Damn Mara. He smacked the machine again. Maybe he ought to just fling it against the wall.
“This is A-and-E Rentals.” The voice sounded almost apologetic. “We will not be able to renew the lease on your office after the first of the month.”
If he wasn’t already so furious, this would almost be funny. How many more irritants could Mara have stirred up? Before he hit the play button again, the phone rang. With morbid curiosity, TJ folded his arms and waited for the machine to take it.
“TJ? Are you there?” Mara. He didn’t want to talk to her. Just the sound of her voice engorged his prick and shut down his brain functions. He couldn’t believe he’d let her leave the cottage without taking her right there on the couch. He wasn’t immune to her flirtatious glances. They had old issues, and she’d signaled loud and clear that she was ready to settle them.
He wasn’t in a humor for settling them with sex when he couldn’t tell the difference between wanting to wring her neck and needing to jump her bones.
Do-wa-diddy-diddy hummed through his head like a bee buzzing.
“Oh, well, if you pick this up before you go home, come over around seven. Glynis Everett just arrived, and we’re having a small welcoming party.” Her voice turned sultry. “Maybe we can make the world go away—”
The machine beeped, and she hung up.
He didn’t give a flying fart about Glynis Everett, but the invitation in Mara’s voice was unmistakable. What would it hurt? They’d get it out of their systems, have a few laughs. Work off a little hostility... Right.
He punched the button to pick up the last message.
“I think you’d better leave town, Dr. McCloud,” a quavering female voice announced. “There’s going to be trouble if you don’t.”
Summoning every foul word in his vocabulary, TJ ripped the machine from the phone and hurled it against the concrete block wall across the room.
Leaving the pieces where they were, he stalked out.
***
Mara widened her eyes in surprise as TJ strolled into her intimate soiree on the back terrace of the B&B that evening. She hadn’t expected him to accept her invitation. She’d been teasing him with that message. She’d enjoyed their interlude this morning, but she was fully aware that she and TJ still had major issues.
He’d thrown a khaki microfiber jacket over his blue shirt, and with one hand in his jeans pocket, he looked as elegant as any man in here, and more authoritative with that chiseled jaw. A wave of dark hair falling over his high forehead and the questioning crook of his thick, dark eyebrow added an aspect of condescension to his unsmiling demeanor. Only she could tell by the tic in his unshaven jaw that he was on the verge of explosion.
Between husbands, her leading lady was salivating already. Glynis had a penchant for rough-looking bad boys—and right now, TJ looked far surlier and more interesting than Glynis’s current young lover. Watching trouble brew as her star’s immature partner glared and Glynis preened, Mara realized how much she’d come to detest the world to which she’d once aspired.
But she knew how to work a room with the best of them. No more shy Patsy.
Snagging a martini from the waiter, she glided across the B&B’s terrace, winking and waving and adroitly avoiding conversation.
“You came.” She handed TJ the martini, captured his elbow and steered him away from her predatory leading lady. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Didn’t you?” He slanted her one of those enigmatic looks that gave her cold chills and hot tremors at the same time. The connection that had always been there between them hummed, pheromones sang, and a whole chorus of hormones erupted in hallelujahs.
Right there and then Mara realized she’d dived off the deep end without a life jacket, but she couldn’t stop in mid-dive and turn back. “I figured you’d written me off as hopelessly shallow, and beneath your contempt.” She mocked herself more than him with that comment.
TJ lifted one sexy eyebrow but his gaze diverted to the see-through effect of her gown. Good. Keep him as off balance as she was.
“Always keep the enemy in your sights,” he replied gravely.
She wanted to smack him, but Ian’s shouted demands for her to entertain a reporter intruded. She bussed TJ’s cheek to mark him as hers, then reluctantly plunged into the midst of the publicity crew.
“What the devil is he doing here?” Ian muttered as she sauntered up. “Isn’t he the guy keeping our trucks from the beach?”
Mara flashed a smile at a reporter, accepted a new martini from her PR man, and whispered to Ian, “He’s an old friend, okay? Leave him alone.”
“Does Sid know he’s an old friend?” her producer demanded. “Better yet, does Sid know your old friend is the reason production costs are gonna skyrocket?”
“It’s none of Sid’s damned business,” she retorted, “and it’s none of yours either. Lay off, Ian.”
“Sid’s talking about hiring a lawyer to move McCloud’s fat ass out of there.” Ian threw back a swig of scotch and scowled.
“Quit talking to Sid behind my back.” With a hiss of distaste, Mara swung on her heel and awarded the reporter her biggest smile. This was her project. Her ex could just keep his bloody hands off it.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mara watched TJ throughout the evening. He didn’t appear to bat a lash when Glynis practically assaulted him in the shadows of the jasmine-covered trellis. Looking as tailored and business-like as the politicians and millionaires she courted, he accepted a fresh drink while the mayor berated him about the access problem. She prayed they’d come to terms, but the parade of businessmen and council members approaching him throughout the evening didn’t bode well.
She knew from prior experience that once TJ decided something was right, nothing shook him from his designated path. The man could give concrete fence posts a lesson.
He appeared at ease, sipping his drinks, occasionally sketching something on a napkin, other times sticking his hand in his pocket and nodding thoughtfully while someone talked. He might be bored, but he didn’t show it. He rewarded everyone with his undivided interest.
Even the women. They flocked around him, touching, flirting, doing their best to capture his attention.
He wasn’t even good-looking, Mara told herself. He had that sharp jut of a nose and no dimple to speak of, unless one counted the dent in his square chin. He seldom smiled. He oozed no charm. He simply regarded everyone with dark-eyed intensity and had them lapping out of his hand.
She hated him for it. He’d had that effect even as a solemn, rather shy high school athlete. She’d always had to fight for every ounce of attention, but TJ just stood there, radiating power, and the world bowed at his feet.
Well, she wasn’t a high school wallflower anymore. She could attract just as much interest as he could. She smiled at the young anchorman in front of her, and he brightened perceptibly. She drifted toward one of the film’s investors and laid a hand on the sleeve of his Italian silk suit. He caught and squeezed her fingers, holding her there while he talked sports with her director.
Across the room, TJ offered a glass of champagne to one of her supporting cast members, a young actress barely out of her teens.
Mara smiled invitingly at the local banker, a distinguished silver-haired gentleman. He zoomed in and hovered.
TJ collected a long-haired local model and another of the supporting cast, this one older than himself. He caught her look across the room and lifted his glass in salute.
She wanted to rip the skin off every woman in his vicinity. Did TJ feel the same about the men in hers? The thought added a thrill of anticipation to the game.
The evening grew late. The levels in the liquor bottles lowered.
She caught TJ edging toward the door. So did Glynis Everett.
Enough was enough. Zigzagging through the noisy crowd, Mara cut them off at the pass.
“Glynis , Tony is looking for you,” she purred at Hollywood’s top box-office draw. Delibe
rately turning her back on the sexy redhead, Mara took Tim’s arm and guided him into the corridor. “I think the party can go on without me now. Why don’t we find some place quiet, where we can talk?”
She’d wipe that inscrutable expression off his face one way or another.
“I’m not shutting down my excavation,” he informed her grimly as they entered the lobby. “You can set the mayor and all the king’s men on me, and I won’t leave until I’m done.”
So his evening hadn’t been any more pleasant than hers. Fine. Served him right. “What if I set Glynis to persuade you? How soon would you cave?” She led him toward the staircase.
“Do you really think all that hair and the lipsticked smirk would turn my head?” he asked scornfully, following her up the stairs. “Give me plain honesty every time.”
Mara quaked a little at that, but she wasn’t exactly dishonest. She just didn’t think she knew what honesty was anymore. She lived in a Technicolor world with flashing lights and glittering gems, some of which might even be genuine. Black and white had disappeared along the way.
She’d find it again once she got this film in the can and the company in her name. She’d have time to look around and rediscover herself then.
She unlocked the door to her suite and led TJ in.
She’d never done anything this brave or this insane in her life. She’d been a virgin when she married Irving, her first husband. Yeah, she’d slept with Sid before they married, but she had his engagement ring on her finger at the time. This was different. This was temporary.
This was Tim.
She wasn’t really thinking of going to bed with him, was she?
No. Definitely not. She just wanted to get even for all those miserable school years she’d watched him wander off with the cheerleaders and the country club girls, leaving Brad’s kid sister behind. She’d been sixteen before Tim deigned to notice her as anything more than a pest. By then, he’d been off at college, and those few short months of telephone calls and hasty weekend visits weren’t enough to make up for the prior years of longing.
“Is honesty all you require in a woman?” she asked with interest.
“That’s a stupid question.” He prowled her suite restlessly, like a caged tiger, picking up expensive antique accessories and putting them down without really looking at them. He didn’t really look at her.
Cooled by a blast of air-conditioning, Mara draped an expensive Italian lace shawl over the thin straps of her gown. She toyed with the fringe of feathers on the shawl much as TJ paced the room. If sexual tension could be bottled, they could supply the entire state of South Carolina tonight.
She’d parried TJ’s insults enough in the past to know how to deal with his bluntness. “Thank you,” she purred, “I’ve always thought stupidity one of my more attractive assets.”
He turned and eyed her with suspicion. “We don’t have anything sensible to say to each other. Why am I here?”
This wasn’t the considerate man of this morning, but a hot-blooded, angry one. His controlled façade had definitely slipped. She might have woken the sleeping tiger, but she was fairly certain she wasn’t the one who had kicked him. Someone else had done that.
She longed to explore the secrets TJ McCloud hid beneath his stony exterior, but they had past issues to work through first.
He shrugged off his coat as if the room had become warm, and Mara shivered nervously at the sight of the powerful biceps she’d admired earlier that day. If she were casting this film, he’d be the sexy antihero who snarled and offed people without a qualm.
Now that she had garnered his full attention, she almost wanted his Clark Kent glasses back. Aware that TJ’s focus could bore holes through steel, Mara spilled the silk of her shawl through her fingers and considered his question. Why had she asked him here?
She understood the answer he anticipated when she felt his gaze drop to the red feathers teasing the black lace of her barely-there neckline.
Defiantly, she shifted the shawl a little, letting the silk slide over her cleavage. She smiled when TJ practically growled at her teasing gesture. The simmering cauldron she remembered had reached boiling, and her blood raced just as it had when she’d been sixteen.
Neither of them were inexperienced teenagers any longer. They no longer had any reason for restraint.
“If you don’t know why I’m here either, maybe I’d better leave.” TJ reached for his coat. The threat in his voice rumbled with the tension of a summer storm.
My, unleashed tigers were sexy. Maybe it was time for her to get in touch with her primitive side. Daringly, Mara slipped the shawl further down her arms. “I think maybe you know why you’re here better than I do,” she taunted.
TJ’s enigmatic mask slipped, exposing raw hunger in coal dark eyes as he stalked toward her. Too late, she realized tigers were also dangerous.
He dropped his coat on a chair arm as he crossed the room. Mara took a step backward, but the needy little girl in her refused to run.
“All right, I’ll tell you—this is why I’m here.” He caught the edges of the shawl, wrapped them around her arms, and tied them behind her, effectively creating a silken strait jacket.
Nervously, Mara tried to defuse what she’d set in motion. “TJ—”
His brawny arm curled around her waist, and lifted her from her feet. An abrupt encounter with his solid torso cut off her warning.
His hard lips slanted across hers, silencing all protest. The demanding grasp of TJ’s arms, the heated pressure of his mouth, made her feel as no man had—as if she were manna from heaven, expressly delivered for his salvation. Helpless to beat him off with her hands or hold him off with her sarcasm, Mara succumbed to the fantasy of being TJ McCloud’s dream come true.
When she yielded to his kiss, TJ’s tongue instantly took possession of her mouth, and fireworks exploded inside her head.
She thought she might have moaned. She knew she let him take her weight as his grip softened, and she slid down his body. She pressed her hips closer to his until he bent her backward over his arm and increased his demands on her greedy mouth.
He left her no choice but to respond in kind, to curl her tongue about his, kiss him deeply, and moan in ecstasy at her helplessness beneath the heat pouring through her bloodstream.
She should have shoved him away when she had the chance. He was mixing sex and anger, and she didn’t want him taking out his frustration on her—
She wanted him any way she could have him. This was the closure she needed to her adolescent daydreams.
She shuddered with desire as TJ’s tongue probed and caressed and his hand slid between them to crush her breast. It had been so damned long since anyone had touched her like this...
There was good reason she didn’t let anyone touch her like this.
Arms still bound by the shawl, Mara tried to wriggle away, but TJ lowered her against the bed’s edge, positioning her between the yielding mattress and thighs as solid as tree trunks. His kisses slid across her cheek and into her hair, melting her synapses with fire and tenderness. Panting and operating on sheer animal instinct, she returned his kisses where she could, desperate to hold him and kiss him properly.
TJ’s solidness crushed her into the mattress. His arousal pressed through the thin layers of their clothes. Unable to use her hands, Mara lifted her hips to meet his—even as she tried to form a reproach through lips bruised and aching from his kisses.
She understood now why mares in heat screamed when stallions trapped and covered them. The primitive instinct to resist submission warred with the sexual excitement of being dominated.
Animal lust won. Hands still trapped, she accepted TJ’s ravishment with a shudder of desire.
His hand slid between them, taking possession of her breast again. Aroused by his deceptive caress, drowning in his kiss, Mara’s brain didn’t kick into gear until he had the shawl and gown off her shoulders and the hook off her bra. Abruptly aware of her seminakedness as coo
l air blew across her breasts, she struggled briefly. Then realizing he’d freed her from the confines of the shawl, she slid her hands behind his neck and tugged his head closer.
TJ took advantage of her lifted arms to caress her nipples. His kiss strayed from her mouth to her throat, and delicious anticipation followed wherever he touched. She arched upward, needing his mouth where his hand played.
TJ took her breast in his mouth. Crying out at the electrifying touch of his tongue, Mara grabbed his shirt so she didn’t levitate to the ceiling.
“TJ!” She tried to protest again, but to her surprise, his name emerged more as a demand.
He obliged by switching to her other breast. Need sizzled as he pushed her farther back on the bed. Her gown slid to her waist with the aid of his big hand.
“We’re adults now,” he muttered, returning to kissing her throat while his hands covered her breasts, teased, then explored lower. “It’s time we got this out of our systems.”
She didn’t want it out of her system. Not now. Not this way.
But she needed it. She needed it so badly she registered no complaint when he ripped off her expensive lace panties. She merely offered a high-pitched cry of satisfaction as he touched her between her legs.
She quit thinking entirely and gave herself up to the sensation of TJ McCloud stripping her naked—a fantasy she’d created in her mind a long, long time ago.
Chapter Ten
Mara’s satin skin radiated an erotic perfume that shot straight to TJ’s groin. Riding high on alcohol and lust, he didn’t fight a driving urge he normally curbed and whose power he’d forgotten.
She was beyond breathtaking. Mile-long legs adorned in outrageous high-heeled sandals, a taut abdomen framed by sharp hip bones, a tiny waist swelling to creamy hills more the size of cupcakes than the overripe melons she displayed in public. When he caressed her breasts, she closed her eyes and hummed in pleasure, as if he were the only man in the world who could do this for her.
The effect was astonishing. Her slender hips arched into him, and he grew so hard he’d erupt if he didn’t act soon.
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