“No wonder you look tired,” she said, her lovely mouth turned down. She was clearly determined to fret about this.
Wes grabbed her hand and held on. “Look. I wanted to do this for you. I got a couple hours of sleep in, so don’t sweat it—I’m fine. Okay?”
“I’m not accustomed to this feeling,” she said. The lower lip was back. She was going to kill him with that thing, if she wasn’t careful. This time, though, it was accompanied by such a bewildered expression, Wes managed to keep his thoughts relatively clean and pure.
“What feeling is that, sweets?” He kept it gentle and quiet, rubbing circles over the back of her hand with the side of his thumb.
“This … this … this—” She waved her free hand in an unsteady arc, like she was trying to grab the rest of her thought right out of the air. Unable to choose one target for her confusion, her attention darted from the two of them, to the picnic, the lake, and back again.
“You’re not used to somebody doing something nice for you, just because they want to,” Wes guessed.
She smiled tightly. It looked painful. “In my experience, most acts of kindness are followed by requests for money, time, and/or help.”
It hurt him, deep down in a part of himself he liked to pretend no longer existed, that she’d be so kerfuffled by one relatively simple act of caring. And yet, selfishly, he was almost fiercely glad to be the first one to show her what it felt like.
Not to mention the fact that he did have an ulterior motive.
Which he probably ought to be getting along with before this conversation got deeper than the lake behind them.
Emotions were tricky things, Rosemary discovered as she struggled to stuff hers back in their carefully labeled lockbox.
For instance, she imagined many women would have been miffed at the way Wes smoothed the moment over by tidying away their lunch things and busily setting out clean spoons and refilling her punch—but Rosemary was relieved. She didn’t want to dissect her feelings and lay them bare. Wes somehow divined that, and she thought it perfectly gallant of him to ignore the prevalent psychobabble about communication and openness being healthy, and allow her to pull herself together with a little dignity.
Rosemary focused on the distraction of wondering what he’d pull out of the knapsack—which was starting to assume magical proportions, like something out of Harry Potter. Could anything other than wizard-space account for the sheer number of items he’d managed to jam into one not-very-large knapsack?
The mystery was solved when Wes produced two small earthenware crocks, glazed a pretty robin’s-egg blue, and said, “Pots de crème! Which is basically a fancypants culinary-school way of saying custard.”
Rosemary accepted her pot eagerly, and removed the tiny, fragile lid to see a velvety, burnt-orange substance with sparkling amethyst jewels of some kind of sugared flower sprinkled over the top. She glanced up at him, lifting her brows.
“In this case, pumpkin custard with candied violets,” he elaborated. Which explained the color.
At this point, not only was Rosemary beyond ready to have a reason not to be talking anymore, she was well conditioned to accept any food whatsoever from Wes’s hand.
Positive reinforcement was incredibly motivating, as it turned out.
Dipping her spoon into the pleasingly thick custard, Rosemary brought it to her mouth and slipped it between her lips, fully prepared for something delicious.
Or so she thought—because nothing in her prior experience or existence could have prepared her for the sheer pleasure of this spoonful.
“Oh,” she quavered, mouth blissfully full. “Oh, oh.”
The lush, earthy sweetness of pumpkin ravished her taste buds, while the crystallized blossoms dotted around the surface of the custard sparkled on her tongue in tiny points of herbaceous fragrance. The homey comfort of autumnal squash and the heady scent of the violets swirled together in a sensual dance that had Rosemary closing her eyes in ecstasy.
She plunged her spoon back in—why was the mouth of the little pot so narrow and hard to navigate?—and was soon in heaven again.
“Good?” Wes asked again, just as he had with the baeckeoffe, and this time it was all Rosemary could do not to call him a moron for even posing the question.
“Are you joking? I want to be facedown in this stuff. I want to swim laps in it. I want …” She broke off to spoon up some more.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” he said, his voice light and bright with amusement. Rosemary was so blissed out, she couldn’t even find the wherewithal to take him to task for laughing at her.
“ ’Enjoying it’ is an entirely inadequate phrase to describe this experience.” She tipped her head back and basked. “God. I love my lab, but moments like these make me so happy to be done with that part of the experiment. I think I could stay in New York forever.”
Wes made a low, rough sound and Rosemary sat up, blinking.
Frak. What did I just say? Panic surged up her chest and closed her throat. Suddenly, the custard didn’t want to slip down quite so easily.
Chapter 20
Wes could barely breathe through the wild surge of joy. “Rosie,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and careful instead of shouting like a madman, the way he wanted to. “Do you mean it? You don’t have to go back to the academy?”
A scorching hot blush flooded her cheeks, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye, but Wes barely noticed because she was nodding. Hesitantly, yeah, but still—and then she said, “I got what I needed from that facility, yes. Which isn’t to say I’d never go back; after all, my things are all there, except for Lucille. Not that she’s a thing. And not that I’m really thinking about moving here! That would be absurd. Obviously.”
“I didn’t want to write that note. Cornell made me,” Wes blurted, grabbing her hand.
She jerked away, her fingers tightening on the custard pot until they went white. “You were just going to leave without a word?”
“No! That’s not what I meant,” he said, alarmed. “It came out wrong. I’m just … damn, I’m nervous. What I wanted to say was that it wasn’t my idea to leave you at all. If it had been up to me, I would’ve been back the next day, me and Lucille, ready to pick up where we left off.”
Rosemary shook her head as if trying to rearrange the thoughts inside it. Moving with exaggerated care, she set the pot and her spoon down on the blanket. “It was up to you, Wes. And you made your choice. You chose your career.” She looked at him, her eyes the lifeless blue of a frozen pond, and delivered the killing blow. “I wasn’t even surprised. It was hardly the first time I was passed over in favor of the chance to leapfrog up the ladder of success.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Wes said, his throat aching. “I swear to you. It was Cornell.”
She blinked. “What?”
“President Cornell,” Wes said. Even speaking the name aloud made him want to hit something. “He came and found me later that night.”
Wes remembered the shock of it—the suddenness of going from the pure joy and thrill of being the first man to ever get to see Dr. Rosemary Wilkins without her clothes on, to the smug, oily insinuations of Wally Cornell.
“He said …” Wes paused to study his hands. “Well, some ugly things.”
“About what?”
About Wes, mostly—You really think someone with her pedigree and background, her opportunities and ambition, is going to be satisfied with a piece of rough trade like you for longer than a night?—and Wes tried not to think about how much he feared the kernel of truth buried in Cornell’s smacktalk.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The main thrust of his conversation was a threat—he swore he’d ruin your reputation if I didn’t leave quietly.”
Rosemary gasped, her skin draining of all color. Lucille, who’d been napping contentedly in a patch of sunlight, jumped to her feet and strained at the leash to climb into her mistress’s lap.
Her hands came up instinctivel
y to hold the small, wiggly body to her. “And you believed him.”
Wes looked out over the lake, watched a cool breeze kick up tiny wavelets and make a flock of ducks take wing. “I didn’t think you’d want to risk it. I mean, brass tacks here. You were gonna choose our fledgling whatever over the research you’d been working on for months? No way.”
“It should’ve been my decision to make!” Her voice was raw with some emotion Wes wasn’t sure he wanted to name.
He clenched his jaw and forced himself to meet her defiant gaze. “Honestly? I didn’t want to know what you’d choose. Maybe it was weak of me, cowardly—I’ll cop to that. But I didn’t want to put either of us through that conversation.”
“So you took the easy road, and left.”
Wes laughed, and the sharp bark of it had Lucille’s head popping up from the safe circle of Rosemary’s arms, ears cocked and alert. “You think leaving was easy? I swear, Rosie, leaving you was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done—and I’ve pulled some crazy stunts in my time.”
Rosemary hunched over Lucille’s little body. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she demanded.
“Because I thought you still needed the lab privileges for your research,” Wes said, scooting closer. Close enough to touch, but he didn’t, because her body language screamed Back off or I might shatter into a thousand pieces. “You were so stoked about it; I didn’t want to risk messing that up for you.”
“This changes everything. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel now. I didn’t want to talk about that night; I wanted to forget about it and move on.” She sighed, and he couldn’t resist. He lifted a hand to her hair, smoothing a flyaway strand of gold bent on escaping from her braid. He braced himself for her flinch—but it didn’t come. Instead, she turned into the touch.
Only slightly, a miniscule amount, as if she breathed in and the breath brought her closer to his hand, but it was enough to make Wes’s heart slam out of control. It was enough to give him the courage to say, “Maybe you want to forget that night, but I never will. I couldn’t.”
She stilled, and her body seemed to loosen, the tension uncoiling slowly and draining away. Her bright blond head tilted until she could catch his gaze, and she said, “I couldn’t forget it, either. I couldn’t forget you.”
Wes clamped his jaw shut on a shout of triumph, but the victory burned in his chest like a lit fuse. “That’s why you came to New York to find me.”
He loved the delicate rose flush that suffused her cheeks. “Well, it certainly wasn’t for your research skills,” she said, sniffling.
Wes grinned and tried to pretend his eyes weren’t blurring on him, the tears he refused to acknowledge burning behind his eyelids. “What are you talking about? I’ll have you know, I meticulously researched every single ingredient that went into this picnic.”
Evidently having had her fill of cuddling, Lucille squirmed until Rosemary opened her arms. Four white paws hit the gazebo floor, followed by a cold, black nose as Lucille immediately began foraging for crumbs.
“Oh, really?” Rosemary said. She leaned back on her hands, her body opening like a flower, everything about her lightening up as the atmosphere between them cleared.
She was so beautiful, all relaxed and disheveled, that thin T-shirt straining across her small, firm breasts—the fire in Wes’s chest flared and spread.
“What, precisely, were you looking for when you designed this meal?” God, she was practically purring.
Drawn to her like butter melting toward the hottest spot in the pan, Wes knelt up and shuffled around the blankets until he was right there, next to her, above her, sharing the same air with their quickening breaths. “I checked to make sure not a single ingredient has ever been classified, by myth, legend, old wives, or science, as an aphrodisiac.”
“And why did you care about that?” A slick pink tongue darted out to wet her plump bottom lip, leaving it shiny and tempting as all hell.
Wes nearly groaned. “Because,” he panted, sliding one hand around her back and lowering her gently down to the blanket, “when I kiss you, I don’t want there to be any confusion about why you kiss me back.”
Her lips parted and that was it. He had to taste them. Framing her stubborn jaw with his right hand, he felt the fluttering of her pulse against his fingertips as he lowered his mouth to hers and plundered it.
She was stiff for an instant, then yielded to him all at once, her body lining itself up with his, limbs flowing seamlessly together. Her mouth yielded, too, softening and opening to allow Wes’s ravenous tongue to plunge in, stroke her sharp teeth, her sensitive gums. He ate at her mouth as if he were devouring a ripe peach with all the goodness of the late summer sunshine and cool early rain.
When his tongue tangled with hers, she made a high, inquisitive sound and arched into him like a cat begging to be rubbed. Wes complied, stroking his hand from her jaw, down the line of her neck and feathering across the fragile wings of her collarbones.
His cock throbbed heavily in his jeans. Wes spared a moment to fervently wish he’d had the foresight or optimism to wear sweats or cargo pants, something loose, but then all thought was gone, obliterated by the simple press of her breast in his loosely cupped palm.
Wes honestly didn’t know if he’d moved to touch her, or if she’d arched again and thrust herself against his hand, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the warm, soft weight of her, the beat of her heart beneath, and the litany of gorgeous little cries that spilled from her mouth when he moved his thumb just. Like. That.
Tearing her mouth away, Rosemary gasped in a breath. “Public,” she squeaked. “Us. Out here. We’re. Public!”
Her color was high, her eyes bright china blue with desire, and his kisses had swollen her lips to sex-kitten proportions. Wes looked at her bottom lip, always a bit pouty but currently bee-stung enough to shut down his higher brain function, and shook his head sharply.
Plan. He was the man with the plan.
“Right,” he said, breathing hard and throttling the need to take that sweet mouth again. “Here, sit up.”
It took every ounce of strength to lift himself away from her and back up enough to give her room to move, but once she wasn’t sprawled out in front of him like some decadent banquet, it got easier. Marginally.
Lucille whined, her tail thumping the floorboards, and Wes checked to make sure her leash was still secured. Seeing that they weren’t about to resume their walk, she gave them a disgruntled look, yawned, and circled in place two or three times before settling back down.
Peeling the fleecy top blanket away from the clinging wool of the tartan, Wes lifted the corner and held his arms out in open invitation.
Rosemary hesitated, some of the hectic blush fading from her cheeks as she glanced around nervously.
Their little oasis in the middle of Central Park was still barren of any life other than the blasé birds and squirrels, and they were used to witnessing all manner of human exploits.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “Weren’t you saying you were cold before?”
That got her. She snorted and arched a brow at him as she shuffled closer and ducked under the corner of the blanket. “My core body temperature is approaching dangerous fever levels. Feeling cold is no longer an issue of concern.”
Wes scooted in behind her, reveling in the waves of heat that were indeed pouring from her slim, fidgeting body. He bracketed her with his legs and arms, giving her his chest to lean back against, and tucked the gray fleece over them.
“Think of me as your trusty old recliner,” he said. “Comfy and cozy.”
Her slender back pressed against his chest, her curvy hips snugged into the vee of his spread thighs—this was pretty much Wes’s idea of heaven.
“A reclining chair makes me think of falling asleep in front of the television,” she said, wriggling to get comfortable. “I don’t feel particularly sleepy right now.”
In the process of settling down, she manag
ed to both elbow him in the side and grind her pert little bottom into his cramped, iron-hard erection. Wes dropped his head to her shoulder, biting down on a groan, caught between the stab of pain in his ribs and the excruciating pleasure-pain radiating up from his groin.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her innocent voice shooting through Wes’s fog of desire like lightning through a storm cloud. It focused him, brought him back to himself and this amazing moment, and he turned his head to press his lips to the side of her neck.
Her T-shirt was tissue soft under his cheek, but not as soft as the silky skin of her neck. She smelled clean, as if she only used soap without any of those cloying perfumes or oils to mask the underlying sweetness of her own skin. Wes nuzzled closer, wrapping his arms around her ribs and feeling her heart knocking against his forearm in tandem with the pulse pounding under his kiss.
That same sense of awareness spiked through him again, clearing his mind of everything but the bone-deep knowledge that he was holding something precious in his arms—something unique and irreplaceable, and he had to hang on to it for dear life, because a guy like him? Well, it was incredible enough that he’d been given a second chance.
There wouldn’t be a third.
Wanting to thank her for the amazing gift of her body leaning so trustingly against his, Wes nipped the muscle where her neck met her shoulder, just to make her jump, then soothed the spot with his tongue.
She shivered and sighed, and a pit of hunger opened up in his belly. Not for food, but for more of those noises.
Sliding his hand down her taut belly, he found the button fly of her corduroys and attacked it, keeping his mouth busy tasting every inch of throat he could reach. Finally, he got her pants open and loosened enough to plunge his hand between her thighs.
His fingers slipped along the hot, damp fabric of her panties—they felt like plain cotton, ever so slightly rough against his fingertips, and they made him long for the perfect smoothness of the sensitive skin beneath.
“Oooh, Wes,” she said, her head falling back. He looked up from her throat to find her eyes open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling of the gazebo, the blue as blank and dazed as the empty autumn sky.
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