by EC Sheedy
Julius’s voice was like satin and tweed, steel with a serrated edge. A baritone bound by silk. Slow caresses and a cold beer. Champagne and sweat…
Its timbre crackled along Deanne’s nervous system like ungrounded electricity.
Suddenly overly warm, she turned away from the Julius and Samba love-in and got busy, tearing lettuce as if she were an automatic shredder.
“The pups are beauties,” Julius said from behind her.
Deanne checked the oven, then started riffling through the fridge for the salad dressing she’d made earlier, glancing at Julius but trying to avoid direct eye contact—for God knew what reason. Maybe because looking at him had a blinding effect, like looking into the sun. “Yes, they’re beautiful. And you’re honored, Samba rarely lets anyone get close to her babies. Kurt for one. She won’t let him near her.”
Julius looked up, before standing to his full height. A faint frown creased his high brow. “Has he come around again?”
She snagged the Parmesan from the fridge and closed the door. “Kurt’s always around.”
Saying nothing, Julius went to the sink and washed his hands. “You should tell him to get lost. And stay lost.”
“That an order, general?” She shot him a quick look.
“Would you listen to one?”
“Probably not.”
“Then we’ll call it advice.”
She stopped what she was doing. “Something about Kurt bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Not me. My gut. I’ve learned to listen to it.” He picked up the wine, tapped the cork.
“The corkscrew is in that drawer.” She gestured toward the middle drawer with the block of Parmesan she still held in her hand, then went back to finishing the salad. Somehow Kurt as a conversation topic wasn’t working. “And the wineglasses are above it.”
Two seconds later, he stood in front of her—too close—holding two filled wineglasses. He held one out to her and she took it. The shift of red in the glass catching a brief glow from the strong overhead lighting.
She sipped, then said, “Do you always listen to those gut instincts of yours.”
“Only when it involves two eventual possibilities.”
“Which are?”
“Threat or sex.”
She choked on her wine.
Julius appeared not to notice her miniseizure and looked over her shoulder at the counter she’d been working at. “You done there?”
“For now.”
“Good.” He took her hand, lifted it. His thumb swept her palm, and his eyes followed its movement a moment, before he tugged her toward the living room. “Let’s sit awhile. Dinner can wait. I want to hear all about Deanne Moore. Starting from the beginning.”
Her stomach lurched. The beginning would take them to Amanda. The truth about how if she’d kept her promise to be in London as scheduled, Amanda and his parents might still be alive. Maybe it had been fate’s fickle, unknowable hand, but on that day it had been a closed fist. A killing fist.
Now that same fist was wrapped around a truth she didn’t know how to tell.
CHAPTER 8
Julius, holding Deanne’s hand, enjoying the softness of it in his, led her back through the doorway to the same sofa they’d sat on during his first visit. Clancy West’s amazing paintings still hung as before, but tonight Julius barely glanced at them. The only art he was interested in was the woman sitting beside him on the sofa, clutching her wine, and looking…tense.
The setting sun, coming through the front windows, blazed hot and low into the room, its gold radiance streaking across the gloss of the wood floor and hurling shadows against the white walls.
Julius liked this room, the simplicity of it, and he liked the woman who’d created it.
He finally understood why he’d hesitated to call her, initiate further involvement. Deanne was risky business. Deeply personal business. And for a man who kept his relationships uncomplicated and risk free, this was new to him. Unexplainable. Fascinating. They’d spent very little time together, yet he felt as if he knew her—that she knew him. Odd. Because he didn’t know her at all.
But he understood her caution, her underlying reserve; it perfectly matched his own.
He’d be smart to stick to his usual routine, which—and he wasn’t proud to admit it—meant initiating what would become a hot but short-term affair. He’d make sure Deanne enjoyed herself—that would be his pleasure—but there’d be nothing more. Beyond the heat of the bed lay the usual void. The usual emptiness. That was how things worked for him. How he liked it.
Looking at Deanne now, her wary expression, the tension in her lush body, his famously prescient gut tightened, the first inkling his game plan might slip sideways, that Deanne might be more of a challenge than he anticipated.
Something in him hoped so.
Either way, it was time to stop what his partner, Joe, called his “overboard, overanalytical, overthinking process” and enjoy the moment.
“Before we…Before this—” Deanne stopped, muttered, “Damn.” She took a breath. “There’s something you need to know.” She set her wineglass on the coffee table and faced him. “About me. I want to—”
Putting a finger against her lips, he set his glass beside hers.
She frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Not sure.” But he was sure. Damn sure. He ran his hand over her shoulder, under her hair, and cupped her nape. Drawing her face to his, he brushed his mouth over hers, savored the softness of her lips, the hint of breath mingling with his, then he drew back. Her eyes were wide-open. Her mouth mere inches from his. She didn’t pull away.
“I thought you wanted to talk—”
He kissed her again, carefully, softly. Still in control, still on game, but this time he didn’t pull back. Leaving his mouth against hers, he said, “I want this first.”
He covered her mouth with his, running his hands up the sides of her face deep into her hair. Keep it light, Zern. That was the plan, the beginning of game…until he tasted her. Really tasted her.
Sweet. Promising. Warm. Hot. Giving…
Her mouth against his was magic. Black magic.
Falling into her and unable to stop the fall, he deepened the kiss, and a soft moan coming from low in her throat pierced him. Heat fired between their bodies. Bodies joined only by mouths ravenous for more.
Julius hardened to aching, shifted closer, and when she grasped his shoulders and sighed into his mouth, his game plan evaporated. He tested the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, and he entered her with his tongue. Christ…
Their tongues met, danced a slick hot dance, and Julius’s ache ramped up to sexual pain, tested the constraints of the metal in his zipper. Now a prison. He couldn’t get his breath.
I need to slow down…have to slow down.
Deanne’s hands slid down from his shoulders, and her nails bit into his biceps. She leaned into him, and another soft moan escaped her mouth, invaded his. He inhaled it and dragged her against him, tumbling them both back against the sofa. He felt her nipples, small points of heat, only fleetingly before her breasts fused to the hardness of his chest.
Heartbeat against heartbeat.
A thrumming built in his ears. His brain spun, white-hot.
His cock, hard and needing, throbbed against her thigh.
And still he kissed her. Her hands tangled in his hair; his hands slid down her back and locked on her waist, stroking, squeezing.
Only a superhuman effort stopped him from pulling up her skirt and grabbing her ass with the finesse of a beer-soaked teenager. Every fiber and cell in his body focused on the woman in his arms. Every cord of muscle and sinew grew as taut and rigid as his pounding erection.
Deanne moved over him in a soft slide, an action that initiated a powerful thrust against her thigh. He groaned, kissed her throat, her shoulder—anything he could get his mouth on—desperate for more skin, more giving flesh. He ran his hands down the sides of her breasts, up again.
Then he fell still. Very still.
She ran her hand down his chest, over the strained muscles of his stomach. Hesitated the barest moment. Down some more.
Fuck! Julius sucked up some air, held it deep, going motionless under her unexpected caress.
She ran her palm over his hardened length. One firm, deliberate sweep, encompassing, measuring…astonishing. An intimate investigation, thorough but over too quickly, ending even before his instinctual thrust.
He sensed she was as surprised by her bold stroke as he was.
She went quiet in his arms, a moment later lifting her head to look at him, her eyes smoky and intense. “I shocked you.”
“In the best possible way.”
“You’re wondering why I…touched you.”
He took some strands of her long hair in his hand, let them slip through his fingers, willed himself to cool off. “No. But I think you are.”
At that, she pulled back from him. Although, thankfully, not so far back he couldn’t hold her hand, kiss her palm, play with her fingers.
“You’re right, but…Honestly? I’m not wondering all that much.” She paused. “And while I can’t say I had exactly that in mind—”
“You mean feeling me up?” He arched a brow, smiled.
She stared at him. “You have a wonderful smile—you should use it more. It…softens you.”
“Right now, I’m a lot of things, soft isn’t one of them.”
“Yes…I know.”
“From firsthand experience.”
She coughed. “Getting back to my, uh, feeling you up.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m not hindering.” And he enjoyed teasing her. She looked terrific, rattled as she was.
“I’m trying to be serious here.” She tugged the hand he was holding, but he didn’t release it.
“Okay. Go. Get serious. But you can’t have this back until I’m done with it.” He kissed her palm.
She took a breath, let her hand go lax in his and straightened her shoulders. “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about you…in that way—well, maybe not exactly about doing that…touching your—I mean, but…” Looking confused and sweetly befuddled, she stopped talking, pulled her hand from his, and abruptly got to her feet. “God, this is awful.”
“In this case, ‘awful’ is definitely in the eye of the beholder.”
“The thing is—” deep breath, “—we know each other, Julius.”
He cocked his head. Impossible. If he’d ever met this woman, there was no way in hell he would have forgotten her.
“We met when I was twelve and you were seventeen.” She took a breath. “I knew your family.” A pause. “I was a friend of Amanda’s.”
Julius chilled, then heated, and his usually cool, logical mind jumbled. The name Amanda entered the white room like a black bird through an open window; the air heaved and churned, as if roiled by its powerfully beating wings. He hadn’t heard any of his family’s names aloud in too many years to count. Everyone who knew him, knew enough never to mention it.
“I spent a lot of time at your house…that summer.”
Julius knew exactly what summer she was referring to. “Then you know.” He didn’t finish. Wouldn’t go there.
“What happened to your family? Yes. I do—and while it’s years too late to say so. I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
“Why didn’t you mention this sooner?” He studied her intensely, angry with himself that he hadn’t remembered something—someone—who mattered to his sister. Deanne had been her friend, and he hadn’t recognized her. So many years…
“I didn’t think it was necessary. When Clancy suggested I contact you about selling his work, I did some checking.”
“Checking?”
“Yes. Checking, not to be confused with prying. I wanted to know about your collection, your tastes—things like that. But other things came up.” She looked uncomfortable.
“Like?”
She paused. “You’re known as a very private person. A man who keeps to himself. So I didn’t think for a moment, we’d—”
“Get personal?”
Briefly looking away from him, she said, “Something like that. When you called and asked me out for dinner, I was going to say no. And maybe I should have, but—”
“But?”
She sat again. Beside him. With her hands locked over her knees. “I was curious. And—to be completely honest—attracted to you.” She smiled, a fleeting, shy smile with a hint of embarrassment. “I wanted to know what it would be like to get to know Julius Philip Zern—all growed up.”
He stood. “And now you do.”
“Some. Not nearly enough.”
He walked to the wall where West’s paintings hung, straightened one that didn’t need straightening, before facing her again. “You should have told me right away.” He didn’t know why he thought that. Didn’t know what difference it would have made.
A timer went off in the kitchen.
Deanne got to her feet. “I suppose I should have. But it didn’t seem right somehow. And I didn’t want it to appear I was using my past connection with Amanda and your family to…ingratiate myself in some way to sell you Clancy’s work.”
Julius understood her logic, grudgingly admired it, but said nothing. He needed to turn this new information about Deanne around in his head, look at it from several angles—think about what, if anything, it meant.
Amanda would have been a woman now, like the beauty standing in front of him.
His chest constricted when he thought of the operative words: would have been. If I’d gone along with things, done what was asked of me, it wouldn’t have happened.
He’d spent years telling himself it was all chance, the impartial hand of fate, but never come to believe it. The best he’d done, judging from his reaction to Deanne’s startling announcement about knowing his family, was bury his guilt in a shallow grave. At the moment, he didn’t know whether he loathed its exhumation or welcomed it.
Deanne was staring at him, as if waiting for him to say something, when all he wanted was for this conversation to end. He wanted the black bird out of the room—and all the pain that came in with it. He wanted to kill the fucking bird, so it would never come again.
“I think,” he said, “the alarm in your kitchen is trying to tell us something.” He picked up his wine and hers, and gestured toward the doorway. “Shall we?”
CHAPTER 9
Deanne walked ahead of Julius, her stomach home to a high jumper’s face-off. Her chest a cloud of disappointment.
You blew it, Deanne Moore. Totally blew it.
When she’d mentioned knowing Amanda, his face had gone blank, even as her mouth still burned from his kisses. Julius had seduction on his mind and her stunning bad timing ended it like a bullet through its very heart—and hers. Every line in Julius’s face hardened into darkness.
She rubbed her forehead, wondered when she’d ever stop making mistake after mistake after…
All the digging in her own past—that toxic sludge of sins, stupidities and soul-killing self-loathing—obviously had some strange side effects, like making her panic over the smallest lie, especially the ones you tell yourself. Not that her knowing about Julius’s family fell in the lie category exactly, but it did feel important; enough that the longer she kept quiet about it, the more impossible it would be to talk about later.
Like it or not, compulsive or not, she wouldn’t allow lies and evasions to settle like broken glass in her psyche. Probably a failing in itself. Maybe she should have kept her big mouth shut, said nothing. It wasn’t as if she and Julius would become…anything. She could have let things go, had sex with him. One night. That’s all it would have been.
But you want more. Admit it. After that kiss you want a whole lot more.
It had taken a year of therapy and another year of hard personal work for her to become a woman capable—no, determ
ined—to say what was on her mind.
And there was something else. She owed it to Amanda and that long-ago pledge they’d made to always be honest with each other. Julius wasn’t Amanda, but he was close enough to count. He’d deserved to know about Deanne’s relationship with his tragedy.
“Can I top this?” He held out her glass.
“No. Thanks, but you can sit down.” She took the wineglass and set it beside her plate. “Two minutes max—and you’ll be eating.” And probably ten minutes after that you’ll be out the door.
Julius sat, and she was grateful for the opportunity to turn her back to him. She held back a sigh, opened the oven and took out the lasagna. For a time the kitchen fell to silence.
Julius broke it. “It’s all right, you know. Your telling me.”
Busy tossing the salad, she half turned. He was sitting at the table at an angle that let him stretch his legs in front of him. One hand rested on his knee, the other held the stem of his glass, idly turning it on the tabletop. “I’m not sure it is. And I’m not sure whether to apologize or not.”
“Don’t.” He paused. “It was a shock, that’s all. I’m glad you told me.”
“You didn’t look glad.”
“I’m glad now. At the time my thoughts were on other things.”
“Like getting me into bed?”
He cocked his head. “That was direct.”
She put the salad on the table, and followed it with the lasagna and a warm ciabatta loaf. “A hard-won talent,” she said, sitting opposite him.
“Then you won’t mind if I take advantage of it.”
“And?”
“And ask you how you were feeling—about my getting you into bed.”
She studied him, not uncomfortable with the question so much as the motive behind it. Oh, hell! “For a few seconds there, I was counting on it.”
He didn’t smile exactly, but his eyes lightened somewhat. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you.”
“I was turning thirteen. I was wearing braces, glasses, and still carrying a good parcel of baby fat.” She picked up her salad fork. “We did swim together once. You taught me the butterfly kick—or tried to. Something about two kicks per stroke, if I remember right.” But I definitely remember your hands around my waist, the sound of your voice telling me I could do it.
