Added to her ex-husband’s visit—he should have murdered the guy in the first place—and three days of intolerable waiting, he couldn’t deny he might have pushed too hard; loved too hard on that one very special night… Dammit, he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He didn’t care what he’d done wrong. If he’d lost control making love to her, it was because she was so damned responsive. And loving. And the only woman on earth with whom he’d ever dreamed he’d lose control.
Owen lurched out of the chair, paced for all of five minutes and then bolted up the stairs. A half hour later, he bolted back down, carrying a suitcase and looking grim. For three days, he’d had an idea of what to do if Laura said no. It wasn’t a good idea. He even had the feeling it was a half-baked, out-of-control, harebrained idea, which wasn’t like him…but at the moment he was feeling half-baked and out of control.
He was going to be on a plane at midnight.
So was Laura.
Humming, Laura finished folding the laundry…and jumped when her front door clattered open to reveal a tall, dark man in jeans, walking boots and red crew-neck sweater. He looked remarkably intent on breaking something…if the set of his jaw and the glint in his pewter-gray eyes were any indication.
She tilted her head. “Owen?”
He stalked over to the phone, lifted the receiver and dropped it back on the hook. “Afraid someone would call?”
Her brows fluttered up. “I forgot it was still off the hook.”
“He’s gone?”
“Who’s gone?” She frowned. “You mean Peter?”
“Where’s the baby?”
“The baby?”
“Laura!”
“You’re being a little confusing,” she said delicately. “Can I have a hug and kiss, or do you just want to keep on yelling for no reason in particular?”
Owen sighed. “Do you have any suitcases?”
“Sure. I also have toothpicks. Shoes. Lamps. And the things most people have.”
“Where?”
“Which thing?”
“The suitcases.”
“In the closet upstairs. Any particular reason?”
“Because you’re going with me to Brazil. Mari’s going, too.”
She digested this, read all the anxiety and exhaustion in his face, and didn’t really need to know more. “All right.”
“Do me a favor and don’t argue. Not on this, Laura.”
“I wasn’t,” she said mildly, and then obligingly followed him up the stairs, since he seemed to be through talking downstairs. Owen in a temper was…interesting. She expected most women would find him awesome and intimidating…but then, most women, thank God, hadn’t made love with Owen.
Some. Some must have. Those she’d been wondering about for the past few hours since Peter had left.
All of them might have been dynamite in bed…but none of them had had the brains to hold on to him. She’d screwed her head on very straight in the past few hours. She’d had one rotten relationship, and had tried very hard to turn it into a lifelong trauma. Actually, being rejected for another man was probably worth a lifelong trauma, if one had the time for it.
She didn’t. Not anymore. It wasn’t Peter’s fault that she’d forgotten exactly what she had to offer in a relationship. Herself. A woman who could stand on her own. A woman capable of a deep and enduring love. Owen wasn’t getting away. And she’d tell him that…as soon as he gave her the chance.
At the moment, he was bouncing suitcases on her bed, flipping them open and jerking open drawers. He tossed one lace camisole into the suitcase. Powder-pink. Then a second one in oyster. Three pairs of underpants. He closed the drawer on her bras without packing any.
She cleared her throat. Braless was okay, but she really didn’t want to sag before she was thirty. “Actually, I’m capable of packing my own things,” she mentioned.
“I will.” His head whipped up. “Dammit. You do have a valid passport?”
She smiled. “Since I was six. I told you, my family traveled a lot.”
He rubbed the nape of his neck distractedly. “I’d worked out Mari, figuring she couldn’t possibly have one. I’ll need her birth certificate; I’ve got a temporary passport and visa waiting for her. But you—I’d counted on you having one. And I shouldn’t have. I should have made absolutely sure…” He stopped again, shooting her another gray look. “Laura, you can leave your work for a few days?”
For a man radiating don’t-argue-with-me, he was remarkably anxious. Vulnerable, she thought lovingly. It was the first time she’d seen Owen vulnerable. “I don’t have anything that won’t wait a few days, given a phone call or two.”
“You can make phone calls from Bahia; that’s not a problem. Mari—”
“Is sleeping.”
“We’ll wake her up at the last minute.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“No.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“I want you with me. That’s what’s wrong.” He lifted his head long enough to glare at her. “Laura. What did he say to you?”
For an instant, she was busy absorbing the look in his eyes. Need. Bold and stark. And just for her. Belatedly, she remembered his question. “What did who say to me?”
“Never mind. You’ll talk in Brazil. Believe me, you’ll talk in Brazil.”
Two days later, Laura was leaning over a second-story wrought-iron balcony, gazing at the Brazilian countryside. Below was a rolling green landscape, but very different from Connecticut’s fresh green crispness in summer. This was a tropical emerald, all lush and tangled, exotic and wild wherever man hadn’t made efforts to control it.
The Reesling plantation was well controlled. To the east, Owen’s cacao trees stretched in neat rows as far as the eye could see. One would never guess the cacao groves had any relationship to chocolate. The trees were strangely shaped, the trunks curved and warped-looking. The cacao itself grew even more oddly. Yellow, red and green, the pods looked like summer squash clinging to the tree trunks.
Inside those pods were the beans, thirty and forty in a cluster. Once the pods were cracked open with a machete, one could sample those whitish nuggets—and begin to understand the remote relationship between nature’s creation and the thirty-dollar-a-pound delectable treats that Owen made from it. In this case, humanity’s work had it all over nature’s—and Laura felt qualified to judge, having spent several hours crouched on the ground, surrounded by
the workers’ children who were delighted to show her how to crack open the pods.
Overall, it was a damned good place for an ardent chocoholic to be abducted to. It might even be a perfect place, if her kidnapper would show up.
Owen had brought her here, and then seemed to go into hiding. On the surface, of course, he had excuses. Since he rarely visited Bahia, it was natural that Senhor Montez would want to whisk him around, show Owen what a fantastic job he was doing as a manager, and lay a list of problems on him. Labor, irrigation, transportation, weather… When Senhor Montez didn’t get excited, he talked English, so Laura caught the gist of the frequent crises a cacao-plantation manager confronted.
That was on the surface, though. Beneath that, Owen was proving elusive. Laura figured he was ashamed of himself. He should be. For openers, kidnapping was a federal offense. Besides that, he’d behaved in a particularly high-handed fashion, and Laura wasn’t at all surprised that he was reluctant to face her.
Turning around, she wandered back inside from the balcony, casting a wistful glance at the bed. It was a marvelous bed, big and old, with four tall posts of gleaming mahogany, and drapes of netting that reminded her of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Two people had slept in that bed for the past two nights, but the poor bed wasn’t seeing any action. Owen was going to sleep unbelievably late and getting up unbelievably early.
“Senhora Anderson?”
A short, dark woman appeared in the doorway, carrying Mari. Dressed in black, with huge black eyes a
nd warm brown skin, Senhora Montez had proved welcoming and friendly from the first minute she’d spotted the baby.
“She woke? I didn’t hear her.” Smiling, Laura reached for Mari, but the little woman shook her head.
“No, no. I take her out for fresh air…if you don’t mind? Not in the sun, and not too hot, promise. I take very good care…” With a quick, beaming smile, she disappeared.
Laura sighed ruefully. Getting her hands on her own baby was proving almost as difficult as getting her hands on Owen. Blond babies seemed to be at a premium in Brazil. Mari was brought to her at feeding time; other than that, the little one didn’t have the chance to whimper before someone in the household picked her up.
Laura had a sneaking suspicion that Owen had arranged part of that baby care to give her a rest. It would be just like him, and she had to admit it was nice being spoiled. Actually, the past two days had been a comprehensive experience in being spoiled. Clean clothes miraculously appeared in her closet; the sheets were ironed; drinks and snacks appeared in front of her before she realized she wanted them; the baby was taken care of; and quiet arranged in the afternoon so Laura could rest.
Hands in the wide pockets of her white cotton skirt, Laura wandered into the hall and down the wide, banistered stairs. She was feeling almost annoyingly well rested…and slightly unnerved.
She needed Owen, for two reasons. One was to—gently and figuratively—bring him to his knees. He needed to understand that she neither expected nor wanted a Superman. He needed to learn that she was capable of assertively, demandingly giving back.
And the second thing she needed him for was to seduce him. Take all the initiative, throw away the last of her inhibitions, and show him the full force of the wanton side to her that Peter had continually cut down.
She was going to do both, with her chin up and all flags flying. She loved that man. He was worth climbing mountains for.
It would just be slightly easier if she could find him. And if she weren’t scared witless. She knew what she had to do, what she wanted and needed to do to put their relationship on an equal footing, but talk was so easy. This was the gambler’s last poker hand, the skydiver’s last jump. Owen might not expect more of her than she’d shown him so far, but Laura expected more of herself.
Owen took the back stairs two at a time. Upstairs, he dropped his sweat-stained shirt and khakis in a pile, then ducked into the shower and flicked on the faucets. He grimaced. He could buy the luxury of hot water, but no amount of money could produce water pressure in Bahia.
Still, eventually the soft, hot stream rinsed the dirt and grime from his body. He’d spent the day in the drying sheds, analyzing the practicality of new equipment with Montez. Paulo liked to spend his money. The subject had come up before and was truthfully a serious issue that deserved his time, but Owen knew well they could have discussed it on the telephone between New York and Brazil.
He was avoiding Laura. Keeping a low profile didn’t come naturally to him; it just seemed something he’d taken up in the past two days. He’d pressed her into a relationship, pressed her into sleeping with him, pressed her to making a lifelong commitment, and had now kidnapped her. Dammit, she had a right to time and space. He’d given her virtually none. From the moment he’d met her, he’d just been so damned afraid of losing her…
And still was.
She couldn’t very well say no if she couldn’t catch up with him.
On the other hand, he couldn’t stay away from her much longer. When he did see her, he planned to be loving, calm, understanding, patient, rational and apologetic. In his heart, he was dismally certain that he would find some method more wild than kidnapping if she said no.
Either way, making love to her seemed the best way to start. Flipping off the shower faucets, he reached out blindly for a towel and mopped the dripping water from his face and hair.
Once he could see, he started roughly toweling his back…until he felt a cool draft from the doorway. Looking up, he froze.
Laura was dressed in red. Laura never dressed in red. The color all but said Hello, sexy. She was barefoot and barelegged; the smocked dress was Brazilian peasant-style, gathered loosely—perilously loosely—at the bodice. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes subtly darkened with mascara, and her hair fell in a satin swirl to her shoulders. As his eyes traveled from her toes to her head, he caught a whiff of her perfume and stopped breathing.
The scent was lethally effective. Quickly wrapping a towel around his waist, he said weakly, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
He hadn’t seen that gleam in her eyes before. Actually, it was less a gleam than a…sizzle. Owen tried out a casual “Mari in bed?”
“Mari’s fed, bathed and in bed for the night.”
“Hmm.” Behind her, he noted that the door to the bedroom had been closed. And next to the four-poster bed were two chairs and a table—he caught a glimpse of an open bottle of wine and two glasses.
“Did you catch dinner? I meant to be in by seven, but—”
“I know. Senhor Montez had another crisis for you to handle. And yes, I’ve had dinner.”
She didn’t sound irritated. Owen snatched another towel to dry off his chest, never taking his eyes off Laura. She was sending him mixed messages. One was loud and clear. She was a beautiful, infinitely desirable woman, nothing Owen didn’t already know, but it was a pleasure to see her acknowledge it. The second message was rather alarming. Laura vibrated determination. Determination and sensuality didn’t usually go together.
It was then Owen noticed that her hands were trembling. Another glance told him that her lower lip was trembling, too. And that behind the sizzle in her eyes lay a huge well of emotion she was trying very hard to hide from him.
Owen was perplexed, but he also relaxed.
Not so Laura. “Owen, we’re going to have a little talk,” she said firmly.
“It’s past time,” he agreed.
“We’re going to talk about kidnappers. And men who drug helpless women with chocolates. And men who take babies to candlelit dinners. And men who totally desert women, leaving them for two days on their own—”
“Laura, about the last two days—”
“Out.” With a severe expression, Laura motioned him into the other room. The towel still draped around his waist, Owen obediently trailed into the bedroom, taking one short detour to make sure the door was locked. She pointed to the bed. He sat.
At that point, Laura would have lost courage, if he hadn’t been sitting there with a love glow in his eyes. Instead, the longer he looked, the more momentum she gained. She moved closer, much closer. Close enough to breathe the scent of him, close enough to see his eyes turn pure dusky pewter in reaction to her nearness, close enough to slowly unknot the towel at his waist. When he was naked, he tossed the towel to the other side of the room.
“Two can play this game, you know,” he remarked.
“If I were in as much trouble as you are, I wouldn’t be talking,” she advised.
Mute, he leaned back on the bed like a man very sure of who he was and what he wanted…and of what she was going to do next. Pagan gods should look so damned sure of themselves. And that wouldn’t do at all, Laura thought fleetingly. Maybe he’d caught on that she was a little nervous? She could have sworn it didn’t show.
“Come here, love,” he whispered.
“I’ll come, but don’t touch,” she warned. “Agreed?”
His smile held both amusement and surprise, but he nodded, staring with undisguised interest as she pulled off her sash, then slowly peeled the dress over her head. When the garment was a puddle on the floor, he was no longer smiling. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath it.
“Come here,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “Only if you promise not to touch.”
“I’ll promise anything you want. Just come here.”
He still didn’t understand. He certainly thought he did, because when she knelt on the bed, he tried t
o reach for her. She had to firmly motion his hands away. “Please?” she said softly.
“Laura—”
“Just lie back.”
When he pushed a pillow behind his head, Laura knelt next to him. He’d taught her any number of things the night they’d made love. One was that one could make love with eyes alone, and her eyes were brazen, intimately lingering over his legs, his hips, his furred chest, the slope of his shoulders.
Owen stayed still, watching her face. A faint breeze stirred the draperies at the window, catching a strand or two of her hair, curling it around her flushed cheeks. He was more than willing to play any game she wanted to and make love any way she wanted to, yet after a time he felt the unfamiliar tension in his limbs, a sweep of color on his skin. He’d never had a modest bone in his body, and—although he knew he was fit—no vanity about the way he was built.
As Laura studied him, he suddenly became conscious of his body in a different way. He’d sought pleasure in simply looking at her, but it was oddly unnerving to have her seek it the same way. He felt vulnerable. Not a word he accepted easily for himself. “Laura.”
She leaned forward. Her fingertips stroked first; her caress was light and those fingers trembling. Her hair swung in a curtain around her face as she learned his skin, learned what made his pulse quicken, his flesh darken, his body tense with desire. She learned Owen as a woman has a right and a need to know her mate.
Her touch changed. She used her palms to stroke from his throat to his shoulders, down his thighs and calves. She tried friction and then softness, kneading and then slow, teasing caresses.
And then firmly put Owen’s wandering hands back at his sides.
Seducing, she was discovering, took the utmost concentration. Owen wasn’t an easy man to reduce to Silly Putty. She wasn’t surprised at that, but she hadn’t counted on him becoming more tense instead of less.
She tried her tongue. His nipples hardened like tiny little knots when she licked them. His naval contracted, and when her tongue made a loving circle lower, she discovered that Owen, with startling speed, went totally out of control.
Sweets to the Sweet Page 13
