Billionaire Bachelors: Gray

by Anne Marie Winston

“You know for what,” she said in a weary tone. That was how she felt. Weary. Tired of trying to out-smart Patsy’s maneuvers. “I am well aware that at times I’ve been less than gracious in my welcome to our home. It’s just that…” Belatedly, she realized she was on the verge of confiding in a man she barely knew and she shut her mouth so quickly she nearly bit her tongue.

  “Just what?” His voice was a soothing baritone in the gloaming.

  She sighed. “Nothing.”

  Gray was silent. She turned and looked away, out over the garden. Climbing the trellis that framed the gate to the swimming pool, the flowers of a white clematis glowed in the dusk as if they were lit from within.

  “Just what?” he asked again. At the same instant, two big hands came down on her shoulders and began to massage.

  Catherine practically leaped off the path. She’d never even heard him move. Automatically she began to move away but his hands kept up the soothing rhythm, his thumbs rubbing firm circles directly over knots at the base of her neck she hadn’t even realized she had.

  It was the first time he’d touched her since they’d danced, and here in the ever-deepening darkness it felt terribly intimate.

  “Hold still,” he said. “Your shoulders feel like they’ve been set in concrete.”

  “T-t-tension.” Her teeth were chattering and her nerves felt even more tightly stretched than ever. She stood silently, rigid beneath his hands, hearing the slide of fabric beneath his fingers. Above her, his breathing sounded loud in the quiet of the night around them.

  As he ran his thumbs beneath her hair, he said, “What’s got you so uptight?”

  “You.”

  His fingers stopped abruptly. Silence.

  The instant she blurted out the word she was sorry. What was she thinking? He was a guest of her family, nothing more, nothing less. “I meant—”

  “Shhh.” His hands left her shoulders. Turning her gently to face him, he laid a finger against her lips; the other hand clasped her neck, long fingers sliding up into her hair just behind her ear. “I know what you meant. You make me pretty damn tense, too, lady.”

  She lifted her own hands and wrapped them around his thick wrists. To pull him away? She didn’t know anymore.

  “Catherine.” His voice was low and rough, filled with need. “I have to kiss you.”

  It was an odd way to put it, but she knew exactly what he meant. As he bent toward her, she lifted her face to his as if compelled to do so, her hands clutching his wrists as if they were her only lifelines in a wild and storm-tossed sea. His arms felt thick and muscled beneath her fingers, the hair rough and crisp and he smelled enticingly masculine, a combination of both the cologne he wore and his own completely male scent.

  The moment his lips touched hers, she knew she’d been lying to herself. He was far, far more than simply a guest of Patsy’s, a tenant renting their cottage. He was danger. He was desire. He was everything she’d once had, everything that had been brutally torn from her in one fatal instant, everything she’d been missing for the past two years. And if she were honest with herself, he was much more.

  He was unfamiliar and yet familiar, tall and strange and yet somehow she felt as though she’d been in his arms before. His embrace felt familiar, even though his body was bigger and harder than her husband’s had been, surrounding her with heat as he pulled her more securely against him.

  He held her against him with one hand at her back while the other slipped up to cradle her head, cupping her scalp. The way he handled her felt easy and comfortable, as if they’d stood like this a hundred times and she felt herself relax into the moment.

  His mouth was on hers, shaping and molding, and she clung to him blindly, her body thrilling to life beneath his touch. It had been so long since she’d known this, so long…. She couldn’t prevent the small sound of delight that rose in her throat and the part of her that wasn’t fully engaged in responding to his all-consuming kisses was briefly amazed at herself.

  Lovemaking with her husband had been enjoyable, fun. But never like this, crashing over her like a tidal wave, robbing her of control and turning her into a needy mass of nerve endings begging to be stimulated.

  His tongue brushed over the sealed line of her lips and she jolted in his arms. The small touch sent flares of sensation rocketing straight through her body, contracting her nipples and her womb instantly. Her knees wobbled and she felt him gather her more strongly against him, pressing her into full, firm contact with the ridge of male arousal surging against her soft stomach. She moaned again as her breath rushed out, and opened her mouth beneath his. He took immediate advantage, sliding his tongue inside her lips and probing the sensitive interior, finding and twining around hers in an erotic dance that drew her into a game of shockingly abandoned hide-and-seek.

  She couldn’t be still, couldn’t stop her body from rocking against his, couldn’t prevent herself from raising one leg and twining it around the back of his calf and tugging him closer. The action spread her thighs and pulled his hard body into closer contact with the soft, throbbing center of her and she moaned into his mouth.

  His hands slid down her body to cup her bottom and haul her hard against him, and he tore his mouth from hers. “God,” he groaned. “You’re killing me, sweet thing.”

  Sweet thing. The endearment echoed in the heated dusk of the evening. Mike had called her that exact same name!

  Mike. Her husband.

  The thought was a bucket of ice on the flames of her passion. She stiffened in Gray’s arms, her hands sliding down to grip his muscled biceps and thrust him away from her.

  He didn’t protest, didn’t try to restrain her, and ridiculously, that annoyed her. She didn’t want him to protest—did she?—but it would have been nice to know it bothered him to let her go.

  “Catherine, I—I’m sorry.” Gray spun away from her. He was panting, his shoulders heaving. All she could see was his broad back, head bent as his hands fisted at his sides and she wondered if he wanted to grab her again as badly as she wanted to press herself against him and damn any consequences. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  For some reason, that was funny and she couldn’t prevent a slightly hysterical bubble of laughter from escaping. “If that was accidental, what would it be like on purpose?”

  He spun to face her and abruptly she stopped laughing. Even in the dark she could see the glitter in his eyes. “I didn’t—I wasn’t going to touch you.”

  There was such an odd note of agony in his voice that she almost reached for him, and she crossed her arms tightly, tucking her hands into the bend of each elbow to prevent herself from making an even bigger mistake. “It’s all right,” she said lamely, knowing even as she said it that it was inadequate. Then she heard her own words. What was she doing comforting him?

  “No.” His tone was definite. “It’s not.” He stepped back and her hands dropped uselessly to her sides. He was so obviously unhappy with himself, and probably with her as well, that the last small fires of desire that had burned in her system despite her withdrawal, wavered and died. Shame was beginning to curl at the edges of her consciousness and she covered her face as she turned and fled.

  When the wall of the house stopped her retreat, she reached for the handle of the screen door, head down, wishing she could just drop through the ground and be done with it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for this to happen, either.” Her voice sounded like a stranger’s. “We’ll…stay out of each other’s way. It will be all right.”

  But it wouldn’t be all right, he thought an hour later, lying in the middle of the big bed in the Thorne cottage guest house. His body burned at the mere memory of her soft flesh cradling him; he so desperately ached for release that he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching down and temporarily taking the edge off the raging need he felt.

  He didn’t want a temporary fix. What he wanted, in a perfect world, was Catherine Thorne in his bed, beneath him, her limbs curling around him as she
took him into her willing body. What he wanted was to see her smile as if her world was complete when he walked into the room. What he wanted was the right to open his arms and have her little boy toddle into them.

  Hell. When had he started allowing himself to think that those things were possible? It would never happen. Could never happen. Catherine could barely stand to talk about the person who had received her husband’s heart, much less meet the fellow. She would be beyond furious if she ever found out that the man with whom she’d just shared the steamiest kiss this side of heaven was a transplantee with Mike’s heart.

  Dammit! He hadn’t meant to put his hands on her, never should have given in to the urge to rub the tension from her narrow shoulders, to feather his thumb across the vulnerable flesh at the base of her neck.

  But he had. And when she’d responded so instantly, so completely, he’d lost what little objectivity he’d had around her.

  And now she was ashamed of herself.

  That was the thing he felt worst about.

  And that, he decided the following morning, was something he had to rectify right away. Not later today or this evening, not in a few days, but immediately. He didn’t want Catherine blaming herself for what had happened between them in the rose garden.

  So after his solitary breakfast of cereal and a banana, he trudged over to the big house and knocked on the kitchen door. As he’d hoped, she and the little boy were already up. It looked as if they were just finishing their own breakfast, and he said a quick prayer that Patsy wouldn’t come in while he said what he’d come to say.

  Just then, Catherine’s eyes met his through the glass panes in the door. The heat that sizzled between them gave him such a rush he was surprised the glass didn’t melt.

  But if she’d felt it, too, she hid it well. She dropped her gaze from his without a single change of expression to indicate that she’d even seen him. But since she changed course and started for the door, he knew she had.

  “Good morning.” She had opened the door but stood in the tiny space as if afraid a few molecules of air might sneak by her and go free.

  “Catherine.” He nodded. Hesitated. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”

  It was her turn to hesitate. She glanced back over her shoulder at Michael, who was busy slopping cereal all over his tray while he watched a popular children’s music program on the television built into the cabinets. “Just for a moment.” She clearly wasn’t thrilled about it but he knew she was too well bred to refuse outright without a good reason.

  She slipped outside and pulled the door shut, keeping her hands behind her back on the knob. The position pulled her shoulders back and thrust her breasts against the thin cotton of her soft knit shirt, and he could no more keep his gaze from assessing the tender curves than he could stop breathing.

  As he watched, mesmerized, her nipples drew into taut little buds that pushed against the shirt.

  She hastily let go of the knob and moved her hands and he forced himself to meet her eyes. Her face was pink.

  “Look,” he said, “last night was not your fault. It was mine. I don’t want you beating yourself up over it, okay?”

  She didn’t move. Didn’t give any indication that she’d even heard him.

  “I came on to you, remember? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She laughed then, but there was no amusement in the sound, only an ugly self-mockery that was echoed in the bitter eyes she raised to his. “You weren’t exactly forcing yourself on me, Gray. You barely touched me and I climbed all over you like—like some stupid vine, remember?”

  Oh, yeah. He remembered. She’d wound herself around him as if she wanted to absorb him into her skin and he’d nearly given in to the raging need to pull her to the ground and bury himself within her. But he said none of that.

  He let her words hang in the air between them for a moment. Then he said softly, still holding her gaze, “I remember all too well. I spent most of last night remembering.” He sighed. “Catherine, you’re a beautiful woman. And I’m attracted to you like I’ve never been attracted to a woman before. But—” He couldn’t stop himself from raising his hand and running the tip of his index finger down over the peach-soft skin of her cheek. “I know you’re still in love with your husband, no matter what your body says.”

  Shock filled her eyes, swiftly followed by tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. Leaning forward, he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, then forced himself to turn and walk away. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. He wanted to feel her mouth under his again, to share the passion that burned inside her, to know that she knew who she was kissing. But he could never touch her again. He’d already gone far beyond the boundaries he’d promised himself he’d stay behind for the few short weeks he would be in her life.

  Then a new and disturbing thought rose: He might leave her life very soon, but she would be in his forever.

  She got her first paycheck the following week. It came in a plain white envelope handed to her by her office assistant, with an amused, “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Catherine smiled in return, but beneath her cheery expression, she was mentally calculating exactly how far her meager paycheck would go. With the savings she would net from doing the landscaping herself, keeping only Aline to help with the household chores, downsizing the BMW she’d driven until last month and not opening the swimming pool this year, she would be very close to breaking even. Thankfully, there was no mortgage on the house, but she had to be careful about setting aside some for taxes.

  It struck her, as she climbed into the midsize American-made sedan she’d purchased after she’d gotten rid of the Beemer, that she almost enjoyed the challenge the family budget had presented. The only thing was, she qualified, it would be so much easier if Patsy didn’t continue to cling to the misguided belief that money and the Thorne name were synonymous.

  She sighed. It was hard to fault Patsy for not wanting to face the truth. The woman had lived through so many tragedies in her life that Catherine imagined she simply couldn’t face one more.

  Her mother-in-law had lost three babies prematurely before she’d finally carried Mike to term. Patsy’s paintings from those years had grown steadily darker and more disturbing; Mike claimed his father had worried that she would try to take her own life.

  But after Mike had been born, she’d found purpose and meaning again. Even when her beloved husband had died far too young, she’d had Mike to keep her going. And when Mike had been killed…Catherine wondered, not for the first time, how different their lives might be today if she hadn’t been pregnant.

  Twenty minutes later she pulled into the driveway of her home and drove around to the large garage, empty now except for Patsy’s Lexus, Mike’s restored Boxster that she desperately hoped to save for Michael, and the space where she parked her own humble little car. Gray parked in the single-car garage attached to the guest house.

  Gray.

  She hadn’t let herself think about him yet today. But she hadn’t been able to prevent thoughts of him from invading her mind in the five days since that night in the garden.

  Oh, God, that night…the merest memory of it made her chest tighten and her hands shake as she reached for the doorknob. Had she ever known such—such heat before?

  She’d been wrestling with a shameful feeling of disloyalty from the moment she awoke in the mornings until she fell asleep at night. And even then, she dreamed of Gray. Vivid, erotic dreams of things she’d never done with Mike, unbelievably intimate things that made her blush all over just recalling those dreams.

  She’d been perfectly sane and normal until Gray MacInnes had waltzed into her life. She’d never had feelings like these, dreams like these. She’d never caught herself daydreaming of what it would be like to make love with a man, never wondered how his hands and his mouth would feel on her skin, never wondered what he looked like beneath the trappings of clothing.

  Maybe it
was her age. Weren’t women supposed to reach sexual maturity later than men? God, if this was what sexual maturity felt like, it was no wonder teenage boys were such dopes. She felt like her whole life could be governed by one specific aching part of her body if she didn’t fight the feeling.

  Somehow, though, it was comforting to think it might simply be a physical process beyond her control. It wasn’t Gray. It was just her age. Gray was the only man in her life, however peripherally. Gray was the only man who’d kissed her since Mike had died. It was no wonder that her errant sexual yearnings had focused on him.

  But…

  Mike had never made her thighs feel loose and her panties wet with a mere glance. He’d always taken care to arouse her when they made love, and he’d learned what she liked and what turned her on most, but…she’d never experienced such a deep-seated physical longing for a certain man’s body.

  When Gray’s eyes had dropped to the front of her shirt, she’d had an insane vision of herself tearing the shirt off over her head and drawing his head down, pressing his hot mouth against her needy, aching breasts.

  Was it Gray and only Gray? She’d sat across a desk from the president of a local business today while she’d been presenting a fund-raising proposal, and she hadn’t felt the slightest urge to jump the man.

  Not the way she wanted to jump Gray.

  Abruptly closing the door behind her, she leaned back heavily against the cool wood, pressing her palms to her burning cheeks. What was she thinking?

  In two short weeks, Gray MacInnes had turned her into someone she barely knew! In fact, it almost seemed that he knew her far better than such a short acquaintance warranted, no matter how physically intimate that one incident had been.

  “I know you’re still in love with your husband, no matter what your body says.”

  The words had been delivered in a gentle, understanding tone that belied the heat in his eyes. She had been too stunned by the words to respond as he’d walked away. Not stunned to consider that she still loved her deceased husband—but shocked to realize that she couldn’t even bring Mike’s features clearly to mind anymore. Shocked, and so distressed that she couldn’t prevent the tears that had sprung to her eyes.