Authors: Janet Dailey
Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #General, #Contemporary, #Western Stories, #Suspense Fiction, #Domestic fiction, #Montana, #Ranch life, #Women Ranchers - Montana, #Calder family (Fictitious characters), #Women ranchers
Calder Promise (5 page)
“As I said, colorful.” A small smile crooked his mouth. After she was comfortably ensconced in the seat, he deposited the bundle of clothes on her lap. “Shall I put the top up?”
Laura shook her head. “Don’t bother. The hotel isn’t very far from here.”
Chapter Three
T
o Laura’s amusement, the doorman’s expression didn’t so much as flicker when she stuck a high-heeled foot out of the Porsche and stood up, swaddled Indian-style in a blanket while clutching her evening clothes. She waited by the hotel steps for Sebastian to join her, head up and the slightest hint of a naughty smile touching the corners of her lips.
o Laura’s amusement, the doorman’s expression didn’t so much as flicker when she stuck a high-heeled foot out of the Porsche and stood up, swaddled Indian-style in a blanket while clutching her evening clothes. She waited by the hotel steps for Sebastian to join her, head up and the slightest hint of a naughty smile touching the corners of her lips.
She tipped her head to him. “You are coming in with me, aren’t you? I may need your assistance with little things like doors and elevator buttons.”
“Of course.” His smile was quick and warm, his eyes echoing the sparkle of amusement in her own. Turning to the doorman, he handed him the car keys and some folded bills, then swung back to Laura and escorted her up the hotel steps.
“I hope you were generous with your tip.”
“I was,” Sebastian assured her.
“Good. The man was the absolute epitome of tact. For all the notice he took of my clothes, I could have been wearing a mink. I considered giving him a quick flash, but he didn’t seem to be interested.”
Sebastian reached ahead of her and opened the door. “Perhaps he’s gay.”
“A gay Italian.” Laura released a soft, incredulous laugh. “That sounds like an oxymoron.”
“It does, rather.” He guided her to the elevators and pushed the button to summon one. Almost instantly a set of doors glided open with a faint whoosh.
Laura entered the elevator car ahead of him and began the awkward task of searching through the folded clothes for her purse while still maintaining an adequate grip on the blanket. Giving up, she turned to Sebastian. “Find my evening bag, will you? It has my room key in it. And I certainly don’t want to wake up Tara.”
“Do you share a room with your aunt?” In quick order, Sebastian located her beaded bag and extracted the computerized room key from it.
“No. We have separate suites. And Tara isn’t actually my aunt,” Laura declared on a breezily offhand note. “I just call her that to avoid lengthy explanations. Technically we aren’t related at all.”
“How’s that?” He eyed her curiously.
“Tara was my father’s first wife. Several years after their divorce, he married my mother. That’s when Trey and I entered the picture.”
“Trey is your brother,” Sebastian guessed.
“My twin. He favors the Calder side of the family—tall and big-shouldered, with dark hair and dark eyes; hard, angular features. While I—”
“Take after your great-great-grandmother,” he inserted.
“Who may or may not also be Lady Elaine,” Laura finished.
Sebastian smiled at that and returned to the original subject as the elevator doors opened on the designated floor. “So you are traveling with your father’s ex. That’s a bit unusual.”
Laura laughed at the understatement. “Over the years it has raised more than a few eyebrows.” She exited the elevator and added over her shoulder, “Tara definitely isn’t popular with the rest of my family or anyone else on the ranch, for that matter. My grandfather is convinced she is a horrible influence on me. My mother has never actually said so, but I know she agrees. I think she long ago reconciled herself to the fact that I am my own person.”
“That”—his mouth curved wryly—“is very obvious.” He inserted the room card into the slot, waited for the light, and opened the door, then stepped back to admit her.
Laura sailed past him into the suite, paused long enough to deposit her bundle of clothes on the sofa’s damask-covered cushion, then walked straight to the steps that led to a private terrace without ever once glancing back at him.
After an instant’s hesitation Sebastian returned the room card to her purse, entered the suite, and closed the door behind him. By the time he crossed the room, Laura had already disappeared onto the terrace. He left her evening bag with her clothes and followed her outside.
She stood at the outer wall, gazing into the night, indifferent to the terrace’s spectacular view of the Spanish Steps and the sprawl of Via Conditti.
He wandered over to the wall and briefly surveyed the view. A smattering of stars dusted the sky, their light dimmed by the city’s bright glow. The view of the city and its landmarks was a familiar one, though the same couldn’t be said about the woman beside him.
Angling his head in her direction, he let his glance run over her and studied the play of light and shadow on her face, accenting the high, strong line of her cheekbones and marble perfection of her skin. The night gave a silvery sheen to her hair, lightening the color of that glorious blond mane tumbling about her shoulders.
At that moment she had the cool, untouchable look of a goddess, beyond the reach of any mere mortal. But Sebastian knew she had but to turn those sultry dark eyes on him and the impression would change to that of a siren, tantalizing in her beauty, with glistening lips promising rapture.
He smiled inwardly at such fanciful thoughts while simultaneously aware that there was more than a little truth in them. Just being near her aroused all his male instincts. Sebastian suspected he was in danger of completely losing his head over this woman. But that only seemed to add some spice.
“You seem to be in deep thought,” he observed, seeking to pull her attention back to him.
She drew in a long breath and released it in a slow and soft exhalation. “I guess I was.” A small curve lifted the corners of her mouth.
“What could possibly require such heavy contemplation at this late hour?” he asked in mild jest.
“The future,” Laura replied without any hesitation and continued to face the city. “I have some important decisions that I need to make.”
“Such as?” Sebastian prompted, determined to engage her attention.
With a slight toss of her head, she turned at right angles to face him and leaned a hip against the terrace wall. “Oh, very important things,” she assured him in mock earnestness and dipped her chin, her head cocking in a pose that was provocative and alluring. “Whether to travel the world or rule it, whether to feed the starving children in Africa or . . . go to bed with you.”
Heat surged through him with rocketing force. Desire was a hard, stony ache in his loins that somehow managed to thicken his voice. “Personally, I am highly in favor of the latter.”
Her smile widened, Cheshire-like. She moved toward him, maintaining her hold on the blanket edges as she opened her arms, the material winging from them in a gesture that reminded him of an exotic butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. But his view of her body was brief as she curved her arms around his neck, wrapping him inside the blanket with her.
Head back and lips parted, she challenged huskily, “Show me.”
His hands had already moved around the bareness of her waist to mold her more firmly against him. This time her skin was hot to the touch, but just as silky smooth as before.
Before he could take possession of her mouth, she began eating at his lips, taking playful bites of them with her teeth. In all such previous occasions, Sebastian had been the one doing the seducing. But Laura was the aggressive one now. Something told him that was a dangerous precedent. Seeking to claim the initiative, he scooped her off her feet and swung her toward the suite entrance.
Laughter gurgled in her throat. “How masterful,” she purred and stroked a hand along his jaw before sliding her fingers into his hair.
“I assure you I am well-equipped for the role,” he murmured, matching the racy lightness of her tone.
His response surprised a laugh from her, and her dark eyes took a new measure of him, a suggestive gleam in their depths. “Is that boast or brag?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” He negotiated the steps into the suite’s sitting room.
“That will be my pleasure,” she informed him as her fingers found the top button of his shirt.
“Indeed it will.”
“Have you always been so confident of your prowess in bed?” she teased while her fingers continued to undo more buttons.
“I have never heard a single complaint.” He carried her through the sitting room into the suite’s sumptuous bedroom.
“Ah, but men never do—not if a woman is smart. The male ego tends to be much too fragile.”
Control: he could sense her subtle attempt to exert it again. “And I have never met a woman willing to concede that she might be a disappointment in the bedroom.”
He stopped near the bed. A single lamp burned on the bedside table, throwing a pool of light over the downturned bedcovers. He let her feet sink to the floor while keeping an arm around her. The blanket fell away, only a corner of it caught by his encircling arm.
“That’s hitting a bit below the belt, isn’t it?” she challenged lightly while her hands glided down the opened front of his shirt, halting when they reached the waistband of his slacks.
“But that’s often what happens when Mars and Venus collide.”
“But what a magnificent collision it can be,” she murmured, her dark eyes shining with promise.
“Indeed,” Sebastian agreed and stayed her attempt to unfasten his trousers, catching hold of her hands and pulling them away despite the hot and hungry part of him that was eager for her to continue. “But you are rushing things.” He set her away from him and made a quick, appreciative skim of her uptilted breasts, slender waist and curved hips. “We men tend to be dreadful creatures of habit.” He steered her toward the bed, maintaining discreet pressure until the back of her knees made contact with the mattress. Then he gave her a little push that forced her to sit down. All the while she watched with intense curiosity and interest. “Each of us has our own particular routine when it comes to disrobing. Some prefer to start at the bottom and remove their shoes first. Others begin with the tie.”
“You have a head start there.” She reclined onto the bed with languorous ease, bending one leg over the other to show him the full rounded curve of her cheek bottom.
“And I have been remiss in not thanking you for that before now.” Which was the truth. There was hardly a part of him that didn’t feel thick and rigidly swollen. Sebastian doubted that in his present condition his fingers could have managed the intricacies of unknotting a tie or unbuttoning his shirt. Clamping down on a very primitive urge to rip off his clothes and join her on that bed, he pulled the tie from around his neck, striving for a leisurely air that he was far from feeling. “Myself, I do a combination of top and bottom.” He draped the tie across the overstuffed armrest of a nearby chair and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “After the tie, comes the jacket.” After making a show of precisely folding it, he laid it on the chair. “Then the shirt.” He pulled the tails loose from his pants and proceeded to remove it as well, conscious all the while of her avid gaze.
Again, he was anything but casual about the way he arranged it on the chair. At that point he paused and faced her once more. Her eyes made a greedy, almost tactile inspection of the muscled width of his chest and shoulders, taking special note of the curly mat of auburn chest hair.
“This is where I reverse the procedure and begin from the bottom.” He sat down on the edge of the cushioned seat, careful not to muss the clothes already there, and began removing his shoes. After he had arranged them neatly side by side next to the chair, he peeled off his socks, shook them out, and laid them precisely one on top of the other.
“First the top, then the bottom. The middle must be next,” she declared, her dark eyes agleam with anticipation.
“An astute deduction.” He smiled lazily as he stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them. Wearing only his briefs, he folded the dress pants together, leg crease against leg crease, draped them over their suit jacket, and gripped the elastic waist of his lone remaining garment. “Last, but far from least, I remove my briefs.” As he stripped them off, he turned his back to the bed and fixed them on the chair with the rest of the clothes.
“Thus the deed is done,” he announced, squaring around to face her once more, quick to notice the way her gaze instantly zeroed in on his erection.
After a moment’s pause, she lifted her glance to his face. “Are you quite sure you’re British and not Greek?”
“Quite sure.” He arched an eyebrow in silent question.
“You look like Adonis.” Her voice, like the smoldering heat of her gaze, had the breathiness of arousal.
“That’s a relief.” A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “For a moment I thought you were going to compare me with Michelangelo’s young David, able to show off only big hands.”
Her head fell back against the pillow as she broke into laughter. Sebastian took advantage of her distraction to climb into bed with her, stretching out on the inside, keeping her in the lamp’s pooling light. Quick to recover, she rolled toward him and arched her body closer, her hands reaching to spread her fingers over his chest and the mat of hair on his chest.
“I understand,” he began in a voice husky with suppressed desire, “that lovemaking techniques may vary from man to man as well. Some”—with his fingertips, he brushed wayward strands of hair off her cheek—“start at the top.”
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