Feeding the Fire: A Rosewood Novel

by Andrea Laurence

  Grant looked her up and down with a desire surging through his veins. He suddenly felt too warm and the collar of his shirt was suddenly too tight. “Oh, no. Everything about that dress is very, very right. I just wanted to know how long I’ve missed out on seeing you wear it. You should wear that dress every day.”

  She smiled and did a little spin in her entryway. The bright red dress was a bold contrast to her creamy, pale skin. The dress was fitted and fell just short of her knees. It was strapless with a sweetheart neckline that exposed her delicate collarbones and the full swell of her breasts. The silky red fabric had a layer of matching red lace over the top and a belt with a large red rhinestone daisy that highlighted her tiny waist.

  “I think it’s a little much for the Piggly Wiggly,” she said. “Especially with these uncomfortable red satin pumps.”

  They might be painful, but they were hot. He didn’t even know how she could walk in heels like those. “No worries. They make your legs look amazing. I guarantee you that any red-blooded man who sees you in that dress will gladly carry you wherever you need to go.” Grant pulled out the small bouquet of roses he had hidden behind his back and offered them to her. “These are for you.”

  Pepper accepted the bundle of peach-and-pink roses and brought them to her nose. They were exactly like the rose he’d given her after the auction, although he was certain she’d been too spun up that night to remember that.

  “You weren’t supposed to buy me anything,” she argued.

  Grant shrugged. “Force of habit. Besides, those roses remind me of you.”

  She looked down with uncertainty at the pale peachy flowers with the pink edges on the petals. “I’m not sure how, but thank you. Let me put them in a vase.” Turning on her heels, she walked back into her kitchen.

  From his vantage point in the doorway, he could see her open a couple of cabinets, then finally settle on putting the flowers into a plastic drinking cup filled with water. It did the job tonight but Grant made a mental note to bring her flowers in a vase so she would have one for future flowers.

  That was interesting, he thought. He intended to buy her more flowers. That meant more dates. That was a pretty serious thought to just leap into his head. The thoughts disappeared as Pepper walked back to the front door with her purse clutched under her arm. With every step, the red lace seemed to creep higher up her legs. It would be either completely impossible, or just vulgar, for her to ride his Harley in that dress.

  She noticed Grant watching her every step. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking about how grateful I am that Whittaker’s is right across the street.”

  “Why, so we can run home when we’re done eating and have sex?”

  Grant chuckled. “That’s not a bad idea. But no, I was just trying to figure out how you’d get onto the back of my motorcycle in that dress.”

  That made her smile. “For future reference, if you intend to take me anywhere on the back of your bike, I require either advanced warning or the ability to change my outfit before we leave. Otherwise . . . we’re driving my SUV.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Pepper locked her front door and they strolled together to Whittaker’s. The restaurant was the best Rosewood had to offer. It was the only place for thirty miles that had tablecloths and multiple forks at the place settings. For some reason, his mother seemed to find value in that. On the days Grant hopped on his bike and rode wherever the highway led him, he’d come across plenty of holes-in-the-wall with amazing food. No tablecloths, but amazing food.

  Whittaker’s was nice enough. It was decorated with dark wood paneling and the tables and booths were upholstered in a deep burgundy leather with brass brads. There was a fireplace roaring in the center of the restaurant, and a far wall behind the bar was covered with their massive wine collection. At the moment, the restaurant and lobby were packed with wall-to-wall people.

  They checked in at the hostess stand and were escorted to a private table for two just a few moments later.

  “And you thought you couldn’t score a reservation that late,” Pepper noted as they walked through the restaurant.

  “Well, it’s obnoxious, I know, but my last name does tend to open doors. Especially since the owners are friends with my parents.”

  “Ahh . . .” Pepper said, taking her seat and letting Grant push in her chair. “So this is what it’s like to be a Chamberlain, huh?”

  He shrugged. “It’s all I know, so I can’t really compare it to anything else.”

  “It’s different for others,” she said. “I assure you.” The waiter arrived, taking their drink orders and telling them about the special prix fixe menu they were offering for the holiday. Grant ordered them a bottle of a recommended wine for the meal. The waiter returned only a moment later, pouring him a small amount for his approval, then pouring them both a healthy goblet of pinot noir. They made their dinner selections and the server disappeared to fetch their first course.

  “So, do you bring girls here often?” she asked as she sipped her wine.

  “Actually, no.” Grant had been to the restaurant several times with family, but he had to admit this was the first time he’d ever brought a date there. “You’re the first.”

  “I feel so special,” she said with a smile that betrayed her amusement. “I bet potentially running into your family can cramp your style.”

  “It certainly does. I usually take my ladies out of town. But you requested we keep it local, so here we are.” Pepper looked around the restaurant. “I don’t see any Chamberlains, so I think we’re safe. For now, at least. You never know when more of you will start pouring out of the woodwork.”

  Grant noted a tone in her voice as she spoke about his family. When she’d first rebuffed his advances years ago, he had thought at first it was about him. He was too young, too annoying, too short. But getting older, smoother, and taller hadn’t helped, either. Over the years, he’d started to wonder if it had anything to do with him at all. Pepper’s resistance seemed to have more to do with his name than anything else. And it wasn’t just her. Her mother always gave him the stink eye at the counter when he took his car in to be serviced. Her brother had made his distaste for the family perfectly clear when he stopped him outside the dry cleaner’s.

  “Can I ask you a question? It’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time.”

  Pepper took a sip of her wine and nodded. “Okay.”

  “This is awkward for a date, and I apologize, but why does your family seem to hate my family? I mean, I don’t think it goes both ways like a Hatfield and McCoy–type rivalry. I actually don’t recall your family ever being a topic of conversation or gossip at my house aside from the time Logan tried to break Blake’s nose in high school.”

  “He didn’t try. He succeeded,” she said, almost proud of her brother’s achievement of rearranging Blake’s face.

  “Okay, yes, Logan broke Blake’s nose. But I don’t even know what started that fight. Blake never wanted to talk about it and Dad shut the whole thing down pretty quickly. Did my family do something to yours? If one of us did, I have no idea what was done. Is it something I can fix or just the general stuck-up attitude that rubs people the wrong way? I know sometimes I don’t like Maddie at all, but we’re not all like her.”

  At last, Pepper shook her head. “No, it’s not something you can fix, not really. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what happened between our families, either, but it happened long before you or I ever came along.”

  Grant sighed and reached for his wine. His father. That wasn’t a surprise. He could easily see the man doing something to alienate Pepper’s family. As the only lawyer in town, he could’ve helped someone swindle them out of an inheritance with a legal loophole, kept someone from being prosecuted, gotten someone prosecuted unfairly . . . and then, the inevitable sex thing. Norman Chamberlain’s penis was probably the front-runner of causing strife between their families.

  “Th
e way my mom talks about your family,” Pepper said, “I get the impression she either dated your dad, or a friend of hers did and it ended badly. That and the fact that your family seemed to get everything hers never did. She raised my brother and me to be suspicious of the whole family. The way she saw things, the Chamberlains suffered no consequences for their actions and cared about no one but themselves. She’d always warned me to stay away from the wicked Chamberlain boys. Apparently you’re just going to use me for sex and cast me aside.”

  Grant’s eyes widened slightly, although he shouldn’t be surprised, if his father was involved. His own reputation probably hadn’t helped the matter, but he was always up front with women, so they shouldn’t feel chewed up and spit out when he was done with them. He certainly hadn’t cast aside Pepper, and he didn’t want to—a thought that scared the crap out of him.

  “Well, no one sent me that memo, so I’m sorry to disappoint your mother and be a nice guy.”

  “You know, you’d think she’d be more disappointed to be proven right than wrong. For my sake, at least. But she’d probably get some kind of satisfaction from you using me.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  Pepper’s brow went up. “About what?”

  “About me.”

  “Who says that I’ve changed my mind?” she asked with a coy smile. “If you’ll recall, I only got roped into this whole scenario because I had a serious financial investment in it.”

  Grant wanted to call bullshit on her. She was acting far too casual about the last week and they both knew that wasn’t true. Did acting like it was nothing make it easier when it turned into nothing? Probably. “Your financial investment has nothing to do with what happened on that kitchen floor.”

  Her eyes widened and she started stuttering. “W-well, yes. I mean, th-that was just a onetime thing. Close quarters can make people do crazy things. Now that the house is nearly finished and Valentine’s Day is upon us . . . who knows what will happen? Maybe nothing.”

  Grant leaned across the table and pinned her with his gaze. “Pepper,” he said in a low voice, “what do you want to happen?”

  Pepper sucked in a ragged breath, her shiny red-painted lips parting softly. A flush rose to her cheeks, accentuating the carefully applied blush she already had on and reminding him once again of those peach-and-pink roses. Her dark eyes focused on him, a skittishness evident in her wary gaze.

  “Be honest with me, Pepper. That’s all I ask of anyone.”

  With imperfect timing, the waiter appeared with a caprese salad for Pepper and a wedge of iceberg for him. His appearance killed the intense atmosphere that had hovered over them.

  “I don’t know what I want, Grant. It’s only been a week. Aside from the kitchen and the kiss before the peeper struck, it isn’t exactly like we’ve been fostering a relationship. We’ve been doing home improvement projects. You could use me for sex and cast me aside any moment now, proving my mother right all along.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  Her gaze had been focused on her plate, but now she met his eyes with her own. “To get back at me for last time?”

  He hadn’t been expecting that. The night they spent together was amazing. The only thing it inspired for him to get back was her, in his bed. “Why would I want to get back at you?”

  “For beating you at your own game. Turning the tables. Letting you wake up alone for the first time. You could’ve felt used or irritated that I left, especially when I wouldn’t see you again. Dating me just so you could drop me is a real possibility.”

  “Wow,” Grant said. She really did think poorly of his family. Just a bunch of stuck-up, womanizing bastards.

  “You said to be honest,” she added when she heard his stunned reaction.

  “I know, and thank you. To extend the same courtesy to you, yes, I was a little thrown off by your quick departure. But at the same time, I was intrigued. You were like Cinderella, running from the ball at midnight, and I was the determined prince tracking you down. Although, unlike Cinderella, you didn’t want to be tracked. But I liked that, too.”

  Pepper’s brow shot up curiously. “You liked that I rejected you?”

  “More that I liked the challenge. I don’t have to tell you that I usually get my way. For years, you’ve been the exception, and I knew you were unlike all the other women in town. And from the day you crept out of my bed to the day you pepper sprayed me, you’ve been on my mind. You didn’t seem to want me, at least not publicly. As twisted as it may sound, it made me want you desperately. Having you in my bed didn’t change that the way I expected it to. It just made me want you more, but you were gone. I could still taste you on my tongue. I could hear your passionate cries in my silent, still bedroom.”

  Grant spoke the words lowly so no one nearby could hear them but her. Even then, anyone nearby could guess what he was saying by the red flush of her cheeks and the twinkle of desire in her eyes.

  “Really?” she asked, near breathless.

  “Really. You’re an unforgettable woman, Pepper. If I were to just use you and cast you aside, I’d be a damn fool.”

  They opted to get their dessert—a slab of Death by Chocolate cake for two—to go, to eat back at her house. Once the bill was paid and the last of the wine consumed, they scooped up the to-go box and rushed home.

  “It’s amazing how different your place looks,” Grant said when they stepped inside.

  It was true. Once the back bedrooms were painted and the furniture could be moved in, things really started falling into place. She’d spent half of today putting things away in closets and hanging pictures, and the other half trying to decide what she was going to wear tonight. Judging by Grant’s appreciative gaze as it roamed over her body, and over the house, he approved of all her handiwork.

  “It certainly seems bigger when I’m not living in the livbedoset.”

  “The what?”

  Pepper smiled. “That’s what I called the living room, because it was combined with my bedroom and closet. Now that it’s back to being just a living room, I should stop calling it that.” The bedroom furniture and all her clothes were in one bedroom. The boxes and items she had stored in the dining room were in the extra bedroom for now. She wasn’t sure what she would do with the other space, but she had time to figure it out now that she had an actual dining room and living room to sit in and think.

  Pepper set her purse down on the coffee table and slipped out of her jacket. “Dinner was great, Grant. Thank you for taking me.”

  Grant approached her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I assure you the pleasure was all mine. I think we both deserved a night like tonight after all our hard work.”

  She ran her hands over the soft fabric of his suit coat and pushed it over his shoulders. It slipped down to his hands and he laid it gently across the arm of the couch. “You’ve done so much for me this week, Grant. I’ve been racking my brain all day trying to figure out how to make it up to you.”

  Grant’s blue eyes focused on hers. He swallowed hard, the muscles of his throat working up and down. “You paid a lot of money for my company.”

  Pepper reached for his tie and loosened it, tugging it off. Her fingers moved nimbly down the front of his shirt, undoing each button until she reached his belt. “I didn’t pay you. I paid the Tornado Fund. You didn’t see a penny of it.”

  “It was for a good cause,” he said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as her fingers unfastened his belt.

  “It was,” Pepper agreed. “And you’re a good man for volunteering. I think you deserve a reward for that, don’t you?” Pepper slipped her hand into his pants and stroked the bulge straining against his briefs.

  Grant didn’t agree or disagree, he just groaned. With her other hand, she unzipped the fly of his pants to give herself better access. His suit pants slipped down his thighs, revealing the black briefs he had on underneath.

  Kicking out of her heels, she slipped to the floo
r in front of him. She tugged down his underwear, exposing the hard length of Grant’s desire. Her fingers immediately closed around him, sending a shudder through Grant’s whole body.

  “So I thought and thought about what you might like,” she said, slowly stroking him as she spoke. “Finally, I came up with an idea I think you’ll appreciate.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Grant managed between tightly gritted teeth.

  Pepper didn’t respond. Instead, she flicked her tongue over the tip of him. Grant hissed, encouraging her to do it again. She moved to the base, running her tongue along the underside before slipping him into her mouth.

  “Pepper,” he groaned.

  She worked over him with her mouth until the muscles of his thighs were so tense, she thought he might rip his pants.

  Then she stopped and reached for the dessert box. “Why don’t you slip out of the rest of that and meet me in the bedroom?” Climbing to her feet, Pepper winked at him seductively and disappeared down the hall. A completely naked Grant arrived in her bedroom a few moments later.

  “Lie down,” she said, pointing to the bed.

  Grant enthusiastically hopped onto her mattress. He crossed his arms behind his head and smiled wide at her. “Whatever you say.”

  While he watched, she unfastened the belt of her dress and then tugged the zipper down her spine. The dress slipped to the floor and she stepped out of it wearing nothing but a strapless red lace bra and matching panties.

  “Red is my favorite color,” Grant noticed with appreciation in his eyes.

  “Oh yeah? I’ll leave this on a little while longer, then.” Pepper crawled onto the foot of the bed, spreading his legs wide to nestle between them. Then she reached for the to-go box and opened it.

  Inside was an enormous slab of cake. It was multiple layers of cake, chocolate mousse, fudge, and cheesecake. She ran her index finger through the chocolate icing, then dragged her fingertip down from the tip to the base. Bringing the finger to her mouth, she sucked the remaining icing away, making sure Grant watched every move she made. Then, after making him wait an excruciating amount of time, she leaned in and licked his skin clean.