Breathless (11 page)

“No, it wasn’t.” His tone was firm and brooked no argument. She made a face.

Her taste in clothes needed serious help. She wore a heavy denim dress that had one of those low waists and a hem that rested at her ankles. Some hideous yellow T-shirt buttoned to her neck. “There’s a ladies’ store at the end of the plaza. You could pick up some clothes there.”

“I just got the essentials.” She pointed to the bag in his hand. “And I brought clothes with me, remember?”

“What’s up with that?” He couldn’t resist asking. They’d fallen right back into their old familiar friendly roles. But this time, there was an edge to everything they said, a friction that had never been between them before. He liked it.

A lot.

But still, he had to ask. “You dress like a refugee from a religious cult, yet you’re nothing like your appearance.”

She bit her lip but strode into his office with a determined gleam in her eye.

“You hide behind that shit, Tawny, and I can’t see why.” Why any woman would hide the kind of body Tawny had been blessed with was out of his ken.

“My business, Stack.” But she looked uncomfortable with the line of questioning. A nice guy would let up. A nice guy would let her settle in upstairs while he dealt with the backlog on his desk.

Stack had never seen himself as a nice guy.

Pity.

“You know you changed your life by choosing to dress that way. With a body like yours—”

“What?” She spun to face him, agitated. “I could get laid once in a while? Some man would rescue me from a life of drudgery? Run around on me or give me a kid or two and leave me to raise them on my own.” She crossed her arms over her chest in a classic protective stance. “Hey, yeah, that’d be following the family tradition.”

“Okay. I get it, life wasn’t fair. It rarely is.”

She turned toward the door. “I’ll go upstairs and put this stuff away. Thanks for the use of your spare room.”

“No sweat. Here’s the key.” She made sure to avoid touching his hand when he passed her his key ring. “You’ll find fresh sheets in the linen closet in the hall. One of the team used the apartment while I was in Texas. This isn’t the first time we’ve housed a client who needed protection.”

She nodded and walked out. He tracked the sound of her footsteps for as long as he could hear them. If he had his way, she’d be changing the sheets on
his
bed and sliding in there with him.

What he couldn’t figure was why, when they worked together for three full years and she dressed to kill any hint of male interest, she would suddenly expose her spectacular body to him in the middle of a job. She wore a bikini, at a public pool, where he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

He’d never lost focus on a job before that day. He hadn’t been able to see anything but Tawny in all her glory. Luckily, the client hadn’t noticed at the time, but he knew he’d lost focus, and so had Tawny.

Ten minutes after they caught the peeper at the exclusive country club’s pool, Tawny quit the agency and took off like a bat out of hell. He felt like a fool for having never been aware of what Tawny had been hiding under her clothes for three full years! A stupid, aroused fool, who’d had a great relationship with a woman and was too blind to see that it could have been more. It could have lasted.

He’d wanted many times to track her down and talk. Try to explain how good her disguise was. Then, he got angry. She’d set out to make him feel like an ass and succeeded. But why she chose that particular day to expose herself, he didn’t know.

He hadn’t seen her since. Instead, he’d gone back to work and waited, hoped, for the phone to ring. He’d wanted her to miss him the way he missed her, every day, every time he unlocked his office door and walked into the emptiness.

In the three years they’d worked together, Tawny had been standoffish and undemonstrative. She was bright, gifted with a wicked sense of humor that he loved to play off of, and drawn tight as a violin string.

When the conversations had turned remotely personal, she’d pulled off a forbidding stare that had iced him but good. Her friendliness had been a cover, a blind that had fooled him.

Stack didn’t like to be fooled. Not by a woman, and never by a friend. Tawny had played at being a friend, when all along she’d been all woman.

To the best of his recall, they’d never even touched. He couldn’t remember ever slapping palms in a high five, or otherwise showing appreciation for a birthday gift or holiday bonus. Hell, he’d never even bussed her cheek with a perfunctory kiss.

And now, all he could think of was seeing her body again. That day at the pool, he’d finally understood why she’d been given her name. Her skin was tawny as a lion’s fur, smooth and creamy.

Spectacular from her head to her toes, Tawny was a living, breathing sex goddess. Lush and shapely, her curves had drawn the attention of everyone at the pool that day. The women had shot daggers with their eyes, and he could swear the men were ready to shoot their loads.

But the question remained. Why that day? Why choose to bring herself into the light, let him see her as a woman for the first time, then run away?

He cast the ceiling a glance, heard her light movements in the kitchen area, and decided it was time to find out.

T
awny slipped the last of Stack’s dishes onto the dish drainer on his kitchen counter. The window over the sink looked out to the back alley. She felt Stack’s arrival before she heard him step into the kitchen. “There were dishes left in the sink, I washed them. I’ve got to keep busy or I’ll go crazy wondering if he’s out there staring at your office window.”

“We weren’t followed here, and no one watched us when we went to the store. I’d have seen them.” He leaned on the doorframe, his shoulders broad enough to hold up the whole building.

She’d felt his concern and protectiveness like a cloak drifting over her from head to toe. Warmth stole from her chest, down her arms, and along to her fingertips. “I shouldn’t have left the building without you. I forgot for a moment why I was there. It all seemed so familiar and comfortable that I slipped into my receptionist role and just…forgot that someone’s been following me.” A thought crossed her mind. She straightened and faced him squarely. “It hasn’t been you, has it?”

He went red as a stoplight. “No, not that I haven’t thought about you.” His lips firmed. “I’ve wondered how you’ve been. I’ve considered calling, but you didn’t seem to want any contact and I had to respect that.”

“Thank you.” While she appreciated the respect, it also grated on her that he hadn’t acted on his impulse to call. She probably would have spoken to him. If she was in a good mood. If she was vulnerable at that particular moment and wanted to talk to him. If she was lonely.
Who was she kidding? She’d been lonely for Stack since the day she’d quit
.

He shrugged. “I respect women, and you especially. Now, tell me everything that happened today.”

Respect. It was one of her main priorities in a relationship, and the thought that he would offer it to her so easily made it difficult not to throw herself at him. She gripped the counter at her back. She needed something solid to hold on to.

He’d asked about the details of her day, and she needed to focus and recall. He was so broad, so focused on her, so
familiar
that her nerves settled. “I’ve been running everything through my head and I can’t figure out who this is. Or why they’re doing it.”

“Just talk. Close your eyes, walk through your day again. Let me hear what you’re seeing as you recall.”

She’d seen him use this technique successfully many times. Maybe if she’d tried it herself she’d have remembered something useful before this. She’d been right to come here, right to put her faith in Stack. If she let her heart slip farther down the slope toward loving him, she could deal with the fallout later.

She let her eyelids drop and slowed her breathing. Three long, slow breaths later, she realized he hadn’t moved. He waited on the other side of her eyelids, watching her chest rise and fall, allowing her to “see” the events of her day.

She walked herself through her morning, noting how humdrum and boring her life sounded. Eventually, she got to the Wash ’n’ Suds. Against the dark screen of her mind’s eye she saw herself opening the dryer to put a load of her clothes inside. Settling in, she spoke of every detail as if it were happening now for the first time.

“I need the washroom, so I close the door of the dryer, set the timer and heat setting, and leave the clothes to tumble. Other people are to the right and left of me.”

“Men or women?” He spoke softly, and she knew this meant he didn’t want to startle her. His voice gentled her, let her relax.

“Moms with family clothing. Men’s work clothes, children’s clothes, their own.”

“Do you see the women?”

“Yes.”

“Are they your size?”

She shook her head. “One is pregnant, the other is painfully skinny. Bony, like she’s forgotten what a meal tastes like.”

She heard his gentle hum, as if he’d nodded at her description, but she kept her eyes closed. “You’re in the ladies’ room,” he prodded.

“Yes, I have to hurry because my first dryer is close to finishing its cycle. It’s a busy day, with lots of people waiting for dryers. I step back out of the restroom and see my newest dryer has stopped before the cycle’s ended. I check the door and it’s open. I swear and look all around, but I don’t see anyone watching me.

“The pregnant woman says a man opened it, tested the clothes to see how dry they were, and then walked out. She thought he was waiting for me and was checking to see how much longer he’d have to wait in the parking lot.”

“She was lying.”

“No, I don’t think so. She walked to the window and pointed to a car parked under a tree on the far side of the lot. Since the car was in the shade, I couldn’t make out if anyone was inside.”

“That’s when you called me.”

“Not right away. I decided the guy was just a pervert who staked out the place to get his jollies looking at underwear.”

“You thought he waited for you to leave your dryer unattended, then pawed your clothes.”

She opened her eyes, feeling stupid all over again. Maybe that was exactly what happened. Maybe she was here for nothing. But Stack’s expression was serious and concerned. “That happens, right?” She looked for confirmation.

“You wouldn’t have called me unless something felt off. You’re too smart to dismiss a gut feeling, Tawny.” He stepped closer and she wondered if, just this once, he would touch her.

He never had, not since they’d briefly shaken hands when he’d welcomed her to his firm. As often as she’d wanted to reach out to him, she never had. She’d been so firmly set in her decision to be friends, to hide from his view, that she’d never let him see that she cared.

Now, he stood not four inches from her, close enough that she could feel the heat from his chest, smell the scent of his aftershave. He’d used the bottle he kept in his glove box, probably on the way to pick her up.

She knew so many intimate details of this man’s life that she could hardly believe she didn’t know the feel of his hands, not on her shoulder in a comforting pat, or on any other part of her body, including and especially on her erogenous zones.

“Close your eyes again and take me back there with you. Tell me why you called me. Tell me why you got scared.”

She closed her eyes, licked her lips, and allowed herself to go back to the Wash ’n’ Suds again. “I closed the dryer so it could finish, then took the rest of my laundry out of the first dryer. A woman rushed to use the machine the minute I emptied it. I heard a couple of bitchy comments about pushy women, but I didn’t want to get involved, so I moved toward the window. I folded my towels while I kept an eye on the car in the parking lot, but the shade never shifted enough to let me see anything. When the second dryer buzzed, I pulled everything out.”

“You’re sure nothing was missing.”

She envisioned her whole process. “I’m certain. As I folded my tees, I flashed on what had happened at home last week. I ran back to the window, but the car had left. I dashed out to the walkway, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. That’s when I got creeped out and called you.”

“Go back to what happened at your place and tell me why you think someone was there.” His breath danced across her face. He’d had coffee and something minty. She wanted to taste his lips, to feel the pressure and moist heat of his mouth, but she had to continue. She was on the verge of an important memory and she couldn’t mess it up. She couldn’t afford to be stupid.

Keeping her eyes closed, she said, “I keep my thongs sorted by oldest on top with my newest on the bottom of the pile. I didn’t see anything wrong with my room until I went to pull out my underwear. The pile of thongs had been flipped so that my newest were on top. I’d never do that.” When she got no response, she peeped one eye open. Big mistake.

He had that look again. That hungry male need thing that set her heart to top speed. Tension coiled around him like a spring. She stood four inches from a dark panther on high alert.

Tawny had never wanted to be pounced on so badly in her life.

Had she moved closer to him? The counter no longer pressed into her back, and he seemed near enough to kiss. His eyes went dark as they scanned her face. Up close like this he was too hard to resist. He was just plain hard.

He was bad.

He was hot.

He was what she wanted, and his touch would be to die for.

“Why did you wear that bikini that day? Why did you wait so long to show me who you are under those god-awful clothes?”

Typical male, deciding that a woman was nothing but a body. In one fell swoop he’d done away with the jokes they’d shared, the conversations they’d had, the friendship they’d built. Touching or no touching, they’d shared a lot of good times and a lot of stress. They’d seen each other at their worst and their best. He’d made her laugh many times, while she’d returned the favor. He’d always said he loved her sense of humor.

And all that had been wiped away when she’d walked out onto that pool deck and dropped her towel.

She’d seen his cock rise like a trumpet in a solo, his eyes drink in every inch of her curves, and saw the light of friendship dim to nothing. She hadn’t thought of that when she’d donned the suit. Stupid. Stupid James girl.

Still, she should be honest now. He’d come for her immediately when she’d called, no matter that she’d left him high and dry, no matter that he’d just gotten off a plane and felt bone tired.

“I saw you,” she blurted. “With your little friend. The night before. Fucking in your office.”

He’d been pumping into some woman on the desk and she’d been rapturous. Tawny could still see his buttocks hollowing with each thrust, see the way his naked back glistened with his efforts, smell the musk of their passion.

It had enraged her, made her stupidly jealous, and she’d done the unthinkable. She’d behaved like every other James woman who had ever lived. She’d gone after her man.

Her
man! He’d ceased being her friend, her boss, her buddy. Her secret desire. She’d wanted to make him notice, to let him know there was a part of her he’d never seen. A part of her that he might want.

Fuck! She was one messed-up woman.

The next day at the pool stakeout she’d shown him what he was missing. She’d strutted and preened and turned him on. She’d had no idea she felt that possessive about Stack. It shamed her now, that stupidity, made her feel like such a chump.

She knew all along he had lots of women. But to her knowledge, he’d never had one visit the office. She’d never had to see him with another woman.

She’d lusted for him for so long she’d gone a little crazy.

Maybe if he’d had a real girlfriend, someone who swung by the office to see him at lunch, or chatted with her when she answered the phone, she wouldn’t have reacted on such a visceral level. But none of his women had behaved like girlfriends. He hadn’t bonded with anyone.

It hurt to see him be so cavalier as to fuck some slut when she, his friend and confidante, was right there in front of him.

His brows knit as he tried to make his brain work. “Fucking in my office? Who?”

He didn’t even remember! “A blonde, I think. Small and thin. Different from me. I, ah, kind of went nuts, and the next day I showed up at the pool wearing a bikini. I shouldn’t have. Our relationship was strictly professional. You were my boss.”

“Yes, but you were the first woman I’ve ever been friends with. The only woman. That meant a lot to me.” He raised his palms in supplication and melted her heart with one tilt of his head. His expression was ingenuous. He had no idea that they could be anything more than friends. He’d never, not ever, thought of Tawny the way she thought of him.

Not until he’d seen her body.

That hurt.

She remembered the pump, pump, pump of his ass, the strength of his back, the way he’d held that woman. The way her own body had reacted at the sight, sound, and scent of Stack Hamilton making love.

A shiver ran through her at the memory. She closed her eyes and used his trick again.

“What are you seeing now?”

“You, with your back to the door, her legs wrapped around your waist. She’d left her shoes on. Bright blue stilettoes. She had muscular legs, and she kept crooning for you to fuck her fast and hard.”

“How did you feel when you saw that?” his voice went gravelly, aroused.

Her breath rose and fell faster, her eyelids fluttered open until she looked directly into his eyes.

“Answer me, Tawny. Go back there and tell me what you see.”

She kept her eyes open, stayed brave or stupid, she wasn’t sure which. “I see you grinding into her. I see me, wanting that too.”

“Do you still want what you saw that day?” He held her gaze, hot and hard and needy. His lower body brushed lightly, once, twice, against hers.

Her hips strained toward his of their own volition.