Sweets to the Sweet (9 page)

“I’ve waited a lifetime for you.”

He didn’t give her a chance to answer. He whispered how he felt inside her, how beautiful he found the soft sounds escaping her lips, how special he found her fire. For a moment, she felt a terrible uncertainty. She didn’t know lovemaking as Owen knew it. She needed to give back the richness, the soaring pleasure, the sweet, fierce yearning, but she didn’t know how.

She didn’t know the rhythm. He caught her. She felt lost and he found her. She felt frantic that it would never end, and then the richness of treasure when he made the whole world explode in passion-drenched softness.

Sunlight danced on Owen’s closed eyelids. Laura’s gaze slid sleepily over his night beard, the sleepy shadows that softened his eyes, the rumpled spray of dark hair on his forehead. Only when his hand stroked lazily up and down her spine did she realize he was awake.

“You should still be sleeping,” he scolded groggily.

“I couldn’t.”

She was too busy remembering the night before. The first time they’d made love had been all fierce, sharp images, the second all soft, lazy strokes, like silk in firelight.

Wonder was still in her eyes. Desire was a heady champagne, but she hadn’t known that until last night. She’d barely slept, didn’t want to sleep. Her fingers strayed to his lips, stroking, soft. “You’re a beautiful lover.”

“So are you, love.”

“No. I felt that I was just…starting. Trying to know what limbs went where, what to do…”

“All the limbs fit. Did you notice?” His teeth nuzzled her fingers, and then stopped, his eyes searching hers. “Are you sore?”

“No.”

“You’re going to have to open your eyes and look at me if you want me to believe that. You’re not suddenly turning modest on me?”

She opened her eyes. His were clear gray, and far too perceptive this early in the morning. “I’m not sore. And modesty wouldn’t have a chance for survival around you.”

He grinned. “I never could see the point of modesty when nudity is so much fun.” A long finger traced the line of her jaw before settling under her chin, tilting her face for him. His kiss was a tender stamp of possession. When he lifted his head, his look was a second stamp. “My beautiful wanton lover,” he murmured. “Laura?”

“Hmm?”

He said softly, “I’m sorry—for you—that he was such a fool. But not for me. If he hadn’t been part of your life, you might not be with me now. I want you with me. In this bed. In my, life. Laura?”

She touched his cheek.

“I’m sorry if I was too rough the first time,” he said quietly.

“You weren’t.”

“I was. And then twice, so soon after the baby…” He shook his head. “The first time, I don’t know what happened. I knew you were nervous, and I had every intention of going slow and easy…but then I touched you. And that sparked a small explosion by spontaneous combustion.” He touched her nose. “That was partly your doing, love. Because I just didn’t believe you wanted anything…contrived. And I didn’t want to give you time to think—”

“You certainly didn’t give me any time to think,” she assured him teasingly.

He gave her a wry look. “You seemed in as much of a hurry as I was.”

“I was.”

“But still I never meant to be rough. To do anything that might have frightened you…”

“You were never too rough,” she denied.

“Yes.”

“You weren’t.”

“I was. And you’re only arguing because you’re dying to leap out of this bed. Some people can lie in bed until noon, but neither of us seems to have cultivated that vice.”

She chuckled. “I’ve always been an instant wake-up type.”

“Me, too. And we’re going into the city today, remember? That is, if you still want to see how chocolates are made?”

Her eyes blinked wide open then. “Where’s the baby? Where are my clothes? And for heaven’s sake, where’s the coffee?”

Owen burst out laughing and slid out of bed. “And here I thought you loved me for my body.”

“That, too.” She laughingly bounced away from the hands that reached for her.

She was trying to break the spell of intimacy too fast, bounding out of bed, snatching up her clothes, fleeing for the shower. Part of that was a natural bubble of excitement over the day ahead, some of it was her desire to be ready before the baby woke up. Owen knew that, but also guessed that some of her scurrying around arose from her need to put her clothes on and rebuild those safe walls between them.

He caught up with her in the hall. His body pinned hers securely against the bathroom door, and his fingers tilted up her chin. There weren’t going to be any more walls. His mouth pressed down on hers, cool, smooth and possessive.

He didn’t raise his head until her pulse had slowed down and the turquoise in her eyes looked like jewels. “I love you,” he said gruffly, and then leaned back, patted her fanny and turned on a winsome smile. “Let’s
go,
woman. I can hardly wait for you to see the business. Think you can control yourself around several hundred pounds of chocolate?”

She let out a breath that was decidedly ragged. “Now, you listen, Reesling. I may have a slight craving for chocolates, but I assure you I’m not going to pounce on them. I’ll be a perfect lady.”

“God, I hope not.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Owen burst out laughing.

Her eyes searched his. He’d changed her life the night before. She seemed to have nothing of equal value to give him, and she felt at a loss.

He wanted her, she knew that. He wanted the passionate side of her, and heaven knew he’d proved that. She was conscious that their lovemaking had been one-sided, that he’d done all the giving and asked nothing from her.

She loved him. Enough to want more for him. Enough to question herself honestly as to whether she was woman enough to give him what he needed in a mate.

“Laura?” Owen could have cursed himself, seeing the haunted look in her eyes. What had he said?

She smiled, forcing it. “I was going to ask you to shower with me, but you blew it,” she told him sadly. “It’s really a shame you teased me about those chocolates…”

“I take it back.”

“You think I’m a glutton,” she accused.

He paused. “In certain areas…”

She whipped a towel from the rack, and draped it over his head. “That does it.” She nearly had the door closed, but his hand snuck in.

She learned a lot about teasing in the shower. In fact, Owen complained bitterly when she stepped out and reached for a towel, but Mari was awake and crying by then.

And Laura had some thinking to do.

“Then the pods are cracked open with a machete, and inside, there are from twenty to forty cacao beans. They’re white at that time; after they’ve fermented for a few days, they turn brown. That’s when they develop the taste of chocolate.” With his hands jammed in the pockets of a white lab coat, Owen paused, an amused grin on his mouth as he watched Laura. “You know, since you asked the question, I assumed you were interested.”

“I am, I am.” But she couldn’t make herself turn her head away from the huge vats.

“After that, they’re bagged and shipped here, and then the real fun begins. The beans are put under heat and pressure to get a thick, dark paste called chocolate liquor. You’re listening?”

“I’m listening,” Laura assured him vaguely.

“Hard chocolate liquor is sold as baking chocolate. If you again put the liquor under pressure, you extract cocoa butter, which is the basis for white chocolate. Mix the fatty cocoa butter with the chocolate liquor, and you have the basis for dark chocolate candy. And it just snowed in the jungles of Brazil.”

“Amazing,” Laura breathed.

“It snows rainbows down there.”

“Does it?”

Owen burst out laughing, swinging an arm around Laura. He leaned closer to whisper, “Go ahead. Stick your finger in. It’s obvious you’ve been longing to do that.”

Laura flicked a dreamy glance at Owen, but her eyes immediately returned to the vision in front of her. The bright, long room was filled with huge vats of chocolate. In each, rollers were slowly, hypnotically stirring the lakes of liquid brown. Owen called the stirring process “conching.” Laura called it heaven.

The smell invaded every corner of the room, every pore and sensory nerve ending in her skin. She could taste it in the air. “What I’d really like,” she said slowly, “is to take off all my clothes and dive in there. Float in it. Swim in it… I used to dream about that as a kid. Diving into a sea of chocolate.”

Owen’s arms slipped around her waist from behind; his lips nuzzled behind her ear. “Lady, don’t do that to me,” he said huskily. “Now all I can see in my head is this vision of a naked Laura, drenched in chocolate. Turquoise eyes. Gorgeous legs. All of her edible…”

When he turned her, gray eyes met sea-clear blue-green, and held. For a moment, Laura could feel his tongue lapping the imaginary chocolate off, inch by inch. There was no Mari, waiting in his sister’s office a few steps away. There was no outside world, where an insistent drizzle had slowed their drive into the city. There was just…Owen, his lips in her hair, the lush pleasure of feeling wanted, and the fragile wonder of knowing that this man not only wanted but demanded every ounce of sensuality she could summon.

She rested her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder, absorbing the strength and warmth of him. A vague malaise had gradually intruded on her conscience, and now it refused to disappear. He’d given everything the night before. He’d given everything since the day they met. What exactly did she have to offer him in return?

Not woman enough.
The words had haunted her for a long time. Owen deserved—and expected—a lover as honest and uninhibited as he was. An assertive mate who gave equally. And Laura had been carrying around a lot of emotional baggage that she had to sort through before she felt she had anything to offer him.

Breaking away from him, she feigned a scolding look. “You promised me a visit to the tasting room.”

“
Testing
room,” he corrected with a chuckle, but his eyes narrowed as she bolted for the door. Her abrupt withdrawal, her sudden uneasy silences that morning… “Laura?”

She turned with a smile.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, beyond a severe chocoholic attack.”

“
That
we can solve,” he said dryly, but didn’t believe her.

By some miracle, she didn’t drool as they toured the kitchens, but restraint was difficult once they reached the decorating area. Owen’s sister Susan joined them with the baby. Tall, with a happy smile and a cap of jet-black curls, Susan was as enthusiastic about chocolate as Laura was, and her laughter pealed through the room as she whisked Laura first to one table, then to another.

The women who worked with the candies were dressed in spotless white lab coats. At one table, a worker was dipping cherries in liquid chocolate. At another, several women were squeezing chocolate from pastry guns to produce delicate swirls and rosettes on top of the candies. Laura saw the molds for the whimsical white-chocolate unicorns Owen had given her, and for the impossibly delicate cameo. Chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate-covered jelly beans, caramels… Her hands formed fists in her pockets.

Owen finally leaned toward her, whispering, “Honey, you just weren’t cut out to be a martyr. You’re also panting in public. Go ahead. That’s what they’re there for, to taste.”

“You don’t understand,” Laura said glumly. “Once I start, I might not be able to stop.”

“I noticed that last night.” He chuckled when a soft rose colored her face, and raised a chocolate-covered cherry to her lips.

Her lips parted helplessly before the morsel of chocolate. It tasted so disgracefully delicious that she couldn’t help closing her eyes for a second. When she opened them, Owen’s smile had died. He was just looking at her. Not touching.

“Feel the flow of phenylethylamine?” he whispered.

“Pardon?”

“I told you chocolate contained an aphrodisiac. Remember?”

“Yes.” Why couldn’t she look away from him?

His voice had turned low, gravelly. “Don’t you dare try to deny it, Laura. It’s far too late for that, for both of us.”

“Owen?” Susan hung up the wall phone on the far side of the room and strode toward them. “Gary’s been trying to track you down. How about if I take Laura and the baby through packaging and meet you in your office for lunch?”

Owen’s eyes searched Laura’s, but then lifted, all masked control, to his sister’s. “A half hour then?”

Susan shook her head, watching Owen stride from the room, and then grinned at Laura. “At
last
I’ve got you alone, you poor woman.”

Laura glanced at Owen’s sister in surprise.

“I’ve been elected the family inquisitor,” Susan said cheerfully. “A role I enjoy, actually, since I’ve always been the biggest gossip in the group. And believe me, the phone lines have been busy from here to Toronto to San Francisco. Suddenly, Owen isn’t bellowing around here like the tyrant we all know him to be. Suddenly, he hasn’t got his mind on business thirty hours of the day.” Susan pushed open the door and led Laura through. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing to our oldest brother, but you’re about to be awarded the Reesling’s private Nobel Peace Prize. Your baby’s been an angel,” she added.

“Thank you.” Laura, a little bewildered by this news, heard Mari instantly let out a petulant cry.

“Oops! Should I have knocked on wood before I said that?” Susan whispered.

Laura took the baby and said quietly, “I don’t actually have any influence over Owen, you know.”

Susan shot her a thoughtful look and then changed the subject. “Do you really want to see packaging?”

“What I would really like to do is change Mari’s diaper!”

“Come on. We can use Owen’s office.”

Owen’s inner sanctum was a workaholic’s dream. Thick rust carpet and paneling absorbed noise; his U-shaped desk was large enough for numerous ongoing projects; and behind it, a computer screen glowed green with the day’s action in cocoa futures.
Not
a room where a baby’s diaper was normally changed, and then Mari wanted lunch.

Laura settled with the baby in a rust-colored chair in the corner; Susan took the opposite one, kicked off one shoe, and curled a leg under her. Frank and easygoing, she started the conversation again. “We knew there was a woman even before we had your name, you know. The whole family’s been taking bets on what you’d look like, what you’d be like. Owen’s always been as secretive as a cat. Worms every little escapade out of the rest of us, but never tells us about himself.”

“He wouldn’t,” Laura commented, and again started to say that Susan was misinterpreting her relationship with Owen, but his sister was blithely going on.

“He doesn’t open up easily…which is why we’ve all despaired that he’d ever marry. A few women have given him a good chase, but he always slipped the noose.” Susan popped a chocolate into her mouth and shook her head. “I’ve gained five pounds since I’ve been around here full-time. I wish the family manufactured some nice nonfattening product like
shoes.
”

Laura chuckled. “I’m a terrible chocoholic.”

“Me, too, but not Owen. Owen has a disgusting amount of willpower. Have you noticed?”

“I’ve noticed,” Laura said wryly. “He told me you and Gary had just joined the business?”

Susan nodded. “Gary’s got a master’s in marketing; he’s the brain. I never pretended to be, but Owen bullied me into getting a degree in home economics and chemistry. All I really want to do is work on the recipes. And the patents.” She made a face. “Owen insists that’s part of my area. Both the recipes and the manufacturing process are patented, but the legal part of the business is strictly boring. And my older brother is a terrible tyrant.”

“So he’s confessed.”

“Has he?” Susan fingered her hair, a gesture Laura already noticed was habitual. “It’s partly true, actually—but not nearly as much as we tease him about. To watch him in action is like watching a symphony conductor—he gives the signals, the rest of us follow, and suddenly there’s a smooth flowing business—like music.” Susan swung her leg down, slipped on her shoe and stood up. “He should be coming back. I’ll ask Marna if she ordered lunch—you met our office manager? Marna’s an angel, puts up with all of us.”

“I met her.”

“You won’t hurt him, will you?”

The words seemed to come from nowhere. Susan was standing at the phone, poised and cool, but there was suddenly a hint of strain on her even features. “He’d kill me for talking to you,” she admitted quietly.

“Susan—” But there was no stopping her.

“He needs someone, Laura. Someone who can stand up to him. Someone who can teach him to open up. Someone who’s willing to give as much as he does. The thing is, he’s always been the one man we could count on. He bandaged our skinned knees and listened to our growing-up problems and served as best man for every wedding. I’ve always been afraid he would fall into a relationship where he did all the giving.” She smiled suddenly, but not with her eyes. “You’d think he never needed anything from anyone, wouldn’t you? A very self-sufficient man, our brother—only I’ve never thought that. He’s damned easy to depend on, but I’d like to believe he’ll fall in love with woman
he
can depend on, too.”

Rain came down in torrents as they were driving home. Mari fell into a fitful nap in her infant seat. Laura was quiet.

Too quiet. Owen stole repeated glances at her pensive profile. “Everything okay?” he asked lightly.

She smiled absently, leaning her head back against the soft leather headrest. “Everything’s fine with me, but you’re in a lot of hot water, Reesling.”

He chuckled. “For any particular reason?”

“You led me to believe the business ran like a well-oiled clock. Good Lord. Between the problems of shipping perishables to market fluctuations to calls from Brazil, there’s a disaster a minute there.”

“Which is what makes it fun.”

“Which means you’ve managed Grand Central Station alone for too many years,” she accused firmly. “Superman should have had it so easy.”

“I coached everyone before you got there to make me look good.”

She gave him a scolding look. “Considering they all call you a tyrant behind your back, it’s a miracle you don’t have a constant turnover.”

“I beat people who threaten to leave me,” he explained, and added quietly, “Could we change the subject?”

“To what?”

“Marriage.”

She turned to face him, a catch in her throat. She’d guessed it was coming, but not at this particular moment.

“I don’t want to drive you to your place. I want to drive you to my home. I want you with me. Night and day.” At a red light, his eyes seared on hers. He hadn’t meant to ask her, not here and now. All day he’d felt her gradually withdrawing from him, and the words had just popped out. Now he couldn’t seem to stop them. “I love you, Laura. And you know I love your daughter. If you don’t feel quite as strongly as I do, I think you will—I know you care. After last night—”

“I more than care,” she whispered.

“Then say yes.”

Until they reached her drive, she was silent. Owen had made her believe in rainbows again…but their whole relationship had been unbalanced. He had done all the giving; she had been a taker. He’d barged into her life, helped her through the roughest weeks she’d ever lived through, stormed her defenses and turned her into sexual Silly Putty. She loved him. But she’d given him nothing. Everything Susan had said only drilled home her own feelings.
Don’t hurt him, will you…

“Laura…” He stopped the car in her drive and switched off the key. He was so tense inside he could barely breathe. “Look at me.”

“I’ll do more than look at you.” A distinctly feminine smile barely curved her lips. Ignoring all the difficulties of gearshifts and bucket seats, she raised her arms and tugged him closer. She hugged with love, hating anything that caused him to look so tense and wary, needing to feel him close. “I
love
you,” she said fervently. “Don’t doubt it, Owen, but I need time.”

“You don’t need time.” She smelled like hyacinths and rain, just as she had on the day he met her. His mouth searched for and found hers. “You don’t need time to know how you feel when you’re with me.”

“I know,” she agreed huskily, “exactly how I feel when I’m with you.”

“Then say yes.” His lips hovered over hers, prepared to apply persuasion.

“A few weeks—” His mouth homed in again, wooing her with texture and softness and taste. Last night spun in front of her closed eyes, the silky darkness when she’d waited for him, the fear and anxiety, the reluctance to release control, the burning excitement when she had. She broke free, whispered desperately, “All right. A week—” His hand pushed up her blouse, claimed her taut breast. “You’re not being fair—” His tongue drove inside her parted lips, intimately claiming the sweet darkness of her mouth. How could fire be so soft? And more memories danced through her mind, of the feel of the man inside her, of the explosion of a thousand fantasies when the reality of equally wanting and being wanted was so much richer. Equally wanting and being wanted. Equally. There was no love without equal give and take. She broke free again. “Three days, Owen. You have to give me three days. And the baby’s crying.”