Star Quality

by Lori Foster, Lucy Monroe

  He took a deep breath. “I’m stubborn. You may have noticed.”

  She laughed, a small, breathy sound. “Yes, I had.”

  “I didn’t want to admit what I felt was love, not the times I was so disappointed I wanted to hit things when you didn’t show up for the management training seminars, not when I realized my desire for you was out of control and spurring me on to fantasize about you in a way I hadn’t ever done with another woman, not when you said you loved me and turned me on so bad, I lost what was left of my mind, not when seeing you getting dressed to go back to your room scared me worse than going sky diving for the first time, not even when you told me you couldn’t be with me because of your moon magnetism. But, honey, when you ran away from me and my proposal, even I wasn’t stubborn enough to keep denying my love.”

  “You didn’t propose. You offered to give me a baby.”

  “Same thing. I’m not a sperm donor; I’m a man. If I’m going to give you a baby, you are going to be wearing my ring on your finger.”

  “Oh, Blake.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I—”

  Wait a second. He let go of her hands to dig in his pocket. He came up with a small black velvet box and flipped it open. The square-cut moonstone with diamonds on either side of it winked up at them.

  He pulled the ring out and put it partway on her finger. “Yes?”

  She grinned, her eyes glistening with tears. “Yes.”

  “Thank you, God.”

  She laughed, and he pushed the ring all the way on and then kissed her until she was plastered against his front, kneeling on the floor with him.

  Then he gave her another lesson in cooperation and had to stifle her shouts of pleasure with his mouth.

  Much later they were snuggled into his queen-size bed after Ivy announced their upcoming marriage to the staff.

  Everyone congratulated them, but none of her employees were surprised. Trudy said it had been obvious to all of them for months that Ivy was in love with the big boss. They were just glad he had shown enough smarts to return her feelings.

  “I’m not going to like being separated from you during full moons until I get pregnant,” she said, rubbing her hand over his tight abdomen.

  They had made love again, this time her giving him a lesson in cooperation. He’d even let her tie his hands to the old-fashioned bedposts to do it. He was free again, and his arms were locked around her as if he’d never let go.

  He lunged up and over her, his face fixed in a scowl. “Who said anything about being separated?”

  “You can’t—”

  “You’ve got to stop making erroneous assumptions, woman. They’re going to get you into trouble one of these days.”

  “Thanks for the advice, but—”

  “I’ve got a fishing cabin in Vermont, and we can retreat there for a few days every month.”

  “You can’t leave your business like that.”

  “Actually, I can. I am the boss, but my plan is to work remotely. I’ve been thinking about it, and we can insulate the second bedroom against magnetic fields and make it my office. I’ll do the same for my study at home as a safety precaution. You won’t be able to go in those two rooms. I’m sorry about that, but it’s better than being separated once a month.”

  “You would do that for me?” she asked, making no effort to hide the awe she felt at the prospect.

  His scowl deepened. “Of course. I love you, or did you think saying that meant I just wanted to get you in the sack?”

  “No, but…”

  “Look, I want to be with you. Always. And I’d like to wait to have kids for a year or so. That means we need a solution to your monthly magnetic moments.”

  “You want to wait to have children?”

  “Is that okay with you?”

  “Yes. I’d like to be married for a while first, but I do want your babies, Blake.”

  “And the idea of you having them is the biggest turn-on I’ve ever known except for when you tell me you love me.”

  But waiting for a year or so sounded good. It meant he really was marrying her because he wanted to be with her, not because he was trying to help her fix her problem. The man had to love her a lot to have already worked out the solution he had.

  She wiggled her hips against him. “You said me telling you I love you turns you on?”

  “Yes,” he growled.

  “I love you, Blake. I love you. I love you. I love you…”

  His laughter ended on a groan of desire, and they made love again, this time both of them totally secure in the knowledge this marriage was going to happen for all the right reasons and their love was real and strong enough to last a lifetime.

  MOONSTRUCK

  Dianne Castell

  One

  “How’s it feel to be rid of a hundred and eighty pounds that was slowly ruining your life?” Bridget asked Julia as they made their way down the courthouse steps in Delicious, Ohio.

  The clock on the spire chimed twelve, and Julia took off her wedding ring. She kissed it, tossed it high, sunlight sparkling against the gold band, and the fifteen-year symbol of her marriage to Frank Simons splashed into the fountain in the town’s square. “Since I divorced his lying, cheating ass ten minutes ago, it feels great.”

  Bridget grinned. “’Bout time. You deserve better than him.”

  “Deception in a relationship sucks, and my dear ex is the king of deception. If I hadn’t found his other credit card with charges for flowers I never got, fancy restaurants I never visited, and plane tickets to places where I never went, I wouldn’t have known. I did the good wifey thing. I stayed home, did errands for his parents.”

  “While he did Club Med.”

  She watched water stream from the top bowl to the second larger one, then overflow into the apple-shaped basin. “I wish Frank, that rotten pig, would wind up in that fountain with the ring. They belong together.”

  She turned as Frank Simons the third, bank president and son of the most prestigious family in town, strutted down the steps. He gave her the bird, snickered…then tripped and fell into the splashing water. Arms flailing, he slipped forward, then back, finally standing upright. He swiped his stunned face as water cascaded over his head. Then he snorted?

  Bridget exchanged looks with Julia as she bit back a laugh. It felt good to laugh about something after the divorce from hell that kept the Simons’ money with the Simons family and left the ex-wife with zilch. But that was okay because that zilch included Frank. “Sure wish I had a camera to immortalize this touching scene.”

  She watched her ex slosh his way down the tree-lined street, his five-hundred-dollar suit dripping, Gucci shoes leaving dark footprints on the sidewalk. “I wonder how Frank did that, fall into the fountain, I mean? He’s been around it all his life. His great-grandfather donated it to the town, insisted the base be the shape of an apple to commemorate all the orchards in the area. How could Frank trip on a bright, sunny day in July? Doesn’t that seem…strange?”

  “What’s strange is you didn’t push him in.” Bridget fluffed her frosted brown hair and grinned. “Maybe your luck’s changing. You should help it along. God knows you deserve it.”

  “Maybe I’ll go visit my parents in Cincinnati.”

  “I was thinking more like a new wardrobe. Maybe take a trip to Disneyland. Have great sex, and don’t give me that wide-eyed look that says ‘who me?’ You’re forty-one. Cosmo says that’s a woman’s sexual prime. I’m actually looking forward to turning forty next year. So, you don’t want to waste it, you’ve done enough of that with Frank and his attack of mid-life, Viagra-enhanced puberty.”

  Julia wagged her head. “After this year I don’t have a sexual prime. What about an apple pie prime? I’m definitely in my apple pie prime.”

  “That’s the divorce talking. You’re substituting food for sex. You need to get back on the horse. Go for a ride. Start to live again and do it right away, or you’ll crawl back into that photog
raphy studio of yours and never emerge again. Not all men are Frank Simons, thank the Lord.”

  Julia twisted the handle of her purse and let out a sigh. “Wh…what if I don’t know how to ride. Maybe I forgot. Frank and I hadn’t ridden in a really long time.”

  Bridget held up her hand to silence Julia. “Course you know how to ride. That’s what you tell women who’ve gone through what you have, right?”

  She gave Bridget a sheepish grin. “Easier to give advice than take it yourself.”

  “Look, you’re entitled to a new life now that this is all behind you, maybe a little sexual fantasy to boost your spirits.”

  She nodded at Julia’s attorney coming down the steps. “What about Cal? Unattached. Attractive. He’s been single for a long time. Bet he’d like a little fling in his life. And he’s liked you since high school.”

  “That was a long time ago, and I think the thing was for you and not me. Cal and I are just friends.”

  Bridget’s eyes rounded. “Since when? I could have sworn there was more.”

  “He told me six months ago he was glad we’d always been friends, and he shook my hand and kissed me on the forehead. If that isn’t the friend approach, I don’t know what is. I think I have a bad effect on guys lately. I have rotten male karma.”

  “What about that PI guy following Cal? Didn’t Cal bring him in from Cleveland? He looks like a man who’d appreciate a little sexual fantasy.”

  “Marc Adams?” Julia rolled her eyes so far back in her head she saw where her ears attached. “Cal got him to follow Frank to Club Med and get the goods on him because thirty-five-year-old Mr. Studly Adams fits in the Club Med scene like a duck in water. Probably has a preferred customer card. I think he’s way beyond me.”

  “Right now Barney, the purple dinosaur, is beyond you.”

  “Thank you very much for pointing that out,” she whispered as the two men approached. “So how could I wish for Marc Adams to want wild, hot sex with me?”

  Cal pulled up beside her and loosened his tie, yielding to the noonday heat. “Well, it’s all over with, Julia. You can get on with your life.”

  He took a camera from the suddenly dazed looking Marc Adams and handed it to Julia. “Marc happened to have this in his pocket, tools of the PI trade. He snapped a picture of Frank in the fountain.” Cal winked. “I think you should cover it in Plexiglas, put it on the floor of your photography studio. Walk all over him for a change.”

  Julia glanced at Bridget and said, “This is really strange. I wished for Frank in the fountain and for the picture, and both happened.”

  “All sorts of things happen in divorces.” Cal turned to Marc. “Right?”

  Right? Right about what? Marc felt totally dumbfounded, in a complete state of physical shock. One minute he’d been taking pictures of Frank-the-jerk in the fountain snorting, and the next thing Marc knew he had a hard-on for Julia Simons that was so intense he could barely walk. What the hell!

  “Marc?” Cal asked, looking concerned.

  “Sure,” Marc answered, not having the slightest idea what he’d agreed to, his sudden boner for Julia boggling his mind and other overactive body parts.

  Oh, he’d admired her flame red curls, flashing green eyes, resilience, and good sense, but deep down inside the woman scared the hell out of him.

  “You okay,” Cal asked, giving him a curious look.

  “Busy.” He caught Julia looking at him and buttoned his sports coat to hide his dick straining against his zipper. Sweat prickled his body. He shouldn’t have buttoned his coat, but if he didn’t…Shit!

  He raked back his hair. “Much busier day than I expected.” Julia Simons now Dempsey was not his type. She was one of those feisty, sassy, take-no-prisoners types. Started MRS, Men Running Scared, a support group for wives who vow to take action against their cheating husbands. Didn’t she sell Frank’s Jag on eBay, give his custom-made titanium golf clubs to the Boy Scouts for their putt-putt golf course?

  She was justified in her actions, but she was not the easy-going, fun-loving, live-for-the-moment type of gal he dated. Not the type who turned him on. But if that was true, what was happening to him now?

  Cal gave him a curious look. “Busy? Aren’t you done for the day?”

  Yeah, he was done. His brain was cooked oatmeal. All he could think about was Julia’s nicely rounded breasts hidden under her gray silk blouse. How they’d feel all warm and full in his hands, how they’d taste sweet in his mouth, how his tongue could tease one nipple, then the other, making them hard and taking them deep into his mouth and—

  What the hell am I doing! He wanted to have hot, wild sex with Julia Simons. Take her to bed and do things to her Frank probably never dreamed of. Marc sure as hell couldn’t say that to Julia, but he wasn’t about to let her walk out of his life, either. “Would…would you like to go to dinner tonight?”

  “Me?” Julia’s eyebrows arched to her hairline, and she looked around as if searching for someone else.

  Marc swallowed. His common sense yelled run, run, run; his dick demanded sex, sex, sex. His dick won. “To, ah, celebrate a new beginning…for you.” Sounded lame, he needed more. “I like to take my clients to dinner after the case ends.”

  Cal’s forehead furrowed. “You do?”

  Marc gave his old friend from their police department days in Cleveland a butt-out look, then said to Julia, “Seven? I’ll pick you up? The Old Orchard Inn? I’m staying there, the food’s great. Terrific apple butter, apple fritters, apple pie. I’m sure they have other great apple things; I just haven’t gotten to them all.”

  Damn, he was rambling. He never rambled. He was a focused get-the-job-done kind of guy, till he got an unexplainable hard-on for Julia Simons.

  Her fingers twisted the handle of her purse. “Well, I—”

  “She’d be delighted,” Bridget answered with a big grin. “Julia loves the Old Orchard Inn. They’re remodeling it, you know. I hope they don’t ruin the charm. She’s restoring the historical photos to hang in the hallways. She’s a terrific photographer, expanded her hobby into a career.”

  Marc returned her grin. “Great.”

  “I have a shoot at seven.” Julia countered, looking relieved. “Jeffery Blum’s seventy-fifth birthday party, I’m committed. Sorry, I can’t make it.”

  “Nine, then?” Marc offered, his dick refusing to take no for an answer.

  “Ah, sure.” Julia looked like a woman who’d just run out of excuses.

  “Great.”

  She held up the camera. “I’ll develop the film and return the camera to you tonight.”

  “Great.” All he could say was great? His erection had corroded his brain. At the moment one head completely controlled the other.

  He fell in step beside Cal as they left, and Cal said, “You don’t take clients out, especially forty-one-year-old clients who have a backbone. Thought you were heading back to Cleveland tonight.”

  “Changed my mind.”

  Cal stopped under the green-and-white-striped awning of Granny Smith’s Apothecary and Ice Cream Parlor, making Marc stop, too. “What’s going on with you? Are you sick?”

  Marc put his hand to his forehead. “Maybe.”

  “Go to the doctor.”

  He considered his present physical state. “Not now.” He shook Cal’s hand. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Glad I could help on the Simons’ case. Deception has no place in a relationship; I learned that from my parents’ disastrous marriage many years ago. Anytime I can help someone out of a mess like that, just give me a call.”

  “You’re hanging around Delicious for a while?”

  Marc puffed out a deep breath and thought of Julia, her creamy skin, rounded hips that would fit perfectly against his hips. His physical condition wasn’t improving. “I’ll be around for dinner.”

  Cal put his hand on Marc’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine, just hang in there.”

  That’s the trouble, at the moment he wasn’t hanging; he
was stiff as a frozen fish. “Maybe things will get back to normal after tonight.” Somehow. “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Marc looked Cal dead in the eyes. “It’s really complicated.”

  Bridget walked with Julia toward her studio, a slight breeze the only break in the summer heat that kept most people inside by the air conditioner or swimming down at Golden Lake. “Marc Adams asking you to dinner is definitely the way to start your new life. How terrific is that?”

  “The question is why?”

  “Are you kidding, because he’s handsome with incredible brown hair with gold highlights that weren’t put in by some salon. And his blue eyes make me feel faint, not to mention his build. Batman would kill for that build. That’s why it’s terrific.”

  “Not the terrific part, the dinner-date part.” Julia stopped by the big picture window of Mom and Pop’s Diner. “Why did he ask me out? Doesn’t that seem a little weird to you? We’re not exactly a match made in heaven. I’m six years older, newly divorced. He’s a big-time player and likes it that way. Why me?”

  “Maybe he’s due for a change. Maybe he’s looking for something more than a hot date.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  “I mean the more part. And now’s not the time to second-guess the situation; you accepted and you have to go. And you need this; you need a connection with a real man, someone who’ll remind you that you’re a woman.”

  “I know I’m a woman; men don’t get cellulite. You accepted the invitation; you should go.”

  “I have a boyfriend; Jerry would not be thrilled.” She batted her eyes. “He’s very possessive. Besides, you have Marc’s camera. You can’t just drop it off and break the date. That would be rude after he did you a favor taking that picture. Go, have fun. Wear something sexy, black, low cut, high cut. Strappy shoes. Men love strappy shoes. With beads. They go ape-shit over beads.”

  “I’m on the board for the library and the apple heritage museum. I’m on the town council. I have suits and sensible shoes and…damn if McGuffy didn’t park his truck in front of my studio again.”