Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  “I’m not married.”

  He exhaled through pursed lips.

  “Do you believe me?”

  Nasty gazed at her intensely blue eyes. “Yes, I do. But what was all that about? The call. Your friend Festus sounded as if he believed the guy. The nice guy.”

  Her regard wavered. “I don’t know. Freaky things happen in this business. People get fixations on you. It’s one of the trade-offs.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like it either. But I do like this job. Apart from Bobby, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s changed our lives. Before we were…” She averted her face. “None of that matters. Forget it.”

  “Is this the guy who made the other calls? The ones to your answering machine, or whatever?”

  Polly scooted around and got to her feet. She toured the saloon, smoothing wood paneling, studying the black-and-white etchings he’d collected over the years. And while she stepped from one to the other, she hummed something complicated classical, maybe. “Places you’ve been?” she asked tapping a picture frame.

  He’d let her avoid giving answers for a while. “Yes.”

  “Paris. Sydney.” She pointed to the next picture and raised a brow in question.

  “Amsterdam,” he told her. “Then Hong Kong, Wellington, Bogota, Madrid. London, of course.”

  “You’ve traveled a lot.”

  “It used to go with the job.”

  “When you were in the Navy.”

  “Yeah.” The less said about that the better.

  Her gaze dropped to his left ankle. She didn’t comment on the scars, hadn’t mentioned his limp.

  “Ugly, huh?” he suggested.

  “No. But it must have been painful when it happened.”

  “It’s over now.” And he was lucky to be both alive and relatively unscathed. “You are getting threatening calls, aren’t you?”

  She laughed.

  He wasn’t convinced. “Aren’t you?”

  “No, not really. It’s just silliness.” She returned to pick up her wineglass and stood near Nasty. “The guy who said he was my husband. Sam Dodge. He’s Bobby’s father.” The announcement was defiantly delivered.

  “But you’re not married anymore?”

  The shutter came down. Her eyelids lowered hiding her expression—except for the fixing of her mouth in a tight line.

  “You could have told me the truth before.”

  “I didn’t owe you the truth. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “True.” But she was here, and she’d already let him know she’d come to set the record straight—and that she was less than indifferent to him.

  She rested an elbow on one crossed arm and touched the glass to her lips.

  He felt her, felt her body heat, the tension in her muscles, her rigid stance. And he felt her awareness of him.

  Nasty set down his own glass. He shrugged away from the banquette and stood over her, very close.

  Polly’s fingers tightened around the glass. Her lashes flickered and a nerve near her left eye.

  Half-expecting her to run, he touched the tips of his fingers to that fascinating pulse at the base of her throat.

  She held absolutely still.

  “I’m not the enemy,” he told her.

  The breath she took was deep.

  He took the glass away and put it down beside his own. “You don’t believe me.” Was that what he was seeing—feeling? “That first night on the docks… You decided I was making these calls, didn’t you?”

  She looked at him then, and he absorbed the shifting emotions he saw, the wavering between suspicion and wanting to trust.

  “I’ve never called you on the phone. When I do, you’ll know it’s me.” Her pulse beat hard. The skin he touched was soft and warm. She had come to him. “You are frightened by these calls, aren’t you? They aren’t just something that goes with the territory? These are different?”

  Still she hovered on the edge of believing her instincts.

  “You came to me alone. You’d be no match for me if I was the kind of man to take advantage, but you came here. Are you willfully stupid or are you trying to persuade yourself I’m a good guy?”

  The look she aimed at him held everything she felt, doubt, anger, confusion, fear, the need to trust. She needed to trust him. He took her hand in his and she didn’t resist. Polly Crow needed a friend. Whatever roles the people in her life filled they didn’t fill the one that had brought her to him this morning.

  Nasty sat on the end of the banquette seat. He tugged gently on Polly’s hand until she let him bring her to stand between his knees.

  Today she wore her hair loose. Straight and silky, it swung forward over her shoulders. Dark lashes contrasted with the honey color of her hair and her light skin. The hand he held trembled and she tightened her fingers around his.

  “You and I are on the same side, Polly.”

  She raised her eyes to his. Such searingly blue eyes, so vivid he almost had to look away.

  “Friendship would be a good place for us to start.” Whatever it took, he was going to break through her defenses. She wanted him to, or she wouldn’t be here. “Do you need a friend Polly?”

  At last she broke her silence. “I’ve got friends.”

  “A different kind of friend.”

  Her throat moved. “I stopped thinking about it a long time I ago. I thought I had anyway.”

  “Would you like to make that clearer for me?”

  She raised her free hand as if to push back her hair, but made a fist and settled it on his bare shoulder instead.

  She didn’t look away from his face.

  Neither did Nasty look away from hers. “What did you stop thinking about a long time ago?”

  “I don’t know how to say it.”

  “You’re not frightened of me, are you?” He’d frightened a lot of people in his time, but only people he’d wanted and needed to frighten—Polly wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m frightened of me. Of what I’m feeling. I haven’t let myself… I haven’t let myself think about—about me, I guess. It’s been easier that way.”

  “Polly—”

  “I’m not sorry for myself.” The defiance was there again. “It’s just the way it is—the way it’s had to be. I had to make my way. For Bobby and for me. I’ve had a lot of luck, too. Some really good people have come my way.”

  One by one, he loosened her fingers. Her hands were longfingered but narrow—the nails short. Graceful but capable hands. He turned her palm upward, stroked it with his thumb. “Should I be scared to be here with you?”

  “I think you know you shouldn’t.” The feelings were new to him, feelings he’d never expected to have, never even considered having. “No more scared than I am with you.”

  The fist on his shoulder unfurled, and she spanned the muscle there, rubbed tentatively to the base of his neck and back.

  His erection was instant. So was the desire to pull her into his arms. Sexual urge and tenderness. These weren’t the reactions he’d practiced dealing with. Survival required different skills. But this was another kind of survival, wasn’t it?

  If she knew the power of his response to her she’d run. “This Sam Dodge. Your son’s father”—he didn’t want to call the man her ex-husband—“does he keep in pretty close touch?”

  “No. I haven’t seen him for several years.”

  “I’m glad.” Pretending indifference wasn’t in the cards anymore. He’d already declared himself.

  “It’s fine with me. Bobby still thinks about him, though. I know he does. Children need to feel wanted—by both of their parents.”

  “Sometimes one is as good as it gets,” he said. A reflex. He didn’t want the topic to get personal. “Did Sam reach you on the phone?”

  She hesitated before saying, “Yes. We talked.”

  Cautiously, trying not to think about Sam Dodge, or the fact that just the sound of the man’s name made him jealo
us, Nasty bowed over Polly’s palm. He pressed his lips there and closed his eyes. If she bolted, he’d just have to start all over again. Polly didn’t bolt.

  He felt her hold her breath.

  She smelled of roses, the wild kind that grew in hedges in old gardens—in the sun.

  When he kissed the base of her thumb it jerked. At the touch of his lips on the inside of her wrist, she drew in a sharp breath.

  And he drew in just as sharp a breath when she stroked his hair so very lightly. She stroked his hair all the way to his nape, and her fingertips stayed there.

  He tensed all the way to his gut. Concentration got tougher. “Did you get together with Sam?” He had no right to push her for the personal stuff.

  “Not yet.”

  Yet. “He’d be a fool not to want to get back with you.”

  “Sam and I never worked. We never could. He’s in Florida, and I haven’t invited him to come back here.”

  A man couldn’t be blamed for feeling satisfied when he got the answer he wanted. “I’m glad you decided to come to me.”

  “Are you?” she said. “We don’t know much about each other. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “You know some,” he told her, raising his head. He glanced at the rise of her breasts above the low neckline of her dress, at her throat—and into her face. “I told you I’m thirty-six. Ex-Navy. Co-owner of Room Below—and this boat. A car. Not much else. I never was interested in things.”

  “What did you do in the Navy?”

  He’d never be able to tell her, not really tell her. “I was a SEAL.”

  She frowned, then her expression cleared. “Oh, sure. Diving, right?”

  Among other things. “Yes, diving.”

  “I used to be a cook.”

  It was his turn to frown, before he laughed. “A cook? You?”

  “A very good cook,” she told him. “For an artists’ colony in Bellevue, the one my mother manages now. A friend of mine, Bliss Winters—she’s Bliss Plato now—she owns it. She was very good to me when nobody would take a chance.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone saying no to you.”

  Pleasure tinged her smile. “I can be flattered, you know.”

  “Most of us can. What did Sam want?”

  Her smile faded instantly. “According to him, just to talk. For old times’ sake.” She made a disbelieving sound. “As if I’d want to remember any times with him.”

  “Weren’t there any worth remembering?”

  The question earned him a direct stare. “No. Not one of them. I was never married to him.”

  So his intelligence hadn’t been faulty. He probably shouldn’t feel glad but he did mostly because the man, Sam Dodge, had never had any legal claim to her.

  “Does that shock you?” It was a challenge.

  “Does it shock me that you had sex with someone you weren’t married to? That’s the question, isn’t it? The answer’s no. I never was into double standards. I’ve never been married. I’m not a virgin, either.”

  She smiled. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because you only had to look at me to know I was that kind of a guy?”

  Polly smiled again. “I’m not sure what kind of guy you are—but I can’t seem to stop wanting to find out.”

  Reading too much into what she said would be easy. “Then we’re even.” Overreacting could be disastrous.

  He pushed back her hair and framed her face lightly. For a long time they just looked at each other.

  “What kind of a name is Nasty?”

  “A nasty name,” he said flippant before he could regroup. “A name I picked up as a kid when I probably deserved it. It stuck.”

  When he didn’t elaborate he saw her decide not to press him.

  He looked at her mouth. Soft, pouty—a sensual mouth whether she liked it or not.

  Polly folded her hands over his forearms. She had to know he wanted to kiss her. Was she signaling him to stop? He shifted forward on the seat a fraction.

  Abruptly, her eyes closed. She slid her arms around his neck and buried her face there.

  For a moment he hesitated, then he held her, eased her close and held her, smoothed her back through thin cotton, crossed his arms around her and hugged as tightly as he dared.

  The sensation of her fingers in his hair, on his neck, slipping down his spine and back across his shoulders made him shiver. He was glad he hadn’t put on a shirt. He’d like to pick her up and carry her into his cabin, undress her, stretch her on top of him. She would be all softness to his tough angles.

  He’d be happy with that. Hell, he’d be goddamn delirious with that.

  It’d be enough for now.

  Her smooth fingertips began their trip all over again.

  Nasty shivered again.

  Getting naked and lying together would be great. It wouldn’t be enough, ever.

  With a sigh, she pushed back far enough to see his face again.

  He inclined his head to study her. “I want to have a relationship with you, Polly.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Not exactly the response he’d hoped for. “How can I make you sure?”

  The circles she made in the hair on his chest drove him wild inside. He pressed his lips together and willed himself to be patient.

  Slowly the circles widened. Then they narrowed. All the time she watched, until she used only her thumbs to trace around his nipples.

  Surely she knew what she was doing to him. How could she not know? The rapt concentration on her face made him unsure. Almost as if she was somewhere else, watching herself touch him, and gauging his reaction to those touches.

  Nasty made fists on his thighs. No longer completely calling his own shots, he leaned toward her and pressed a kiss into the soft flesh above the neckline of her dress. He felt her shiver this time.

  This wasn’t a one-sided attraction. “We could start really slow,” he said pressing his mouth to the hollow beneath her collarbone, to the pulsing beat above it, to spot, after spot, on the side of her neck and across her jaw to her earlobe.

  Gentleness fled. She drove her fingers into his shoulders and clutched.

  A whisper was all that separated his lips from hers. He whispered “I’m going to kiss you,” and sealed the promise.

  The first joining was a series of glancing brushes. He opened her mouth. Quickly, repeatedly, he slipped the tip of his tongue just inside to moist skin.

  Polly kissed him back. For every move he made, she had one of her own.

  She wanted him, too.

  If he hoped to take this where he wanted it to go, he must help her to have no regrets. Take it slow. Shoot, this was what he got for spending most of his adult life alone. A bunch of raw edges and not a lot of finesse.

  His breath came in pants.

  So did Polly’s.

  “We’re… Every word that comes into my head sounds like a line from an old movie.”

  Her eyes were closed. He kissed the lids. Keeping his hands off the rest of her should earn him an award.

  “Maybe they just sound like old lines, period?” she suggested.

  “Maybe. But I mean this. We don’t have to take things fast. I’m a patient man.” He was becoming a routine liar with her.

  Warm. Her breasts were warm against his chest. Her hips fitted snugly between his thighs. If she didn’t feel what she was doing to him, she wasn’t feeling anything.

  She felt what she was doing.

  Nasty watched Polly glance downward and let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t think too much before I came. I wasn’t sure why, except I knew I wanted to see you. And I wanted you to know I hadn’t lied.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I haven’t thought of anything but seeing you for weeks.”

  “I’m not oblivious to what this is doing. It’s hard on you.”

  He grinned. “Nice girls try not to notice things like that. Th
ey certainly don’t mention them.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Outrage blossomed and died before she dealt him a playful poke.

  “Can we see if it would work with us?” he asked, seeing an advantage and deciding to push it. “I mean, will you let me?… Could we spend time together?”

  “My life isn’t simple. I come with baggage.”

  “I don’t care what you come with, as long as you come—to me,” he finished weakly.

  She ran her nails delicately along his thighs.

  Every move she made imprinted itself on his brain. He wanted a chance to have all the moves again, and then he wanted to return the favor. “We’d start really slow, Polly. We wouldn’t jump right into bed.” Hell.

  Her crossed arms and hunched shoulders confronted him. He’d either angered or shocked her. Probably some of both. “Seriously, I’m not the kind of guy to rush a woman.”

  “You’re not?” She took a backward step. “Are you joking?”

  Women. How could any man know how they’d react to an honest attempt at tact? At least, he’d thought he was being tactful. He leaned toward her. “Maybe I’m misreading the signals here. Have I offended you? Do you want to go to bed?… Do you? We can, of course.” Boy, could they.

  Polly spun around. Her laughter first puzzled, then mortified him. Frustration hovered a hair away.

  A thud sounded from the deck, followed by rapid footsteps. “No one ever bothers me here,” Nasty grumbled.

  Polly’s laughter subsided to a chuckle. “Until today.”

  Sharp rapping on the hatch set his teeth on edge.

  “Mr. Ferrito?” A rich female voice bellowed down the stairs. “This nice Mr. Miller told me to come here.”

  “Venus?” Polly said her eyes screwed up.

  Nasty walked past her. “What did you say?”

  “Venus. My mother. It sounds like her.”

  The hatch doors swung open and sunlight flowed in. Feet clad in bead-studded gold sandals appeared then ankles in leopard-patterned tights and draped about with many pointed lengths of floating, black-and-gold skirts. The rest of the woman came rapidly into sight.

  She clinked.

  Coins and bells strung around her waist and hips, more coins at the neck of her cropped gold silk top—they all rustled and rang and clinked. Crowned with a curly chignon of red curls, the woman’s florid face was handsome.