by Nancy Warren
“Hit the ice dispenser,” he panted.
Turning them, he set her on the kitchen counter, the lovely posh, dark granite counter. It was cold on her bottom, but she liked the stability and the change of angle.
She leaned back on her hands and gazed deep into his eyes. He was thrusting deeper, stroking that wonderful place deep inside her that, like the rest of her, so loved attention. She was climbing, higher and higher as she felt him move in faster, more desperate thrusts.
She heard the ice maker presumably replenishing itself, their harsh breathing, and then the scrape of her fingernails on the granite as her hands clenched. As everything clenched, from her throat to her toes, and then the wonderful wave rolled over her. In the background of her own cry, she heard Matthew, felt him shudder against her and then slump forward, so his lips were against her neck, his head resting on her shoulder.
She liked to feel his breath against her neck, panting and then slowing. They didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. And then she shivered as the combined chill of sitting on polished rock in wet clothing got through to her.
“Darling,” she said, “I’m freezing.”
“Hot shower?” he said against her throat.
“Mmm. Keep me company?”
He nipped at the sensitive skin of her throat. “Oh, yeah.”
Later, when they were curled up in his big, comfy bed, her body limp and satiated, she said, “I think I lost count of my orgasms.”
Matthew raised his eyelids and looked at her through sleepy eyes. “You count ’em?”
“Usually it’s not that difficult.”
He closed his eyes again, but the skin around them remained crinkled and one side of his mouth curled.
She punched him on the shoulder. “And put that self-satisfied, smug expression away, young man.”
He laughed, rolling her over and pinning her beneath him. “Just happy I did my patriotic duty.”
“Patriotic—”
“Improving English/American relations.”
“Oh, honestly.” But, since he was kissing her, and she had a feeling her mystery tally was about to go up, she let him get away with his arrogance.
For now.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his shoulder, thinking. “When did you find out what I really do?”
He was breathing so deeply she thought he might have nodded off. He hadn’t, but she could see it was close. He opened one eye. “Do you always talk after sex?”
“If I’ve got something to say.” The other eye opened and before he could speak she said, “All right. Always.”
“Me, I like to sleep after sex.”
“We’ll compromise. You talk to me, then I’ll let you sleep.”
He yawned and shook his head. She liked being here, with her head on his shoulder. His skin was warm against her cheek and she could hear the heavy thump of his heart. Then the rumble of his words. “Pretty early on.”
Damn. She’d been so pleased with herself. “How early on?”
“After Rafe started spending some weird-ass hours at your place, I got curious. I followed you one day.”
She rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t see her. “You were always following me.”
“Only the two times.”
“You were jealous.”
She felt him struggle, thought he’d deny it, and then was pleased when he said, “Hell, yeah, I was jealous. And crazy mad ’cause I didn’t have any right to be.”
“You were in torment. There I was right next door and you couldn’t have me.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it. And I wasn’t in torment.”
She raised her head and looked down at him. “You weren’t?”
He lifted a hand to push the tangle of her hair behind one ear. “Maybe a little.”
“That’s better.” She put her head back down. “So, you were in terrible torment over me and you followed me. Again.”
“Don’t make me sound like a stalker. It was investigative research.”
He sounded cross. She smiled against his chest. Turned her head and kissed him there.
“You went into a spa with a bunch of brochures and came out a half hour later walkin’ funny and with flip-flops on your feet.”
“I must have had a pedicure.”
“I went in after you and saw a stack of brochures for The Breakup Artist. It was easy to cross-check the phone number with your address.”
“What a clever detective you are.”
She didn’t have to glance up to know he was rolling his eyes. “Not hardly.”
“So you’ve known all this time?”
“Yep.”
“And you didn’t let on.”
“Nope.”
“Did you want to hire me?”
His chest rose and fell on a deep breath. “I would never have hired you. I try to do my own dirty work. Only I couldn’t. Brittany’s—”
His voice faded and she wondered if he was feeling awkward bringing up his ex-girlfriend while in bed with another woman. “Brittany’s a darling. But you two were hopelessly mismatched. You’d only have brought each other misery.”
Another gargantuan yawn. “Can I go to sleep now, or did you want to discuss world peace or global warming?”
She kissed his jaw. “Get your rest. You’ll need it.”
Chapter 25
A few days later, Chloe walked through her own kitchen door at nine thirty in the morning, feeling mildly guilty, and ran upstairs. “Sorry I’m late,” she said to Stephanie, who was tapping away at her computer.
The younger woman said, “You don’t have to apologize to me. It’s your company.”
“Right.” Of course it was. She was mad. Utterly mad. Also annoyed with herself. She didn’t like sleepovers if she could help them. It gave men ideas.
Matthew was exactly the sort of man she didn’t want getting ideas. He was too—too everything. Too good looking, too good in bed, too sure of himself. A man like that could only mean trouble.
“I should have been here in case you needed anything.”
Stephanie looked at her as though she’d gone off her head. “You were only next door. I could have found you if I’d needed you.”
“How do you know that? I could have been any number of places.”
“Your car’s out front. I assumed—”
“Forget it,” she snapped. “I’m in a stupid mood. Don’t mind me.”
“Okay.”
The day passed in a blur. Her stomach felt strange, her head buzzy. She couldn’t concentrate. She’d think she needed sex, except she was currently having the best sex of her life. Every day. It was easy, after all—it was only next door.
When Stephanie came up beside her, where she was standing looking out the window, she jumped. “You startled me.”
“Sorry. I called and you didn’t answer. You okay?”
“Yes.” Of course she wasn’t okay. She’d been watching Matthew mow the lawn, thinking dreamily of the things he’d done to her last night. The things he’d whispered in the dark. “I was—”
“I know,” Stephanie said.
“I’m not feeling right,” she said, turning from the window and seating herself firmly at her desk. “I’m sort of lightheaded and woozy.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then you must be in love.”
For a stunned moment Chloe stared at the woman standing on the other side of her desk, then she broke into laughter that sounded faintly hysterical. “With Matthew?”
“Unless there’s another guy you’re spending every spare minute with.”
“Nonsense. He’s convenient, attractive.”
“Great in bed?”
She put a hand to her chest. “Oh, darling, don’t get me started.”
She nodded. “He makes you laugh.”
“In his odd way.”
“Have you told him things you’ve never told anyone else?”
Stephanie nodded sagely. “When you think about the future, do you see him in it?”
“Where did you get these questions? The latest Cosmo quiz?”
Stephanie just looked at her.
“Oh, no. Not you too.”
Stephanie nodded, not seeming nearly as neurotic about the idea as Chloe, but then she hadn’t left quite as many men at the altar, either. “Trust me, it’s love.”
“But I don’t want to be in love with Matthew,” she wailed as Stephanie walked out of the room.
Her assistant turned, looking for too knowledgeable. “Then you’d better figure out what you’re going to do about it.”
“I think I need to breathe into a paper bag.”
Stephanie chuckled. “Oh, don’t forget I’m leaving early today. I’m going to be in the studio audience when Deborah and Jordan are interviewed about their book.”
“That’s nice. Is Rafe going?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t think it was a great idea for him to be on TV.”
“Oh, right. Of course. Well, I’ll watch the show and look for you.”
The minute Stephanie was out the door, Matt found an excuse to come over. He was all sweaty from mowing the lawn. His shirt had flecks of grass on it. When she saw him on her doorstep, her heart lurched—oh, God.
Stephanie was right. She was in love with him.
So, instead of throwing herself into his arms as she wanted to, she wrinkled her nose. “The tradesman’s entrance is around the back.”
He looked as though he was thinking of shoving her bodily over his shoulder and taking her straight to bed, sweat and all, and truthfully she wouldn’t have put up much of a struggle. Instead he said, “I’m going home to shower, then how about I take you downtown for dinner?”
“Oh, but Deborah Beaumont’s on television. We have to watch it. Come on in and shower here. We can eat later.”
He shook his head. “Let’s go to my house.”
“Why?”
“There’s a TV in the bedroom.”
“Really, Matthew. Is sex all you ever think about?”
The look he sent her had her pulse rate increasing. “Only when you’re around.”
Naturally, they ended up watching Deborah and Jordan on television from the comfort of Matthew’s big bed, curled up together naked and sharing a beer.
“She looks pretty good for a doctor,” Matthew remarked when Deborah and Jordan were introduced on the television show. “Hot.”
Deb did look hot. Amazing. She also seemed very different from the woman who had shown up at Chloe’s house in the middle of an emotional meltdown. She seemed a lot less tense, and happier somehow.
Even dull, stuffy Jordan seemed different. More of a man and less of a geek.
The interviewer asked them the obvious questions about the book. What was the secret of lasting love? Jordan and Deborah looked at each other and she said, “Communication is essential to a healthy relationship.”
Matthew snorted. “Big surprise. It’s in the title of the book.”
Chloe shushed him. The interviewer asked a bit about the pair of them and how they’d come to write the book, and then said, “I understand you two are personally involved as well as being business partners. Do you think you have a better relationship because you’re both experts in love?”
Jordan laughed. “No. We’re like a couple of MDs who get sick but are too busy to go to the doctor.” He looked at Deborah and Chloe thought, wow, who knew?
Deb picked up from there. “We love each other, but we’re working at this every day.”
Then the questions from the audience started. “Ooh, goodie,” Chloe said. “Look for Stephanie.”
But before they saw Stephanie, the camera focused on another familiar figure. Matthew shifted beside her. “What’s Brittany doing there?”
“I remember she said she was going to buy the book. She must have enjoyed it.” Brittany was sitting beside a jock boy who matched her like the salt shaker matches the pepper.
Pepper had his hand up. He got the mic and with a glance at a blushing Brittany, asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Deborah answered, “If it’s happened to you, then I believe it.”
There was laughter and clapping from the audience. Brittany’s new guy said, “I’m a gym teacher and when I started at my new school, I saw this woman and—” Here he mimed beating on his chest. “—ka-boom.”
Chloe glanced up at Matthew to see how he was taking this, but if anything, he seemed mildly nauseated. He looked over at her. “Ka-boom?”
Jordan said, “It doesn’t really matter whether it starts with shooting stars or a slow build, the important thing to remember is that every relationship is going to have problems. The really successful ones we see are where the partners talk to each other.”
She pressed the mute button because she really didn’t think either she or Matthew could take much more of this, but left the picture on in case Stephanie was shown on camera.
She traced her finger across Matthew’s collarbone, following the dip right in the middle. “Did you go ka-boom when you first saw me?”
“Honey, from the first moment I met you, I haven’t been sure whether I wanted to make love to you or strangle you.”
“Well, make sure you don’t mix up the two.”
He snorted. “How about you? Did you go ka-boom when you saw me?”
“Certainly not.” Their gazes caught and held. She thought she could stay like this forever. “There might have been a slight ping,” she acknowledged.
“A ping? Like a car that needs a tune-up?”
“Well, I was jetlagged at the time. Besides, the English are a very reserved people.”
“Like hell,” he said, yanking the cover off and revealing her naked body, which he proceeded to devour until she was thrashing noisily and anything but reserved.
“Come on,” he said when they finally got out of bed. “I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Bats.”
Chapter 26
“Oh, look at them,” she cried. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
She was standing with Matthew and heaps of other people, many holding cameras, to watch the nightly flight of an enormous population of fruit bats who lived under the Congress Street Bridge and all flew out at dusk to hunt insects.
At first there were only a few, like blurry birds, then suddenly the sky was dark with them. Streams of dark bats flying off. The smell was a bit rank, but the spectacle was amazing.
After perhaps half an hour, it was all over. The bridge emptied as families took the kids home and lovers walked away hand in hand, like she and Matthew, to find a restaurant.
He liked to take her to places that would surprise and delight her. He said he enjoyed her reactions, and she liked the way he explained things.
One weekend he drove her down to San Antonio and they visited the Alamo, which actually brought tears to her eyes. She’d never realized how international was the force that fought so hopelessly to save their tiny fort.
Afterward, they ate in one of the many restaurants overlooking the river walk and spent the night in a grand old hotel that reminded her of Europe.
It was perfect. Too perfect.
On their last night, after a magical, romantic walk by the river, they made love in the big, opulent bed and while they were so intimately linked, he whispered, “I love you.”
He kissed her then, before she had a chance to reply, and she understood he was giving his love as a gift, not asking for an exchange.
What frightened her most was that she did reciprocate.
They were quieter than usual on the way home. A line had been crossed and she had no idea what to do about it. She knew her feelings for him were different, were deeper, than what she’d ever felt before.
And the knowledge terrified her.
Whe
n they reached home and unpacked the car, she headed firmly for her own home. “Thank you for a lovely weekend.”
He looked at her in that way he had that told her he saw more than she wanted him to. “You coming over later?”
“I haven’t slept in my own bed in over a week. I don’t think so.”
“You want me to come to you?”
She dropped the bag she was carrying and stomped over to him. “Matthew, I cannot go on like this. You crowd me. Control me.”
“Like hell I do.” He grabbed his own bag and turned for his house. “You want to sleep alone tonight, fine. All you had to do was say so.”
“I did! And it’s not the sleeping, it’s—” She threw up her hands, feeling a theatrical sense of frustration spill out of her. “—everything. I look out the window and there you are. I—I can’t seem to get you out of my mind. I can’t take it.”
“I’ll tell you your trouble, Chloe—you have to be the one calling all the shots. You’ve always had those Italian puppies of yours whining at your heels until you kick them a good one. But I won’t be kicked around. Or brought to heel so you can wipe your tiny British feet all over my backside.”
“I never—”
“You’re spoiled. You’ve got so used to having your own way you cut and run the second a real man comes along.”
“That’s not true, I—”
“I told you I love you. That’s what this is about.”
“It’s not, I—”
“I don’t know why I’m crazy enough to love you, but God help me, I do. So you’re scared. I get that. I’m scared, too.”
“You are?”
“Damn right I am. You think I want to be stuck with a high-maintenance shrew for the rest of my life?”
“The rest of your life—” That made her crazier than the fact he’d just called her a shrew. “I can’t plan that far ahead. I can barely schedule a pedicure for next week.”