“I was wondering if you were planning to attend their Coach Ball this year,” she said, “because I’d love to go.”
Ah, so that was it, he thought. The Coach Ball was the premier spring event of the region’s social season—and one of the most exclusive. Kyle had always looked forward to the black-tie gala, but with all the turmoil at work he wasn’t sure of his plans this year.
“The ball is still weeks away. There’s so much going on at the office right now, I have no idea if I’m even going.”
“But if you do go...”
“I already told you I haven’t decided,” Kyle said. The last thing on his mind right now was a ball.
“Fine!” Greta huffed. “But you don’t have to make up a story about being busy. I know you Kyle Ellison, and if you don’t want to have fun with me then you’re having it with someone else.”
The low-battery warning beeped on his cell phone a second before it went completely dead. So much for thinking a conversation with Greta would pull him out of his Logan-induced funk. All it did was remind him Greta was a woman used to getting her way and when she didn’t her mean streak came out with a vengeance. Kyle opened the armrest compartment to retrieve his charger and then remembered it was in his other car.
Suddenly, the Ferrari lurched forward, careening from side to side on the slick ice.
“Damn,” Kyle muttered.
He gripped the steering wheel struggling to turn it out of this skid as he’d done with the others. Only this time the sports car whirled out of control, doing a 360-degree spin. Kyle pumped the brakes, but they were as useless as the tread on his tires against the sheet of glass hidden beneath the snow.
He braced himself for impact as the Ferrari came out of the spin and slammed nose first into the biggest snow bank he’d ever seen.
* * *
Just a few more miles, Nia thought, peering through the windshield at the wind mixing the falling snow with the drifts already on the ground.
Then what?
No hunky hubby would greet her. Dinner wasn’t waiting or much food either since she hadn’t had time to grocery shop.
Just a big, empty house.
“Thanks a lot, Amy,” Nia grumbled aloud. Puffs of smoke formed as her warm breath met with the cold air.
She’d been just fine until her friend had put these silly ideas in her head.
That’s how it all starts, she reminded herself.
First, you obsess over finding a man. Then you bust your tail coming up with ways to please and hang on to him. Until ultimately, he becomes everything, and you lose sight of the person you were and the goals you had for yourself before he came along.
Flashes of red and yellow from the roadside caught Nia’s eye, interrupting her reverie. She squinted and rubbed her mitten-covered hand against the windshield to clear the condensation clouding the inside of the glass.
Hazard lights.
She slowed the truck, which was already crawling through the snow at a snail’s pace. A car on this road at this time of night was a rarity, and this one appeared to be wedged in a snow bank.
Nia threw the truck in Park. Not bothering to pull to the side of the road, she grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and climbed out of the truck. She prayed the driver and any passengers had the good sense to stay with the car. A shudder went through her at the thought of what may have happened if they’d attempted to walk in this mess. It was a short drive to the Miller’s place or hers from here, but in this weather it would be a long, deadly walk.
Wind-propelled snow stabbed at her, stinging her face. Nia pulled the fur-trimmed hood of her parka over her head and continued to tromp through the snow toward the blinking taillights.
As she got closer, she saw the lights belonged to a fancy sports car, a temporary paper license tag that appeared to be from Tennessee flapped in the relentless wind. The car looked good and stuck, the entire front end practically buried in the snow bank.
The engine was running, and she noted the exhaust from the tailpipe. However, the driver’s window and rear windshield had iced over making it impossible to see if anyone was inside.
Nia tapped on the driver-side window with the butt of the flashlight.
“Hello? Anybody in there?”
Nia shined the light on the window, but couldn’t see anything but her own reflection in the frost. Then she heard a faint noise.
Thump. Thump.
There was someone inside.
Nia yanked on the door handle, but ice had froze the door shut. “Hold on a sec, I’ll be right back,” she shouted.
Moments later, she returned with an ice scraper and immediately began chipping away at the thick layer of ice around the door’s seal.
She gave the door handle another hard pull. The crack of ice breaking sounded before the door finally gave way.
Inside, a hulking figure sat in the driver’s seat. She shined the flashlight—right into the handsomest face she’d ever seen.
Stunned, Nia could only stare.
“Please tell me the cavalry’s arrived,” he said, puffs of smoke coming from between his pearly white teeth.
A blast of icy wind knocked Nia out of her I’ve-never-seen-a-good-looking-man before stupor.
“I’m the closest thing to it you’ll get tonight,” she said. “We need to get out of here, before we both end up stuck. You okay? Can you walk?”
She detected a nod as he shut off the car’s engine and unfolded his big body out of the low-slung car. Nia craned her neck to look up at him. He had to be at least six-four, she thought as he leaned in and retrieved a large leather duffle from the car.
“Get in,” Nia yelled, gesturing to her pickup.
The wind pushed them two steps back for each one they took, and she instinctively looped her arm through his as they trekked toward it.
He stopped. “The rest of my things,” he shouted over the howling wind.
Nia glanced back at the car. If they didn’t hurry they’d both end up stranded.
“Leave ’em.”
Thankfully, he didn’t need any more convincing. When they got to the truck, she threw open the passenger door and made her way to the driver’s side.
Nia turned the heat to full blast for her shivering passenger, who she could either attempt to drive back to town and chance sliding into a ditch herself, or just take him home with her.
Chapter 4
A spring pushed up through the cracked leather of the truck’s bench seat stabbing Kyle’s frozen butt cheek.
He didn’t care. Nor did he mind the stench of motor oil permeating the interior of the battered truck or the AM band radio squawking in the background. Right now, the heat kicking out of the truck’s vents made it better than any of the status vehicles lining the garage of the Ellison estate.
He held his bare hands over the vents and sighed as warmth surrounded them.
“I’m Nia, by the way,” his rescuer said.
“Ky-le.” He managed to push out through teeth that hadn’t stopped chattering. He turned toward her, but the fur-trimmed hood of her parka blocked the side of her face. Not that he blamed her. He wished he had a thick hood on his head blocking the elements.
“What were you doing out in this weather?”
“Stuck,” he replied, too cold to elaborate. He stretched his numb fingers over the vents, wishing he had gloves too.
“Guess it really doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Well, Kyle, there’s no place else to take you tonight but home with me. So I’m taking a leap of faith here and assuming you’re not a Ferrari-driving serial killer who doesn’t know how to dress for cold weather.”
“Businessman.” Dammit. His teeth wouldn’t stop clacking together. “Cold.”
“My place is just a few miles up the r
oad. Actually, it’s my grandmother’s house, but I inherited it....”
The soothing feminine voice continued talking, but Kyle was too busy giving himself a mental kick in the ass to register anything she’d said.
Between his cousin’s appearance and his own gung-ho exuberance to demonstrate to his uncle he could handle his latest assignment, Kyle had been thrown off his game.
So now he sat freezing his tail off in a beater of a truck headed to who knows where.
Kyle continued to shiver as his rescuer turned off the main road and down what probably was a side road before it had been blanketed in snow. Shortly afterward, a lamppost illuminated a yellow wood-frame house surrounded by snow-laden evergreens.
“Here we are,” she said.
Kyle eyed the shin-deep layer of snow covering the path leading to the covered porch. The idea of wading through it made his barely thawed feet ache. At this point, he’d gladly trade his handcrafted Italian driving loafers for a pair of cheap boots from the nearest Walmart.
He felt a hand on his forearm.
“The longer we sit out here, the deeper it’s going to get,” Nia said.
He nodded, taking in the night sky. The snow wasn’t letting up. If anything it was coming down even harder, and he was only a few precious yards from shelter.
Once inside, Kyle continued to shake wondering if he’d ever be warm again. His gaze trailed his hooded rescuer as she went straight to the thermostat and adjusted the dial.
“I turned up the heat,” she said. “You should feel it soon.”
He wanted to thank her, but decided to wait until his teeth stopped chattering. So far, he hadn’t been able to utter more than a word or two.
Kyle looked around the room. His eyes flicked from walls covered in peeling, avocado-green wallpaper to faded faux-leather furniture he guessed was orange in its prime. Chunks of snow fell off his coat onto matted shag carpeting in a throwback shade of brown he didn’t think existed anymore.
Where in the hell am I?
Then he remembered the woman mentioning she’d inherited the place from her grandmother, who’d obviously been trapped in a time warp or served as curator for a 1970s museum.
But whatever the place lacked interior designwise, it was beginning to make up for in the temperature department. Kyle wasn’t positive, but he thought his toes were starting to defrost.
He pivoted to the parka-clad figure, hovered over a fireplace feeding wood into the fire she’d started.
“Let me help you with that.” Dropping his bag on the floor, Kyle strode toward her.
She stood abruptly, and her head collided with the center of his chest. Instinctively, he grabbed her arms to steady her, and a pair of startled brown eyes stared up at him.
He dropped his hands. “Sorry, I was trying to help.”
“Uh...um, I was just getting a fire started as backup.” The hood fell back from her head. “You know, in case the power’s knocked out.”
Kyle nodded and moved past her, closer to the flames. Extending his hands toward them, he flexed his fingers, oblivious to the tiny sparks catapulting off the crackling wood. The snow was melting off him in earnest now, rendering him a cold, soggy mess.
He sneezed once, then again.
“Bless you,” she said. “You’ll probably want to change out of those wet clothes before you end up with pneumonia. The bathroom is down the hall, first door on the right.”
Kyle hesitated not wanting to move away from the intense heat the fire was throwing off, but his host was right. He didn’t want to make a bad situation worse by getting sick. He spent a few more minutes soaking up the fire before picking up the leather duffle he’d managed to grab from the car and following her directions.
The bathroom was also a blast from the past he’d only seen on old television reruns. But it was clean and warm.
Kyle had no idea what was inside his duffle. Thomas “Chief” Gayle, better known as the Ellison household’s chief of staff, had saw to it his bags were packed and waiting in the Ferrari. Kyle hoped the bag he had contained his essentials and not the suitcase he’d abandoned in the trunk of the car.
He unzipped the bag and immediately saw his favorite fleece warm-up jacket on top. He breathed a relieved sigh and sent a silent thanks to Chief for once again saving his ass. Rummaging through the bag, he also discovered his toiletry kit and enough clothes to last him a day or two.
Kyle shed his lightweight wool coat, which had been worthless against the snowy onslaught. Next came his shirt, which was also soaked.
He heard his name along with a light rap on the door. He opened it. Nia stood in the doorway holding a set of fluffy, white towels.
“In case you wanted to warm up with a hot shower,” she said.
It was the first time he’d had the opportunity to see what she’d looked like, undistracted by his shivering or chattering teeth.
She was average, he figured, taking in her smooth coffee-colored skin. She wore her hair in a short Afro, which flattered her heart-shaped face, but was the polar opposite of the long, silky tresses he liked on a woman.
She was plain, when he liked flashy. Short, when he preferred tall. Round, where he preferred svelte.
Simply put, Nia wasn’t his type. Not at all.
The sound of Nia clearing her throat pulled him out of his own head.
“Do you want the towels?” she asked.
“Oh, sure,” he said, taking them from her. “Thanks.”
His space-cadet moment must have made her nervous, Kyle thought as he watched her dart down the hallway. She was probably asking herself what kind of strange man she’d taken into her home.
He chuckled to himself as he shut the door and turned on the shower. “So much for being smooth, player.”
* * *
After all her big talk to Amy about sex being nonexistent on her priority list, one delicious eyeful of Kyle’s bare chest had left Nia wiping drool from her mouth.
Pull yourself together, girl. She blew out a sigh and headed to the kitchen. She surveyed the refrigerator’s meager offerings before pulling out cheese and butter. There were no cans of soup left in the cabinet, but fortunately, there was half a loaf of bread in the breadbox.
She was hungry and figured her guest was too. Grilled cheese seemed like a better option than the other choice, peanut butter.
The shower water stopped, and Nia’s thoughts shifted back to Kyle’s gloriously naked torso. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she pictured water raining down on those mile-wide shoulders, droplets beading on those defined pecs and rolling over his washboard abs.
Just stop, she silently scolded herself again as she added the bread and cheese sandwiches to the butter sizzling in the cast-iron skillet.
First off, everything she’d told Amy had been true. She had more important things on her agenda than sex, like finally getting her job promotion and fine-tuning the proposal she prayed would save the town of Candy from financial collapse.
Furthermore, it didn’t take a genius to realize she wasn’t Kyle’s type. She recognized his dismissive expression. As the girl who used to run home to her grandmother in tears after being teased for her big eyes and thick lips, she’d seen it before.
Besides, men that looked like him didn’t give women who looked like her the time of day, let alone a second look.
“Smells good in here,” Kyle said.
It was the first time he’d uttered more than a word or two, and his deep voice rippled from the back of her neck down to her toes.
Nia looked over her shoulder to find her houseguest leaning against the kitchen archway dressed in jeans. Fortunately, he’d covered that flawless chest of his with a thermal shirt and a fleece jacket.
“I was hungry and thought you might be, too,” she babbled nervousl
y. “Hope you like grilled cheese.”
“Grilled cheese sounds great.” Kyle stifled a yawn with his hand. “Guess my appetite thawed out with the rest of me.”
The scent of his soap, masculine and outdoorsy, tickled her nose, and his presence made the space of the small kitchen feel even tighter.
Nia licked her suddenly dry lips. No doubt about it, her dormant sex drive had awakened from its long hibernation—and it was demanding satisfaction.
“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room, and I’ll bring your sandwich out to you when it’s done.”
Anything to get him out of there and buy her a few moments to rein in her errant hormones. Nia flipped the sandwiches and tried to block out Amy’s words echoing in her mind.
...take off those goody two-shoes of yours just once...
Sliding the sandwiches onto plates, Nia exhaled, and braced herself for sharing a meal with her sexy guest.
“Kyle, food’s ready,” she called out.
She walked into the front room with his dinner and found him asleep on the ancient orange sofa her grandma had stubbornly refused to let her replace.
“Kyle,” she called again.
He didn’t stir. If the man was exhausted enough to fall asleep on that rock-hard sofa and not hear her calling him, Nia reasoned, he needed rest more than food.
“Chicken,” she muttered to herself as she retreated to the kitchen.
After eating and washing dishes, she nixed her original plan of a bubble bath and opted to work instead.
Diving into her proposal was just what she needed to get her priorities straight and Amy’s nonsensical advice out of her head.
Nia grabbed her notes from her tote bag and headed to the dining room, which had become her makeshift office since she’d taken up the cause of the candy factory.
Unfortunately, the dining room didn’t have a door, and the wide archway separating it from the living room gave her a perfect view of her dozing houseguest.
Sweeter Temptation (Kimani Hotties) Page 3
