One Night With You (The Heart of the City Series, Book 1)

by Schuler, Candace

  He's so beautiful, she was thinking, for the second time that night. So beautiful and good and strong. She didn't pause to wonder how she knew those things about him. She just did. He was all those things and more. And, for tonight at least, he was hers.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked quietly, intrigued by the soft dreamy expression on her face.

  "About how beautiful you are," she said simply.

  "Good God, Desiree," he began. "Men aren't—"

  "You are," she insisted, her fingers reaching out to cover his lips, "You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen." She smiled, a siren's smile of pure provocation. "And for tonight—all night—you're mine." Her hand trailed over his mouth and chin and throat to the top button of his shirt, "And I want to see more." She had the first button undone. "Much more," she said teasingly.

  Slowly, then, and in a tense, tingling silence, she finished unbuttoning his shirt, running her fingers lightly over his broad furred chest as she went, and tugged it free from the waistband of his slacks. Her slim fingers hovered uncertainly over the buckle of his belt.

  She could see the smooth muscles of his stomach tense in anticipation, waiting for her next move and, perversely, instead of doing what he expected her to, her hands went to the buckle of her own belt. She unbuckled it, tossing it carelessly to the floor and, in one swift movement—quickly before her courage failed her—she grasped the hem of her tunic in both hands and pulled it off over her head.

  The peach-colored, lace-trimmed camisole she wore beneath her tunic, with tiny bows at the shoulders and between her breasts, was an intriguing contrast to the almost boyish appearance of her outer clothes. It served to emphasize the pale fragility of her shoulders and arms and, at the same time, to enhance the fullness of her breasts. It was as if she had been saving the real Desi, the feminine, inner Desi just for him.

  Her hands went to the first bow between her breasts and pulled it loose. The look in Jake's eyes began to burn hotter. Not melting, now, or even smoldering, but a raging inferno of desire as he lay there, very still, watching her undress for him.

  The look in his eyes scorched her, making her clever fingers suddenly clumsy with nervousness and trembling excitement. The second bow snarled, refusing to come undone, and Desi's hands dropped as she briefly considered pulling the garment off over her head.

  "Don't stop, Desiree," he breathed raggedly. "You're driving me crazy."

  "You do it," she invited him, leaning forward so that he could more easily see the tiny bows. One hand held her hair back out of the way and the other touched the middle of his broad chest lightly, balancing herself as she leaned over him.

  It took several seconds—an eternity—to untangle the second bow, and she realized that his chest was heaving under her hand, as if he had run a long way, his heart thudding. A faint sheen of perspiration glistened across his powerful shoulders as he worked impatiently at the bow. Suddenly it came free under his fingers. Then there was only the third and last bow on the front of her camisole and the tiny ties on either shoulder. The silky garment slid slowly down her body as the last tie was released, revealing to his avid, hungry gaze the creamy perfection of her pale breasts with their small reddish-brown nipples puckered and straining for his touch, inviting him to explore their softness.

  Jake needed no second invitation. He levered his torso up from the pillows, fastening his mouth greedily to one hardened nipple, and twisted his body so that Desi was turned onto her back beneath him. He seemed frantic, suddenly, to have her completely bare. As his lips and teeth tenderly ravaged her breasts, his hands were busy peeling her, and himself, out of the rest of their clothes.

  Desi helped him as best she could; kicking off her sneakers, lifting her hips as he tugged her slacks, and then her tiny bikini panties, off her hips and down the long slender length of her legs to toss them onto the floor on top of his own clothes. She reached for him as she lay back on, grasping his forearm to bring him down on top of her.

  He resisted her pull. "The condoms are in my carryon."

  Her hand tightened on his arm. "We don't need condoms," she said, tugging him down to her. "I'm on the pill."

  He hesitated for just a second and then slid back up her body, parting her thighs with his knees, and Desi received him into her as impatiently and eagerly and as passionately as he took her. There was no holding back for her with him. No coyness, no shyness, just an aching hunger and a desperate need to love and be loved by this man even if it was only for one night.

  I love you, she wanted to whisper to him as he moved above her. I love you, Jake.

  The words ran like a chant through her head, remaining unsaid because she knew that it was not what he wanted to hear from her. He wanted her passion and her heat, not her love, and she did her best to turn off the words running through her mind, giving him what he wanted.

  Her thoughts, her desire, her very being were all focused completely on him at that moment—and for all the moments for the rest of that long lovely night. For all the moments of what turned out to be the almost forty-eight glorious hours that followed it.

  She had nearly two full days with him. Two days of heart-stopping, head-spinning passion with the man who had invaded her deepest dreams ever since the first time she had seen him, nearly six years ago.

  And it was enough, she told herself sternly, determined not to cry when she woke up on that Sunday morning—alone—and found only a scrawled note and the scent of him still lingering on the empty pillow next to her to reassure her that she had not merely dreamed it all.

  It had to be enough, she insisted, because it was all she was ever likely to have.

  Chapter 3

  "Teddie," Desi hollered, banging awkwardly on the front door with her elbow, trying to make herself heard over the music that was playing—loudly—inside. Pavarotti this morning, she noted with amusement. Nothing but the best for Teddie's plants. "Teddie, help!"

  The music stopped abruptly and there was a pause, as if whoever was inside was listening to determine whether or not he had actually heard anything.

  "Teddie, hurry up," she repeated into the silence. "It's me, Desi, and everything's starting to fall!"

  The door swung open to reveal a slim young man in tight white jeans and a pale-yellow cashmere sweater. His white-blond hair was cut short and carefully styled, and his feet were encased in well-worn Gucci loafers. A heavy gold chain lay against his tanned neck, and he wore a chunky diamond ring on the pinkie finger of his left hand.

  Only the best for Teddie, too, Desi thought, suppressing a smile at the look of annoyance on his handsome narrow face.

  "You could have made two trips," Teddie said, reaching out to take one of her grocery sacks from her.

  "I am making two trips. There's more in the car," she informed him, nodding toward the practical four-door that had recently replaced the sporty Spitfire. "Be a darling and bring it up for me, will you please? While I get Stephanie unpacked."

  Teddie's free hand reached out and touched the top of the tiny head nestled against Desi's breast—all that was visible of the sleeping baby in the navy kangaroo pouch strapped to Desi's front. "How is my little princess today?" he cooed, a foolish infatuated look on his face. "Did she enjoy her little outing?"

  "Yes, she did," Desi answered for her infant daughter. "And now she's wet."

  Teddie looked almost horrified. "Well, don't just stand there, go change her." He stroked the downy head again. "The poor darling might take a chill. And we can't have that. Go on—" he waved her up the stairs "—I'll get the rest of your groceries and put the car away." He held out his hand for the keys.

  "In the car," she told him, moving on up the stairs to her second-floor apartment.

  "Haven't we told you a million times how careless that is?" he began to admonish her almost automatically. "Anyone could just walk by and drive it away. And then where would you be?"

  "Without a car?" she guessed, teasing him. "Oh, all right, Teddie. You're right. It is
careless of me. I won't do it again."

  He continued to glare up at her sternly.

  "Okay, I'll try not to do it again," she promised, and he went out to get the rest of her groceries, muttering something to himself, she was sure, about how careless women should not be allowed to have charge of babies.

  Honestly, since Stephanie had been born it was like having her mother—or a nursemaid—living in the apartment downstairs. Not that she was complaining. Having Teddie and, to a lesser extent, his partner Larry living so conveniently close and being so concerned about her and the baby was a godsend at times, and a comfort always.

  He had been a bit uncertain at first when she had informed him that she was expecting a baby and asked him, as her landlord, whether or not he would prefer her to move out of her apartment on the top floor of his lovely Victorian. She knew he and Larry had put a lot of work into restoring the gracious old house and thought that they might not be willing to put up with the eventual wear and tear, not to mention noise, that a baby living upstairs would mean.

  "Let me talk it over with Larry," he'd said to her when she first approached him.

  A few days later she was invited down to their apartment for a drink to discuss the terms of her continued occupancy. The mother-henning had started then, that very night, when she was given fresh orange juice instead of the cocktails they were drinking because, Teddie said, he had read that alcohol was bad for the developing fetus.

  In the months to come they had more or less taken charge of her "delicate" health and would have, if she had let them, tried to run her entire life. It was Teddie who helped her paint the bright cartoon circus animals that marched around the walls of the baby's room and it was he, an interior designer who worked at home, who watched for the delivery truck that brought the new, snow-white nursery furniture.

  Hardly a week went by when she didn't find another recipe for some vitamin-packed health drink or some informative article on prenatal care stuffed into her mailbox, with the important parts always highlighted with a yellow marker pen.

  It was Larry who had fortunately been at home that Sunday morning to drive her to the hospital when she started having labor pains nearly two months early. He had stayed on at the hospital during her surprisingly brief labor and was the one who called her mother with the news that there was another redhead in the family.

  So much, in fact, did her two neighbors seem to enjoy their new, self-appointed roles as surrogate fathers that Desi's mother, who had come to stay with her for those first few weeks after the birth, had delicately tried to suggest that perhaps one of them was Stephanie's daddy.

  The thought made Desi laugh out loud, jiggling the baby enough to wake her.

  "You slept through traffic jams and exercise class and Pavarotti," Desi accused her, smiling fondly as she unstrapped the carrying pouch to lay her child on the wicker changing table, "but now you wake up. Why is that, I wonder?" she asked the baby, who continued to stare up, following the sound of her mother's gentle voice with round, wondering eyes.

  Jake's eyes, Desi thought, for the hundred-thousandth time.

  They had lost that unfocused blueness common to most newborns within two weeks and were now a dark, Hershey-bar brown. Very definitely her father's eyes; bright and curious and meltingly sweet, in a tiny face that was otherwise a baby-sized replica of Desi's.

  Desi sighed, resolving once again to put all thoughts of Jake out of her mind. He was no part of her life now. He had never been, really. But it was hard, so very hard, not to think of the man when she looked at the daughter he had given her.

  "Come on, darling," she said, scooping up the now-dry baby. "Let's you and me go get us a little snack. All that exercise made me hungry."

  She carried the baby down a short hallway papered with scattered sprigs of blue forget-me-nots and yellow primroses, and into the bright sun-filled kitchen.

  Whatever else anyone might say about Teddie, she thought absently as she strapped Stephanie into her infant seat, they couldn't fault his excellent taste. The kitchen was a rather narrow room, more long then wide, high ceilinged like the rest of the apartment, the walls covered in blue-and-white checked gingham. White cotton-lace curtains fluttered at the bay window, and the gleaming golden-oak cabinets were glass fronted with blue forget-me-nots hand painted on the white ceramic knobs. A white wrought-iron chandelier decorated with twining green leaves and blue flowers hung over the table. Not strictly Victorian, but antique nonetheless and perfectly in keeping with the rest of the room.

  The furniture and accessories in the apartment were Desi's own. Most of them were neither Victorian nor even truly antique. Somehow, though, her mixture of graceful white wicker, starkly modern chrome and glass, with a few pieces of early Americana and Art Deco thrown in for good measure made a pleasing, if somewhat eclectic, whole.

  "Won't she be cold wearing just that?" asked Teddie, dropping the last load of the groceries on the blue-tiled counter.

  Desi glanced over her shoulder to where Stephanie lay in her infant seat, staring with wide, fascinated eyes at a Boston fern as it slowly swayed in the warm breeze coming in through the half-open window. The "that" she was wearing was a clean diaper and a tiny neon-yellow T-shirt with the words, Born to Boogie splashed across the front. It was a gift from her seventeen-year-old Uncle Court.

  "The fresh air is good for her," Desi said, suppressing a smile as Teddie tenderly and somewhat peevishly rearranged the T-shirt, smoothing it down over Stephanie's little round belly.

  "She ought to have a sweater on at least."

  "Sweaters are something babies wear when mommies—or in this case—Uncle Teddies are cold," Desi informed him as she continued to put away the groceries.

  It wasn't really the lack of clothes that Teddie was objecting to. It was the clothes themselves. His baby gift to her had been a very beautiful and far-too-expensive ivory lace christening dress, the sort that only royalty used now. Left to him, Stephanie would have spent these first six weeks of her life lovingly smothered in more of the same. To Teddie's way of thinking, baby girls should be dressed exclusively in pink lace dresses and ruffled bonnets.

  "Well, I still think—"

  "Teddie." Desi turned from the counter to face him. His concern was appreciated, and she was grateful for everything he had done for her and Stephanie, but sometimes all this unsolicited advice did tend to grate on her nerves a little. "Stop being such a worrywart, will you? She's fine."

  "Well, you're her mother," he said, making it clear that he thought that particular circumstance to be an unfortunate state of affairs for the child involved.

  Lord, now she had hurt his feelings! "Here," she offered, by way of apology, handing him the bottle of formula that had been warming in a pan of hot water. "Feed her for me, will you? I have to check my messages."

  There was nothing Teddie seemed to like better than a chance to hold the baby, and Desi left them cooing and gurgling at each other while she went down the hall to her bedroom to check the telephone answering machine.

  The phone must have been ringing incessantly all morning, she thought. Her mother with a "just checking" message, the pediatrician's nurse with a reminder about Stephanie's six-week checkup tomorrow, a couple of calls from Joanne at the agency about some possible free-lance assignments and, lastly, one from Eldin Prince.

  "Hello, luv. Got a job to discuss with you. Big one," his voice with its distinctly upper-class English accent boomed into the room. "Call me," he ordered, and reeled off a number with a 212 area code. That meant New York. She hadn't known Eldin was in New York.

  Desi switched off the recorder and flung herself back onto the blue-and-white patchwork quilt covering her modern brass four-poster. A job, he'd said, a big one. She stared up at the white plaster ceiling, her eyes absently following the detailed dips and swirls that had been so painstakingly restored.

  A big one.

  The words echoed through her mind again, and a little thrill of anticipation snaked its
way down her spine. She was itching to get back to work. Stephanie was already six weeks old, and because of a sudden case of toxemia, Desi had quit working full-time much earlier than she'd planned, taking on only the occasional free-lance job through Joanne's agency when she was feeling up to it. Part-time work was okay; giving makeup lessons or doing up society ladies before big charity "dos" paid pretty well, and it was interesting—for a while. But it wasn't like working on a movie, especially a movie with Eldin.

  A big one, he'd said.

  And if Eldin, who had once referred to an invitation to the White House as a dreary social obligation, was excited enough about a new project to call it big, then it must be very big.

  Her head began to whirl with possibilities. He meant big names, probably big money. She searched her mind for any bits of gossip or conversation she had heard in the last few weeks before she had quit working to have Stephanie, but could recall nothing out of the ordinary. There had been the usual tripe about who was sleeping with whom and what names were on their way up or down. She had been more or less out of touch for—what?—almost four months now. Four months was a long time in the movie business. Anything could have happened. She sat up and reached for the phone.

  "Sherry-Netherland Hotel," announced the voice on the other end of the telephone wire. "May I help you?"

  "Eldin Prince, please." Desi twisted the telephone cord nervously. "I don't know his room number."

  Teddie poked his head around the bedroom door while she was on hold. "I've put Stephanie down for her nap," he said, and backed out as Desi silently mouthed her thanks.

  "I'm sorry. Mr. Prince's room doesn't answer. May I take a message?"

  "Yes, please. Tell him Desi...." She paused, glancing down at her watch. It was almost two-thirty, which made it almost five-thirty on the east coast. "Could you page the bar for me, please?" she asked the operator. Eldin never missed the cocktail hour. It was, he said frequently, the most civilized part of the day.