BOUND TO HAPPEN

by Alison Kent

  Sydney turned first her head, then her entire body to face him … and was immediately struck silent by both the heroic fire and heat of loss burning in his eyes.

  Here she'd been casually flirting, waiting for Ray to offer to show her how to relax, to help her have a good time. She'd been thinking about the fulfilling nature of her own work. She hadn't been thinking at all about what it was he did for a living. About the suffering and devastation he had to encounter in his efforts to minimize disaster and save human life.

  Funny how cosmetics and accessories suddenly seemed such a shallow pursuit. And at the same time, how gIRL-gEAR's new teen-mentoring program took on a new significance.

  The effort was one of which Sydney was proud. Of which Ray could be proud. Of which even her flamboyantly unorthodox mother would have to be proud.

  Still, Sydney felt compelled to reach out and offer a sympathetic shoulder, even though she had a feeling that Ray's needs, if any, would be less about a shoulder and more about a willing ear. Or even a friend, though she doubted he opened up more than rarely. She could almost see the words waiting to tumble free.

  She gave him an encouraging smile. "I guess your line of work wouldn't be. Fun, that is. Though it has to be dozens of times more rewarding than running a fashion empire."

  Ray avoided her efforts to draw him into the conversation about himself. "Would that make you an empress?"

  "No," she said, determined to try again later. "Just your garden variety CEO."

  His mouth quirked into a lopsided grin as he shook his head. "Nothing about you has ever been garden variety, Sydney Ford. I knew that the first time I laid eyes on you."

  "When was the first time you saw me?" She knew precisely the first time she'd seen him.

  "My senior year," he said, moving to brace both hands on the balcony railing and leaning forward. He looked out to sea as he spoke. "You would've been a junior. You came into the computer lab where we were working on the school paper. You were with Isabel Leighton. She was dropping off a disk with one of her infamous last-minute stories."

  He leaned farther forward, his forearms supporting his body weight as he laced his hands together. "You stood just inside the doorway with your arms wrapped around a stack of books. You were wearing pinstriped dress pants and a lacy white blouse in a school where the girls who wore anything that covered their legs wore jeans. Nobody wore dress pants. But then I found out who you were and it all made sense. Pinstripes and lace were exactly what the Ice Queen would wear."

  He turned his head. His brows drew together in a thoughtful frown even as he smiled. "What I never could figure out was why you went to public school. No one understood why you weren't enrolled in some private, rich-girl academy."

  "My mother," Sydney admitted, realizing that, though the resentment had faded, the ramifications of her mother's decision remained. Her school years hadn't been particularly happy, even though they'd proved to be a strong foundation from which she'd learned to stand up for herself, to concentrate on taking care of Sydney Ford.

  "My mother didn't want me to get a big head, thinking I was better than anyone else because I had money." Sydney hugged herself. "I don't think she got it that I stood out more at public school, that I never quite fit in. Even the other kids who had money labeled me a snob."

  "Because you had so much more."

  She'd often wondered how different her life would've been without money. Even now, her falling-out with her father was a betrayal rooted in the financial choices he'd made. Still, it wasn't about money as much as it was about broken promises…

  "Nolan made his first million before he was thirty, did you know that? And my mother wasn't exactly a pauper. She came from money, yes, but her abstract oil paintings struck a chord with collectors. Her gallery showings sold out every time. She never depended on my father for monetary support." Though, to Sydney's chagrin and, more so, to her heartache, things had apparently changed.

  Ray nodded, as if digesting the information. "And you're following in the family footsteps. Making a lot of money and doing it your way. Not depending on anyone but yourself."

  Sydney wasn't sure whether to frown or smile, but finally went with the latter. "I'm going to take that as a compliment, even though I'm not sure if that's how you meant it. Yes, I grew up with the advantages of wealth. I never had to worry about how I was going to pay for my education. And Nolan did seed gIRL-gEAR.

  "But I wouldn't have gotten the money from any venture capitalist if I hadn't known what I was doing. Trust me, Nolan's not that altruistic." Or at least, she mused with more than a touch of resentment, he didn't used to be.

  Ray glanced over, hair falling over his forehead. His expression conveyed an unwavering understanding. "You don't have to justify your family's wealth to me, Sydney."

  She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly. Why did she let herself get so worked up over money? "Is that what I'm doing?"

  He shrugged, then looked back out to sea. "Sure sounds like it to me."

  She stack out her tongue, anyway. "Then it's all your fault for reminding me of feeling like I had to justify it to everyone in high school."

  "Everyone except Isabel Leighton."

  Sydney took a deep breath. Ray couldn't have known of her latest connection to the one friend from school who'd kept her sane, who'd put so many things into perspective, who'd given her support and a shoulder when she'd needed both more than she'd needed food and water. It was just a coincidence that he'd brought up the one name that, considering recent circumstances, gave her heart a jolt.

  "Izzy was the best," Sydney said, working to relax. "She's still the best and has done amazing things with her life. But as far as high school went, you're right. She couldn't have cared less where I came from. She was that way with all her friends. I had other friends, too. Good friends. Just not as many as Izzy had."

  "And not as many as you might've had at private school," he stated, standing up to face her.

  "True," Sydney admitted, knowing it wouldn't help her cause to leave Ray with the wrong impression about her own schooling preferences. And so she gave in to the smile tugging at her mouth. "But the private schools Nolan was interested in weren't co-ed. Even if I didn't date, I still enjoyed going to school with boys."

  Obviously curious, Ray asked, "Why didn't you date?"

  "You're asking me that question? You'd get a better answer from any of the boys I graduated with. I think you know what they thought of me." She definitely knew what they'd thought.

  But knowing hadn't helped her understand why none of them had bothered to get to know her. She might've appeared aloof and she'd definitely been shy. But nothing about her was cold. Her Ice Queen reputation had been grossly exaggerated. As Ray had found out.

  "Yeah, I know what they thought. But you gotta realize boys that age don't have the ability to tell the difference between frigid and shy. They'll look for any scapegoat if it'll save their own hot-shit reputation. You made a good one." He shook his head, returned his hands to his pockets. "It's not very hard to figure out."

  Sydney mentally backtracked to the middle of his explanation and frowned. How had he known she was shy? She was sure she'd never told him. She wanted to ask him more, wanted to hear who he thought she was. Wanted to hear in his own words why he'd wanted her to share his vacation.

  Wanted to begin to understand her own attraction to him so she could begin to work her way beyond the allure. He wasn't even close to being the compatible and civilized man she'd envisioned sharing her life with one day. Yet lust, she was discovering, defied logic and unanswered questions.

  So she simply stared, wide-eyed and mute, as he moved closer, near enough that she could feel the heat from his large and half-bare body.

  She could smell his deliciously masculine scent, clean and sweetly spiced. The bath soap stocked in the villa, made by a woman on the mainland, was a blend of natural ingredients, including native grasses and herbs.

  Ray wore the fragrance well, an
d Sydney could only imagine the thrill of nuzzling her nose into his skin. She'd always been enchanted with the contrast of a man's soft skin over his hard muscles. And she knew without a doubt that Ray would feel the same as he had in the past, while still feeling like a man she'd never known.

  He stepped directly in front of her then so that the shadow from the support beam fell across the center of his body. He lifted one hand and touched an index finger to her cheek, trailing his touch back toward her ear.

  "Talk to me, Sydney Ford. Help me figure you out."

  Sydney's heart pounded. "You know who I am."

  "No." He shook his head. "I know the woman you want me to know. But there's a whole lot more to you than what you've let me see."

  He was getting way too deep, when she wasn't here for deep. She was here for fun, not self-examination. "You know I'm wealthy, you know I'm an Ice Queen. What else do you need to know?"

  "I don't care about your money. I told you that." He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. "And we both know nothing about you is cold."

  "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure," she said with a shiver, feeling the tips of her breasts draw tight.

  Ray glanced down, ran his finger the length of her throat to her breasts, where he circled first one pebbled nipple, then the other. "Trust me, Sydney. You're warm and you're welcoming in all the ways heat matters. I've been there, remember?"

  How could she ever forget? She'd tried for eight years to match the ecstasy she'd felt with Ray. No man had come close to arousing her body so fiercely. She'd been starting to believe her own press, the rumors of her own frigidity.

  But here was Ray, barely touching her, and she was heating to melting point. Why did she heat only for him? Why had she always heated for him? She hated the idea that he had a proprietary claim to her sexuality. She hated the thought of any man owning her that way.

  Ignoring the fiery tip of his finger, she boldly lifted her chin. "That's sex, Ray. That's not me."

  "Yeah, it's sex. But it's more than sex." He'd moved his trailing finger back up to the hollow of her throat. "You have to be warm and welcoming as a woman to be as warm and welcoming as you are sexually."

  "But I'm not that way," she softly admitted before closing her eyes. "Not always."

  "Good." He leaned forward, whispered directly into her ear. "I like hearing that."

  His breath was warm, his body was warm. She wanted to absorb all she could of his heat and couldn't help but move her hands to his hips, where she hooked her fingers through his belt loops. "Why would it matter to you? It's not like we're involved."

  "You don't think we're involved?" The exasperation in his voice caused Sydney to open her eyes. "Any time we're in the same room we're avoiding each other. Either that or working on getting as close as we possibly can. If we weren't involved, then your body wouldn't respond the way it does to my touch."

  The fingertip he'd had resting at the base of her throat he now touched to the center of her chest, right at her breastbone above the neckline of her chemise. Then he drew it down her belly, circling her navel before taking the fiery fine of contact even lower, over the mound of her pubic bone to the knot of her clit—where he stopped, pressed and teased with a butterfly touch.

  Sydney shuddered, flexed her fingers into fists and pulled at Ray's waistband, urging him closer. He continued his seduction, wedging his knee between her thighs, opening her to the brush of air that blew beneath the hem of her chemise. Tightly pinching a strip of the silk, he rubbed the material back and forth between her legs until she whimpered.

  "Don't tell me you react like this with any man," he demanded, his voice gruff. "Don't tell me you let any man who wants to touch you this way."

  No man had ever touched her this way except Ray. No man had ever drawn her to the edge of orgasm with such a simple touch. "I've never reacted this way with anyone but you. Never … never."

  Ray growled, a low-rumbling sound that rolled up his throat. "So why aren't we doing this all the time? Why do you blow me off every time I get this close?"

  He was close now and she wasn't moving. At least not moving away. She was moving the way she moved for him in her fantasies, in her memories. Memories that suddenly seemed incredibly out-of-date.

  "Maybe I'm afraid that what we had wasn't real. That I made up everything about what you did to me. That it never happened. I'd hate to think that it never happened."

  "Trust me, Sydney, it happened." He let go of her chemise. "But maybe I'd better refresh your memory."

  He moved his hands around to her backside, kneaded the muscles there and pulled her close. She felt his arousal, the barest brush of a denim-covered swell against the fabric of her nightgown, against her belly beneath, against the core of her body that ached to take him inside.

  She wanted to laugh. She'd thought her plans for seduction so simple. But nothing about her involvement with Ray Coffey was simple. It was complicated and intense and as disturbing as a young woman's memory of the first time she'd made love.

  "Okay, I know it happened," she said. "I know it was good. I just can't help but wonder why, with you, it was so different than it's ever been since."

  "You don't think that has something to do with it being your first time?"

  This time she did laugh. "No, Ray. I know about first times. I have a lot of girlfriends, remember? And we talk. About sex then and about sex now. What you and I did…" She hesitated. How smart was it really to admit to him how much of what she was feeling, how much of what she had felt?

  They had both grown up. They had both changed. And he was wrong about their involvement. All they meant to each other was a piece of the past. At least that was all he meant to her, all she'd let him mean to her. She had a life now, she had a business and she couldn't afford his type of distraction. "What you and I did…"

  "I want to know, Sydney." He bunched her chemise into his fists and worked his hands beneath. "Tell me why me. I knew dozens of guys who wanted you. You turned them all down. Why did you say yes to me?"

  Had she ever said yes to him? Or had it been more a case of Ray being in the right place at the right time, Sydney reeling from the fight with her mother, her mother's ugly dare and demand?

  Sounds filtered up from the first-floor veranda, drawing her attention. Her fingers slipped free from Ray's belt loops and she settled her palms against his bare waist. "Shh. Listen. Do you hear that?"

  Ray stilled, as well, one hand on her back, one on her backside, his gaze locked intently with hers as together they listened to a couple making love on the veranda below. Quiet moans and whispered shushes and giggles that were quickly muffled. Quelled gasps cut off before timbres and tones of voices were recognized. Breathy moans and sharp cries smothered with openmouthed kisses.

  Hearing the sounds, the voices, the unmistakable vocalization of passion, aroused Sydney unbearably, even while she felt a stirring discomfort at being an unwitting bystander to another couple's intimacy.

  "Do you know you sounded like that?" Ray asked. "Breathy and out of control. I've thought about that a lot. About the way you sounded. Almost as often as I've relived your response. You were something, Sydney. And I want to learn all the ways you've changed."

  "I just don't get this, Ray." This is what she was here to figure out, so she could let the obsession go, let Ray go and get on with her life. "Neither one of us has a reason to be as caught up in that one moment as we both appear to be. Doesn't that bother you?"

  Ray remained silent for a moment, then made a sound of irritation. "Not in the way it seems to bother you. Yes, I think about it. Every time I see you, I think about it. It's a natural association."

  She glanced away. She supposed he was right. Didn't she do exactly the same thing? So why did she feel more frustrated than ever?

  Was it only because his hands were roaming her body? Because she finally had her hands on him? Or was it more, a frustration that this encounter wasn't following the lighthearted script she'd written?

&nbs
p; The sounds from the veranda below were no longer hushed and subdued. The sounds were, in fact, noisy and frenzied and sexy, and suddenly Sydney was in no mood to eavesdrop. What she was in the mood for was pulling Ray close, exploring his body the way she'd been too young, too shy, too nervous to fully explore before.

  But even more, what she was in the mood for was being held in his arms, being touched tenderly, being gently, lovingly seduced. And that wasn't what she was supposed to be in the mood for at all. She was supposed to be wanting a wild, hedonistic fling, and here she was thinking warm and fuzzy.

  She dropped her forehead to rest on his chest, where the hair tickled her nose and his heart beat like a bass guitar playing rhythm and blues. The mood was all wrong for her seduction.

  This wasn't the time alone that she'd wanted to have. They'd verbally revisited too much of the past, complicating an already complicated situation that she wanted to let go.

  Leaving a tiny brush of her lips over Ray's breastbone, she stepped away from his touch and out of his reach. His brows were dark slashes over eyes now glittering with arousal.

  She mustered her resolve. "I think I want to go in to bed. I feel like a voyeur and I don't like it."

  As she walked away, Ray called a soft warning to her back. "We're not done here, Sydney."

  She paused. "For tonight, we are." Casting a sultry glance over her shoulder, she met his gaze. Oh, how he made it hard to go. "But tomorrow's another day."

  Once Sydney left the room, Lauren waited less than five minutes before hopping off the bed and heading to the set of suites on the other side of the villa's second floor. She wasn't sure that what she was doing was smart, but it was what she had to do.

  As much as she hated giving the other woman any credit, Poe was right. Lauren would never have another chance like the one offered over the next few days to discover exactly where she stood with Anton.

  Neither one of them had any appointments to keep or errands to run or the excuse of work to keep them busy. This was the perfect time to settle their relationship once and for all.