The Look-Alike Bride (Crimson Romance) (11 page)

Guilt rebuilt her determination, but she was finding it more and more difficult to draw upon guilt when she considered Zara’s feelings for Adam.

What about her own feelings, she asked herself. Plus, she had realized the moment she first met Adam in the woods that he had never so much as kissed Zara.

Why now?
she asked herself. For whatever reason, Adam had suddenly decided to pursue Zara. What had she done to cause it? Or had Adam just decided he had some free time on his hands, and Zara was available?

This had to stop. She stared at Zara’s secure kitchen phone and tried to will the caller into being a wrong number.

She knew it wasn’t, not at ten o’clock in the evening. How had she gotten herself into this position? And all within three days of meeting Adam. That really cemented her guilt into something that felt like a lump of lead in her throat.

The phone shrilled again.

If it was Adam, he would probably come knocking on her door if she didn’t answer. She grabbed for the receiver.

“Hello.” She bit out the word and hoped he’d think he caught her in the shower.

“Hello, angel.” Adam ignored her bad temper. “I wanted to make sure you felt safe. Has anybody been spying on you tonight?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “I kept having the feeling that eyes were looking at me, and sure enough, when I opened the curtain and looked out, there were millions of little eyes, all looking down at me.”

“Were you, by any chance, looking toward the lake?” he asked, chuckling. “The frogs—”

“I was looking at the sky,” she interrupted. “And I should warn you that any hints on your part of any paranoia on my part will be regarded with extreme hostility.”

There was a brief silence, while Adam digested the idea that she might regard the stars in the night sky, or perhaps the fireflies in the trees, as eyes spying on her.

“Why don’t you open the door and look outside right now?” he said at last. “Tell me if you see anything or anyone looking at you.”

“Adam, I am not going to open that door at this hour. Butch and I are thinking about our beds.” Too late, she remembered that mentioning a bed to Adam was probably a bad idea.

“I’m worried about you,” Adam said. “I want to know if anything is out there, okay?”

“Oh, all right. But I’ll have to put the phone down. Hold on, while I go look.”

She wished she had her own cell, but it remained in her Houston apartment. For some reason, Zara had insisted on that, but Leonie had taken the precaution of recording a message about being on vacation and out of cell range before she left. That was not good, because if anyone called her about a job, she couldn’t return the call immediately, not to mention the loneliness of being out of touch with her friends.

Since Zara had put out the tale that she was turning off her cell for the duration of her vacation, and no one other than the agency and their parents knew Zara’s cabin landline number, Leonie didn’t have to worry about fielding Zara’s callers.

Since meeting Adam, Leonie hadn’t had time to feel lonely, and that wasn’t good either.

Moreover, Adam had Zara’s landline number. She wondered how he had managed to get it.

Shaking her head, she laid the receiver on the kitchen table and headed across the big living area to the front door. She used the peephole Zara had installed and saw nothing, so she cautiously unlocked the door, peered out and barely bit back a screech.

Adam stood to the side just out of the peephole viewing range, watching her with his cell phone in his hand.

“Well?” he asked, grinning at her. “What do you see?” He came toward her. “A mother ship full of aliens, looking down on you?”

Annoyance overcame the surge of joy she felt at first sight of him. “I see a man getting a door slammed in his face.”

He moved so fast, she wasn’t quite sure how he covered the distance, even though she never took her eyes off him. The next thing she knew, he had inserted the toe of his shoe in the door. She closed the door on his foot.

“Now, angel, at least you can say you were right. There was someone out here watching you.” He never moved, even when she set her heel on his toes.

Butch let out a sharp bark, as if to remind her that Adam had called her angel against her expressed wishes. Leonie hoarded her anger, knowing she was going to need every morsel of backbone to win this small battle.

“Am I going to have to sic my dog on you?” She glared pointedly down at the battered deck shoe poking over her threshold. “Kindly remove your foot so I can close my door. Butch and I want to go to bed.”

“Good. So do I. With you.” He watched her with intent green eyes, on the lookout for any sign of weakening on her part.

Leonie sucked in her breath. Somehow, she hadn’t expected this blatant proposition so soon. In fact, she’d hoped to avoid it by avoiding him.

“It’s too soon.” She opted for the truth. Even if she hadn’t been masquerading as Zara, she still didn’t feel comfortable starting an affair with a man she’d known barely three days.

Did she? How long did one need to know a man in order to have a fling?

“We hardly know each other,” she added defiantly.

“On the contrary, I knew the day I met you that I wanted you.” He clicked off his cell phone and slid it into his trousers pocket. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

How had she let this happen? If only she’d already been in bed and had refused to get up and open the door.

She sighed and struggled to think while still holding the door half-shut on his foot. “Adam, it’s too soon for us to talk about going to bed together.”

“Is it?” He studied her furiously heating face, smiling slightly. “On what particular day this week would you like to resume this discussion?”

“This week?” She blinked. “That’s a typical masculine assumption. What’s wrong with a month or two?”

She ought not to be weakening so fast, but she was. The problem, she decided, was that he looked altogether too male and too assured of the eventual outcome.

“I thought I was being unusually lenient,” he said, grinning. “Besides, we don’t have a month. Haven’t you heard? Time moves very fast when you’re on vacation.”

“So it does.” She gave him her best glower and wondered if the real problem wasn’t her own surprising feminine desires. “That’s what I mean. What happened to the days when people got to know each other before they went to bed together?”

“It’s probably something to do with the millennium.” He shrugged and eased more of his shoe inside the door. “Everything changed with the century.”

Memories of Roddy Hillister suddenly filled her mind. She’d thought she knew Roddy well, and look what happened there. Even though they became lovers, he switched his interest to Zara the minute she came to pay Leonie a visit.

It was ironic, Leonie thought with some bitterness. Adam thought he was getting to know the real Zara Daniel, and he wanted to have a tryst with her. Instead, he was stuck with Zara’s younger sister. What would he say if he discovered the truth?

Leonie shuddered, imagining the scene. Her only hope was to cut off contact with Adam on some pretext and let Zara take up where she had left off with him.

She just wished Adam would quit looking at her like that. He was really getting to her. Where would her heart be if she let herself believe he cared about
her
, Leonie Daniel?

She drew in her breath on a gasp. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe she didn’t even care which of them he wanted, so long as she could have him for a little while.

It couldn’t be, she declared inwardly. She couldn’t possibly be in love with a man she’d known for such a short time, and under false pretenses to boot.

But what if she were?

• • •

Adam wondered what he’d said. Leonie turned so pale, even her lips lost their natural pink color. He thought back over his words and could find nothing unduly alarming.

Maybe she was a virgin. But surely not even virgins these days regarded a man’s natural desire for sex as something so frightening it scared them silly.

He took swift advantage of her sudden stillness and slipped the rest of his body through the crack in the door. Butch, standing alertly behind Leonie, regarded him balefully a moment then went back to his rug before the hearth.

Leonie blinked at him as if wondering belatedly how he’d gotten inside.

“Look at it this way,” Adam said. “I’m attracted to you, and I intend to do something about it. If you’re not equally attracted to me, then say so now and I’ll go away.”

He waited a moment, even though he knew he wasn’t mistaken in thinking Leonie was attracted to him. When she said nothing, he knew he was on the right track as far as physical attraction went.

“If you don’t think we know each other well enough, we can remedy that,” he added. “There’s no one I’d rather spend more time with than you.”

Rather than display a countenance uplifted by this thought, Leonie looked downright horrified. “Actually, I don’t have a lot of time—I mean, I’ve brought some work from the office that I really need to catch up on, and—”

“You aren’t going to quit your rock-painting class, are you?” He hoped his reasonable tone masked his feelings. “I’m just now getting the hang of it. We can have lunch together afterwards.”

She shut her mouth firmly on what sounded like the beginning of another lame excuse and looked him in the eye. “Are you always this determined to get your own way?”

“Always.” He relaxed. “After all, there aren’t many things these days that are worth the trouble, so when I find something that is, I go all out to get it.”

“That must be true, because I’d have sworn you thought rock painting was definitely not on your list of worthwhile projects.” Leonie turned and stalked back to the kitchen to jam the telephone receiver back into its cradle, then folded her arms across her breasts and watched him with a suspicious blue gaze. “How did you manage to get the hang of it when you never even touched your rock?”

“Watching you, angel. Watching you.” He couldn’t help laughing at her alarmed expression when he took a step toward her. “What’s the matter? Am I scaring you?”

“You don’t scare me.” She moved steadily sideways, away from his gradual approach. “Stop
stalking
me, Adam.”

He halted. “Sorry, angel. I just want to kiss you.”

The battle raging inside her was clearly visible on her expressive face. Adam wondered if she knew he could read both the desire and the consternation she felt upon hearing that simple declaration. Probably not, or she’d replace her naturalness with the mask Zara usually wore. Zara’s emotions never showed unless she wanted them to. That was part of what made her a good agent.

Leonie, on the other hand, had never learned how to mask her emotions. She probably wasn’t even sure what she was feeling.

At this realization, Adam’s craving for her increased tenfold. He took another half step toward her.

“After all,” he added softly, “I didn’t get so much as a goodnight kiss earlier.”

Leonie gave him another of those suspicious looks that acted like an aphrodisiac on his libido. “I nixed the goodnight kiss because you got way too much kissing on that park bench.”

“That wasn’t a goodnight kiss,” he countered and moved toward her again. “That was a park-bench kiss. There’s all the difference in the world.”

She watched him warily and even edged a little closer to Butch. That didn’t bother Adam. He registered a reminder to pick up some particularly succulent dog snacks the next morning and begin cultivating the collie’s friendship. Leonie Daniel was definitely a “love me, love my dog” woman, he reminded himself.

“I don’t—” She jolted as if struck by lightning when he reached her and gently cupped her shoulders in his hands. “How do you do that?”

He drew her closer, all too conscious of the wild clamor in his body. “Do what, angel?”

“All of a sudden you’re here, and a minute ago, you were there.” She gestured toward the center of the living area, distracted, and stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting my goodnight kiss,” he said.

Adam rubbed his hands over her shoulders, gently massaging away the tension while he studied her face a moment. She exuded supreme mistrust, but whether she mistrusted herself or him, he had no idea.

He was right about her eyes. The blue of her irises was deeper and warmer than Zara’s, and her lashes were longer and thicker. He loved the way her brows grew in a feathery arch, and the lovely curve of her upper lip. In fact, there was nothing about her he didn’t like, other than this extreme wariness of him and his motives.

Before he kissed her, he cradled her jaw in both his hands and drew one finger gently across her mouth. She parted her lips and sucked in her breath audibly.

That was all the encouragement he needed. Adam wrapped both arms around her hard, and kissed her with all the exuberance he felt inside. An instant later, for the second time in his life, he lost control of everything.

Leonie’s arms went around his neck, and he felt her fingernails in his hair. At the same time, she moved so far into his embrace, he could feel the pounding of her heart against his.

The next thing he knew, they were on the sofa together, still kissing madly. He presumed she had maneuvered them there, because he sure couldn’t remember doing it.

Her mouth was sweet and wild. She kissed him and let her hands slide over him, as if she had never been so close to a man before and felt driven to explore him.

Adam didn’t mind being explored. In fact, he thought it was a shame she might finally learn enough about him and not want to examine him so minutely any more. He could really enjoy serving as a woman’s learning experience.

So long as the woman was Leonie Daniel. And so long as she didn’t go off and try to learn more with some other man.

“You’re mine,” he said, when that thought hit.

Her eyes opened slightly and glittered with blue fire. “Yes.”

Even his blood sang with victory. He seized control of the moment and turned her so that they lay side by side on the sofa before the fireplace.

On the hearth rug, Butch lifted his noble head and took note of the situation but appeared to realize there was nothing he could do about it. He returned to his nap.