by Ann Simas
Luca hooted at her recollection.
“She’s had a boob job,” Libby said, grinning. “Plus she wears colored contacts and bleaches her hair. If I hadn’t known about the name change, I never would have recognized her when I saw her on the news last week.”
“Don’t you have a Box to break down?” Sunny asked, unable to curb the sour note in her voice.
“I do, but for some reason, I think this” —she waved her arm to encompass Sunny’s bedroom— “might be a better show.”
Luca walked over to Libby, removed her hand from the door jamb and gently pushed her out of the room. He shut the door and turned the lock on the knob.
“What are you doing?” Sunny asked, half afraid, half clamoring for more of what he had to offer.
He advanced on her, his dark eyes raking her from her face to where her toes tented the throw. “I’m tempted to finish what we started.”
“We didn’t start anything.”
“You didn’t try to stop me.” He reached down and grabbed the corner of the throw and gave it a yank.
Because she had anticipated he might do something like that, Sunny was already tugging her sleep tee back into place.
He kept his hot gaze glued to her the entire time.
Sunny thought she might explode from wanting him. “Libby called us lovebirds. Do you think we are?”
He dropped down on his knees beside the bed and cupped her thigh with his hand. “Not yet.” The hand crept higher. “But we definitely could be.”
“I think I’d like that,” Sunny said, barely able to find her voice. She tore her gaze from his to watch his big hand make its way further north. When he came close to reaching his destination, she sprung to her knees, effectively breaking the hand-to-body contact. She couldn’t contain a gasp from the pain in her side. “I don’t put out without some major foreplay.”
“I can do foreplay,” he said, staring into her eyes. He reached for her, but she did a drop-and-roll, ending with her feet planted on the floor. On the opposite side of the bed. She grasped her side as if that might quell her pain.
“Foreplay should involve some romancing,” she said, hoping to clarify things. She thought it might have come out better if she wasn’t panting.
“I can be romantic,” he said. He pushed to his feet and moved around the bed toward her.
“I mean like a candlelit dinner in a nice restaurant, and maybe flowers. And chocolate. Followed by a little making out.”
“You name it, we’ll do it.” He reached her and grasped her upper arms gently, pulling her up against his big, hard body.
“Luca, I’m not kidding. I don’t screw on the first date.”
“This isn’t a date,” he muttered, lowering his head.
Sunny was lost in sensation. His mouth on hers. His erection pressing against her abdomen. His hands creeping back up under her sleep tee. She gave up the ghost and slid her arms up around his neck. He dropped his hands to cup her buttocks, pressing her more firmly against him. “What are you doing to me?” she whispered when he let her mouth go to nibble his way down her neck.
“Hell if I know, but if it’s anything like what you’re doing to me, I hope it never stops.”
Sunny grabbed him by the ears when his head dipped lower, and his mouth moved toward a breast. “Luca, there are people in the house. Libby, my kids, Angie, and probably Trey by now. I just can’t do this knowing they’re out there.”
He straightened with a frustrated sigh. “I hear you. It’s just that I don’t seem to be able to have a rational thought when I’m around you.” He released her and took a step back. “Especially when you’re not wearing anything but a flimsy T-shirt.
“I can remedy that.” She reached into a drawer for a pair of jeans.
He watched with intense interest as she stepped into them.
“Turn around.”
“Do I have to?”
She did a little two-step-and-hop so her backside was to him, then tugged the jeans up over her butt as quick as she could. Better he should glimpse a little cheek than the beaver she’d been so worried about earlier.
When she turned back to him, he said, “You do realize you have nothing on beneath the shirt or the jeans. How’s that supposed to cool my jets?”
She moved up against him and stood on her tiptoes. “You’re a grown man. Control your urges.” Her arms went up around his neck and his hands slid down to cup her bottom again. He lifted her and she slid her legs around his tight-end hips, ready to enjoy the tongue-to-tongue tête-à-tête.
Until another knock sounded at the door.
Chapter 18
. . .
The next day, Sunny decided she had to get back to work. Horny or not, she had a living to earn, mouths to feed, bills to pay, yada, yada, yada.
She spent the morning playing with Carson and Maisie while Libby ran errands. At noon, the sisters, the kids, and Angie gathered in the kitchen for hot dogs and fruit salad, and afterward, Libby put the little ones down for a nap. Angie went outside to do her daily check of the perimeter and the grounds and Sunny headed to her workroom, where she had her watercolors set up.
She’d done quite a bit of preliminary sketching before the New York trip and her editor had approved the images. All she had to do now was paint. Water, brushes, pigment. She was good to go.
At mid-afternoon, revived from their naps, Carson and Maisie were tearing around the backyard with Libby and Angie. By five o’clock, she’d finished three of the twenty-seven paintings she needed for the book. Not bad for a four-hour work day. Tomorrow, she’d rise early and get in an hour or more of painting before Carson and Maisie woke. That would mean a six a.m. alarm, but what the heck? She’d done it many times before.
That night, her psyche played havoc with her plans. Her sleep was plagued with dreams that replayed the highlights of the last five years of her life—her wedding day, Carson and Maisie’s births, the day she got the notification of Zach’s death. From there, they morphed into a nightmare, all centered around Zach’s parents filing the lawsuit to obtain custody of her children. The paperwork claimed she was an unfit mother. Even though that had been resolved in her favor before the case ever got to court, it still had the power to level her, even in a dream state.
As if all that weren’t bad enough, the kidnapping vision inserted itself into her phantasm.
Somehow, Sunny forced herself awake. Drenched in a sweat of fear, her heart pounded so hard in her chest, she thought it might actually explode. With her eyes wide open, and her breaths laboring in shallow pants, she soon realized she was hyperventilating.
She threw her legs over the side of the bed, flipped on the lamp at her bedside, and made her way across the room where the nebulizer was set up. By rote, she assembled the cup and filled it with solution, fitted it to the nebulizer tubing, and turned the neb on. She concentrated on long, deep breaths in, slow even breaths out. Within a matter of minutes, she was mostly back to normal, and unfortunately, wide awake.
Sunny glanced at the clock. Five a.m. She used the bathroom before heading to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. She toasted an English muffin while it brewed, then went to her workroom to ready her supplies for a couple of hours of watercoloring. By the time the household woke around seven-thirty, she had completed two more paintings. Only twenty-two to go.
Carson padded into her workroom first. Sunny pulled him up into her lap for a morning snuggle. “Have a nice sleep, baby?”
“Uh-huh, but Maisie woke me up.”
“She did?” Sunny smiled. “Was she snoring?”
“No, she was talking. I told her to be quiet, but she wouldn’t.”
“What was she talking about?”
Carson lifted a shoulder. “Sumthin weird.” He tilted his head back to look at her. A serious frown marred his precious little-boy features.
Sunny gave him a little squeeze of encouragement. “Tell Mommy, honey. You won’t get her into trouble.”
“Not worrie
d ’bout that,” he said. “Worried ’bout you. Maisie kept saying, ‘Don’t hurt my mommy’ over and over and over. Who’s gonna hurt you, Mommy?”
Sunny wasn’t worried about who was going to hurt her, so much as she was about why Maisie had said it.
When one explanation hit her like a particularly vicious punch, it knocked the breath out of her.
Please, God, don’t let my daughter be having visions like mine!
. . .
Normally, Maisie and Carson slept in their own bedrooms. However, since Libby and Angie were staying with them, her daughter was taking the extra twin bed in her brother’s room, Libby slept in Maisie’s room, and Angie got the spare bedroom.
When Sunny had first looked at the four-bedroom house with the attached studio, sitting on almost an acre, she’d fallen in love with the sprawling Mid-Century Modern home. The price was right because the market had experienced a serious downturn, everything inside was updated, and the yard was beautifully landscaped and fully irrigated, including a drip system in the flower beds. What was not to like?
With Zach’s life insurance and a small trust her grandparents had left her, she opted to pay cash for the property, leaving her with no monthly mortgage payments to worry about. Half of every royalty check went into an IRA account and she split the remaining half equally between her checking account, a savings account, and two college funds. So far, finances had not been an issue for her. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she freelanced illustrations for several other authors, whose books were also selling like hotcakes.
Sunny got Carson situated at the kitchen table with the first of the blueberry pancakes she pulled off the griddle, then went to check on Maisie. Her two-year-old had always been a late sleeper, but even so, eight-thirty was unusual for her.
She gazed down at her daughter. Maisie lay sprawled sideways in the bed, uncovered, and hanging over the edge of the mattress. Sunny debated waking her, then decided she had to, otherwise, naptime and bedtime schedules would suffer. She leaned down and rubbed Maisie’s chubby cheek with the backs of her fingers. “Good morning, sweet pea.”
Maisie protested with a whimper.
“Time to wake up, sweetheart.”
Maisie’s big blue eyes popped open. “Mommy! Don’ wet da bad man hut oo!” she cried, and promptly burst into tears.
Sunny gathered her daughter into her arms, trying to console her. “No one’s going to hurt me, sweet pea. Mommy’s fine, I promise.”
Her words seemed to have no effect on Maisie, who scrambled upright in Sunny’s lap so she could throw her arms around her mother’s neck. Caught in a sudden stranglehold, Sunny was honestly stunned that her small daughter had so much strength in her arms. “Baby, it’s okay. Mommy’s fine, really.”
Even though she repeated her assurances several times, Maisie was not consoled. Baffled, Maisie rose from the bed, still cradling her daughter, and began to pace with a small bounce to her step. That particular method of quieting the child had worked from the time she was a baby, but today it had no effect.
“What’s wrong with her?” Libby asked from the doorway.
“She thinks someone’s going to hurt me.”
“Where did she get an idea like that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get her to stop crying long enough to ask her.”
Carson appeared beside Libby. “Mommy, I’m hungry. Are you gonna finish making pancakes? What’s wrong with Maisie ?”
“C’mon, buddy,” Libby said, grasping her nephew’s hand, “I’m starving, too. I’ll make a whole bunch more pancakes, okay? Mommy and Maisie will join us in the kitchen in a little bit.”
Sunny shot her sister a grateful smile. Libby had a way with kids that meant she would be a great mom someday. “We’ll be there soon,” she assured Carson. “You know how Maisie loves blueberry pancakes.”
“Boo-bewwy,” Maisie said, her words burbling against Sunny’s neck. “I wub boo-bewwy pancakes.” She lifted her head and turned it in her brother’s direction. “Don’ eat ’em all!”
“Don’t worry,” Libby said. “We’ll save some just for you, sweet-ums.”
When they’d gone, Sunny took Maisie to the bathroom and sat her on the potty seat. When she’d finished, they washed her hands, then Sunny used a cool cloth on her face to wipe away the tears. “Were you having a bad dream?”
“Guess so,” Maisie said. Her little eyebrows dipped in a way that told Sunny she was thinking. “Bad man hutted oo, Mommy. I don’ wike him.”
Sunny debated delving further for particulars. Had her daughter dreamed of the past incident with Boyson, or a future one? Could Maisie even tell the difference?
. . .
Sunny agonized over how to go about soothing her daughter’s worries. No matter which solution she considered, none of them seemed quite right.
The only thing she knew for certain was that Maisie clung to her all day long like a little abalone stuck to its rock. She wouldn’t even go down for a nap unless Sunny agreed to lie down with her. As it turned out, the nap was good for both of them.
Upon waking, Sunny was surprised to learn that Luca had called to say he’d bring pizza for dinner. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him, because she did, but he stirred up so many feelings inside her, both physical and emotional, and she didn’t know if she could cope with them right now.
Libby and Carson chose a kid-movie to watch on Netflix. Maisie played quietly with her dolls on the floor next to Sunny’s stool while her mother painted. Sunny managed to complete two more pieces before she heard the doorbell.
She was surprised when Maisie surged to her feet and ran from the room screaming, “Wuca, Wuca, Wuca!”
Sunny cleaned her brushes and covered her pigments, satisfied with the progress she’d made, though the day had been broken up rather oddly. That’s what happened when you worked from home and had two kids under the age of five. Juggling and adapting were the norm most days.
She made a quick trip to the bathroom attached to her bedroom to change out of her painting shirt and into sleeveless tee. She released her ponytail and ran a brush through her hair.
Pizza on the patio sounded like the perfect way to end the day. The kids could run around after dinner and exhaust themselves before bed. Sunny could devour Luca with her eyes and think about…stuff.
Several minutes later, she found Luca sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room. Carson sat on one knee and Maisie the other. They were having a serious discussion about the bad man in Maisie’s dream.
Luca looked up briefly, an expression of concern on his face. “You know you don’t have to worry about Mommy, right, Maisie? I won’t let anyone hurt her.”
Maisie reached up and patted his cheek with her little dimpled hand. “Tank oo, Wuca. I don’ wike da bad man.”
Luca grasped the child’s hand and kissed the palm. “I know you don’t, sweetheart.”
Carson put his hand up to Luca’s chin, forcing the detective’s head to turn. “You promise you won’t let anything happen to Mommy?”
“I promise.”
Carson, looking so much like Zach in that moment, narrowed his eyes on Luca, as if contemplating the sincerity of his words. In the end, he must have found his assurance, because he flashed Luca a big grin and said, “I’m hungry for pizza!”
“Me, too!” Maisie shouted.
“Let’s eat,” Luca said. Before he could help the kids get to their feet, they managed it on their own and bolted for the bathroom.
“Let Maisie wash up first,” Sunny called after them. She moved into the room, admiring Luca as he pushed himself up from his cross-legged position. Usually he had on a suit, but today he wore khaki shorts and a red polo shirt. Her eyes wandered shamelessly from the near-black hair on his head to the boat shoes on his sockless feet. As far as Sunny was concerned, he looked good enough to eat.
“Like what you see?” he asked, giving her a return once-over.
She shot him a sultry grin. �
��What’s not to like?”
He grinned back. “That’s what I was thinking about you.”
“Okay, you two, break it up,” Angie said, coming in through the patio door. “Let’s eat before you two get too hot and the pizza gets too cold.”
Right behind her, Libby came in and went to the fridge. “Who wants beer?”
“Me,” Luca said.
“Me, too,” Sunny said.
Angie vacillated. “I guess one won’t dull my senses,” she finally said.
“What about the kids?” Libby asked. “Milk?”
“Yeah, but I’ll get it,” Sunny said. “You’ve got your hands full.”
Carson and Maisie tore into the room at top speed.
“Walk!” Sunny ordered. They slowed, but their pace couldn’t quite be called a walk. “Will you corral them?” she asked Luca.
The east-facing patio, shady but warm, was the perfect setting for dinner. Pizza and crispy chicken drumsticks were on the menu, with chocolate ice cream topped with fresh strawberries for dessert.
Angie insisted she could handle the after-dinner cleanup, while Libby hustled the children off for a bath. In their jammies, they came out to the patio for goodnight hugs and kisses. Sunny worried that Maisie might rebel about going to bed, but her daughter bounced off, happy as the proverbial clam, holding Libby’s hand.
That left Sunny and Luca alone on the patio.
He pushed back his chair and stood, extending his hand to Sunny. “Let’s move over to the love seat.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Sunny took it. Instead of immediately steering her toward the two-seater, he pulled her close and kissed her.
Every part of her began to tingle and buzz in anticipation.
“God, I haven’t been able to think about anything but kissing you again since I left here yesterday.”
In answer, Sunny’s hands slipped up around his neck and pulled his head back down for more. His hands slid down, cupping her backside, pressing her closer.
When they pulled apart, both were breathing heavily. “I’d like to take you home with me, Sunshine, and make love with you all night long.”
