“Yes, which is the reason we’re spending time together now. A holiday fling is just what we evidently need. It’s the season to be jolly, and we can even act a little loony, out of character, even behave like sex addicts and all that good stuff. We’re adults with needs. But when it’s all said and done, eventually things have to get back to normal, and when they do, it will be life as we know it.”
“And what kind of life is that?” he asked, trying to keep anger from burning the back of his throat.
“I can’t speak for you, but mine will be one with no serious entanglements. I have too much baggage for any man to deal with.”
Try me. He decided now was not the time to tell her that their entanglement was already as serious as it could get. He also decided not to break the news that he had all intentions of resuming what they had shared before. The only kind of life he planned on having was one with her in it.
He opened his mouth to speak but closed it when he heard them docking back at the port. A short time later the car door opened, and he knew Jules had returned. That gave him a chance to sit and ponder why he had this burning obsession with getting back with her. And he knew the reason had nothing to do with the off-the-chain sex they’d had tonight or all those other times before. It was way too deep for him to try and dissect at this moment. Especially when she thought she’d delivered the last word.
He fully understood why she intended to keep him at arm’s length again once they returned to Charlotte. She’d been burned once and didn’t intend for any man to light a match to her again. Well, he had news for her. He was not going to let her lump him in with that poor excuse for a husband any longer.
“You’ve gotten quiet on me, Xavier.”
They were back on the road again. Bright lights were everywhere as the car headed back toward her hotel. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“What I need to do to convince you that we need to restart our affair on a long-term basis.”
She shook her head. “Don’t bother. I don’t do longterm.”
“You did me for one month shy of a year.”
“I got carried away,” she said simply. “We got carried away. It was an abnormality for you as much as it was for me.”
Yes, it had been, but he hadn’t complained.
“And what about your status in the club?”
The question annoyed him. “Forget about the club.”
“Why should I? And can you? You and your godbrothers are the ones who established it. What will they think?”
At the moment he didn’t give a royal damn.
What had he been thinking when he’d conceived of the Bachelors in Demand Club, he wondered now. And at the time, his five godbrothers, for various reasons, had been more than happy to be a part of it. “Xavier?”
He glanced over at her. “I’m still thinking.”
She smiled. “Yes, you do that and pretty soon you’ll see I’m right. What you’re asking for is not what you really want. You just got caught up in the moment. You even admitted yourself that because of work you hadn’t slept with another woman since me. The way I see it, you’ve been suffering from a bad case of horniness. Don’t get your heads mixed up, Xavier. You used to be pretty good knowing one from the other.”
He looked away out the window. She sounded like she assumed she had all the answers. Well, he had news for her. If she thought—
“And I think considering everything, we should forget about that nightcap.”
At her interruption, he looked at her. “Are you saying you don’t want me to spend the night with you?”
“I don’t recall issuing you an invitation.”
He frowned. “Are we into playing games now, Farrah?”
“No.” She didn’t say anything for a moment and then, “Look, Xavier, I’ll spend every moment that I can with you while we’re here in New York. I really want that. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fun while it lasts.”
There was a momentary pause, and then he asked, “But when we return to Charlotte, I can’t call you or drop by like before?”
“I prefer that you didn’t.”
Did she really mean that, he asked himself. She was returning his stare with a straight face, and her tone of voice sounded serious enough. But still…
She was the same woman who’d come apart in his arms moments ago. The same woman who’d admitted to missing him, to trying to forget him these past six months.
He studied her features and saw the determined look in her eyes. However, he took a minute to look beyond that, and he could swear he saw something else. Was she really that scared to admit that possibly those eleven months they’d been together had meant more than just sex?
His eyebrows knit in a tight frown. This was getting pretty damn confusing. He should be in agreement with how she was thinking. She definitely expected him to be, but he just wasn’t feeling it, and he needed a reality check to figure out why.
“Let’s do dinner tomorrow night,” he heard himself suggesting.
“That’s fine, if I’m in town.”
He lifted a brow. “Where will you be if not here?”
“Heading back to Charlotte if I wrap things up with my clients tomorrow. Either way I hope to be leaving by Friday.”
A sense of dread felt like a sword twisting in his chest. Friday was two days away. “I want to spend time with you again before you leave, Farrah, and I agree tonight might not be a good time.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Xavier. That’s the best I can do.”
She was deliberately giving him little to work with, but she didn’t know that Xavier worked best under pressure. He would take tonight to go home and regroup, plan a new strategy and decide just what he intended to do about Farrah Langley.
One thing was for certain. He had no intentions of letting her go. If she thought things were over between them, then she definitely had another thought coming.
Chapter 8
Farrah wrapped the huge towel around her as she stepped out of the shower. From where she stood in the bathroom she could see her bed, and if anyone would have told her she would be sleeping in it alone tonight, without Xavier, she would not have believed them.
There was no reason for him not to have spent the night…at least there hadn’t been a reason until he began spouting all that nonsense about them continuing their affair once they returned to Charlotte. What could he have been thinking to even suggest such a thing?
As she slipped into her nightgown, she shook her head, totally confused. Tonight had been an adventure, definitely something new and different. She smiled, thinking she liked the idea of being naughty. She liked the idea of a holiday affair, too.
A casual relationship was all she was interested in. With Xavier, however, what had started out as a strictly no-strings affair had slipped into a hot and heavy routine, a full-blown sexual habit they couldn’t kick. Not that they’d tried. The more he’d shown up on her doorstep, the more she’d wanted him to keep coming.
And that wasn’t good.
He could argue with her on that point all day long, and she would not change her mind and relent. As far as she was concerned, they either agreed to indulge in a New York affair or nothing.
Then why, she thought a short while later when she slipped between the sheets of her lonely bed, was she thinking of him and all they’d done that night? What they’d shared for eleven months, and more importantly, what she’d gone without the past six months and what she would continue to go without?
If tonight had been a calculated move on his part to stir up memories, then she would be the first to say he’d succeeded. As she lay staring up at the ceiling, she couldn’t get out of her mind just how he’d felt inside of her, killing her softly with every sensual stroke.
So many memories began swirling around in her head, making sleep impossible. At least for now. Instead, she couldn’t help but recall the first time he’d shown up on her doorstep and how quickly and ea
sily she’d tumbled with him into her bed. She’d opened the door, and he’d stood there, wearing a pair of jeans and a white shirt and looking as sexy as any man had a right to look. There had been something about him that had wowed her from the first time she’d seen him that night at the Racetrack Café. She’d heard about him and the bachelor club he was affiliated with, but until she’d seen him for herself, she hadn’t known how any man could have that effect on a woman.
She’d known she had wanted him from the start, passionately so, and hadn’t intended to let something like protocol stand in her way. She’d seen him as a way to have fun and forget about all the hurt Dustin had caused her. She’d wanted to know how it felt to have a no-strings-attached affair and not care one iota if she saw the man again. She’d wanted an affair that was as casual as it could get.
And that’s what she’d gotten in the beginning. But then she’d noticed things beginning to change, even if he hadn’t. Probably because those changes had been onesided. There was no reason to assume that he’d begun thinking about her in the wee hours of the night and anticipating the next time they would hook up. Or find himself smiling in the middle of the day after thinking of something that happened between them the night before. And she was pretty confident that when she did open the door for him, he didn’t feel that funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Those had been the warning signs, and she’d had no reason not to heed them and put in place any and every preventive measure that she could. Nothing seemed to work. The situation seemed to get worse. And she’d known the best thing to do was to break things off with him completely.
And now he wanted to jump-start things again and had done a pretty good job giving her a reason to do so. But she couldn’t. Bottom line was that she was dealing with something he couldn’t understand. It was only about sex for him, but for her she was taking every memory as seriously as it could get.
She moved to another position, not that she thought that would help. It would be a sleepless night. Even after the workout Xavier had given her tonight, her feminine core was achy, in need of some intimate attention, Xavier Kane style.
Give in to him, a voice inside her head whispered. You’re a big girl. You can handle another affair with Xavier. It would be up to you to make sure it’s an affair that leads nowhere. And if it did, what’s another little broken heart? What’s the big deal?
The big deal was there in his eyes each and every time he looked at her. It was there on his tongue every time he kissed her. It was embedded in the fingers that touched her.
After a few tosses and turns, she discovered she still couldn’t get to sleep and decided she needed to talk to someone, and there was no other person she could share her woes with than her best friend.
She glanced over at the clock and cringed when she saw it was almost one o’clock. She didn’t know what kind of hours Natalie was keeping now, but before she was married, Dr. Natalie Ford Steele, esteemed chemistry professor at Princeton University, used to be up at all hours of the night.
She grabbed her cell phone off the nightstand and punched in one number that automatically connected to Natalie. The phone was picked up on the first ring. “Hey, Farrah, what’s going on?”
Farrah smiled, grateful to hear her friend’s bubbly voice at a minute before one in the morning. “Evidently, you are. I take it you aren’t sleep.”
“Heavens, no. I just finished another chapter of this book I’m working on and was sitting here cuddled on the sofa enjoying a cup of hot chocolate.”
She then remembered that Natalie was working on what would probably be another New York Times bestseller on global warming. “Where’s Donovan?”
“Oh, he went to bed hours ago. I think the triplets wore him out. We kept them earlier while Cheyenne and Quade went shopping to play Santa. They are definitely three busy beavers. Donovan and I could barely keep up with them.”
Farrah chuckled. “Are you two having second thoughts about having kids of your own now?”
“Never! I want Donovan’s baby so bad.”
Natalie’s words made something twist in her heart when she remembered how she had wanted Dustin’s baby, too. Instead of giving a child to her, he’d given one to someone else. That pain reminded her why she could never give her heart to another man.
“So what’s up, Farrah?”
She swallowed. There was no reason to talk anything over with Natalie now. Not with the reminder she’d just gotten. The pain was still stabbing her chest. “Nothing.”
“Um, I know you, girl. You would not have called me at one in the morning for nothing. Go on. Let it out. What’s bothering you?”
Farrah nibbled on her bottom lip a minute before saying, “I ran into Xavier yesterday.”
There was a pause on the other end, which Farrah understood. Natalie knew why she had broken things off with Xavier. “In that case, I’m sure cold New York is probably pretty hot by now.”
Farrah threw her head back and laughed, especially when she remembered how hot things had gotten while riding across the Hudson in Xavier’s private car. She then cleared her throat. “Hey, what can I say?”
“You can say the two of you have decided to get back together.”
The smile on Farrah’s face immediately became a frown. She’d known that Natalie liked Xavier. What was there not to like? Besides being good-looking as sin, he was also a downright nice person. She would attest to that. And of course he was one of Donovan’s closest friends. But all of that had nothing to do with her heart.
“No, we’re not getting back together, although he suggested such a thing. I told him I’d indulge in a holiday fling while we’re here in New York. That was the best I could do.”
Understandably there was another pause, which was followed by a feminine snort. “I wish you would rethink that proposal, Farrah. Not all men are like Dustin.”
Farrah changed positions in bed while she rolled her eyes. How many times had she heard that very thing—not only from Natalie, but from several others? “I don’t want to try and weed the good from the bad. Casual affairs suit me just fine, but the one with Xavier was beginning to get too hot, heavy and addictive.”
“That’s not bad with the right guy, Farrah. Hey, let’s run down a few things.”
“A few things like what?”
“Why Xavier might be a keeper.”
There was no doubt in Farrah’s mind that he was a keeper. All she had to do was concentrate on the tingling between her legs to know just how much of a keeper he was. But he would be a keeper for some other woman, definitely not her. She frowned, wondering why the thought of that suddenly annoyed her.
Natalie began her checklist. “I don’t have to ask if he’s good in bed.”
She couldn’t help but laugh again. “No, please, don’t bother.”
“Okay, then. Is he someone you would want as a friend?”
A friend? Yes, she could see him being her friend once they put the bedroom behind them. But when she saw him, she didn’t think of friendship, just sexual satisfaction. “Yes, he’s someone I’d want as a friend.”
“Okay, then. Do you consider yourself happy when you’re with him?”
That was a no-brainer. Of course she was happy whenever she was with him. He could do things with his mouth, tongue and erection that could keep any woman delirious. “Definitely,” she heard herself saying.
“Get your mind out of the bedroom, Langley, and provide responses on a purely plausible basis.”
“Not sure I can do that with Xavier. Our relationship was one that started in the bedroom.”
“That’s not true. If anyone’s relationship started in the bedroom, it was mine and Donovan’s. Your relationship with Xavier started at Racetrack Café, Farrah. You were the one who was quick to carry it into the bedroom.”
Farrah thought about Natalie’s accusation and had to agree that she had been the one who’d instituted a sexonly relationship with Xavier from the first. Of course he had gone
along with it. What man wouldn’t have? She had known the moment she’d lit her gaze upon him that night that she’d wanted him.
“Sorry, but I’ve conditioned myself to only think one way when it comes to men. And please, please don’t tell me again that all men aren’t the same.”
“Maybe if I keep saying it, one day you’ll believe me.”
“I believe that now, Nat, but like I said, I don’t have the time to find out who’s naughty and who’s nice. I can’t risk taking a chance and being wrong.”
“I think deep down you want a man who’s both naughty and nice and you have both with Xavier.”
Farrah released a deep sigh. “What is this? Slap-some-sense-into-my-best-friend-where-Xavier-Kaneis-concerned Day?”
“I won’t even try doing that. You’ll have to see for yourself what a great guy he is.”
“I hate to burst that romantic bubble floating around your heart, but all Xavier wants from me is sex, too. It’s not that serious. Only problem with that is that I could fall in love with him, Nat, if I’m not careful and I can’t let that happen. Thanks for listening.” Not waiting for Natalie to reply, she quickly ended the call. “Love you. Bye.”
Finding a more comfortable position in bed, she stared up at the ceiling again as she drew in a ragged breath. Sleep continued to elude her as one thought replayed in her head. A woman was entitled to make at least one mistake in her lifetime, but a smart woman wouldn’t be a fool and make two.
Xavier slipped into his robe as he eased out of bed, unable to sleep. At this very moment he should have been in Farrah’s bed making love to her again. When she’d ridden the elevator up to her room, he should have been on that elevator with her, kissing her every second of the ride.
Okay, so her refusal to jump-start their affair again had thrown him for a loop. He’d figured after tonight she would have seen the merit in them hooking back up. Evidently they weren’t on the same page. Not even close.
Moving through the hallway, he walked down the stairs to the kitchen. He had purchased this house on Long Island as investment property a few years ago and hadn’t regretted doing so. He liked New York and whenever he came to town he much preferred staying here than in a hotel.
Bachelor Unleashed Page 9
