Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  “Yeah. I love—”

  “He swims,” Polly said quickly, her eyes locked with Nasty’s again. “But he’s not ready for diving yet.”

  “He will be,” Dusty said. “How about it, Bobby? Help me stock the shelves, pack orders? Pay’ll be good, and there’s lots of neat stuff in the shop.”

  “He isn’t old enough,” Polly said faintly.

  Dusty slapped his thigh. “Crap. Right, Bobby? This’d be an apprenticeship.” When Polly finally managed to look at the other man, he winked. “Great place to be while your mom’s at work. Till you go back to school. And if we make good partners, you can come after school once you do go back.”

  “Well”—Bobby removed his hand from her waist and raised his face to hers—“Could I, Mom?”

  What did they really know about these men? “We’ll see.”

  “Aw, Mom.”

  “May I use your bathroom?” Polly said. She had to get away from Nasty. She had to squash the ridiculous notion that he could make love to her from across a room.

  “Sure,” Nasty said. “Through there. Turn right. There’s a study. First door on the right. Bathroom off that.”

  “Just a minute,” Venus said. The liquor had relaxed her shoulders and her tongue. “That woman said your new friends were dangerous. What new friends?”

  She had to go to the bathroom. “Later, Mom, okay?”

  “Not okay. How long have you known”—she raised her glass to Nasty—“how long?”

  “Mom, please—”

  “How long?”

  “Hold on, Venus,” Dusty said, all smiling good humor still. “Polly and I met for the first time when she came across to the shop this morning. Belinda and Festus sent her. You know Belinda and Festus at the voodoo shop?”

  “New Age,” Venus said severely. “Festus would never allow anything to do with voodoo inside his doors. Neither would Belinda.”

  “Just the odd bag of Inspiration,” Nasty said in an innocent tone that didn’t match his still watchfulness.

  Fortunately Venus was too preoccupied to hear him. “Good friends, they are.”

  “Like I said,” Dusty persisted. “You know them. And they sent Polly to me.”

  Venus gave up trying not to return Dusty’s smile. “But you aren’t anything to do with the movies.”

  Polly groaned. “I don’t work in the movies, Mom.”

  “You’re not a movie star,” Venus said to Nasty. “I thought you were.”

  “Thanks.” He’d make a great straight man. “Not guilty, though.”

  “You and Dusty own a dive shop.” She made the statement in a less than enthusiastic tone.

  “You’d rather I sold bags of… incense?”

  Venus wasn’t to be diverted. “It wouldn’t be natural if I wasn’t worried.”

  “Well, I haven’t known Polly long,” Nasty said helpfully. “In some ways. In other ways I feel as if I’ve known her a very long time.”

  “Can I work for Dusty, Mom?” Bobby said, clearly too enamored of the idea to think of anything else. “He’s a friend of Uncle Festus and Auntie Belinda.”

  “We’ll see,” Polly told him, hanging to thin threads of resolve.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Venus asked Nasty, raising her chin as if it would make her taller. “Either you’ve known her a long time, or you haven’t.”

  “You can trust Nasty,” Polly heard herself say, and knew how desperately she wanted to trust him. “I do.” Her heart told her she was being honest, her head warned her to slow down.

  He parted his teeth, and she saw his jaw lock. She couldn’t have drawn her attention away if she’d wanted to. Polly didn’t want to.

  Nasty Ferrito could make love to her from across a room. When someone wrote of a ghostly smile, this elusive smile of his must be what they meant. It shook her and she wished she could stay shaken, just this way, forever.

  “No one has a name like Nasty,” Venus said, sounding as if hyperventilation was imminent. “Silliness. What is your name, young man?”

  Polly sighed.

  The comers of Nasty’s mouth tilted up a little more. “Ferrito. Xavier Ferrito, ma’am.”

  Polly blinked. “Xavier?”

  She’d said she trusted him. Now was the time to pocket those few wonderful words and push until she gave in and let him into her life.

  Nasty allowed Polly a couple of minutes before leaving Dusty to charm Venus and Bobby He went to the study that was his favorite room in Dusty’s home and closed the door behind him. He had keys to the house, and Dusty’s permission to call this quiet room his own. Outside a bay window, red maples screened off everything but a glimpse of distant mountaintops.

  Xavier Ferrito.

  What a name to stick a little kid with.

  He prowled to a wall of books that belonged almost entirely to him, and pulled out first one, then another volume. Books had been his refuge, still were. Throughout years when he’d acquired none of the baggage other men collected, he’d always balked at the idea of getting rid of a book or two.

  The toilet flushed in the small bathroom.

  Water ran, and the sound of Polly humming made him smile. No ordinary, predictable woman, this blue-eyed dynamo. Endless surprises. Never a reaction he could totally expect. Bach, Beethoven, something from a show?—he wasn’t an expert on music, but he could become addicted to the sound of Polly’s voice.

  The bathroom door opened. She jumped at the sight of him and didn’t mask her anxiety quickly enough.

  “Sorry,” he told her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Her nervous little smile angered him, angered him at whoever had singled her out for the wrong kind of attention.

  “I’d better collect my family and go home,” she said, glancing at the closed door to the hallway. “We’ve really messed up your day.”

  “You’ve made my day.” Any move toward her might be a mistake. He stood his ground, but didn’t like it. “Any day with you in it would be a better day.”

  Polly expelled a huge sigh and let her eyelids drift shut. “You can’t go around saying things like that.”

  “I just did. And I intend to make a habit of it.”

  “Don’t… Just don’t get hung up on me, Nasty. I’m not a good bet. I never was.”

  He hadn’t expected her to throw herself at him. Neither had he expected the answer he had got. “Another only semi-healed spirit. Who’d a’thunk it? Polly of Polly’s Place, national success, every mom and dad’s dream helper. And she’s got an ego about an inch high—on a good day.”

  Her frown darkened her eyes. “I didn’t ask for psychoanalysis.”

  “Didn’t give psychoanalysis. I just said it like it is. I may not be really quick, but I’m not stupid, not if you wave flags with messages on them in front of my eyes.”

  Polly’s eyes were suddenly too bright. She went to the window and faced the branches of trembling red leaves outside. “Xavier’s a great name. Distinguished.”

  “Thanks.” The less said about that, the better. “Nasty suits me.”

  “I’d say you’re wrong, but in a funny way I suppose it does.” Her backward peek at him came as close to being coquettish as any move he’d seen her make. “It’s cute. And before you try to tell me how cute you aren’t, I think you are. Tough, but cute—and too sexy for my good.”

  He wasn’t considered garrulous, but he could usually hold his own verbally. Not at this moment.

  “It’s definitely time to say good-bye, Nasty.”

  He found his voice. “No way.”

  “Yes.” With a flurry, she spun from the window and made for the door.

  Nasty cut her off. “You’ve got to be kidding. I went out on a limb the other day. I said something most people would think was suicidal.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “I meant it. I still do. More so. And evidently you don’t find me grotesque.”

  The tilt of her head, the way her lashes shaded her eyes, brought o
n some of that sexiness she’d talked about.

  “Unless you can think of a way to convince me I shouldn’t, I’m going to stick to you like glue,” he said. “I’m taking care of you.”

  Her lips came together in a straight line. “Thanks for the white-knight sentiments, but I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. I wouldn’t want to start letting the side down now.”

  He reached for her. “You’re important to me, Polly. Some fool’s decided to make you a victim. He—or she—hasn’t reckoned with me.” The announcement that he was a pro in the covert attack area would probably freak her. “I’m a strong man. There are some who might say that when God made me He forgot the blood and nerves—and maybe the heart, too.”

  “They’re wrong. About the heart.”

  Nasty grinned. “I guess I asked for that. You need to be careful, okay? Careful, but not frightened. As long as you do what I tell you to do, nothing’s going to go wrong.” He’d made it through situations where no one should have lived, situations that pitted him against the kind of professional killers who had mistakenly expected to bury him and grow old; he could handle any amateur terrorists.

  “It could be nothing at all, couldn’t it?” The quizzical widening of her eyes warned him she needed encouragement as much as honesty.

  “It could be,” he agreed. “The important thing is to think of ourselves as Boy Scouts. We’ve got to be prepared—just in case we’ve got a real live nut on our hands.”

  “I don’t know how to react with you. You frighten me. Then you make me… You make me feel things I shouldn’t feel. Not when we’ve known each other such a short time.”

  Exultation was a great sensation. “Point one: You’re not alone. I frighten me, too, sometimes.”

  That, at least, earned him a weak laugh.

  “Two. Who the hell decides what people should or shouldn’t feel? The feelings police? Polly”—he caught one of her hands and pulled her toward him—“what I feel for you scares me.”

  “That’s what I mean. This isn’t rational—not to me, anyway.”

  His tug brought her closer. “And you think it feels rational to me? Just in case you think I go around making declarations to women, forget it. I thought I’d sewed myself in real tight for life. I never expected to… I never expected this. I’m a loner, Polly. Dusty and Roman are as close to family as I’ve gotten—and that includes during my childhood.”

  “It’s too much.” Her eyes closed again. “Too much all at once.”

  “Go with it. You don’t get to tell me I can’t watch over you until this other thing fades away. I’m going to anyway.”

  “You can’t just—”

  “You can’t stop me.” He inclined his head, searching for the right words, strong enough words. “There’s no law against a man being. I’m just going to be. You won’t even see me. But I’ll be somewhere around you.”

  She pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around her middle.

  Nasty looked at her middle. A lovely middle. Even though he hadn’t seen it without clothes, he knew how lovely it would be.

  “I’ll be looking for you all the time,” she said.

  Reluctantly he ended his contemplation of Polly Crow’s waist. “Good. I may even let you see me sometimes, just to make sure you don’t forget I’m around.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Isn’t that some sort of harassment?” Despite her best effort at seriousness, the quirky grin crept in. “I’m becoming an expert on harassment, you know?”

  “I’m becoming an expert on you. I hope.”

  They paused together in that time and space, a space where even the air ceased to move.

  With his two index fingertips, Nasty explored Polly’s face, her jaw, from the point of her chin to the dips beneath her ears. The sides of her neck were smooth and soft. Her delicate collarbones felt as if he could break them between finger and thumb. She shivered, a steady, all-encompassing shudder. “How did you get here?” he asked her. “To the April?”

  “I walked. I like walking.”

  “You won’t be walking back.”

  Her eyes opened but almost sleepily. “My mother will drop me off.”

  “I’ll take you. Why don’t you keep Bobby here? He’ll be safe, Polly. Probably much safer than with your mother. He won’t be the first child Dusty’s protected. He’s good at it.”

  Something close to terror darted into her eyes. “Bobby shouldn’t need protection.”

  “And maybe he doesn’t. But be grateful it’s here just in case.”

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t want to stop looking at you to find out.”

  She breathed deeply, expanding her breasts.

  A man was only a man. He studied her breasts.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I’ve got to. I’m always going to have to look at you.”

  “Fab will be expecting me at TGIFriday’s.”

  Her mouth was a magnet. “You’ll be introducing me as a date.”

  “She… Nasty, Fab and I share everything. I haven’t said anything to her about a man in my life.”

  Gripping her shoulders, he slowly lowered his lips to hers, and said, “You’re going to say something about me tonight,” before he sucked her top lip, very gently, between his teeth.

  He felt her coming apart in his hands. She filled her fingers with his cotton shirt and clutched him closer. Her moan filled his brain. They kissed ferociously, driven by the power of fear—her fear, and his desire—for her.

  She tore her mouth away and rested her brow on his chest. “We’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to stay away from each other.”

  “Why? Because we both want the same thing.”

  “No—”

  “Yes! I’ve been hard for days.”

  “Please.”

  “Anytime,” he told her, deliberately twisting her meaning. “I can lock the door. We’ll have each other here. Now. But it’ll only be a start. You’re a drug to me. I can’t get enough of you, and I’m never going to get enough of you.”

  “This never happened to me.” With her palms flat on his chest, she raised her face. “I’m not like this. I know I got pregnant when—”

  “You don’t have to talk about that.”

  “Yes, I do. If you think you want me so badly, you need to know who I am. Who I was. I was a wild kid. I thought I had something to prove. Getting pregnant was the best gift I could have had. I was on my way to the end of my world until Bobby. But I wasn’t promiscuous. Sam was the man who got me when I didn’t have anyone else. He made me feel important. I’d never felt important before. But then I grew up. There isn’t a man who doesn’t think I’m cold, Nasty. I don’t lust after… Sex.” Her lips remained parted.

  “But,” he said softly, “you lust after sex with me, don’t you?”

  Her hands became fists.

  He said, “That sounds so calculating—so self-indulgent. I lust after you. All I have to do is think of you, and I spring to attention, love. When I look at you, I’m in pain. When I touch you”—he framed her face—“torture of the best kind is what you do to me. I want to take your clothes off.”

  She cried out, then covered her mouth.

  “Don’t worry. They’re too busy making their own plans to miss us.”

  She shook her head.

  “Love, love,” he murmured, and cupped her bottom. He was a great deal taller than Polly. He had to all but lift her off her feet to bring their pelvises together. “You’re going to keep on seeing me, Polly. And every time you do you’ll know I’m thinking about this. I’ll be thinking about putting my hands between your legs and opening you up. And I’ll be thinking about slipping inside you.”

  “Stop it.”

  “D’you want me to?”

  She held her tongue between her teeth.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he repeated.

  Polly unbuttoned his shirt. “We’ve got to go back to the kitchen.” She pul
led the shirt open and kissed his chest. She kissed with her mouth open and used her tongue and teeth, and she forced her hands between them to seek out the part of him that throbbed and strained.

  “Kiss me,” he ordered, gathering her hair in one hand at her nape to pull her head back. He didn’t wait for her to comply, but took what he wanted.

  She jerked her face away. “This is mad.” Her hands shifted around his body. “Mad.”

  “Yeah. Completely mad.” Deliberately, with the kind of willpower no man should be expected to have, he pried her hands loose and settled them on top of his shoulders instead. “And you’re right. We’d better cool it.”

  Instantly, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Hey! Hey, what is it, love? Hey—”

  “Nothing,” she said, sniffing. Tears overflowed. “I don’t understand any of this. Someone’s threatening to kill me. I’m scared about that. But all I can really think about is…”

  He held his breath.

  “All I can think about is making love with you.”

  “Yes!” He let it all out. “Oh, yes. Me, too. In every possible way.”

  “Nasty—”

  The kiss he allowed himself, one kiss, left them both gasping for air. “Now,” he said when he raised his head again. “First we get your mother safely on her way home. Then we have Dusty take Bobby over to show him around the shop. Then I take you to TGIFriday’s to meet your sister. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

  “Just a minute. Please. You’re going much too fast.”

  “It couldn’t be fast enough. After we’ve met with your sister, I’m going to take you home.”

  “You can’t plan my life like that.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Bobby—”

  “I haven’t forgotten Bobby. I’m a responsible guy. Even when I’m having difficulty thinking of more than one thing, I’m still responsible.” When in doubt, attack.

  Her hands slipped from his shoulders to his chest once more. “I love touching you,” she said, talking as if to herself. “I love the feel of you.”

  Some things had to be taken care of or a man might die of needing them. “I’m going to take you home from the restaurant, Polly.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You’ve seen where I live. It’s only fair for you to show me your place.”