by Ann Major
“If I sleep with you, for old times’ sake, would you let me stay?” Her voice was soft and husky, shaking a little, yet her invitation flowed through him like music, causing something vital and true, something ripe and raw, in him to leap toward her.
“What?” he growled, his gaze lowering to her breasts despite his best intentions, because he was truly tempted by her outrageous offer. Which she, no doubt, knew.
Damn her silky hide.
She laughed at him. “Oh, dear, even your ears are turning red. Why is that, I wonder?”
Because he felt as hot as a volcano about to burst.
“Quit staring at my breasts like I’m offering them to you on a serving platter! I was just kidding. Okay? You looked so grim and uptight I thought a little levity would do us both good.”
“Well, I wouldn’t kid about something like that, if I were you,” he snapped.
“Why? Because you’re mad that you want to sleep with me too much?”
“I don’t want to sleep with you.” His voice sounded strange to his ears, maybe because he was speaking through gritted teeth.
“Good,” she said in a teasing tone that said she didn’t believe a single word. “Because I don’t want you, either. So, we’re both safe. In no sexual danger from each other. You have your pretty Alicia, aka Butler Shipyards, and I have my work in progress.”
“No boyfriend?”
Why in hell had he asked that? He didn’t give a damn whether she had a boyfriend or not.
“Would you care?”
“Stop it.”
“I can ask a question if I want. You don’t have the right to tell me what to say or do any more.”
“I never told you any such thing. We weren’t ever that important to each other.”
“Thanks. They say it’s good for one’s character to be humbled once in a while.”
“I want you off my land. If you don’t agree to my terms, I’ll have my lawyer contact you. Trust me. The fight over the legality of this lease will cost you far more than it’s worth. If you’re smart, you’ll take my offer.”
“I can tell you’ve grown used to pushing people around.”
“Damn it.”
“You know, I almost feel sorry for you. Nine years haven’t taught you anything. Oh, sure, you’re richer and colder, which means a lot of people probably think you’re pretty successful. But I’ll bet you’re not nearly as happy and as satisfied with your life as you try to pretend, or you wouldn’t be trying to bully me. You’re living a lie, Logan Claiborne, and I’m one of the few people who knows it. That’s why you want me to leave. You don’t want to face the truth about who you really are and what you really feel. You’re no elegant, refined gentleman. You use your money like a shield to fend off anything that’s real…like me.”
“Rip up that paper. Do the smart thing for once. Just say you’ll take my money.”
“Or you’ll what?” When she licked her mouth, making her lower lip shine wetly, something that had been wound too tight for nine damn years snapped inside him, unleashing a force he would have denied with every breath in his body.
With a suddenness that startled them both, him most of all, he seized her slim shoulders. Jerking her to her feet, his hard arms circled hers, and then crushed her against him. “You shouldn’t have come back here. You shouldn’t have messed with me again.”
“So, you do want me, a little,” she whispered, her musical voice a husky taunt against his throat. “Is that why you’re so afraid of me?”
“I’m not afraid. You have to go,” he muttered furiously, too aware of her soft breasts mashed against his chest. “You know it. And I know it.”
“Do I?” She paused. “Well, now I’m going to tell you something. I don’t know it. You and I haven’t been on the same page in ever so long, Mr. Claiborne. Lucky me.”
“Damn you.”
“I want to stay and I will—until I’m good and ready to go. And I will go, but only when I decide.”
“If you’re smart…”
“I’ll what? I’ll leave before I tempt you into my bed again?” She laughed.
A faint breeze swept the wide veranda, stirring gold tendrils against her temple. She was so damn sexy, and her body felt so warm, he lost his train of thought. How could he think with her in his arms? With her voluptuous breasts pressed against his chest? With her hair smelling sweetly of shampoo and her body of jasmine scented soap? With her half-open lips too close to his to resist? With her saying things to deliberately tempt him?
Yes, she was right. He wanted her naked and writhing and wet underneath him again.
On that thought his mouth came down on hers. If only she hadn’t clung, maybe sanity would have returned. But she did, pressing herself against him, shuddering as violently as he did, causing him to gasp and kiss her again and then again. And with every kiss, his long-repressed hunger grew until it was a thunderous, pulsing fever. When she purred, melted and opened her delicious mouth wider so that his tongue could fill it, the world began to reel past him in a dizzying rush.
He had no idea how long he held her and devoured her mouth, or how he summoned the strength to finally push her away before it was too late to stop.
Panting hard, he stared down at her. He’d been seconds away from carrying her to the garçonnière where he would have taken her wildly and violently, not tenderly as he had on their first night. And once would never be enough. He felt as obsessed by her now as he had in the past.
As his guilty eyes held hers, he saw that she was burning up just like he was. Her cheeks were red, her mouth swollen, her eyes aflame, her tumult more than equal to his.
“I still hate you,” she said, breathing so hard and fast, those beautiful breasts of hers were heaving, tempting him to new indiscretions.
“I hate you even more than Jake does. I hate you for what you did in the past. For who you were back then. But most of all, I hate you for who you still are. And for what you just did. You take, but you don’t give.”
Then why was she running her tongue over her lips as if to taste him again?
“Good,” he whispered, loathing himself even more than she and Jake ever could. “Concentrate on that, then, and maybe we’ll get through this without tearing up our lives again.”
“And I thought I was the only one who suffered,” she whispered. “Was I wrong?”
Never in a thousand years would he admit that he’d suffered because of losing her, that he’d caused Noelle to suffer, and yet…The truth was that after he’d jilted Cici and had willed his overpowering attraction for her to die, so that he could marry Noelle and make her happy, his determination had failed him. Back then he’d thought if a man had enough willpower, he could make himself do anything. He’d believed he could create the life of his grandfather’s dreams through sheer force of will. But instead his obsession with her had dominated him.
Through the years, she’d haunted him. Every time he’d come home to Belle Rose, even with Noelle, Cici had been there, memories of her sensuality and sweetness luring him.
Why wouldn’t her power over him die?
Not daring to look at her a second longer for fear of losing the last fragile shreds of his control, Logan turned and vaulted down the stairs beside the ugly ramp she’d built. Striding around the back of the house as if ten demons were on his trail, he called to his grandfather.
Cici came running, her dark eyes wide, as a smiling Pierre held up a hand to stop the tour, so he could see what his grandson wanted.
“Is everything all right, Logan?” Pierre asked.
“It’s time I left.” He took his grandfather’s hand and shook it gently, noting how weak the old man’s clasp was.
“Then you’re through with Cici and she’s free to finish the tour with me?”
“Yes,” Logan muttered. “I’m through with her.”
“Wonderful. I’ll be happy to finish the tour,” Cici said, her lilting velvety voice so cheery behind him he was further infuriated alth
ough he continued to smile at his grandfather. No doubt she thought she’d won.
Not that he so much as glanced at Cici as she rushed up to join his grandfather. Logan didn’t meet the gazes of any of the people clustered around his grandfather and Cici, either, but he could tell that they sensed some of the dramatic undercurrents because they were staring from him to Cici much too avidly.
He did manage to nod a final goodbye to his smiling grandfather even as he swore to himself that tomorrow morning, he’d tell Hayes Daniels, his CEO, to sic the full force of their legal department on the defiant Cici. The house, after all, which was open to the public, belonged to Claiborne Energy.
Logan smiled grimly. She wouldn’t last long after such an assault. He would soon be rid of her.
Four
L ogan, who had the headache from hell after a night of no sleep, had arrived at his office shortly after 6:00 a.m. Work on the last few details of the merger went smoothly for a couple of hours.
The first sign that Cici had launched a counter attack of her own before he’d even gotten his planes in the air occurred shortly before 9:00 a.m. Logan was just settling into a meeting with Hayes Daniels in Hayes’s lavish office after a lengthy chat with their attorneys about Miss Bellefleur, her illegal lease of property on company land and a strategy to deal with her when his secretary called him.
“But this isn’t just a phone call,” Mrs. Dillings said, her voice sharp with indignation after he’d dared to point out that he’d given her strict instructions that she was not supposed to interrupt him. “I thought you would want to know that your grandfather’s here. Especially since you went down to check on him yesterday.”
“Here? In New Orleans?”
“Here. In your office. And if I may say so, he hardly looks like the invalid you described. You’d never know he had a stroke except for that slight limp. But he does seem most anxious to talk to you. He said immediately. Oh, and you know how his jaw juts out the way yours does and how you both growl when you’re not getting your way? Well…looks like a storm is brewing.”
She would know. His grandfather had been her former boss. Obviously, Mrs. Dillings was very good at what she did and knew her value, or she would never have dared to comment like that. Maybe someday Logan should remind her that more people got fired for poor people skills than for being bad at their jobs.
“I’ll be right there. See if he wants anything…a cup of coffee…a beignet…hell, order him a dozen beignets.”
“He’s with a most charming companion. A Miss Bellefleur.”
At the mention of Cici’s name, a pair of pert breasts stretching a hot pink, jersey top with a biker’s nasty face on it arose in his mind’s eye, causing his headache to worsen. The same restlessness that had hammered in Logan’s blood all night long and had kept him awake began to pulse anew. He arose from his leather chair, walked stiffly to the door and then, stopping himself, began to pace.
“Miss Bellefleur’s already asked for a whole tray of beignets. She likes them with extra powdered sugar.”
Would she eat all that sugar with a spoon and then lick her fingertips?
He stared out the window at the city which was shrouded in murky mists. Unbidden came the memory of an eighteen-year-old Cici sitting across the table from him under the famous green-and-white canopy of the Café du Monde, licking powdered sugar off the curve of her thumb. How enchanted he’d been by everything she’d done that afternoon.
“Right. Indeed.” Heat suffusing him, Logan said a stern goodbye to Mrs. Dillings. Continuing to pace, he directed his attention to Hayes, who was leaning back in his black leather chair, his long, muscular legs crossed, his tanned fingertips steepled in front of him.
“She’s here,” Logan said.
“Who?” Hayes said smiling, his black eyes mild as he studied him.
“Cici,” Logan snapped as if such a question were ridiculous.
“Our infamous Miss Bellefleur.” Hayes leaned forward. His black eyes became piercing, which was bothersome.
“Well, that didn’t take our lawyers long. We barely hung up and now the villain’s here to plead her case,” Hayes said, his smile broadening.
“Obviously our attorneys failed to reach her. Because she’s here and not at Belle Rose, where she belongs, so she could have answered the damn phone.”
“I thought the point was that she doesn’t belong there.”
“Right. Exactly. Of course. But my point now is that she jumped the gun. Again.”
“Your Cici is beginning to sound like a handful.”
Of course, any woman foolhardy enough to risk her neck in war zones, the long lens of her Leica camera her only shield against bullets, is bound to be a handful.
“She’s not my Cici!” he yelled, he who never yelled.
“If you say so. All you’ve talked about is her. Nothing—ever—not even your wife has ever distracted you like this.”
“Because she’s using my grandfather to get to me.”
“Dirty trick.”
“She’s full of them.”
Hayes, his best friend, his former college roommate, his CEO, was tall and dark and tough as nails, way tougher than Logan. Which was why Logan had hired him. The trouble was, Hayes, who was nosy as hell, was observing him with far too much interest and probably far too much insight.
“I’d better go deal with her,” Logan said.
“But you just brought in our legal team so you wouldn’t have to be involved with her personally. Why not send Abe? You said you didn’t want to get your hands dirty. You said this is a trivial, domestic matter.”
“Right. That’s what I said.”
Suddenly, this whole matter with Cici felt way too personal to turn over to anybody else, even his ruthless lawyers, of which Abe was the head.
“Did I ever tell you how much I dislike being slammed with my own data?”
Hayes laughed out loud. “Don’t we all? Keep me posted. I want to hear how round two comes out. Your Cici is much more interesting than any merger with Butler Shipyards. By the way, I’m beginning to wonder if Mitchell Butler has been entirely honest with us. At this point it’s just a gut feeling…but…”
“Check it out,” Logan said.
Logan’s heart had been beating at a ferocious clip ever since he’d shut his door only to see Cici and his grandfather, their chairs pushed close together, enjoying a makeshift picnic of beignets and rich black coffee. Oblivious to the crumbs they’d scattered all over his coffee table, they were smiling at each other.
The old man looked happier than he had in years, and that would have been heartwarming if Logan trusted Cici. But how would his grandfather feel when Cici finished her book and returned to putting her life on the line in the fast lane just to take a few pictures? Cici was an adventuress, not a caregiver.
Sitting down at his desk, Logan punched a button on his intercom and told Mrs. Dillings to hold his calls. When he looked up his grandfather had moved his chair so that it faced Logan’s desk.
When the old man frowned, Logan scrunched lower in his chair. Nobody could make Logan feel four years old again just by sticking out his jaw except this man who’d raised him. How many times had he stood in this very same office when it had belonged to his grandfather and waited for the old man to begin some lecture because he’d committed some minor, boyish infraction?
As he waited, Logan began to feel caged in his civilized office that was filled with leather and chrome and too many polished wooden surfaces. And he knew who to blame for his discomfiture.
Not that he was about to give the delectable Miss Bellefleur, who was, indeed, licking her fingertips with a grace any feline would envy, the satisfaction of looking at her.
Even so, all he saw was Cici. All he felt was her.
In her purple T-shirt and tight black jeans, with her childishly sticky fingers, fingers he wanted to lick clean, she was a garish splash of voluptuous color in his too elegant, beige suite.
Did she always have
to dress in outfits that screamed, look at me? Did she even own a decent dress? Or a conservative suit? Or plain black pumps that might have concealed those livid, purple toenails, which, by the way, on her, were sexy as hell? At least, they matched her T-shirt.
He had memories about those half-naked feet. After sex, she used to climb on top of him and stretch out, placing the soles of her feet on top of his feet. God, he’d loved the feel of her on top of him as he’d wondered what she’d do next.
And her hair—it was wild this morning—springy curls tumbling to her shoulders. Big hair was not a look he liked on his woman…usually…except right after sex. Still, he was hard as a rock, and the view wasn’t what was turning him on.
Ignoring Cici, Logan concentrated on his grandfather. “You seem upset, Grandpère. Why are you here?”
“Maybe because sitting around Belle Rose isn’t doing me much good. I was always a man of action.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I’m here because I want to start by righting a few wrongs.”
“Such as?”
“In the past, I was unfair to Cici. And so were you.”
“At whose instigation?” Logan whispered.
“Mine. I take full responsibility. I was so furious at Bos and so discouraged by your father’s failures and Jake’s wildness, I didn’t want Jake to be seduced by Cici and marry her. I didn’t know what a niece of Bos’s might do to our property if she married into our family. I didn’t trust her. So, I asked you to intervene to save your brother, who was always more susceptible to temptation than you.”
Little did he know.
“And because I did, Cici was hurt so badly she ran away and got into a dangerous, heartbreaking profession. She stayed away, until now.”
“Is that what she told you?”
He nodded. “Last night we had a long talk.”
Logan could well imagine that they had.
“She wants to come home,” Pierre said. “She says she forgives me. She’s persuaded Jake to come home, which is what I’ve wanted ever since I got sick. And for that, now you want to throw her out.”