by Lora Leigh
The oil popped, stinging her as she transferred the churros to the paper towels. “I have to be careful about contacting my family. My ex-husband has tried to use them to find me. Even threatened them. We call and send letters through a neighbor, so there’s no record of my address and phone number in their house.”
She stole a look at Jesse. He’d lost some of the old poker face, and she could see him grimly absorbing the news. “Did Brenda already tell you about that?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Of course not. Brenda wouldn’t, although she might hint, if she was convinced that Estrella wanted Jesse for more than the fantasy.
“What did she tell you? About Eve, or my job, maybe by accident?” A thought struck Estrella. Perhaps Jesse had known all along that she was not the sophisticated lady she’d pretended to be. Her faced heated, and she hurriedly bent over the fryer, adding more dough. Too many churros already, but she needed to keep busy.
“No, we talked about me. But she did tell me to try again with you. That you had your reasons for the phobia about tattoos.”
“Tony, my ex-husband, had tattoos. I used to watch his hands and arms a lot, to be ready if he was . . . in a bad mood.”
“He hurt you?” Jesse kept his tone neutral, though she could hear how doing that strained his throat.
“Some. Mostly it was about being in control of me. When I did something he didn’t like, he might grab me, push me. Now and then I had bruises, but mainly there was a lot of yelling. He was threatened because I wanted to be more than his wife.” The old feelings of humiliation swept over her. She hated to think of how long she’d stayed, making excuses for putting up with the bad treatment. “I was sixteen when we met, eighteen when we married. You know, young and stupid in love. It wasn’t always so bad.”
Jesse had put his head down. She saw him clench and unclench his hands beneath the table. “And you feel safe here?”
She rescued the well-browned churros. “Yes, finally. We think he’s given up, and soon I may be able to have my family out to visit. Until we’re sure, I’m using an old family name from my father’s side—Ianesque.”
“But you really are Estrella?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’m glad of that. I couldn’t think of you by another name.”
There was caring in his voice. And something more. A question?
Of their future.
She caught her breath. It was too much for her to believe that he could forgive her deception so easily. “Aren’t you angry with me at all?”
His answer was measured. “That depends on why you did it.”
Estrella took her time, pretending absorption in making another batch of churros. Finally she set down the emptied pastry bag and leaned her butt against the edge of the counter, making herself look into Jesse’s eyes even though that only got her more antsy. “I did it because I wanted to know what it was like to be different from the real me. The truth is, as I’m sure you figured out, I work as Eve Romero’s maid. I do many housekeeping and personal chores for her too, but mostly I clean. I ride the bus to work every day in my maid’s uniform, and that was when I first noticed you on the road crew.”
She took a breath. “So, well, I started fantasizing about you. Then I started thinking that maybe I could make you want me, if only I was different. When Eve went out of town on business, I took off my uniform and got into her convertible.” She shrugged. “The rest of it, you already know.”
He rubbed at his forehead. The chair creaked. “Why did you think you had to be different?”
“Because it was a fantasy. One night where I could be as wild as I secretly wanted to be, after all these years of always being cautious and good.”
“Maybe I would have preferred the real you.”
Do you? she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t.
“What happens now?” Jesse asked.
“I don’t know, except . . .” Suddenly she was shy.
His eyes searched her face. “What?”
“I know you only said it to help me out with Eve, but I liked it when you called yourself my boyfriend.”
“I liked that too. But I’m not—” He frowned and wrenched the words out of himself. “I’m not your best bargain right now. Aside from my background, I don’t have money, and no real prospects except what I can earn with my hands. If you want a better life . . .”
She ached to hug him, but she didn’t dare that either, not yet. “Don’t you know that it’s not money alone that makes a better life?” He looked up at her and she quickly smiled encouragement. “Besides, I have plans of my own. I’m in night school, getting a degree. Someday I’ll have a good job, one to build on.”
“Really? What are you studying?”
“Don’t laugh,” she said, remembering that the last of the churros were still frying. She dipped her slotted spatula into the sizzling oil. They were a bit too crispy.
Aware of Jesse’s gaze, she pushed a damp tendril behind her ear. “I’m going to be a pharmacist.” She shot him a little grin. “Something about wearing a white coat and being clean and orderly appeals to the maid in me. Plus, it’s helping people.”
She rolled the hot churros in her sugar mixture and brought him three of them on a paper napkin. “Do you think that’s odd, me wanting to be a pharmacist?”
“I think it’s just fine.”
She sat and leaned her elbows on the table, licking her sticky, sugary fingers. “What about you?”
He watched with gleaming eyes. “When I still had my savings, I thought of buying a small plot of land and trying organic farming. My grandpa had a farm. I spent a summer there, once.” He picked up a churro.
“Go ahead. Try it.” She nudged his hand toward his mouth. “You could start a new savings account.”
“I already have.” He bit into a hot crispy corner of the golden-brown pastry, where it was crusted with melted sugar and cinnamon. “Mmm. Tastes familiar. Tastes like you.”
“I don’t know about that.” She leaned across the table, reaching for a kiss. A hot, sweet, melting kiss. “I’m thinking they taste more like you.”
“Sweet woman,” he said against her lips.
“Hot man.”
“Not a bad combination.”
“Could work.”
“Want to give it a try?”
“Only until we succeed.”
Wanted: One Hot-Blooded Man
Pamela Britton
Chapter One
He hadn’t changed in years.
Breanna Miller peered out through the front windshield of her car, watching as Trent Walker stripped off his shirt, sinewy cords of muscle rippling along his rib cage as he bundled up his shirt and threw it aside. It had to be ninety degrees, the heat causing sweat to glisten in each crevice and valley that crossed his chest. He lifted a water jug that sat on the tailgate of his construction truck, the black one-ton backed up to an industrial building site, Trent unscrewing the lid of the jug and tossing water all over his blond head. It made him shiver, water droplets flying off his head, rivulets cascading down his tan body.
Bree almost went home right then.
What was she thinking? she asked herself for the thousandth time. What the hell had she been thinking, flying fifteen hundred miles to meet up with a man she hadn’t seen in ten years, one who probably wouldn’t remember her despite how close they’d been, much less remember her name?
He turned toward her car, his blue eyes homing in on her like he knew she watched him. Bree ducked down behind the steering wheel. Jeez-o-peets, that’d been close. Just what she needed, for Trent to spot her.
The knock on her window a moment later made her scream.
Trent stared down at her, his big body bent forward as he peered into the driver’s-side window, gorgeous blue eyes curious.
“Bree Miller?” he asked, his voice clearly audible in the dead silence of the car.
Oh. My. God
He’d recognized her.
“You ar
e Bree, aren’t you?”
How the hell had he recognized her? a voice screamed inside her head. Granted, her black hair was still the same, but she’d long since lost her glasses and twenty pounds.
Bree blindly fumbled at the window control, warm air hitting her face like she’d just stepped into a hothouse.
“Well, hi, Trent. Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
Lame. Stupid. Beyond dumb. Now he was going to ask—
“What are you doing here?”
She almost closed her eyes, almost flopped her head back. Instead she forced herself to think.
Think, Bree.
“Well, um, actually. I just flew in.” And boy are my arms tired. “I, ah, just happened to stop here to get my bearings.”
Liar, liar, liar.
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” she echoed back.
Did he believe her? Bree searched those hazardous-to-your-health blue eyes and found no sign of mockery.
“So you’re in town for the weekend?”
“I’m here on business.”
True, though not the kind of business he had in mind. Monkey business.
“Wow. Well, we’ll have to get together.”
“How about tonight?” Bree asked, cursing herself immediately. Jeesh, could she sound any more desperate?
You are desperate.
“Well, I don’t know—”
But it was too good an opening to miss. The whole way over, she’d wondered how to excuse her presence at his job site. She’d been sitting in front of the place contemplating that very problem when he’d begun his striptease and she’d become . . . distracted. Now she saw an answer.
“It’s been so long, Trent,” she said, giving him a wide smile, even though inside she quaked in her pointed-toe boots. “And just think what a huge coincidence it is that I stopped here. Right here,” she repeated. “To, umm, look up directions.” She absently reached for the map that she kept nearby, only to shove it away when she spotted the giant, black X, that marked his job site.
“Tonight?” he repeated.
She nodded.
But then his face cleared, his eyes doing some kind of smoky, sexy thing that made her nervous. “Okay. Sure.”
She almost lifted her hands in victory. Step one accomplished.
“What time?” he asked.
“Why don’t you meet me at my hotel—the Embassy Martinique—around six?”
“The Embassy Martinique,” he said back. “That sounds great.”
Now if she could just get through step two: having sex with him.
______
Bree told herself she had nothing to worry about. She’d just meet him for drinks. Nothing had to happen—not if she didn’t want it to. He’d never have to know the truth behind her sudden appearance at his construction site. He never needed to know that she’d traveled all this way to see him again because of something they’d shared in their past.
But that didn’t stop her from dressing the part, in something sexy, not slutty. After all, she didn’t want to scare the man away—jeesh, she still couldn’t believe he’d recognized her. But as she dressed in a little back dress, the tight halter top and long, flared skirt a perfect re-creation of Marilyn Monroe’s famous white dress, she wondered if she’d gone off the deep end.
You haven’t even finished dressing and already your hands are shaking.
“I can do this,” she told the mirror. “It’s going to work out.”
But what if Trent had a girlfriend and he didn’t want to sleep with her?
You’re making excuses, Breanna girl.
It was true, because the truth of the matter was, the thought of having sex with Trent Walker scared her to death.
But you have to.
She’d come too far to back out now. And if she didn’t push herself to do this now, she was desperately afraid all the therapy to put Humpty Dumpty back together again would be for nothing.
So she slipped on black, strappy heels, ran her hands up her long legs to ensure they were smooth as glass, and brushed her loose hair one last time. When she’d finished, she forced herself toward the door. Forced because there was a part of her that still balked.
______
She knew the moment she entered the crowded bar that the dress had worked. Male heads turned to stare appreciatively, more than one woman took one look at her, narrowed her eyes, then dipped her head to complain to a friend who would also turn and glare. It’d be kind of gratifying, if she weren’t shaking in her stiletto heels.
He was easy to find—right at the bar where he said he’d be, his blond head towering over the lesser mortals standing nearby. And as Bree got another look at him she felt her anxiety slip away as a surge of pure, feminine appreciation took over.
Oh my.
All he wore was a white T-shirt, the logo of the company he worked for branded across his chest. That T-shirt clung to every previously noted muscle, the ones that hardened his chest and lower abdomen. Arms the size of ham hocks flexed as he lifted a drink to his mouth, his head swinging around.
Bree pasted a smile on her face. Their eyes met. If she’d been any other woman, the look he gave her would have made steam emerge from her panties. Instead it made her throat tighten in fear, made her smile wobble a bit.
“Hey there,” he said in a low voice as she came up to him.
“Hi,” she said,’ slinging her purse off her shoulders and placing it on a bar stool he’d saved for her. She smiled up at him in a wide, I’m-So-Happy-To-Be-Here smile. It’s just Trent, she reminded herself. The guy you used to pal around with. Your best friend from high school. Remember? Sure, you haven’t seen him in years, but it’s the same guy just the same.
Actually . . . it wasn’t.
She couldn’t believe how big he’d gotten. In a lot of places. She noted the blue jeans he wore clinging to his crotch. He looked like he worked hard for a living, his body honed, arms tan, fingers callused. He looked like a man, not the pubescent boy she remembered.
“God, Bree. It’s been—what—almost ten years?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I can’t believe we ran into each other like that.”
“Actually,” she said, forcing her throat to work so she could swallow. “It wasn’t exactly an accident.”
“No?” he asked, looking surprised.
“No. I, um, sort of planned it.”
“Really?”
“Really.” And then she forced a fake and hopefully sultry smile to her face. “Look. Do you want to get out of here?”
She saw his pupils dilate a bit, saw the flash of something close to surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean go up to my room.”
The pupils flared again, so did his nostrils, the look on his face going from soft and friendly to hard and predatory.
“I mean, if you don’t have a girlfriend or anything.”
He didn’t say anything. Music began to play, a throbbing beat that instantly made people straighten up and voices get louder.
He leaned toward her. Bree told herself not to draw back. “Are you propositioning me?”
“Ahh . . . yeah I guess I am,” she admitted, telling herself not to look away.
But she did glance away, only to see him finger the rim of the drink he’d been sipping. “What’s the matter? You nostalgic for the good ol’ days?”
But she’d been expecting the question. “I’m a professional, Trent. I don’t have time for relationships. Nowadays sex is just a release for me. I try to fit it in when I can.” She gave him the practiced smile. “No pun intended. When I realized I was coming here on business, I thought I’d look you up to see if, you know, you might have some time for me.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” she repeated, running her foot up his left leg. “We used to have some fun, you and I. I was hoping you’d want some more.”
Actually, he’d been her first love, but that been a long time ago.<
br />
She thought he might refuse, thought he might laugh in her face. Lord, she’d envisioned so many different reactions to her words.
His, “Let’s go,” was the reaction she’d hoped for. What she didn’t expect was the way hearing those words would make her feel.
Oh God, Bree thought, her palms going sweaty. She started to panic. Her heart pounded against her chest.
He took her hand, Bree sliding off her bar stool. Trent, she reminded herself, it’s just Trent. But the reassurance didn’t help.
“What floor?” he asked.
Bree realized they’d crossed the lobby and she hadn’t even known. She blinked, trying to realign her mind. Floor? What floor?
“Fourth,” she said.
A minute later the elevator closed. Trent pressed a button, then turned her toward him, his head moving to her lips before she could stop him.
“Trent—,” she managed to say before those lips covered hers. Familiar lips. Lips that had kissed her intimately . . . once upon a time.
But he’d changed. He wasn’t the soft-mouthed teenager she remembered. Oh, no. This man was hard. He nipped at her mouth, his tongue caressing the sensitive swell of her bottom lip in a way that should have had her moaning in pleasure.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he whispered.
The elevator doors opened. They pulled apart.
“What’s your room number?” he asked, tugging her out the door.
“489,” she said, letting him pull her along even as her ears began to ring.
“Key?” he asked.
Bree fumbled in her purse, handed him the white card. He inserted it in the card-lock, and with a loud click and a snick, the door opened, light flowing in from the row of windows directly opposite. The moment she stepped inside, he pulled her to him.
This was it then, a voice inside her said. This was what she wanted him to do. Amazing how easy it had been—
He kissed her, his tongue slipping past her lips before she could form another word, and the shock of that hot, masculine invasion made her gasp. But she didn’t panic because he tasted . . . familiar. Safe. Sweet.