by Lori Foster
“What can I do to help?”
Regina stared at Riley, and he stared back, studying her. She’d expected him to sit and admire her dinner preparation skills, not watch her every move. But if he wanted to help…wasn’t it a man’s job to carve? She’d never had a man around long enough to know, and her father certainly hadn’t been the type to worry about how food was cut. He was more a grab-and-stuff-it-in-your-mouth kind of guy.
Regina handed Riley the butcher knife and fork with a flourish. “Iced tea, milk?”
“Tea is fine.” He stood to begin slicing apart the chicken. Regina noticed that he did an admirable job. He glanced up at her. “Why are you so nervous, Red?”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
She sighed, unable to deny the obvious. “No more so than usual. That is, I’m always nervous.” It was a complaint she often got from men. But now, with the man being Riley, she felt doubly unsettled. Add to that some unknown assailant who had tried to hurt her several times and might just try again, and to her way of thinking she had plenty of reason to be nervous.
“Because you’re worried?”
“Yes.” She poured the iced tea, sat, remembered she wanted music and popped back up. “I’ll be right back.” Seconds later, the stereo in her bedroom played low, adding soft sounds to the clink of china and silver.
Riley waited for her to return. He held her chair, but when she sat, he didn’t retreat. Instead he bent down and kissed the side of her neck. Oh Lord, she’d never get used to this spontaneous kissing of his. At Mach speed, he’d taken them from acquaintances, maybe friends, to something much more intimate.
Fighting the urge to gasp again, she stiffened. Where he’d pressed his mouth, her neck tingled and felt damp. A strange but pleasant warmth rippled through her.
Riley spoke softly into her ear, adding to her awareness. “You need to be comfortable being alone with me, Red.”
The way he said that, all seductive and low, made her stomach flip-flop. “I do?” At this rate, she’d never be able to eat. It’d look like she didn’t appreciate her own culinary skills.
“Yeah.” He brushed her nape with the back of one finger, then circled the table and sat in his chair, facing her, casual as you please, as if he hadn’t just been teasing her, turning her on.
“Um…why?”
He picked up his fork. “Starting today, we’re going to be alone together.” His gaze caught and held hers. “A lot.”
*
THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS. He’d had no idea that Regina was such a fine cook. For long moments, they ate in silence. He waited to see what Regina would say to his statement, but she just sat there, watching him cautiously, occasionally nibbling on her food.
He didn’t want to spoil her dinner, so he sat back and studied her. “I guess you want me to explain?”
She cleared her throat. “That’d be nice, yes.”
A starched linen napkin had been placed beside his plate. Since it was there, Riley used it to pat his mouth. “All right. You’re not showing much improvement at the gym.”
Her shoulders sank the tiniest bit. Riley wasn’t sure if it was disappointment or relief. “I know. I’m not a very physical person.”
He intended to hold all judgments on that until he had her in bed. Then he’d see just how physical he could coax her into being. “You don’t need physical strength, Regina. But you do have to stop worrying about other people watching you.”
She winced. “I know. It’s just that I hate looking like a fool.”
“Once you know what you’re doing, you’ll look like a pro.”
“Yes, of course,” she quickly agreed. “I’ll try harder, I promise.”
He didn’t believe that for a minute. “Regina?”
She glanced up at him, her brows raised quizzically.
“I’m going to give you very private lessons from now on. Just the two of us.” He looked at her mouth. “All alone. No spectators.”
She stared at him for three seconds. “You are?”
Riley nodded, a little put out that she questioned every damn thing he said, like she couldn’t believe it or doubted it to be true. He wasn’t a liar, damn it.
Stunned by that mental statement, he shook his head and made a quick amendment: he wouldn’t lie to her, and not about this. Other lies, lies from his past, were well buried.
Holding on to his patience, Riley continued his explanation. “There’s not much room here at your place, so we can’t really get going tonight.”
Her mouth opened. In anticipation, shock or horror? Riley couldn’t quite tell. “You can either come to my place, or the gym after hours.”
She held perfectly still. Tonight she had her thick hair twisted at the back of her head and held in place with a fancy gold clip. It had been somewhat loosened by the kiss he’d given her earlier. The florescent overhead lights brought out the deeper reds and lighter golds, mixed in with the auburn. It also reflected the wariness in her green eyes.
She wore a freshly pressed sleeveless green V-neck shirt and low-riding cotton slacks. Her sandals showed off her meticulous pedicure.
From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she was polished to a shine. She’d even managed to do dinner with no additional mess, putting things away as she used them so that no empty pans sat on the stove and no seasonings were out.
Riley wanted to see her mussed.
He wanted to see her sweat.
He wanted to hear Ms. Suzy Homemaker crying out in raw sexual excitement without a single thought as to how she looked, concerned only with the deep, driving pleasure.
Damn, he had to stop that train of thought or he’d be seducing her right now.
Finally, she nodded. “Thank you.” Her voice sounded a little raspy. “It does embarrass me. I think it’ll be easier without others watching. But, Riley, mostly it’s you that I worry about.”
“Me?” Sipping his iced tea, he watched her, thinking it wasn’t such a bad thing if he unsettled her. It meant she held at least a small amount of awareness for him as a man.
She pleated her napkin. She straightened her fork. Suddenly she blurted, “Are you attracted to me?”
“Yes.”
She seemed surprised by his immediate answer. Then she chewed on her lips. “I’m attracted to you, too.”
She made that admission with the same regret she might have given a murder confession.
“I know.” He hadn’t known. He’d hoped. He was pretty sure. But he’d wanted confirmation.
Now he had it.
“It…bothers me, the idea of you seeing me all messy and sweaty.”
Hearing her say it sharpened his desire. “Eventually, I’ll see you every way there is.” He toyed with his iced tea glass, his gaze never wavering from hers. “When we have sex, you’ll definitely be sweaty. Messy, too. That’s the way it is with good sex. But I’m willing to bet you’ll look hot as hell.”
Her breathing deepened and her brows puckered in thought. After a long hesitation, she said, “You, um, you treat Rosie like a pal.”
“Rosie is a pal.”
“But she’s also a very attractive woman.”
Leaning back in his seat, Riley nodded. “Agreed.”
“And yet you never have romantic thoughts about her because she’s become your pal.”
Riley had no idea where she was going with this. Women could be so confusing, even to a man who prided himself on getting past the surface stuff. Oh, he could detect some of her thoughts. She was uncertain, interested, wary. But he wanted to know why she felt so uncertain.
He eyed her, then decided a little truth couldn’t hurt the situation. “Who says?”
Confusion left her face blank. “Who says… Well, Rosie said. She assured me that she loved Ethan and—”
“She does.” It had recently become very clear that Rosie had always loved Ethan—she’d just been waiting around for him to come to his senses and realize that he loved her, too.
“He is.” With Harris and Buck, they made a regular foursome, but he and Ethan had more in common. They were all friends, but if Riley ever had his back to the wall, he’d trust Ethan more than any other man.
“Then—”
“You think because we’re friends, I shouldn’t have sexual thoughts about her?” He stretched out his long legs beneath the table and bumped into her small feet. “You and I are friends, and I have plenty of sexual thoughts about you.”
Her eyes widened comically. “Plenty?”
It was his turn to smile. “All day, every day, as a matter of fact.”
She stewed on that for a bit before speaking again. “But see, that’s just it. I thought you felt about me the way you feel about Rosie, except you’re closer with her.”
“Not a chance.”
“You’re not close to her?”
“Very close. But the way I feel about you is on the other end of the scale. I don’t intend to ever sleep with Rosie.” He let his gaze drop to her breasts. “You, however, I intend to get naked with just as soon as it can be arranged.”
Her eyes dilated in shock, but he also saw reciprocal interest in the way her breathing deepened and how her skin warmed. Despite all that, she shook her head. “You should probably know, Riley, I don’t sleep around.”
“You’re a virgin?”
More color stained her cheeks and she frowned. “No, I didn’t say that.” Then she added in a mumble, “For heaven’s sake, I’m twenty-eight years old.”
“So you’re saying you don’t want to sleep with me?” He knew damn good and well that wasn’t true. But would she be honest?
“Of course I do.”
He grinned.
“I mean, I do, but I’m not going to. Not anytime soon, that is. We barely know each other.”
He’d known her long enough to understand exactly how he felt. “We’ve known each other better than three weeks now. That’s not exactly a sneeze. And because of the lessons, we’ve been physically close.”
“You’re keeping count?”
She was clearly astonished by that. Hell, it still stunned Riley a little, the depth of what he felt. But he didn’t want her panicking on him, so he backed off. “Let’s finish eating, then we’ll talk about it more. By the way, you’re a hell of a cook. I’m impressed.”
Relieved by the change of topic, she nodded. “I wanted you to be. Impressed, I mean.” She caught herself and her gaze jerked up to his. “That is, I try to impress everyone.”
“Yeah? Why is that, Red? You don’t think just being yourself is good enough?” There was so much he still had to learn about her. Funny how appearances meant nothing to him because they weren’t something you could trust. Yet, they meant the world to her.
The contrast in their views might have discouraged him, but he figured he was at least making headway now.
“Maybe.” She propped her head on her hand, realized that wasn’t the proper way to sit and jerked upright again. “Actually I’ve thought about this a lot, about why I’m the way I am. Every so often, I wish I could be different because sometimes it has the opposite effect and just drives people nuts.”
“What people?”
“Co-workers, friends. Men.”
He didn’t give a damn what other men thought of her. If they steered clear, hell, he was glad. “Rosie and Ethan and Buck and Harris like you fine.” He smiled. “I like you more than fine. But I am curious why you’re so worried about what other people think. That is, if you care to talk about it.”
She pleated and fussed with her napkin. “It’s silly really. Maybe something of a habit left over from when I was young.”
“You were a fussy child?”
His teasing put a selfconscious half smile on her face. “Yes. Very fussy, I guess. See, I came from a…a dirty farmhouse.” She wrinkled her nose with that confession. “And when I say dirty, I’m not exaggerating. It’s awful to admit, but we lived like pigs.”
Not sure that he understood, Riley asked, “You were poor?”
“Poor and slovenly are not the same thing, but yes, we were poor, too. I’ve never been certain if it was necessary, if they just couldn’t make enough money or if they simply mismanaged what they made.” She shrugged. “My parents sustained us from paycheck to paycheck. If we ran out in the middle of the week, or something came up—as things always do—they’d borrow or beg.”
The expression on her face twisted his heart. Softly, he said, “That had to be rough.”
“I hated it and it embarrassed me.”
The emotional plethora took Riley off guard. Being a private man, he couldn’t imagine discussing so much of his personal background. “So you’ve worked to change your life. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“It was never my life.” She sipped her tea, scooted her broccoli around on her plate with the edge of her fork. “It was my mother’s, my father’s and my younger brother’s. But not mine.”
No, Riley couldn’t quite imagine her ever being comfortable in those circumstances. She was so prim, proper and precise now, that it must have been almost painful for her.
“You didn’t accept the circumstances of your youth.”
“For as far back as I can remember, even as a young kid, I tried to make it different. Everything I owned was old and stained, but I did my best to always keep it clean and pressed.” She glanced up at him and gave a low laugh. “My brother used to make fun of me for being so meticulous. The other kids we knew…. They liked to call us names and poke fun at us.”
Riley hated that anyone had hurt her feelings, even though it had happened long ago. And her brother… It was ridiculous to be angry at him when he’d been no more than a boy, too. But that didn’t change how Riley felt. “Kids can be pretty cruel when no one is teaching them better.”
“Maybe. But if you’d ever seen our farm or car or how my parents behaved in public, you’d understand why the kids treated us the way they did. I understood it. And I knew my family would never change. After I graduated high school, I moved away, got a job as an errand girl with a small paper and worked my way up to reporter.”
Riley smiled. Reporter was a bit of a stretch considering the small pieces she wrote. Then again, her human-interest stories for the local paper were always entertaining. She’d done a stellar article on Ethan that had made the fire department, as well as the whole town, proud.
Riley thought about it and decided selective sharing was good. It forged a bond that would bring them closer together, and that was his ultimate goal. There were parts of himself he could discuss, parts that weren’t buried deep and that wouldn’t reveal anything beyond the surface.
He mentally skimmed a variety of topics and settled on his safest bet—family. “My mother isn’t immaculate or anything.”
Her interest obvious, she glanced up at him with a smile. “No?”
“She keeps the place tidy, but it’s always well lived in. I have two younger brothers, one older.”
“Four boys? My goodness.”
“Yeah, Mom felt the same way.” He laughed. “The others still live near to home and they drop in a lot with their broods. Between the three of them, I have ten nieces and nephews.”
“Wow. A big family.”
He acknowledged that with a shrug. “Mom is old-fashioned, the type who wants to feed you the minute you show up and fusses around you the whole time you’re there. I haven’t been home to see her in a while.” That was something he should remedy, Riley decided. Funny that he hadn’t much considered how long it had been until Regina started discussing her family.
Wondering how Regina would react to the casual mess around his mother’s house, he pushed his plate away. “Maybe next time I go, you could come along with me.”
Her eyes shot wide. “You want me to meet your mother?”
She sounded as if he’d asked her to swim with sharks. “And Dad, too. You’d like them.”
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She had nothing to say to that so Riley pressed her. “What about your folks? Do you visit with them at all?” He wouldn’t really be surprised if she’d broken all ties, but it’d be a shame. When all was said and done, family should be there for you, and vice versa.
“They’re gone now.” There was a wistful, sad note to her voice. “Mom died years ago from cancer and Dad passed away from a stroke two years after. The farm was sold and my brother and I split the profits. That’s how I bought my house. I’ve been sitting on that money for a while.”
Riley had wondered about that. He didn’t imagine a small-town reporter earned much income. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. I loved them, but I was never very close with them. We had a…strained relationship.” She hesitated, and Riley wondered if she’d pull back now, if she’d return to being evasive. Instead, she shrugged. “They thought I was snooty.”
With almost no prodding at all, she continued to open up to him. In his experience, reporters pried into anyone and everyone’s life, but clammed up when it came to their own personal issues. He couldn’t help wondering if her openness was a compliment reserved for special people. Did she feel safer with him? Did she trust him?
“Snooty, huh?” He pretended to study her head to toe, then nodded. “Circumspect, yes. Meticulous, maybe. But not snooty.”
“Thank you.” She tucked in her chin to hide her smile. “My brother still accuses me of thinking I’m better than them.”
“Do you?”
“Think I’m better? No. But I’m certainly wiser about how I handle my life.” Her long look seemed like a warning, one he fully intended to ignore. He would have her, and soon. “My parents had a great farm that they let go to ruin because they refused to do any real work. It should have been worth five times as much, but they’d never taken care of it. The house was so run-down it had to be demolished. There wasn’t a piece of furniture or a dish to be salvaged.”
“No mementos at all?”
“A few photographs that my brother and I split. My folks didn’t believe in cherishing the past or planning for the future. They had the barest medical coverage and of course, it wasn’t enough. Now my brother seems just like them. He flits from one job to the next, one woman to another.”
