Sunny Chandler's Return

by Sandra Brown

  “Get out of my house.”

  “Sunny,” he said on a long-suffering sigh as he leaned against the draining board and folded his arms over his naked chest, “let me give you a lesson in morning-after etiquette. The least you can do to repay a man who gave you seven orgasms—or was it eight? It’s hard to tell with a woman as lusty as you—anyway, the least you can offer me in return this morning is a cup of coffee.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “You didn’t seem to think so last night,” he said blandly. “And just for the record book, last night had everything to do with you and me and nothing to do with my bet with George.”

  “Isn’t that why you slept with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you explain that case of Wild Turkey on my front porch?” She made an arrow out of her arm and accusingly pointed toward the front of the house.

  “I can’t. I don’t know how George found out I was here. Maybe he saw me leave the church driving like a madman, followed me out here, and drew his own conclusions.”

  “Or maybe once you’d scored, you sneaked out of bed and came in here to call him.”

  Ty balefully stared at her for several seconds, then turned his back to take a coffee mug out of the cabinet. Finally, the coffee was ready. Only after he had poured his coffee and taken several scalding sips did he look at her again. “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Well, you should. You had your hands on me practically all night.” His eyelids lowered sexily. “And what you usually had a hold of I could hardly take out of your clutches without both of us noticing.”

  Her cheeks filled with color and heat. She lowered her gaze, floundering for something to say. She could feel herself rapidly losing ground and didn’t know how to get it back.

  “Well, it’s over and done with anyway. You won your bet. My week here is up. As soon as my guest,” she stressed scathingly, “finishes his coffee, I’m leaving for home.”

  “For New Orleans?”

  “Where else?”

  “And go back to what?”

  “What do you mean by that?” She was immediately on the defensive.

  “Back to all those lovers that never existed?”

  She had no response to that, so she avoided addressing it at all. “Back to my career.”

  “A career you could just as easily handle from here.” Ty set his empty cup down. “All you’ll be going back to is your self-imposed loneliness. You exiled yourself from everything that was familiar and dear to you because you didn’t have the guts to stay and face what is so evidently clear.”

  “That my fiancé chose my bridesmaid over me!”

  “No, that you chose the wrong man to begin with. You didn’t want to admit to everybody that your judgment had been so far off.”

  “After what happened, I didn’t have any choice but to leave.”

  “You had plenty of choices!” he shouted. “For one, you could have stayed and married Jenkins. For another, you could have exposed him and Gretchen instead of taking the rap yourself.”

  “I loved him too much for that,” she fired back. She knew it wasn’t true; Ty knew it wasn’t true. But she wanted to provoke him.

  It didn’t work. “That’s crap, Sunny,” he said mildly. “Just like it’s crap that your parents left here because of your disgrace.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I talked to Fran. She said your dad was offered a fantastic job in Jackson. Their leaving here had nothing to do with you. But you chose to believe it did to justify your own leaving. For the benefit of everybody in Latham Green, you’ve painted yourself as being an independent career girl with a string of lovers and a devil-take-tomorrow attitude. You started believing in that false image yourself.

  “But we both know that woman doesn’t exist. That isn’t the life you want. When you left here, you weren’t running toward something. You were running away. And if you leave today, that’s what you’ll be doing again.”

  Sunny was so angry she was rocking back and forth slightly. “Take your half-baked psychology and go straight to hell, Sheriff Beaumont. I can’t wait to get back to New Orleans. I’m leaving as soon as you dress and get out of here.”

  “Okay,” he said with a shrug, “leave. But I’ll only come after you.”

  “What for?”

  He moved forward and didn’t stop until he was toe to toe with her. “Because I want you. I must be crazy, but I do. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you eating those damn strawberries. Last night you proved to be the woman I had guessed you were, the woman I’ve needed and wanted for a long time.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoyed me because that’s the last chance you’ll ever get.”

  He laughed. “Far from it, Sunny. You can run off today, but I’ll just chase you down. Remember when I told you that Jenkins was the greater fool for letting you walk through the church door? Well, I’m not Jenkins. I’m gonna stay hot on your saucy little tail until you’re in my life, in my house, and in my bed for good.”

  For a moment Sunny was speechless. “You actually think I would live with you? Here in Latham Green?”

  “Husbands and wives usually, not always of course, but usually, live together.”

  “Husbands and—you think I’m going to marry you?”

  He grinned confidently. “Not think. Know.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right. Most men wouldn’t want a firebrand like you around, but I kinda like the excitement. I’ve been with many women, not a single one of whom has ever gotten me out of bed by flooding the front porch with Wild Turkey,” he said, laughing.

  “Go ahead, laugh. I think it’s hilarious myself that you are under the delusion that I’d ever marry you and live in this hick town.”

  “This hick town did all right by you. I think it’s a great place for kids to grow up.”

  “Kids?”

  “Sure. I think we ought to do our civic duty to keep the Latham Green school district in business, don’t you?”

  Her expression seethed with mutiny and resentment.

  He cuffed her under the chin. “I know you’re resistant to the idea right now. You wouldn’t recognize what was good and right for you if it came up and bit you. But after you’ve given it some thought, you’ll come around.”

  He headed for the door. “Oh, and if you do decide to leave today, be quiet while you’re packing. As you know, you kept me up most of the night.” Scratching his chest absently, he yawned broadly. “I’m going back to bed.”

  Again Sunny was left staring at an empty doorway.

  He was bluffing. Wasn’t he?

  He hadn’t been teasing about the bet with George. He had said he would get her into his bed by the night of the wedding and he had done it.

  The idea of marriage was preposterous. Wasn’t it?

  She loved him. Wouldn’t she rather have a life with him in Latham Green than one of loneliness in the city?

  No, nothing could change her mind about leaving. Nothing?

  This time she would be running from the man she truly loved. From the man who truly—

  She poked his bare shoulder. It was infuriating that he had actually gone back to bed and was peacefully sleeping. After the second rough punch to his shoulder, he rolled to his back and blearily looked up at her.

  “Are you still here?”

  “You never said anything about loving me.”

  “Is it necessary that I tell you?” He came up on one elbow.

  “Well, it would be nice.”

  He laughed at her testiness. “Sunny, if I hadn’t been falling in love, I would have taken you to bed the first day I met you. I would have followed you home from that party and had carnal knowledge of you then and there, gotten you out of my system.

  “And—” he said, pointing a warning finger at her open mouth that dared her to interrupt him, “don’t deny that it would have happened. From the first time
we looked at each other, it was only a matter of time until we satisfied our attacks of mutual lust. I waited until last night because I was hoping to win your trust, too. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t any longer just sex for me.”

  “Then you meant what you said about liking and admiring the woman I am?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She gnawed on her lower lip. “I don’t want more than two children.”

  He stacked his hands behind his head. “Sounds reasonable, since you’re the one who has to have them. You’re not too old, are you?”

  “Thirty my next birthday,” she replied tetchily.

  “Thirty, huh? Well, I guess that’s okay.”

  Her temper went into slow simmer. “I won’t go dowdy, either. I refuse to change the way I dress to fit the nonfashion trends in this town.”

  “Good. I like the way you dress.” His gaze moved down her body. “And undress.”

  She resisted his melting look, but it wasn’t easy. She felt a familiar weakness in her knees. “I’ll have to go into New Orleans frequently.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t intend to give up my work.”

  “I wouldn’t think of asking you to.”

  “I plan to apply at every bank in Louisiana and Mississippi until I get a loan.”

  “You won’t have to. I have some money set aside.”

  That shut her up for a moment, then she said, “I won’t use your money to start my business.”

  “Now, Sunny, don’t be stubborn. It will be our money when we get married.” She only stared back at him resolutely. He sighed. “Okay, for once let’s compromise. You exhaust all your possibilities, then if none of them pays off, we’ll review the situation, keeping my nest egg in mind as a last resort.”

  She nodded brusquely. “Agreed.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t cook very well.”

  “We won’t starve.”

  “Gardening isn’t my thing. I don’t like bugs and snakes and dirt and stuff, so don’t expect me to enter my homegrown, home-canned green beans in the parish fair.”

  “Actually I prefer Del Monte.”

  “I’m neat. I’ll expect you to help—”

  “Sunny?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like me?”

  She gazed down at his face, thinking that it was the dearest face she’d ever seen, even badly in need of a shave as it was. “Very much.”

  “Do you love me?”

  Emotions welled inside her. She had to swallow hard before saying hoarsely, “Very, very much.”

  He whipped back the covers. “Then shut up and get back in here where you belong.”

  When she was naked and lying beside him, he gathered her close. “Now that we’ve got all the technicalities out of the way, now that you know my loving you doesn’t pose a threat to your independence, your career, or anything else that makes you you, now that you’re calm, let me tell you how I feel.”

  He smoothed back her hair as he whispered huskily, “I love you, Sunny Chandler. I fell in love with you the minute I saw you. Even if I hadn’t made the bet with George, I would have wanted you in my bed as soon as possible, and I would have chased you to New Orleans if necessary to get you.

  “Whether it’s chauvinistic or not, I want to protect you for as long as you live. I’ll make certain that everybody knows you are Ty Beaumont’s woman, his lady, his wife. Anybody who hurts you will have to deal with me and, as you well know, I can be meaner than hell. You’re a pain in the ass and a total delight and I adore you.”

  Laughing softly, she ran her fingers over his lips. “I could say the same of you.” Her eyes were sparkling merrily as she basked in his adoration. “Why didn’t you use this romantic approach from the beginning?”

  “It never would have worked. I had to let you talk yourself into the idea of loving me.”

  “Think you’re clever, don’t you?”

  “Immensely,” he said without a trace of humility.

  She curled her arm around his neck and pulled him down for a deep, lengthy kiss. His hands moved over her lovingly. He touched her breasts and provoked the tender crests until they beaded against his stroking fingers. Lowering his head, he kissed them in turn and laved them with his tongue.

  They caressed, perfectly attuned to each other’s desire. Soon, their breathing was choppy and swift.

  “Ty,” she sighed, “don’t touch me there.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Yes, yes, but if you don’t stop, it’ll be all over for me before you’ve even started.”

  “Want to make a bet on that, Sunny Chandler?”

  And don’t miss the unforgettably seductive novel . . .

  DEMON RUMM

  by SANDRA BROWN

  On sale in hardcover January 2005

  Read on for a preview. . . .

  Demon Rumm

  On sale in hardcover January 2005

  Knowing that by now Kirsten was feeling more relaxed, Rylan lay down on his back in front of the sofa, resting his head on his hands. Using his toes, he slipped off his shoes. His stomach was drastically scooped out to form a concave bowl beneath his rib cage, and he realized that he was hungry. Also slightly aroused. He wondered if Kirsten was aware of the bulge behind the fly of his jeans. Probably not. That had been his normal state since entering her house, that semifullness that hadn’t reached the uncomfortable stage yet. If she had looked at him at all, she probably simply figured he was well endowed. The thought made him smile.

  To justify that cocky smile, he asked, “What did you and Rumm find in common to talk about?”

  “We talked mostly about him. Oh, he asked me polite questions, and was impressed when I told him I’d just gotten my master’s degree in English. But he wanted to talk about airplanes and flying to the exclusion of almost everything else. He always did.”

  “Do I detect a trace of resentment?”

  “Of course not!”

  Her flare-up caused one of his eyebrows to v eloquently.

  “I mean, flying was Charlie’s life,” she said defensively. “He’d been born to do it. For him not to fly was equivalent to not breathing. I understood that from the beginning, from that first night.”

  Demon Rumm had been a fanatic about flying and airplanes, Rylan thought. Men of his ilk were by nature required to be. But living with a zealot for anything wouldn’t be easy or enjoyable. Wouldn’t it tend to make the partner jealous of the fanaticism? Was that what Kirsten Rumm was trying so desperately to conceal, that she had been jealous of Rumm’s obsession with aerobatics?

  Rylan studied her for a moment, weighing the advisability of bringing up another touchy subject on the heels of that one. He decided that postponement would never make it easier to verify this point. “According to the script, Rumm told you that he regretted the end of the Vietnam war.”

  “He did,” she confessed quietly. “He was a fighter pilot without a war to fight. I think he was actually frustrated when all our spats in the Persian Gulf were peaceably resolved. Not that he wanted to kill people. It was just that flying fast airplanes was what he felt destined to do. That’s why he didn’t extend his time in the Navy or become a commercial airline pilot, as most of his friends did when their stints were up.”

  This was a facet of the man’s character that Rylan wanted to explore further, but not just yet. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said. “Back to that night, did he come on to you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’d have thought he was crazy if he hadn’t. What was his line?”

  “What do you think?”

  She was challenging him. How well did he know his character? He squinted and tilted his head to one side. “Will you go to bed with me?”

  She sucked in her breath quickly. “No.”

  “Is that what you’re telling me or what you told him?”

  The room grew very quiet, with only the logs in the fireplace cra
ckling.

  “You weren’t asking for yourself,” she said finally. “You were asking for him, weren’t you?”

  He grinned obliquely and was pleased to see that she was unnerved.

  Without pursuing it, she rushed on. “He said I didn’t look like the one-night-stand type and I assured him that I wasn’t.”

  Rylan supplied the next line. “ ‘Good. Because I have something much more permanent in mind.’ ”

  “You got that from the script.”

  He nodded. “He was a smooth operator. Seduction through the commitment angle.”

  “Maybe. Whatever it was, I fell for it.”

  “He swept you off your feet?”

  “He made me feel giddy and breathless. After being around campus types who wore musty tweeds, affected Ivy League accents, and smoked pipes, Charlie was refreshing, with his rakish leather jacket, his Southwestern twang, and his dashing smile.” Her blue eyes were glowing. Her lips were slightly parted and moist from frequent licking. Through them her breath rushed, lightly and thinly. “It was exciting just to be near him.”

  “I can imagine,” he remarked wryly.

  It was a new emotion for him, jealousy. He’d been struck. The fangs of the green-eyed monster had sunk in deep. Jealousy was pumping like poisonous venom through his system with each heartbeat.

  He could imagine the effervescence she felt in her chest because it matched his own, that sexual awareness that made one tingle all over, that unspoken knowledge that something good was going on and that, given liberty, it would get even better. It wreaked havoc on one’s erogenous zones and played Russian roulette with one’s judgment. It was hell. And it was heaven. Poets and lyricists, try though they might, couldn’t pen words to describe that twisting tightness in one’s chest, that delicious pressure in one’s loins, that fizzy fever in one’s blood.

  But, dammit, he wondered if Kirsten was feeling it vicariously through her recollections of another man, or was it for him? Was Demon Rumm responsible for that turbulence in her blue eyes? Or was Rylan North?

  Apparently his eyes were as hot as his blood. His piercing stare must have frightened her. She moved quickly, swinging her feet to the floor.