by Leanne Banks
The memory of the first moment they’d met hit her like a cyclone. He carried his size with masculine ease. That was the first thing that had impressed her. She’d had a difficult time keeping her gaze off of him as he stood across the room at the bar. And she’d been shocked when he’d looked back. Not surprisingly, there’d been a woman standing beside him trying to get his attention. He’d been distantly polite while he finished his bottle of beer and kept his gaze trained on Lisa.
Lisa had grown so uncomfortable that she’d deliberately looked away and thought about making her excuses to her friends and leaving. When he’d shown up beside her table with a smile that said, “I’m harmless,” and violet eyes that said, “You’re mine,” it was all she could do to breathe, let alone speak.
Tonight, the violet eyes said the same thing, but there was no playful, harmless grin. She didn’t know if it was fear, passion or insanity, but her pulse skipped into double time.
He wore a white shirt open at the neck, the sleeves casually folded up. The light color emphasized his tan and brought her attention to his throat where, she’d learned, he was a little ticklish. They used to play a game where she nuzzled his neck with kisses and he would try not to laugh. She allowed her gaze to fall to his strong forearms. How many times had he lifted her and carried her as if she weighed no more than a child?
Not anymore.
Lisa sucked in a quick breath and felt the cork pop on all the emotions she’d stuffed down inside her. For one horrifying moment, she felt the strangest urge to cry.
Appalled at the thought, she swallowed hard, cleared her throat and recalled that he’d asked her a question. “I’ve been fine,” she managed. “And you?”
He shrugged. “Busy at work. I called you a few times and got your answering machine.” He hooked his foot on the platform where her table was located and leaned closer.
His position cut off the rest of the room and somehow made their conversation seem more intimate. Lisa shifted slightly away. “Yes, well—”
“My sister owns a riverboat down in Beulah County. She’s having a get-together for my six brothers, and I’d like you to come.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister and six brothers,” she said, dismayed that the small piece of personal information should affect her so.
“I guess I never got around to telling you. Would it have mattered?”
Would it have? Lisa faltered. She’d always sensed Brick kept his life strictly divided into different areas that rarely overlapped. He’d shared a little about his job with her, but nothing about his family. That had hurt. It had been one more piece of evidence that he wasn’t serious about her. “I don’t know.”
“Listen, Lisa, I’ve been thinking. A lot.” He put his hand over hers and stared intently into her eyes. His voice deepened. “I’ve been missing you a lot too.”
Lisa’s heart pounded against her rib cage.
“We had something damn good, and it seems like it was over in less than a minute. We called it off without looking at the possibilities.”
Lisa could feel herself sinking under his spell again, and she knew what would happen if she did. Just the touch of his hand made her tremble, and the look in his eyes could melt steel. If she followed her heart, she’d end up in bed with him within thirty minutes. It would be incredible sex. Her breasts tightened at the mere thought of it. After it was over, however, Brick would stall any deep discussions, and she’d feel emotionally frustrated.
“I don’t think—” She broke off, feeling both relieved and uneasy when she spotted Mark on his way back to the table. “There’s my date.”
Brick’s gaze widened. “Date?”
Lisa pasted a smile on her face and eased her hand from Brick’s. “Mark Lawford, this is Brick Pendleton. He’s a—a—”
Both men gazed at her expectantly.
“He’s a demolition expert,” she finished weakly.
Brick stared at Lisa in disbelief.
“Well, how about that,” Mark said, extending his hand. “You blow up buildings for a living?”
Brick tore his gaze away from Lisa and shook Mark’s hand. “Not really. I used to do more work blasting foundations,” he said, still blindsided by how Lisa had described him. Demolition expert. Not ex-lover, friend or the man who knew every inch of her body. He took a slow, deep breath. Brick prided himself on his great sense of humor, but his grin felt a little forced by the time he got to it. “I only use explosives every now and then. Most of my work is done with machinery.”
“That must be something. Hey, you want to join us? I’ll buy you a drink, and you can tell us some of your war stories.”
Brick slid a glance over to Lisa. She gave a quick, desperate shake of her head. He hesitated. If he were a nice, polite guy, he’d excuse himself, but he wasn’t feeling particularly polite right now. He slid into a chair directly opposite Lisa. “Sounds good to me. I’ll take a beer and tell you as many stories as you want.”
Over the next hour, Brick shared a few tales with Mark and Lisa. He noticed that Lisa avoided his gaze, and every time she did, he struggled with the perverse urge to do something to get her attention. Brick couldn’t see Lisa getting serious about Mark, but, then, he couldn’t see Lisa getting serious about anyone but himself. And he refused to consider the prospect of another man in her bed.
He shifted slightly and his knee bumped hers. She drew back and dodged his gaze again. Brick felt a lick of impatience and sipped his beer. “So what movie did y’all go see?”
Mark named an action flick, and Lisa toyed with her watch. She was doing her best to ignore him, and Brick was tired of being ignored. “Did you close your eyes during the shoot-out scenes?” he gently teased her.
If he’d been sitting beside her, he would have squeezed her waist. Instead, he extended his feet on either side of hers and put them just close enough to make her aware of him. Her startled gaze finally shot up to meet his.
Lisa struggled to disentangle her bare legs from his. The brush of denim and the strength and warmth of his knees capturing hers sent a chaotic heat pulsing through her bloodstream. “I kept my eyes open except for two times,” she admitted, glaring at him when she freed her legs.
Mark glanced from Brick to Lisa quizzically. “You never told me how you two met.”
Trying to salvage what she could of this disastrous date, Lisa forced a smile and said casually, “As a matter of fact, we met here about nine months ago.” She shot Brick a warning look.
Brick’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Nine months and twenty-three days,” he corrected. “And that was just the beginning.”
Chapter Two
“He’s kinda scrawny,” Brick said forty-five minutes later when Lisa jerked open her door.
“Everyone looks scrawny to you,” she retorted, completely exasperated. Back at the bar Mark Lawford had picked up on Brick’s tone and looked at Lisa with questions just waiting to be asked. Lisa had been so embarrassed, she didn’t have a prayer of forming an adequate response. She wasn’t pleased with the sense of relief she’d felt when Mark hadn’t kissed her good night. She wasn’t pleased that her first date “with a goal” had ended so disastrously. And she wasn’t pleased that she didn’t know who she was more angry with, Brick or herself.
She would never have let him in except that he claimed to have her address book, and when she’d checked her purse, sure enough, she’d found it missing. Her address book was one of the keys to her search for a husband. In the wrong hands, the information it contained would be humiliating. Lisa held out her hand. “Where’s my address book?”
“In a minute,” he promised. “Let’s have a drink and a little conversation first.” He strolled past her into the small den.
Lisa’s grip tightened on the door, and she closed her eyes in frustration. She’d done pretty well in her quest to get past Brick and start looking for the future father of her children, until she’d run into her former lover. Former lover. The thought caused her stomach to t
ighten.
Lisa slammed the door mentally and physically. Determined to get rid of Brick, she whipped around and went into the den. “I’m not going to offer you a drink,” she said through gritted teeth to the man who lounged on her sofa. “I’m going to ask for my address book, thank you, escort you to the door and say good night. That’s the program. Got it?”
Brick locked gazes with her for a long moment. After seeming to measure her determination, he frowned and pulled the small paisley cloth-covered book from his pocket. He stood. “What are three stars for?”
Humiliation crowded her chest. Lisa felt her cheeks burn with heat. She snatched the book from his hand. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“Oh, but I do worry about you.” Brick took a step closer and looked down at her. “I wonder if you’re trying to cater too many parties. I wonder if you’re forgetting to eat dinner. I wonder if you’re working so hard that you forget to have fun.”
Lisa tried not to let his concern soften her resolve. “I ate dinner tonight, and I was having fun with Mark.”
Based on his expression of disbelief, Brick must have guessed that last comment was a stretch, but he let it pass. “I wonder if you’ve backed into something this week.”
Lisa pressed her lips together. The man knew entirely too much about her, even her little problem with backing into things with her car. Just that morning she’d barely missed a mailbox. “Not a thing.”
He paused and his face was utterly sincere. “Ever since you kicked me out of your apartment after making love to me like a wild woman—”
The reminder murmured in his low, husky voice singed her from head to toe. Taking a deep breath, Lisa stepped back. “I did not kick you out. It wasn’t as if we lived together or anything.”
He moved closer and lifted a strand of her hair. “Then what would you call it?”
“I—I—” She swallowed over her fumbling tongue. His nearness affected her as if she’d risen too fast after deep-sea diving. His gaze roamed over her from head to toe. He wanted to touch her everywhere he’d looked, she realized. Her body melted. “I invited you to leave,” she managed in a strained voice.
He lifted an eyebrow and twined his fingers through her hair. “Next time,” he said quietly, “I guess I’ll have to turn down that invitation.”
His thumb grazed the soft curve of her jaw, and Lisa had to resist the urge to turn her face into his wide palm. “Next time I won’t invite. Next time I’ll—”
He pressed his thumb over her lips, halting her threat. “I’ve missed you.”
She drew a shaky breath. His simple direct words had the impact of a bomb detonating inside her.
“I’ve missed holding you, kissing you, making love to you. And I’ve missed talking to you.” He lowered his head closer to hers so that she didn’t just hear his words, she felt them. He dropped his thumb from her mouth and curled his hand around her waist. “Tell the truth, Lisa. Haven’t you missed me just a little bit?”
Lisa experienced a rush of emotion inside her so intense that it hurt to look at him. She squished her eyes closed. “Oh, Brick,” she whispered.
His warm mouth captured hers, his tongue slid gently past her lips, and Lisa’s knees and resolve dipped. It was an I-don’t-want-to-do-without-you kiss packed with tender seduction. Her hands groped for his shoulders, and she was immediately enveloped in his arms.
With his hand at the small of her back, he matched their lower bodies together so that she felt him intimately against her abdomen. Lisa’s heart nearly burst. She’d missed him in this way too. Missed his arms around her, missed his hungry kiss, and missed the way he openly showed his need for her, a need he wanted her to satisfy.
Undiluted arousal surged through her like straight whiskey, robbing her breath and sanity. Her thighs tingled, a restless ache settled low in her belly, and instinctively she wanted to touch him where he grew taut and hard. He’d always liked it when she touched him. She skimmed her hand down his chest to his belly.
He gave an encouraging groan that vibrated deliriously through her mouth. She slipped her fingers closer to the very edge of his straining masculinity.
He shifted his pelvis toward her hand and pulled his mouth from hers. His head dipped toward her shoulder, and his uneven breaths matched hers. “God, I’ve missed you, Lisa. It’s been too long. Let me take you to bed.”
The word bed slapped at Lisa like two cymbals crashing against each other, reverberating throughout her overheated consciousness.
One of his hands rose to caress her breast, and she felt another sensual tug inside her. “Lisa,” he muttered, pressing his erection into her hand again, seeking her intimate touch.
Her mind and body were in total disagreement about what she should do next.
What was she doing? her conscience screamed. Lisa pulled back her hand and pushed against his shoulder. Three weeks away from him, one kiss, and she’d lost it. “Oh, Lord, what am I doing?” she whispered brokenly, turning away from him and immediately missing his warmth. She wrapped her arms around her waist.
Brick’s body rebelled at the sudden distance between them. He reached for her, but she jerked away from him. His hands felt empty beyond belief. What had happened? One minute she was the epitome of feminine heat in his arms, the next, she’d pulled away. Brick shook his head to clear it. She sounded almost as if she were crying. The notion nearly tore him in two. Wanting to hold her, needing to hold her, he touched her arm.
“No!” Lisa nearly jumped out of her skin. She pushed back her hair. “I don’t want—” She swallowed and shook her head. “I don’t want this. I didn’t want this.”
Brick paused, absorbing the quick hurt. “Yes, you did. We both did.”
“Okay,” she admitted. “My body did.” She took a deep breath and finally met his gaze. “But my brain didn’t. This—whatever it is between us.” She waved her hands in exasperation. “It’s useless. I tried to tell you before.”
Brick plowed his fingers through his hair. “It didn’t feel useless to me. Making love with you has always been more than—”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Her eyes darkened. “It was exciting. It’s always exciting, but after it’s over…” Lisa sighed and her explanation faded out.
“After it’s over, what happens?” he asked, feeling a sting of remorse. Had he been so inconsiderate that he’d foregone her pleasure for his? Lord knew, when he made love to Lisa, he had the sensation of a five-alarm fire that had to be put out, but her pleasure had always been important to him.
“After it’s over,” she began, and hesitated again. “You’re still you, and I’m still me. You still want no strings, and I still want a family. You usually go home, and the next morning I feel…” She shrugged. “Empty.”
Brick was the first to admit that the feminine psyche was a complete mystery to him. “Is this about me staying overnight? Because if it is—”
“It’s about you staying every night.”
Brick felt a muscle spasm in his jaw. Uneasiness grabbed and clutched at his gut. He shoved his clenched hand into his pocket. Hell, he simply was not ready to cut Lisa loose. He didn’t want to give her up yet. When he’d seen that little book of hers with his name crossed out, he’d felt undiluted panic. “We could live together.”
Her eyes rounded in surprise. Uncertainty flashed across her face, but only for a second. Lisa looked away. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly.
“Lisa, maybe this is just a stage,” he said, voicing what he’d been hoping because he couldn’t accept not being with her anymore. “Look at how wrapped up in your job you’ve been. Now, all of a sudden, you want marriage and a baby. Maybe this will all blow over in a couple of weeks or a month.”
“It’s not all of a sudden,” she wailed. “And I don’t expect you to understand because I don’t think you really know me that well.”
Affronted, Brick stared at her in disbelief. “What the hell—”
Lisa held up a h
and. “You know me sexually, but not in other ways. The other ways a woman wants to be known by a man.”
With a sinking sensation, Brick sensed her resolve. It was something new, and he hadn’t come to grips with it. Before, she’d always been flexible, almost malleable, and he’d hoped he’d be able to talk her around this latest glitch the way he’d always done before. But she looked as if she’d faced something inside herself and come out stronger because of it.
Even though he topped her by five inches and outweighed her by a hundred pounds, Brick, who was known for his power, found himself envying her strength.
Lisa had made a decision grounded in what she thought was best. What she’d decided, he realized, was that she didn’t want him.
Brick pulled off the handkerchief he’d tied around his head to keep the sweat from his eyes and accepted the chair and cold beer his sister, Carly, offered. “Thanks.”
His brother-in-law, Russ Bradford, took another chair and saluted Brick with his own beer. “Appreciate your help. When you said you were coming down for the weekend, I swear I wasn’t planning to work you to death.”
“I’m a long way from dying,” Brick said, though he felt miserable inside. He knew Russ needed help, and Brick needed something to quell the restlessness within him. So far, he hadn’t found it. “Since I’ve been here so often lately, I thought I’d better earn my keep.”
“It’s no problem and you know it,” Carly said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the dinner cruise on Matilda’s Dream? I could make space for you.” She grinned. “After all, you used to be part owner.”
“One of eight owners,” he said wryly. Brick’s six brothers, he and Carly had inherited the riverboat from an aunt. Russ had bought out the brothers’ shares and Carly had taken it over and made it into a successful business.
Brick wasn’t in the mood to socialize. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t in the mood for much of anything. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll stay here tonight.”