Some Like It Hot (36 page)

She reached up and wiped sweat off his forehead with her fingertips and said, “Then maybe I should have. It would probably have saved me a lot of pain and heartache the past twelve months.”

“There’s something I need to say. Something you should know.”

Something inside Cat panicked. If he was going to tell her that he was sorry but he didn’t love her, she didn’t want to hear it right now. “Please, let’s not talk anymore. Could we just savor the moment? We can talk in the morning. I want tonight for action and not talking.”

He stared at her, and a smile creased his lips. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” she said, pushing him back and crawling over him. “I want to be on top this time.”

Cat forced herself awake the next morning, finding the spot beside her in bed empty. She smiled, remembering vividly what she and Rory had done through most of the night.

She turned over on her back and stared at the ceiling. Making love with Rory was always a unique experience, and she was transformed into a sex kitten in bed. No, last night she had been more of a tiger.

She remembered the exact moment she had confessed that she loved him, and even now, when she wasn’t sure how he felt about her, she had no regrets in doing so. He had told her he loved her that night they broke up, but in anger she had told him where he should take his love and shove it. She had been a total fool.

Shifting in bed, she wondered where Rory had gone, and then she climbed out of bed and slipped into his oversize T-shirt that was thrown over a chair. Now that her confession of love was out of the way, she wanted to find him and tell him the rest of everything, including the fact that this weekend had been nothing but a setup, but one that had been well worth it.

She heard a sound outside and went to the window and glanced out. She saw Rory. He was sitting on the steps and staring into the distance. She sighed just from watching him. He was handsome, and the way the sun’s rays slanted across his features made him even more striking. A shadow darkened his chin, denoting that he needed a shave, which made him look even sexier.

She turned when she heard her cell phone ringing and rushed across the room to pick it up. “Yes?”

“He knew.”

Cat lifted her brow at hearing Lisa’s voice. “Who knew?”

“Rory. He knew everything.”

Cat took a deep breath, trying to grasp just what Lisa was telling her, hoping what her friend was claiming wasn’t true. “What are you saying, Lisa?”

“I’m saying that Rory knew you were coming to the cabin. Peyton and Rory. They set us up like we set them up.”

Cat shook her head. “But how could they have known?”

“That day in our office when you declared that you were placing Rory on your wish list, he heard you. He had come to the office to let me know Peyton was parked outside waiting on me. So Rory knew all about your plans to get him back…and he intended to teach you a lesson in the process.”

“How do you know this?” Cat asked, slowly remembering that Rory hadn’t really acted surprised to see her when she’d arrived at the cabin on Friday afternoon.

“Peyton let something slip out about you being at the cabin this weekend. I questioned him as to how he knew when no one had known of your plans but me and Mel. So I made him talk, which wasn’t easy, and although he wouldn’t tell me everything, he said that Rory knew about the wish list and your plan for the weekend and intended to teach you a lesson.”

“Teach me a lesson?” she repeated. She closed her eyes.
Was this weekend about him teaching her a lesson and nothing more?

Cat was silent as she walked back to the window and looked out. Rory was still sitting in that same spot. “Thanks, Lisa, for letting me know what’s going on.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m leaving just as soon as I can pack my stuff, that’s what I plan to do. There’s no reason for me to stay any longer, since Rory has succeeded in getting out of me what he wanted.”

“Which was?”

“A confession that I loved him so he could throw it back in my face, use it against me, and hurt me the same way that I hurt him.”

“You don’t know that for certain, Cat. It may not be that way at all.”

“Yes, it is that way, Lisa. Otherwise, he would have told me the truth in the beginning.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Look, I’ll talk to you later.” Without giving Lisa a chance to say anything else, she disconnected the call.

“Where are you going?”

Cat didn’t pause in what she was doing. She continued packing as she hissed angry words over her shoulder. “I’m leaving so I hope you had plenty of fun using me the way you did.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Cat turned to glare at him, full of anger, fire, and humiliation. “I know everything, Rory. I know what you know. I also know that my showing up here wasn’t a surprise to you and that you wanted to teach me a lesson for what I did last year. Do you deny it?”

He crossed his hands over his chest and returned her glare. “No, I don’t deny it.”

His words hit her like a blow. “You bastard. I hope you enjoyed getting your pound of flesh.”

“I did. Every gorgeous inch of it. But what I really enjoyed was getting you to admit that you’re in love with me.”

“Why? So you can throw it in my face and use my love to hurt me the same way I hurt you last year?”

“No, I did it so I could be absolutely sure that my feelings for you were reciprocated and that you wanted me back for the right reason.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard you that day, Cat. I heard you declare that you needed a man. Not me, but ‘a man.’ Then you proceeded to place me on this damn wish list. I didn’t know whether you were doing so because you realized that you loved me or if you were just in need of a sexual fix.”

Cat raised both eyebrows. “How could you not know that I loved you?”

“And how could I know it? You’ve never told me, and after the way we split, did you actually think I would assume any such thing?” he demanded.

She stared at him for a long moment, and then slowly shook her head. No, after all the things she’d said that night, there was no way he would have assumed that. “So you concocted this plan of revenge?”

“Revenge had nothing to do with this weekend, Cat. After Peyton and I figured what you and Lisa were up to, I decided to see how far you would go. I needed to know the truth before risking my heart to you again.”

“But you claimed you only wanted a no strings attached, no expectations affair between us.”

“Yes, and I said that to see what your reaction would be to my offer. If the only thing on your mind was sex, then you would have gone for it. But if you loved me, and I mean truly loved me, there was no way you would have been satisfied with sharing that kind of relationship with me.”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Last night when you admitted that you loved me, I was prepared to tell you the truth—and I started to, but you stopped me and said we would talk in the morning.”

She remembered. At the time she had wanted him again and hadn’t wanted to spend time talking. Beside, she hadn’t been certain what he had wanted to say. “You could have made me listen.”

“No, I could not.”

She frowned. No, he could not. She had wanted him in a bad way last night, and once she had crawled on top of him, her mind had been on only one thing: riding him.

He took a few steps to stand in front of her. “I love you, Cat. I never stopped loving you. But I had to be sure that you loved me as well. What I told you the day you arrived was the truth. My life has been miserable this past year, but I couldn’t settle back into the type of relationship that we had before. My love for you demanded more, something beyond that. I’d known the moment I laid eyes on you at Peyton and Lisa’s wedding that I wanted a future with you—and that love, marriage, and babies would be part of the deal.”

He reached out and took her hand in his. “I knew about your goals, your dreams, and at no time did I ever want to take them away from you. I only wanted to enhance them. I knew my timing was off that night and that you weren’t ready and that I shouldn’t have tried pushing you into anything. But I never thought you would send me away and end things between us like you did. Your rejection hurt. Surely you can understand my not wanting to rush into a situation for you to hurt me all over again.”

She nodded. She had hurt him, which was something she hadn’t meant to do, but the thought of giving up everything she’d worked for scared her. It had taken her twelve months to realize loving Rory didn’t mean giving up anything, but was all about gaining everything.

“And something else you need to know,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What?”

“There was never a Shari. She was someone I made up to save my pride. I didn’t want you to know that I couldn’t get over you, that I was still pining for you, that I was still so deeply in love with you that some days I couldn’t even think straight.”

She sighed deeply before saying, “And neither could I. I had been so sure that once you saw things my way you would come back. And when you didn’t, it forced me to realize just what I had lost, and just how much you meant to me.”

“Was it so hard to love me?” he asked, his lips curving in a wry smile.

She shook her head. “No, in fact, it was too easy. You’re wonderful, interesting, handsome, a perfect bed partner. I just didn’t think I was ready for what you wanted at the time.”

“And now?”

Her gaze remained steadfast on his when she answered by saying, “Being apart from you made me realize just how much you meant to me, Rory. It’s always good having goals in life, but I had to find out the hard way that that’s not the only thing a person should have in life. There is more to life than accomplishing major achievements, but I have to admit that when I added you to my wish list, I considered getting you to fall back in love with me again as my all-time major goal because my life would be nothing without you in it. And now if you were to ask me to share my life with you, you would definitely get a different answer from the one I gave you before.”

He smiled. “Okay, let’s just see about that.”

With her hand still firmly clasped in his, he got down on a bended knee and looked up at her. Cat blinked when she realized just what he was doing. She watched as he pulled a small white box out of his jacket pocket.

“Cathleen Janelle McAlister, I love you, so very much. Will you make me a very happy man and marry me? Will you be my partner for life, the mother of my children, the joy of my life? Forever?”

Cat couldn’t help the tears that began streaming down her face. “Oh, Rory.”

He smiled up at her, his love shining in his eyes. “Sorry, but this is a yes-or-no question.”

She chuckled through her tears. “Then my answer is definitely yes. I would be honored to marry you.”

After placing the ring on her finger, he stood and pulled her into his arms. “I bought this ring for you eighteen months ago, but even after that night, I refused to believe that you wouldn’t eventually wear it one day. I had refused to give up on you, Cat.”

“But you never came around.”

“No, I was giving you the distance I thought you needed. But things between us were far from over—trust me.”

She smiled at her ring before taking a step forward and moving her hand up the back of his neck. “I do trust you. And I also love you.”

“Say it again.”

She met his intense stare. “I’ll say it as often as you like. I love you, Rory.”

“And I love you, Cat.”

“And I love you double, triple, a thousand times over.”

He swept her off her feet into his arms and quickly headed toward the bed, needing to have her close, as close as two people could get. And together they would get just what they most wanted and needed: extreme satisfaction.

Six Months Later

Four hours after being presented as man and wife at their wedding, Rory and Cat arrived at their honeymoon cabin. As a wedding gift, his parents had surprised them and had the cabin restored. Rory didn’t care how the inside of the place looked, just so long as it had a bed.

Three months before the wedding, his Cat had declared her body off-limits. She wanted their wedding night to be like the first time for them, and no degree of persuasiveness on his part could change her mind. So here he was on his wedding day, horny as sin.

He carried her from the car and over the threshold into the house. When he kicked the door shut and proceeded to carry her straight to the bedroom, Cat looked over her shoulder and asked, “What about our luggage?”

He grinned down at her. “You won’t be needing anything. For the next week or so, I’m going to like the look of you in bare skin.”

She chuckled. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes, sweetheart, that’s a fact.”

He helped her remove her dress, bra, panties, and everything else that stood in the way of him getting what he wanted. He then quickly began removing his own clothes.

She watched him with interest as she stretched out on the bed. “Kind of in a hurry, aren’t you?”

“If only you knew.”

“But I’m about to find out, right?”

He smiled at her. “Right.”

And then he joined her on the bed, and with a small sigh, she went into his arms. He kissed her the way he had wanted to kiss her after the minister had proclaimed them man and wife, but had he kissed her this way then, there was no telling what it would have led to.

After he ended the kiss, she smiled up at him thoughtfully. “Did I ever tell you that I have this sinfully sexy man on my wish list?”

He skimmed his thumb over his wife’s tight nipple. Then, lowering his head, he took his tongue and started licking it. “Do you?”

“Yes,” she managed to say in a breathless whisper. “He’s pretty high in my list of priorities.”

“Is he worth it?”

When he placed his hands between her legs and began stroking her there, she purred. “Oh, I think so. In fact, I got a bad case of the hots for him.”

“Does he know it?”

“He will before the night is over. And he did promise me that he was going to teach me all the ways to satisfy a man. He is Mr. Satisfaction, and from what I understand, his wife will become Mrs. Satisfaction,” she said in a ragged breath when he stuck his finger inside her, stroking her deeper.

“Umm, sounds like the ultimate in gratification,” he said, leaning up to kiss her lips.

“No holds barred, from what I understand.”

“And I’m sure they were made for each other. The ideal couple,” he said, easing his body over hers.

“They are and will always be. Forever.”

And as Rory slid into his wife’s body and felt her inner muscles clutch him tight, he stared down at her, knowing he was where he belonged. He then whispered huskily, “Yes, forever.”