Sun-Kissed (6 page)

And her knuckles, the back of her hand, brushed elusively against his jaw and the edge of his mouth, but never really touched his lips at all.

He lowered their hands. But not his gaze. Those blue eyes just
held
hers. Watched her as he turned them, as he danced them around the floor, neatly negotiating the other couples without ever brushing against them and without ever looking away from her.

I promised not to talk. But I’m thinking.

Anne was the one who had to look away. And she
hated
being the one to look away, the one to lower her gaze from a challenge. She pretended she was checking to make sure the wedding guests were all being taken care of.

But he kept
thinking.
It was probably why his hand was so aggressively
hot
like that, reaching into all these places his hand wasn’t supposed to go. She could feel his thoughts just
pushing
down between her legs, cupping her breasts, invading her panties, doing things his thoughts should
never
have the nerve to do. His thigh pressed against hers a moment on the next turn, and now his damn pushy thoughts were thrusting a thigh up between her legs, pulling her in to ride on it,
spreading
her legs for him.

She wanted to slap him, or better yet hit him, knee him as she’d threatened, fight him to protect herself from the invasion without her permission, and yet he hadn’t said one damn word. He hadn’t made one inappropriate touch. He hadn’t even flicked that intense blue gaze of his down over her breasts in a lewd way.

For all she really knew, his thoughts could be analyzing the latest stock reports by now, and everything else was in her own head.

She tried thinking about the latest stock reports, too. Numbers blurred in her brain, columns dissolving in a wash of black and white, and she gasped with the sense of vertigo that left in her.

Maybe she needed to buy a new house, make it an even two dozen. Or redecorate one of the ones she had. She grasped onto that, calming, and ideas flooded her brain instantly, driving out his persistent
thinking.
Yes. Maybe she would do something very small. That would be different. Take on that “reduce” movement and show how small spaces could be made workable. Something quiet and private, in some gentle, intimate landscape, low, old mountains, maybe. Maybe she would have the house built from repurposed material. Five hundred square feet, no more; she needed to show she could handle the space challenge better than anyone else.

She’d need to use her outdoor area well, with a space that size. A porch or a patio, a swing for two, canvas loungers. And inside, something delicate to separate the bed from the living area, without reducing the sense of space. It would be a white bed, a queen or a double, maybe, big enough for two people who were comfortable with each other. This fragile white fabric, more a suggestion of fabric than anything else, would drape from a centerpiece above it, like old mosquito netting maybe, and the couple could just reach out and brush fingers across it to release it, let it float down and turn the bed into their little room for two.

The sheets would be old Egyptian cotton, washed so many times there was nothing left in them but softness and comfort, and the two people would stretch out on those sheets and—

Her body flowed into a dip, a hand firm under her waist, her body tucked in safe against hardness, blue eyes holding hers.

Lowering her at just the angle she might be lowered onto a bed.

Sure and strong that arm, suspending her just on the edge of something, her position so entirely precarious and entirely safe. She stared up at him, her heart beating hard.

The song had ended. He straightened her effortlessly, and she took a breath to step back, to say thank you, to mention she needed to check on the caterer, as notes to a new song started.

That firm, strong hand tucked her right back up against him. He set her hand onto his other shoulder. And then he wrapped that arm around her, too, snuggling her in close. His freed hand came to rest on her nape.

Big hand, covering all of it, pulling her head close to his chest. It was like being in a spa. Between the warm firm hand on her nape and the warm firm hand on her lower back, her whole spine wanted to dissolve. Just…sink into him. Let him carry her. Just be weight against weight, body against body.

Think about that bed. That quiet, private bed in the little space for two with those sheets that had been slept on so many times…

His hand rubbed over her nape, gentle but firm.
Here you are. I’ve got you.

Her neck unstiffened before she could think, her head sinking against his chest. It was a slow dance, one of the love songs Jaime and Dom had chosen. Couples shifted around them on the dance floor, some leaving before they could be forced into too much intimacy, but more filling the floor, all those couples who said,
Even we can dance a slow dance.
Wives tugging on husbands’ hands.
Dance with me.

God, this was nice.

Terrifying how nice it was. She didn’t
do
this. Trust in another person to hold her, keep her.

And it was…sexy. That rubbing of bodies, that strength and heat of his, friction, friction, friction, slow and steady and heating her more and more. Until her breasts hurt and her sex felt clutching and greedy and soft, and her nape, where he kept that gentle, rubbing hold of it, just sent shivers over and over down her spine. Little, resistance-destroying vibrations that spread out through her body.

Oh, hell. Maybe she should just
go
with it. As Mack said, what did they have to lose?

Nothing. Right at that moment, it didn’t seem possible that they could ever lose anything. Certainly not twenty years of friendship. Not because of something as hot and sweet as this.

Her lips softened apart, and her head actually started, just started, to turn into his chest so she could kiss it when she realized and took a breath, trying to control herself. But her lips felt funny. As if this static electricity had built up in them from all the rubbing and not been allowed that touch to release.

She curled her lips in so that she could lick them, subtly, without ever showing she had.

Mack’s other hand rubbed firm and gentle lower down her spine and—
cupped her ass.

She started.

He squeezed. Shh. Let your ass do what I tell it to.

And damned if she didn’t want to
do
it. Let him handle her ass however he liked.

Her butt even felt all tight and flexing and eager, as if she might like some of those things he liked, too.

Cade and Sylvain whirled by, at what seemed a pretty fast pace for a slow dance, heading in the direction Anne had last seen Jaime and Dom. Sylvain was laughing at his wife, but as they passed, those chocolate eyes of his met Anne’s, and he winked at her.

Oh, brother.

“Mack,” she hissed.

Mack made a mildly impatient, amused sound and she realized he was looking over her shoulder. He tried not to let her turn, but she managed to twist enough and spotted Cade elbowing Jaime. Jaime looked immediately toward her father, and then her eyes widened to match Cade’s. Anne couldn’t quite figure out their expressions, and maybe they couldn’t figure out what they wanted to feel, either. Astonishment? Glee? Amusement? Confusion? None of the expressions seemed very negative, although Anne found several facets of them aggravating. What was amusing or confusing, exactly? Sylvain just raised a puzzled eyebrow at his wife, when she said something to him, and shrugged one easy shoulder.

Like there was nothing at all unusual in his world at a fifty-three-year-old woman getting her ass grabbed by a man in the middle of the dance floor.

There might be something to be said for the French.

“Sorry,” Mack said to her. “How did you manage to raise a so much better-mannered child?”

That made Anne scan the garden for Kurt, of course. He was standing stock still over there by the cakes, staring at them, or more particularly at Mack’s hand on her butt, both his eyebrows up. Granted, his expression was a lot harder to read, but probably because his reactions were even more complex than Mack’s daughters.

And what business was it of any of theirs anyway? Last she’d looked,
they
were getting on with their lives in the ways they chose.

She shrugged, that close to telling Mack,
Go for it,
that she had to bite her teeth closed in astonishment on the G. She was
not
supposed to be giving Mack any go-ahead signs for this madness.

She
hadn’t drunk anything more than a glass, after all. She was supposed to be keeping their heads for them.

“How long does this song last exactly?” Because she was starting to
feel
drunk. All soft and…smooshy. Holdable, squeezable. And she didn’t do those things. She just didn’t.

Ever.

Do those things.

“If the band is smart about where their biggest tip is likely to come from, a long time,” Mack said.

And indeed, the band drew out a long crooning of “loooove” and cycled around again.

“Haven’t they already sung that verse?”

Mack shrugged. “Apparently, they’re smart.”

“Is that band helping you sexually harass me?”

He snorted. “I’d have to have power over you to do that, Anne. You know what? Maybe we should go back to me just thinking, not talking. Talking seems to give you something to fight.”

She should probably twist free and walk off.

But she didn’t.

Because she felt too soft and smooshy and holdable. And what if her bones didn’t work? What if they just folded up under her the second she tried to stand without support, all floppy, the way they felt?

Also, how thin was her skirt? Was it at all possible a damp spot could show through if this rubbing kept up? She’d never, ever had to worry about that kind of question before.

“Maybe I should dump the ice in one of those champagne buckets on your head.
Or whatever part of your anatomy needs it.
” Again.

“Shhhh,” Mack whispered, long and low, so that the sound just shivered everywhere. He pressed
her
finger to his mouth this time. “I’m thinking.” And he
bit
it, a firm, tiny pinch of teeth.

Fire raced through her, an unfamiliar burning she had no idea how to put out. “Malcolm Anthony Corey, you are messing with the wrong person.”
Yes, dare him. Dare him.
She knew exactly how Mack Corey responded to dares. To being told he couldn’t do something.

“Anne. Shut up and dance.”

Chapter 4

Anne peeked through the roses, not really spying, no, just…checking up on things. Making sure everything was all right.

Rich, sweet, lemony scent surrounded her. She’d planted the beautiful, pink climber rose with her own hands, to replace a dying one that Julie had planted. It and many of the other roses in her gardens and the Corey ones were in the middle of their spectacular second burst of blooms for September. Anne had helped Julie design these gardens long ago, and given that Mack didn’t pay much attention to house and garden design, had had to keep tinkering with and maintaining them ever since. First because somebody had to step in and help the family get through those initial years without Julie and then just because…well, that was what she did
.
Design spaces. Make the world perfect.

And she’d had time, because somehow, the periods she spent at this house compared to any of the others kept stretching, and so did Mack’s. Especially after the girls went away to college, and his house in Corey grew so empty, Mack came here more and more, and somehow they just always stretched their stays at the same time, shifting many aspects of their operations here so they could linger longer. It was when Mack wasn’t there, though, that Anne usually came over and worked on his gardens. She didn’t know why, but when she didn’t have those beach walks with him, something about working in his gardens instead of her own eased her skin.

The Corey beach house had a nice, large, dramatic layout to work with: that line of great French doors that opened the whole house to the sea and sun when the weather was right, and that were filled with glowing, golden promise when you came toward them from the sea at night; the garden that was not too grandiose but that lent itself to a landscape of cozy spots and adventurous, fairytale corners for the girls, and even an old, shared platform for pirate adventures that had a ladder reaching up to it from both yards.

Cade stood under it now, a hand on the ladder as if she was half thinking about climbing up into it despite her sea-green, matron-of-honor finery and high heels, but she turned back to Sylvain instead. He bent his black head to her and lifted his hand to her face, and Anne’s mouth softened a little, this strange mix of happiness and wistfulness, as she watched them. She would have liked to have a daughter. Maybe, somewhere, she would have liked to have a man like Sylvain Marquis lifting a tender hand to her cheek.

“Happy?” Sylvain asked his wife, in that low, warm voice of his that made Anne think of chocolate with a French accent. One of Paris’s top chocolatiers—
the
top chocolatier, he preferred to claim—he had a gorgeous poet look going on that made him a media darling. She needed to get him on her show. She’d bet he would make a nice boost to her post-prison-comeback ratings. Her viewers would go wild.

Cade nodded, that smile on her face caught by the moonlight and the lights Anne had had woven through the garden. Her light brown hair had been coerced into an elegant updo for her role as matron of honor, including elegant strands twining gently down by her face. Sylvain clearly didn’t like it—his long, pianist’s fingers would start to touch the sculpted hair, hover, then curl back toward his palms and find another target. Her cheekbone, her eyebrow, a rub over the join of her neck and shoulder that made Cade’s shoulder and neck flex a little in pleasure.

Anne suspected that Sylvain’s reluctance to touch her hairdo was less out of respect for its elegance than because only a heavy coating of hairspray had gotten Cade’s silky fine, straight hair to stay up. Cade’s first ballet recital after her mother’s death, Anne had been the one to take over Julie’s role and glue Cade’s hair to her head to last the performance. Well, someone had to fly into Corey and help out in the wake of that car wreck. The family had fallen to pieces. Anne knew how to pick up pieces.