He set her down and took her by the hand down the steps, and she stood, one hand on her galloping heart, beside the karaoke jockey’s booth while Clay said, “Thanks, man, from both of us. Amazing light show,” and handed over yet another bill from his seemingly endless supply before he led her back to their table.
She really should ask what he did for a living. He either had some expense account, or…what did a man do in West Virginia that brought him to San Francisco and allowed for this kind of night? On the other hand, what did it matter? She was enjoying herself, that was all. No past, and no future. She was here, and that was all.
He sat down at the table, took a long drink of water, grinned at her some more, and asked, “What?”
She shook her head, pulled her hair back with one hand, and found herself admitting it. “I keep trying to imagine what your job could be, and everything I come up with is so ridiculous.”
The skin around his eyes crinkled in an absolutely delicious way when he smiled, she’d discovered. “What are the candidates?”
“Porn producer?” she asked, and added, through his outraged expression and her own strong desire to giggle, “Which would account for your cool, your looks, your free-spending ways, and how casual you’ve been all night. Most men give off this desperation, you know. Like they’re trying too hard, or they’re…” She made a face of her own. “Stalking.” The bubbles of laughter were trying to make it out again. “They’re trying to convince themselves they’re wolves, soooo sneaky and scary, and they’re actually coyotes. Country joke,” she added when he looked confused. What, they didn’t have coyotes in West Virginia?
“Maybe I’m neither,” he said, with some more of those crinkles. “Maybe we’re both deer. I could handle being a deer. A very manly deer with extremely large…antlers.” They were both laughing now. “One who wins all the deer fights,” he got out. “And I’m not a porn producer. Come on. You can do better.”
“Uh…” She was having trouble sobering up, in more ways than one. He had let her pour her own champagne, but she’d definitely drunk more than one glass. More than two glasses, probably. “If you sell farm equipment, don’t tell me, OK? Or if this trip is your reward for reaching Diamond Sales level at the insurance company.”
“Nope,” he said. “How about this? I’ve done a few things, but right now, I’m in law enforcement.”
“Now that,” she said, “I find hard to believe. Given the singing and dancing skills. Also the hair.”
“Huh?” He looked confused for a moment, off-balance for the first time all evening, and then he smiled and said, “Call it plainclothes. What do you think? Another glass of champagne? Another bottle? The seminar on High-Value Homeowners doesn’t start until ten tomorrow.”
“And the bonus,” she said, “was extra-good this year. No, thanks. I’ve had more than enough to drink. Whew.” She stood up. “Give me five minutes, and I’m good to go.”
Rafe used her absence to make a call. His tow-truck-driving mate, Jim, had given him a business card, and it was still in his wallet where he’d tucked it away for show, intending to chuck it later. If there was ever a time to use it, though…
By the time Lindsay came back, he was able to say, “I got your car taken care of.”
She stilled in the act of buttoning the trench coat he’d just held for her. “In what way?”
He picked up her white shopping bag from the floor, and couldn’t help a glance inside. There was something in a sort of peachy-gold color in there. Or two things. They were both silky, and they were both decorated with some creamy lace. And one of them had satin straps and buckles.
Bloody hell. She’d been out buying sexy lingerie. He realized she was staring at him, and handed the bag over. “Pardon?” he asked. “What did you say?”
Her pupils dilated. Standing in the noisy, crowded, overheated club, and all she saw was him. She was swaying towards him, her hair in disarray, her cheeks flushed. Unfortunately, she got her poise back and said, “My car. How is it taken care of? I’m really not in any shape to drive.”
“Oh.” He blinked, thought how best to explain it, and said, “A ma— a friend of mine is meeting us back at the hotel garage. His wife will get your keys and drive your car home for you, wherever that is. Ready to go?”
She didn’t move. “I’m not going home with you, you know. Or back to your hotel. I can’t.”
There it was again. That vulnerability. And there he was, too, falling into her sweetness and warmth like a polar explorer coming home. “No,” he said, the laughter gone. “I see that. How about if I promise you this? I’ll get the taxi. You can give him the address.”
The ride back to the Clift didn’t take nearly long enough. Almost midnight on a rainy Monday, and the streets of Japantown and the Tenderloin nearly empty. The taxi stopped in front of the parking garage, behind a certain yellow tow truck, and Rafe pulled out one of the final bills in his wallet and told the driver, “Give us ten minutes to deal with a car, and then I’ll have you take the lady wherever she needs to go.”
Was he disappointed that he’d be going back to the hotel alone? Too right he was. But there was always tomorrow.
Jace? Yeah, he was still here for Jace. But he was here for this, too.
After that, it was introductions all round, and riding up in the slow elevator with Lindsay and Sandy, his new mate Jim’s wife, who was going to drive Lindsay’s car home and get a lift back with Jim. A plan that had seemed to bemuse Lindsay, but all she said, when they’d stepped out of the elevator into the low-ceilinged, dank space of Level 4, was, “You’re something, you know that? Nobody does things like this.”
“Nah,” he said. “I told you. Diamond Sales level pays real good.”
Sandy glanced at him sharply, then looked away. She knew who he was, obviously, but she wasn’t saying anything. Clued in by Jim, then. That was good. He wanted Lindsay to come out with him tomorrow because she wanted to be with Clay Austin, not Rafe Blackstone.
Tomorrow, though, he’d tell her. If he was going to kiss her the way he needed to, if he was going to have his hands all wrapped up in her golden hair and her body under his—and most of all, if he was going to have a hope of seeing her again afterwards—he had to tell her first.
He hung back, though, while she gave Sandy her address and the keys to a decidedly downmarket silver sedan, watched the red taillights disappearing around the first curve of the ramp, thought about feather earrings and cheap silver bangles, and suddenly wondered, the thought like a shower of ice water, Fallen on hard times, despite the clothes and the Clift? Looking for a ticket out? Is that the reason for the two-steps-forward, one-step-back? Is she playing a game?
He was definitely making this date as Clay.
The lights hanging from the concrete ceiling cast a cold glow, and the ventilation system hummed. Cars hunkered, dark and silent, around them, and a clunk and a whoosh announced that the elevator was in use. And he stood, his hands in the pockets of his wool jacket, looked Lindsay over, and tried to separate what was true from what he wanted to be true.
She said, “I’d better be going. And seriously—don’t worry about my taxi. That was nice of you, but it was my drinking and my responsibility. I’ve got it.”
Somehow, she’d picked up on his thoughts, had closed down. And he’d been wrong. Too cynical. Somebody with a face that transparent couldn’t lie.
He said, “But you see—I promised. That was our deal. I’ll be here another night. We could take you on another adventure. Ice skating, maybe. Flying lessons. Uh…” He cast his mind about. “Bioluminescent kayaking.”
She said, “What?” But she was laughing again, and so was he.
“I read about it,” he said. “The organisms in the water are lit up somehow. Phosphorescence. Sounded pretty cool. Could be a new experience.”
“Mm.” She smiled. “It could. Maybe you could give me your phone number, and I could call you in the morning. I’m only here one more night myself. We
could make a plan. Not for flying lessons. I’d have to work my way up to that. But we could…see.”
“We could.” She took a step, and then she took another one, and he stood absolutely still, there under the fluorescent lights, and waited for that bird to flutter down.
She was so close now, he could smell her perfume. Still floral, still subtle, just like her. She put a slow hand up, touched his cheek, rough with days’ worth of black stubble, and drew her fingertips down his jaw. The lightest touch, but he felt it all the way along his face. All the way down his body.
It wasn’t the bird that needed to be set free after all. It was him. Because the moment she touched him, his hand went to her waist like there was no choice at all.
When his other hand touched her own cheek, she sighed. And when his thumb brushed along it…her lips parted.
The balance had shifted, and it was his move. He tipped her chin up with a gentle hand, felt her rising onto her toes, bent his head, and kissed her.
It was soft, nothing but a brush of lips. Silken hair between his fingers, the taste of champagne and the smell of flowers in his head. He lifted his mouth from hers, smiled into her eyes, and bent to kiss her again. Still soft, still sweet. And so good.
Wait a minute. This wasn’t…he was…Her mouth was opening under his, she was making a little noise in her throat, and he went from “simmer” to “burn” like she’d turned the knob. Somehow, he’d backed up a few steps, or she had. Whoever had done it, she was against the wall, was pulling his head down, or maybe he was pulling her up, since he had a hand under her. Trench coat, velvet jacket, confusing shirt, jeans…and still, he felt the shape of her under his palm. She squirmed some, and oh, yeah, the hot rush of blood was right there. His tongue was in her mouth, mimicking that other dance, the one he needed to do now.
He needed…He needed…
He didn’t hear it at first, not over the rush of blood pounding in his head. But it happened again. Three short blasts of a car horn. And then three more.
When he tried to lift his head, she made a protesting sound and pulled him back down. He kissed her once more, then—all right, once more than that, before he managed to say, between kisses at the corner of that luscious mouth, then trailing along her cheek, “Taxi. Do you still want it, or do I tell him to…” He was pressed up so close. He was aching. “To, uh…” it was a groan. “. . . go away? I’ve got a car here, too. I’ve got a hotel room. I want you in it so bad.”
For a moment, she was still, and he didn’t want to admit how he was holding his breath. He could swear, too, that his body was thrumming to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Then she sighed, and he didn’t need to hear her say, “No. I need to go. My sister…No. It’s not my sister. It’s me. I need to go.”
“Right.” He stepped back, pushed the button for the elevator, reminded himself, You are Clay. If she only wants the star, it’s not worth it, and said, “Going to give me your number?”
“No,” she said, and he rocked back. She smiled a little ruefully. Maybe a little shakily, too. “But I’m going to ask you for yours.”
Lily rode home in the back of the cab, looked out between the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge at a black ocean that stretched all the way to Japan, and wondered whether she’d actually gotten smarter, or just more scared. Whether this was the wrong kind of caution, the kind that held you back from trying new things. Like karaoke, or maybe like Clay backing you through the door into an anonymous hotel room, his lips already on yours, and starting to undress you before the door had even closed, because he couldn’t wait another second and neither could you. And finding out what a man that unselfish would do next. How thoroughly he’d kiss you, how well he’d touch you, and how achingly long he could make it last. Whether he could possibly be as much of a toe-curling, sheet-twisting, dirty-sweet ride as he’d felt like when he’d had her pressed up against the wall of a parking garage.
A very manly deer. With enormous antlers. One who won all the deer fights.
He hadn’t tried to stalk her and bring her down. He’d wanted to make love to her. Surely she couldn’t be wrong about that. Should she have gone for it after all?
She picked up her phone, nearly pressed the button, and set it down again. And then she picked it up twice more, and set it down twice more, too. Tomorrow was soon enough. She’d just left him. Plus, there was her lousy track record to consider.
But when she’d shut the door of the taxi behind her, retrieved Paige’s car key, let herself through the security gate and then into the houseboat, when she moved quietly through the darkened space and felt her twin’s happiness in the very air she breathed…Well, yeah.
She’d told herself that there was no loneliness like being married to the wrong person, and it was true. She’d also told herself that she was better off alone, and maybe that wasn’t. What would it be like, she wondered for the first time since her marriage, to be with the right person? Would you feel swallowed up, or might you feel…understood? Even just for a little while?
Even just for a night?
She wouldn’t go all the way to “settled down with.” She had the settling down part handled. She owned her own house for the first time in her life, and she owned her shop, too. At least, she had a mortgage and a lease. Close enough. She also had goats, chickens, and friends who loved her for herself, and she was working on the best garden she could possibly devise. Her own place in the world, her own piece of land, and her own roots, growing deeper with every passing month.
And all the same, once she’d taken her shower and climbed into bed, she was holding her phone again.
One-thirty A.M. He wouldn’t still be awake. It was a bad idea all the way around.
She settled on a text. He could read it in the morning.
Got home fine. Thanks for that. Still can’t believe you did it.
And got a chime right back.
Good. And of course I did it. I was doing whatever I could. Couldn’t you tell?
Bad idea to call. She hit the button anyway.
“Hey,” he said, and that was all.
“Hey,” she said back. “It’s Li—Lindsay.” She was a lousy liar. Why hadn’t she given him her real first name, at least? It would have been stupid to share her last name and where she lived, sure, with some guy she didn’t know. Sinful, Montana, was way too small a town. The fake first name, though, had been a step too far. How could she tell him now that she’d lied, that she’d been trying on a new, braver persona?
Somehow, that was how.
“Well, hey, you,” he said, and she knew exactly why she’d called. Which was basically because every cell in her body had wanted to hear his voice. “Did the car make it back, too?”
“Yep. And the key was right there in a magnetic box in the wheel well, just like Sandy promised. You have competent friends. How does an out-of-towner just happen to know a guy with a tow truck and a wife willing to drive that far on a rainy night?”
“Pure luck,” he said. “But then, I’m a lucky guy. So have you thought about tomorrow? Today, that is. What’s your pleasure?”
She stretched out a little more luxuriantly. Jace and Paige might not care too much about clothes, but they had nice sheets. Flannel, and soft as a man’s old shirt, the kind you borrowed from a guy after the first time you made love. The kind his eyes would light up to see you wearing.
Whoa. She hadn’t had that first-time, this-time, breath-catching feeling, that hitch in her voice and tremble in her legs, for a long, long while. Her body hadn’t been this tuned up in forever, either, like every single piece of her was open, thirsty, drinking in every sensation. The rain drumming on the houseboat’s roof, her hair still holding the scent of her shampoo, the darkness wrapping around her, keeping her close and safe, and Clay’s voice, warm as amber. She said, “Hmm,” drawing the syllable out until it was a slow, sleepy hum. “Flying lessons are out, and I’m busy during the day. What would you think about meeting me for dinner?” He was letting her choose ag
ain. She loved it.
“I’d like that just fine,” he said. “If you wore your boots again, we could go for a walk along the Embarcadero afterwards and look at the lights. That’d be real nice, walking with you.”
“Mm. There’s that rain, though.” She was teasing a little, just because it was fun. “Are you sure you want to get me wet?”
She only realized what she’d said when it was out there. The silence at the other end of the line told her he hadn’t missed it, and she waited, almost holding her breath, to see what he’d say. Don’t be a sleaze, she begged him silently.
“I’m going to pass that one by,” he finally said, and she let her breath go again. “And say that I’ll be buying the biggest umbrella I can find, and thinking about you holding my arm and snuggling up some. But if I’m also thinking about how it felt to hold you, and how much more I want to do…well, I’m nothing like a perfect guy.”
“You’ve been pretty perfect up till now.” She leaned back against the headboard. “I’m going to take things that step too far,” she somehow found herself saying, “and ask what you’re doing. Why you weren’t asleep. What you’re…” She’d had to stop and clear her throat. “Wearing.”
“I’m in bed. Just like I’m imagining you.” That honey might not be quite so smooth anymore. “I came back to the hotel, took a shower, and still couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about having somebody too sweet backed up against the wall. Thinking about how she danced, and about those dimples she showed me when she smiled. How she smelled like flowers. I wanted her with me like crazy. I still do. And as for what I’m wearing…I could lie, but the answer is, nothing. Want to tell me about you? I’d sure like to hear it.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d tingled like this, like he was touching her already. “I’m in bed, too,” she said. “I always wear something to bed. I like nightgowns. Pretty ones, with tiny ribbon straps. Silk, if I can get it. I like the way it feels against my skin. I’m wearing one of those now.” She hesitated, then said it. “And that’s…all.”
Tempting as Sin Page 4
