by Sable Hunter
“Did you drown?” West enquired at the door.
“No.” She threw the door open and found him right in front of her. Keeping her eyes above his belly-button took immense moral fortitude. One glance earlier had revealed to her that Weston Rogers was very well endowed indeed. “Be my guest.” She stepped aside while he entered her powder room. “Sorry about all the girly stuff.”
“No problem.” She heard him say as she also heard a stream of something that wasn’t coming out of the faucet.
“Oh, my.” She put her hands to her cheeks. “I am an old maid, my family was correct. I’m blushing hearing a guy pee.”
Maddie stood there, not really knowing what to do. She really needed for him to stay, but she had to get her own traitorous emotions under control. Oh well, might as well make the best of it. If West could see the funny side of this situation, she could too. Should she get in the bed and strike a seductive pose? Should she sit in the chair next to the window? Should she…get out of the bathroom door would be a better idea.
“Excuse me,” Weston said right behind her, causing her to jump. “I like the T-shirt.” He tugged on the tail of it as he rounded by her. “Come on, let’s lie down. I’m tired.”
Maddie pulled on the bottom of the shirt, trying to make it longer. It said Free Hugs, but she guessed he knew that by now, seeing as how she’d Frenched him at the front door. “Weston, I don’t know what to say. I’m more embarrassed than you could possibly know.” Making himself at home, he pulled down the covers. All of a sudden inspiration struck her. She knew how she could get those blueprints! “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” She turned and left the room before he could protest.
Heading down the hall, Maddie wasn’t surprised to find Morgana on the couch filing her nails. “Honeymoon over?”
At the moment, there was nothing Morgana could say that would deter Maddie. She was on a quest. “We need libations.” Hopping so she could reach the top of the refrigerator, she selected a bottle of wine. Then she located a corkscrew, two glasses, paper towels, and a bag of cheese and grapes she’d filched earlier from the kitchen.
“I’m not surprised West needs a drink. You’ve heard that all women look good at closing time? There’s a reason.”
“Oh, can it, Morgana, you’re just jealous.” She ran to the hall and found the storage tube. “Weston makes Sergio look like an onion.” With that parting shot, Maddie scurried out of the way of the Cosmopolitan magazine that came hurtling through the air.
West looked up as Maddie skidded in with her refreshments. “Made it. I brought the blueprints and nourishment.”
Her bright smile almost caused his heart to stop. Patting the bed with one hand, he held out the other to take the wine bottle, then the corkscrew. “Have you and Morgana always had this volatile of a relationship?”
Maddie was on her knees, making a nest for herself beside him, propping pillows against the headboard and pulling the covers up to cover them to the waist. “Here’s the glasses.” She held them up while he poured the bubbly. “This will be fun.” She grinned, spreading out the grapes and cheese on a paper towel. “Well, we got along when we were younger. Once she hit puberty, we went our separate ways. She’s my half-sister and I never really fit in with her and her mom. I was like my dad and she’s a mirror image of her mother. He, like me, loved Galveston and Windswept.” She brought the glass to her lips and took a sip. “I lost him my first year in college.”
“I’m so sorry.” West covered her hand with his.
“Thank you, West.” Taking a grape, she bit it in half. He leaned forward as if he wanted part of it and she playfully fed him the rest. “Dad left me fifty-one percent of Windswept. I turned it into a Bed and Breakfast and committed to give them their part of the profits. For a long time, they left me alone. But they’ve had a financial setback and now they’re pressuring me to sell. If they have their way, Windswept will soon be torn down and replaced by a Beaumont Resort.”
“What?” This concerned Weston. “Tearing down Windswept would be a travesty. Working on the plans, I realized how well-constructed she was and when I drove up yesterday, I fell in love.”
Maddie rubbed her thumb on the glass. His support made her feel good, his declaration of love made her a mite jealous. “I grew up here, I would never want to live anywhere else. She’s withstood war, storms, and pirate attacks.” Rubbing the sheet absentmindedly, she confided, “I don’t want to give up my independence. Hugh Beaumont is supposed to come and proposition me.”
“Proposition you? He asked you out?” A touch of jealousy nipped at West.
“No.” She giggled, taking another sip. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Juliana tries to engineer something between one of us and him. She’s pretty desperate to make this deal. I’m sure it won’t be me, though. I’ve been a source of disappointment to her. I don’t go to the hair salon or get regular manicures. I buy most of my clothes at the tourist shop on the seawall and I wasn’t asked to dance at my own debutante ball.” As West frowned, she hastily explained. “I missed the introductions. While everyone else was parading around, I was scaling the drainpipe outside trying to get a kitten out of a tree.” When he bit back a grin, she elaborated. “He was cute. I slipped. It was muddy. By the time I got cleaned up and was presentable again, everyone was all paired up.”
West edged toward her until their shoulders were touching. The contact seared Maddie’s skin. The intimacy she was sharing with this man would fuel many nighttime fantasies.
“You could never let anyone down. Look at what you’ve accomplished.”
“Enough about me.” She clinked their glasses together. “Do you enjoy being an architect?”
Weston turned toward her a little bit. Their faces were close enough she could feel his breath on her skin. “I do. Galveston, as you know, presents special challenges, everything from costal erosion to storm surge concerns. I’m even on the board looking into the possibility of building barriers such as levees, gates, and dikes to protect Galveston and Houston from hurricane storm surge.”
“I’m impressed. Windswept survived the 1900 hurricane. She was used as a shelter for the homeless and for some of the survivors from the orphanage.”
“She deserves to be preserved.” West covered her hand with his.
“Yes, she does,” Maddie agreed. “Tell me about your family.”
West could see Madeline was truly interested, so he began to talk. “My family grew up in Winnie. My dad is a rice farmer and Mom is a housewife. I have two brothers. Dallas, who is a lawyer here on the island, and Aiden, who owns a construction firm.”
“Do you all get along better than Morgana and I do?”
He picked up her hand and started absentmindedly tracing her fingers. “Yea, we just have some rules we follow.” At her raised eyebrow, he answered, “We never date the same women and we do our best to keep our mother happy.” This made Maddie laugh. Before he knew it, Weston was talking to her on a variety of subjects. They discussed his childhood and teenage years. “I swam in the irrigation canals and worked on a shrimp boat during the summers. I put myself through college at the University of Houston working construction with Aiden.”
“I worked the desk at the Galvez Hotel while I attended Rice. What I learned there helped me decide to turn the Windswept into a Bed and Breakfast.”
“What was she before?”
“My home.” At the moment, she felt so close to him, Maddie wanted to lay her head on his shoulder, but she refrained. “Windswept has a long history. I’ll tell you about it sometime.” Not wanting to talk only about herself, she asked him more questions. Soon he was discussing his love of diving, how he’d explored some of the sunken ships off the coast. “The Selma always intrigued me. She was a reinforced concrete tanker. And another time I was with a group diving at a wreck and we discovered a solidified tar volcano.”
“A what?” Maddie was fascinated.
“They call them tar lilies, where a seam of asphalt eru
pts underwater and hardens.” Before he knew it, West was sharing about his love of blues, especially Texas artists like Edgar Winter and ZZ Top. He laughed and told her he liked to read Nic Pizzolatto who wrote the book Galveston and was the mastermind behind the show True Detective. He talked and she listened, she really listened.
“You’re a Renaissance man,” she told him, setting her empty glass on the bedside table. “Why don’t we look at these now?” Not waiting for his permission, she uncapped the tube and withdrew the blueprints. “Wow, you’ve done a lot of work on this.”
Weston wasn’t really in the mood for work, but he took one side and began to explain what he’d done. “We don’t want to change the way the Windswept looks or remove any of its historic ambiance. What we want to do is make her structurally sound and strong enough to withstand high winds. Steel reinforcements and a framework we can anchor into the ground is what you need.”
Madeline looked at every feature he pointed out. She didn’t understand everything, but his suggestions seemed on target. “Ike caused quite a bit of damage. We were lucky to escape as well as we did.”
“Study these tomorrow, look at the cost estimate, and we’ll discuss it further.” He rolled them up. The hour was getting late and he was in bed with a pretty woman. There were some things more important than work. “Come on, let’s relax.”
When his hand slipped under her hair and he brought their heads together, time almost stood still for Maddie. “Please, I don’t know what to do. This is different than before.” She blinked up at him, hope and desire making her blue eyes shine like jewels.
“How?”
“No one’s watching. You don’t have to do this.”
As if it belonged there, he let his hand glide down her back, easing her down on the bed until they lay face to face. “I want to do this.” He stared at her mouth, and when her small pink tongue licked her lower lip, he bent to capture it.
A purr of pure delight whispered through her lips and he breathed it in as his lips moved gently over hers. When her tongue shyly ventured to tease his, West’s manhood sat up and took notice. Deeper, harder.
Excitement gripped Madeline, she was enthralled. Weston’s lips were so full, so gentle—God, so good. Surrendering to a wild hunger, she ate at his mouth, nibbling and licking, asking for whatever he would give her. When he groaned, she strained to be closer, gripping his hair, boldly slipping one leg over his. “More,” she whispered, rubbing her breasts against his chest in abandon.
All of West’s reservations receded as if they were pulled away by the ebb of the tide. He growled, pulling her closer still, his mouth devouring hers. The woman he held in his arms was hungry and he wanted to give her what she craved.
He pressed himself to her, his erection hot and hard between them, giving her the urge to ask for even more. She ground her lower body against his, craving something she’d never had…
But she wasn’t going to have it tonight.
West pulled back, his breathing harsh. Touching his forehead to hers, he nuzzled her cheek. “We’d better stop. While I still can.”
What if she hadn’t wanted him to stop? Didn’t she get a vote? Guess not. “Okay. Do we put the pillows between us now?”
“No.” He snorted, hoping he was telling the truth. “I have more self-control than that. Turn over.” He directed her to place her back against his front. “Rest now. We’ll sort all of this out tomorrow.” He kissed her neck, and she settled into his arms with a sigh. “Thank you for the tickets to sail on the Elissa.” He realized they were genuine now, as genuine as she was. “I don’t think I’ll share those with Rod.”
“I’m glad you like them. They were given to me by the chamber for my volunteer work. When you’re out at sea on the tall ship, you can remember me.” Noticing the time on the clock, she saw that it was after midnight. “Thank you, Weston. This is the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had.”
“Valentine’s Day isn’t over yet, it’s only just begun.”
“True.” Although, it would be over for her once the sun rose and he slipped from her life. The only connection with him she’d have would be the hotel renovations. There wouldn’t be any more chances to sleep in his arms. “But this is one night I’ll never forget. I’m just sorry I used you.” Then, it hit her. “I wonder what happened to Rod?”
“You didn’t use me.” West tightened his arms around her. “And I don’t care what happened to Rod,” he whispered. “I’m just glad he didn’t show up.”
Downstairs…Elaine stretched and handed Rod his shirt. “You are one talented man.”
He took it, pulling it over his head. “You’re not so bad yourself, Cupid.”
Elaine glanced nervously in the corner, making sure her bow and arrows were well hidden. “Elaine, my name is Elaine.”
Rod leaned down to kiss her. “I don’t care what your name is, I like you so well, I’m going to wave the fee.”
With a sly smile, she sat up, grabbing the sheet to cover her ample assets. “You can never put a price on pleasure…or love,” Elaine purred, glancing up at the ceiling. “Madeline Cross, you owe me one.”
* * *
When Madeline woke, she felt like a million dollars. The sun was shining bright. She’d never slept better in her life. “West.” Rolling over, she couldn’t wait to touch him one more time.
The other side of the bed was empty. Of course.
But, there was a note.
Maddie’s heart sank. Well, it was fun while it lasted. She picked up the note and read…
Maddie,
Sorry I had to run, but I had some important things to take care of. Thank you for an amazing evening and for your hospitality. I enjoyed myself and you more than I can say.
You’ll be hearing from me soon.
West
“Shoot,” she whined, falling over. Would she ever know what it was like to be loved?
At least she’d shut Morgana up—for a little while.
Kicking the covers off, she got up to face the day. No sooner was she dressed that the normal excitement of the Windswept took over. Guests had questions, lots of questions. The sink in one of the second floor bathrooms stopped up. Another guest swore she saw the eyes in one of the paintings move in her room. Still another man threw his back out and Madeline had to bring in a chiropractor for an emergency house call.
“You know how he did that, don’t you?” Tilly whispered. “Bedroom acrobatics.”
Madeline smiled. “Lucky woman.” She was jealous. She would’ve given most anything to have had some undercover action with Weston.
As they walked from the elevator to the lobby, Madeline checked her phone messages. She was hoping against hope that Weston would call, but that was just wishful thinking. He’d wait for her to contact him about the plans. Later, she’d have to examine how much all of the work was going to cost. Hopefully she’d be able to afford it.
“Magpie!”
Tilly groaned. “Your royal pain-in-the-ass bellows.”
Maddie grinned. “You’ve got her pegged.” When they arrived in the lobby, she was shocked to find not just her sister, but her mother and a man she assumed was Hugh Beaumont standing and waiting. Juliana had the same bored, judgmental expression she always wore and Hugh was eyeing the ceiling like he was trying to determine how hard it would be to pull down.
“Madeline Mercy Cross, what in God’s name are you wearing?”
Juliana’s outburst caused Maddie to look down at her attire. She wore a perfectly respectable pair of whitewashed jeans and a pink turtleneck sweater. They weren’t designer, but they were comfortable. “Clothes?”
“Hugh, try to look beyond my stepdaughter’s gaucheness and see her good breeding. I know there’s evidence of it in there somewhere.”
Her tone cut into Maddie like a piece of glass. “Mother…” She protested. When her eyes met the investor’s, she felt his gaze smear across her flesh—that’s exactly what it felt like—a smear. Now, she understood. H
ugh Beaumont was a dirty old man. “What can I do for you all? May I offer you a drink?’
“Later.” Juliana waved her hand dismissively. “Right now, we don’t have time. Hugh wants to take a look at the property, walk around outside. He brought a surveyor with him.”
Anger washed over Madeline like the rushing surf. “Windswept is not for sale.” As she faced her mother, her sister and Hugh Beaumont, Maddie realized she stood alone.
“It is if I say it is.” Juliana’s words dripped with ice. “I was the wife of Martin Cross.”
“And I was his daughter,” Madeline countered.
“Not his only daughter,” Morgana added coldly.
Hugh Beaumont held up his hand. “Madeline, I’m sure after you hear my proposal, you’ll agree my vision is the best for this prime piece of property. How about we have dinner this evening? I understand you don’t have a date for Valentine’s. We could take care of…business.”
Her eyes clashed with Morgana’s before she answered Hugh. She wasn’t acknowledging his reference to a date. “I don’t need to hear your proposal, this is my home. Whatever vision you have means nothing to me.”
“Don’t be rude, Madeline,” her mother snapped.
“I didn’t mean to be rude.” Maddie hugged herself tightly. “How do I make you understand that I can’t let you do this?”
Morgana stepped right up and got into her face. “We have a lawyer who can make it happen, Maddie. If you think you can stop us, you’re delusional. But then we knew that…if you think you fooled me last night with that fake boyfriend, you’re wrong. I saw through you two like a clear piece of glass.”
A feeling of hopelessness swamped her. What was she going to do? Madeline couldn’t find words to argue with her family. After all, they were right. She was alone.
“Madeline! Madeline! Come to the desk,” Tilly called. “There’s something up here you need to see.”
“Excuse me.” She turned to make her escape, grateful for whatever awaited her.
