shopp
ing.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I’m burned out.”
“Oh, I heard you, all right. Did you hear me?”
“Is this some unsubtle form of torture?”
“Nope. It’s some unsubtle way to get past the surface and down to what really suits you. The way you feel right now, if anything catches your eye, that will mean it really speaks to you.”
He muttered something she chose not to hear. Then he sighed and followed her into the next showroom.
By late afternoon they had been through every display at least once. Some they had gone through several times. Shelley’s notebook and pen had been out all the time, but Cain hadn’t objected. He knew that there had to be some way to keep track of designers and colors and delivery dates.
And he had to admit that her shopping technique was effective, if ruthless. After hours and hours of looking, he knew instantly whether a piece of furniture could hold his interest. He also knew which decorating effects were merely spectacular and which had staying power for him.
It was the same for colors and textures. Some combinations that at first had appealed to him tended to bore him on the third or fourth or fifth look. Other combinations became more attractive each time he saw them.
His responses became reflexive, a gut-deep yes or no that had nothing to do with anything except his unique, personal taste.
“Mercy,” he pleaded at last.
“You’re in luck. They’re closing up the building.” She frowned. “I wish I’d taken time to measure the rooms in your penthouse.”
“Do you need it to the inch?”
“No. But I can’t decide between two or three groupings for your living room, and the bedroom might be too big for—”
“Twenty by thirty-eight feet,” he interrupted, yawning.
“What?”
“The living room. The bedroom is fifteen by thirty. You want the rest?”
“Whatever you have.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Behave yourself, or I’ll use my influence for an after-hours tour of every furniture showroom we’ve already seen.”
Cain began reciting the dimensions of his penthouse. Quickly. She wrote it all down with her own brand of shorthand. When he was finished, she looked up.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“I’m an engineer. I’ve got an eye for measurements.” He smiled, looking at her from head to toe.
Her pen jerked as she remembered just how cruel some kind of measurements were.
“You wear a size ten dress,” he said, “except in the more expensive lines. Then it would be an eight. Same for your shoe size. Eight, that is.”
“About the shower alcove in your penthouse,” she began.
He talked right over her. “You’re thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five, give or take some fractions. And,” he continued, holding his hand out, looking at it, remembering, “you fit perfectly in my palm. That means a nicely filled B-cup.”
“Stop it.”
“Why? You’re learning something, aren’t you?”
“I know my own measurements.”
“And now you know that you can trust my room measurements.” His smile was challenging. “Right?”
She closed her notebook so hard that the pages snapped together. “I have some furniture to order. Why don’t you settle in over there. and wait for me?”
He looked over his shoulder and saw replicas of a medieval rack, a stock, an iron maiden, and a bed of nails. Some whimsical furniture designer was using the ancient torture devices to show what should be avoided in the name of human comfort.
“I confess,” Cain said, throwing up his hands. “Whatever it is, I’ll confess to anything.” His hands dropped to her shoulders and he drew her close. “Except lying. I never lie, mink. You fit perfectly in my palm.”
His kiss was both gentle and hot, as were the hands sliding down her back to her waist. He released her so quickly that she didn’t have time to object.
“Don’t be long,” he said. “We have reservations for dinner.”
“Dinner?” she asked.
She was off-balance, caught between objection and response, unable to express either one.
“At the beach. With Billy. Don’t worry,” he added, yawning. “JoLynn won’t be around.”
“I can hold my own with her.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
He waited until Shelley had turned and walked away several steps before he spoke.
“I’m glad you think I feel like Squeeze—strong and warm and very hard.”
Her steps hesitated as she realized JoLynn must have told Cain about being compared to a snake. Quickly she turned and glanced back at him.
He was smiling a remembering kind of smile.
She turned away with a rush. Her heels made a distinct, determined clicking sound in the hallway. Like her heartbeat, her steps accelerated.
Even though nothing followed her but the memory of his smile, she felt pursued.
Chapter Nine
The sea rolled toward sand that had been turned a deep gold by the slowly descending sun. The light at the beach was magical, shimmering with mystery, touching even the most ordinary things with myth and majesty. A child’s forgotten, half-buried plastic bucket became a wide crescent of precious lapis lazuli set in rough gold. Tiny stranded jellyfish be-came moonstones gleaming with time and riches. Rocks became ebony sculptures whose shadowed faces appeared and disappeared with each breaking wave, each shift of light.
During the heat of the day, the sand had been churned by thousands of feet. The sun worshippers were gone now, but the footsteps they left behind were miniature dunes and velvet shadows that recalled the epic sand mountains of the Sahara. The sea itself was an iridescent blue that was almost tropical in its intensity.
Shelley looked over the tips of her sandy toes and watched Billy and Cain bodysurf. Though it had been years since Cain had played with Pacific waves, it was obvious that he was holding his own against his agile nephew.
With deceptive ease, Cain caught wave after wave, riding the foaming water with little more than his powerful shoulders showing above the creamy surf. Billy stayed right beside his uncle, his slender body making up in determination and skill what it lacked in power.
Smiling lazily, she watched the males at play. She was outmatched in the big waves and had no problem admitting it. After an hour of being tumbled around by the surf, she had been ready to lie on the beach and let the thunder of waves lull her to sleep.
Now she was awake again. And hungry. Dinnertime was at hand, but the surfers were reluctant to give up their play.
A few feet beyond her, the bonfire she had just built crackled within a ring of stones. Everything was ready for roasting hotdogs.
Except the men.
She stretched and listened to her stomach rumble, but didn’t get up and do anything about it. The low, rhythmic voice of the surf was unraveling her all over again.
After a few minutes, all she wanted to do was burrow into the warm, silky sand and watch golden light flow over Cain. When he rose from the creamy remains of a wave, he looked like a god cast in pure gold. Muscles in his calves and thighs flexed rhythmically, carrying his body with a grace that made her stare without knowing it.
He radiated vitality as surely as the sun radiated heat. Water ran like golden tears down his body, burnishing every line of muscle and sinew, outlining him with liquid fire. For a long time she watched him with a complex yearning that was both sensual and something more complex.
And she tried to imagine how it would feel to flow like water over his body, to know him as intimately as the sea did, touching all of him.
The thought made her breath hesitate, then quicken in time with her own heartbeat. She had never wanted to know a man’s body like that, completely, curiosity and passion rising equally within her.
Would he like to be touched that way? she wondered. Would he allow my fingertips and palms and lips, my teeth and ton
gue, all of me to discover all of him?
Would his inner thighs be as sensitive as mine? Would his nipples harden beneath my lips? Would he enjoy being stroked, arching into my touch like a great cat?
And beneath all those questions, the fear that held her sensuality in a cold prison.
Would I be able to arouse him to the height of need—and then be woman enough to answer that need?
Fear and sensual hunger warred within Shelley. She closed her eyes, but still she saw Cain walking toward her, each movement of his body a separate seduction. She had known other men who were better-looking or more socially polished, bigger or smaller or more physically perfect. None had been more intelligent, more perceptive, quicker of mind.
No man had ever called to her own mind and body as Cain Remington did.
No man but Cain had made her want to abandon fear and memories of humiliation and give herself to him. No man but Cain had made a satin flower begin to bloom inside her body, petal after soft petal unfolding . . .
She shivered invisibly. What will happen if I give in to the sensations that both frighten and fascinate me? What if Cain is right? What if I’m able to please him?
Dear God, what if he’s wrong?
“Wake up, mink. It’s time for dinner, and you promised to be the cook.”
She opened her eyes. Instantly she wished that she had kept them closed. Cain was standing so close to her that she could have turned her head and licked golden drops of water from his leg. The temptation to do just that shocked her.
When she tried to look away from the water-darkened hair and well-defined muscles of his calf, her glance simply went higher. She remembered the hardness of his thighs as he had pressed against her. And another, more urgent hardness.
Almost desperately, she looked away from his tight navy swim trunks. But the curling line of dark hair that appeared above the top of his trunks and then fanned into a wedge-shaped mat across his chest did nothing to cool her thoughts. She wanted to rub her cheek against his chest, to seek the skin beneath the male pelt with nails and tongue, touching him.
Then she realized that she had been staring at his body far too long. She looked up and saw the sensuality darkening his eyes.
“Do you know what I’d like to do?” he asked.
Where the Heart Is Page 11
