by Leslie Kelly
Carefully turning around until she was face to face with her sleeping lover, she studied him carefully. The long lashes resting on his cheeks. The tiny scar on the bridge of his nose. The shadow of morning stubble on his cheeks. His curved mouth, with those perfect lips slightly parted.
The sheet was tangled around his legs and she took the opportunity to look further. Her breaths grew deeper as she saw the visible proof of the strength she’d felt last night. The cut of muscles in his arm, the ripples in his chest—no wonder he’d carried her so effortlessly. She noted another small scar above one rib—she’d felt that during the night. Then lower. Oh, yes, she’d felt that, too.
She knew his body intimately, but she didn’t really know the man. She wanted to, though. Desperately.
Jade had never in her life had a one-night stand. Something deep inside her rebelled against the idea that this might have been one. She wanted to laugh with him and talk with him in the moonlight again. Wanted to give him hell for the ridiculous costume he’d worn last night on the tour.
But to what end? He lived in another state. In another world, really. His life was as foreign to her as if he’d come from outer space. She should let him go. Kiss him goodbye. Be content with the few incredible memories they’d created. Geography said they had no future, even if her heart—along with other more tender body parts—was saying she should try to find out.
She still hadn’t decided what to do when he opened his eyes and smiled. That crooked smile made his eyes crinkle and spark with light, his lean face turn boyish and playful, and sucked the breath right out of her lungs.
How could she have thought she could just walk away?
“Morning,” he growled.
“Good morning.”
He pulled her close, draping an arm around her waist. “What are you thinking?”
She wasn’t about to tell him the truth. “I was wondering what time it is.”
“Too early. Go back to sleep.” Then he lazily caressed her hip, teasing the upper curve of her bottom. “Better yet, let’s stay awake.”
She chuckled. “You’re insatiable. I have to go to work.”
“You’re staying,” he said, sounding supremely confident.
“No.”
He leaned closer, kissed the tip of her nose and whispered, “Yes.”
Her response was slightly weaker than before. “No.”
When his hand moved up to cover her breast, tweaking her nipple into instant awareness, she gave a soft, helpless moan.
“Yes,” he said again, dropping his mouth to her throat. “Yes.” He nibbled his way lower. Then, oh, God, lower.
She groaned in anticipation, seeing his head between her legs, knowing the pleasure he wanted to give her. “Yes,” he whispered once more before his tongue began to do incredibly wild and wicked things to her, making her gasp and whimper.
He toyed and nibbled and licked at her until she lost control and shook as hot waves of intense pleasure roared through her entire body.
Then once more he ordered her to give herself over to him, to let him have his way. “Yes.”
She could no longer even try to resist. “Yes.”
TWO HOURS LATER, however, she refused to allow him to coax her into staying. It was 8:00 a.m., and she could hear people moving around the house. She hoped she could escape while Uncle Henry visited with his guests during breakfast.
“When can I see you again?” Ryan asked as she emerged from the bathroom pulling her top on over her head.
He watched her from the bed, the sheet draped across his lap. Looking at him, she forgot to move for a second, with her head stuck out of her tank top and her arms tangled inside it. His thick arms, tousled hair and crooked smile had her wanting to crawl right back between the sheets and spend the day doing everything all over again.
Lord, she was becoming a sex maniac.
She finally remembered what the heck she’d been doing and pulled the top in place, then reached for her skirt.
“You, uh, want to see me again?” she asked, cursing the little squeak in her voice. Hopefully he hadn’t heard it.
No such luck. He rose from the bed, striding toward her, his body lean and powerful. Her mouth went dry remembering the feel of him on top of her. Beneath her. Inside her. She closed her eyes, then opened them again.
“You’re damn right I do,” he said, taking her jaw in his hand. “I don’t know what last night was about for you, but it was only a beginning for me.”
A beginning. Of something that wasn’t likely to have a happy ending. A wiser woman would have backed away, ended things now. Jade had always considered herself pretty smart. But as Aunt Lula Mae often said, particularly about Jade’s mama, “Da heart don’ always like to listen to what da head has to say.”
“All right,” she whispered.
His relieved smile was gratifying. “Spend the day with me.”
“I just spent the night with you.”
“So the rest will be easy.”
She nibbled her lip. “I have to work.”
“Aren’t you the boss?”
She nodded. “But I have to do some things. Including going home and checking on Aunt Lula Mae.” She looked down at her shirt and crumpled skirt. “Not to mention changing clothes.”
“Then spend the afternoon with me.”
“I can’t.”
He got out of the bed and approached her. Jade threw her hand up, palm out. “Don’t try to persuade me.”
He gave her an innocent, “who me?” look, and kept right on walking, until he was flush against her. Neck to knee. Breath to breath. “Meet me this afternoon.”
“I ca….”
He kissed the end of the word right out of her mouth, taking her lips against his and licking his way inside so he could tease her tongue into saying yes.
“Say yes,” he whispered when they drew apart.
“Do you always get your way?”
He nodded. “Always.”
At least the man was honest. “All right. Just this afternoon. But no more playing hooky for me—I have a business to run.”
He put two fingers straight up in the air and vowed, “Absolutely. Just today.”
She didn’t trust the humor in his eyes.
“And the next day.”
“Ryan…”
“And the day after that.”
She was laughing as she left the room. Laughing, and suspecting he might be right.
“SO, WHO’S THE GUY?”
Jade looked up from her desk the next morning, seeing Daisy framed in the doorway of her downtown office. Her all-black clothes and stark white makeup looked especially out of place on such a bright, beautiful summer day.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, nibbling her lip at the lie.
Daisy smirked and entered the small, one-room office that Jade had rented last year when the recordkeeping and phone calls had become too much to handle at home. She plopped down on the seat opposite the desk. “You are so full of it. I know you, Jade. This is the ‘I-got-laid Jade’ I’m seeing here.”
Jade couldn’t prevent a tiny smile. Daisy was so outrageous, but also a very intuitive friend. Jade had definitely gotten laid. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, had she!
“I think we’re supposed to be talking about you and, uh, your formerly incarcerated friend,” she replied, forcing her mind out of the bed she’d been sharing with Ryan for the past couple of nights.
Daisy shrugged. “I dunno. It’s okay, except all he ever wants to talk about is how bad it was inside without a real fast-food burger for eighteen months. All we’ve done is hit every drive-thru in Savannah. Cripes, you’d think the key to getting some psycho to confess to anything is withholding his daily Whopper.”
Jade met Daisy’s eyes, they shared a salacious look, and both burst into laughter.
“Okay, so other than being sick of fast-food, what else is going on?”
Daisy shrugged. “He’s changed. Or I’ve changed. Whatever.
We just don’t seem to have much in common anymore. He’s even mentioned wanting to go back to Iowa and live off his folks on the farm. I’d rather have somebody stick flaming toothpicks up my nose than do that.”
“Lovely,” Jade murmured.
“I don’t know if we’ll make it. Seems kind of silly since I moved all the way up here to be close to the prison.”
As much as she’d hate losing Daisy, Jade would much rather have the girl get the loser ex out of her life. “You don’t want to go back to New Orleans, do you?”
Daisy crossed her arms across her chest, leaned back in her chair and lifted one boot-covered foot onto her other knee. “Nah. I’ve gotten used to it here in Savannah. Genteel freaky instead of raunchy freaky.”
Jade nodded in rueful agreement. That kind of summed things up.
“So, tell me about your guy. Who put that look on your face?” Daisy asked, not distracted from her original question.
“What look?” The I-met-an-amazing-man-and-we’ve-spent-nearly-every-minute-together-for-the-last-two-days look?
She swallowed hard and lifted her water bottle to her lips, still trying to divert Daisy’s attention. The water had been here all morning and was now somewhere between tepid and bathwater, but it was better than having to try to explain the crazy relationship she’d fallen into with a practical stranger.
An amazingly delicious relationship, but a crazy one nonetheless.
“Spill,” said Daisy.
“It’s not a big deal.”
Daisy reached over and helped herself to a handful of peanut M&M’s, which Jade kept in a dish on her desk. She picked out all the green ones, munched them, and dumped the others back in the bowl. “Puh-lease. You got some, I can see it all over you.”
Jade quirked a brow and pointed to her loose yellow skirt and sleeveless top. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not wearing a dress from the Gap.”
Quick-witted Daisy immediately got Jade’s Monica Lewinsky reference and snorted a laugh. “Is it anybody I know?”
Jade shook her head knowing she might as well come clean. Daisy was like a kid digging through a cereal box for a toy. Relentless, thorough, and not caring what spilled onto the floor. “He’s someone I just met. And we’re…”
“Having wild sex?”
“We’re getting to know one another.”
“In bed.”
“And out,” Jade shot back.
Daisy chortled. “Aha, so there was a bed in there somewhere!”
Oh, yes. A bed. A garden. The bathtub at the hotel Ryan had checked into yesterday afternoon—not wanting to stay at another cozy B&B where Jade was well-known.
She didn’t mind people knowing she had sex—most people made a regular practice of it. She did mind people hearing anything, um, unusual from another room, in an old house with more old layers of paint than nails holding up the walls.
One thing was for sure—whether it was the Southern air or something else—Ryan was definitely the most potent man she’d ever known. His appetites perfectly matched hers.
They were both insatiable.
Ryan. Just thinking about him made her feel the most unusual feeling of elation. Jade had considered herself much too…well, jaded ever to turn into one of those giddy women who gauged their happiness by the barometer of their love life. Like her mother and her sister.
Her sister. That had been an interesting conversation. She’d called Jenny yesterday morning when she’d gone home for a change of clothes. Jenny had been rattling on about auditions and a big tipper at the restaurant. When Jade had asked about Ryan, her sister had responded with an unexpected, “Who?”
A few more words and Jenny had confirmed she’d blown a lunch date into gargantuan proportions.
Typical Jenny, their mother’s daughter. A whirling bundle of energy who loved being at the center of attention and treated every aspect of her life as if she were the star performer and everyone else merely supporting players.
Jade was much more like her father. Danny Maguire had been a black-haired Irishman whose stoicism had hidden a deeply vulnerable emotional side. Not that he’d often let anyone see it. He’d been the stable element in their family. He’d put up with Mama’s flamboyance and with two outrageously different daughters. He’d never protested the presence of a live-in great-aunt—a voodoo priestess who wasn’t even technically a blood relation, since Lula Mae had been adopted by Jade’s great-grandfather decades ago.
He’d done it all with quiet wisdom and a good-natured laugh. Right up until the end when he was dying of the kind of cancer that brought men to their knees, robbing them of life long before it actually killed them. Even now, more than twelve years later, she missed him every day. Tears rose in her eyes, as they always did when she thought about him.
Jade had been thinking about him a good deal over the past few days, and she didn’t question why. It was because she’d finally begun to wonder if she was like her mother after all, able to experience love strong enough to last a lifetime. Hungry for love, wanting it desperately. Not because she’d lost it, as Patty Jean had, but because she’d never truly experienced it at all.
So far.
She couldn’t imagine what Daddy would be thinking of her latest situation. Little Miss Common Sense, involved in a passionate affair with a man whose address she didn’t even know. He’d be surprised, she was sure, because she’d been described from childhood as the calm, introspective, thoughtful one. The one who never let her emotions rule her head. Just like Daddy.
“You okay?” Daisy asked, interrupting Jade’s long moments of silent thought. “The sex was so good that you’re still crying over it a day later? Or was it that bad?”
Jade quickly wiped at the tears she hadn’t realized were there and was about to reply when she realized someone else had entered the office. Her nerve endings all perked up in reaction, so she knew before even looking who it was.
Ryan.
9
“SHE’S DEFINITELY NOT crying because it was bad,” Ryan said with the kind of casual confidence some men never achieved in their entire lives. He strode into her office, filling up the small space with his mere presence.
Even Daisy did a double-take—and she was tough to impress.
“Well, hello,” she said. “I think we were just talking about you. Brought out the emotional side of Jade.”
Never one to allow anyone to be too sure of her, Jade merely shrugged. “I had something in my eye.”
Ryan crossed the room in a few steps and looked down at Jade with visible concern. “You’re sure? Is anything wrong?”
“Yeah,” Daisy said, standing up and crossing her arms in front of her chest. “She’s crying because she’s finally realized all she missed out on by not having sex for a couple of years.”
Oh, man. Jade was really going to kill her now. “Go away.”
Ryan looked amused. “Years?”
“I’m gone.” Daisy gave Ryan a thorough once-over, nodded and winked her approval, then sauntered toward the door.
Before she escaped, Jade came up with a decent comeback. “You’re one to talk considering where your boyfriend’s been for the past year and a half!”
Daisy gave her a half smile and Jade realized that probably hadn’t been the right retort. The young woman didn’t seem the type to wait around for eighteen months for any man.
God, she felt old. Though only twenty-six to Daisy’s nineteen, she’d played the mother to Jenny for so long that she didn’t remember ever being as reckless as the younger women.
“Years?” Ryan asked again once Daisy was gone.
“She was exaggerating.”
He waited.
“Greatly.”
Still waited.
“Not years, plural.”
Then he sat on the corner of her desk, looking completely at ease in his casual jeans and T-shirt as he waited for more details. He wasn’t getting them. Instead, she went on the offensive. “Want to talk about your previous sex
life?”
“Nope.”
“Then don’t ask about mine.”
Boring as it’s been.
He bent down and gave her a quick, possessive kiss on the lips. “Not talking about former sex lives. That’s a sign of a relationship, isn’t it?”
“There’s that word again.”
“Sex?”
“Relationship,” she retorted. “That’s not what we have.”
He got off the desk and squatted next to her. Swiveling her around, he pulled the rolling chair closer until her knees touched his chest and his hands covered hers. “We don’t have to put a name on it, Jade.”
Good.
“But we both know we’ve fallen into something.”
Fallen in. Naked, tied and handcuffed, but definitely fallen. “It’s not like it can go anywhere,” she said, determined not to get attached to this man and the things he made her feel.
“Why not?”
He looked really curious and a little confused, as if he hadn’t noticed the minor problems of geography and their vastly different lifestyles. He was a responsible big-city architect who worked with millionaires on renovating their Fifth Avenue penthouses. She was a two-paychecks-away-from-broke tour guide operator who scared tourists for a living.
“We don’t seem to have much common ground,” she finally said, considering it the understatement of a lifetime.
His evil grin told her his mind had gone right into his pants.
“Other than that,” she added, a laugh on her lips.
Oh, yeah, they had that. They had sexual compatibility coming out the yin-yang. But they didn’t have anything else.
So they’d managed to fill a day or two and enjoy each other’s company out of bed, as well. He liked her kind of music. She liked his kind of buildings. They both liked sushi and loathed catfish. They had fun window-shopping on River Street and liked people-watching in the Victorian District.
That didn’t mean they were compatible, or anything. He was strictly northeastern white-bread conservative and she was Southern mixed-race bohemian.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into taking another afternoon off,” she muttered as she led him outside and locked up the office.
