Enjoy this classic romance with an edge of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham, now available for the first time in ebook!
In town for a family reunion, Lucia Lorenzo crashes into bed at her cousin’s condo…but wakes up next to someone who is definitely not her cousin. It’s Ryan Dandridge, the infuriating ex who still sets her aflame. Dealing with Ryan amid the antics of the extended Lorenzo clan is hard enough, and then disturbing events suggest Lucia has a dangerous stalker. Maybe it’s a good thing Ryan is at her side, after all…
Originally published in 1988
Lucia in Love
Heather Graham
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
CHAPTER 1
It wasn’t that she hadn’t been expected to encounter another person in the bed because she had.
She had known someone else was there when she had crawled in last night—or early that morning, actually—about two o’clock. She had been supposed to share the room with someone, anyway, so the fact that something had changed and now she was also sharing the bed didn’t seem too odd.
This simply wasn’t the right someone.
She discovered that fact slowly. She could only explain the time it took her to discover what should have been an obvious mistake by reminding herself that she was absolutely exhausted; she had worked a full day and half the night, then driven in circles for hours, and she was still so tired that she simply didn’t want to wake up.
The legs should have been her first—and most important—clue. Beyond a doubt, those legs did not belong to her cousin Dina, and Dina was the someone who should have been sharing the bed. Dina’s legs were long and slim. These legs were long, but they were also hard and heavily muscled, covered with coarse hair—and indisputably masculine.
But Lucia had been so exhausted that it hadn’t registered that the legs were all wrong. On the contrary, they had seemed to be just right.
Perhaps that was the real problem.
Some warning should have sounded, even in her exhausted state. Some instinct should have told her that this wasn’t right at all.
The body beside her was long, and it was warm. She had begun the night on the edge of the bed—just as the other body had. When they were kids, she and Dina had shared a double bed dozens of times—with half their other female cousins thrown in for good measure. They had often slept up in Grandma’s big bed, where they had poured out their dreams and their fantasies. But those days were long ago now; she and Dina were supposed to share a room in the condo, but not a bed.
Still, when Lucia had arrived and found only the one bed, she had assumed that Aunt Faith had flubbed things a bit. There were twenty-six family members here: the Three Graces, as she and her cousins referred to her aunts—Faith, Hope and Charity—their husbands, and various children and grandchildren. Patience, Lucia’s mother, had been unable to make it to the reunion because her husband had taken her on an anniversary trip. Lucia’s mother was aptly named, the cousins had all decided. Patient and soft-spoken, she was younger than the Three Graces, and the cousins had agreed the calmest of the group.
Now, fully awake, Lucia pulled her mind back from thoughts of her family and realized that something had gone wrong. At 2:00 a.m. it had been very easy to assume that Aunt Faith had assigned her and Dina to the wrong room, and that the figure asleep in the bed was Dina.
But as morning dawned and she felt those hairy legs, Lucia began to realize that the body next to her did not belong to Dina. And yet she felt an instinctive sense that things that should have been entirely wrong were entirely right….
She had begun the night on the edge of the bed, but as the hours passed she had moved toward the center of the bed. But she had been sure that what followed was a dream.
In the dream, she had curled into the middle of the bed with Ryan, as she so often had. He had slipped his arm around her and held her close. It was the way they had always slept. His chin would rest on the top of her head, his fingers would lie idle over her abdomen and she would feel completely secure and feminine. She would feel the radiating warmth of his naked flesh, and smile, knowing that a matching smile would be curving his lips, because he would be awakening. His fingers would begin slowly stroking over her belly, then wander to her breasts. No matter how soundly she slept, the seduction of his touch would always call to her. It would reach into her dreams, rush through her blood, haunt her flesh, and before she had even fully awakened, she would be turning to him, wanting him. Often she would open her eyes wide with surprise and meet his, blue-green eyes, sea eyes, full of mischief, darkening with passion. Then she would feel the tension in his body and the pressure of his lips, and the sweet hunger would burst upon her, and she would be very, very much awake….
That was what had been, Lucia reminded herself. Past tense. Ryan was no longer part of her life.
Yet she felt as if she might have been back with him. Still in a state somewhere between sleep and waking, she thought back to those days in December when he had entered into her life and her world had suddenly begun to revolve around him completely, when he had begun to mean everything to her. Back to the night when they had argued so horribly, when she had realized that he was only a comet shooting across the sky, a comet that she could never catch and certainly never hold.
The body next to her shifted, and once again she felt the touch of those masculine legs.
Lucia stiffened, and full awareness rushed through her. She wasn’t dreaming. She was lying there, curled up beside someone with long, masculine legs and long, bronzed fingers that lay beneath her breasts and an arm that curled nonchalantly over her waist. His hands were powerful looking, his nails were bluntly clipped and clean, and he wore a sport watch with a black band.
She screamed, not a cry of terror, but rather one of shock and abject dismay and absolute disbelief.
She reached for the fingers beneath her breast, but her cry had startled him awake, and that long-fingered hand was suddenly clamped over her mouth. She twisted around and came face-to-face with Ryan Dandridge.
In those first few seconds Lucia was certain that he was just as startled as she was. His tawny brows shot up, and then his sea-colored eyes narrowed sharply on her, and it seemed as if a mask of suspicion fell over his features.
It was his angry look. She knew it all too well. It was dark and ominous and implacable. If he had been standing, he would have locked his arms over his chest. But he wasn’t standing. He was lying down, with his hand still clamped over her mouth and his leg cast over hers. His bare leg. His chest was bare, too, she saw. Bare and bronze and covered with coarse tawny hair. She wondered what else was bare. She burned inside at just the thought and was afraid that she had also turned crimson at it.
It didn’t matter, because he couldn’t be here. She was in Garden City, South Carolina, and she hadn’t seen him in months—not since she had left him in Rhode Island. He was supposed to be her cousin Dina Donatello. But he was here, and he was clearly furious.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he exploded.
Trust him to have the arrogance to ask such a stupid question when he was so clearly in the wrong—not to mention preventing her from giving him an answer!
She twisted frantically, and his hand fell from her face. Before she knew it, she was shouting at him with a vengeance. “What am I doing here? Get out of this bed! Get out of this room before I call the police. How did you find me? What the hell did you think you could possibly accomplish by comin
g here? Where’s Dina? What have you done with her? You—”
He grabbed her chin and interrupted her. “Shut the hell up, Lucia, will you, please? I imagine people are still trying to sleep nearby.”
She jerked against him violently, freeing herself from his not-at-all tender grasp. “Get off of me!”
She stared at him, hating him, in a way. She had convinced herself of that—it had seemed to be the only way to live without him at the time. But suddenly, seeing his tousled hair, his striking eyes and blunt, powerful features, she thought of the first night she had seen him. She had been eating lobster with a client while a band played and couples whirled around the dance floor. She had looked up and seen him; he had been watching her. He hadn’t looked away. He had smiled, and she had blushed and stumbled over the simple explanation she was giving her client about the properties of golden oak, and then she had discovered herself looking up again.
He had still been staring at her.
Then someone tapped him on the shoulder, apparently a colleague, but he had shaken his head and smiled, and Lucia had felt her breath quicken as she had watched him walk straight toward her. He had excused himself pleasantly to Jim Dyson, her client, and then he had reached for her hand and pulled her straight out to the dance floor.
He had been tall and handsome and determined, and his smile had been incredibly charming. On the dance floor she had pulled herself up to her full five foot three and, with great dignity, informed him that she was with a client, that she didn’t dance with strangers, and she intended to return to her booth.
“What’s your name?” he had asked her.
“Lucia. Lucia Lorenzo.”
“Lucia.” He ran her name over his tongue, as if he were tasting it and finding it sweet. Then he had pulled her closer and told her that his name was Ryan Dandridge, and that they weren’t strangers anymore. It was true. In those seconds it seemed as if she had somehow come to know him very well. To know the feel of his arms, and the special magnetism of his scent and the compelling attraction of his eyes, of his smile. To know his warmth, and the curious security she felt in his embrace as they danced.
He walked her back to her table, thanked Jim and said casually that he would see her later.
“Friend of yours?” Jim had asked.
And, inexplicably, she had answered yes.
That had been the beginning….
Now he suddenly released her. He stared at his hands as if he had touched fire, then looked back to her sharply. “What are you doing here? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Me?” she asked. His leg was still on top of hers, and the Snoopy nightshirt she had quickly struggled into last night was bunched high on her thighs, letting his bare flesh touch hers. He seemed even more muscular than she had remembered, and she realized that he probably was entirely naked; she just didn’t have the nerve to look.
She lifted her eyes to meet his. She expected to meet a sardonic smile, but he was still staring at her angrily, though. There was also something slightly puzzled about the look on his handsome features.
“Well, Ms. Lorenzo, what are you doing in my bed?”
“You’re in my bed!” she shrieked.
“I beg to differ.” His eyes slid over her, and the sardonic smile she had expected earlier fell into place. “Not that I mind having you here.”
“Bastard!” she hissed, and before she knew what she was doing she seized a pillow and bashed it against his head. He hadn’t been expecting the attack, and it slammed him down flat on the bed.
She heard him swear and prepared for a fast flight. She had almost cleared the bed when his fingers clamped around her arm and he pulled her toward him. Her night-shirt bunched up all the way, and she gasped, startled, when he straddled her waist. Beyond a doubt, he was naked. Naked and very male.
The fabric of her nightshirt barely covered her breasts. She was wearing only a pair of lace bikini panties beneath the nightshirt, and those seemed to cover nothing. She felt him as strongly as she might feel the heat of the sun. She swallowed, fighting to remain calm, to maintain some kind of control. He seemed completely at ease, unmindful of their state of undress. He didn’t even seem to care that it was obvious that she still had an effect on him.
“Stop this!” she said, but it was a whisper and not a demand.
“Isn’t this why you’re here?” he asked quietly.
“What?” She had to be losing her mind.
He smiled, but it was a dry smile, bitter. “This isn’t why you’re here? Then why? You left in the middle of a discussion, as I recall. Are we picking it up again now? You just came to talk? Really? So why crawl into my bed?” His gaze swept over her again. “I should warn you, though, that if you really intended to seduce me, something in black lace might have been a little better. Snoopy is cute, but…”
She let out an inarticulate oath and attempted to dislodge him. It was impossible. Her temper rose, and so did her panic. She couldn’t stand to be near him. It was too painful. It had been too hard to learn to live without him. This wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare. A nightmare come true.
“Move!” she commanded him.
“Oh, I get it. You crawled in here just to get into another argument. Forget it, Lucia. You left me once. I don’t want any explanations—”
“And I’m not going to give you any!”
“You shouldn’t have come. I might have had another woman in my bed. What would you have done then?”
“You are the most insolent man I have ever met in my entire life! I am not in your bed!”
“Lucia!” His lip curled, and then he laughed. His thighs tightened around her, and she felt the explosive heat of his body and the rigid strength of him. “One more for old times’ sake, is that it?”
“No!” This was impossible. She hated the way he was looking at her, and yet he felt so good. She had completely lost her mind!
She had to get away from him. She was suddenly afraid that she was going to cry.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them back furiously, dismayed at the emotion that seized her. She had done the right thing when she left him. Their argument had been bitter and awful, and nothing good could have come from it. They simply weren’t meant to be together.
But she hadn’t done well without him. Sleeping alone, waking alone. Dreaming. God, she had missed him. The feel of him, the scent of him. His whisper, his touch.
“Please! Ryan, please move. Let me up!”
Her words tumbled out desperately. Some of her emotion spilled into her voice, and he released her instantly, but he still hovered over her, his eyes guarded, his mouth set. His cheekbones were high and square, and his expression could be ruthless. Though a lock of his hair tumbled over his forehead and he was vulnerably bare, there was nothing unguarded about him.
“Ryan, please!”
He moved away from her, and she took immediate advantage of her freedom. She leaped to her feet and walked over to the door, then turned around, bracing herself against it. He had drawn up the sheets and sat Indian-style, with the covers stretched across his knees. His hands were folded in his lap, and he was still staring at her, accusing her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked again.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated desperately.
“I own this place.”
“What?”
“I own it.” He waved a hand, indicating their surroundings. “I built this place, Ms. Lorenzo. This is what I do for a living, remember? The time I devoted to my career was a bone of contention between us. Or so I thought. Maybe that wasn’t it at all.”
She ignored the bitter taunt. “You…own this?”
“Yes.”
Lucia swallowed.
He arched a brow, and his sardonic smile curled into place. “You didn’t know that? Come on, Lucia. So why are you here?”
“I had no idea you would be here! I’ve come for a family reunion. The northern part of the family came south, and
the southern part came north. I’m supposed to be with Dina—”
“Dina?”
“Dina Donatello, my cousin.”
He stared at her for a moment as if he had been hit with a brick. Then he groaned and pressed his palm against his temple. “Joe’s sister?”
“Yes!”
“Joe Donatello is your cousin?”
“Yes!” She felt as if they had been playing an absurd game of charades and he had finally figured out a tough word.
As if she had finally figured out a very tough word herself.
“Oh, no!” she gasped. “Joe’s friend. You’re Joe’s friend. The one who owns the condo.”
“Exactly,” he murmured. His eyes were closed as he rubbed his forehead.
Lucia felt suddenly weak. She slid along the door until she was sitting against it. “Oh, no,” she murmured. She should have known; she should have guessed. She had known that Ryan was from Massachusetts, and that he was a builder. But it had never occurred to her that he and Joe might know one another. Never.
He was staring at her again. She saw the suspicion in his expression even before he spoke. “You didn’t know?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“You just happened to stumble into my bed?”
“You idiot!” she snapped. “Yes, I just stumbled into your bed.”
“With no idea?”
“Yes, with no idea!” She bounced to her feet, her pride intact. “And what about you, Mr. Dandridge? You know Joe—and you never heard about his cousin Lucia?”
“Joe has a dozen cousins.”
“Two dozen, but so what? You planned this! Just what is it that you want? Are you trying to put me in a compromising position with my family, is that it? Make a fool out of me for walking out on the great Casanova?”
“Lucia, I never—”
“You’re always—”
“You’re a spoiled brat, Lucia. A spoiled little brat accustomed to getting your own way. Well, it doesn’t always work like that in life.”
Accustomed to getting her way…
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