Private Relations (12 page)

Giles was right. She had to stop looking for the trick. There was no trick. She was getting a weekend she’d longed for with all her heart. All she had to do was shut out reality for forty-eight hours and indulge.

In fact, all her appetites were hearty, but if he left her at the door to her suite with a polite kiss on the cheek, she’d still have had one of the nicest evenings of her life.

And if, come Monday, he was the part of the fantasy that turned into a pumpkin, well, she’d deal with it.

“D
ID YOU HATE
the ballet very much?” Kit asked Peter. They stood close together on the Hush rooftop. When she breathed in, she caught the scent of jasmine from the garden perfuming the air. Far below hummed the incessant traffic, but up here, she felt set apart from the teeming city, closer to the stars.

“After that facial, the ballet was nothing.”

He didn’t sound all that upset, though. In fact, she had a sneaking feeling he’d enjoyed the ballet more than he was letting on. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her and she let herself lean into his strong chest and enjoy the warmth.

“You smell good,” he murmured against her neck as he planted a trio of kisses at her nape.

“I think it’s the flowers up here that you’re smelling,” she said.

“No,” he mumbled against her skin, sending shivers through her, “it’s definitely you.”

“This is our last night,” she said, feeling her body respond to his even though they’d pretty much exhausted themselves—not to mention half-drowned themselves—in the big tub earlier.

“Is it?” he asked, his lips moving to her shoulder. His breath was warm, his lips teasing.

Was it their last night? She’d been wondering that herself. Maybe there was a way to keep this incredible lover in her life. Except that letting ex-fiancés back into a woman’s life seemed fraught with vague but horrendous possible complications. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have to think about it.”

His lips curved against her shoulder and she felt his chuckle rumble through her. Then he raised his head and his eyes glinted down at her. “You have to plan it out, you mean. With a Venn diagram?”

His guess was close enough to what she’d been thinking that she huffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m seeing a white board, and several colors of pens. Purple to write down the pros of letting me back into your life. Black for the negative reasons. Yellow for neutral factors. Am I close?”

She shrugged. She wasn’t about to lie. And if she’d spent some of the time he was at the spa amusing herself with a few pens and her white board, she really didn’t see why she had to share that information.

“Maybe I can help you make your decision. Let’s make a list now.”

“That’s silly. Besides, I’m hungry. Dinner will be brought up whenever we call for it.”

“Indulge me.”

“There’s no white board up here.”

“No,” he said, digging into his pocket. “But I do have my PalmPilot. I can change text colors. We’ll improvise.”

“I can’t make a list of your good and bad points with you sitting right here,” she told him.

“Sure you can. I can help. Who knows my qualities and vices better than me?”

She settled herself at a black wrought-iron table. The
pool lapped quietly, reflecting the mood lighting on the roof patio and the pale wash of the moon. The man was ridiculous. She decided to call his bluff. “All right. If you want to.”

“Great. I do.” He opened a file. “I don’t have a purple font. Pink okay?”

“Let’s start with your negatives first.”

She thought his shoulders slumped a little. “I hope this baby has enough memory,” he said, shooting her a wry grin.

“I certainly do,” she snapped.

His gaze met hers and she saw a certain eagerness. He wanted to talk about the past. Damn. She hadn’t meant to sound so angry. She wasn’t angry. She never dwelled on past mistakes. How odd that flash of remembered pain had felt so excruciating.

He looked as though he might say something, then seemed to think better of it. “Okay,” he said, “Black font.” He typed and she saw over his shoulder that he’d written a heading: Peter’s Bad Points.

The curser blinked away at her as he held the small machine out. She grabbed it. Typed: Teases at inappropriate moments.

“Now you do one,” she said and passed it back. He thought for a minute. Typed: Forgets to buy socks. Sometimes tries to match a black with a blue.

She read what he’d written and said, “So what? I don’t care about that.”

“All right then. You put down a negative thing.”

She grabbed the device and typed: Pushy.

She shoved it back.

He picked it up and typed: Ran from own wedding. Bad emotional risk?

“That’s not fair,” she said reading the words. “If anyone was going to put that on the list, it should have been me.”

“Why didn’t you? It was hanging there in the atmosphere.”

“Because that doesn’t matter. It’s over. In the past.”

She went to erase his last entry but he stopped her. “Let’s leave it in there for now.” He glanced up. “Um, maybe we should add a few positives to this list.”

“I’m really hungry. Could we eat first?”

He sighed. “All right.”

She called down and, as she’d told Peter, was instantly assured that dinner would be sent up along with a bottle of wine personally selected by Jacob Hill.

“We call this roof service,” she said, when one of the room service waiters arrived with a serving table.

No tasting menu tonight. Instead, Jacob had sent up a simple salad with organic greens and lobster ravioli. The wine was cold and crisp, and chosen by him from his native California.

“You know, I think I could live at this hotel,” Peter said, as he raised his glass to hers in a silent toast.

“I know,” she agreed. “I have the greatest job in the world. I spend a lot of my life here.”

“So,” he said, settling back in his chair, looking gorgeous and vaguely mysterious in the candlelight. “Tell me the story of your life,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. Tried to read his expression. “You know the story of my life,” she said. “I’ve known you for years.”

“Pretend that we met for the first time last night. Let’s get to know each other.”

“But that’s silly.” She saw him open his mouth and
raised her hand to forestall him. She knew what he was going to say. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Anything he wants.”

He nodded, obviously pleased she’d guessed he was going to spout his favorite line of the weekend.

“Fine. My life story.” She glanced at him and paused. How would she organize and display the facts of her life for this man if she’d just met him? What would she say? She tried to imagine he was a guy she was dating, some acquaintance of an acquaintance who’d recently moved to New York.

“I’m from Oregon originally,” she began. “I was pretty good at school but not the best, a reasonable athlete, but no star. My dad’s a grocery store manager, and my mother stayed home to raise us. They split up a few years ago and my mom now works for a cancer research agency. She’s a fund-raiser.”

“Is that who you inherited your PR talent from?” Peter asked, as though he’d never known these facts. She opened her mouth to answer and realized that no one had ever asked her that question before, including Peter.

“I don’t know.” She thought of her mother, so capable, maybe a little bossy and absolutely manic about how to host a dinner party. She grinned. “I guess I must have. My mother did most of her event planning as a hobby, but I’m telling you, Jacob Hill isn’t better organized in the kitchen than my mom. If she cooks for a dinner party, she starts a week ahead. I’m not kidding. If dinner’s on Saturday, she’ll have most of the food prepared and frozen by Tuesday.”

He laughed.

“No. It’s true. She’ll scour her place top to bottom on Thursday, lay the table on Friday, and by Saturday all she has to do is thaw the food and get dressed. I guess
I do take after her. Well, I don’t freeze dinner party food ahead, of course, but I like to have everything perfect.”

He sipped his wine and watched her. She had his entire attention. It was nice. “You’re a long way from Oregon.”

“I decided to come out east for college, mostly to get away, I guess. See something new. I met Piper at college, you know. We’ve been friends ever since. To tell you the truth, she wasted a lot of time at college. Not me, though. I loved it. I was born for public relations.”

“What made you move to New York?” he asked. Like anyone would. As if he didn’t know.

She toyed with a leaf of endive. Then put down her fork. “I was going to get married,” she said. “It didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry for him,” Peter said, as though referring to a stranger. “But happy for me.”

This was getting too weird. She sent him a brief glare. “Anyway, after I didn’t end up getting married, I moved to Manhattan, got a job with a PR firm and started working my ass off. Piper hired me when she opened Hush. Like I said, it’s the greatest job. Part of my responsibility is to see and be seen around town. I live a fun, single life in the greatest city in the world. What could be better?”

“What do you think you’d be doing right now if you’d married that guy in college?”

She put her chin in her hand and thought about it. Not something she’d done too much before since she wasn’t big on dwelling on the past. “I don’t know. He lived out of the country for a few years. If I’d married him, I probably would have lived in Hong Kong and Europe, too. Or maybe he would have got a job stateside and I’d have ended up with the same career path. Who knows?”

“Have you ever wondered if maybe it wasn’t the man who was wrong, but the timing?”

“Peter, please. I do not want to go back there again.”

He looked as frustrated as she felt. Why did he keep torturing her with their past?

“All right. If you won’t talk about the past, then let’s get back to our possible future.” He drew out his PalmPilot again.

“I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s silly with you sitting right here.”

“You can’t leave a man with a list of negatives about his character and not one single positive thing. And you in public relations.”

She bit back a smile. He sounded a little huffy. “I don’t know.”

“Just a few positives? Please?”

She held out her hand. With a cocky grin he handed the device over.

The curser blinked as she tried to come up with something positive about Peter that wouldn’t end up making her sound like she still cared. She typed, watching the words come up in pink.

He read, “Good kisser.” Winked at her. “All right. Let me do one.” He typed and passed.

She laughed. He’d written Great in bed.

She typed Healthy Ego. Passed it over. Thank goodness they’d turned this into something fun and frivolous.

He made an entry and passed her the Palm.

There was a smile already on her face as she imagined what other boastful comment he’d come up with, but the smile froze when she read, Loves you.

She stared at the stupid pink words and fought an urge to turf his personal organizer over the balcony. She
might have if she wasn’t afraid it would hit somebody far below.

“You don’t love me,” she cried. “You never did.”

She leapt to her feet, not caring any longer about hiding her hurt, and ran.

He caught her before she got to the roof exit. “I did love you. I do.” He gripped her shoulders but she wouldn’t look at him. She turned her head, blinking furiously.

“Please don’t go. Please let me love you.”

“Don’t say those words.” She turned to him, fierce and proud. “Don’t say them.”

“All right.” He was trembling. She could feel it in his arms and for a second she wondered what it would be like to let herself go the way she used to, to believe in him so completely, to be so sure they’d be together forever.

To give her heart as easily as she gave her body.

“All right,” he said again, “Just please, let’s have this night together.”

She glared at him. “And you don’t love me.”

He stared down at her for a long moment and then he said, “I don’t love you.”

He kissed her slowly, sweetly, running his hands down her back and pulling her tight against him. “I don’t love the way your body fits against mine so perfectly.”

He turned her so her back was to the wall. “I don’t love the way your breasts feel in my hand,” he said, fanning his fingers across her nipples until they ached to be touched properly.

“I don’t love the way I know you so well, I can almost read your mind,” he said, slipping the buttons from her midnight blue silk dress. His voice grew husky and she heard herself panting as desire tangled with emotions old and new in a fiery mix.

Proving how well he did know her, he reached for her breasts and, pushing down the silky cups of her bra, played with them in his hands until she was moaning. He kissed her feverishly. “I don’t love the way you kiss me, or the taste of your nipples against my tongue,” he said harshly, dropping his head to put his mouth at her breast.

“Oh,” she cried, digging her fingers into his hair, holding him against her breasts while he licked and sucked at her. He scraped his teeth lightly over an engorged tip and powerful sensations shot straight to her core.

“I don’t love the way the moonlight looks on your breasts,” he said, baring her to the pale light that washed over the rooftop, making her skin appear milky white.

She was desperate for him, and she let him know by clawing at his shirt, anxious to get to his skin.

When she’d bared his chest and belly, he pulled her against him so their torsos rubbed back and forth.

He fumbled with his pants, and she felt his erection spring up against her belly. She whimpered with need. There was so much powerful emotion swirling around them that it seemed to channel into the one area where they had no controversy. Maybe they couldn’t communicate verbally, but their bodies were dying to share with each other.

She kissed him feverishly, tasting wine and a hint of lobster, feeling his frustration even as she was certain he tasted hers. She nipped at his lower lip, let her hands clutch greedily at his hips.

He dragged her panties off and then hoisted her up, pinning her against the wall even as she wrapped her legs around him.

“And I don’t love the first moment I enter you,” he
said, “when I feel like everything I am and everything I’ll ever be is right here.”

He thrust hard and smooth, driving into her so she felt possessed and there was nothing she wanted more right at this moment. He took her hard and she reveled in it. His words were crazy, passionate, and if she wouldn’t let herself believe in him again, she could respond to his lovemaking with abandon.