1-900-Lover

by Rhonda Nelson

  Those melted chocolate eyes of his had danced with a knowing sort of humor, and the corner of his mouth had tucked into a grin that made her alternately want to shrink out of existence and suckle his bottom lip. Her gaze slid to where he sat in the passenger seat.

  After spending the past hour in his company, shrinking out of existence had lost its appeal and the suckling idea had expanded to other areas of his glorious anatomy—the curiously vulnerable patch of bronzed skin behind his ear, for instance. There was something positively adorable—not to mention sexy—about the way his hair curled gently behind his ears.

  Yes, to her eternal chagrin and bewilderment, she was looking that closely.

  Why? Hell, who knew? Rowan thought, utterly exasperated. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. She’d turned into a single throbbing, pulsing nerve of need, and the longer she spent in his company, the more the condition worsened. She wanted him that desperately. More than her next meal. Her next breath.

  Even the idea of a virtually unlimited budget and a half acre to landscape in her own unique design hadn’t deterred the dogged attraction. If anything, she suspected it had only worsened as a result of it, because now she had more than a serious case of lust going, respect had been thrown into the mix as well.

  Landscaping wasn’t simply a job to Will Foster, wasn’t just a way to earn a living wage—he was truly passionate about it. She’d suspected as much from the beginning, but listening to him talk about sod, fertilizer, trees and flowers while they surveyed Doris’s yard had confirmed her earlier opinion. And if that resonating fervor in his voice hadn’t clued her in, then one look at his own lawn definitely would have.

  Rowan slowed as she neared his house, then guided her car down Will’s lengthy gravel drive. The classic two-story house and surrounding property loomed instantly into view, and she found herself just as startled, just as impressed as she had been the first time she’d made this trip.

  While he definitely took the minimalist approach to decorating the inside of his house, the outside was another matter altogether. The sloping lawn was graced with mature oak, maple and magnolia trees. Flowering bushes and evergreens hugged the perimeter of the home, and various bedding plants—impatiens, petunias, pinks—lent splashes of contrasting, happy colors to the landscape. Hanging baskets of hot-pink bougainvillea and ivy geraniums lined the porch, and a couple of planters loaded with a variety of flowering plants flanked either side of the front door.

  Rowan followed the drive around to the back of the house and found it even more impressive with a second look. A huge antique brick patio butted against the house and surrounded a large kidney-shaped pool with a stacked-stone waterfall. A built-in bar and grill, along with plush patio furniture provided an ample place to simply relax or entertain. Predictably, the entire outdoor room had been accented with lots of greenery and flowers.

  In a word, it was gorgeous.

  To the left of the pool area, an ivied archway led to a private garden—his antique roses, no doubt—and one she suspected was accessible from the master suite. Though the greenhouse, potting shed and orchard couldn’t be seen from the pool area, Rowan had noted them all the same from the road. Every inch of his property had been pruned, clipped, planted and tended with the kind of single-minded tenacity of a passionate perfectionist. She ought to know. It took one to know one, Rowan thought, quelling a grin.

  At any rate, recognizing the shared characteristics in him made her chest tingle with a pleased warmth, and her belly clench with another jolt of desire. If he took this kind of care and attention to cultivating a garden, then it simply stood to reason that he’d put that same determined effort into cultivating a lover. The mere idea made her nipples tingle, made her womb quicken. She pulled in a shuddering breath as she shifted the transmission into Park, then let it go with a smile.

  “Home, sweet home,” Will told her, unwittingly parroting her first thought when she’d walked into his house. “Would you like to have a look around out here before we go inside?”

  Most definitely. “Sure, I’d love to.”

  Time and heat prevented a thorough tour, but her initial impressions were dead-on—he was a perfectionist. She’d also been right about the private garden. His roses were gorgeous, and she made him promise to share several cuttings with her.

  Given the perfect state of the yard, Rowan had anticipated a thorough, well-kept greenhouse, but what she hadn’t anticipated—an unexpected delight that absolutely thrilled her to her little toes—was his heirloom seed collection. Respect and, curiously, even desire adjusted accordingly.

  With the advent of hybrid seeds, many of the open-pollinated varieties were getting harder and harder to find. Hybrids had their advantages, yes. They were disease resistant and consistently produced more uniform fruit and blooms. The trade-off was a lesser scent with the flowers and a muted taste to the fruit, which in Rowan’s opinion completely defeated the purpose. Backyard gardeners—like herself, and Will obviously—preferred the nonhybrid varieties. Her gaze slid to Will once more.

  Who would have ever thought she’d get this excited over a guy who liked dirt as much as she did? Rowan thought as another flame of warmth tickled her chest and lower extremities.

  She fingered a small package of tomato seeds. “Crimson Cushion, Watermelon Beefsteak, Giant Beefsteak and Ponderosa.” Impressed, her gaze shot to his. “Wow.”

  Seemingly uncomfortable, he shoved his hands in his pockets. Soft light filtered through the roof, bathing him in a sepia-looking glow. “It’s a hobby of sorts.”

  It looked like more than a mere hobby to her, Rowan thought, intrigued by his purposely vague description. She picked up a small catalogue. “Some hobby,” she said with a small harrumph, for lack of anything better.

  Will leaned against a potting table, kicked at a nonexistent rock on the floor. “My father and grandfather were farmers. Farming was too unpredictable for my tastes,” he confided with a small smile.

  She’d just bet it was, Rowan thought. She’d gleaned enough of his personality to make that deduction in just a few short hours. In fact, Will seemed to enjoy having his way just as much as she enjoyed having hers. The idea that she might have met her match gave her a little thrill, appealed to her more than it should have. “Oh, really?” she asked, tongue in cheek. “I find that hard to believe.”

  He smiled at her, the grin equally boyish and sexy, endearingly hot. “Yeah, well,” he continued. “I still have a healthy respect for it. My grandfather, in particular, was a big proponent of the heirloom varieties.” He shrugged lightly, cast a careless glance around the greenhouse. “It’s a small way to follow in his footsteps.”

  Whether it was the offhand way he shared that significant insight—his laudable respect for tradition, or the respect for tradition itself—Rowan didn’t know, but her heart inexplicably brightened all the same, and the frightening realization that she could oh-so-easily fall for this guy penetrated her mushy brain and sent a dart of uncomfortable panic right into her overly warm heart.

  She’d recognized the Super-Sized attraction. She’d even reluctantly admit to some curiously strong emotions given the short length of time they’d known each other—being with him came easily, made her feel curiously…safe, for a lack of better explanation—but admitting to herself that this could turn into something more than a cavewoman crush was particularly…disturbing.

  In fact, though she’d thought she was past the Mark debacle, she suddenly found herself unreasonably spooked.

  “Well,” Will said, jerking her out of her frown-provoking thoughts. He pushed away from the potting table. “We should probably get started.”

  “Right,” Rowan managed, still unnerved. She pinned what she hoped looked like a natural smile into place and made her way to the door. True to form—getting through a day without embarrassing herself in some way had never happened—her sandal caught the lip of the threshold, knocking her off balance and, if it hadn’t been for Will’s quick reflexes
, she would have undoubtedly ended up in a graceless heap face-first, ass-end up on the ground in front of him.

  Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

  Instead, even as her face flamed with a familiar oh-shit-why-me? humiliation, another heat spread like a flash-fire over her thighs, up her belly and directly into her breasts. His hands, strong, slightly callused and warm, bracketed her upper arms and her breath left her in a small whoosh as her back came flush up against the hard wall of his muscled chest.

  “Whoa,” Will chuckled softly into her ear, causing a delicate shiver to dance through her.

  Rowan swallowed. Oh, sweet Jesus. His scent, a mesmerizing combination of earth, air and hard work, invaded her nostrils, making her pulse hit an unsteady beat. She made the mistake of shooting an embarrassed glance over her shoulder, and wound up stuck, unable to look away from that warmed honey gaze.

  A beat slid into three, and the humor in his eyes swiftly faded, replaced by a heat so intense she barely resisted the urge to melt beneath it.

  Every cell in her body sang with joy because she wasn’t alone in this unholy attraction—he felt it too. Evidently just as strongly because, thrillingly, a definite bulge nudged the small of her back. His gaze dropped to her lips, an unspoken want she mimicked as well, wordlessly sharing the same desire.

  She desperately wanted him to kiss her, could feel that very desire hammering with every beat of her heart, could feel it intensify with every agonizing second that stretched between them.

  Then the agony abruptly ended, when he finally swore, then lowered his head and found her mouth with his. There was nothing tentative about the way he took her mouth, nothing hesitant in the way he firmly molded his lips to hers, nothing shy about the bold sweep of his talented tongue into her mouth.

  It was hot and delicious, wickedly tantalizing, and the sheer pleasure coaxed an ecstatic whimper from the back of her throat. She turned in his arms, wrapped one hand around his waist, and anchored the other behind his neck, brazenly pressing herself against him. Out of character? Yes, to some degree. But she didn’t care because she wanted him and she would do everything in her power to have him. Because it felt right, as natural as breathing. With any other person, she might have hesitated, but not with him. Not with Will. With Will, she could only feel, and the absolute perfection of this moment left no room for modesty, for doubt, for anything but sensation. The burn of desire charred pride and propriety, left nothing but an urgent sense of need.

  With a low growl of pleasure, Will sagged against the door frame, pulling her with him. His hot mouth fed at hers even as his hands charted confidently over her back, then settled warmly over her rump. A hot thrill snaked through her at the intimate contact. Her womb clenched with achy need, her nipples pearled beneath the satiny fabric of her bra, and a moist heat coated her feminine folds and swiftly seeped into her panties.

  The bulge she’d felt at her back had grown significantly and was now positioned just below her belly button, a pity since she wanted it lodged firmly between her legs. She shamelessly tippy-toed, trying desperately to put that part of her that ached the most on a firmer level with that part of him she knew would bring release. Her clit pulsed with an itchy insistent heat, and a tingly warmth concentrated in her nipples as his tongue curled repeatedly around hers. Back and forth, a suckle and a sweep.

  God, could he kiss, Rowan thought dimly.

  She tangled her fingers into those silky curls at the nape of his neck, kneaded his scalp and was rewarded with a masculine growl of pleasure. She smiled against his mouth, empowered by the whip of attraction she wielded over him. He tugged her bottom lip into his mouth, and a wave of goose-flesh leap-frogged up her spine, camped in her neck, forcing a preorgasmic shiver.

  Will left off her mouth, blazed a trail of kisses down the side of neck. His hands were suddenly everywhere, molding her more tightly to him, reading her body like Braille, drawing sighs and mewls of pleasure from somewhere deep in her throat.

  She slid her hands over his chest, felt the muscles quiver and jump beneath her palms and, before she thought better of it, had tugged his shirt from the waistband of his pants, then sighed when she finally felt his hot skin against her eager fingers. Warm, hot, hard and thrilling…and she wanted more.

  Will hummed with pleasure, the sound weaving through her blood, stoking a fever inside her. Not to be outdone, he tugged her shirt down over her shoulder, nipped at her, then tugged it down even more until he bared the top of one breast. He licked a path over the curve of the cup of her bra, then latched his mouth onto her aching peak through the slinky material, unwittingly snatching the breath from her lungs. Rowan arched against him, pushing the needy nipple farther into his hot mouth. Oh, sweet heaven, she thought dimly. She wanted him. Right now.

  She needed.

  With the teeniest bit of effort, she would come right here in broad daylight, fully clothed, in the doorway of his greenhouse.

  The idea drew a whimper, another unspoken plea, one that he readily—thankfully—interpreted. He shifted, planted his legs farther apart in order to better align their bodies. She literally shook with the anticipation, her insides vibrated with it. She was so very, very close. She tightened her arms around his neck, shifted closer. Closer…

  Ahhhh. There.

  Oh, God. Please. Almost—

  “Will?” a female voice screamed from out of nowhere, practically on top of them from the sound of it, and abruptly cut through the sensual fog surrounding her fuzzy lust-ridden head.

  Startled, Rowan squealed and jumped back. Will jumped, too, as though he’d been hit with a cattle prod, then he swore hotly—repeatedly—and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, seemingly trying to summon patience from a hidden source. “Christ,” he muttered.

  Rowan wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, darted a guilty look over her shoulder, fully expecting to find the owner of the voice directly behind her. She braced herself for further embarrassment, but curiously, no one was there.

  “Will!”

  Though she should have been expecting it, Rowan jumped again, squealed. The lips she’d just been kissing tipped into a grin at her reaction. He unclipped his phone—which apparently worked as a two-way radio as well—from his shorts and held it up meaningfully to her. He exhaled a mighty breath. “Yes, Mom?”

  Ah. His mother. Rowan bit the inside of her jaw to keep from smiling.

  “I tried calling the house, but didn’t get you.”

  His gaze tangled with hers, then he reached out and ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “That’s because I’m not in the house. I’m outside. Was there something in particular you needed?”

  “No, nothing particular I guess. I just thought I’d remind you that it’s not too late to change your mind about Rebecca Hillendale. I’m sure she’d love to have dinner with you. I could call her back.”

  Rowan arched a pointed brow and had the pleasure of watching the tips of Will’s ears turn red. She kept her expression coolly detached, purposely bored, but inside she writhed with immediate, disproportionate, unfounded jealousy.

  She didn’t know this Rebecca Hillendale from Adam’s house cat, but that didn’t keep her from instantly hating the woman, or from forming a less than charitable opinion of her. As far as Rowan was concerned, she was undoubtedly a fat, ugly Class-A bitch and if she knew what was good for her, she’d keep her distance. It was ridiculous. She was ridiculous. But she couldn’t help herself.

  Will massaged the bridge of his nose. “Mom, we’ve been over this. I’m not having dinner with Rebecca Hillendale. Ever,” he added vehemently. “Let it go.”

  His mother heaved a put-upon sigh. “Oh, all right. But you can’t blame me for trying. I don’t like the idea of you being lonely.”

  From the beleaguered look on his handsome face, this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. Rowan’s intuition went on point. If his mother worried about him being lonely, then that meant he must not date. At least, not regul
arly. A secret thrill expanded in her chest. But if that was the case, then why? Rowan wondered. Like her, had he been hurt? Or, like so many guys in his generation, was he simply commitment-phobic? Something to ponder later, she decided, filing the information away for future consideration.

  “I’m not lonely, Mom,” Will insisted. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  His mother blithely ignored his attempt to end the conversation. “Just because you’re not lonely now doesn’t mean you won’t be in the future—”

  Will shot her a long-suffering see-what-I-have-to-deal-with-look and smiled. “I know,” he interrupted. “Gotta go, Mom.”

  “—you know,” she continued without the slightest pause. “It’s not healthy, a man your age being—”

  “Mom.”

  The pointed edge to his voice finally snagged her attention. “Yes?”

  “I’m busy.”

  Now that was an understatement, Rowan thought with a mental snort, quietly mourning the loss of her almost orgasm.

  “Well, you should have just said so,” his mother replied primly. “No need to get snippy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Will’s eyes widened in comical disbelief as she disconnected. “Was I snippy?” he asked. “I don’t think I was snippy.”

  Rowan laughed, shook her head, and crossed her arms over her chest. “Nah, not snippy. Forceful maybe.”

  Will chuckled darkly. “Trust me. With her, I have to be.” A droll smile rolled around his lips. “As you just witnessed, she’s not afraid to share her thoughts, opinions or suggestions, particularly when it comes to who I’m dating, or more accurately, not dating.”

  Rowan nodded. “I’ve got a landlord with the same annoying proclivities. She’s convinced I won’t be a whole woman until I’ve changed my last name.” She blew out a breath. “It doesn’t take long to get old.”