by Julie Leto
She slipped into the kitchen and checked the food and water bowls, which were full. She grabbed a pouch of cat treats out of the pantry and endured Lady’s impatient mewls on her way back into the living area, where she intended to coax Black Jack down from his perch. She was a little surprised to see Daniel still standing in the hallway warily eyeing her and her cat.
She smirked as she approached him, Lady cradled in her arms. “I can bring you a pillow and blankets if you prefer to sleep in the hall.”
With a grimace, he entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. Lady instantly struggled out of her arms, bounced to the ground and made a beeline for the new guy. Her internal motor turned up to its highest setting, Lady coiled around his legs, basting his pants with her soft, dark fur. He sidestepped with an amazing amount of grace, but he’d met his match. The cat anticipated his moves, and no matter how much dancing he did in the foyer, Lady wouldn’t let him get away.
“What is she, in heat or something?”
“You do have that effect on women,” Abby quipped, shaking the bag of treats up at Black Jack, who seemed much more interested in his companion’s obsession with the new guy than he did in the tuna-flavored crunchies.
“It’s a curse,” Daniel said, balancing on one foot to avoid stepping on Lady’s serpentine tale. “Know how to break it?”
She snorted. If she knew how to fight the allure that was Daniel Burnett, she wouldn’t be in this situation at all, would she?
“Just pet her,” she advised. “If cats think you don’t like them, they never leave you alone.”
“So if you like them, they ignore you?”
“Pretty much.” She slid a footstool to the cabinet and climbed up to collect Black Jack, but he had no interest in coming down. He lifted his big furry body and backed into a corner with a hiss.
“Oh, really?” she challenged, annoyed. Her pets weren’t accustomed to guests of the male persuasion, but she didn’t expect open hostility. “No treats for you, you nasty traitor.”
“Talking to me or the cat?”
Daniel was directly behind her. She gasped, surprised he’d come so near without her hearing him—without her feeling him. He had Lady curled up in his arms, her eyes at half-mast while he scratched her chin. Abby couldn’t remember her cat ever looking quite so hypnotized.
She remembered the sensation very well.
“Give me a second and I’ll get you set up in the guest room,” she said, turning so she could back her way down the stool—but not before he took a bold look at her ass, which was right at his eye level.
“Is that my only option?”
His voice was silk and sensuality, not unlike the sound emanating from the back of her cat’s throat. She allowed herself a split second to fantasize about him caressing her as he did her pet, but then skewered him with an exasperated look that was more for herself than for him.
Daniel exuded sex to strangers. To a woman who’d experienced the skill of his sly hands, wicked tongue and generous mouth, his allure was doubly powerful.
With their shared past, her attraction to him wasn’t rational. It was chemical.
“Unless you want to sleep out here on the couch with the cats, yes, Daniel, that’s your only option.”
“If we skip the sleeping part, do my choices expand?”
His shamelessness was both infuriating and exhilarating. He had no boundaries, no limits. She couldn’t help but laugh. She’d never met anyone like him and she doubted that once he left, she’d ever meet anyone like him again.
At least, not if she could help it.
“Sorry, but that’s the best I can offer.”
He eyed her couch and then the cat, who was now stretching up and burrowing her head beneath his chin. “The guest room will be fine.”
“Good choice. Make yourself at home and I’ll show you around in a few minutes.”
Abby went into her bedroom, kicked off her high heels, then unhooked her earrings as she sauntered into her bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. Thinking it might not be a good idea to show Daniel into the bedroom while she was still wearing the sexy black dress, she pulled out her most modest pajamas, a full-length top and pants in a hazy pearl silk that she’d gotten from her mother for her last birthday.
She kept the lights off, her ear tuned for any sound of Daniel moving around her apartment, maybe looking through her things, trying to find some clue about her current life that he could use to his advantage.
He could look all he wanted—he wouldn’t find much. When she’d moved out of the brownstone she’d shared with Marshall, she’d left most of her possessions behind. The house had belonged to his family and most of the furnishings had been theirs, too. Shamed by her behavior before the wedding, she’d wrapped herself up in his world, in his things. When he died, she realized how much of herself she’d lost.
Once she’d started to come out of the fog of sadness, she’d decided to get her own place. She’d ignored her mother’s offer to pay for an interior designer, opting instead to fill the apartment herself with furniture and knickknacks that she’d picked out on her own. Even the cats were new, adopted from a shelter. She still had a few things to remind her of Marshall—like the T-shirt he used to wear to bed that she kept in a tissue-lined box in her closet—but mostly, this places was hers and hers alone.
But now, Daniel was here. In her life. In her home. Was he still in her heart, too?
She reached behind to undo the zipper of her dress and nearly jumped out of her skin when her hand met his.
“Here, let me.”
She moved to step away, but stopped. She couldn’t keep running. She’d found Daniel not only so he could help her retrieve her grandmother’s painting, but also so she could face his part in her crazy past and put it to rest. If she couldn’t endure his touch, how would she ever prove to herself that he no longer held sway over her heart, body or soul?
After taking a deep breath, she lifted her hair off her nape.
For a long minute, he didn’t move, but his warmth prickled her exposed skin.
She glanced over her shoulder.
“Everything okay back there?” she asked, trying not to sound as if her nerve endings were about to burn out at the tips.
The heat of his hand hovered inches from her flesh. “I didn’t expect you to let me get this close.”
She held her hair higher. “I’m too tired to twist myself into a pretzel so I can put on my pajamas. I’m just being practical.”
He hummed as he mulled over her claim. “I can work with that.”
“Why don’t you just work my zipper while you tell me why you think it’s okay to be in my bedroom?”
He slid the fastener down her body, but didn’t reply. The pad of his finger only struck against her skin once, at the spot where her lower back arched.
Then he was gone.
At least, his hand was gone. He hadn’t moved.
Slowly, she let her hair down, the strands fanning down her exposed back, providing scant protection against her body’s keen awareness of his. So close. So warm. So…solid. She swayed a little. He cupped her elbows to keep her from losing her balance.
“Daniel,” she pleaded.
“Danny,” he corrected. “No one calls me Daniel. No one who really knows me.”
“There are people who really know you?”
He released her. “A few. Maybe one or two.”
“Like your brothers? The ones you won’t call to tell where you are?”
She crossed her arms to keep her loosened dress from sliding off her body, but she wanted to hear his answer. In all the reports she’d read from her private investigators, she’d never once run across the name of anyone Daniel—Danny—had become close with. She’d assumed he was either an inveterate loner or he kept the people he cared about protected from his work.
Or both.
“Just because I don’t want them in my business doesn’t mean they’re not important to me. A
lex and I have gotten kind of tight.”
“You mean Alejandro?”
Danny smirked. “Yeah, him.”
“And what about Michael. You said on the plane that you’ve known him longer. Aren’t you close?”
He rolled his eyes. “Hello? FBI agent. He’s not exactly cool with my profession.”
“Your older brother is an art expert,” she pointed out. “As you steal art, I can’t imagine he’s too thrilled about your choice of jobs, either.”
“He’s not,” he conceded. “But he’s willing to overlook my past misdeeds in the name of brotherhood. He’s Spanish. They’re really big on family blood and loyalty and all that.”
She sniffed in amusement, snatched her pajamas and headed back to the dressing area. “Yeah, I know about famiglia.”
She didn’t expect him to leave the room, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard her mattress squeak under his weight. She chuckled hopelessly and changed as quickly as possible out of her dress and into the silky pj’s. Even covered from head to toe, she still felt exposed when she slid back into the bedroom. One layer of filmy material between her bare breasts and Danny’s assessing eyes didn’t seem like nearly enough.
“Interesting look,” he commented.
He’d bunched her throw pillows against the headboard and was lying across her comforter as if he owned the place.
“What did you expect me to wear? Flannel?”
“Seemed to be the direction you were going in.”
“I don’t own flannel.”
“Then this is the next best thing.”
Against his chest, he held her favorite pillow. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the saying embroidered into the cover. Well-behaved women rarely make history. Like the painting, it had been a gift from her grandmother. Like the painting, it was a present her parents had been glad to see taken from their house. She couldn’t help but wonder what her parents would think if they knew who was lying on her bed with a half-expectant look in his dreamy green eyes.
She snatched the pillow away.
“Time for me to show you where you’re sleeping.”
“I could sleep here.”
“You could,” she said, “but then I’d have to sleep in the guest room and that just doesn’t seem right somehow.”
He moved as if to get up, but instead, planted his elbows on his knees and eyed her with that cocky assuredness of his that she never could decipher. Was he about to tease her? Or hit her with an undeniable truth?
Or both?
“Come on, Abby. Your husband has been gone for a year. A guy like him, willing to forgive what you—what we did. He wouldn’t want you to be lonely.”
“I’m not lonely.”
“This from the woman with two cats?”
“Exactly,” she said. “I have two cats not because I am lonely, but so that I won’t be. At least I know they’re going to stick around. At least I know they’re not going to steal from me or lie to me.”
“I won’t lie to you.”
“But you have.”
“Yes, and I apologized. And now I have a chance to prove to you that I won’t hurt you again.”
“By sleeping with me?”
He scooted to the other side of the bed, where no one had ever slept except Black Jack and Lady, and flipped back the covers.
“Great idea,” he said. “It’s been a long day, and to be honest, I’ve been spending way too many nights alone. And maybe, if I manage to sleep next to you all night long without doing anything you don’t want me to, you’ll start trusting me a little.”
She narrowed her gaze. He was trying to pull something. A guy like Danny Burnett was always running a scam, always working an angle. “Define doing anything you don’t want me to,” she asked.
He chuckled. “Sharp as always. Okay, that could be too open for interpretation. How about, I won’t do anything that I might have done during our previous…interactions. Unless you verbally ask me to.”
She quirked a brow.
“Okay, unless you beg.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
He grinned. “Not tonight.”
She swallowed what little moisture was in her mouth and considered how this could play out. She could order him into the guest bedroom, lock her door behind her and spend the rest of the night wondering if she’d lost a key opportunity to see just how far she could trust the man she’d recruited to save her family’s reputation. Or, she could show him how much she’d changed by accepting the gauntlet he’d thrown.
“Fine,” she said, sliding between the sheets. “The bathroom’s in there if you want to take a shower or whatever. I have extra toothbrushes in the drawer.”
Surprisingly, he took her up on her offer. He bounded off the bed and made such quick work of prepping himself for bed that she hardly had time to close her eyes when he came back in with his shirt untucked, his pants unbuckled and his socks removed. He grabbed a throw blanket from her chair and then slid on top of her bed beside her.
She rolled over. “That’s cheating.”
He arched a brow. “And you expect more from a guy like me?”
She turned over with a huff, punched her pillow and then slid her right arm firmly underneath it. “No, I guess I don’t.”
“Good, because I’d hate to disappoint you again. The first time nearly ripped me apart.”
6
FOR AN HOUR, MAYBE TWO, Abby slept. Her dreams had been a confusing kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, most of them more like smears of slick oils on canvas rather than actual images she could identify. But they hadn’t woken her up. Danny’s voice had done that. Even as she rubbed her face and her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could hear him muttering in his sleep. She couldn’t understand him until he said, “Abby.”
She rolled over and pushed aside the comforter that had bunched up like a cushioned wall between them. He’d turned onto his side, facing away from her. Though it was cold outside her floor-to-ceiling windows, Danny’s skin glistened with a thin layer of sweat. The slight muskiness shot Abby’s tired mind straight back to the hot summer nights she’d tried so hard to forget.
“Please, Abby.”
She scooted closer. Was he really dreaming about her? She bit her lip, as afraid to believe him as she was to doubt him. If he was murmuring her name in the middle of the night, that meant he still cared about her—still wanted her. Even after all these years. Even when she had nothing left for him to steal.
But what if he was faking, pretending to be so wrapped up in her that she invaded his dreams? She’d never be able to trust him. He’d manipulated her once. She couldn’t allow him to do it again.
With a minimum of movement, she rolled out of bed. Crouched, she remained beside the bed for a minute, pondering her choices. She really didn’t have many. She could, she supposed, take her pillow and retreat to the guest room. There, at least, she’d be safe from either scenario. If he was really sleeping, then she wouldn’t hear anything that he wouldn’t want her to—anything that might reveal the truths locked away in his subconscious mind.
And if he was acting, he couldn’t play her if she wasn’t around.
But she didn’t want to run. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She couldn’t be.
Instead, she padded softly around the bed. A streak of silver moonlight stretched across the length of his body. The light dazzled through his chest hair, drawing Abby’s eyes to his lean, flat abs, which tapered into his unbuckled pants. It was too dark to distinguish the source of the bulge in his crotch. It could have been the blanket, she supposed. Or a trick of the light.
Or an erection.
Her mouth watered.
She covered her face with her hands. This was wrong. So wrong. The man had lied to her, stolen from her, nearly wrecked her whole life, starting with her impending marriage. He’d used her in the worst possible way, luring her out of her comfortable, respectable life with promises of sensual experiences that he had, admittedly, made go
od on up until the very end.
While married to Marshall, she couldn’t remember ever fantasizing about Danny or even wondering what had happened to him. She’d done her very best to put him entirely from her mind. And her husband, whether out of his own insecurities or a genuine desire to keep their marriage strong, had gone out of his way to spice up their sex life. She was never bored. They never fell into a rut.
But as a result, Marshall’s death meant she missed sex more than ever. She missed the intimacy. She missed the mindlessness. She missed the conflagration of sensations that stripped away every pretense, every fear, every regret.
Could Danny give her that?
Did she want him to?
This time when he spoke, his words were unintelligible, a tangle of sounds that spoke of hot sex and utter surrender. He shifted, turning so that he was lying flat on his back. There was no mistaking his erection now. He’d not only unbuckled his pants, he’d unzipped them.
And he wasn’t wearing underwear.
Unconsciously, she stepped closer, then looked away.
She didn’t have to peek at him to remember his naked body. The images had remained burned into her brain. With him, she’d discovered so much about her sexuality—things she never would have been brave enough to explore with Marshall, who’d known her since she was a child and who’d treated her, up until her affair with Danny, like a china doll that might break if he loved her too roughly.
But Danny had never treated her gently. From the first moment they’d met, he’d come on to her with whispered innuendos just shy enough of crass to pique her curiosity without frightening her or turning her off. He’d orchestrated every word, every touch, to her vulnerabilities so that she’d had no choice but to fall and fall hard.
With him, she’d explored the true depths of passion and physical need and expression. He’d scorched away her inhibitions until all that was left was raw, unfulfilled desires, which he’d then satisfied one by one by one.
“No, don’t,” he said. “Don’t go. No.”
He grunted and groaned, and in the sounds, Abby heard the timbre of true supplication. He was begging her for something…or at least, he was begging someone. She knew how quickly characters could morph when someone was asleep.
