Picking up a folder, she looked at him. “Any questions?”
“Yes. How can you stand it?” he asked her, gesturing around him to indicate the rest of the house. He was only half kidding. “It’s so quiet.”
She paused for a moment, cocking her head as if listening.
“It is, isn’t it?” Brianna agreed. “I forgot what this could be like, working without having the walls shake every fifteen, twenty minutes.” The awkwardness behind them and having slipped back into a comfortable groove with Connor again, she said, “Shall we get started?”
The next four hours were spent following up on the lead that Brianna had managed to find, plus discovering information on another person on the list along the way. The latter had happened almost by accident.
Verifications were made as well as plans to follow up with a phone call and eventually, hopefully, a face-to-face meeting.
It was all beginning to fall into place.
Leaning back in her chair, Brianna looked rather satisfied with their joint effort.
“All in all, I think we’ve had a very productive afternoon,” she told Connor. She rotated her shoulders. They had begun to ache.
“Afternoon?” he echoed, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost evening. I didn’t realize we’ve been at this for so long,” he admitted.
“I guess I can get a lot done when I’m not rushing out to check into screams and crashes every few minutes,” she said with a smile. “Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly, turning toward him.
“You don’t have to make dinner,” Connor told her. She’d worked almost harder than he had today. He didn’t want her going to any extra trouble now on his account.
Brianna waved away his protest. Besides, she wasn’t making anything from scratch.
“How do you feel about leftovers?” she asked. “I made meat loaf yesterday and it’s not exactly the kids’ favorite.”
Right now, he was hungry enough to eat the pan the meat loaf had been made in, although he kept that to himself.
“Meat loaf sounds great,” Connor answered, then added, “But just so you know, I would have settled for peanut butter and jelly. Or just peanut butter,” he told her.
She laughed, trying to picture him eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She really couldn’t. “You know, for a man of your background, you don’t have very expensive tastes.”
Connor wasn’t sure he followed her. “My background?” he questioned.
Maybe she should explain, Brianna thought. “I said I had time on my hands. I spent part of that doing a little background research on you,” she confessed. “Fortunado Real Estate—you’re part of that, aren’t you?” she asked, citing the real estate company that he’d told her had experienced a severe downturn.
What was she getting at? he wondered. “I didn’t try to hide that,” he pointed out.
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed, then explained her thinking. “But you showed me your private investigator credentials and a private investigator isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of Fortunado Real Estate.”
For a second he thought she was going to withhold any further information until he agreed to up her payment. He’d been dealing with people who were only out for themselves for too long.
But he knew better. Brianna wasn’t like that.
Relaxing, he asked, “Is this your way of saying that your offer of meat loaf is off the table?”
Rather than go on explaining why she’d decided to look into his background and wind up embarrassing herself, she decided that the safest thing to do was just to feed him.
“Come with me,” Brianna told him, taking hold of his hand.
“To the ends of the world,” he quipped, then added, “Or the kitchen, whichever is first.”
She laughed, dropping his hand. “You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?”
He took no offense, knowing she didn’t intend any. “I usually play with the kids to use up any excess energy I might have. They’re not here so I guess you get to see this side of me. I can usually keep it hidden,” he added with a straight face.
“Uh-huh.”
Brianna warmed up what was left of the meat loaf in the microwave, then put the platter on the table. A serving of corn and leftover mashed potatoes accompanied the main dish.
Connor set the table for them as she warmed the meal. He’d been here often enough now to know where everything was kept and taking part in the domestic scene felt right. It made him uneasy that this came to him so effortlessly. This wasn’t the self-image he had of himself. Why wasn’t he running for his life?
“Much better than peanut butter and jelly,” he commented, sitting down when she did.
She noted that he had set the table and smiled her thanks.
“They asked about you, you know. Yesterday, when you didn’t come, the kids asked about you,” Brianna explained. “They wanted to know what I’d done to chase you away.”
He’d just taken a bite of the meat loaf and had to wait until he swallowed before asking, “What did you tell them?”
She thought of being confronted by the duo. Both had been deadly serious. “That you were a busy man and had other things to do besides working on a project here.”
“Did that satisfy them?” he asked as he continued eating. His mind was hardly on the food. She’d stirred his curiosity with her story. And his libido with her nearness.
“No,” Brianna said with a sigh. “They were convinced that I’d done something to make you stay away.”
He waited for a couple of minutes before quietly saying, “Well, in a way, you could say that the two pipsqueaks were right.”
Brianna looked up sharply at him. “I did do something to make you stay away?” she asked him, even though, in the back of her mind, a little voice had answered that very question yesterday, undermining her confidence. She’d managed to squelch the voice but here he was saying the same thing. “What?” she wanted to know. “What did I do to suddenly make you stay away?”
He paused, debating the wisdom of what he was about to say.
And then he said it.
“You were you.”
Brianna frowned. “That makes no sense.”
He didn’t see it that way. “It does when I’m struggling to do the honorable thing, to stay away from you the way I promised.”
“I didn’t ask you to stay away,” she denied. “I just asked you not to...” Kiss me. At a loss as to how to phrase it, Brianna found herself searching for words.
“Yeah, about that...” Connor reached over and cupped her cheek, trying his best to stifle feelings that were threatening to overwhelm him. “I can’t. I can’t stay away,” he admitted. “I wasn’t following up other leads yesterday,” he confessed. “I was listing all the reasons why I should keep my distance from you. All the reasons why I should just go away.” It had actually been a consideration. One he couldn’t follow through on. “There was just one reason why I couldn’t.”
She nodded, guessing at the reason. “Because you wanted to find Charlotte.”
“The hell with finding Charlotte,” he said. Didn’t Brianna understand what he was trying to tell her? “I couldn’t go away because I couldn’t get myself to leave you. To walk away and never see you again.”
She had another theory about that. A far more common one.
“Maybe you can’t leave because I turned you down. Probably no woman has ever said no to you before and it’s a classic case of wanting something you can’t have,” she guessed.
“No,” Connor insisted, “this is different.” He saw the look that came into her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to change your mind. I understand why you’re telling me no and I respect your choice.” Even though it was killing him, he added silently, “I just wanted you to know that despite everything that
’s currently going on in my life and despite trying to track down this woman who’s trying to bring down my entire family, you were all I kept thinking about these last twenty-four hours. I couldn’t get myself to focus on anything else.”
She had what she wanted, Brianna thought. He was telling her that he wasn’t going to try to get her to change her mind, wasn’t going to try to seduce her, and she believed him. Once this project was completed, she could send Connor off and that would be that. She would be home free.
The hell she would be!
Getting up from the table, she stood beside Connor and pulled him up to his feet with her. Before he could ask her what she was doing or even say another word, Brianna threw her arms around his neck and brought her mouth up to his.
The kiss took him completely by surprise and totally incinerated every single word he had just said to her. All his noble intentions and promises just vanished into the night air as if they had never existed.
“Was it something I said?” he murmured against her lips even as he kissed her back.
“Shut up,” was the only thing Brianna said before she utterly surrendered to what she had known since he had kissed her that first time was inevitable.
Her destiny.
Since she had dropped all the barriers she had so carefully constructed and diligently kept in place since Jonny had left her, Brianna expected Connor to lose no time in taking her, in uniting their bodies and satisfying the urges that she knew had to be consuming him.
She was completely surprised when instead of doing that, Connor took his time and made love to her instead. The experience was still fiery, but at the same time, his lovemaking was slow, deliberate, making her feel cherished and beautiful with every movement, every thrilling caress he delivered.
Instead of tearing off her clothes and throwing his own aside in a mad, overwhelming rush to consummate their union, Connor kissed her.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
He kissed her lips, her throat, her shoulders, sending shivers through her whole body with each touch of his mouth. His lips skimmed over each and every part of her that was exposed to him.
Somehow, although she wasn’t totally aware of how, her clothes kept vanishing, allowing him to press his lips against more and more of her.
Claiming more and more of her.
She’d never made love like this before, never felt this mounting frenzy building within her before, turning her into this insatiable creature she didn’t even recognize. She wasn’t a shy, shrinking violet anymore. She was a woman possessed with a desire to give pleasure as well as receive it.
Somehow, without any conscious thought, she and Connor made their way from the kitchen into the living room.
They never reached the bedroom.
It seemed as if it was leagues away and she felt demands vibrating through her body now.
But first she wanted Connor to remember tonight, to know that he made love with her, not just another one of the women she was certain passed through his life. Brianna suddenly wanted to leave her mark on his soul. Years from now, after another score of women had come and gone, she wanted him to remember this night.
To remember her.
She went with her instincts, some innate force he had woken up within her, and made love to Connor with the same verve and intensity that he had been making love with her.
Breathing heavily, their bodies gleaming with sweat, they finally began the last leg of this wondrous journey that was still before them.
With his eyes on hers and their hands laced together, Connor entered her.
Brianna used the last ounce of her energy to match him movement for movement, causing the sensation to swell and rush up, catching both of them in the last wave that pushed them all the way to the top.
Clinging to one another, they allowed the tide to come and carry them away.
Chapter Thirteen
“I guess it’s a good thing the kids went to that sleepover,” Brianna murmured.
She was curled up against Connor on the sofa. Euphoria was slowly settling in, taking the place of the wildly thrilling thunderbolts of desire that had all but done her in. She smiled as she ran her hand along his hair. “Otherwise, this might have been a little hard to explain.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Connor contradicted. “Because if Axel and Ava hadn’t gone to that sleepover, this wouldn’t have happened,” he informed her, turning so that he could look into her face. He cradled her closer to him, their naked bodies touching, sending out renewed signals of longing. “At least, not until they were asleep and we were in your room with the door closed.”
His response surprised her. It also warmed her. “That’s a very responsible approach,” she told him, amazed that he would think of that. She’d just assumed that Connor would have put his own needs ahead of the children, especially since they weren’t his and in all likelihood, he wouldn’t be seeing them much longer.
“Why do you look so surprised?” he asked, brushing the back of his hand against her face, caressing her. “I’m not exactly a charging bull moose in heat.”
Unable to hold herself in check, she started to laugh then, her body brushing up against his on the sofa. “I never thought of you as a bull moose, charging or otherwise,” she confessed, tickled by the image he’d created.
He wasn’t insulted by the reference he’d just made. “There’s one thing to be said about a bull moose, though. It has great staying power.”
Her brow furrowed as she frowned. “You’re making that up.”
Connor’s expression gave nothing away. “Maybe,” he allowed. Raising himself up on his elbow, he looked into her eyes. “Why don’t we take this into your bedroom and see? Your sofa did in a pinch, but it’s not all that comfortable.”
“You didn’t seem as if you were all that uncomfortable,” she reminded him, amused.
“You’d be surprised how much more accommodating I can be with a little more space to work in,” he told her, the look in his eyes pulling her in.
Exciting her.
“All right,” she told him, “surprise me.” Her smile was warm and inviting as Brianna started to rise to her feet.
Standing already, the first thing Connor did was literally sweep Brianna off her feet and into his arms.
She felt as if her very breath had whooshed out of her lungs. “What are you doing?” she squealed.
“Surprising you,” Connor answered, satisfaction curving the corners of his mouth. Then he added, “I aim to please.”
Brianna tucked her arms around his neck to secure herself.
“You’ve already taken care of that part,” she told him, her eyes dancing as she thought of the last hour they had spent together.
“In the words of Al Jolson—” he began, only to be interrupted.
“Who?” she asked him. She had no idea who he was referring to.
“A famous old vaudeville showman,” Connor explained.
“Vaudeville.” Brianna shook her head. The man was turning out to be a walking font of information. “You are an endless source of surprises.”
He laughed, then continued. “As I was about to say, in the words of the immortal Al Jolson, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’” Connor told her.
And it was a promise that he definitely intended to live up to.
* * *
This time, Brianna felt her heart pounding so hard when they finally fell back against her bed, she didn’t know if it would ever be able to slow down to normal again. If the first time they made love had been wonderful, the second time absolutely defied all description.
It took several minutes for the room to stop spinning and several more for her body temperature to even begin to return to normal.
In all honesty, she was surprised that they hadn’t set the bed on fire.
�
��I’m not sure,” she murmured to Connor, “but I think I just died.”
“I’ll check you for a pulse once I get my oomph back,” Connor promised. “You really wore me out. I guess it must have been all that stored-up, leftover energy you had because you didn’t have to chase after your kids today.”
Right now, Brianna wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to move again. “Just trying to keep up with you.”
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing,” Connor told her. He stopped for a moment, listening. “And now I’m hearing bells,” he said. “You’ve had some effect on me.”
“That’s the phone, silly,” Brianna said, identifying the sound.
She turned her head toward the landline on her nightstand.
He raised his head to get a better look at the intrusive object. “That’s right. I forgot you had a landline. Why do you have a landline?” he asked. Most people he knew didn’t own one of those things these days.
“In case the electricity goes out and I can’t charge my cell phone,” she told him. “My line of work depends on my being reached.”
She was tempted to let the landline go on ringing. It couldn’t be a potential client on the other end of the line, not at nine thirty at night.
But by the third ring, her concern that it could have something to do with the children overcame her. “I guess I’d better get that. Whoever it is probably won’t go away until I answer.”
With what she felt was her very last shred of energy, Brianna reached over and picked up the receiver. Bringing it up against her ear, she murmured an exceedingly tired “Hello?”
The next second, Connor saw her bolt upright. She was holding on to the receiver with both hands. “What?” she cried.
Connor sat up beside her. He had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, he could see that it was distressing Brianna.
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