She punched the phone icon and hit Tucker’s name in her recent calls queue. “You want praise? Okay. It was amazing. I had no idea you could dance like that.”
Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She wanted him in bed with her. Now. Kissing. Fucking. God, she wanted him.
“Thank you. Umm...so...what are you wearing?” he asked, his voice husky, sexy and probably half-joking. The man didn’t take life—or himself—too seriously.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She hadn’t felt this horny...ever.
“Actually,” he said, slowly, meaningfully. “I would.”
Tucker had tried to convince himself she was too uptight to watch the video, and if she did, she wouldn’t call. But she did. She reached out and, damn, if he wasn’t hornier than hell picturing her watching him dance. But, here he was, stretched out naked on his bed with his foot resting on a pile of pillows, a sinfully soft comforter covering his lower body.
“Let me break the ice. My chest is bare. Nipples puckered hard as BBs. Know why?”
“Because it’s cold in the house?”
“Because I got turned on thinking about you watching me dance.”
Her gulp made him go instantly hard.
“Your body is amazing. When do you work out?”
“Four hours a day when I’m performing. Squats. Weights. Yoga. Zumba.”
“Zumba?” she chortled.
“Great beat and rhythm. Your body can’t help but move. Frees up the mind. Did you like the song?”
“I did.”
“Play it again but this time, close your eyes. Picture us dancing to it. Are you ready?”
He waited a few seconds until she said, “Yes.”
Her breathlessness made him smile.
“Are you wearing pajamas?”
“Y...yes.”
“Take them off. As soon as the music starts, I’m going to take you in my arms, under the cape. I want you to feel the red satin against your skin.”
He listened closely. He thought he heard her mutter something about him being bossy and silly, but when he closed his eyes he could picture her lifting her perfect ass to wiggle free of the silk bottoms. He knew they’d be silk. Did her fingers shake when she unbuttoned the top? He sensed her vulnerability. She was afraid of looking foolish—even in the privacy of her hotel room.
“Okay. I’m naked,” she said in a small voice.
God, he wanted her so badly he could barely focus on what he’d been thinking about ever since she dropped him off. He promised himself the moment his foot was healed they would make love for a whole day.
“Cue the music,” he said, his voice scratchy from the tightness in his throat.
Once the song started to play, he closed his eyes and coached her. “You’re standing in front of me, facing the audience. My cape is around us both. As the melody swells, your hips rock, side-to-side. You can’t help yourself. Where it stops nobody knows.”
“The fire...” she murmured.
“That’s right. It’s burning desire. The lyrics tell our story. Do you feel my velvet glove touching you under the cover of the silk and satin?”
She made a sound of pleasure.
“Put your hand there for me. You know how I’d touch you if I were there. My right hand on your breast. Squeezing gently. My fingers working your nipple. Rolling it back and forth, around and around.”
He smiled, hearing the lyrics mimic his direction. Round and round. “I’m heating up. Are you?”
“Yes.” The word dragged on for several syllables.
The song ended and went to the next video in his cache. Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon. How freaking appropriate, he thought.
“I’m getting rid of the cape, now. Whoosh. Gone. It’s just us. In the spotlight. Are you okay with that?”
“Good. Yeah. Good with it. But...where’s the cane?”
He grinned. “Right here. Between us. What did you think that long, hard thing was?”
Her giggle went straight to his heart. God, he could love this woman for a long time. More than once, anyway, the rogue in him added.
“I’m putting it between your legs. Put your hands on it. Both hands, Amanda.”
She gulped.
“Move it. Ride it. Make it rub that spot—you know the spot I mean. Your sex is on fire, Amanda. It’s hot and swollen and the magic stick knows how to make it feel better.”
Her groan made his hand reach for his body, which was hot and swollen, too. “Describe what you’re feeling Amanda. Are you wet? Sticky hot?”
“Hot,” she repeated. “Wet. Yes. Definitely wet.”
“I’m tossing the stick away, now. Turn around. Face our audience.”
Her quick intake of breath told him he was taking her well outside of her comfort zone. The song changed again, pulsing rock. Something he doubted she ever listened to, songs with hard words and bad language that cut through the crap with raw and honest intensity.
“You don’t care what they see, Amanda, because this is not for them, it’s for you. Just you. Pleasure. Move against me, Amanda. Make me hot for you. Push me to the edge. What are you doing?”
“I have my hand on your...cock.”
His cock pulsed in direct response to her use of the word. “How does it feel?”
“Thick. Big. Hard. I like it. Can I taste it?”
A drop or two slipped out wetting his hand. “Yes.”
“Salty. Hot in my mouth. How is that possible?”
“The same way I can see your mouth on me. God, it feels good. So good.”
She groaned. “I want you inside me. Down there.”
His eyes squeezed tight. Little girl, can’t you say the word for your precious, beautiful body? Oh, baby, I need you to let me love you. For real, baby. For real.
“You’re going to have to be me for tonight, baby. Touch yourself the way you know I would touch you if I were in bed beside you. Tell me what turns you on, Amanda.”
“I...I can’t.”
“Yes, sweetheart, you can. With me. Now.”
And after a moment of hesitation, she did.
He pictured her naked on her big bed at the Graff, writhing as the urgency built. And he coaxed her to feel every blessed second, every biting, glorious pulsing release when she cried out, “Oh, oh, oh, yes. Yes. That’s it. Magic. Oh, God, I don’t want it to stop. Are you...?”
He let go of his still rock-hard cock. “Done,” he lied. “You had me at ‘Oh, God.’”
She was breathing hard. “I can’t believe we did that. Phone sex. Me. That’s so not me.”
She sounded embarrassed. Of course, she would be. Poor society girl parented by uptight morons who didn’t have a clue about the amazing woman they’d accidentally reared. “A phone sex virgin,” he said, keeping his tone light. “I had no idea. You’re hot, girl. Damn. You give good phone.”
Her laugh sounded happier, lighter than it had been a moment earlier. She believed him.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” he asked.
“You will for sure. I’m moving in, remember?”
God help him. How could he forget? The hot, sexy girl he slept with every night in his dreams was going to share a house with him for the next month or two. Why did that suddenly sound like the worst torture known to man?
Chapter Seven
“The sneaky, mud-creeping, low-life bastard!”
Amanda could hear her grandmother’s pissed off diatribe from the moment she arrived to take Molly to her daily occupational therapy.
A week had passed since Amanda left the hotel and moved into the guesthouse. A relatively good week. No major confrontations with her parents. Molly had been surprisingly cooperative and in good spirits. Even her dementia seemed improved, giving them longer, rather pleasant lucid periods spliced with short-term memory loss and confusion.
So, being met with agitation and anger the moment she walked in the door of Molly’s room at the rehab center took Amanda by surprise.
“Hey, Grand
ma. What’s wrong?”
“No fool like an old fool, they say. I expected better from my only child,” Molly snapped, tossing a piece of paper in Amanda’s direction. “Shoulda known better.”
The single sheet bearing a familiar letterhead—her father’s legal firm—fluttered to the rehabilitation hospital floor. Amanda knew the crest well since the firm was the only one Andrew Heller had used her whole life. She secretly called the junior associates, associates, and partners: the Bad Suit Society. For as much money as Andrew Heller paid them, they should have been able to afford Armani.
“What do the Bad Suit Boys want? Nothing good, I’m sure.”
“Are you part of it?”
Amanda’s fingers hovered a few inches above the paper, which had fallen face down. She straightened and placed her hands on the waistband of her new taupe capris. Once the month of May officially gave up the ghost, and Amanda knew she was looking at another month, if not longer, in Montana, she’d broken down and bought some summer clothes and several pair of sandals and open-toe slip-ons.
June in Montana seemed almost ideal as the daytime temperatures climbed into the seventies. Lovely weather if you were dressed properly, she decided.
She’d picked up a swimming suit and a couple of sun dresses, too, because the aides at Molly’s rehab facility swore summer would get hot. “All the way through the Big Marietta Fair, if we’re lucky,” one said.
Amanda liked this weather a lot. Her favorite part of the day was early evenings when the setting sun cast long, intriguing shadows everywhere she looked. Unfortunately, she didn’t venture out for long because giant mosquitos that seemed to materialize out of mid-air loved to feast on her.
“You appear to be spoiling for a fight,” she told her grandmother. “But I have no idea what’s in that letter. May I read it before you boil me in oil?”
Molly’s shoulders relaxed, but her jaw didn’t give an inch. “Read it.”
Nerves made Amanda’s hand shake. She knew what was coming, but she’d been in denial in that area of her life, too. Carrying out her family’s wishes had sounded a whole lot simpler when she was in New York. Nobody warned her that she might actually come to care for her grandmother, and other members of the community. One, in particular.
Hopefully this letter was something Molly didn’t understand, not something they’d have to go to war over.
“I should have known Andrew Heller would get his way eventually. And June’s too damn spineless to stand up to him.”
Amanda had heard this refrain before. Big, bad Andrew played mind games on poor little June. Unfortunately, Molly didn’t see—or refused to see—the whole picture. Amanda’s mother was no victim. June made her bed and usually slept in it quite peacefully, as far as Amanda could tell.
She carried the letter to the guest chair in Molly’s private room of the rehab center where her doctors had agreed she needed to stay until her house was completely renovated and Molly was strong enough to move about on her own with the help of a walker. That last bout of pneumonia had taken a toll on Molly’s lungs, and less oxygen affected her energy, mobility and balance.
Amanda had worked at the dinette in the guesthouse all morning, half-hoping she’d see Tucker, but he’d left with Flynn before she woke up—as he had every day that week. Oh, they crossed paths half a dozen times during the day as they dealt with remodeling questions and concerns, and they’d shared take-out a couple of times that week, but that was the extent of their interaction.
No kissing. No handholding. No hot, lingering stares acting like tractor beams to pull them into each other’s arms. Nothing even faintly resembling the sexual fantasies she’d been nursing since their episode of phone sex on her last night at the Graff.
Her frustration was taking a toll on her sleep and her patience. “You know, Molly, your daughter is not a complete pushover. She has a mind of her own, and has been known to express independent thoughts on occasion.”
“Humph,” Molly said, snorting. She gave Amanda a look of pure suspicion and shook her head.
The motion caught Amanda’s attention.
“You had your hair done this morning, you scamp,” Amanda exclaimed. “How long have I been trying to talk you into visiting the salon? Like twice a day since I got here?”
Normally, her grandmother’s hair looked as though she didn’t own a brush.
“I won a free wash and set at bingo last night.”
Amanda bit down on her grin. One of the tasks her parents had required of Amanda was to report back on the status of Molly’s checking and saving accounts. Since those reports came faithfully in the mail every month, Amanda had been able to reassure them that Molly had plenty of money. Enough to have her hair styled every day for the rest of her life. But, Amanda had come to realize that a lifetime of thrift didn’t lend itself to frivolous expenses. “It looks nice, Grandmother. Very nice.”
“Thank you.”
Amanda held up the letter and started to read, but Molly interrupted her. “Why does my own daughter hate me? What did I do that was so wrong?”
Amanda glanced up, wondering if her grandmother was waiting for an answer, but she could tell by the melancholic cast of Molly’s head that she was thinking aloud. She did that a lot. Sometimes revealing the most insightful, if tragic, memories dealing with life, death and parenting.
“I know I was the stern one in the family. Tried to teach by example. Patrick couldn’t say no to that girl. Nothing I said or did could make up for Patrick’s spoiling.”
Amanda didn’t remember her grandfather. She wasn’t even sure when he died. Molly didn’t keep a photograph of the man nearby, but Amanda had boxed several beautifully framed portraits of Patrick O’Neal, a florid-faced, overweight man, who obviously liked food and drink a bit too much.
“But I’m her only family. I thought she’d come back some day. That’s why I built her a house. So she didn’t have to stay with me. Too much pride to do that.”
The very comfortable little bungalow where Amanda felt safer and more at peace than she had the whole time she’d been living in the lap of luxury at the Graff. Was that less a comment on the hotel than on Tucker’s presence, she wondered?
I feel comfortable with him. In a way she’d never felt when she’d lived with her fiancé. “I like the guesthouse, Grandmother. I wish I’d come to visit you sooner. I would have enjoyed staying here and getting to know Montana. Tucker asked me how come we never came, and I couldn’t remember.”
“I made her pick between us, and she chose him.” Molly looked past Amanda, lost in her thoughts. “Andrew ‘Ass Wipe’ Heller. A damn bully if you ask me. I never abided bullies in my classrooms. If you can’t be civil and respect the other students, you can get the hell out of here.”
Amanda tensed. She hated when Molly went on a rant—especially when Amanda’s father was the source of it. While Andrew Heller wasn’t Amanda’s favorite person at the moment, neither did she feel right listening to someone bash him without trying to show some loyalty.
“Mother and Andrew have been married for almost forty years, Grandma. Surely that counts for something.”
Molly looked out the window, her attention wandering, Amanda sensed. Amanda had asked Molly’s doctor about these moments of disconnect.
“Your grandmother is old. She’s had some health challenges the past few years, and she’s a stubborn old coot. That means she doesn’t always do what her doctor tells her to do. Nor has she been completely honest with me when I’d see her. I believe she’s been showing signs of mild cognitive impairment for years, but until recently she was able to function at a very independent level. Her neighbors and friends have helped keep an eye on her. Unfortunately, one of her good friends passed away three or four months ago. I think that may have triggered some depression and things have gone downhill since then.”
His answer made sense, but it made Amanda angry, too. Who wouldn’t be depressed if a good friend died? Why didn’t anyone care enough to help Mo
lly get through the sad time? Couldn’t someone have made sure she was eating—not just guzzling those awful, high-sugar nutrition drinks? Where was Molly’s family throughout this? Where was I?
Kat had provided some excellent online links to help Amanda understand what was happening to her grandmother, as well as providing contacts to actual resources designed to help slow Molly’s decline. “Hopefully, with improved nutrition, supervised daily exercise, and getting Molly’s meds stabilized, you’ll be able to keep the bad episodes fewer and further apart,” Kat had offered.
Amanda hoped so. She liked her grandmother’s wit and wisdom. The black anger and verbal vomit of expletives she could live without.
Amanda went back to her reading. The Bad Suit Boys spoke double-talk and legalese but Amanda had been around slick talking people her whole life. The gist of the letter seemed to be a request to provide proof of a Last Will and Testament. If one did not exist, June Heller, as Molly’s sole heir, requested that Molly make her administratrix of a Trust—to be formed—as well as giving June Power of Attorney to make sure Molly’s “end of life” wishes were followed.
Jumping the gun, aren’t we, Mom?
She let out a sigh. No surprise here. But the timing felt wrong. Why had her parents moved up the timetable without consulting her?
“Which one are you again?” Molly asked.
Amanda looked up. “Which one of what?”
“June’s girls.” Her grandmother’s habit of mixing up time, faces, and facts wasn’t new, but it seemed to get worse when she was agitated. “The youngest, aren’t you?” She nodded, satisfied that she’d answered her own question. She closed her eyes and added, “The mistake.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Don’t bother. Your mother’s the one you should be talking to. She’s the one who thought having a third baby would finally turn your daddy into a family man. Didn’t work the first two times so I don’t know how June convinced herself number three would produce a miracle.” She cackled. “That’s the name I suggested when she told me she was pregnant. I asked her, ‘You hoping for a damn miracle? He’s never going to change, June. You know that.’”
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