by Susanna Carr
“Why not?” He walked to her. “It would be ideal. It would be just you and me. You can add your personal touch to the cottage. And at night—”
Molly had to stop him. “No, that won’t work. In case you have forgotten, I don’t sleep with the boss.” And it was going to be really hard to enforce that now that she knew exactly what she would be missing.
Kyle drew back. “Boss?”
“I appreciate the offer. I really do. But if you want to look for Laurie’s replacement, you should take out an ad in the paper.”
She couldn’t handle this anymore. She found it difficult to stand. To breathe. She was giving up something she would have begged for a chance at a week ago. And it was all because she dreamed too big.
Molly knew she had to get out of this kitchen, get out of this cottage, before she made it worse. She turned and headed for the door when Kyle captured her wrist.
“Molly—”
“No, Kyle.” She couldn’t look at him as the tears burned in her eyes. She didn’t want to cry. Please, don’t let them fall. “When I told you that I loved you, I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t trying to con you.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not going to work for you.” She made herself turn and look at him. He was too close. The gentle look in his eyes was too much. “I need a job, and I need a place to stay, but if that’s all you can offer me, then I have to move on.”
“You don’t.” He pulled her closer to him.
“I can find a job elsewhere,” she assured him. “It’s not like my skills are completely unmarketable.”
Kyle wrapped his arms around her and held her snugly against him. “Molly, I want you to stay. With me.”
She tried to break from his hold and wasn’t having much luck. “Haven’t you heard a word I said?”
“I’m not offering you a job,” Kyle explained. “Although you have suggested that looking after me would require an army.”
“What…?” She stopped struggling. “What are you saying?”
“I want you to stay with me. As my real fiancée,” he said, and suddenly looked away. “Well, to start with.”
She stared at him. Fiancée? She hadn’t even allowed herself to dream that far, that big. “Why?” she asked.
Kyle met her gaze directly. “I love you,” he said, his voice cracking.
Her chest clenched. She couldn’t accept that. She was too afraid to believe it. Too afraid that she misunderstood. “You do not.”
“Uh”—his eyes narrowed—“yeah, I do.”
“Kyle.” She held her hands up, needing to stop him before he said something he really regretted and couldn’t take back. “I know we had fun pretending to be engaged, but it wasn’t for real. What you’re feeling isn’t for real.”
“Yes, it is.” He brushed his mouth against hers. “I know it, and I’m willing to prove it. Every day.”
She leaned away from him. His kisses were muddling her mind. That promise sounded too good to be true. “How?”
“You’ll have to stay with me to find out,” he said with a sly smile. “Are you ready to take that risk?”
On him? On the future of them? Oh, yeah. She’d take that risk. Molly nodded. “Yes, are you?”
His light green eyes glowed brilliantly. “I wouldn’t offer it otherwise.”
“You’re talking about staying here at the cottage?” That wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much she wanted it. “You can’t stay here. It’s too far away from work.”
“Okay,” he reluctantly agreed as he skimmed his mouth against her forehead. “So we can’t stay here all the time.”
“But I like this cottage.” They could create their own reality here. What if she really didn’t fit in his life?
“You haven’t seen my other homes,” he reminded her, his lips skimming along the corner of her eye.
“True.” She hesitated. “Homes.” She shook her head with disbelief over the idea.
“Although,” he mused as he placed soft kisses along her cheek, “I know you have a thing for living at the office.”
“Forget that!” She dodged away from his mouth. “Now that I have lived in the lap of luxury, I have a few requirements.”
“Name them.”
“I need you,” she told him.
“You have me.” Kyle said it with a direct simplicity that it sounded like a vow to her. “What else?”
What else did she need? She remembered the list she made when she stayed in the DIY truck. “I need heat.”
He pressed her against him, her breasts flattening against his chest. “I’m more than willing to share.”
“Food.”
Kyle nodded with agreement. “Makes sense. I’ll provide and you do the cooking.”
She wasn’t too sure about that. After Thanksgiving dinner, she was ready to do take-out for the rest of her life. “That’s up for negotiation.”
“Anything else?”
She tried to remember the other items on her list. She knew it wasn’t a lot, but there were a few essentials she would never live without again. “Showers.”
His eyes took on a naughty gleam. “Only if I get to watch this time.”
Molly felt the blush creeping up her face. He was never going to let her live that down. “And a bed.”
“Absolutely,” he said in a low growl. “I’ll make sure you have all of that.”
“And what do you need?” she asked. She didn’t know if she had anything to provide him, but she would find a way to give him everything he needed.
The look in his eyes softened. The lines bracketing his eyes and mouth faded. “You. Beside me.”
Molly waited, but Kyle didn’t add anything to that list. “That’s it?”
The corner of his mouth tilted. “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
As far as she was concerned, it was easier than being away from him. “I’m there for you,” she promised.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he said as he let her go.
Yeah, she knew that list was too short. There was no way she could provide him with everything he needed. “What?”
“This time, you get to wear the blindfold,” he said as he shrugged out of his long-sleeved T-shirt.
Molly took a cautious step back and waved her finger at him. “Oh, no, no, no!”
“Hey,” he said as he pulled the shirt off, revealing his lean, muscular chest. “I wore it last night.”
A wicked excitement curled around her chest as she felt her breasts tingle. “But that was different.”
“Come on, Molly.” He twirled the edges of the shirt until it became one wide swath of cotton.
“You’ll have to catch me first!” Molly ran out of the kitchen. She looked over her shoulder and screeched when she saw Kyle coming after her.
Molly skidded around the corner and bolted up the stairs, wondering when she should let him catch her. She didn’t want to make it too easy for him.
But would that be cheating, she wondered as her feet hit the second floor. Or was it a form of lying?
Nah, she decided as Kyle grabbed at her waist and hauled her against him. It was destiny.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Not. Here’s an advance look at Susanna Carr’s hilarious “Valentine Survivor,” in VALENTINE’S DAY IS KILLING ME. A January 2006 book from Brava…
Shanna pulled out a sheet of paper, slightly crumpled from constant viewing. “I’m concentrating on the basics.”
“Give me that.” Her sister snatched it from her fingers and read it aloud.
THE LIST
Receive a dozen long-stemmed red roses. At work. In front of everyone.
Dinner at the most romantic restaurant in downtown Seattle. Champagne optional, but would gain bonus points.
A date with someone who knows where my G-spot is without asking for directions. And knows what to do with it.
“So?” Shanna prodded, anticipation buzzing inside her again. “What do you think? Good, huh?”
Heather pressed her lips together and shook her head slightly. She wordlessly returned the list.
“Knock it off.” Shanna reverently folded the paper and slipped it back in the purse. “You have to admit that this list is fail-proof.”
Heather’s forehead crinkled. “Are you kidding? Everything will go wrong.”
“You wanna bet?” She already regretted showing her sister the list.
“Sure. Let’s look at your dinner requirement. What do you consider the most romantic restaurant in Seattle?”
“Swish.” She hadn’t actually been there, but it had topped the ten most romantic restaurants for the past three years. For all she knew, they could serve macrobiotic junk. Who cared, as long as they did it with a romantic flair?
“Oh, sure. Swish.” Heather scoffed at the idea. “Like you’re going to get in there. I hear that they take reservations a year in advance.”
Shanna didn’t say anything, but she knew she was gloating. The best kind of gloat, as long as you weren’t on the receiving end. The smirk tugged at her pursed lips. She felt the pull of her eyebrows as she tried not to waggle them.
“You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” she asked innocently.
“You made reservations a year in advance.” The way Heather said it made it sound like an accusation. “Without even having a boyfriend on the horizon.”
The smile she tried to contain broke through. “Yep. I decided I was not going to suffer through another bad Valentine’s Day. On February 15 of last year, I called Swish and made reservations. I got a table for two by the window overlooking Elliot Bay.”
“Lovely.” Sarcasm shimmered through the single word. “Too bad the second seat in your dinner for two is going to be empty.”
“Not necessarily.” She felt her eyebrows waggling.
“I’m not eating dinner with you.”
Shanna tilted her chin up. “You’re not invited.”
“Are you telling me you have a date in mind?”
Pure pleasure kicked into her veins. “I sure do.”
For the first time that morning Heather showed a spark of enthusiasm. “You and Calder?”
Calder. Calder Smith. Her breath hitched in her throat as her ex-boyfriend’s image slammed into her brain.
His pitch-black hair was cropped close against his skull. Tanned, weathered skin stretched over his lean, angular face. Lines fanned from his gleaming brown eyes and bracketed his stern mouth. And every once in a while, a slow, almost shy smile that made her heart tumble.
She used to think that Calder had been almost too tall for her. So tall that she felt delicate next to him. Or maybe it was his harsh masculinity that made her feel fragile and ultrafeminine. Whatever it was, Shanna still shivered at the memory of his earthy sensuality.
She swallowed roughly and tried to clear her suddenly swollen throat. “Heather, you know the rule,” she reminded her in a hoarse whisper. “Do not speak his name in front of me.” It was bad enough she had to see him almost every day because they worked for the same computer software company.
“Okay, fine. But He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named should be on that checklist.” She shook a finger at Shanna. “That would be the perfect V-Day you’re searching for.”
Like she didn’t know that already. She didn’t want to think about it. Shanna tried to push the image aside, but the tingling of her skin remained. She had to forget about him and not let any what-might-have-beens get in the way of her goal.
“So who’s your date?”
She wasn’t too sure if she wanted to share any more information, but she knew her sister wouldn’t let the topic rest until she found out. “Dominic.”
“Dominic? Who’s Domi—no!” She grabbed Shanna’s arm and pulled her to a stop. “Not…”
“Yep, that’s the one.”
Heather’s eyes widened with dismay. “He’s a slut.”
“I think the term you’re looking for is ‘serial dater.’” Even though she hated it, Shanna did the quote thing with her fingers. Just because she could.
“For future reference, anytime you use the word ‘serial’ to describe a guy, it’s not going to be good.”
Damn if her sister didn’t use the quote move again. “I’ll remember that.”
Heather covered her face with her hands. “Dominic. Why-y-y?” She wailed and stomped one foot after the other. “Why him? He’s not going to send you flowers.”
“Yes, he is.” If the subliminal messages didn’t work, the full-frontal request could not have been misunderstood.
Heather dropped her hands from her face and glared with suspicion. “Shanna, tell me the truth. Did you order and pay for the flowers in advance?”
“No!” Her mouth dropped open in shock. Outrage. “I would never do that. That’s pathetic! I can’t believe you would even think I’d consider it.”
Her sister’s jaw slid to one side and she arched a knowing eyebrow. “Shanna.”
“Okay, the idea crossed my mind,” she admitted, as she and Heather jaywalked through a parking lot, “but I rejected it. I know the minute I did that, all my bitchy coworkers would sniff out the truth.”
“Yeah, you would never live that one down.” She shuddered at the possibilities.
“Anyway, the whole point of the exercise is having a guy send me a bouquet at work. A dozen red roses, to be exact. I will accept no substitutes.”
“Why do you think Dominic is going to send you flowers?”
“He will if he wants to find my G-spot on Friday.” Shanna knew the motivation didn’t sound the least bit romantic, but it would all work out in the end.
“Do you know where it is?”
“It hasn’t made itself known for the past three months,” she said with a shrug, “but that doesn’t mean it changed addresses on me.”
“And you think it’s going to head the welcome committee for Dominic?” Heather exhaled long and hard. “Of all the men you could have picked. Couldn’t it have been anyone else?”
“Heather, think about it.” It wasn’t like she had randomly picked Dominic. He fitted her requirements for the night. “How many guys can you name who know what a G-spot is, let alone what to do with it?”
“There’s me,” the familiar, rough voice said from right behind her.
Shanna stumbled to a halt and forgot to breathe altogether as Calder steadied her. His fingers spanning against the curve of her hip made her knees melt. She trembled as his heat washed over her. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, her G-spot just announced that the hibernation season was officially over.
Let the good times roll…with JoAnn Ross’s “Cajun Heat” from BAYOU BAD BOYS, available now from Brava…
It was funny how life turned out. Who’d have thought that a girl who’d been forced to buy her clothes in the Chubbettes department of the Tots to Teens Emporium, the very same girl who’d been a wallflower at her senior prom, would grow up to have men pay to get naked with her?
It just went to show, Emma Quinlan considered, as she ran her hands down her third bare male back of the day, that the American dream was alive and well and living in Blue Bayou, Louisiana.
Not that she’d dreamed that much of naked men back when she’d been growing up.
She’d been too sheltered, too shy, and far too inhibited. Then there’d been the weight issue. Photographs showed that she’d been a cherubic infant, the very same type celebrated on greeting cards and baby food commercials.
Then she’d gone through a “baby fat” stage. Which, when she was in the fourth grade, resulted in her being sent off to a fat camp where calorie cops monitored every bite that went into her mouth and did surprise inspections of the cabins, searching out contraband. One poor calorie criminal had been caught with packages of gummy bears hidden beneath a loose floorboard beneath his bunk. Years later, the memory of his frightened eyes as he struggled to plod his way through a punishment lap of the track was vividly etched in her mind.
The camps became a yearly
ritual, as predictable as the return of swallows to the Louisiana Gulf coast every August on their fall migration.
For six weeks during July and August, every bite Emma put in her mouth was monitored. Her days were spent doing calisthenics and running around the oval track and soccer field; her nights were spent dreaming of crawfish jambalaya, chicken gumbo, and bread pudding.
There were rumors of girls who’d trade sex for food, but Emma had never met a camper who’d actually admitted to sinking that low, and since she wasn’t the kind of girl any of the counselors would’ve hit on, she’d never had to face such a moral dilemma.
By the time she was fourteen, Emma realized that she was destined to go through life as a “large girl.” That was also the year that her mother—a petite blonde, whose crowning achievement in life seemed to be that she could still fit into her size zero wedding dress fifteen years after the ceremony—informed Emma that she was now old enough to shop for back to school clothes by herself.
“You are so lucky!” Emma’s best friend, Roxi Dupree, had declared that memorable Saturday afternoon. “My mother is soo old-fashioned. If she had her way, I’d be wearing calico like Half-Pint in Little House on the Prairie!”
Roxi might have envied what she viewed as Emma’s shopping freedom, but she hadn’t seen the disappointment in Angela Quinlan’s judicious gaze when Emma had gotten off the bus from the fat gulag, a mere two pounds thinner than when she’d been sent away.
It hadn’t taken a mind reader to grasp the truth—that Emma’s former beauty queen mother was ashamed to go clothes shopping with her fat teenage daughter.
“Uh, sugar?”
The deep male voice shattered the unhappy memory. Bygones, Emma told herself firmly.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to be tellin’ you how to do your business, but maybe you’re rubbing just a touch hard?”
Damn. She glanced down at the deeply tanned skin. She had such a death grip on his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Nate.”
“No harm done,” he said, the south Louisiana drawl blending appealingly with his Cajun French accent. “Though maybe you could use a bit of your own medicine. You seem a tad tense.”
