by Nancy Warren
The first time? First time what? First time she’d seen him? First time she’d kissed him? First time she’d—
“On the boat.” She seemed to be mumbling the words into her pillow, but he caught them easily enough.
The first night they’d made love.
A wash of tenderness flowed over him, stronger in all the places their skin touched, strongest of all in the most intimate togetherness of the part of his body buried deep inside hers. The tenderness seemed to rise through his belly, against the smooth skin of her back. It radiated from his chest against her shoulder blades. He pressed his lips to the skin between them and felt her shiver. It was one of her sweet spots, he knew, since he’d searched and experimented on her whole body looking for those extra-sensitive areas. He kissed his way up to the nape of her neck, feeling the shiver spread, and then he did something that surprised him.
“I love you,” he said.
Chapter Twelve
Cam blinked, stunned by his own revelation. How could he have been so bloody stupid? He loved this woman.
Since there was an apparently stunned silence coming from his companion, he hurried on.
“I overheard you on the phone tonight. I heard you break off your engagement and tell that Forsythe bloke that you love me.”
“You were eavesdropping on a private conversation?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to. I went to see why the hell you weren’t in my bed, or I wasn’t in yours, and I heard the voices. I heard what you said.”
A beat passed. “Why didn’t you come in when I was off the phone?”
She pulled away, knocking him out of her body and turning onto her back.
His scalp prickled with heat. “You were crying your eyes out, sweetheart. I didn’t want to intrude—no, that’s crap. I didn’t know what the hell to do, or how I felt about what you’d said, so I hid out in my office for a bit. Had a beer. Thought things through.”
“And what did you decide?” She was so rational. He really, really liked that about her. She wasn’t throwing herself all over his neck, already phoning a florist and caterer for the wedding, which he’d half-feared. She was treating love the way she treated business. With calm detachment. Excellent.
Wasn’t it?
He wished he could see better in the dark. Her face was pale as mist, her body rising from the sheets like clouds at dawn.
Unable to gauge her emotions in the darkness, but feeling pretty certain from her tone that she was still up to being calm and reasonable—businesslike—about this whole thing, he decided to go with the truth. “I decided not to say anything about what I’d overheard. I thought I’d find a way to talk you into staying and working on a new project.”
“What project?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t thought it up yet.”
“I see.” A quiver of something, humor he suspected, danced in her tone.
“Yeah, well, anyway, so there I was, knocking back a Tooheys and wondering why I felt so damn peculiar and I decided it was because I really wanted you to stay. So I’d get you to stay awhile.”
“And then how did you feel?”
How to describe the sense of calmness and the rightness of it all? “I felt beaut.”
“Beaut.”
“Too right.”
“And then?”
“And then I climbed the stairs, went to your room and—”
“Weren’t you afraid I might still be crying in there?”
“I’d rather face a sackful of snakes than a woman in tears,” he admitted.
“But you went anyway?”
“Well, yeah. I couldn’t let you cry all night now, could I?” Honesty compelled him to add, “And I was sort of hoping you’d be finished with the crying and wanting to show me how much you loved me.”
“And you were going to present your proposal then?”
“Proposal? Who said anything about a proposal?” He scratched his chest as an itch seemed to develop above his heart.
“You did. A business proposal to keep me tied to your side until, I assume, you got tired of me.”
“Or you got tired of me,” he countered. Fair was fair. Although it hurt even to imagine Jen leaving him before he was good and ready.
Except that now he realized it would hurt indescribably if she ever left him at all.
“Too right. But then tonight, it hit me. We’re right together. I bloody love you.”
A low chuckle that sort of wobbled at the corners came from Jen’s general direction. “You are such a romantic.”
He rolled so fast she was squashed beneath him before she’d had time to do more than utter a muffled shriek. “You want romance? I’ll show you romance,” and he began to devour her with as little romance or finesse as he’d ever shown in his life.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop himself from kissing, licking, nuzzling, nipping every bit of her he could reach.
“Ow,” she squealed. “I’ll be covered in whisker burn.”
“Good.” The urge to mark her as his was as strong as the impatient desire thrumming in his veins and bringing his body to ardent, aching life.
“What are you doing?” This a cross between a giggle and a moan.
“Don’t know, really.” He wasn’t sure he could explain his position. His nose was in her belly button—well, as much of his conk as would fit. And he had a nose of manly proportion. And from this peculiar position, he was kissing the outlying surrounds of her belly. As he’d already discovered about her, Jen was inclined to be ticklish.
If she could talk, he wasn’t being romantic enough. So he cupped his lips against her skin and blew, making a horrendous racket and making her squirm and giggle, her body trying to roll in on itself like an echidna rolling up into a ball when attacked.
She wasn’t questioning what he was doing now, she wasn’t being the cool professional either. She was rolling and giggling like a lunatic, banging him on the head and pushing at his shoulders. He was having trouble getting any suction going since he kept laughing himself.
“Stop it!” she managed.
“Only if you’ll marry me.” He practically had to shout to be heard.
Sudden silence descended. Her belly stopped wriggling beneath his lips and went rather rigid. Great abs. A natural surfer. Instead of giggling now, he heard only rapid soft panting.
“What did you say?”
“Marry me. I told you I could be romantic.”
“Proposing while tickling me is romantic?”
“I’m an Aussie, love. That’s about as romantic as I get.”
There was a long pause, and even though this entire evening had knocked him for a six, he knew he was doing the right thing. His body had known first and it had taken him a minute to catch up, but marrying Jennifer was suddenly the answer to the problem that had baffled him. How not to let her go.
“What about your other proposal? The business one?”
“It was a crap idea. I knew it the minute I came up here.”
Since she seemed to be pondering the idea, he went back to kissing her skin. It tasted like something he’d never grow tired of. Felt as soft as the silk undies she liked to wear.
“Now what are you doing?” she sighed.
“Buttering you up, so you’ll say yes. Do you think you could say it soon? I’m in suspense here.”
“I just broke one engagement . . .” Her muscles tensed again, and he felt her rise up to see over his head to the glowing numbers on his bedside clock. “Two hours ago. And you want me to get engaged again?”
“No. I don’t trust you around engagements. I only want to marry you.”
“Oh. When?”
He thought about it while he licked her belly, taking his time now that he was pretty sure he had all the time in the world since they’d be spending the rest of their natural lives together. “Tomorrow,” he said.
“I can’t marry you tomorrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—I have things to do.
I’ve got to go home and get this campaign started. I need to . . .”
“What?”
“I need to think things through.”
“What’s there to think about? You know you love me. I heard you tell the other bloke that.”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, so it made a soft popping sound. “Mark. How could I forget Mark?”
By thinking about Cameron Crane and the sooner the better, if anyone wanted his opinion.
“I need to let some time go. I’ve got to at least talk to him in person. He deserves that much.”
“What about me, then?” He was feeling aggrieved and let it out in his tone. “Don’t I deserve an answer?”
“Oh, Cam.” She maneuvered until she was on top of him, as much of her as possible touching as much of him as possible. “I love you. Thank you for asking me to marry you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And I need time to think about it.”
“What?” he exploded. He’d made his decision and he liked to move quickly to implementation. That was his way. He couldn’t bear dithering. “I love you. You love me. What’s the holdup?”
“The holdup is there’s more to marriage than love.”
“Well, fair enough. But the sex is bloody marvelous, too.”
She chuckled. “True. But there’s the question of my job, my apartment, my season tickets to the ballet, my friends. My . . . my country.”
“Who says we have to stay here all the time? Now that we’re launching Crane into the States, I’ll be spending a fair bit of time over there. We’ll keep your place. Or buy another one. I don’t care. Whatever you like.”
She groaned and flopped back. Fed up with all this fumbling in the dark, he reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. And as he turned back he wondered how he could ever have thought a simple affair would be enough.
The lamplight made coffee and cream of her skin. Dark where shadows fell and rich white where the light struck. He was prevented from reading her expression since she had an arm thrown across her eyes. It could be from the sudden light in the room, but he suspected she’d had her arm there before he’d flicked the switch.
Not good.
He was offering to live half his life on the other side of the world for her, what more did she want?
“Why couldn’t you be poor?” she wailed.
Sometimes women simply didn’t make any sense at all. “Why would I want to be poor? I’ve been poor. It’s not all that crash hot.”
“Well,” she said, removing her arm off her face and finally looking right at him, “couldn’t you be less rich?”
He thought about that for a second. “No.”
She propped on one elbow and turned to face him. It took all of his concentration not to shift his focus to the breasts now dancing like sugarplums just at the periphery of his vision.
“This is going to look bad. It’s going to seem as though I dumped Mark for a rich man.”
“What do you care what a bunch of dickheads think? You know it’s not true.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. “Maybe it’s because I’m in the image business. I always care what people think.”
“I love you, that’s what I think. It’s all that really matters.” And he found the more often he said those magic words, the more he liked the sound of them. He wouldn’t mind hearing them back now and again, either.
As though she’d read his mind, she leaned over and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her breasts to his chest. “I love you so much,” she said softly. “I don’t want any ugly rumors to get in the way.”
“Here’s what we’ll do,” he said, stroking her hair and finding that this kind of intimacy had almost as much going for it as the thrusting inside her body kind. “We’ll go on out there. I’ll do some business. You’ll do some business. You’ll have your talk with the ex. Then we get married.”
She sighed, ruffling his chest hair. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple. Some things are,” he said, deciding the time had come to show her just how easy and uncomplicated they could be together. He kissed her, and using a technique learned young, managed to have her flat on her back in one smooth move, without breaking lip contact, bashing teeth, or any awkwardness.
He parted her knees gently, reached for her hands and linked fingers, and then, keeping his eyes steady on hers, he entered her body. “Slow,” he murmured, “simple.” He thrust into her just the way she liked, reaching that spot deep inside that always made her breath hitch. “Easy.”
Her eyes filmed with tears but she didn’t turn away or even blink, simply stayed with him, moving with grace and power.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you,” she said.
He kissed her again and then slow became fast, simple became complex, as he loved her with all the skill and experience of a man who’s spent time and effort learning to please a woman.
But in the end it was still easy. Easy to be with her, easy to slide in and out of her slick, grasping body, easy to imagine doing this every night for the rest of his life.
When she cried out his name he was right there with her, and her climax set off his own so that finally, he achieved satisfaction. More than that, he realized. Peace.
“So you’ll wait for me?” she asked him later as they lay snuggled and wide awake as dawn crept into the room.
“I’ll wait.”
“Thanks for your patience.”
“I haven’t got any. I said I’ll wait, but I’ll be at you every day until you marry me. It’s my way, see. That’s how I get what I want.”
“And do you always get what you want?”
He thought about it, feeling her hair tickle his throat, her breasts rise and fall with her breathing, thinking how far he’d come in his life and how he’d needed Jennifer to show him it was okay to slow down and enjoy his life. Did he always get what he wanted?
“Abso-bloody-lutely.”
Surfer Boy
Chapter One
Lise Atwater grabbed the back of her neck as though it were a dog’s scruff and tried to give herself a shake. The tendons beneath her squeezing fingers were like iron stakes, and she was on day four of a tension headache that showed no signs of taking a break. Even her shoulder-length brown hair felt heavy.
“What’s up?” her assistant Sonia asked.
“My hair feels heavy.”
“Lighten it. Try going blonde, hon.”
Lise groaned. “That is so bad I should—”
“Think about it. Lighten your hair, lighten your load, lighten up! You are killing yourself. Repeat after me. We are not feeding starving children, curing cancer, or saving the environment. We are selling products people don’t really want and convincing them there’s a need.”
“Do you think you’re being helpful?”
“I see my role more as a thorn in your side. Cassandra, St. Paul, and Mother Theresa all rolled into one.” Sonia was a vivacious Argentinian with just enough of a Spanish accent to sound adorable, dark sparkling eyes, and skin that always looked sun-kissed. She made Lise feel preternaturally pale, even as Sonia’s fun-in-the-sun wardrobe—all of which seemed to highlight an impressively sexy cleavage—only made Lise feel dowdier. Not to mention more flat-chested.
Some people could make a navy suit appear chic, but Lise turned even expensive suits dowdy. She wasn’t quite sure how she did it. Partly it was her shoes. Grandmother shoes, Sonia called them. But high heels gave her corns and she preferred comfort to fashion.
“Who’s the hunk?”
Just looking at the photos spread over her desk made Lise feel even more dull. The tension wires in her neck creaked tighter. “Jennifer Talbot’s sending him to me for training. She sees him as the spokesmodel for Crane Surf and Boogie Boards when they launch here in the States.”
“Mmm, very nice. You should be doing the salsa on your desk, not holding your head like you are in pain.”
Lise dragged o
ff her glasses and rubbed her eyes, trying to remember how many hours it had been since her last dose of pain relievers. She couldn’t remember and decided analgesic poisoning was preferable to the headache anyway. She opened her desk drawer for the bottle. Might as well kill two birds, she decided and washed the pain relievers down with a swig of Maalox for her stressed stomach. “He’s all wrong,” she said, after grimacing and wiping her mouth with a tissue.
“Are you crazy? Tell me one thing that is wrong with this man?”
She stared at the four glossy eight-by-tens tacked to her corkboard and at the rest spread over her desk, and took another swig of the antacid. “He’s all wrong,” she repeated, unable to articulate exactly why. “I feel it in my gut.”
“Is that why you’re giving yourself ulcers?”
“Ulcers are caused by bacteria. This is just stress stomach.”
“I get a feeling in my belly, too, when I look at him. And it’s not stress.”
“His smile’s too wide. His shoulders are too broad. His eyes are too big. His hair is too wavy. He’s too tall, his skin’s too clear, his nose is too straight.” She snapped her fingers as she realized what was bothering her. “He’s too damned perfect. No one will believe he’s real.”
Sonia plucked one of the photos and held it between copper-painted fingernails. “He’s not perfect,” she said in triumph. “Look at that. Right there.” She pointed to the left side of his grinning mouth.
Lise squinted, then remembered she didn’t have her glasses on. She shoved them onto her nose and tried again. “All I see is a dimple.”
“Exactly. And look on the other side of his mouth. He doesn’t have one. Only one dimple. He’s not perfect at all.”
She gazed at that gorgeous—too gorgeous for his own good or any woman’s—face and felt twitchy. “I don’t understand it,” she finally said in frustration. “Jen’s got the best instincts of anyone I know. She didn’t have a second’s hesitation about this guy. How could she not see he was all wrong?”
“What exactly is wrong with him?”
“Nothing. That’s what I keep telling you. People don’t buy product from perfect-looking people. They don’t trust them. They want advice from the woman next door, the guy who could be their doctor. Sure, a man they find attractive—but this . . . this is way beyond attractive. He’s in a whole new league. And, worst of all, he isn’t even American. We might, by the skin of our teeth, be able to use an unbelievably handsome American to sell product, but it’s like we’re saying, if you want perfect, you have to go to the other side of the world. You’ll be lucky to find anything passable on this continent.”