by Gina Wilkins
He motioned toward his grimy clothes. “I’m hardly fit company.”
“Come in, Paul.” She pushed open the door.
He hesitated only a heartbeat before dropping the umbrella on the porch, shuffling his wet feet on the outside mat and following her inside. She closed the door behind him.
Because her apartment formed a half basement beneath the south-facing inn, which had been built on a downward slope, she had windows only on two sides, west and north. To compensate for the lack of natural light, she’d chosen pale woods and bright colors for her decor. Her floor was made of large, diagonally placed porcelain tiles styled to resemble stone, so she didn’t have to worry about tracking in a mess.
She kicked off her wet boots as soon as she was inside, tossed her purse on a chair and turned to study her guest. She couldn’t help but shake her head at the sight of him. With his wet, tousled hair and his blood-and-dirt-streaked clothes, he was still incredibly appealing, but decidedly bedraggled.
“You’ll be more comfortable if you take off your boots,” she suggested. And then, remembering something, she said, “I’ll be right back.” She made a dash for the small laundry room attached to her kitchen.
She returned moments later carrying a pair of men’s jeans and a large gray T-shirt. “Maybe you’d like to put on some clean, dry clothes before we eat. I can toss yours in the washer during dinner. I can’t guarantee fit on these jeans, but they look close to your size, I think.”
“You just happen to keep men’s clothes on hand?”
“They’re my brother’s. His washer broke last week and he did a few loads of laundry here while he waited for a new part to be delivered. I found these in my dryer with a few other things yesterday and haven’t had a chance to get them back to him yet. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you borrow them for a couple of hours.”
“Well, I—”
She grinned. “Strip, pal. I really can’t look at those bloody clothes of yours all during dinner. You can clean up in the spare bedroom. I’ll change in my room.”
She pointed him toward the correct door, then hurried into her own room to change. She made a quick call to Kinley to tell her she was home safely, and was assured that everything was fine upstairs. Kinley and Dan had decided to stay in one of the empty rooms overnight rather than brave the storm and drive back to her house.
“Everything’s under control here,” Kinley added. “We’re playing charades in the parlor with some of the guests. Having a great time. You just take it easy the rest of the night. We’ll call if we need you.”
A few minutes later, Bonnie stood in her kitchen, having washed up and dressed quickly in a cotton top and skirt and slippers. Her hair was still a bit damp around the edges, but she’d left it down to dry. Paul wandered in a couple of minutes later, wearing his own socks and Logan’s clothes, which fit him fairly well.
She reached for the dirty jeans and shirt he carried wadded in his hands. “I’ll just throw these in the washer and then throw together something quick for dinner. Make yourself comfortable on the couch or at the table, if you prefer.”
Rather than taking a seat, he was standing where she’d left him when she returned. “What can I do to help with dinner?”
Because he seemed genuinely to want to help, she set him to chopping tomatoes and a red onion while she sliced avocados, shredded white cheddar cheese and whisked together a vinaigrette for a Cobb salad.
“Maybe it’s a good thing you’re starting tomorrow night’s class with knife skills,” he said with a crooked smile as he washed the knife a few minutes later. “I’m a little slow when it comes to slicing and dicing.”
“Better slow than sliced, yourself,” she answered with a light shrug, retrieving romaine lettuce, cold chicken and boiled eggs from the fridge. “But maybe I can give you a few tips tomorrow night.”
He reached out to brush her cheek with the back of his hand, making her almost drop the food on the floor. “I rather like this private lesson,” he said in a low voice.
She cleared her throat and smiled up at him through her lashes. “You can have one of those anytime.”
He chuckled and took a step back, as if moving away from temptation. “What can I do now?”
“I have some very good locally bottled white wine you can pour for us. I think we deserve a glass tonight, don’t you?”
His reply was heartfelt. “Absolutely.”
They took their time over the salads, sipping the wine slowly. They didn’t talk a lot during the meal, and when they did they avoided discussing the traumatic motorcycle accident, chatting about his friend Tim’s horse stables instead. After clearing away the dinner dishes, she transferred his clothes to the dryer. Paul carried his wineglass with him when he moved to sit on the deep-cushioned red couch in the open-floor-plan apartment.
The rain continued outside, with wind, rain and lightning putting on quite a show over the mountains. Paul checked the weather reports on his phone, relieved he’d found nothing more threatening than a thunderstorm warning. He’d called to check on Cassie, and said he was relieved to hear she was spending the turbulent night at her mom’s.
“Did you tell her where you are?” Bonnie asked from the kitchen.
Looking over the back of the couch, he shook his head. “Not specifically. And she didn’t ask.”
She wondered if Cassie had her suspicions about where her dad was riding out the storm. Cassie had been a bit heavy-handed with her matchmaking Sunday, not so subtly leaving Bonnie and Paul alone together at his house. Awkward, but at least she didn’t mind them spending time together.
She picked up the open bottle of wine on her way to join him. “More?” she asked, holding it over his glass.
Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and he nodded with a faint smile. “Maybe half a glass. I’m not driving until my clothes are dry anyway.”
She poured him a little more than half a glass, then added the same amount to her own. She found herself in no hurry for the dryer to buzz, and Paul looked content enough on her couch. She sat beside him, her full skirt arranged around her as she tucked her feet beneath her and half turned to face him.
“I’ll bet Logan’s down at his place worrying about any damage the storm could be doing. I’m sure there will be leaves and twigs thrown around, which he and Curtis, his assistant, will clean up in the morning, but I hope there’s no real damage. It took us several weeks to fully recover from that ice storm last February.”
“That was a bad one. Did you have much damage here?”
“Let’s just say it took a bite out of our maintenance budget.” She pictured her brother pacing the rooms of his cottage with Ninja at his side, peering out the windows to watch the storm, and she hoped he had enough sense to stay inside until the worst was past. He took nature’s assaults on his landscaping quite personally at times.
“There’s a heck of a lot that goes into running a business of this size, isn’t there?”
Smiling wryly, she sipped her wine, then said, “There is. We didn’t come into the operation completely unprepared, since all of us trained in various aspects of business. My degree, specifically, is in hotel management. Kinley majored in business, then real estate brokerage, and Logan is a computer whiz in addition to being talented with landscaping and maintenance. Dan calls him a true ‘Renaissance man,’ which always causes Logan to grumble because it makes him self-conscious.”
“It sounds as though Bride Mountain Inn is in very competent hands.”
“We certainly try.” She pushed back her hair, feeling muscles that hadn’t been used in a while remind her of the afternoon’s activities. “It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”
Paul gave a little snort as he picked up his wineglass. “You can say that again. Not exactly the way I wanted our day of fun to turn out.”
“Most of
it was still fun,” she assured him. “I loved our trail ride, I enjoyed meeting your friend and I’ve had a very pleasant dinner with you. All in all, that’s not such a bad day.”
Holding his wineglass loosely in his left hand, he reached out with his right to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. “You’re the type to find the bright side in every situation, aren’t you, Bonnie?”
“I want to,” she confessed. “Nothing wrong with being an optimist, is there?”
Lightning glinted again through the windows, accompanied almost simultaneously by the boom of thunder, proving the storm had moved directly overhead now. The lights flickered, but stayed on, to her relief. The inn had an emergency generator system that kept the refrigerator and freezer running and operated a few lights upstairs, but it wasn’t large enough to provide power for the entire inn. She reminded herself that Kinley and Dan were taking care of everything tonight, and that Logan was always on call if needed. This was her evening off, and it wasn’t over yet.
Paul glanced toward the closest window, speaking up just a bit over the pounding of rain against the glass. “Nothing at all wrong with optimism. As long as it’s tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism.”
“I’m not naive, if that’s what you mean. I just like to think everything works out the way it’s supposed to eventually. It was certainly a good thing for Kyle and Cheryl that we were in the right place when the motorcycle went off the road.”
“Or maybe if he hadn’t been showing off for us, they wouldn’t have gone off the road and been hurt at all,” Paul countered. “So maybe we were in the wrong place at that time.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head. “I think this is what they call a circular argument. I’d better get out of it before I wind up totally confused.”
His lips quirked. “Cassie and I have gotten caught up in plenty of circular arguments during the years.”
“And you liked it.”
He shrugged, his lips twitching with a smile. “Maybe.”
She took another sip of her wine, smiling at him over the rim of her glass.
Paul set his glass on the coffee table, then turned to her again. Almost absently, he reached out to toy with a lock of her hair that had curled tightly against her shoulder as it dried. “I appreciate your optimism,” he said. “I’m always telling my students that if they can visualize success, they can likely achieve it. That’s what you and your brother and sister have done here with the inn.”
“We’re getting there,” she agreed, though her sudden awareness of his proximity, of the closeness of his hand to her breast made it more difficult to concentrate on their conversation. “We’ve, um, got a way to go before we completely break even from all the renovations we had to do before we opened, but that goal is in sight now. Another two or three years, maybe.”
It was so hard to think coherently with him leaning closer to her, his jade eyes reflecting the flickering lightning from the window behind her. Her heart thudded against her chest so rapidly she thought he might have heard it if not for the thunder.
He took the wineglass from her suddenly nervous fingers and set it beside his own. “So you have at least a couple of more very busy years ahead. I’m glad you could take a few hours today to spend with me.”
“So am I,” she murmured as his mouth neared hers.
Finally their lips met, melded. His arms went around her and she wrapped hers around his neck, leaning eagerly into him. The tip of his tongue parted her lips, slipped just inside to taste her, slid slowly from side to side until she captured him, held him, deepened the kiss herself.
Oh, she had wanted this. Those previous kisses had been merely prelude to this one. Practice, maybe. This one…this one was serious.
His hands were buried in her hair now, fingers tangled in the curls. Electricity sizzled around them, her heartbeat pounded in her ears, mixing with the sounds of the rain and thunder so that she could almost wonder if the storm was inside or outside. The lightning dancing across her windows could just as believably been fireworks.
The lights flickered, once, twice. She moaned in protest when they blinked the third time and remained off. She didn’t mind being in the dark with Paul, but she wondered if she needed to go upstairs and check on her guests.
As if in response to her thoughts, her phone chirped with a text.
Reluctantly, she drew back from Paul, who groaned softly when she broke off the kiss. The apartment was in deep shadows now with the storm darkening the skies outside, but she could see his rueful expression.
“I think you’re being paged.” He didn’t sound annoyed, but sympathetically frustrated. Considering his longtime role as go-to family guy, he should certainly understand the need for her to check the message. She groped on the coffee table for her phone.
The text was from Kinley. Everything under control. Stay where you are.
“Do they want you to come up?”
She kept her phone in her hand, the glow of the screen providing light. “No. Kinley’s in charge tonight. She wanted to let me know I’m not needed at the moment.”
“Maybe not upstairs,” he said and reached for her again.
Dropping the phone on the table, she nestled against him, running a hand slowly up his chest. “The emergency generator doesn’t provide power down here. I could light candles so we can see better.”
“Or we could just depend on our sense of touch,” he said, his voice warm with intimate humor.
Tongue tucked firmly in her cheek, she said gravely, “I suppose we really have no choice.”
“No,” he murmured, shifting his weight to press her back into the pillows. “No choice at all.”
Her laugh was muffled by his kiss.
They put the sense of touch to very good use. Hands explored, caressed. Legs tangled, entwined. Bodies arched, shifted, strained. Every inch of her ached for his touch, and he seemed intent on satisfying that longing. He shifted onto his side on the couch and she lay facing him, one leg thrown over his, his hand sliding beneath her skirt to stroke her thigh. She had a hand beneath his borrowed T-shirt, her palm spread over his warm, taut skin, tickled by the light covering of hair across his chest. They kissed again, slowly, thoroughly, appreciatively.
She hadn’t actually planned for the evening to go this far, but still she found herself in no hurry to bring it to an end. She wasn’t thinking about the future now, about subtext or concerns, possibilities or potential disappointments. This night belonged solely to them—to her—and she wasn’t ready for it to end.
Finally separating their lips by an inch or so, he cleared his husky throat. “Maybe I should go.”
Considering where his right hand was, and considering that she was pressed so snugly against him that she knew exactly how much he was enjoying this interlude, and considering that she had been participating very enthusiastically, she had to admit she was surprised by his words. Cassie was at her mother’s, so he would be returning to an empty house, possibly a dark house if the power outage extended that far. “Why?”
He grimaced expressively. “I think you know why.”
She appreciated that he wasn’t trying to rush her, despite his own obvious reluctance to stop. They would part on good terms if she sent him on his way now. Perhaps he would ask her out again soon, and maybe next time they could finish what they’d started tonight. Or maybe they could just finish it now, she thought, reaching up to cup his face in her hands and nibble his lips. She heard him inhale sharply, felt a little quiver run through him, and she had the satisfying suspicion that he was exerting a significant amount of willpower not to roll her beneath him.
“Bonnie,” he groaned against her mouth.
“You’re not really in a hurry to go, are you?” she asked, sliding her bare leg against his denim-covered one. “I mean, it’s still early. It wouldn’t even be
dark out if it wasn’t storming.”
“I didn’t say I want to go,” he reminded her.
“Then don’t,” she said, making a sudden decision. She shifted into a sitting position, then stood and looked down at him. “Maybe you’d like to see the rest of my apartment?”
“I’ve wanted to see your bedroom for a while now.”
She laughed softly in response to his candid admission and took his hand as he rose. “Then by all means…”
“You’re, um—?”
She broke in firmly. “I’m a big girl, Paul. And, as I said earlier, I’m not naive.”
Clutching his shirt, she went up on tiptoe to face him. “I haven’t had a vacation in almost three years. I haven’t even had a day off in almost longer than I can remember. I am a single, unattached grown woman with a rare few hours for myself and a very handsome, occasionally charming man with whom to spend them. Now I could light a candle and we could play gin rummy, or we could adjourn to my bedroom with no strings and no regrets.”
His smile flashed in the dim light. “Well, when you put it that way…”
They walked together toward her bedroom, with her leading the way. Just as they crossed the threshold, the power came on again, turning on the lights in the room behind them. Bonnie didn’t bother to flip the bedroom switch, but closed the bedroom door instead. “Let’s just pretend we didn’t notice that, shall we?”
Tumbling with her to the bed, he said, “The only thing I see is you.”
“Right answer,” she assured him, and drew his mouth to hers.
Chapter Seven
The sizzling electricity in the room had nothing to do with the storm when Bonnie arched into Paul’s eagerly roving hands. Hungry to taste the firm muscles she’d felt only through his clothes so far, she tugged at his shirt, pushed fabric out of the way, then pressed her parted lips to the warm skin she revealed.
Paul made a deep, rumbling sound when she circled one of his taut nipples with the tip of her tongue, and she laughed softly with pleasure against his chest. But then his hand slid beneath her skirt and her laughter changed to a breathless gasp.