Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (4 page)

"A woman's duty is in the home," he'd said so many times she couldn't believe she'd not recognized the futility of fighting
his closed mind earlier.

She should have at least caught on when she'd graduated from college with honors and he'd said, "Wasn't there one man in
the whole architectural department you could have married?"

She'd thought he merely needed educating.
  So she'd begged her way into his firm and accepted every menial task he'd assigned her, or rather he'd had other architects in the firm assign her. She'd bitten the bullet, telling herself he didn't want to show favoritism, that he was testing her--making her stronger. She thought she would be the woman to prove to her father that women could do it all.

By the time Harry
Dawson joined the firm, she'd started to notice that drafts
men
with less experience and lesser schooling were getting promoted ahead of her. Over Manhattan Iced Teas, she and Harry had commiserated over her father's lack of support of her and Harry's less than stellar design skills. The next thing she knew, they were in bed together and Dad was inviting Harry to Sunday dinners.

She finally had her father's attention
. The day Harry produced a diamond engagement ring he couldn't possibly afford on his salary, it had taken very little investigation on her part to uncover why Harry had gotten a substantial raise, and why he was being lauded as the firm's newest rising star. The design Harry had presented to her father, the design that landed the firm a large government contract had been
hers. He’d stolen her work.

But Harry's betrayal was minimal next to her father's.
When she'd presented him with the evidence of Harry's double-dealing, the least she'd expected her father to do was fire Harry. Instead, dear old dad chastised her for undermining her future husband, pointing out Harry had people skills. He had connections. So, what was the big deal if she helped her husband-to-be with his designs now and then?

What was the big deal?

The big deal was that daddy-dearest saw her only as a means to bring a
son
-in-law into the family business when he should have been grooming his daughter to take over. That's when she ended her engagement to Harry and resigned from the firm, refusing to comply with her father's twenty-first century version of an arranged marriage.

Just her luck the man she'd hired to renovate her first project
seemed to have the same outdated inclinations about family and marriage as her father. A man with forever etched all over his baby blues. A man with an outdated bias was no man for her. Besides, she wasn't looking for forever with any man.

The gall of Roman St. John pound
ing on her door when she was trying to unwind from the catastrophe for which he was to blame. And for what reason? To demand she give him a time when she'd be done so he could cook his steak.

"Inconsiderate, self-serving
--" Opening the drain, she climbed out of the tub. There’d be no more relaxing, thanks to Roman St, John. Never mind that her stomach growled with the ferocity of a lioness five days from her last meal.

She grabbed up her clothes and the smell of smoke slapped her in the face.
She threw the garments back on the floor and scanned the small room for something else to wear. There was nothing…unless she wanted to don one of St. John’s sweaty t-shirts.

"Men!
They expect us to be at their beck and call, to look our best and smile pretty. To make sure their shirts are pressed and their three-minute eggs are cooked to perfection! But can even one of them have the forethought to set out a robe for a woman?"

#

She entered the kitchen in a puff of steam and a pair of towels, one wrapped around her hair and the other around her torso, barely covering the most intimate parts of Tess's personal terrain.

"The least you could have done was pu
t a robe in the bathroom for me," she said none-too politely.

Roman
blinked at the enticing swell of breasts visible above the edge of a maroon towel and blankly repeated, "Robe?"

"You can't expect me to put my smoky clothes back on?"

Dumbly, he shook his head. It wasn't like he'd never seen a woman in a towel before. He was a man of some experience, the sort of experience he'd recently put on hold as a courtesy to the future Mrs. St. John, whomever she might be. But, he'd never seen Tess Abbot in a towel.

Or experienced such mixed feelings
at the same time. On one level, he was being chewed out and resented it. On another, he wanted her, harpy mouth and all.

He tore his gaze
away from her breasts and looked at her mouth in an attempt to break the spell. Bad choice. He wanted to press his lips to hers, if only to shut her up.

Wrong.
He wanted to possess those lush lips, and plunder her mouth with his tongue. To tear the towel from her body, swipe the dishes off the table, and take her right there amidst scattered utensils and spilled salad.

"A robe, St. John?" she
prompted, hands on hips.

How could such terse words make those full, bow-shaped lips look
so inviting? It had to be abstinence that had him lusting after the bane of his existence, and the sweetly compact breasts and forever legs within reach. He shouldn't have looked down. The woman had legs that climbed from ten red-painted toenails to eternity. And eternity was where he wanted to be right now.

He groaned and headed for his bedroom, his voice oddly hoarse in his ears.
"I'll find you something to wear."

Roman breezed past her, ordering, "Keep an eye on the steak."

"You expect me to go outside dressed like this?" Tess turned after him, flipping an edge of the towel wrapped around her torso.

He paused in the doorway of his bedroom and looked back at her, a perplexed
expression on his face…until his eyes followed the flick of the towel against her thigh. Something more carnal flickered across the baby blues then. Oh yeah, her contractor was definitely the typical lusting male. Men were so predictable.

"Steak's under the broiler," he said through
clenched teeth before disappearing into the bedroom.

She gave
him credit for not leering as she stepped over to the stove and peeked inside the oven. Two slabs of beef sizzled under the broiler. So, he didn't exactly
barbecue
. Another plus?

She plucked a morsel from the frying pan on top of the stove and popped it into her mouth.
As she rolled the hot potato around her tongue to cool it, she studied the table set with two place settings. Forks on the left, knives and spoons on the right. So, he wasn't a total barbarian, either.

She chewed, her mouth flooding with flavors.
She plucked another tidbit from the pan, blew on it this time before sampling. There was more than just salt and pepper and potato teasing her taste buds. So, the man could cook, too.

Wanting more,
she scooped another piece from the frying pan, scorching her fingers this time and dropping the potato slice. Reflexively, she stuck her burnt fingers into her mouth just as he emerged from his bedroom.

She was sucking on her fingers.
Tess Abbot, razor-tongued temptress, was standing in his kitchen in a skimpy towel sucking on her fingers. Whatever had he done in life to deserve this kind of punishment?

Roman fixed
his gaze on her eyes, determined not to notice how her full lips looked suctioned around two of her fingers--how they rounded in an almost surprised "oh" shape that didn't quite match the devilment in her eyes. He stopped just out of reach of the woman…a man could be tempted only so far…and dangled a t-shirt and sweat-shorts with a drawstring waistband in front of her.

"I don't have a robe,
" he said.

One corner of those finger-sucking lips
lifted.

"Try these," he offered,
hoping she didn't hear the pleading behind his words. Being how immune to him she seemed to be, he wasn't keen on her seeing how weak his libido was.

She removed her fingers fr
om her mouth, cocked her head to one side, and smiled a crooked, little smile. Oh, she knew exactly what effect she had him. He drew a bolstering breath and waited for the inevitable smart-alecky come-back. But she said nothing. She just tugged the shorts and shirt from his fingers and sauntered off down the hall, her hips swaying beneath the thin terrycloth towel. Damn but that woman had moves that could cause a ten-car pile-up.

She glanced back at him just then, one hand on the
bathroom doorframe, and called, "You cook a mean potato, St. John."

"Am I to take that as a compliment?"

"Take it however you like," she said through puckered lips. Then she was gone, the bathroom door closed between them.

Take it however he liked, huh?
Well, what he liked might not be quite what she had in mind. But then, he wasn't thinking about the potatoes. He was thinking about that towel slipping off her high, rounded breasts and sliding down her forever long legs to pool on the floor around her perfectly painted toenails. He was thinking about her stepping into his shorts, and about his t-shirt sliding down over her head, her shoulders, and her--

H
e smelled smoke.

Tess had bathed.
She clearly wasn't wearing her smoky clothes. The scent of smoke couldn't possibly have come from her. Maybe it was him.

But, before he could sniff his shirtsleeve, a
curl of smoke drifted past his nose from the direction of the stove. With a curse, he pulled the steak charring beneath a blistering broiler from the oven. What more could go wrong for him today?

#

Tess closed the upstairs bedroom door behind her, leaned back against it, and smoothed Roman's t-shirt down over her full stomach. They'd eaten without talking until she couldn't bear the silence. So, she'd complimented him again on his potatoes.

"It's the sweet onions and minced garlic that give them a bite," he'd replied.

Sweet onions? Minced garlic? She was only vaguely aware of there being a variety of onions as she'd rarely joined her mother and sisters in the kitchen. The man not only knew about onions, but he
minced
garlic as well. A domesticated man. Her father would not approve of that.

But d
id she?

She tugged the neck of Roman's
t-shirt up to her nose and inhaled the tangy aroma of seared beef. He'd taken the worst burnt piece of sirloin and given her the choicest piece. Trying to impress her? Or was he just being a good host?

T
he t-shirt he'd given her to wear wasn't one of the thin, blue undershirts he normally wore under his plaid shirts, either. Instead he'd given her a sturdier, navy blue version with a whimsical figure of a carpenter stamped on the front. She'd have called such an act chivalrous, were she a romantic woman.

But she wasn't.

Tess slid the ribbed neckband of the t-shirt across her lips and contemplated the man to whom the shirt belonged, a man who did not own a robe. Why did that make her smile?

Because men in robes tended to look stuffy and Roman St. John was anything but stuffy.
Besides, he had far too wonderful a chest as defined by those thin blue tees to hide beneath a robe.

Or a pajama top.

As if what he wore or didn't wear to bed should matter to her. He was not for her, plain and simple.

Then why
was she relishing the differences between him and her father? Why couldn't she stop searching for his scent among the navy blue threads of the t-shirt? Why was she contemplating how best to find out what Roman St. John wore to bed…if he wore anything at all?

Her gaze fixed on the double bed
tucked under the peak of the roof. Stomach full, bubble bath fresh, and feeling quite toasty in Roman's over-sized t-shirt, it was only natural that her mind wander to the one area where she remained yet unsated.

And to be sated, all she had to do
was descend the steps to the bedroom directly beneath hers. Yep. Bat the eyelashes a few times and give him a come-hither look or two, and her reluctant host would be at her mercy.

Yeah, right.
His eyes could have bugged out of head and his tongue rolled on the floor when he'd seen her in that towel like some lusting cartoon wolf. She doubted Roman would welcome any invitation from her. She'd tweaked his ego far too often. Never mind she'd done it to keep him at bay. A woman who intended never to marry hadn't any business tempting a man looking for a wife. Business being the operative word here. And the only business that should be on her mind?

H
ow she was going to repair The Castle in time to sell it before that balloon payment at the end of the year. Six months wasn't a lot of time, especially when she had no idea how much damage had been done to The Castle.

Yawning
, she shucked the bulky shorts and kicked them aside. The bottom of the t-shirt tumbled halfway down her thighs, its caress reminding her of Roman's broad hands with their callused fingers--fingers whose firm yet unbruising grip had earlier on the porch kept her upright. How nice it would be to enlist his help with the repairs.