“Let me help you,” Bobby offered, rising to his feet.
“Nonsense. Tell him he doesn’t have to help, Cassie.”
Cassie met his gaze.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Really.”
Not about to argue with a man who was willing to clear the table, Cassie said, “Bring the sugar cookies when you come back.”
“You could help, Cassie,” her sister said, giving her one of those significant looks vacillating between reproof and unspoken advice that was impossible to interpret under the best of circumstances—meaning in a more sober state than her current one.
“No need,” Bobby said, arranging numerous plates on his forearms like a practiced waiter. “I’ve got them.”
“I wish I had him,” Willie whispered, sliding into her seat beside Cassie. “Where the hell did you find that glorious hunka, hunka love? If I wasn’t going on tour again next week, I’d fight you for him.”
“Save your energy. He’s spoken for by several Miss Worlds and sundry starlets, and he’s only in town for a brief time to find the missing Rubens. He’s also well aware of his accomplishments and appeal, believe me. So for all the above reasons”—and for a more pertinent, he’s-not-interested reason she chose not to mention—“I’m staying way clear.”
“You’re crazy. Enjoy him while he’s here. Life’s short.”
“I doubt he’s interested.” A half-truth, but what the hell, one had to consider one’s vanity, and he’d been pretty plain at lunch that he didn’t want to screw the hired help.
“Of course he’s interested. He looked at you a hundred times during dinner. I was sitting across from you. I saw.”
“You’re hallucinating. This man amuses himself with jet-set women.”
“So? There’s no jet-set women here tonight.”
Cassie shook her head. “I have to work with him. Sex muddles things up.” As if anyway, she thought.
“What do you have to lose?” Willie said, as though reading Cassie’s thoughts.
“My pride.”
“That’s crap. This is the twenty-first century, sweetie, where women are going to finally level the playing field. If you want him, take him. Female power rules. Give it a try.”
Sure, right after I travel Buddha’s trail to enlightenment, Cassie thought. “Maybe I will,” she lied, not about to argue with Willie’s sense of entitlement.
“Way to go, babe. Let me know what he’s like in bed.”
“Sure.” It was getting easier to lie by the minute.
“That’s why I didn’t marry Todd,” Willie said, as if Cassie had asked. “He wasn’t good in bed, and he wanted me to stay home, like really stay at home. Can you believe the selfish bastard when he knew I’d been dreaming for years about being good enough to make the cut in pro golf? He threw a fit when I wouldn’t marry him, but it was him or golf—no contest there.”
“Is he . . . well—parenting at all?”
“When he’s not too busy making his way in the banking world.”
The sneer in her voice didn’t give much room for a pleasant rejoinder. “It’s probably for the best,” Cassie said, as though she was a lexicon of lies and platitudes tonight. God almighty, was there a happy marriage in her circle of acquaintances? She couldn’t think of one. Which didn’t say much for her friends. Except for Meg, of course, and Egon, the prints curator. She almost exhaled in relief, thinking of the two couples’ mutual adoration as though they were her lifeline to a more harmonious world of loving kindness and compassion.
“Absolutely. Cole’s happy. He travels with me. And I love playing golf.”
“You always were slated for stardom, Willie. Everyone knew it.” Even as a child, Willie had been single-minded in pursuit of her dream. “I envy you that all-out commitment.”
“You’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do.”
“That’s true.” And if she could only strangle Arthur, her job would be ideal.
“To dreams.” Willie lifted her wineglass and winked. “And Bobby Serre in your bed.”
Cassie clinked wineglasses and smiled. “To dreams at least.”
“One out of two—what the hell.”
“Amen to that.”
And they giggled like they’d been doing since they’d become friends in the first grade.
“You want some action, meet me on tour sometime.” Willie grinned. “I can assure you complete anonymity if you want it.”
“Anonymity for what?” Meg asked, just like an older sister wanting to know everything.
And like a younger sister familiar with evasion, Cassie said, “Willie’s telling me how to avoid the paparazzi.”
“Right. And don’t ask me to tell you what Mom said about Aunt Lizzie.” Meg placed a large plate of sugar cookies on the table. “Coffee anyone?”
“Aunt Lizzie never does anything.”
“Once in a while she does.”
“I’m not biting.”
“Fine. Coffee, Bobby?”
Bobby had been standing in the kitchen doorway with a half-smile on his face, taking in the not unfamiliar sibling scrimmage. “Yes, please.”
“Sugar? Cream?”
He shook his head.
“Your sherbert’s melting.”
As he sat down at the table, Cassie glanced up from under her lashes and smiled. “Meg gives orders to everyone.”
“Not a problem. The food was great.”
He ate every drop of dessert, took seconds, ate three cookies, drank his coffee, and answered Willie’s and Meg’s questions about his life with a well-mannered courtesy that gave away very little. Not that either woman was deterred, continuing their interrogation nonstop until Cassie finally said, “It’s getting late. We’d better go,” to save him from the line of questioning that appeared to be leading to his past marriage.
Thank yous and good-byes were exchanged, the children came in to wave from the front porch, and as they settled into the leather upholstered interior of the town car, Cassie made sure she sat in the farthest corner of the seat, as distant from the alluring Bobby Serre as possible. After all Willie’s talk of good-in-bed men, she was feeling the need for caution.
“Thanks for letting me tag along. I enjoyed myself.” Bobby smiled. “And you didn’t have to save me.”
“I didn’t want you embarrassed.”
“I’m good at avoiding that subject.” He grinned. “Practice. Now tell me if any of the names on the temp list look intriguing.”
She appreciated his focus on business, but a niggling little resentment took exception to his indifference. Not that she expected to compete with starlets, she rationalized, but still. The tiniest little bit of interest wouldn’t be remiss. The thought inexplicably jarred her brain, and she suddenly realized she was actually looking at a man without resentment. Was that progress or what? She glanced over to test her newly functioning male awareness antennae only to find the magnet for her awakened sensibilities asleep.
But he wasn’t.
He was pretending because her scent filled his senses, her nearness was like a mega-watt charge to his libido, and the small distance separating them was insufficient if his carnal impulses were to take over and call the shots. Better to feign sleep than to make a move on her that he’d be sorry for the second after he climaxed. Think with your head, not your dick, he kept reminding himself. She’ll be home soon and out of the car, so chill out. You’ll be able to face her in the morning without making excuses.
He pretended not to hear her give directions to Joe; he pretended not to feel her eyes on him. He seriously tried to curb his rising erection, although his libido had had a mind of its own too long to comply to some newfound morality. He heard her suck in her breath, knew why, and felt himself swell even larger. Which precipitated a small, suffocated gasp from his companion that wasn’t particularly helpful to his unfamiliar and perhaps dubious virtue. That word, virtue, perversely flooded his mind with decidedly unvirtuous images, his visual catalogue of artistic er
otica voluminous. Definitely not helpful.
He opened his eyes and turned to her. “Look, you’re very beautiful, but I’m trying to be sensible.” That’s the way. Get a grip. Discuss this like an adult. “So don’t move, and I won’t move, and when I see you at the museum tomorrow morning, everything will be just fine. Okay?”
She nodded because she couldn’t find the breath to speak with her pulse rate peaking somewhere in the stratosphere. After he’d said she was beautiful, she wasn’t really sure what else he’d said . . . something about the museum.
“Don’t move. I mean it.” His words were taut with restraint. She’d half turned when he’d spoken, and that damned button on her suit jacket was unbuttoned again. Christ. The fabric strained across her breasts, the neckline was wrenched askew, and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep from reaching out and sliding his finger down her tantalizing cleavage.
“I won’t.” But it was tempting in the darkness of the backseat, the atmosphere charged, a sexy male body close enough to touch. She felt as though she were isolated in darkness, Bobby Serre enough of a stranger to make no permanent demands, the sexual heat he generated so shockingly urgent she was inclined to throw caution to the wind. But she understood that morning would come and with it the awkwardness and gaucherie of having to work together—afterward.
“It’s for the best,” he muttered, speaking in the same low undertone inaudible to Joe.
“I know.” Her voice was the merest wisp of sound.
“One has to be practical.” Each word was tightly curbed.
“Agreed.”
He shot her an impatient look. “This might be easier if you were your usual argumentative self.”
“I don’t feel like arguing.”
“What do you feel like doing?”
“You know.”
“Tell me.” The freight train was moving.
“I’d rather not.”
“I didn’t know you were prudish.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“What if I wanted to find out?”
“I thought you wanted to be sensible.”
“Screw sensible.”
“Or then again . . .”
“Screw you,” he whispered, lifting his hand, brushing the mounded fullness of one breast, slipping his finger downward into her shadowed cleavage.
“That would be very nice,” she murmured, her body instinctively opening of its own accord at his unhurried exploration.
“Perfect,” he whispered, sliding his finger under the scalloped edge of her lacy bra, touching her nipple.
Perfect in more ways than one, she thought, aglow with lust.
He gently squeezed her nipple, and she gasped, a streak of pure flame racing downward to her pulsing core. It took her a moment to catch her breath and then she murmured, “Do that again,” without grace or humility, without caring about not giving orders to a more or less perfect stranger.
He slid another button free on her suit jacket and dipped his head.
“No, no—wait!” She grabbed his hair.
He glanced up. “For?”
She flicked her gaze toward the front of the car.
Minnesota, he thought, the temperate, circumspect heartland—except for Arthur perhaps—and reaching out, he slid shut the glass divider. “Better?”
“Not really.”
He smiled. “Now what?”
“This isn’t going to be—you know—” she hesitated, her hands dropped from his head and she made a small wrinkly nosed moue, “very private—or comfortable.”
Privacy didn’t concern him. Any limo driver knew enough to be discreet. And the backseat looked plenty wide enough to him; when his cock was this hard comfort wasn’t high on his list. On the other hand, he knew the long-term advantages of good manners and tact. Particularly when the evening was young, and Cassie Hill was hot. “Should we just neck?” he said, his voice teasing. “That’s harmless enough.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, indecision in every syllable. Nothing was harmless in her current state of wild, desperate longing.
Something is happening here, he thought, feeling curiously involved, not solely gauging the performance necessary for consummation. But malelike or Bobby Serre–like, he dismissed the notion that he could be stirred by a woman in any but the most obvious ways. “One kiss,” he whispered. “How can it hurt?” And bending his head, he lightly brushed her mouth with his.
She surprised him and herself as well with an impetuous, flame-hot response, pulling his head down to meet her lips, forcing his mouth open, kissing him hard, hard, hard.
The scent of her washed over him, invaded his nostrils, reminded him of hot sex and hotter orgasms, and, seizing her shoulders, he dragged her into his arms and kissed her back with a fierce, pent-up fury that would have been impossible to rationalize had he been so inclined. Which he wasn’t, being pressed backward on the seat as he was by the feverish, highly aroused Miss Hill, her enormous breasts damned near falling out of her clothes.
Golden opportunity, he was thinking instead.
Her previous issues of privacy and comfort had apparently been dismissed because she was lying atop him, kissing his mouth, ravenous and needy.
And he had what she needed.
As impatient as she, perhaps more so for he rarely had to wait this long for a woman he wanted, his response was equally direct and avaricious, their kiss not so much a kiss as a greedy, gluttonous prelude to what they both wanted.
“Here and now—your house or mine,” he murmured, turning his mouth aside just enough to utter the words.
“Mine,” she panted, sprawled atop him, his legs spread wide, sliding her tongue so deeply into his mouth he felt the spiking jolt clear down to his toes. His erection was rock hard, her weight pressing against the rigid length, her hips moving faintly back and forth as if he needed further stimulation.
He took her face in his hands and forced her upward slightly. “It better not be much farther.” It was the closest he’d come to being impolite, but she either had to stop rubbing against his cock or her house had to be in the next block.
“You have to wait.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“Yes, you do.”
He half smiled against her mouth. “Besides that.”
“Good. Because I haven’t had sex for months.”
His erection surged higher at such tantalizing news. “I’m not sure you should be telling me that.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “I’m going to frighten you off.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She didn’t quite meet his gaze. “You hear stories about men being intimidated by—”
“Women who want sex? I doubt it.”
“Oh, good.” She blew out a breath. “I mean the way I’m feeling right now, I’d be really disappointed if—”
“Don’t worry,” he murmured, lifting her away and sitting up as the car came to a stop. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She smiled. “Except, I hope—”
“Wherever you want me to go. Okay?”
“Thanks.” There really must be fairies who made your wishes come true.
“On the contrary, thank you,” he said with a grin and, leaning forward, he slid open the glass divider.
TEN
BOBBY EXPLAINED TO JOE THAT HE WOULDN’T be needing him anymore tonight; he’d call him in the morning. Then he more or less bodily lifted Cassie out of the car, swung her up into his arms, and kicked the car door shut.
“The neighbors are looking,” she hissed as the town car pulled away. “Put me down.”
“You worry too much. It’s dark. No one can see.”
“You still shouldn’t. You’ll strain something and my night will be ruined.”
“The only thing I might strain tonight won’t be a problem for you, believe me. Now how do we get in?”
Cassie’s house was a low, sprawling Tudor cottage facing
Minnehaha Creek, the street side framed by a cottage garden that she’d labored over for the entire five years of her marriage. “Down that path.” She pointed at what appeared to be a riotous display of daffodils and tulips.
“What path?”
“Put me down, and I’ll show you.”
“What if I don’t want to?” The feel of her in his arms was a strange combination of aggressive sensual receptors and rare tenderness.
“Would you like to lie on my bed or what?”
“At the moment a bed isn’t an absolute necessity.”
“It is for me.”
“Demanding, aren’t you?” he said with a grin.
She winked at him. “Wait and see.”
“Now there’s reason to hurry.” He placed her on her feet.
“This way,” she said, taking his hand and moving toward what appeared to be a mass of dark tulips. But just short of the bed, a gravel path was revealed that wound through the scented spring garden and arrived at a small entrance portico.
Pushing the door open, she said, “Ta da,” with a wave of her arm and beckoned him in.
“You don’t lock your door?”
“Not usually. Nobody can find the door anyway. Would you like a drink?”
“No.”
She smiled. “Would you like me?”
“Yes,” he softly said, but he didn’t move.
“There’s no one here.” Did she detect a faint unease? “We’re quite alone.”
His sexual frenzy had suddenly cooled. Maybe it was the starkly empty room beyond the entrance hall that reminded him of her divorce and ex-husband. Of the reason she was working with him. Of all the potential problems.
“Don’t you dare change your mind.”
Struck by her heated tone and the oddity of his even hesitating for a heartbeat at a time like this, he quickly reverted to type and smiled. “No way I’m going to change my mind. Where to?”
She held out her hand and he took it in his, the warm softness reminding him of all the other warmth and softness he wished to explore, obliterating any remnant of uncertainty. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do this—but couldn’t resist. I hope you don’t mind?”
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