Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (18 page)

"I have one where you come to my office." His voice sounded husky, but his eyes didn't leave hers. He cleared his throat. "It's late. The building's empty. And you walk in the door, unexpectedly and . . ." His hesitation let her heated imagination fill in details that gathered her blood, hot and heavy, in her breasts and loins. "And we make love on the couch. Long, slow, lingering love."

"I have one too," she murmured. "A fantasy." She didn't know where she got the bravery. Unless it was from him.

"Tell me."

"There's a boathouse where my parents live. They bought the house years ago to retire to. We used to go there for vacations, even when I was a girl." She was explaining too much, she knew, but she couldn't help it. She wasn't accustomed to this. "I've fantasized about making love in this tiny, private boathouse. It would be warm and dark, and so beautiful. But I never could see the man's face." Still, she'd known it would be the face of the man she'd love for all her life.

"Can you see the man's face now?"

He had needs, too. If she hadn't known it before, if he'd tried to hide it before, it was there between them now. Could she say no, and hurt him that way? Could she say yes, and hurt herself?

"I -" Paul's face swam before her in a shimmer of tears. "I think maybe I can."

Their lips met.

This time he wasn't rough. Or in a hurry, though she witnessed the cost of his patience in muscles that quivered and tendons gone tense. She would have spared him that, in fact tried to tempt him beyond it, rolling her hips in invitation. But he resisted, tempting her instead.

His mouth and hands and skin were a sensual abrasion, traveling lower and deeper across her sensitized skin. And in the end, she succumbed, falling first and fast as he found her moist warmth and brought there the beat they'd perfected before.

She fell a second time when he joined her, but this was slower and deeper, and all the more wonderful because she watched him, his face rapt and taut, follow her to the ascent, and then over.

They lay as they had collapsed, too exhausted, too sated to move. When his voice came, it seemed to float between them.

"I have one question."

"Hmm?" Forming a word took too much energy.

"Don't your parents live outside Phoenix?"

"Uh-huh."

"A boathouse? In Arizona?"

She poked at his ribs and got a muffled chuckle in reward. "Shows all you know. Yes, a boathouse in Arizona. There's a lake with sailing and swimming and everything. Mom and Dad have lakefront property, and a little, enclosed boathouse."

He seemed to accept that. After a minute or two, he mentioned in an offhand way, "You know I have this other fantasy, too." He stroked his palm over her skin, from hip, over fanny, waist, back, shoulder and neck, then back down. "And for this one we don't have to go to Arizona, or even leave the hotel. We only have to move about ten feet to accomplish it."

He drew her up, disregarding her halfhearted protests, and she saw they were heading for the bathroom.

"It has to do with being hot and wet and close," he murmured into her ear before stooping to snag the bath sheet from the tumble of objects at the foot of the bed. A froth of royal blue wove in among the other items. "Are you ever going to show me this nightgown?"

She stifled a throaty chuckle. "I did show it to you, remember?"

"I meant on you, this time."

"I thought you had a fantasy you wanted to show me first."

He looked from her to the gown swirled at their feet, then back to her.

"Will you promise to show it to me later?"

"Later," she promised. "Much later."

SINCE HIS PURCHASES
hadn't run to such necessities as a clean shirt or a change of underwear, their first stop late Saturday morning was Paul's Evanston apartment.

Bette immediately liked the four-story red-brick building with the general air of solidity. At this time of year, with the leaves gone from the neighborhood's many trees, his top-floor apartment's bay window gave a glimpse of the lake a few blocks away.

But the view was one of the few things that could be said for the near-barren living room. A door topped a pair of file cabinets and held a computer and accoutrements. Brick-and-board shelves for books, an old TV and mismatched stereo equipment. A rugged old couch and one side chair. That was it.

A leaden mass formed in her stomach. It was all too clearly a reflection of the resident. The landing place of someone who wanted to be prepared to take off again.

"Not quite as homey as your place, huh?"

He sounded almost defensive as he stood just inside the door and waved her in, and she didn't have the heart to agree as wholeheartedly as she might have otherwise. "No." Searching for something else to say, she added, "It's a nice neighborhood, Paul."

"Yeah," he agreed, brightening. "It is. Here's the kitchen." His gesture took in a cubicle as Spartan as the living room, although its 1940s-style appliances looked considerably less used than the living room furniture. "I eat out a lot," he explained.

"And the bath." It was mostly screened from view by towels and shirts hanging from door corners, shower curtain rod and doorknobs, but it appeared to be the same vintage as the kitchen.

"And the bedroom." A king-size mattress and box spring sat on the bare wooden floor with the pillows and comforter rumpled from the last time he'd used them. A canvas-covered director's chair at one side held a clock radio and a stack of books on its seat. She suspected that under the pile of clothes on the opposite side of the bed resided the chair's twin. A tiny dresser stood next to a closed closet door. "Not much storage space," he muttered. "Closet barely holds the suits and stuff, so the other things . . ." He shrugged.

"That's the tour, complete in thirty-four seconds, no need to tip the tour conductor."

He smiled a little lopsidedly, and she couldn't resist leaning in as they stood in the doorway of his bedroom and kissing the corner of his mouth. Immediately, she felt embarrassed by the gesture. They'd shared a night of passion, but affection was something else.

"I'll . . . I'll wait out here while you get your things," she said, trying to make her retreat to the living room seem less like scuttling than it felt.

"I kind of thought -" He broke off, but she saw him glance from his rumpled bed to her and back, and she had a pretty good idea what he'd thought. She didn't mind the thought, but hadn't a clue how to express that. But he obviously took her hesitation as a no. "Okay. This shouldn't take long. I've just got to find some clean things." He turned into the bedroom, then back. "I ought to stop by the cleaners and take some of this stuff in, too."

She hid a smile. The cleaners were going to make a small fortune. "Okay."

She wandered around the living room, looking at his eclectic mix of books, absently noting that the papers spread out by the computer dealt with his business, and looked professional and detailed.

Sounds from the bedroom finally drew her back. She'd pretended not to notice when he swept the bathroom clean by heaping clothes and towels into his arms. Now he'd formed a pile in the middle of the bedroom floor, and with his back to her, was busy searching out additions for it.

The search entailed digging through the layers on the chair with as much care as an archaeologist. He apparently hadn't found a shirt to his liking yet, because he wore none. But he'd put on a pair of jeans. Snug jeans that curved tautly over his derriere.

Bette swallowed. Heat ran through her system with deliberate speed, melting away the awkward shyness and the quiet protests of sore muscles.

She could slip into the room, sneak up behind him, mold her palms to the shape of the seat of those jeans, then rub up to the bare skin of his back, across the muscled width of his shoulders, and down again. Her fingers would snag in the waistband of his jeans on the return trip, maybe delve inside a bit, enough to feel the smooth hard skin.

Just before she pushed him too hard with her teasing touch, the split second before he would have to turn and tumble her into the bed, she would pull her fingers away and send her hands once more on their downward path to where they had begun. Only this time they'd go farther, around to -

Bette gasped and jerked at the shrill bleat just over her head, but Paul didn't even turn around.

"Get the buzzer, will you? Michael said something about stopping by today."

She held one steadying hand over her heart as she used the other to press the button that released the ground-floor door. She opened the apartment door.

Quick footsteps echoed up the stairs, along with a grim mutter about people stupid enough to live on the fourth floor without an elevator, then a young woman's head topped the stair railing. As soon as she made the turn and spotted Bette, she started talking.

"Who are you?" she asked with open curiosity.

Bette didn't need to ask the return question. The crown of chestnut hair, the sparkle in gray-green eyes and the energetic grace of her casually clad body proclaimed the young woman to be Paul's sister.

When she grinned, abruptly and blindingly, the likeness was startling.

"Never mind," she instructed, just as Bette opened her mouth for a neutral reply. "I know who you are. Mom told me all about you. And the pumpkins."

She managed to make the latter sound wicked and depraved, or maybe that was just Bette's conscience. Here she had been thinking lascivious thoughts about a man when his kid sister must have been just outside the building. It made her feel illogically guilty. Had her sister-in-law, Claire, ever had such thoughts about her brother, Ronald? Oh, she knew they had two kids and all, but did Claire really have those kinds of thoughts about Ronald?

A giggle tickled her throat, and that made her feel guiltier.
Get hold of yourself, Bette
.

"Hello, I'm Bette Wharton, a friend of Paul's. You must be Judi."

Judi shook her extended hand with enthusiasm and studied her. They stood just about eye to eye. Judi Monroe had a lithe athlete's body encased in sweatpants and three layers of shirts, a free-fall tumble of hair and a mobile, restless face. She looked very, very young, and Bette experienced a renewed wash of guilt. What interpretation would this girl put on the situation, finding her here in her brother's apartment?

"Geez, count on Paul to bring you here for a rendezvous!"

Bette gasped. "No -"

Judi went on, pitching her voice to reach the brother she obviously expected to be in the other room.

"Paul, couldn't you have taken her someplace better than this. You should have a little more class." She shook her head in disgust as she swung a heavily loaded backpack off her shoulders and onto the desk, then called out again. "And some imagination!"

"No. You don't understand. He didn't - This isn't -"

Bette caught herself in time from adding the "what it seems" cliché, but still couldn't find much of an explanation. Perhaps because part of her cried out to defend Paul, to say just how classy and imaginative and romantic and downright passionate he could be.

Only that was the last thing she ought to be telling his younger sister.

"We stopped by to pick up some, uh, papers. That's all. We weren't -"

Judi glanced back with one eyebrow raised. "You weren't?"

The wild thought occurred to Bette that the younger woman sounded disappointed.

Through some sense beyond the normal five, she became aware of Paul.

Turning, she found him lounging in the doorway to his bedroom not far behind her, and she had to fight the urge to go to him and put her head on his shoulder and let him deal with this whole awkward situation.

"Damn! Why not? What the hell's the matter with you, Paul?"

"Judith Marie." Paul's voice held censure. "Stop swearing. You know how Mom feels about that."

Bette looked from brother to sister in amazement.
That's
what he was responding to?

"Sorry," his sister apologized absently. "Dorm talk. But how about this other stuff? Why aren't you -?"

"Shut up, Judi." It was mild but effective. "It's none of your business. Quit embarrassing Bette."

Judi looked stricken for an instant, then contrite. She turned wide eyes on Bette. "Did I? Embarrass you? I didn't mean to. Sometimes my mouth just gets away from me. I'm sorry."

Bette met her look and started to formulate routine words of denial to smooth over the situation. Instead, she found herself telling the truth. "You did embarrass me a little. Maybe startled me is more accurate."

Judi nodded. "I do that to people sometimes. I forget what I'm saying, and what I'm thinking just comes out. I really am sorry."

Bette smiled. "It's fine. Don't worry about it."

Judi's returning smile seemed to light the room. "Thanks!"

Paul cleared his throat in a way that made Bette flick a look at him. Did those changeable eyes of his hold an added emotion? "So, Judi, what brings you here today?"

"I came to use your computer. I've got a Russian history paper due Monday, and your keyboard's better than my laptop. Especially the way I type."

Her eyes slid past her brother. Bette wondered if she could see the bed and would draw incorrect conclusions from its state. With Judi's next words, Bette knew she could and she had.

"But if I'm in the way . . ." Judi let it hang.

Paul was looking at Bette. All she had to do was make the smallest sign and he'd get rid of his sister. She knew that. An afternoon spent the way they'd spent the previous night had definite appeal, but someone who balked at checking into a hotel without luggage wasn't about to make such a clear declaration in front of Paul's younger sister.

"Of course not," Bette supplied. It wasn't exactly her place to issue the invitation, but apparently Paul wasn't about to. "Your brother was going to show me some real estate in the area. We just stopped off here to get some clothes -" She ignored the choked sound of laughter from behind her. " - that he has to take to the cleaners," she added with emphasis.