by BETH KERY
Esa rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in the mood to talk about Rachel’s sexy image. “Carla, listen to me. Listen very carefully. I forbid—do you hear me?—forbid you to say a word about me to Jess or Finn Madigan. Pretend like we hardly know each other.”
“Why?” Carla asked, clearly shocked. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to avoid Finn. Esa, he’s the most delectable, yummy—”
“He’s a man, Carla, not a midnight snack.”
Esa almost groaned out loud when she registered her own words. Apparently she’d been of a different mind last night when she’d kissed and licked Finn’s beautiful bronzed torso before she’d dropped to her knees and—
Heat flooded her cheeks.
“He’s the best kind of snack,” Carla continued suggestively. “The decadent kind that makes you burn calories instead of pack on the pounds. So what are you in a tizzy about? Obviously Finn wasn’t as entertaining as his little brother. I say little only in regard to their ages, mind you, because Jess is far from being little in any other sense of the word.”
“Thanks for that completely unsolicited piece of information,” Esa grated out. “Now, two things—one, tell Rachel I’m going to catch up with her so she better stop avoiding me. And two, if you say a word to Jess Madigan about who I am or what I do for a living, you can start looking for a new job come Monday.”
“Jeez, don’t hold back, Esa. You’ll get an ulcer if you keep in all that acid instead of spewing it out all over your friends. Do I even get to ask you how things went with Finn?”
Esa shot a dirty look at a blonde woman who shot past her in a dark blue Lamborghini. She punched the accelerator and zoomed past her challenger. Driving a fast car did strange things to people’s personality, no doubt about it.
“How did things go with Finn? They went awful. Terrible. Now you know, so the answer to your question is no. Don’t ask me any more about Finn Madigan. Not if you value our friendship.”
Esa understood why her parents hadn’t answered the phone earlier this morning when she found that their handsome, lovingly restored Victorian home was empty except for Felix and Sylvester, their two fat cats. She eventually discovered her mom and dad on their hands and knees in their beloved garden.
“Morning, sweetie.” Lexie Ormond waved a handful of dried-out cattail stalks in the air. She grinned when Esa dropped a kiss on her proffered cheek and straightened her floppy straw hat in the process. “Having dinner at Marisa Cartland’s tonight. Don’t want to be sunburned. She’s thinking about selling her house—too large now that her kids are in college.”
“Think she’ll let you sell it?” Esa asked, referring to her mother’s profession as a residential real estate agent.
“You know your mother. She’ll have the listing by the time hors d’oeuvres are served,” her father said. Esa smiled when she saw that he’d just smeared some black soil on his nose as he adjusted his glasses. David Ormond was a professor of physics at Loyola University. His perpetual vague, distracted expression and rumpled clothing coincided with his brilliant yet spacey academic persona perfectly.
He grinned sheepishly when Esa wiped the dirt off his nose.
“Gorgeous weather for October. Kitten said it was ten degrees cooler in Indianapolis,” he said.
“Rachel called this morning?” Now she possessed solid proof that her sister was avoiding her!
Esa’s anger had simmered just below the boiling point the entire time she helped her father plant a maple sapling in the backyard. It didn’t diminish when, despite her mother’s protests, Esa manically raked all the fallen leaves in the large backyard into a great pile.
“The neighborhood kids will have them scattered all over the place by evening,” Lexie said thoughtfully as she inspected her daughter’s efforts.
“Give the little monsters hell if they even look like they’re going to jump in my leaves.”
“Oh, Esa, lighten up. Where’s your sense of fun?” Lexie murmured with a little laugh before she set off for the house.
Esa ground her back teeth. Was her own mother in on the clobber Esa with the message that she’s a grouchy bore plot as well?
She turned down one of her mother’s delicious lunches, saying she had some important errands she needed to run. She didn’t tell her mellow, easygoing parents that her crucial errand involved finding a way to chew out their flighty youngest daughter.
Esa broke a few land speed records driving downtown to Rachel’s office. She planned to coax Rachel’s administrative assistant into giving Esa the name of her sister’s hotel. But she’d forgotten that it was Saturday and had instead found only a skeleton staff at the offices of Metro Sexy. The receptionist recognized her as Rachel’s sister, however, and allowed her to go to Rachel’s office in order to leave a note. Esa would probably speak to Rachel before she got it, but in the meantime it gave Esa an outlet for her fury.
Esa had been in the midst of penning her nasty, scathing missive when seemingly out of nowhere Finn Madigan walked into Rachel’s office.
Her first reaction to seeing his unmistakable form just feet away from her was amazement that she was experiencing a hallucination. But surely hallucinations weren’t so clear. No, the hard angles of his face, the eyes that were currently narrowed on her into concentrated pinpoints of vivid blue light, the sheer vibrancy that seemed to roll off his long, lean body in waves…one couldn’t imagine anything that breathtaking.
What could he be doing here?
Then he’d called her Kitten and Esa felt like howling in irritation. Of course the frivolous, promiscuous sex kitten that he supposed her to be was worth going to any length for a virile male to locate.
“What…why are you here?” Esa croaked through a dry throat as Finn Madigan ate up the space between them.
“I told you. We have some unfinished business.”
Esa swallowed heavily but it couldn’t abate the rapid leaping of the pulse at her throat. “I-I—”
“You walked out on me,” he finished succinctly. He was so big that the top of Rachel’s desk only reached him at mid-thigh. Esa found herself staring up at a tall tower of glowering man.
“I-I can explain about that,” Esa said in a rush.
He crossed his arms. “Okay. I’m listening.”
Esa glanced down in blind desperation at the note she’d been leaving Rachel and frowned. In her anger she’d not only inadvertently called Rachel her childhood name of Kitten, she’d also spelled interfering wrong. She hastily turned over the note and stood. She couldn’t think straight with Finn Madigan staring down at her from such a superior height.
“I realized that I had to be somewhere else,” she said. She picked up a marble paperweight on Rachel’s desk and began fiddling with it nervously.
“And you don’t think you could have let me know that before you left without saying a word?”
“It just came to me all of a sudden while I was…” She trailed off.
“While you were sitting on my bed waiting for me so that we could do it right?”
The paperweight landed with a loud thud on Rachel’s desk. Her gaze shot up to meet Finn’s. How could his voice have sounded soft and suggestive when his eyes burned through her like surgical lasers? He’d taken her so off guard that she said the first thing that came to mind.
“You got it right the first time.”
“That’s what I thought. So how come you scrammed?”
Esa’s backbone straightened when she registered his grin. Finn was clearly just as cocky as she’d guessed that first time she’d salivated over him while he strutted around the side of the highway like the king rooster in a hen house.
“I told you,” she said with a chilly tone as she rearranged Rachel’s paperweight, hoping the large crack that nearly cleaved it in half had been there before. “I had to be someplace else. I’m not quite sure why I owe you an explanation anyway. How did you find me here?”
“Where?”
“Where? Here,” Esa explained with
a trace of exasperation as she glanced around Rachel’s office.
“No, I mean where did you have to be in such a hellfire hurry last night?”
She glared at him. He screamed of insouciant incredulity as he stood there with his arms crossed, his hip slightly cocked and a smirk on his handsome face that stated loud and clear that even though he was asking, he wouldn’t believe a word she was about to say. He had a lot of nerve, treating her like she was a second grader who kept insisting that her homework was devoured by the hungry bear that occasionally took up residence beneath her bed.
“I remembered I had a date,” she told him with affected indifference as she picked up her purse from where she’d left it on the floor.
“‘S ‘at a fact?” Esa wasn’t quite sure why, but for a split second she was sure that Finn had growled the question.
“Yes. It just slipped my mind until that moment.”
“I hope you made it on time.”
“Just the teeniest bit late,” she replied sweetly. She came around the desk, trying to hide her trepidation at the idea of no longer having such a reassuringly solid object between her and Finn.
“So you had a good time on your date?” he inquired warmly.
“Hmmm?” Esa asked, losing the thread of their inane conversation when he suddenly turned and matched her pace as she fled the room. Her heart hammered so hard in her ears she almost couldn’t hear her own voice.
From the corner of her eye she saw how crisply white his t-shirt looked against his tanned skin and the gray flannel shirt that he wore casually over it. If the pair of faded jeans that he wore fit his lean hips, long thighs and tight butt any better he’d have jean companies shouting out offers for him to advertise their product while he sauntered down the city street.
Yeah, Carla had pretty much been dead-on in her assessment. Finn Madigan was downright delicious.
The fact that he, like his brother Jess, was undoubtedly used to having sexy young things throw themselves at him on a regular basis didn’t surprise Esa a bit. What infuriated her was that he clearly thought she was one of those vacuous, disposable creatures. He was only pissed off because she’d punched a leak in his swollen male ego. She’d dared to walk out of the line while most females were taking numbers and patiently waiting to get on the Finn Madigan ride. Most of them probably guessed correctly that he gave one hell of thrill while the ride lasted.
The thought pricked at her pride and made her draw up short just feet from the door.
“You know,” she began with a condescending smile. “I had a really great time last night. But I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’m not interested in anything permanent.”
“You drive a red sports car with license plates that read SXKITN69. Apparently you’re the publisher of a magazine that my brother has decided is the holy bible for hooking him up with women that are as single-minded in their expectations as he is. You had sex with me on my foyer floor after dancing with me once at a bar. Why the hell would I think you were interesting in anything permanent?” he deadpanned.
Esa closed her slack jaw with a click of her back teeth.
“Of course you aren’t,” she said after a moment. “It’s just… Well, why did you show up here then?”
He leaned down until she felt his warm breath ghost her forehead. His scent—a mixture of fresh air, the spicy remnants of his aftershave and the well-recalled singular smell of his skin—pervaded her awareness. Her nostrils flared as though to capture more of his essence greedily.
“I told you,” he said gently but firmly, as though he was indeed dealing with a recalcitrant five-year-old. “We have business.”
“You want to…to…hook up again?” Esa asked, embarrassment heating her cheeks at using that particular phrase in reference to herself.
He frowned. “What…you stick religiously to the definition of ‘one-night stands’, is that it?”
“Of course not, I just—”
“Look, the last thing I’m looking for is anything serious either so stop acting so jumpy. But the fact of the matter remains. I wasn’t finished with you last night.”
Esa met his stare, stunned by his quiet intensity.
Why had she fabricated that particular lie about not wanting anything permanent in a relationship? He already thought it of her, but it made her sound so unappealingly mercenary to have actually said it. And she suddenly wished—very, very much—that Finn Madigan would have gone to so much trouble in order to locate regular, boring Esa Ormond instead of the silly fantasy she’d created for him.
Now that she’d lied though, she felt foolish for taking it back. Especially since he’d indicated he was just out for a no-strings-attached good time.
Her gaze dropped to the hard line of his well-shaped mouth seemingly of its own accord. Still, there were so many benefits to the fantasy. The imposter woman had been allowed to kiss Finn’s lips, to taste his smooth, golden skin…to burn beneath his long, lean body.
“What are you thinking?” he rasped.
Esa jumped. Had he just moved closer to her? The mouth that she’d just been fantasizing about was now only inches away from her own. She licked her lower lip nervously and froze when she watched his vivid blue eyes trace the movement.
“I-I was wondering if you thought one more night would do the trick?” she croaked.
Finn blinked and met her stare. His slow smile made heat unfurl in her lower belly. “If you promise to stay put and let me have my way with you all night…it just might.”
Esa swallowed convulsively.
“So, do you ever allow one of your lovers to actually take you to dinner?” he asked.
Esa started out of her Finn-induced trance at that. Did he really think she was that promiscuous? A bitter defense rose to her tongue but she stilled it when she saw how his eyes glowed with arousal as he stared down at her mouth. Obviously Finn wanted her to be a loose, unprincipled sort of woman, so what right did she have to deprive him of his fantasy?
Never mind the fact that it was beyond thrilling to have him look at her like he was about to eat her up in one bite.
“Occasionally. A girl’s got to keep up her energy,” she informed Finn as she watched him through lowered eyelids. She wasn’t sure if he bought her seductive act or was just laughing at her when his white teeth flashed in his tanned face. Her heart seemed to pause in her chest when he ducked his head and used those sexy teeth to nip at her lower lip, gently prying her open.
When his attack came, however, it was anything but subtle.
He cut off her shaky moan by covering her mouth, penetrating her lips with his sleek tongue and kissing her hard and thoroughly. The lights that flashed behind her eyes looked like colorful blooming flowers. When he released her from that total onslaught on her senses her eyelids remained closed.
“Who taught you how to kiss, anyway?” she mumbled.
He took his time answering her question as he tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s see…that probably would have been my cousin Dina.”
She opened one eye. “Kissing cousins? Isn’t that a bit of a cliché?”
His low, rumbling laughter made her want to press her cheek to his chest and absorb the experience with another sense organ besides her appreciative ears.
“She’s only a cousin by marriage, but then again just about everyone in Bridgeport is and the ones who aren’t are the real thing,” Finn said, referring to the South Side neighborhood where he grew up. He grabbed her hand. “Come on. How about a picnic? It’s a nice day. We might as well enjoy it while we get you fueled up for action.”
Esa opened up her mouth to protest his crudity—sex kitten act be damned—but then she noticed the gleam of mischief in his blue eyes. Her already escalated heartbeat skipped into double time as he pulled her out of Rachel’s office.
Dangerous. The alarming sort, warning-was-not-sufficient, run shrieking for the hills and hide all the valuables—most especially your heart—kind of d
ownright dangerous.
That’s what Finn Madigan was.
Chapter Six
She had to admit, Finn knew how to do a picnic right. They’d stopped at a French restaurant on Walton Street where the man standing behind the empty bar greeted Finn by name. When Finn explained what they planned the middle-aged gentlemen—who appeared to have a genuine French accent—bustled about preparing their outdoor feast. He’d made eye contact with Esa when he drew down a bottle of Bordeaux from the wine rack, and winked.
“He really likes you, doesn’t he? You must come here a lot?” Esa had whispered to Finn.
He’d shrugged. “I used to come several times a week.”
“Don’t you anymore?”
Finn had shaken his head. “Nah. I used to work across the street. Now that I’m at 63rd and the Dan Ryan it’s a little far to drive for lunch, even for Paul’s food.”
Esa had opened her mouth to ask him more about his previous job but Paul called out at that moment, holding up a partial round of cheese. Finn nodded his approval and Paul added it to the paper sack already filled with a crusty loaf of bread, a package filled with marinated olives, a bottle of wine, a plastic wine opener, cups, napkins and two enormous fresh peaches.
After parking Rachel’s car in the parking garage at Finn’s condo, they’d strolled lazily down Lake Shore Drive to Millennium Park. Since the day was so beautiful and the park was fully decked out in brilliant autumn regalia, they’d walked a bit before settling down to eat lunch.
They’d paused to watch a group being supervised in park-sponsored pumpkin carving. One particular pair of participants had caught Esa’s eye—a five- or six-year-old chestnut brown-haired girl accompanied by what appeared to be her grandmother. The older lady had successfully traced the pattern for the jack-o-lantern onto the pumpkin but she was wincing in discomfort as she tried to use a razor-type knife to carve out the meticulous design.
“No, it’s too sharp for you, Melissa,” Esa heard the grandmother tell the girl gently when the child tried to take the knife from her.
