Full Exposure: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance (6 page)

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded strangled, but it was the best she could do. She felt bereft without his arms around her, but she had only herself to blame. It was better this way, she told herself as she settled down at the table. She had a feeling Kevin could make things extremely complicated when he wanted to.

*  *  *

Thank you
. The words echoed in Kevin’s head as he tried to tamp down on the fury slowly setting his body on fire. What kind of game was Serena playing? From cold to hot and back to cold? With no warning or explanation? He studied her closely, from the serenity of her expression to the rock-steady hands slowly bringing the coffee cup to her lips.

Gone were the sexy siren of last night and the lost little girl of early this morning. In their place was the woman he had met three days ago. Calm, cold, collected, a small but superior smile tilting the corners of her lips.

“The eggs are very good.” When she spoke, her voice was as steady as her hands, all trace of desire gone as if it had never been. But he’d felt her tremble in his arms, last night and again a few minutes ago. Had felt her body melt into his before she could stop it. So what was going on?

“Wine,” he said, his voice sounding harsh to his own ears.

“Excuse me?” She looked at him inquisitively, that small and intensely irritating smile still on her lips. He itched to wipe it off, to bridge the distance that had sprung up between them.

“I put a little white wine in when I was mixing them. It’s how my mother taught me.” He caught her eye.

“Oh. It’s good.” She tried to look away, but he held her cool gaze with his hot one, refusing to let her. He didn’t know how long they sat like that, eyes locked, her fork poised halfway to her mouth, his hand wrapped around his coffee mug. But for a moment, just a moment, an answering heat blazed in her own eyes and her lips parted, as if she was having trouble breathing. The hand holding the fork trembled before she could stop it and her other hand slowly closed into a fist.

So she wasn’t as cool as she liked to pretend. The knowledge calmed him, temporarily subduing the beast that had begun to rise in him. He took a deep sip of coffee, ignoring the slight pain that came from the steaming brew.

“Are you hot?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Her voice was strangled.

He raised one eyebrow inquiringly, even as his lips curled into a smile that was more a threat than a sign of genuine amusement. “You’re sweating.” He gestured to the
single drop of sweat slowly working its way down the side of her face. She definitely wasn’t as cool as she wanted him to believe.

Her hand came up defensively, wiping away the condemning drop before she could stop herself. “I guess it is a little warm in here. With the stove, I mean.”

He shrugged. “I’m pretty comfortable. But I can lower the AC if you want me to.”

“No!” Serena stopped, took a deep breath. “I mean, I’m fine. And I’m not going to be here long enough for it to kick in.”

Rage erupted inside of him, running up his spine to his brain at an alarming rate. Fighting to keep his head from exploding, Kevin clenched his fists and studied her through eyes that had turned nearly black with fury. He forgot to be detached. He forgot to act careless. He forgot everything but the anger burning him from the inside out.

When he spoke, his voice was a low, furious throb. “I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“I am not a coward.” Her voice dripped ice. “I simply have things that I need to take care of, things that can’t be done from here.”

“Bullshit. You’re running away.” He raked a hand through his hair, even as his eyes bore viciously into her own. “What’s the matter, Serena? Too scared to finish what you started?”

“I didn’t start anything.” At his derisive snort, her spine stiffened even more. He hadn’t thought it possible for anyone to actually sit that straight.

“I didn’t,” she insisted. “While I definitely …” Her voice trailed off before she caught herself, cleared her throat. “While I definitely participated last night, I did so without any premeditation. You started it, I went along with it. But now I’ve changed my mind.”

“Just like that? And I’m just supposed to go along with that?” He lifted one eyebrow sardonically, deliberately setting her teeth on edge.

“A woman’s prerogative.” She stared defiantly at him for a moment, before dropping her eyes to her plate. He felt, more than heard, her sigh. “Look, Kevin, it’s a bad idea.”

“What is?” He refused to make it easy for her. She set him on fire, made him burn hotter and harder than any woman ever had and then copped out at the last minute? Not
in this lifetime.

He studied her breasts beneath the gray oxford shirt, saw her nipples pebble under his hot gaze before she crossed her arms defensively over her chest. No, he mused. Definitely not in this lifetime.

“Just because we—kissed—doesn’t mean I have to sleep with you.”

“You’re right.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “So, it’s okay then. You understand what I’m saying.”

He let his gaze linger on her breasts before slowly looking her in the eye. “No.”

“No, you don’t understand?” Her eyebrows furrowed adorably. Despite his anger, he wanted to smooth kisses along them, soothing the fear and confusion he could literally feel rolling off her.

But instead of comforting her, he raised the tension. She had to understand that she couldn’t run from this thing that was between them. “Oh, I understand.” He smiled at the relief that flashed in her eyes. “But it’s not remotely close to being okay.”

He watched her struggle for a response, saw her mouth open and shut several times before she finally got her feet back under her. “Well, that’s too bad for you, isn’t it? Because you’re not the one calling the shots around here.”

“And you are?” He struggled to keep the superior smile on his face. Struggled to remain calm and aloof. Was she about to call his bluff?

“Yes! I mean—” She stopped herself, tugged at the simple gold hoop in her ear. “What I mean is, I definitely am in control of myself. And I’m not going to sleep with you. Not now and not in the foreseeable future.”

He inclined his head. “We’ll see.”

She growled low in her throat, delighting him. She was close, incredibly close, to losing that cool. Why the observation made him happy, he couldn’t have said.

“No, we won’t see. Because I’m leaving! Right now.” She stood up, carried her nearly untouched food to the sink.

Bluff called. She was walking out, without giving this thing between them a chance. “What about the book?” He despised himself for asking but couldn’t hold the words back. “What about the gallery opening in San Diego?”

“What about them?” She shrugged. “I’ll be back in four or five days and we’ll go from there.” She froze, her eyes darting back to his face. “I mean, with the book only. We’ll go from there with the book.”

She was coming back. The thought settled in his head as relief swept through him. She wasn’t running away permanently, just leaving to get some breathing space. He didn’t like it, didn’t want to see her go. But he could handle it. He could even understand it. For someone like Serena, who prided herself on being in control all the time, this thing between them must be pretty uncomfortable. For, much as he wished it wasn’t so, things between them were hot, explosive, far, far out of control.

He watched her stride rapidly down the hall, her heels clicking with each neat step she took. She entered the room only to re-emerge seconds later, her plain gray suitcase clutched in her hand.

“Let me take that for you.” He strode down the hall, relieving her of her burden before she could protest.

“I can get it.”

He smiled, his teeth gleaming warningly in the afternoon light. “I know you can,
cher
. But where I come from, a gentleman doesn’t stand by and watch a woman struggle with a bag that weighs almost as much as she does.” He headed outside before she could stop him.

“I didn’t realize you were a gentleman,” she shot at him, as she pushed the trunk release on her key chain.

His smile was predatory and sexy as hell. “I most definitely am. Look up the origin of the word sometimes. It’s a real eye-opener.”

She dropped her keys. Grinning like a loon, he hid his face behind the open trunk lid as he loaded her bag. He closed the trunk to find her studying him, an uncharacteristically anxious expression on her face. Shoving his hands into his back pockets, he leaned back on his heels and waited for her to speak.

“I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, her teeth worrying her lower lip.

He shrugged. “I’ll be here.”

She nodded, climbed into the car and shut the door. But he couldn’t let her leave like that—she was biting her lip so hard he was afraid she’d draw blood. He knocked on
the driver’s window and waited patiently as she rolled it down. “Drive carefully,
bebe
.”

Her smile was reserved. “I will.”

“Good.” He stepped back and winked. “I haven’t got the patience to break in two photographers in a week.”

Serena gasped, outrage in every line of her face, before slamming the car into gear and heading down the driveway as fast as safety allowed. Kevin stood watching her gray Volvo until it reached the end of the very long driveway.
Gray
clothes,
gray
suitcase,
gray
car. The woman definitely needed some color in her life. Wasn’t it lucky he had more than enough to share? Whistling, he headed toward his studio to get to work.

The metal gates of Angola Penitentiary clanged as Serena passed through them. She gazed straight ahead, afraid to speak, afraid to think, afraid to even blink. If she did—if she so much as moved the wrong way—she would shatter. So she concentrated on taking deep, even breaths. On swallowing the lump in her throat and keeping the tears at bay.

She had done all this for nothing. Left Kevin and the book. Dragged up a past she would much rather leave buried. Faced her sister’s murderer. And for what? To see him paroled after ten lousy years? Louisiana sucked and the corruption that ran rampant in the state sucked even more.

As the prison doors shut behind her, the heat struck her like a fist. It was brutal, much like the parole hearing she had just left. And like the hearing, the hundred-degree humidity threatened to bring her to her knees.

Serena stopped, struggling for breath in the dense air. Her legs were shaky, threatening to revolt if she pushed them to continue. Her heart raced and pain exploded through her chest—was it possible to have a heart attack at twenty-eight? She pressed a hand between her breasts, fought the blackness that crept up on her a little more with each passing second.

“Serena! Are you all right?”

She looked into the face of Jack Rawlins, new Assistant District Attorney for Baton Rouge and the man who had been reassigned her sister’s case as the parole date crept closer. It hadn’t been required that he attend the parole hearing, but he had known how well connected Damien was. He’d been afraid things would go sour and he’d been right.

She put up a hand to ward him off, even as she struggled to suck air into her burning lungs. She’d lose it if he touched her. She knew it as well as she knew that Damien LaFleur, murderer and son of old Louisiana royalty, would be walking through these doors to freedom sometime very soon.

She wanted to scream, to claw Jack bloody. But it wasn’t his fault that Damien
was getting out, just as it wasn’t his fault that first degree rape and murder had been pled down to manslaughter ten years before. Money talked in Louisiana, more than almost any other place in the country, and Damien’s family had a lot of money. Not enough to cover up the crime completely, but more than enough to keep Damien from spending the rest of his long life in prison. Like her, he was twenty-eight. He had years and years ahead of him to pretend that none of this had ever happened.

“Serena. Answer me.” Jack’s face swam into focus again, his eyes frightened now, his mouth a grim slash as he reached for her.

“I’m fine.” She forced the words past her too-tight throat, nearly strangling on them. She closed her eyes and Sandra’s beloved image hovered there, smiling, laughing, so full of energy that anyone looking at her feared she’d explode if she sat still for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Again tears threatened and again Serena beat them back. Sandra’s picture slowly faded, only to be replaced by the photos Jack had brought. He was wily and good at his job; instead of packing up the whole file for the parole board to see, he had packed the three most gruesome of the set. No reason to desensitize the board to the crime. Sandra’s mutilated body swam before her eyes and Serena’s stomach revolted. She barely made it to the trash can in time.

“It’s okay. Ssshh, it’s all right.” Jack’s hand stroked her back soothingly as Serena fought for control. When the dry heaves finally stopped, she stood slowly, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Here, take this.” Jack handed her a bottle of water and Serena rinsed her mouth gratefully.

“Thank you.” When she spoke her voice wasn’t back to normal, but it was audible and nearly steady. She took a few more steadying breaths, relieved that the crushing chest pain had eased slightly.

Jack nodded, placed a hand at the small of her back and guided her toward his car. “Let’s get out of here.” He too was aware of Damien’s imminent release, just as he knew the LaFleurs would be here to pick him up in style. Damien’s younger brother, Michael was already here—though he hadn’t said a word throughout the proceedings, he had sat in the back of the room watching everything. She remembered him and his unnatural
stillness from school, from a time when they could be—if not friends, then at least not enemies.

He’d smiled at her when she’d first arrived, but she hadn’t been able to smile back—not when his very presence at the parole hearing reinforced everything she already knew. The LaFleurs had bought Damien’s sentence and now they were buying his freedom. Michael hadn’t shown any reaction at all when his brother’s parole had been granted. Not even a flicker of his eyelashes or a quirk of his lips betrayed any surprise he might be feeling. But then again, why should he have been surprised? The outcome had been a guaranteed certainty before any of them had set so much as one foot in the room.