by Lisa Plumley
“This time,” Nick said, “I’m taking.”
His mouth came down hard over hers. Just as he’d promised, just as he’d warned, Nick took everything. Her thoughts. Her fears. Every ounce of caution.
Her heart.
His hands delved in her hair, his fingertips rubbing soft against her scalp to hold her still for his kiss. Moaning, he captured her mouth again and again, now licking her lips with tiny, fiery strokes of his tongue, now sucking and retreating and making her crazy with the slanted pressure of his mouth on hers. Chloe kissed him back with all the love she’d kept hidden, twining her arms around his neck, burying her fingers in his hair, pressing hard against him.
Her breasts crushed against the solid warmth of his chest. Her legs wobbled, and she blessed the patio door that held her upright. The muted sounds of wind and burring cicadas and neighbors talking in the distance receded even further, pushed far beyond the spill of light where she and Nick came together. Between kisses, smiles burst between them like raindrops on a summer lake.
Half insane with wanting him, Chloe squeezed Nick’s shoulders and burrowed closer. She couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t kiss him enough, couldn’t do enough to show him how much she wanted this. Wanted him. Laughing, she hugged him close, pressing fervent fast kisses on his neck…made him laugh, too, when she nibbled the ticklish spot on his earlobe. She climbed him like a kitten with a new toy, tasted him like a gourmet with a delicious new dish. A connoisseur of men who’d found the one she’d always craved.
Groaning, Nick brought both hands to her waist. “Chloe, Chloe, you’re killing me. Ahhh—” Grinning, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet. “But what a way to go.”
She laughed, then whooped louder when he swung her around. Within the darker shadows at the patio’s edge, he backed to the heavy wrought iron patio table and sat on it, settling her on his lap with her knees pulled up around his hips. The table’s warm woven metal surface pushed basket-weave dimples into her bare shins, but Chloe didn’t care. She had Nick’s lap to ease the pressure.
Or maybe to build it, she thought as she jiggled in his arms and settled more comfortably atop him. Thank God she was wearing silky shorts instead of a skirt.
Although a skirt suggested delicious possibilities, too.
“Yeah, what a way to go,” she told him, keeping both hands on his shoulders for balance as she kissed him. “I can tell you’re really hating this kissing stuff. Or maybe that really is a banana in your pocket?”
He laughed. The sound made her heart soar like a kid’s helium balloon zooming skyward.
“Nah, that’s no banana. And these”—he cupped her breasts, thumbing her nipples through her smooth silk shirt—“these are—”
Chloe clapped her hand over his mouth. “Are not a subject for discussion, mister. Is that all you can think to do with me? Talk?”
He shook his head. “Mmmmph.”
Nick’s eyes glinted turquoise at her through the lenses of his glasses. Foggy lenses, she noticed, leaning a little closer. Wowsers. Had she done that?
She removed her hand.
Nick didn’t remove his. They stayed curved over her breasts, making conversation as difficult as breathing was—considering the way he touched her. Through her silk shirt, she felt her nipples nudge his palms. He looked at his hands covering her, then stroked his thumbs slowly over her again. Her nipples peaked even harder beneath the heat in his gaze.
“These,” he finished, squeezing gently, “feel like heaven wrapped in silk.”
Why in the world had she tried to stop him from saying something like that? “You big faker,” Chloe managed to whisper. “I thought you were going to say something else.”
He kissed her, rubbed his lips softly over hers, then kissed her again. Smiling, Nick looked into her eyes.
She quivered. Surely he could see all the hope and love and…oh, God, but not the secrets…reflected in her gaze. Chloe closed her eyes and squeezed him close.
“Trust me.” He slipped his fingers around her top shirt button. “Don’t be afraid, Chloe. We can take this as slowly as you want.” He used his thumb to push her button through the buttonhole, then stroked the skin he’d revealed. “As slowly as you want.”
She gasped, openmouthed as his lips came on hers again in a kiss hungry enough to rock them both backward. The table beneath them rocked, too, not that either of them cared.
“Awww, Nick. I’ve waited forever already.” Chloe clung to his shoulders. “Don’t make me wait anymore. Please.”
His hands told her he wouldn’t. This time I’m taking. Again she heard that abandoned bowl spinning on the tiles, remembered the feel of Nick pulling her close for that first, heart-shattering kiss. Giddy anticipation tightened her stomach, making her feel light-headed and tremblingly, achingly, ready for whatever came next.
Biting her lip, Chloe watched, transfixed, as he unfastened her next button, then slipped his fingers inside the gap he’d made. His knuckles brushed over her newly impressive, hormonally boosted cleavage—thank you, pregnancy!—and her whole body tingled at his touch.
“Beautiful,” Nick murmured.
“Thanks. They’re all-natural, too,” she babbled, temporarily undone by the incredible, impossible feel of his hands on her. No wonder she hadn’t been able to forget the night he thought they’d never spent together. Between his magical hands and that killer smile…
Waitaminute…that smile meant something.
“All-natural?” he asked.
Yup, that smile definitely meant something. It meant she’d blurted out a stupid something. Whoops. Well, what could you expect from a love-starved woman, finally in the arms of the man she loved after months and months and months of waiting?
“Sounds like a granola commercial,” Nick added on a grin.
She felt a blush heat her face—and probably the rest of her, too. “Tastes great, too.”
He grinned wider. “That’s a beer commercial.”
“Whatever. You can sample the merchandise later and decide for yourself.” Chloe ground her hips against him for diversion’s sake, then almost wished she hadn’t. The man definitely had a banana in his pocket, and she wasn’t sure how long she could wait to get reacquainted. “Just as long as this isn’t less filling.”
“Youch!” Nick clutched his heart, laughing. “You really know how to hurt a guy.”
Nah, she thought, kissing him to soften her teasing. But he really knew how to hurt a girl. How long would it be before Nick came to his senses and realized the two of them were thisclose to passing the just-friends barrier forever?
She’d think about that later. Chloe couldn’t end what was happening between them now, no matter how bittersweet her memories were of their night together. She didn’t have the strength. Not now, and maybe not ever. Not when Nick was only beginning to see her as a woman.
A woman, she hoped, he might love.
“But I didn’t mean just these.” He cupped her breasts again, and she swayed against him. “Beautiful as they are.”
His eyes twinkled at her, filled with humor and affection and—oh, God, was that passion? She really, really hoped it was passion.
He kept talking, looking somber and Nick-serious even as he stroked her through her silky shirt. “I meant the whole package. All of you. Inside. Outside. Everything.” Nick stroked her cheek, and she felt his thumb tremble against her skin. “You’re beautiful, Chloe.”
Oh, she was done for. Finished. If he hadn’t been holding her up, she might have keeled over right there on the patio table. Melted in his arms like the hot wax from the candles and oozed straight through the basket-weave wrought iron. No one had ever said anything so wonderful to her before. It felt so alien she couldn’t stand it.
“It must be the pregnancy thing,” she told him for an excuse. “You know, the way pregnant women are supposed to be all glowing and radiant and—”
“It’s you.” He kissed her. “Shut up and just believ
e it.”
He went on unbuttoning her shirt, and fairly quickly, Chloe found herself believing it. Believing him. He really did want her. The proof was there in the tenderness of his touch, in the huskiness of his voice, in the warm, hard strength of his body beneath her.
“It’s you,” Nick said again. “Just you. And I’ve been an idiot not to realize it sooner.”
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Well, not yes, Nick was an idiot, but yes—oh, how she wished he’d taken a closer look at her sooner. Maybe he would have, if he’d ever been between what’shernames long enough. Or if she’d ever had the guts to make a move without Kahlúa courage and comfort-giving for an excuse.
She’d never know what it might have taken to bring them together. Right now—with her whole body pasted to Nick’s and his fingers making magic—Chloe didn’t much care to ponder the question.
She nuzzled his neck and kissed him again, happy and wanting and filled to bursting with love, and desperately needing to transmit every jumbled emotion through her kiss. I love you, she thought. Love you, love you…
Beneath her busy hands, Nick’s body stilled. She felt his hands, motionless at the front clasp of her bra. She felt his breathing, harsh-sounding but gentle as a kiss against her collarbone. She felt him withdraw from her, lean back a little and spread the two halves of her unbuttoned shirt in his hands.
His forehead crinkled. Dread crept in her heart and set up shop. What was he waiting for?
Releasing one half of her shirt, Nick reached behind him and grabbed one of the citronella candles from the tabletop. Chloe couldn’t move as he held its flickering light to her chest and looked closer. If he’d had another hand free to tap his lips in his patented thoughtful pose, she felt sure he would have.
“Haven’t I seen that before?” He gestured to her chest. His gaze flashed to her face, then back to her…bra, she realized. Her sheer, orange push-up bra.
The same one she’d worn the morning after the night he thought they’d never spent together.
“Now, where would I have seen your bra?” he asked, still looking puzzled—for the moment.
Knowing Nick, it wouldn’t last. He’d remember their night together…and realize her lie. Damn, damn, double damn! Given away by her weakness for fancy date lingerie. Chloe tugged her shirt out of his hand and wrapped it around her torso, hugging it over her belly. Maybe a joke would distract him? She decided to try sounding flippant—as though they weren’t still halfway stuck together in a heated clinch.
“I dunno, Nick.” Chloe hugged her clothes close as she slid down from his lap. “In your dreams, maybe?”
He didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked sort of…deflated. Exactly the way she felt. But thankfully, Nick didn’t look that much closer to a solution, either, now that she’d safely hidden away the incriminating evidence.
The minute she got home, she was burning that damned bra.
Chapter Eight
“Oh, darling,” Nick said, pacing across Chloe’s living room almost a month later, “I just can’t go on without you. Since you left, I’ve thought of nothing but you. Night and day, day and night—”
“Eastern time, Pacific time, Standard time!” Chloe added dramatically. Sighing, she bounced her pencil off of the notepad in her lap and crossed her arms over her chest. “This letter is killing me.”
She watched her freshly sharpened number two ricochet off her paper on its eraser and spin end over end toward the opposite arm of her red plaid sofa.
Nick ducked. Her deadeye aim wasn’t doing him any favors, either. How had she gotten so much loft on that thing? The pencil thumped into the wall behind him, then dropped harmlessly to her wildly colored, flower-splashed rug.
“I’m not writing something stupid and sappy, Nick. I’m not. It’s just not me.”
“You’re right. You’re very intelligent.”
“Har, har.”
“Too intelligent to let the father of your child get away. Now concentrate,” he ordered, handing her the pencil.
She took it, smirked, and saluted him with it. Damn, he hated it when Chloe turned flippant. Probably because it reminded him of the pat answer she’d handed him on his patio that night.
I dunno, Nick. In your dreams?
Ha. That sexy orange bra of hers—along with the curvy, Chloe-worthy rest of her—had haunted his stupid dreams ever since then, as sure as if she’d predicted it. Never mind that he didn’t want them to. Never mind that he had other things to concentrate on—mainly his growth accelerator, which still hadn’t come together properly. Never mind that becoming lovers would probably ruin their friendship and her chances with Bruno alike. All he’d been able to think about was her.
Somehow, Chloe had gotten under his skin that night and stayed there. Memories tortured him…of her soft, warm body curved against him, of her breathless whispers, of her dangerous roving hands. Memories of the cute way she’d wiggled when he’d kissed her and the husky way she’d moaned in the back of her throat when he’d slipped his hands inside her eye-popping, silky shirt. Memories of the shy surprise in her face when he’d told her she looked beautiful.
Yeah—beautiful. Another fella’s beautiful girl.
Specifically, Bruno’s.
Damn him.
And damn the last month Nick had spent being platonic with a capital “P.” It was making him cranky.
He swiveled past a stack of cardboard boxes bearing the pictures and pastel-printed names of more baby paraphernalia than even he—a four time uncle—had known existed, and looked straight at Chloe.
“Look. You’ve put off writing this letter long enough.”
“Hey, I—”
“Uh, uh, uh.” Nick held up his hands and shook his head. “No more excuses. I’ve heard them all.”
She pouted her perfectly lipsticked mouth. It was just his bad luck the motion made him want to kiss off all that glossy, shimmering pink. It was just his bad luck he had an overactive, out-of-practice libido aimed in her direction. It was just his bad, miserable, luck that just when Chloe had finally found someone she cared about enough to make babies with—he wasn’t fooled for a minute by her “We talked, we laughed, we’re over story”—he’d started falling for her, too.
Whoa. Falling for her? The hormonal soup surrounding Chloe must be getting to him, too. No way was he falling for her. Not with his invention’s production dependent on this summer’s work, and not with her Bruno-the-Marine waiting in the wings. Not with her future happiness—and her baby’s—riding on patching together her temporarily off-track relationship.
Was he her friend or wasn’t he? Friends wanted each other to be happy. They did not necessarily want to drag each other off to the big comfy sleigh bed that just happened to be right in the next room. They did not typically imagine ripping off each other’s clothes, sinking on the pillow-piled mattress and…. Hell. It was past time to end this and get down to business.
Nick tried to look stern. “No more excuses,” he repeated.
She gazed up at him with one hand on her rounded pregnant belly, as innocent as a newly minted angel. “But Shemp really did need some fresh air the other day. That wasn’t an ex—”
“Right. And I suppose Curly needed those home-baked hamster treats last week.”
“I—”
“And Larry was just dying to have his toenails—dog nails—claws!—painted purple yesterday?”
“It wasn’t purple.”
He raised his eyebrows, feeling his blood pressure approach the redline. “Oh, no?”
“No,” she said, all earnestness and precision. A saint, doodling on a notepad. “It was fuchsia. And anyway—”
“Arrgh! Write. The. Letter!”
Flinching, Chloe flipped her notepad to a new page. “You don’t have to yell,” she grumbled, eyeballing the huge burbling aquarium separating her living room from the dining area.
“Quit looking for another excuse. Your fish don’t need fresh air or a manicure, and don’t even try to
tell me they do. I won’t believe it.”
She mumbled something under her breath about stickin-the-mud scientists who needed proof to find their own pants, then gave him a brilliant smile. “Okay. Dictate.”
“You didn’t like my letter.”
Unimpressed by his resistance, she ignored him and doodled hearts along the top of her paper. For some reason Chloe’s patience—her surety that he’d come through for her with a stupid Dear Bruno letter—annoyed the hell out of him. Nick would have shaved his head before admitting it.
Tapping her eraser against the paper, she looked up at him. “I’m waiting, oh professor of love.”
He glared at her. She snickered.
He crossed his arms. “The professor of love has left the building.”
“Aww, come on. I’m only kidding! Sheesh, what happened to your sense of humor?”
It got smothered beneath a month of wanting you.
“What happened to your sense of practicality?” he shot back, feeling out of control. And hating it. “You’re what, four, five, six months—”
“Five and a half months.”
“—pregnant now, and you still haven’t told Bruno. You’re more than halfway there, Chloe! Do you want to patch things up with the father of your baby or not?”
Her eyes widened. For an instant, she looked twice as vulnerable, twice as alone, and twice as tempting snuggled against the outrageously bright pillows littering her sofa. Then the old Chloe returned.
“I dunno, mister mind-meld. Do I? Do I really want to set things straight with junior’s daddy?”
Beneath her notepad, she rubbed her palm over her belly, probably without even knowing she was doing it. It had become a habit as her pregnancy progressed, he’d noticed. Now, at the worst possible damned moment, Nick found himself wondering exactly what it would feel like to put his own hand there. To feel her baby growing and kicking and—
Something dangerous flashed in her eyes, burying his tender thoughts along with it. “Why don’t you tell me? Do you think getting in touch with…with Bruno is the right thing to do?”