by Sarina Bowen
“Just water, thanks.”
He’d expected her to stop on the far side of the counter, the wide stretch of stone between them, but she circled it and stepped onto the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor, stopping several feet away from him.
When he handed her the tall, cool glass, she stretched out an arm to take it. Her fingers avoided his on the glass.
Seeing that ratcheted the tension up anyway.
She lifted the glass to her mouth, eyes locked on his, and only broke the connection when she tilted her head back, her throat working as she drained the glass dry and set it back on the counter with a clink.
“What are you doing here, Maxie?”
He could read her face as she ran through a dozen different responses and discarded them all.
In favor of the honest truth.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
He gave her an out.
“Do you want me to call you a cab? I already told Tommy to go home for the night.”
“I don’t want you to do anything at all for me, Nick.” She tried to jerk away as he caught her slim wrists in his hands and gently pulled her toward him.
“Maxie.”
Staring at his shirt, she refused to meet his eyes. He rested his chin gently on the top of her head, her curls tickling his face. After a moment her arms crept around his waist and he was glad she couldn’t see his smile.
“Make up your mind, Maxie. You can’t be pissed at me and want to go to bed with me at the same time.”
Her voice was muffled but clear.
“Wanna bet?”
A hard pinch on his stomach was her answer to his silent laughter. Then her hands slid under his T-shirt and stroked up and down his back, warm fingers on skin that suddenly felt hot. When her face tilted up to him, her mouth was right there. She sighed into his kiss, opening to him, and he wasn’t laughing any longer.
He brushed fingertips down her cheek, smoothing over downy softness before stroking down the strong column of her neck. Her mouth was cool and wet from the water and her tongue teased his, dancing with it for a moment before pulling away as she tilted her head to the other side and changed the angle of the kiss.
She was warm in his arms, and the slow drift of heat from her spread over him like a drug. Breaking the kiss, he dragged his hands up to frame her face, pushing back her dark curls. Lowering his mouth to hers again, he brushed his lips back and forth until she deepened the kiss.
Her palms slid up his chest and over his shoulders and he buried his face at the base of her neck, inhaling her dark, sweet scent.
He looked up and caught her snaking a hand up to cover her mouth, wide open in a giant, creaking yawn.
Ah, the death of the ego.
“Whoops.” He couldn’t believe she’d made him blush. “Sorry.”
Abandoning all hopes of wild sex in the moonlight, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders, tucked the other under her butt, and bumped her up into his arms. “Come on.” He headed down the dark hall to his bedroom.
She pounded a fist on his chest.
“Put me down. I can walk.”
“I know you can. I’ve enjoyed watching you do so on more than one occasion.”
Thump. Again.
“Put me down.”
“Shut up.”
He didn’t stop until his knees bumped the edge of the king-size mattress, where he deposited her on top of the rucked-up duvet. Glaring up at him, she raked the hair out of her eyes with one hand, using the other to push herself up. But her toes slid under the covers and he knew she was fighting a losing battle.
“I’m not sleepy.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle push, rolling her onto her back among the fluffy white pillows piled in front of the headboard. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he held up a placating hand.
“If you can stay awake for five whole minutes, then I promise…”
Smoothing back her hair, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and the corner of her mouth.
The curve of her ear.
“I’ll ravage the pants off you,” he whispered. His words made her shiver.
She was determined. He’d give her that. She fought every millimeter, but as he stroked her hair, her lids fell inexorably shut. She curled up on her side, one hand tucked beneath the pillow. Even so, she muttered at him, “Not sleeping.”
“Of course not.”
“Pants off.”
“Absolutely.”
He stood up and stretched mightily. Considered the empty smoothness of the sheets in the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.
Oh, what the hell.
At least this way he’d have the memory of sleeping with her in his bed.
Stripping off his jeans and chucking them toward the door of the walk-in closet in the corner, he moved to the far side of the big bed and slid under the comforter. Leaving his T-shirt and boxers on would be his nod to propriety. She was curled up all the way across the mattress, her back to him.
That wouldn’t do at all.
But as soon as he wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked her against him, Nick realized his mistake. Her butt was snug against his crotch and she’d curled her hand around his, pressing his arm between her breasts.
He dropped his head on a pillow with a low groan and resigned himself to the wait for sleep to come.
Long before it did, his breath had slowed to match hers, almost imperceptible in the darkness next to him.
* * *
When she awoke, sunlight warm on her face and a tangle of sheets around her body, Maxie was alone in a strange bed.
She slid her hands across the luxuriously soft sheet beneath her, wrinkled now with the impression of two sleeping bodies. Not a strange bed, no. The enormous bed with its slate-colored down duvet, the sleek lines of the dark, low dresser and bedside table, the bare walls—all of it fit her picture of Nick Drake, captain of a financial empire.
That it did not remotely resemble the explosion of clothes, photographs and random souvenirs from past shows that distinguished her own bedroom shouldn’t bother her.
Should it?
Her midsection growled audibly. Introspection would have to wait. The last meal she’d consumed had been a Polish and some peanuts at the game the previous afternoon, not counting the various candy bars she and Grace had snagged from vending machines in the corridors of the hospital.
She ran her tongue over her teeth.
A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt, either.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she placed her feet carefully so as to make no noise in the silent apartment. She felt like a cat burglar and that was annoying, since she wasn’t sneaking anywhere.
She heard the clicking before she saw him and wasn’t surprised to find Nick hunched over the keyboard of a laptop computer on the coffee table, forearms resting on his knees as he leaned forward and typed with impressive speed.
His cheeks curved into a smile as she walked over to the large leather couch, so she knew he heard her, but he continued typing without looking up. He was dressed in yet another crisply tailored suit, ready for the day to begin. She ran her palms over her wrinkled jeans and felt half-dressed, and poorly at that, in comparison. He’d clearly been awake for some time already and she couldn’t say why this bothered her.
He punched one last key, pushed the laptop closed and leaned back against the couch, looking satisfied with the world. He looked over his shoulder at her.
“Good morning. Can I get you anything?”
“You keep extra toothbrushes?” she said, the words sounding like a jealous accusation even to her own ears.
Nick turned to face her more fully and lifted an enquiring brow. “I keep extra everything,” he said. “I don’t like running out.”
The planner in her should have loved that, but somehow even this grated this morning.
“I have to get home. I need to call a cab.
”
She winced. Was she incapable of having a polite conversation with the man? No doubt he found it charming to have her jumping down his throat at dawn. But just being in this environment made her edgy. She still had curtains she’d sewn out of sheets hanging on her windows and Nick’s floor-to-ceiling walls of glass said, I’ve got so much money, I don’t even care if people see me walk around naked.
“Your truck is downstairs.” She should be grateful, but it bothered her to have someone else take care of things for her. “I had Tommy pick it up last night.” He walked right past her to the kitchen. She heard him opening and closing cabinet doors behind her. China clinked against the marble counter. “There’s coffee, juice and bagels here. Have some breakfast and I’ll call the garage and ask them to bring it around front.”
He was pouring her a cup of coffee when she spun around and snapped, “Will you stop it!”
“Excuse me?” His hands didn’t falter as he continued to angle the dark stream into the enormous white bowl of a mug.
“Just stop it. Stop fixing things, stop arranging things. If I want something done, I can take care of it myself.”
His hands were warm when he picked up one of her fists, pried it open and pressed the hot mug into her hand. He smiled and tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear before turning back to the toaster and popping in a bagel, making her feel like a rumpled child again.
“You are clearly not a morning person.” She opened her mouth to argue with him and he placed a finger on her lips. “Have some coffee. Eat something. When I’m at your place, you can make breakfast all on your lonesome, okay? I promise not to fight you for the privilege.”
The idea that he wanted this connection between them to continue, to deepen perhaps, made her shiver. Still, she might have continued arguing with him if it hadn’t been for the sudden and traitorous betrayal of her stomach, which growled when she caught the smell of toasting bagels, loud enough to wake the neighbors.
Her surrender might not have been graceful, but it was complete. She turned her back on him, popped the crispy bagel from the toaster, and snagged the container of cream cheese from the counter. Ignoring him as he called the front desk with instructions regarding her truck, she fed her mutinous belly and washed down the quick meal with the entire contents of her fishbowl of a mug while standing in the kitchen.
By the time she felt him move in behind her, she was carbed and caffeined enough to rejoin the human race. She even leaned back against his hard chest when he slid his arms around her waist.
“Ah, that’s better.” His voice tickled her ear. “Are all the women in your family so hostile in the morning?”
She thought for a moment while she wiped the last smear of cream cheese off the butter knife and popped her finger in her mouth. “My mother and Sarah are always nice,” was the only honest answer she could come up with.
“And you and Addy?”
She wasn’t even surprised that he knew her eldest sister’s name.
“Yeah, not so much.”
She felt rather than heard him chuckle. Full of food and hot coffee and wrapped in his embrace, she was completely satisfied.
“I have to go,” he said and she felt him press a kiss to the top of her head. “I have a breakfast meeting.”
She laughed. “I hate those.”
“Yes, well, at this one we will probably have an actual breakfast.” He moved away and returned with her battered messenger bag and an equally fashionable pair of tattered running shoes. “And an actual meeting.”
Pausing in the act of crouching over to tie her shoes, she said, “Are you trying to imply that I don’t know how to run a business meeting? I’m heading to one of my own right now.” Although calling an early morning prop pickup at a West Loop theater a meeting was probably pushing the definition of the word. Still, it paid the bills.
“Wearing that?” The skepticism in his voice reminded her that this man operated in the rarefied world of thousand-dollar suits and women who wouldn’t be caught dead in imitation jewelry.
“Yes.” She kept her voice level and kept her eyes on her laces. “Not everyone works the fashion-plate angle at the office. Or has an office.”
“Wherever they work, most people change clothes first.”
“Take my word for it. I won’t be even close to the most rumpled person I see today.”
He was waiting with her denim jacket when she stood up, and he smoothed it over her shoulders after she shrugged into it. He ran his hands down the length of her arms to interlock his fingers with hers and then drew her hands up to his mouth.
“I don’t doubt you can do absolutely anything,” he said and pressed a kiss to the knuckles of each hand in turn.
Slick, she decided. Very slick with the compliments, he was. If only she didn’t feel so very un-slick around him. Un-slick was a feeling she didn’t care for at all.
No way could she handle this attraction between them now, when she couldn’t risk indulging in it. When they finally hit the sheets…or the table…or the wall, she had no doubt that this man was going to set her house on fire and leave her sitting in a pile of ash.
“I better go.” She leaned against him, pressing her breasts to his chest and a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth, enjoying the contradiction.
When she stepped away, he moved to accompany her. She waved him off. “No worries. I can find my way out.” And face the knowing eyes of the front-desk clerk as he watched her rumpled figure next to his polished presence? So not happening. If she had to, she’d trip him and jump over his prostrate body to avoid it.
No such drastic measures were required. Nick stayed at the counter and watched her walk to the door. She remembered the comment he’d made the previous night and felt his eyes on her ass like a stroke of a hand. When she reached for the doorknob, he stopped her with a word.
“Maxie.”
She kept her hand on the knob. It felt safer.
“We have some unfinished business, angel.”
She turned, holding the knob with both hands behind her back. Leaned against the door and twisted her lips in a half smile.
“You’re the angel, Mr. Investor Man.”
His eyes darkened. “Not hardly.”
Indeed. “Maybe I’ll darken your doorstep again later.”
He strolled closer but then stopped, leaving the width of the foyer between them. His eyes removed every stitch of clothing from her body and dropped them in a neat pile at her feet. She caught herself leaning toward him and renewed her grip on the doorknob.
“Make it much later.”
“Let me guess.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Dinner meeting.”
Five steps across the polished floor had him easing into her personal space. The corner of his mouth quirked. “I’m feeling predictable.” He leaned over her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body, and reached behind her. She dropped her hands a split second before he wrapped his fingers around the doorknob. “No rest for the wicked.”
She stepped half an inch closer to him until she could whisper in his ear. “Then you must be exhausted, Nicholas Drake.”
He was laughing as she backed out the door and she was surprised at how much she liked making him grin.
* * *
Twelve hours later, Maxie backed down a ladder, filthy from the accumulated dust of the lofty reaches of Carving Bananas’ warehouse. She and several employees had spent the day sorting and storing every single prop and piece of equipment used in the show they’d broken down the day before, but at day’s end there were only two of them left on the premises—Maxie and Marcus, her other ASM. Loud hip-hop pumped from a boom box propped near the wide-open garage doors at the front of the building. After a solid day’s work, she was full of the satisfaction that came from knowing precisely where everything was, even in this enormous cavern.
Her current outfit was, however, something of which she was certain Nick would not approve.
The day had been unsea
sonably warm for late spring in Chicago, where the real summer heat usually didn’t hit until the end of June or first days of July. She’d long ago stripped off the jumpsuit that had been intended to keep off most of the dirt, ignoring Marcus’s catcalls, and was working in cut-off booty shorts and a skinny black ribbed tee, her hair pulled off her damp neck in a high ponytail.
She was sweaty. And dirty. And stiff with the effort of holding herself on a high rolling ladder while depositing assorted items into large, labeled bins.
If she couldn’t loosen up a little, and soon, she might break into a million pieces. Just then she recognized the bass beat of Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty” pouring from the radio. She jumped down the last two steps and shouted to the man at the far end of the row of shelves.
“Marcus! Get your ass out here!”
She heard his whoop as she cranked the volume and shimmied her way across the concrete floor to meet him in the middle, popping her shoulders to the beat and whipping her hair back. Now he was her second Assistant Stage Manager, but long ago, Marcus had dropped her on her ass in the middle of a student dance production. She’d never let him forget it.
“Don’t you dare drop me,” she shouted as she launched herself at him.
His strong hands caught her in midair, lifted and flipped her, and supported her arched back as she curved her legs down to touch the floor in a spine-cracking back bend. She flowed smoothly upright, tossed a flirtatious glance over her shoulder and twitched her ass at him as she circled her hips on her way down to the floor.
“Never again.” Marcus matched her hips bump for bump all the way down and back up again. A smile flashed across his dark face as he grabbed her wrist, spun her out and back and dipped her until her ponytail brushed the floor.
Even upside down, with her arms wrapped around the sweaty shoulders of her dance partner, she recognized the tall figure standing at the open garage door.
“Company.” She let Marcus roll her back up again and then tugged on his skinny dreadlocks and winked at him. “Thanks. I needed that.”
“Girl, you need more than a dance, if you know what I’m saying.” His open-handed smack on her ass scooted her toward the door.