by JoAnn Ross
“How about the occasional ulcer?” He plucked the roll of antacids from her hand, forestalling her from popping another tablet into her mouth.
“I don’t have an ulcer.”
“I suppose you have a doctor’s confirmation of that?”
She tossed her head, then wished she hadn’t when the headache stabbed like a stiletto behind her eyes. “Of course.”
She was a liar. But a lovely one. Dane suspected that it had been a very long time since Amanda had taken time to visit a doctor. Her clothes, her title, her luggage, the window office with the high-backed Italian-leather chair, all pointed to the fact that the lady was definitely on the fast track up the advertising corporate ladder.
Her too-thin face and the circles beneath her eyes were additional proof of too many hours spent hunkered over advertising copy and campaign jingles. He wondered if she realized she was approaching a very slippery slope.
He was looking at her that way again. Hard and deep. Just when Amanda thought Dane was going to say something profound, the elevator lurched to a sudden stop.
“Third floor, ladies’ lingerie,” he said cheerfully. “Do you still wear that sexy underwear?”
She wondered if he flirted like this with all the female guests, then wondered how, if he did, he managed to keep his job. Surely some women might complain to the management that the inn’s sexy bellhop brought new meaning to the slogan Service With a Smile.
“My underwear is none of your business.” Head high, she stepped out of the elevator and headed toward the stairway at the end of the hall, leaving him to follow with the bags.
“I seem to remember a time when you felt differently.”
“I felt differently about a lot of things back then. After all, I was only fifteen.” The censorious look she flashed back over her shoulder refused to acknowledge his steadfast refusal to carry their teenage affair to its natural conclusion.
“I recall mentioning your tender age on more than one occasion,” he said mildly. “But you kept insisting that you were all grown-up.”
Not grown-up enough to hold his attention, Amanda thought grimly. As she climbed the stairs to the tower room, she decided she’d made a major mistake in coming to Smugglers’ Inn.
Her focus had been clear from the beginning. Pull off the corporate challenge week, get the obnoxious Greg Parsons promoted out of her life, then move upward into his position, which should have been hers in the first place.
Awakening old hurts and reliving old memories definitely hadn’t been part of the plan.
And neither had Dane Cutter.
3
The first time Amanda had seen the tower room, she’d been entranced. Ten years hadn’t lessened its appeal.
Delicate forget-me-nots bloomed on the walls, the high ceiling was a pale powder blue that had always reminded her of a clear summer sky. More blue flowers decorated the ribbon-edged curtains that were pulled back from the sparkling window and matched the thick comforter.
“The bed’s different,” she murmured.
“Unfortunately, during the time the inn was closed, it became a termite condo and had to go.”
“That’s too bad.” She’d loved the romantic canopy. “But this is nice, too.” She ran her hand over one of the pine-log posts that had been sanded to a satin finish.
“I’m glad you approve.”
He’d taken the bed from his own room this morning. Now, watching her stroke the wooden post with her slender fingers, Dane felt a slow, deep ache stir inside him.
“I’d suggest not getting too near the woodwork,” he warned. “The paint’s still a bit sticky.”
That explained the white specks on his jeans. A pang of sadness for lost opportunities and abandoned dreams sliced through Amanda.
“Well, thank you for carrying up my bags.” Her smile was bright and impersonal as she reached into her purse.
An icy anger rose inside him at the sight of those folded green bills. “Keep your money.”
All right, so this meeting was uncomfortable. But he didn’t have to get so nasty about it. “Fine.” Amanda met his strangely blistering look with a level one of her own. “You realize, I suppose, that I’m going to be here at the inn for a week.”
“So?” His tone was as falsely indifferent as hers.
“So, it would seem inevitable that we’d run into each other from time to time.”
“Makes sense to me.”
It was obvious Dane had no intention of helping her out with this necessary conversation. “This is an important time for me,” she said, trying again. “I can’t afford any distractions.”
“Are you saying I’m a distraction?” As if to underscore her words, he reached out and touched the ends of her hair. “You’ve dyed your hair,” he murmured distractedly.
“Any man who touches me when I don’t want him to is a distraction,” she retorted, unnerved at how strongly the seemingly harmless touch affected her. “And I didn’t dye it. It got darker all on its own.”
“It was the color of corn silk that summer.” He laced his fingers through the dark gold hair that curved beneath her chin. “Now it’s the color of caramel.” He held a few strands up to the light. “Laced with melted butter.”
The way he was looking at her, the way he kept touching her, caused old seductive memories to come barreling back to batter at Amanda’s emotions.
“Food analogies are always so romantic.”
“You want romance, princess?” His eyes darkened to obsidian as he moved even closer to her.
As she tried to retreat, Amanda was blocked by the edge of the mattress pressing against the backs of her knees. Unwilling desire mingled with a long-smoldering resentment she’d thought she’d been able to put behind her.
“Damn it, Dane.” She put both hands on his shoulders and shoved, but she might as well have been trying to move a mountain. He didn’t budge. “I told you not to call me princess.“
“Fine. Since it’s obvious that you’ve grown up, how about contessa?”
It suited her, Dane decided. Princess had been her father’s name for a spoiled young girl. Contessa brought to mind a regal woman very much in charge of her life, as Amanda appeared to be.
The temper she’d kept on a taut leash during a very vexing day, broke free. “You know, you really have a lot of nerve.” Her voice trembled, which made her all the more angry. She did not want to reveal vulnerability where this man was concerned. “Behaving this way after what you did!”
“What I did?” His own temper, worn to a frazzle from ‘overwork, lack of sleep, and the knowledge that Amanda was returning to Satan’s Cove after all these years, rose to engulf hers. “What the hell did I do? Except spend an entire month taking cold showers after some teenage tease kept heating me up?”
“Tease?”
That did it! She struck out at him, aiming for his shoulder, but hitting his upper arm instead. When her fist impacted with a muscle that felt like a boulder, the shock ran all the way up her arm.
“I loved you, damn it! Which just goes to show how stupid a naive, fifteen-year-old girl can be.”
What was even more stupid was having wasted so much time thinking about this man. And wondering what she might have done to make things turn out differently.
His answering curse was short and rude. “You were too self-centered that summer to even know the meaning of the word love.” Impatience shimmered through him. “Face it, contessa, you thought you’d get your kicks practicing your feminine wiles on some small-town hick before taking your newly honed skills back to the big city.”
He would have her, Dane decided recklessly. Before she left Smugglers’ Inn. And this time, when she drove away from Satan’s Cove, he’d keep something of Amanda for himself. And in turn, leave her with something to remember on lonely rainy nights.
“I loved you,” she repeated through clenched teeth. She’d never spoken truer words. “But unfortunately, I was stupid enough to give my heart away to someone w
ho only considered me a summer fling.”
Thank heavens she’d only given her heart. Because if she’d given her body to this man, she feared she never would have gotten over him.
Which she had.
Absolutely. Completely.
The hell she had.
The way he was looking at her, as if he couldn’t decide whether to strangle her or ravish her, made Amanda’s heart pound.
“You were a lot more than a summer fling.” His fingers tightened painfully on her shoulders. His rough voice vibrated through her, causing an ache only he had ever been able to instill. “When I went back to college, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought about you during the day, when I was supposed to be studying. I thought about you at night, after work, when I was supposed to be sleeping. And all the time in between.”
It was the lie, more than anything, that hurt. All right, so she’d misinterpreted their romance that long-ago summer. Amanda was willing to be honest with herself. Why couldn’t he be equally truthful?
“It would have been nice,” she suggested in a tone as icy as winter sleet, “if during all that time you were allegedly thinking of me, you thought to pick up a pen and write me a letter. A note. Hell, one of those postcards with the lighthouse on it they sell on the revolving rack downstairs next to the registration desk would have been better than nothing.”
“I did write to you.” He was leaning over her, his eyes so dark she could only see her reflection. “I wrote you a letter the day you left. And the next day. And for days after that. Until it finally got through my thick head that you weren’t going to answer.”
The accusation literally rocked her. The anger in his gritty voice and on his face told Amanda that Dane was telling the truth. “What letters? I didn’t get any letters.”
“That’s impossible.” His gaze raked over her snow-white face, seeking the truth. Comprehension, when it dawned, was staggering. “Hell. Your parents got to them first.”
“Apparently so.” She thought about what such wellmeaning parental subterfuge had cost her. What it had, perhaps, cost Dane. Cost them both.
“You know, you could always have written to me,” Dane said.
“I wanted to. But I couldn’t get up the nerve.”
He arched a challenging eyebrow. But as she watched reluctant amusement replace the fury in his eyes, Amanda was able to breathe again.
“This from a girl nervy enough to wear a polka-dot bikini horseback riding just to get my attention?” The ploy had worked. The memory of that cute little skimpily clad butt bouncing up and down in that leather saddle had tortured Dane’s sleep.
The shared memory brought a reluctant smile from Amanda. She’d paid for that little stunt. If Dane’s mother hadn’t given her that soothing salve for the chafed skin on the insides of her legs, she wouldn’t have been able to walk for a week.
“It was different once I got back home,” she admitted now. “I kept thinking about all the older girls who worked at the inn, and went to college with you, and I couldn’t imagine why you’d bother carrying a torch for a girl who’d only just gotten her braces off two weeks before coming to Satan’s Cove.”
Damn. He should have realized she might think that. But at the time, he’d been dazzled by the breezy self-confidence he’d assumed had been bred into Amanda from generations of family wealth.
Oh, he’d known she was too immature—her passionate suggestion that they run away together had been proof of that. But it had never occurred to him that she wasn’t as self-assured as she’d seemed. She had, after all, captured the attention of every male in Satan’s Cove between the ages of thirteen and ninety. She’d also succeeded in wrapping him— a guy with no intention of letting any woman sidetrack his plan for wealth and success—around her little finger.
Looking down at her now, Dane wondered how much of the girl remained beneath the slick professional veneer Amanda had acquired during the intervening years.
“I did work up my nerve to call you once,” she said quietly. “But you’d already gone back to school and the woman who answered the phone here said she didn’t have your forwarding address.”
“You could have asked my mother.”
Her weary shrug told him that she’d considered that idea and rejected it.
Dane wondered what would have happened if his letters had been delivered. Would his life have turned out differently if he’d gotten her call?
Never one to look back, Dane turned his thoughts to the future. The immediate future. Like the next week.
“It appears we have some unfinished business.” His hand slipped beneath her hair to cup the back of her neck.
“Dane—” She pressed her palm against his shirt and encountered a wall of muscle every bit as hard as it had been when he was nineteen. There was, she decided recklessly, definitely something to be said for a life of physical work.
“All this heat can’t be coming from me.” His fingers massaged her neck in a way that was anything but soothing as his lips scorched a trail up her cheek. “The sparks are still there, contessa.” His breath was warm against her skin. “You can’t deny it.”
No, she couldn’t. Her entire body was becoming hot and quivery. “Please.” Her voice was a throaty shimmer of sound. “I can’t concentrate when you’re doing that.”
“Then don’t concentrate.” His mouth skimmed along her jaw; Amanda instinctively tilted her head back. “Just feel.” When his tongue touched the hollow of her throat, her pulse jumped. “Go with the flow.”
“I can’t,” she complained weakly, even as her rebellious fingers gathered up a handful of white cotton T-shirt. “This week is important to me.”
“I remember a time when you said I was important to you.” The light abrasion of his evening beard scraped seductively against her cheek as his hands skimmed down her sides.
“That was then.” She drew in a sharp breath as his palms brushed against her breasts and set them to tingling. In all her twenty-five years Dane was the only man who could touch off the fires of passion smoldering deep inside her. He was the only man who could make her want. And, she reminded herself, he’d been the only man who’d ever made her cry. “This is now.”
“It doesn’t feel so different.” He drew her to him. “You don’t feel so different.”
He wanted her. Too much for comfort. Too much for safety. The way she was literally melting against him made Dane ache in ways he’d forgotten he could ache.
“This has been a long time coming, Amanda.” His hands settled low on her hips. “We need to get it out of our systems. Once and for all.”
She could feel every hard male part of him through her clothes. He was fully, thrillingly aroused. Even as she tried to warn herself against succumbing to such blatant masculinity, Amanda linked her fingers around his neck and leaned into him.
“I don’t know about your system,” she said breathlessly, as his tongue skimmed up her neck, “but mine’s doing just fine.”
“Liar.” His lips brushed against hers. Teasing, testing, tormenting.
Desire throbbed and pooled between her thighs. Flames were flicking hotly through her veins. She’d never wanted a man the way she wanted Dane Cutter right now. Worse yet, she’d never needed a man the way she needed him at this moment.
Which was why she had to back away from temptation. When, and if, she did make love to Dane, she wanted to make certain she knew exactly what she was doing. And why.
She needed to be certain that the desire coursing through her veins was not simply a knee-jerk response to the only man who’d ever made her burn. She had to convince herself that she wasn’t succumbing to the seduction of the romantic setting, old memories, and sensual fantasies.
After suffering the resultant pain from her impulsive, teenage behavior, Amanda had acquired a need for an orderly, controlled life. Unfortunately, there was nothing orderly or controlled about the way Dane Cutter made her feel.
“I need to think,” she protested weak
ly. “It’s been a long and frustrating day and I’m exhausted, Dane.”
“Fine.” He’d give her that. There would, Dane told himself, be other times. “But before I go, let me give you something to think about.”
Amanda knew what was coming. Knew she should resist. Even as she warned herself to back away now, before she got in over her head, another voice in the back of her mind pointed out that this was her chance to prove she was no longer a foolish young girl who could lose her heart over a simple kiss.
Since the second option seemed the more logical, Amanda went with it. She stood there, her palms pressed against his chest, as he slowly, deliberately, lowered his mouth to hers.
It was definitely not what she’d been expecting.
The first time he’d kissed her, that long-ago night when she’d come to his room, clad in her sexiest nightie, Dane had been frustrated and angry—angry at her for having teased him unmercifully, angry at himself for not being able to resist.
His mouth had swooped down, causing their teeth to clang painfully together as he ground his lips against hers. He’d used his mouth and his tongue as a weapon and she’d found it shocking and thrilling at the same time.
Later, as the days went by, Dane had grown more and more sexually frustrated, and it had showed. Although his kisses were no longer tinged with anger, they were riddled with a hot, desperate hunger that equaled her own.
Although the attraction was still there a decade later, it was more than apparent to Amanda that the years had mellowed Dane, taught him patience. And finesse.
He cupped her face in his hands and she trembled.
He touched his mouth to hers and she sighed.
With a rigid control that cost him dearly, Dane forced himself to take his time, coaxing her into the mists by skimming kisses from one side of her full, generous mouth to the other.
“Dane-”
Ignoring her faint protest, he caught her bottom lip in his teeth and tugged, causing a slow, almost-languid ache.
Prepared for passion, she had no defenses against this exquisite, dreamy pleasure. Amanda twined her arms tighter around his neck and allowed herself to sink into his kiss.
