Darlene grabbed Shannon’s hands in her own. “You made our weekend!”
Shannon laughed. “I wish all of my guests would insist on helping out, cheerfully doing hours of work and managing to create a finished product that looked so professional.” She paused to grin at them. “Come to think of it, I wish all of my staff would do the same. I’m comping your room for this holiday just because you’re so darned inspirational!”
“It’s our pleasure, Shannon,” Keith said, the sincerity of his words evident in his voice and his warm gray eyes.
Darlene released Shannon’s fingers and turned to her husband. “Oh, Keith! The baskets.”
Keith’s glance darted around the backyard. “We’ve still got to set up the table with the baskets,” he explained to Shannon, already striding toward the spot he and his wife had selected earlier. “See ya in an hour, hon!”
So, Shannon left them to their tasks and completed several small chores of her own. The next time she glanced down at her watch, it was five minutes to noon.
When she reached the Bakers, the yard was already swarming with animated guests of all ages, every one of them as energized as that famous TV bunny, ready to fill their baskets with colored eggs and sweet treats.
At the stroke of twelve, Darlene rang a bell to quiet the crowd. Her husband cleared his throat.
“Welcome to Holiday Quinn’s Annual Easter Egg Hunt!” Keith said.
The crowd cheered. Shannon glanced at their faces, hoping to see Bram, but he wasn’t outside. A shot of disappointment surged through her. She hadn’t wanted to admit how much she’d been looking forward to seeing him having a little child-like fun, especially since there wasn’t a thing that seemed remotely child-like about him. She’d hoped to catch a glimpse of a different side of this commanding, authoritative man.
And, well, she also just liked looking at his body.
Keith continued. “Miss Quinn has graciously allowed us to run the event a little differently this year, so we’ve decided to add a new twist to it.”
Shannon grinned. When the Bakers had suggested this change to her, she thought it might be a funny one. She was curious to see if the predominantly adult crowd thought the same.
“Any child under ten gets a basket and free rein to run and collect whatever he or she can,” Keith said. Shannon noted the giddy handful of guests that fit into this age bracket. “Everyone over ten must hunt with a partner. And only one member of the team is allowed to touch the eggs, though the other can lead and direct. One more thing—” Keith paused for dramatic effect. “The partner that picks up the eggs and puts them in the basket has to be blindfolded.”
A gasp rose from the crowd followed by a bubbling of laughter, which grew louder once Darlene demonstrated the blindfolding process by tying a long scrap of black fabric around her husband’s eyes.
“So, you adults out there, choose wisely,” Keith informed them, lifting the fabric on one side so he looked like a benevolent pirate. “You’ll want to be with partners you trust.”
Darlene passed out the baskets to the little ones and then, with her husband’s help, made sure all of the adults in attendance had been paired up, with one member of the team securely blindfolded.
Stopwatch in hand, Keith said, “You and your partner get to keep the booty and, adults, some plastic eggs are hidden in higher locations, filled with treats just for you…so enjoy whatever you find!”
Darlene pointed to the stopwatch. “Five, four, three, two, one…GO!”
And off they went. The little ones scurried around, eager and unfettered. The wisest of the adults held hands, the sighted ones leading the way. The Bakers, too, held hands and snuck in a few kisses when they thought she wasn’t looking. Shannon sighed. It must be amazing to still be in love like that after so many years together.
“Have I missed it?” a deep, instantly recognizable voice whispered from behind her.
“Hi, Bram,” she said, trying to keep her excitement at his appearance in check. “I’m afraid the hunt has already begun, yes. Did something detain you?”
He tapped the cell phone in his hand and shot it a disgusted glance. “Phone call.”
Of course. She was talking to Mr. Workaholic, after all. “Well, you can watch the festivities with me, if you want. Here, from a safe distance.”
He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Darlene declared.
Shannon, Bram and Keith all stared at her.
Darlene wagged her finger at Bram. “No guest can stand on the sidelines like a wallflower at our event. Get a blindfold on and get yourself out there!”
“Like a wallflower?” Bram muttered, clearly mystified by having such a term applied to him.
Shannon couldn’t help herself. She had to laugh at this. “It’s okay, Darlene,” she began. “Perhaps if another guest joins in late, Bram can—”
“Who needs other guests?” Darlene said, a devious grin pulling up the corners of her lips. “You’re not running this event, Miss Shannon Quinn. We are.” She thrust a blindfold at Shannon and an Easter basket at Bram. “Hurry! Clock’s ticking. You don’t want everyone else to get all the good stuff, now do you?”
“W-Well, I hadn’t planned on—” Shannon said.
Keith, getting into the act, grabbed the fabric out of Shannon’s hand and tied it tight around a surprised Bram until his eyes were completely covered. “Go!” the older man commanded.
They didn’t dare refuse.
As she tugged on Bram’s hand, his large palm engulfing hers, she felt his body heat seep into her skin. Her pores tingled everywhere.
“Uh, what just happened back there?” Bram said, gamely allowing her to lead him toward one of the oak trees at the edge of the property. “One minute we’re talking like civilized adults…”
“…and the next, we’re being pushed off on this merry chase,” she concluded for him.
His grip on her hand tightened. “Well, I’m not complaining. But I hope you’re leading me toward something good.”
“Guess you’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?”
He chuckled but didn’t reply. More intensity emanated from him, radiating unspoken questions in her direction along with a rising warmth.
What the heck she was doing?
Playing flirtation games with this man was like blithely cutting wires on a ticking bomb. And though she wasn’t inexperienced in the romantic arts, she was hardly an explosions expert.
She briefly explained the rules of the game and directed him to an area near their feet where a few colored eggs were stashed. “Okay, Bram. There are three eggs along the base of this tree. Two are real. One is milk chocolate filled with caramel. They’re all about a six or seven inches from the tips of your shoes.” His very nice leather shoes.
He squatted next to her, still holding her hand with one of his. With the other hand, he put the Easter basket on the ground near his foot and blindly reached a few inches in front of him, tapping the grass with the pads of his fingers until he finally touched one of the colored eggs.
“Hey, I got one.” He lifted it and placed it into the basket, somehow managing to make every motion provocative.
“Very nice, Mr. Hartwick. You’re a quick learner.”
He rubbed her palm with his thumb, a wicked grin emerging from the mouth below the blindfold. “You have no idea, Ms. Quinn.” He nabbed the other eggs in a flash and stood up. “Where to next?”
Even without eye contact he was still a formidable presence. Shannon felt her pulse speed up and she took a few cleansing breaths. “Um, well, I spotted a couple of plastic eggs between two branches just above us. I can hold the basket for you, but you’ll have to be the one to reach for them.”
“Sure. Which direction?”
She studied the tree limbs and the juncture between them where a pink and a purple plastic egg sat. If she asked him to swivel around and he turned too far, he could easily hit his handsome head on one of the branches. Did
n’t want that to happen.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s our strategy. The angle is a little tricky. I’m going to have to move your body so you’re facing the eggs.” She stood behind him, wrapped her arms around his strong torso and slowly pivoted him about 45 degrees to the left. He didn’t resist being handled, but he was solid man. Hardly what she’d call “pliable.”
“How am I doing?” he said in a low voice. “Am I in the right position?”
She cleared her throat and tried to get her mind out of the gutter. “Yes. You’re perfectly positioned.”
She caught that wicked grin of his again. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Inwardly, she groaned. He wasn’t making this easy on her. Another ten minutes of his innuendos and she was going to rip those designer clothes off his back and start reenacting one of her favorite nighttime fantasies, right here in front of everybody.
“Carefully lift your right arm,” she instructed him, “until it’s parallel with your shoulder.” He did this and waited for her to continue. “Now bend your right elbow and move your hand toward your chin until I say to stop.”
“Okay.” He followed this direction, too.
“Stop,” she said when his hand had cleared the branch. “Now reach up like a crane. A few inches at a time.” She watched as he did this. “Higher,” she said. “Still higher.” His fingers hovered just above the plastic treasure.
“Am I getting closer?” he asked, with no attempt to disguise his amusement by this continued game of intimate insinuation.
“Very close,” she said, determined to keep them on task. At least in public. “All you have to do now is pick them up. They’re right next to each other, about two inches below your fingertips and a little to the left.”
He reached for them and, with his large palm, scooped them both up at the same time. “Got ‘em!” But as he leaned over to drop them in the basket Shannon held for him, the purple egg slipped out of his grasp, landed in the grass below and broke open revealing—to Shannon at least—its contents.
Ooops.
“Damn, I dropped one,” he said. “Here, direct me. I’ll pick it up.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it.” She tugged at his hand. “Why don’t we go to the next tree?”
He stopped like dead weight in place and pulled her toward him. “What’s in the egg, Shannon?”
“Just, um, just a few condoms.”
He let out a short laugh. “How many? Two? Three?”
Shannon blushed, glad he couldn’t see her face. She glanced at the broken egg and its spilled booty. “More like seven.”
“Seven?” He laughed again, longer this time. “Wow. Optimistic Easter Bunny. Are they colored?”
“Yes.”
“Flavored?”
“Um…yes.”
“Well, in that case, we’re not leaving them here.” Bram knelt down and began patting the ground. “A little help, Shannon. Am I getting warmer?”
His fingers were nowhere near the egg, but every part of her turned warm just from standing next to him. “Yes,” she whispered, unable to keep the desire from her voice. She knew it the moment he lifted the blindfold from his eyes. He dragged her toward him and toward the side of the tree furthest from the Holiday Quinn crowd.
“So much for playing by the rules,” Bram murmured, tossing the scrap of black fabric on the ground and bringing her body flush with his. He leaned against the tree’s solid trunk and let his fingers dance along her vertebrae. “Tell me how you want me to move next, Shannon.”
Taking chances was a good thing, a tiny voice inside of her whispered. She needed to learn to take more risks, within reason, she reminded her internal critic. This was the only explanation she could give herself for what she said next. “I think you’d better kiss me, Bram. Now. And you can do whatever you want with those fingers of yours.”
She didn’t need to say more than this. He grunted and simply took over. His mouth was on hers the moment her words had left it. His hands roamed the curves and crevices of her dress slacks, pausing to give special attention to the gap at the back of her waistband. He slid a few fingers in there and massaged her lower spine while pressing the front of her body up against all his hard ridges and planes.
No sensation could rival this. Bram orchestrated his maneuvers with a finesse most men could only dream of mastering. When his lips explored hers and his tongue probed deeper, she felt the rare sense of flight had been gifted to her. She would’ve sworn in a heartbeat that her shoes had left the ground.
Someone coughed nearby. “Shannon…uh, there you are.”
She and Bram broke apart, and she felt her feet crash back to earth.
Jake stood a yard or two away, a shuttered expression on his face and his voice ice cold. “The new caterer has been looking for you, and Margaret stopped by your office about half an hour ago. She left you a message.”
She nodded. “I—er—thank you, Jake. I’ll check it in a few minutes.” She took another step back from Bram and heard his audible sigh. That was when she remembered the chill between the two men earlier in the day. Well, they might not get along, but she still needed to deal with them both. “Perhaps we can run through a few things when I get back to my office,” she told her assistant. “I’d like to do something special for the Bakers, since they’ve helped so much this weekend.”
“Okay,” Jake said, making no motion to leave.
“So, I’ll see you. In my office. Soon,” she said, enunciating every syllable, all but forcing him to take the hint, which he finally did.
Once Jake stalked away, Bram returned his mouth to hers, more possessively this time. She almost let herself get pulled under his spell again, but she knew she needed to act like the owner of the inn now, not like a sex-starved teenager on her first date in months.
She put her hand to his chest and leaned away. “Business before pleasure, Mr. Hartwick. I must get back.”
His hazel eyes pierced her with fire, golden and untamed. “Understood,” he whispered. “But you know where I’m staying. Any chance you could slip away to the Astaire Suite later?”
“I have a major meal preparation to oversee, Bram, and then there’s an early evening performance I’m responsible for hosting. It doesn’t finish until nine.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah, I heard about it on my way outside. ‘Green Eggs and Hamlet.’ Very clever.”
“Entertainment for all audiences,” she said.
“That’s not the kind of entertainment I crave,” he retorted. He picked up the Easter basket and filled it with the purple egg and its spilled contents. Then, very deliberately, he dropped the black blindfold into the basket, too, and regarded her with a heated glance. “You’ve been in my fantasies, Shannon. I’d like to turn a few of them into reality tonight. If you’re interested.”
Oh, boy, was she ever interested.
But she wasn’t crazy. This man might spark a blue flame just by entering a room, but they didn’t run in the same circles or even live in the same state. There was no future in something like this, no matter how many fantasies—hers or his—they enacted in the Astaire Suite. She’d just have to enjoy it as the one-night-stand it would likely be.
Could she live with that?
A part of her wasn’t sure, but that wasn’t the part of her that was speaking. “I’ll see you around nine-thirty,” she said before walking away. “And Bram? Hang onto that basket.”
***
No doubt about it, Bram was head over heels in lust. He didn’t delude himself with illusions that his feelings were anything more than the obvious: He wanted Shannon in his bed. Tonight. And tomorrow morning. Despite not being an especially religious man, he intended to have a positively divine Easter Sunday.
He took a power nap then fielded a half-dozen or more calls. Some production problems in Zurich had been the cause of his late arrival at the inn, but things seemed to be under control now.
He shot off a few business e-mails, grabbed a pl
ate full of delicious roasted lamb and potatoes at the buffet dinner and caught a glimpse of Shannon inspecting the stage before the acting troupe went on for their performance.
Bram couldn’t stomach sitting through a whole G-rated show, not with his mind decidedly elsewhere, but he stared at Shannon until he had the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks blush. Then he went up to his suite to wait for her.
And quite a suite it was. The Astaire featured a four-poster, king-sized bed with silk sheets and a satin-and-down comforter. It was as spacious as three regular guestrooms combined and it boasted an entertainment center, wireless Internet access, a balcony, a Jacuzzi and a fully stocked kitchenette.
Yes, he’d stayed in higher-class, more luxurious accommodations when he’d traveled to Rome or Vienna, but for a small Wisconsin harbor town, this was tops.
He decided he’d book this room every time he visited the inn. What the hell, he could afford it.
At precisely 9:29 p.m. he heard a light knock on his door.
Shannon.
He swung it open and his auburn-haired angel breezed in. “Hi,” she said, looking gorgeous but, from the slight fidgeting of her fingers, a little apprehensive.
He closed the door. Locked it.
“Hi,” he said back. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I know.” She bit her lip. “Listen, Bram, I need to tell you something.”
Oh, God. She’s married or engaged or…who the hell knows what? He held his breath and nodded.
“It’s no secret that I’m attracted to you. Very attracted. And I want to be here with you. Tonight.”
Well, this wasn’t bad news. He released a little of the air in his lungs and said, “But?”
“But I don’t know how far we should take things. We barely know each other, and I’m a little new to taking chances on the unknown, so…”
He reached for her hands and exhaled the breath that remained. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen in here that you don’t agree to, Shannon. I don’t want the ghost of Fred Astaire haunting me for the rest of my life. Who knows what noisy havoc he could wreak?” Bram smiled at her and waited for her to smile back. When she did, he brought his lips down on hers.
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