A beauty. A wit. Skilled. And a breathtaking lover.
But the expression on her face told him she was perplexed.
“What’s the matter, honey?” he asked, jamming his hands in his pockets, promising himself not to touch her unless he could make her happy again. “Did I do something wrong? Forget something?”
Surprised he had been looking at her from across the room, she blinked and met his gaze with frankness. Oh, yes, that was another fact he loved about her. She was real.
Her sensuous gray gaze still locked on his, she rose like a nymph from the sea out of that big, broad bed and strolled toward him. His cock appreciated every sinuous ripple of her muscles, every sway of her luscious breasts, every swirl of her long red hair.
She came and stood right up against him, her hands shoving aside the robe and pushing it to the carpet so that they stood once more, chest to breasts, stomach to stomach, cock to pussy. “No, Gil. You’ve done everything right.”
He lifted her chin with a thumb and forefinger. “Susanna.” He said her name, urging her to share with him whatever disturbed her.
But she cupped his jaw and kissed him with the sweetest persuasion. “You’re perfect, Gil. I could not have hoped for anyone better. You dance like Fred Astaire.”
He hooted as she pressed kisses down his throat and his sternum only to sink to her knees and use her lush lips on his navel, his hipbone and finally, dear God, his cock. “I’m only as good as my partner, Ginger.”
She cupped his balls, rolled them in gentle fingers, then licked the semi-turgid length of his cock. “Think we make love like Bogart and Bacall?”
“Ha!” He nearly shouted as she took him fully in her mouth and sucked him deliciously hard. “Jesus. If we don’t have it down yet, I want to practice.”
“Me, too. All you have to do is whistle, honey,” she said in imitation of the Bacall line to Bogie, “and I’ll be there.”
He braced his feet apart, put one hand behind him to the wall and one in her hair as she primed him like a well-practiced lover. His cock was going to fall off if she made him any harder. “Darlin’, listen to me. I want to fuck you again and you can’t—”
With a pop, she let him go, and he groaned. “Can’t suck you off?” Like a kid denied a treat, she rubbed her nose into the hollow above his inner thigh. “Why not?” She sounded like she’d weep if he stopped her. Hell, he’d weep if she didn’t put her talented mouth around him again.
“I have no fucking idea, babe. Do want you want.”
“Oh, Gil Santana, I do want to give you a Christmas gift.”
He gulped, a noisy sound of giant frustration. “Yeah. Give it all to me.”
She let her head fall back, her mouth open, her eyes twinkling at him. “Wow. A man after my heart.”
“Get busy, babe. I’m after more than that.”
She licked him and laved him, sucked him and stroked him until he thought he’d howl like a banshee. And when his sight left him and he knew he’d soon be done for, she took him so deep inside her mouth, he could have sworn she’d swallowed all of him. He let loose, his scalding cum spurting down her throat, and she groaned as she kept caressing him and swallowing.
Backed up against the wall, both his hands in her jumbled tresses, he came to with her nuzzling his groin. With shaking hands, he took hold of her underarms and pulled her up to him.
Lifting her face, he wiped a few glistening drops of cum from her lower lip and led her to bed. Wrapping her tightly against him, he buried his lips in her hair. “No one has ever done that for me before.”
She seemed to hide her face in his throat, sweetly shy at her own success of swallowing all he had to give. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I’d think you’d have so many women after you, ready to do anything to have you, keep you.”
Too many for all the wrong reasons. “I never wanted anyone to do that for me. Not until now.”
She raised her head, her eyes shining with pride. “Really?”
He nodded.
“I’ve never done that before.”
It was his turn to rear back in surprise. “Then I’d say you’ve got talent.”
“For the right man.”
“Bogart.” He hugged her close, grinning to himself.
“Bogart, honey,” she called him, sounding a bit brazen suddenly. “This Bacall is starving. Shall we eat?”
She bounded from the bed, naked and natural and so damn appealing he wanted to sit there and look at her.
“What’s the matter, Bogie?” she teased as she ogled his lax penis. “Too tired to eat?”
He threatened her with a tight look. “You want me to gain my strength back so that I have energy enough for you.”
Teasing, she plunked her hands on her hips and tapped a toe at him. “And what’s wrong with wanting to be loved like it’ll never end, huh?”
He stood up and ran his hands right down the front of her pretty breasts to her sopping wet pussy. “Where you’re concerned? Nothing. I hope I live long enough to satisfy you.”
An odd light sparked in her eyes. It lasted only a second, but it had her stepping away from him toward the living room and their dinner.
He followed her, her lover now, her very enchanted lover. Her very inquisitive and apprehensive mate.
As she took the dome off one of the dishes, he caught her hand. “No more prevarications. Tell me what bothers you.”
“I said that about wanting to be loved like it would never end.”
“And?”
Like a shot, she straightened up, put the dome down on the cart and stared at him. “I know that caring like that requires an equal and opposite kind of love.” She tried to escape his grasp.
A knot tightening in his gut, he wouldn’t let her go. “And?”
“I don’t want to love like that.”
She might have knocked him over with a feather. They’d been so natural together. So free. What had he misunderstood? What had he not perceived? He gaped at her.
“I want too much else to be anyone’s lover.”
Feeling like she’d knifed him in the heart, he dropped her hand and crossed his arms. “Like what?”
His challenge had her lifting her head, sticking to her guns, looking like a brave kid facing a firing squad. “I want a great career. Shakespeare is fine for now. But I want Broadway. I want Hollywood. I want my own salon, my own line of clothing for stage and screen. I want name recognition and—”
Right. He knew what she wanted. “Fame. An Oscar. Your name on the credits.”
He knew his spine had stiffened. His jaw had clenched. Funny thing, even the tender heart he was discovering he might have here with her seemed to have dissolved in a thousand poison words. Those were the very words he’d heard from the women who had crowded his life for the past nine years. The starlets crazy to get him in a room. The ones who chased him on the sets or into a café. Those whom his own boss demanded he “cultivate.” Hell.
Susanna was no starlet. No actress. But she wanted similar markers of success in a savagely competitive business—name recognition, in print, on credit rolls, along with the awards that came with talent and skill and years of apprenticeship.
“I want the same thing,” he told her now because it was probably the one fact missing from their introduction to each other. The one thing they had no time to say when they had been so enchanted by the other they could barely breathe.
Her brows knit. She stepped backward. “What do you mean?”
“I teach history of the movies right now, Susanna, but for the past fifteen years I’ve been the assistant director to a few different men you may have heard of.”
“Like who?” she asked tenuously.
He named two Brits he’d begun with in London and the one tyrant for whom he’d slaved in Hollywood most recently.
She put a hand to her chest. “My god. Gil, they are such…artists. So well renowned. With Oscars.”
“Yeah. And I
paid my dues. Learned what I needed to. Met enough investors and creative types to fill me up to here.” He sliced a hand across his throat.
Her eyes widened at the nasty implication. “What happened? Why did you—?”
“Leave? Because it was time. I’d learned enough. I’d seen enough. I’d put up with enough phonies and wannabe’s. Enough also-rans and never-beens. I’m starting my own production company. Next summer, in Portland, I begin shooting my first independent film.”
“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, beaming with pride for him, and took a step forward. But she halted, looking dazed and sad that she shouldn’t try to approach him. “Gil, that’s wonderful.”
“I want my own life, my own career, my way. No pressures from people I don’t respect or like. The ability to say no to a man or a woman who thinks they can influence me in any way that I don’t want to be.”
His vitriol had her nodding. “I see,” she said on a thread of sound. “I want you to know I would never do that to you. To anyone. I’m not like that.”
Yeah. That’s what I thought. But now, who’s this other Susanna? The one who doesn’t want to risk love because of her career.
“I want my success on my own merit, Gil.”
“Thanks for clarifying that,” he bit off, yet he felt like he’d turned to stone. She had seemed like everything he’d always wanted, and yet this one small part of her…turned out to be a big part. The professional part. The hungry, aggressive part that made people unprincipled. He couldn’t bear to know she was like that.
He found himself staring at the blank wall. She was walking around him, picking up her clothes, escaping to the bathroom and shutting the door.
He found his robe in a heap on the floor.
When she came out, she faced him with a tenuous smile and moist gray eyes. “I loved tonight. I’ll always remember how unbelievably wonderful you are.”
What could he say to her? Sure? Thanks? Me, too?
He watched her let herself out and close the door behind her.
He hadn’t felt so alone, so miserable, so damned bereft in all his life. “Merry Christmas, Santana. Hell, it’s only another night of the year, right?”
Chapter Five
Susanna walked the floor that night so much she thought there ought to be a hole in the carpet. The letter from Madame Eve that she’d found slipped under the door in her suite this morning sat on the dresser. As the digital clock clicked over to five, Susanna picked it up once more to re-read the last few sentences.
“Gilbert Santana matches you in so many ways. In temperament. In professional attitudes and aspirations. I have great hopes that your one-night stand with him will be one of the most fulfilling nights of your life.”
“It was until I botched it!” Brusque, afraid to care too much for him—and then lose him, I destroyed him. I saw his despair in his eyes.
“Why couldn’t I be blunt? Tell him the whole story?” she kept asking herself like an idiot who knows the answer but can’t form the words. “If I told him the whole thing, it might not have gotten all out of proportion, out of whack. I am not that crazy, driven career woman who declared I’d do anything to get where I wanted to be!”
That was not who she was. But she lit on the professional need to illustrate her deeper problem. Hurt, he had matched her words with his own experience of nutty broads who would do anything or say anything to get ahead.
She went to the window and hit the remote to draw the drapes. The sun wasn’t up. Did it ever come up here in the North Pole?
But she had adored being with him. And she had not revealed to him the whole story. But she should try…if he’d allow her to explain. She owed it to him to try.
Her stomach growled.
Okay, Corrigan. Courage. Food. And an apology to a man who deserves one.
***
Twenty minutes later, she walked down the hall to Room 342 and saw that the room service waiter had hovered a few rooms down as she had ordered, until she could arrive.
“Thank you,” she murmured, signed the check, and tried to smile. “Wish me luck.”
“At this hour of the morning, ma’am, you bet!” He walked off.
She pulled down her sweater, licked her lips, and raised her hand to knock on Gil’s door.
It fell open before she could make contact. And there he stood, hair wet from a shower, eyes as bleary as hers, dressed in sweats…and confused. “What? What are you doing here?”
She couldn’t find words and flapped her arms, helpless.
He pulled her forward.
Suddenly she was in his room against the same wall where he’d made love to her only hours ago. She wanted his hands on her again. But she forced out her jumbled thoughts. “My…my cart. Breakfast. I ordered for us,” she explained, pointing outside. “A peace offering.”
“I see,” he said, and reached out to roll the cart inside. Then he closed the door. “What are you doing here?”
She shifted from one foot to the other. “I came to apologize. To…to say I’m sorry and let me…let me explain.” She blinked back the tears that sprang to her eyes.
He opened his palm. Inside were her two earrings and her necklace. She had forgotten them in her rush to leave. “I was coming to you. To apologize. Explain. To talk.”
“Oh, Gil.” She swiped at tears that threatened to blossom and roll down her cheeks. “I’m so glad. I want us to be friends.”
“I don’t.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to be friends with you, sweetheart. I want to be lovers. Talk to me. Tell me whatever it is and I’ll tell you my story, too. We’ll be even.”
“I signed up for 1Night Stand because I wanted to be close to someone…again. Not a permanent lover, but someone to enjoy and laugh with. I needed that for a few hours because, you see, I lost my sister, my only sibling, last July. A long illness, terrible and sad. She was my friend. My best friend. And that was a few months after our mother died. So, it’s been a rough year for me.”
Now she was looking at him through the mist of fat tears. “I’ve told myself for months that I ought to be fulfilled with the new post at the Shakespeare. That all that work is enough. That it’s good for me to want all that fame and glory I ran on about here to you. But I don’t really believe it. I don’t, Gil. I sold myself a bill of goods that I needed a grand career to fill up my hours and my loneliness.”
She gulped hard but two tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be a wuss here. I wanted to be bright and positive.”
“You are, sweetheart. Ninety-nine percent of the time!” She smiled at him for that.
He would have kissed her then, but she put her fingers to his mouth. “Oh, Gil. Let me tell you. Let me…finish. I never found a man I cared deeply about. Not in all my life. But I thought when I heard about 1Night Stand and Madame Eve that maybe I could take it for what it was worth. One night. A few hours with a great man. And when I learned that I was invited for the holidays, I snapped up the chance because I…I would have been all alone this Christmas.” She clamped a hand over her mouth at the sob that escaped her.
He cradled her close, his lips in her hair. “Darlin’, you are not alone this Christmas. You are here with me.”
She snuggled nearer. “I want to be with you and be happy.”
“Look at me.” He wiped her tears from her cheeks. “I’ll do my damndest to make you warm and safe and happy. I’m so sorry, honey. I was hurt and crazy with it. I went off on you like a jerk, ascribing qualities to you that I had no right to. Things that were ridiculous given how I knew in my heart you weren’t any of those things.”
She smoothed the fabric of his sweats. “Oh, but I am some of those things where you are concerned. I’m selfish. I want you for myself.”
He grinned. “I want it no other way.”
“And I’ll be a jealous wretch if any woman ever puts her hands on you.”
“You show her, babe. I’m yours.”
&nb
sp; “Are you? Can we be? Together for this week?”
“And why not come visit me in Portland for New Year’s? I have a second bedroom, if you would prefer to use it. No ties. Unless you want.”
She kissed his dimple. “You are charming, Santana, but I do want the hot bed with the tall, dark, handsome hero.”
“He’s trying to be a better man for you.”
“He doesn’t have to try. He already is. I came here not wanting to care. Not wanting to risk loving and losing. But you changed that for me. I do care for you. More than care for you.”
A wistful look in his eyes, he pushed a few strands of hair from her cheeks. “I won’t hurt you, honey. I won’t go away. And I won’t fly off the handle again, either. We’ll go as slowly as you want, Susanna, but I know where we’re going together.”
She hugged him, desperate to show him how she loved him. “Would you say you and I are meant for more than one night together?”
“Gable and Colbert?” He pulled back to ask her.
She threw her arms around his shoulders. “It happened in one night for them. Why not for you and me?”
“I haven’t felt so right with anyone, ever,” he admitted.
“Life is not like the movies. This reality of ours is better.”
“I want to make ours better all the time. More talk, no misunderstandings.”
“We have Santa to thank. And his helper, Eve. She got us right.”
“Very.” He agreed as he hooked his fingers in the bottom of her sweater and took it up and off to land on the floor.
“So are you going to kiss me?” she demanded, hooking one leg around his hips.
“I’m thinking about it,” he whispered as he unsnapped her bra and caressed her breasts. “You do need kissing badly. ‘That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed often and by someone who knows how.’”
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