Slow Hands (12 page)

The trail blazed by his mouth and tongue was hot, wet, and then cold as he moved on to the skin above her breasts. Clare luxuriated in the forgotten feelings of being held and touched. Desired and aroused. Of losing control. Her fingers craved the texture of his skin, the ripple of muscle beneath her touch.

Impatiently, Sam unbuttoned her shirt, pushing aside the fabric. Clare caught her breath as Sam paused, tantalizing her with promises as his forefinger dipped beneath the lace edge of her bra to tease her nipple. When he flicked the hardened nub, Clare bit her tongue to hold back a moan. The pulse between her legs began to escalate to a throb. Conscious choice ceased to exist. The dance began in earnest.

“Sam—” The ragged sound was warning, plea, and satisfied sigh.

“Shh,” Sam whispered against her neck. He kissed her lips, her eyes, and the shell of her ear as he began to strip her. A lazy smile tugged at his mouth as he felt her kick off her shoes. The shirt was disposed of quickly enough, but he lingered over the bra. The dark rose of her areolas was visible through the sheer lace. Each nipple jutted upward, straining the cloth. Slowly, he fingered the front clasp, sliding his hand over the creamy mounds before releasing the catch.

“Samuel!” William’s voice was faint, but without a doubt drawing closer. “Miss Clare!”

The words dashed ice water on Clare, and she struggled free of Sam’s intoxicating hold. All she could say as she grabbed frantically for clothing was “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

Sam’s language was more colorful and varied.

“Samuel?” William tapped on the door, and Clare disappeared over the side of the bed despite Sam’s attempts to stop her.

Cursing again and snatching up the white polo shirt, Sam managed to look unruffled as the door swung wide. He tossed the shirt over his head and mumbled, “Yeah?”

William knitted his brow and looked curiously around the room. “Where’s Miss Clare?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders into his shirt. “Don’t know. Isn’t she downstairs?”

“Now, would I be asking you if she were?”

“She’s probably gone over to the carriage house,” Sam offered, purposely nonchalant.

“You don’t say?” William didn’t say anything more, but he stared with great interest at a spot on the floor beside the bed. Sam’s eyes closed briefly as he remembered the soft thud of Clare’s tennis shoes as they hit the Oriental rug. Recovering his composure, he knew better than to look down. Being caught wasn’t the same as admitting he was caught. And he had no intention of telling Clare, who crouched out of sight, that William had spotted her shoes.

“What do you want, William?” Sam tried to keep his voice even.

“Money. I got to the store before I realized I was going to have to stock the whole kitchen.”

Sam frowned and tucked in his shirt. “The household emergency fund is two
hundred
dollars, William. That buys a lot of food. We’re having one guest, not the Queen of England and her entourage!”

The butler raised his eyebrow, a subtle reminder that sarcasm wasn’t necessary. “Samuel, I don’t care if you
stock the kitchen or not, but don’t ask me to explain to Rebecca
why
we have company coming and no food.”

“She’s your daughter!”

“That’s why I won’t be doing the explaining.”

Since Rebecca’s tongue was every bit as sharp as William’s, Sam fished his wallet out of his pocket and silently handed several twenties to the older man. William’s eyes widened, once again riveted to the spot on the carpet that boasted Clare’s sneakers. Risking a glance from the corner of his eye, Sam watched as a feminine hand carefully pulled the last tennis shoe beneath the bed.

William nobly ignored the mysteriously disappearing shoes. “When you see Miss Clare, you tell her not to worry. I’m going to treat her right.”

“When I see her, I will tell her,” Sam agreed darkly, and jerked his head toward the door.

“I’m going now,” William said a little too loudly.

“Not soon enough,” Sam muttered under his breath, knowing that by then Clare had convinced herself yet again that losing control was her worst enemy. She’d never laugh about this fiasco, never see the humor in the situation.

William ambled toward the door and stopped halfway there. “I expect I’ll be gone for quite a while this time, what with buying the food and all.”

“Fine,” Sam gritted out between clenched teeth as he advanced on his butler with every intention of shoving him bodily out the door if necessary. Obviously spurred onward by the look in Sam’s face, William crossed the threshold a fraction of a second before the door banged shut behind him.

“Samuel.” Even through solid oak the older man’s voice was loud and strong.

Sam hung his head in defeat and pulled open the door a crack. “
What!
”

“I think we’ll put Miss Clare’s guest down at the end of the hall. In Pamela’s old room. That way the noise on the stairs at night won’t disturb her.”

“Whatever,” Sam agreed, and slammed the door again before William’s subtle observation registered in his consciousness.
That way the noise on the stairs at night won’t disturb her.
The impact of those words sent fear into Sam’s heart. William approved. William was matchmaking. Unraveling the threads that kept Clare wrapped tighter than a drum was going to be hard enough without William lending a hand.

“
Is he gone?
” The disembodied words floated toward him from beyond the bed.

“For the moment. But William’s like flypaper. Once he has a hold on you, he’s very hard to get rid of.”

Clare peered over the bed and swept the room with her gaze. Apparently satisfied, she plopped her shoes on the bed and elbowed her way to a standing position. Sam noted the shirt he’d worked so hard to remove was now securely buttoned and hugging the curves he should have been hugging. The thought irritated him as much as Clare’s nervous posture did.

“Thank heavens I remembered the shoes,” she said, gesturing lamely toward them. “You don’t think he saw them, do you?”

“No,” Sam lied. “Come here, Clare.”

She actually took a step toward him before sanity rescued her, pushed the panic button, and reminded her how close she’d come to losing control before. The man leaning so casually against the door represented everything she struggled to eliminate in her existence. He
didn’t care about control. He wanted anything and everything in life. He encouraged her
to want, to lose control.
And she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t. Bad things always happened to people who lost control.

The first time she could remember completely losing control, she’d told the people she loved most in the world to go away and never come back. And afterward, wanting her parents back had hurt too much. Wanting to be loved like Ellie was loved had hurt too much. Wanting to be anyone but poor Clare had hurt too much. When she finally stopped wanting and finally got control of her emotions, she stopped hurting. A hard lesson, but one she learned very well. A lesson she didn’t want to learn again.

No was a hard word to say to Sam, but she said it.

“Dammit, Clare. We’re adults. And contrary to what my butler thinks, this is my house. What we do to and for each other is none of William’s business. I intend to straighten that out first thing tomorrow.”

Startled, Clare said, “William has nothing to do with this.”

“Then come here,” coaxed Sam.

“No.” The refusal came easier this time, especially since she didn’t look in his direction.

“Hey,” Sam said softly as he pushed away from the door. “Look at me, McGuire. I’m not suggesting a quick tumble in the sheets and money for cab fare. I never have been very good at one-night stands.”

Clare lifted her chin and drilled him with as honest a gaze as she could muster. “Too bad. I’m not much good at anything else.”

Looking as if she’d just landed a solid blow to his midsection, Sam dropped the hand reaching for her back
to his side. She circled the bed and sat down to put on her shoes. “I need to get home and pack. I’d better make a list. I’ve got a million details to settle before tomorrow. Not the least of which is figuring out where everything is in this house. Ellie will never believe I live here if I don’t know where the silverware is.”

As he watched the efficient, list-making perfectionist sneak back into Clare’s personality, Sam managed to contain his anger. Barely. He’d never wanted to shake a woman in his life until then. But he wanted to shake Clare, shake some sense into her, make a connection. The minute he got close, she pulled in her emotions like a turtle pulled in its head and shut the flap. Why did she need the wall around her?

A better question would be why did he care? Why had he continued to push inside her defenses? Why hadn’t he gone looking for the right kind of woman to love? One that would have been capable of loving him back? Sam felt the blood drain from his face as he confronted the one fact he’d overlooked. He was falling in love with the woman who sat on the bed, knee to chin, tying her shoelace.

Spending two weeks with Clare had given him glimpses of the woman inside the tidy package—the woman vulnerable enough to trigger his protective instincts, sexy enough to plague his dreams, and complex enough to fascinate him. Not to mention clever enough to involve him in her scheme to fool Ellie. His neat little plan to settle down with a comfortable woman had fallen apart the moment Clare crossed her legs and challenged him to prove he could teach her anything. The hell of it was, if he didn’t teach her to want people in her life, he’d lose her. If he couldn’t teach her to lose control, and fast,
he was in for a lot of hard, lonely nights.
Patience
, he told himself. He needed patience.

“The everyday silverware is to the right of the sink,” he said as she tightened the last bow. “Company silver is in the butler’s pantry. But William will handle the table setting if you have dinner guests.”

Clare laughed suddenly. “Guests? Practically everyone I know will be under this roof. Whom would I invite?”

“Your boarder, of course.” Sam grinned and tried to convince himself that he could outlast Clare’s demons.

After wrestling a large suitcase onto Sam’s bed, Clare began to unpack. While she had made the trip to the condo to pick up her cat and her clothes, William had efficiently emptied the mahogany bureau. The clothes of Sam’s closet not moved to the carriage house had been relocated to an unused guest room, and Clare had no doubt that William had already changed the sheets.

William’s attention to detail had stripped the room of any physical reminders of Sam. So why did Sam’s presence still fill the room, pressing against her? Because when she’d arrived, Sam gave her one of those heart-stopping looks before deserting her in favor of the carriage house. That look had been both a threat and a promise. William, on the other hand, had been nothing but gracious, as though her stay would give him nothing but pleasure.

Clare groaned, realizing that Sam’s behavior sent the exact same message but with a completely different affect on her nerves. Methodically, Clare transferred her clothes to the bureau and sternly told herself to forget
him. Sam’s room was nothing more than a hotel room. The only difference was that Sam probably didn’t have stationery and a Bible in the nightstand drawer. She reached for the drawer handle and pulled, not really expecting anything, but irresistibly curious. What she found made her suck in her breath and sit down on the bed.

Why would a man who hadn’t made love in this room have condoms in the nightstand? And why should she be shocked? Or care? Either William had overlooked a few personal items, or Sam was making a subtle point.

Clare picked up one of the foil packets and knew William hadn’t forgotten anything. Sam had slipped them into the drawer. She had to close her eyes against the rush of sensation that spilled through her body. This was Sam’s way of telling her that he was impulsive but not reckless. His way of telling her that he wouldn’t ignore the chemistry between them and that she’d better be ready.

Heat seeped into her bones as she fought the memory of his thigh riding high between her legs as she arched and rubbed against him. Throwing the packet back into the drawer, Clare slammed it shut and paced the room. Good Lord, what was she going to do? He wouldn’t give up, and he wasn’t the kind of man who’d settle for pure and simple sex. If there was such a thing as pure and simple sex! At least not with Sam. Not the way he put his hands on her and turned the world upside down.

“
Meow.
”

Slick broke her train of thought as he leapt up onto the bed and fell over, rubbing his head along the pillows. Clare stared at him and envied his ability to make himself at home so easily.
No, don’t you dare envy that damn cat!
she cautioned herself.
You’ve got no business relaxing right now.
This was Sam’s house; she was only trespassing. So no relaxing. No ties. No emotional involvement. What she didn’t have, she couldn’t lose.

She believed in safe. She believed in secure. No risk. No hurt. Sam believed in rolling the dice and taking the chance. Not her. No sir.

By the time she’d finished unpacking, she had control of her emotions, and the clock read almost midnight. Every muscle in her body ached from the tension of fending off Sam. Her shoulders were impossibly knotted. Her head throbbed, and her conscience pinched her for planning an elaborate charade to fool Ellie. Wearily, she ran water in the old-fashioned claw-foot tub in the adjoining bathroom and then added foaming bath oil. After a day like today, she needed a good, long soak with no distractions. Returning to the bedroom, she pulled her white gown out from under her contented cat, who’d curled up on it the minute she laid it out, and grabbed her cosmetic bag.

“Clare?” Sam called from the hallway and knocked on the door. “I saw the light from the carriage house. It’s late. Anything wrong?”

Stunned, Clare glanced at the clock again and then at the window. Sam could see her room—
his room
—from the carriage house. He’d been watching? Crossing the room, Clare threw the gown over her shoulder and opened the door a crack. Sam leaned against the door facing, his shirt unbuttoned as though he’d thrown it on at the last minute. While his chest wasn’t completely bared, she could see the definition of his pectorals and the flat stomach that disappeared into the low-slung jeans.
Half-dressed. Hurriedly dressed.