And he nearly collided with Gabe.
“Was that Shannon I just saw you with?” Gabe asked.
Josh grinned. “Well, at least you don’t need glasses yet.”
Gabe did not return his grin. “You’re not…?” His voice trailed off, as if he was afraid to form the second half of the question.
Josh knew what he was asking. “No.” And then, because they were friends and he’d always been honest with Gabe, he added, “Not yet.”
Gabe stiffened. “Not ever,” he emphasized, like a man envisioning disaster. “And especially not during this trip.” He squared his shoulders. “Or I’ll have to kill you.”
“For doing what comes naturally?” Josh asked innocently. He made it a rule never to force himself on anyone, never go where he wasn’t welcome, but there were definite welcoming vibes coming from Shannon and since she was the girl of his dreams, or had been once, he meant to avail himself of that unspoken invitation.
Gabe pulled him over to the side where, hopefully, they wouldn’t be overheard.
“I mean it, Josh. Shannon’s off-limits. She’s engaged, she’s Alexis’s sister and on top of that, she’s a damn nice person.”
“I’m aware of all of the above,” Josh informed him. He reclaimed his shirt, drawing it out of Gabe’s fingers. “Especially the last part.”
Gabe looked at him, exasperated. “So, if she’s so nice, why would you want to take her to bed?”
Josh did his best not to laugh. “Did you just hear yourself?”
“You know what I mean. She’s too nice a person for you to mess with and do your usual number on.”
Josh’s eyes were unreadable. “Maybe I won’t do my usual number.”
Gabe wished he could believe that. There wasn’t a woman alive who could get Josh to give up his wandering ways. “Stay away from Shannon,” Gabe repeated.
Josh saluted. “Message received, sir.” He slipped an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “Now, let’s talk about your one last fling before you have to lock up your manhood forever.”
Gabe did not like the inference. “It’s a wedding, not a jail sentence.”
Josh shrugged. “Same thing.” But this time, he said it with far less feeling than he normally did.
The change in tone was not wasted on Gabe.
THE MEN WERE ALL GORGEOUS.
As Shannon sat, listening to the women around her howl and cheer and applaud wildly, Shannon could truthfully say she had never seen such muscles, such abs, such incredibly slim, perfect hips. But the sum total of all these perfect attributes left her completely bored.
While it was true that the men who were dancing for her sister and the other female members of the Donovan-Fellini wedding party could have easily stepped off a movie set or out of some catalogue dedicated to showcasing absolutely perfect specimens of manhood, she had no doubt that each and every one of these men were about as three-dimensional as used carbon paper. There didn’t seem to be a thimbleful of personality among them.
As the music swelled, Shannon’s mind drifted elsewhere. She caught herself thinking about Josh, wondering if he was nearly as bored and distracted at Gabe’s bachelor party as she was at Alexis’s bachelorette party.
Probably not, she mused. Men were men. They liked looking at perfect bare flesh. Well, she needed more. She needed substance. Muscles alone had never been a turn-on. She admired brains, a heart. Kindness. Then a man could be cute.
A package deal, she supposed.
She just missed Robert, Shannon insisted silently. That was what was wrong with her.
Excusing herself, Shannon got up and slipped out of the main room.
Leaving the noise behind, Shannon walked into the pink-tiled ladies’ room and took out her cell phone. A sigh escaped as she looked at it. Almost five days in Paris and she had yet to connect with Robert. But it was the middle of the night in New York City now and she knew for a fact that Robert did sleep.
Dialing his home phone number, Shannon leaned back against the marble sink and waited as she counted off the number of rings, her stomach tightening with each one.
The instant she heard the receiver on the other end being picked up, she snapped to attention. Her hand tightened around her phone. “Hello?” she said eagerly.
“Hello?” a sleepy voice echoed back at her. “Who’s this?”
The voice that answered her call was female. A sleepy female.
What was a sleepy female doing in Robert’s apartment? He had no sisters and his mother had died just before they began dating almost three years ago.
Shannon felt numb inside.
“Who’s this?” she heard herself demanding.
“Tiffany,” the voice that was shattering her life into tiny pieces whispered in response.
Shannon took a breath, refusing to let her imagination run away with her. Refusing to believe this was what it sounded like—that Robert was taking advantage of her being out of town. Just as she had secretly suspected.
Damn.
“Is Robert there?” Shannon asked.
“Sure he’s here. It’s his place,” the grating voice whispered. “But he’s sleeping. Finally.” A squeaky giggle followed, leaving the word finally open to all sorts of interpretation, none of which seemed favorable. “Can I take a message?”
This had to be a wrong number. Robert was a common name. She’d hit the wrong number and somehow gotten connected to another Robert. “Robert Newhall,” Shannon said, praying the woman on the other line would tell her there was no one there by that name. “I’m looking for Robert Newhall.”
Now the whisper took on a layer of impatience. “I told you, he’s asleep. Damn near wore both of us out. Now, do you want to leave a message or not?”
“Yes. Tell him that Shannon said to go to hell. It’s over.”
Shannon didn’t remember closing the phone and disconnecting the call. She didn’t remember stumbling outside the club or hailing a taxi.
The ride back to the inn was a complete blur.
The only thing she was aware of was the huge ache inside her chest and the word fool echoing over and over again in her brain.
A block away from the inn, she realized that she was crying. That she’d been crying ever since she ran out of the club.
The taxi stopped moving. They’d reached the inn. Her driver was looking at her with compassion.
“You will find someone else,” he assured her kindly. And then, as she began to deny that she was crying over a man, he added, “Tears, they are always about love.”
She pressed her lips together, knowing that to speak would leave herself open to crying again. So instead of saying anything, she handed him a fistful of bills and hurried out of the cab. She felt weak. Dizzy. Stupid.
Squaring her shoulders, she made her way not to the inn, but around back to where the garden had retreated into the darkness. Most everyone was still either at one club or another, but she didn’t want to take a chance on running into anyone, not even one of the inn’s staff.
She wanted to be alone.
Sitting down on the edge of the fountain, she wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand. She should have seen it coming, she really should have, Shannon upbraided herself. Robert had been growing more and more distant, more and more wrapped up in his work. Or so he told her. Obviously, whatever he needed, she couldn’t give him.
She’d made herself over into a pretzel for the man and he still wasn’t satisfied.
Damn him.
How the hell was she going to face everyone? She couldn’t stand to see pity in their eyes. When her parents found out about Robert’s infidelity, her father would give her a speech, saying that Robert wasn’t good enough for her. While she might agree with him, she really didn’t want to hear it right now. And her mother would offer to do a number on Robert. Of her two parents, her father might be the ex-sports jock, but it was her mother who was the physical one, highly protective of her own.
Well, she could protect herse
lf.
Standing up, Shannon took off her engagement ring and flung it into the center of the fountain.
“Did you remember to make a wish?”
Startled, she swung around to find Josh standing behind her. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at the bachelor party?”
“One of the guys got sick. Someone had to bring him back to the inn,” he said simply. He took a step closer to her, peering at her face. The light here was bad, but even so, he could see the tear stains on her cheek. “Why aren’t you with the others?”
She shrugged, looking away. “Naked men bore me.”
“Well, we have that in common. Although, I have to say that from where I’m standing, that’s not exactly encouraging news.” Very gently, he put his fingers beneath her chin and raised her head until her eyes were on his. He suddenly felt very protective, felt the need to take her in his arms and make her tears go away. His voice became serious. “What’s wrong?”
Something leaped up inside her. Her heart, she presumed. Obviously, it hadn’t turned to ashes the way she’d thought, but was now beating wildly in her throat, sending out all sorts of vibrations through her.
She didn’t answer him. Instead, Shannon grabbed hold of his shirt lapel, drew herself up on her toes and sealed her mouth to his.
The fireworks were instantaneous, exploding inside her as the kiss she initiated deepened. Her head began to swirl and she felt almost dizzy, but rather than pull back, to assess, to regroup, she let herself go completely.
Her arms threaded around Josh’s neck, she cleaved her body to his, causing the sizzle she felt through her body to grow and become a full-fledged fire within seconds of its inception.
“Take me to your room,” she breathed.
Damn it, this was what he’d been waiting for, thinking about. Maybe even subconsciously dreaming about for years. And yet, it seemed wrong somehow, he thought, as if he was taking advantage of her. Suddenly, he was thinking beyond the moment, beyond the desire. Thinking only of the sad-eyed woman before him.
He didn’t want anything that might happen between them to be marred by her regrets. So he drew back and looked at her. “Shannon, are you sure?”
Why was he arguing with her? Why wasn’t he just sweeping her off her feet the way she wanted? The way she needed? “Take me to your room, or a broom closet if that’s too full. Or right here.”
As she said it, she moved against him, causing all sorts of delicious sensations to go shooting through his loins.
Damn, but she was a handful. “Shannon, what happened?” he wanted to know.
The concern in his voice did her in.
If he’d jumped at what she was offering, then maybe she could have backed away at the last minute, sought her senses from somewhere. But Josh was obviously thinking of her, maybe even feeling her pain somehow. All she knew was that Josh was being thoughtful and possessed the greatest set of lips she’d ever encountered.
Robert could boast of neither trait.
It was the last time she thought of Robert for the next eight hours.
CHAPTER FIVE
BECAUSE SELFLESSNESS only went so far, Josh gave up trying to reason her out of doing what they both wanted. When he brought her to his room, it was empty, as he knew it would be. The moment the door closed, shutting out the rest of the world, they came together and almost from the first, a strange feeling of homecoming descended over him.
Something happened.
Josh had always enjoyed the women he’d made love with. It was always a mutually shared, satisfying experience. But it involved merely the joining of two bodies and the physical reactions that joining generated. It never went any further, which was the way he wanted it, the way he expected it to be.
There was something more at play this time around, something deeper. Something that made him hold back, go slower and absorb every caress, every tentative exploration, every wild, heart-pounding surge that occurred.
He’d never been one in search of his own pleasure to the exclusion of his partner. That road held no allure for him, but this time, with Shannon, her pleasure, her enjoyment, her responses took complete precedence over his own.
They made his own responses come into being.
And when it was over, when he lay exhausted beside her, Josh caught himself wanting to go back to the start and begin all over again.
And again.
Until he was completely spent. And even then, when it was done and he could hardly breathe he was so tired, it was still different.
The restlessness didn’t come.
The restlessness that always fueled his desire to move on. To get up and leave the woman and the interlude because it was in the past and had no claim to him or to the present.
With Shannon, all he wanted to do was hold her in his arms, smell her hair, feel the warmth of her skin as she curled into him. He felt like a runner who had finally crossed the finish line. Who’d made it home.
He wanted to linger.
It was, he realized, as if she’d single-handedly, and without knowing it, torn him down and rebuilt him in the space of one wild, passion-filled night. He’d always wanted her and now he had her—and he wasn’t disappointed.
Moonlight was streaming in through the window he’d forgotten to close. He even heard crickets. The chirping noise meant the crickets were looking for one another, searching for their soul mate.
Maybe he was one up on them. It made him smile.
Josh felt Shannon stirring against him. She sighed, her warm breath rippling along his skin and making something in his belly tighten as a fresh wave of desire came out of nowhere to find him. To urge him on.
The woman made him want to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Tightening his arm around her, Josh looked down at the face he knew in his heart had been the only one he’d ever wanted to see beside him as dawn nudged aside the layers of the night.
He kissed the top of her head and realized that he had never done that before, never been moved by tenderness to share a moment. This, he thought, was a whole new experience for him. It was a little scary, but he liked it. Really liked it.
“Something wrong?” he asked her.
No, she thought, everything was right. For the first time in a long time, everything felt right. Absolutely right. There was no tension in her body, no tight shoulders shooting pains up to her neck. No anxiety humming along the perimeter of her mind as she wondered if she’d said something that Robert would disapprove of.
She felt, she realized, like herself again. Her old self.
Shifting, she turned into him. “I was just wondering where your roommates were.”
“If they’re not passed out in the club, they’re probably off somewhere practicing.” She looked at him, confused. He smoothed out the single furrow in her brow. “They’re part of Alexis and Gabe’s band, remember?”
That’s right, the two Angelos. She and Josh had come to his room the other day looking for Gabe’s cousins. She smiled. “Very clever of you.”
He wasn’t following her. “Clever?”
Shannon’s smile widened. “Getting rid of any witnesses.”
When he’d suggested using Gabe’s cousins, he hadn’t thought about them vacating the room. He was just trying to help Alexis. “That wasn’t the plan.”
Her eyes grew alert. “What was the plan?”
Freudian slip, he thought. He didn’t want her to think that he had plotted any of this, even though, at the outset, that had been his intent. It seemed somehow wrong now.
“To come to Paris and stand up for my best friend. And help with the wedding any way I could,” he added the last part for good measure.
She hesitated, then shrugged. Sitting up, she drew the sheet around her. “Well, you certainly helped me see the light.”
There was a very real temptation to draw her back into his arms and let whatever happened after that happen. But he refrained. She needed to talk, so he urged her on. “And what light
would that be?”
Shannon dragged her hand through her hair. Waves of deep strawberry fell about her shoulders. “That I can do better.”
He sat up and looked at her. “I can’t tell, was that an insult?”
She suddenly realized what that had to sound like to him. “No, not you. God, I didn’t mean you. I meant Robert.”
“So, it’s over?”
“So over it should have never been.” Shannon looked down at her hand and remembered the ring she’d flung into the fountain. She knew for a fact—Robert had made a point of telling her—that it was expensive. She still didn’t regret throwing it away. Stretching out her fingers, she held out her hand. “It looks better this way. Naked.”
Josh grinned, reaching for her again. “The same could be said for you.” His lips came down on hers in a slow, deep kiss.
Shannon allowed herself to linger for one long, languid moment, savoring the feel of his lips on hers. But just as she began to sink into the kiss, she forced herself to pull back. If she remained any longer, she wouldn’t be able to leave. Or want to.
So she placed her hands on his chest and gently pushed Josh away. “No, someone’s liable to come in. I’d better get back to my room.”
His eyes washed over her as she rose from the bed. She took his breath away. That didn’t usually happen after lovemaking, only before.
Definitely something different was going on here, he thought, pleased beyond measure. She was everything he always knew she’d be. And more. It was, he realized, as if he’d been waiting for her all his life.
His smile was sensual as he asked, “Want me to help you get dressed?”
Right. She’d never get out that way. “Said the spider to the fly.”
“I don’t think the spider wanted to dress the fly, but maybe you’re right.” He sat up, the sheet pooling around his midsection. She had already hurried back into her clothing, much to his regret. And suddenly, the moment turned serious for him. “Listen, I don’t want this to be a one-time thing.”
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