Kate, looking down at her exposed collarbone, gasped. “Now I look like a serving wench!”
Verna smiled mischievously. “Exactly.”
KNOCK-KNOCK.
Toby, lying in the lounge chair that had also served as his bed last night, flicked his wrist and stared at the hairs on his arm. My watch is still on my dresser, back in my house. He glanced toward the door. Must be seven. Time for breakfast.
He stood slowly, feeling every ache in his body. He’d fallen asleep on the chair in the wee hours while watching his house, contemplating how he could pull off the Monday dinner, but he hadn’t concocted one damn idea. Analyzing mergers and acquisition deals was one thing. Analyzing how to get back into his home, pretend he was still engaged to Free, and at the same time outwit her new boyfriend’s snarling Dobermans—had he heard the guy call them Mickey and Minnie?—was a different story.
Toby trudged across the room. Mickey and Minnie? The guy probably also had two German shepherds named Donald and Daisy. Reaching the door, Toby opened it.
“You look awful!” Kate blurted.
“Good morning to you, too.”
She scrunched her face. With her eyes squeezed shut, she said, “Insert foot?”
“No offense taken.”
She opened her eyes and grinned. He liked the way her lips curved when she smiled, giving her an impish appearance. He’d never noticed before how her blue eyes sparkled, like sunlight glittering on the ocean.
“I brought breakfast.” She held up the tray. “And I didn’t drop it, either.”
He looked down. Scrambled eggs, biscuit, jam, butter. Things he could easily recognize, even without his glasses. When his stomach rumbled loudly, Toby placed his hand on his midriff. “Guess I didn’t realize how—” His hand froze on his bare stomach. He was standing in front of her in his underwear, again.
He quickly folded his hands over himself. “Sorry. Heard you knock. Forgot how I was dressed. Or not.” He edged behind the door.
Kate laughed, although he detected a nervousness in it. “I have a brother a few years younger than me. I’ve seen him in underwear and plenty less, although you’re nothing like my brother! Shall I put this tray on the table next to the window?”
Nothing like her brother? Did that make him less or more? “Sure.”
As she passed, Toby inhaled the tantalizing aroma of buttery eggs and roasted coffee—and mingled in with those smells, the faint scent of soap and lilacs.
Kate’s scent.
He was glad he was behind the door, because his body was reacting in ways that it shouldn’t for a man whose world had supposedly been turned upside down.
“Shall I set the table for you?” Kate asked from across the room.
A hazy light outlined her form as she stood in front of the windows. Without his glasses, she had a slightly fuzzy quality that made her look almost ethereal. Her hair, short and unkempt, framed her oval face like a spiky, dark halo. He wondered if she purposefully wore her hair that way, or if she just couldn’t be bothered with putting a lot of effort into a style. Funny how Kismet—fate—had brought this Motown-playing, car-bombing woman so powerfully back into his life.
He realized Kate was waiting. “Sure,” he said, having completely forgotten what she’d asked, reasonably certain it had something to do with breakfast.
As she pulled utensils from a rolled napkin and set them next to the plate, he checked out her color-wheel outfit of the day. Except for that stringlike vest, she’d kept to one color—blue. Even her sandals were blue. Compared to the blast of colors she wore last night, this morning she looked almost tame—like a piece of soothing sky had floated into this red, angst-ridden room.
She didn’t seem to want to leave. “Shall I pour your coffee?”
He didn’t seem to want her to leave. “Sure.”
When she bent over, his gaze wandered down her soothing blue blouse to her curvaceous bottom. In the window, her silhouette was lushly defined. Round. Firm. He gulped. Suddenly the blue of those jeans wasn’t so soothing after all.
Stop staring at her blue behind.
He quickly tried to look elsewhere. As though he couldn’t aim his eyes properly, his gaze ricocheted wildly to a painting, bounced off a curtain rod and skidded over a lamp shade before it finally landed on the coffee she was pouring. Steam rose from the cup, hot and transparent like his thoughts.
“Milk?”
“Sure,” he croaked. He never took milk in his coffee. But just as the liquid cooled the coffee’s temperature, maybe it would also temper his hot thoughts.
“Sugar?”
He groaned. His hot and sweet thoughts.
Kate tilted her head and flashed him a perplexed look. “Was that a yes or a no?”
“Yes,” he answered huskily. He stepped a bit more behind the door, wishing these damn stretchy undies were boxers.
She filled a heaping spoonful and stirred it into the cup. “Come and get it while it’s hot!”
Great. I won’t be able to leave this room for the rest of my life. “I’ll…wait until you leave.”
Kate stiffened and turned her back to him. “Oh! Right! You’re—” holding her head at an odd angle, she began slowly walking backward toward the door “—you’re naked. Nearly. I’ll leave now…give you your privacy.” She rapidly shuffled backward, her arms swinging as though she were doing a moon-walking dance. She had hit a pretty impressive pace when the back of her foot hit the edge of the gargantuan bed. Her arms flailed wildly as she teetered.
Toby lunged from his hiding place and caught her just as she toppled backward. The impact of her weight pushed him off balance. He staggered back a few feet, his arms grabbing Kate’s middle, just as he had grasped the pitcher last night—
Whomp!
They fell sideways onto the bed, their sandwiched bodies bouncing in tandem on the plush red cover. Toby attempted to steady himself by grabbing a chunk of the slick satiny cover above Kate’s head. Whoosh. It yanked loose. He flew back, pulling the cover and something heavy on top of him. Something smelling of lilacs.
He opened his eyes and stared into a pair of big blue ones. Just what I need—more blue. Kate lay on top of him, the red satin cover enveloping both of them like a plush, exotic cocoon. A plush, bouncing, throbbing cocoon.
“What’s…wrong…with…this…bed?” Toby asked between surging motions.
“It’s a…water bed.”
He didn’t dare nod his head in understanding. The motion might trigger a mini-tsunami. Trying to quell the up-and-down motions, he lay stiffly—or as stiffly as a water bed allowed one to lie—wondering how in only a few moments, Kate had gone from serving breakfast to lying on top of him. He tried to think how to extricate himself from the motion, the blue, the red cocoon, the lilacs, but they all conspired against him. He could only think about Kate’s breasts, squished against his chest like two sweet…water balloons.
“Sorry about this,” Kate said breathily.
“It’s okay. I like water balloons.” Water balloons. God, he was losing it.
“What?”
“Beds. I like water…beds.”
Kate sighed, which made her breasts press harder again his chest. Toby thought feverishly of baseball. No go. He switched gears to a long-ago memory of a Monopoly game. Traveling fast, he had two hotels on Boardwalk when Kate whispered, “I never should have let Verna unbutton me.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Your breakfast is getting cold.”
It’s the only thing that is. He tried to move from underneath Kate, but the wriggling and pushing only worsened his condition.
He didn’t think her eyes could get any wider, but they did. Those big blue saucers blinked. Her hair, which before had looked stylishly unkempt, now looked positively wild. With those guileless eyes and heathen hair, she was like a mixture of innocence and sin. Blue and red. Water and balloons.
“Kath-e-rine Corr-i-gan,” squealed a high-pitched woman’s voice. “You’re suppose
d to be servin’ breakfast!”
After a beat, Toby offered, “This isn’t what you think, ma’am.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday.” With a self-righteous snort, Melanie walked briskly past the bed to the table. Peering through a gap in Kate’s wild hairdo, Toby watched a fuzzy Mrs. Corrigan adjust what appeared to be the angle of the fork and knife. “Katherine forgot the salsa, so I brought some—although it doesn’t appear you two really need it.”
Melanie set a container neatly on the table, turned and walked past them, her gaze glued to the door as though she had on blinders.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Toby mumbled. If he weren’t pinned to the bed by Kath-e-rine Corr-i-gan, he’d have kicked himself. He was brought up always to respect women, but Mrs. Corrigan would never believe that after catching him nearly naked, twice, with her daughter. And this time, in bed.
Melanie halted. “You’re welcome,” she responded belatedly. “Katherine, I believe there are other guests who need your attention. If you have the strength.”
“I don’t know,” Kate answered in that droll tone he recognized from last night when the three of them had met on the landing. “Toby’s done plumb taken it out of me.”
With a snort of shock, Melanie strode from the room.
3
KATE PUSHED HERSELF off Toby and jumped onto the floor. “That’s the last time I serve breakfast unbuttoned,” she said shakily, fumbling with her top.
She seemed more excited than flustered. Toby debated if their reactions to each other were because of this red room, or was there some red-hot chemistry between them? “The most I saw was your collarbone,” Toby countered, mainly to calm Kate’s reaction. He sat up and tugged the satin cover over his middle. “Why’d you tell your mother I took it gum out of you?”
“Plumb.”
“Mothers don’t like finding their children—especially their daughters—in compromising positions. After last night’s bowl incident—and this morning’s bed incident—she probably thinks I’m a marauding, sex-starved heathen.”
A rush of pink stained Kate’s cheeks. Blinking, she stammered, “I—I don’t think you’re a heathen.”
“Just marauding and sex starved?”
The pink in her cheeks deepened to red. Kate cleared her throat. “Funny,” she said, “Melanie didn’t mention any of the bowl stuff this morning. She’s usually the queen of the rumor mill.”
So Kate wasn’t going to answer his question. Which answered his question. “Maybe she’s giving me the benefit of the doubt,” he said gently. “Mothers are like that.”
A light flashed in Kate’s eyes. “My kid brother always got the benefit of the doubt. So I guess you do, too. But then, in my family, the men wore the pants.”
He cocked one eyebrow at her outfit, opened his mouth, then closed it. Some things were best left unsaid. “Your mom’s just being a mom. Have you ever thought it might shock—even upset her—when you say things like you ‘skip’ around with naked men or that I took it ‘plum’ out of you?” He gave his head a shake. “What is that—some kind of Southern fruit expression?”
“Yeah, we Southerners like to mix up fruit in our sayings,” Kate answered in an exaggerated drawl. “Like ‘peachy keen.’ Or ‘sassafras.”’
“We Italians have our sayings, too.” He remembered a saying his mom often said. “Questa casa non èstà un albergo. This house isn’t a motel.” Ironic how, for Kate, it was both. “Sassafras isn’t a fruit,” he added teasingly.
“Too bad. It would have been a good one.”
He suppressed a smile. Kate had spunk and fire—attributes that were refreshing compared to most of the women he’d known. “It’s your business how you converse with your mother, but if you wouldn’t mind a bit of friendly advice, instead of reacting to her, you might try to understand her.”
“Reacting?” Kate ruffled her fingers through her hair, which caused several tufts to stick up higher.
“Yes, reacting. Those skipping and Southern-fruit expressions are reacting.”
“It’s like I told you last night. These comments are my only defense.”
“Has anyone ever told you sarcasm is a form of indirect anger?”
“Thought you were a businessman, not a shrink.”
“I subscribe to Psychology Today.”
“Oh.” She leveled him a look. “Does that magazine also tell you why you blast Beethoven? Maybe he was deaf, but the rest of us aren’t.”
“No,” he answered, sitting straighter. “But the magazine did have a fascinating article on women who blow up people’s cars.” The article was really about women who blow-dry their hair, but he had the urge to stretch the truth and one-up that little Beethoven dig.
Kate crossed her arms. “And why do they?”
“Would you believe…repressed stick-shift envy?”
Her mouth dropped open before it snapped shut. “I don’t believe that!” Her eyes narrowed. “But I do believe you’ll never forgive me for blowing up your car, which wasn’t entirely my fault, by the way.” She paced a few steps, as though burning off some excess energy.
If he didn’t need to remain sitting on the bed, covering his underclad body, he’d pace, too. He’d loved that car, a tan Firebird with gold trim. Sleek. Powerful. He’d had it only one week, and then bam. It went from Firebird to fireball. “So if it wasn’t entirely your fault, whose fault was it?”
She turned, her eyes wide, as though amazed he might finally be willing to hear an explanation. “The kid with the sparkler,” she said simply.
“Thought your pickup had a gas leak. Was that also his fault?”
She skewered her mouth. “No,” she finally said. “Of course not. But I didn’t know it had a gas leak. For that matter, I didn’t know that kid would throw the sparkler onto the stream of gasoline that led to…”
“My car. That string of events led to my car exploding in a ball of fire.” He meant to be ticked. But instead, he was overly aware that he felt like exploding into a ball of fire. Exploding, burning and…consuming Kate?
They stared at each other for a long moment, the intensity of their gaze building until it was palpable, like a stream of gasoline waiting to be ignited. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her top button—she’d been so anxious trying to button it, she’d missed. The material fell open, offering a teasing glimpse of creamy skin. If he glanced farther down, he could detect the soft swell of the top of her breasts, which were rising and falling with her increased breaths.
A bolt of desire seared through him. He was tired of being the businessman, playing the game, abiding by the rules. He wanted to break loose, live, feel, experience. Again he thought there was a reason they were in Kismet: fate had brought them to this moment.
“Kate,” he murmured huskily. “Come here.”
Her blue eyes sparked fire as she took a step toward him, then stopped. “Free,” she said softly.
He started to say it was over between him and Free. Hell, Free had some boyfriend with Disney Dobermans—there was hardly room for Toby. But he wasn’t ready to explain all that right now. Tomorrow night, he needed to pretend to his future boss and his wife that Free was still his fiancé. And he’d learned in business that to cinch the deal, you didn’t preview your game plan. Not to anyone. Because you never knew what small piece—what seemingly insignificant admission—might blow up the entire transaction.
But despite the justification, he felt guilty not telling Kate the truth.
When he didn’t answer, Kate nodded as though understanding that Free stood between them. Looking away, she murmured, “Now your breakfast really is cold. I’ll get you another plate of eggs.”
“I’m not all that hungry, actually. The biscuits and coffee will be plenty.” Now he felt like a dog, letting the conversation shift to something inconsequential, like eggs and biscuits. But he had no choice. “I’d rather you brought me some clothes,” he added quickly.
“Okay!” Obviously eager to be of help—or maybe
eager to escape their heated moment—Kate walked toward the door, which with her long legs took two or three strides. “I’ll go next door and ask for your—”
“No!” Toby had one foot on the floor, but stopped himself from following her. He really wasn’t in the mood to run after her dressed only in his Calvins. When Kate turned back with a surprised look, he explained, “I don’t want you going to my home.”
“Why?”
“It’s early.”
“Not that early. Besides, Verna’s already seen Free in her signature bead outfit. She was walking with—” Kate pursed her lips. “Anyway,” she continued, “Free must know you’re running around town naked, or nearly naked. It would make sense someone would show up requesting your clothes.”
“But not you.”
Kate smirked. “Why? Will she think I’ll try to blow up your shirts?”
She’d probably welcome that. Because right now she’s ripe to act out some of her misguided anger. “No, I don’t want your going over there because I don’t want Free to know I’m staying next door.”
“Why?”
“She might try to get even.” Might? She’d already shown her hand with the boyfriend and his Dobermans. Probably thought she’d successfully ruined Toby’s dinner, his job opportunity. Toby knew it was best to let Free keep thinking that, rather than give her another opportunity to screw things up.
“Vengeance?” Kate looked perplexed. “What’ll she do—throw beads at us?”
Chalk one up for Kate’s humor. “No,” he said, fighting a smile. “Let’s just say I don’t want her to think I’m fooling around.”
“You?” Kate sputtered. “As though she’s so innocent!”
Touché. “It’ll only aggravate things if she thought I was getting back at her. You know, a tit for a tat.” Now he felt his face go hot. “Although she’d probably never dream I’d be getting back at her with you.”
In Bed with the Wild One & In Bed with the Pirate Page 18
