Harlequin E Contemporary Romance Box Set Volume 3: Falling from the SkyMaid to LoveWhen the Lights Go DownStart Me Up

by Sarina Bowen

  “Or out of one.” His voice was a low murmur that rumbled in her belly and sent a line of fire straight to her core. She wondered if her skin was actually glowing from the heat that swept over her. “The bed is totally not necessary.”

  “Nick.”

  His voice was idle, almost soothing.

  His words set her on fire.

  “I could fuck you right here, Maxie, and I wouldn’t give a damn who was watching. Just looking at you, how you respond to me, to my voice, makes me so hard I can’t think straight for wanting you.”

  Her breath, shallow and rapid, stuttered at his words. Lightheaded with a sudden rush of want that tingled in her breasts, in her belly, in between her legs, in her damn toes for crying out loud, she let her eyes drift shut for a moment as she inhaled deeply through her nose, desperate for some oxygen to combat her dizziness. Her chest lifted on the deep breath and she felt the slide of silk over her bare breasts in every fiber of her being, until she hurt with an achy need to be touched right now, damn it.

  And Nick wouldn’t. Stop. Talking.

  “You don’t think we have anything in common?”

  His foot slid between hers beneath the table and he kicked her ankles apart. She flashed hot at the reminder of him doing just that when standing behind her at the opera house, right before he bent her over a row of seats and brought her to climax with his hands.

  His eyes were dark, pupils blown with arousal, and she knew that he’d pushed her legs apart on purpose. To remind her. To turn her on even more, crank the tension in her body another notch higher.

  She pressed her knees together, even though he wasn’t anywhere near her knees, and tried to focus. She was practically panting for god’s sake.

  “You’re a trust-fund baby who probably went to Paris on spring break in high school and picked your favorite college without a worry because your parents paid the tab for everything.”

  “It was Rome, actually. For spring break. Paris was where I studied my junior year abroad.”

  The laugh jerked out of her without warning. Jesus. She’d been going for an exaggerated stereotype. Hadn’t expected to nail it on the head. She drilled him with her eyes, willing him to understand this. To see how very unsuited to one another they were.

  “I worked to save money for college starting when I was thirteen, and I still had to pick the school that offered me the most financial aid, not the one I wanted to attend the most. Because my dad died when I was so young I can’t remember him and my mom raised four kids without any help.” It hurt her heart a little to think of how hard things must have been for her mother, who’d never shown an ounce of strain to any of her children. “I didn’t have clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs until I started making my own in high school on the theater department’s sewing machine. I’ve never been to Rome. Or Paris. But you can damn well bet that when I go, it’ll be because I busted my ass earning every dime I spend.”

  “So that’s where it comes from.”

  “What?”

  “Your unusually eclectic sense of style.”

  “That damn well better be a compliment.”

  “It is.” He bared his teeth at her in a smile. “But I can see why you do it, if you never got to choose what you wore as a kid. As an adult, you make all the choices and you want as many of them as possible. Greedy girl.”

  She opened her mouth to argue with him. And then hurt herself when her jaw snapped shut, her teeth clicking together hard.

  “Well, shit.” Was that really it? She’d always figured that particular personality quirk came from having been a theater brat all through school, even before she realized that she wanted to make it her profession. But did it really go back even further than that? She sank back in her chair, not sure whether to be floored or pissed that Nick already knew her better than she knew herself. The admission was painful. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “I did. Because I did the same thing.”

  She scoffed from her relaxed slouch. Please. He ignored her skepticism and kept talking.

  “You wanted what you’d never had. So did I.”

  “Please.” Out loud this time. “I bet you had everything you wanted. Everything anyone could want.”

  “Not true. I wanted risk. I wanted to take a chance on something that belonged to me, just to me, and find out if I’d fall flat on my face or knock it out of the park.”

  “Let me guess. You were an instant success.”

  He signed the credit-card slip and slid the folder to the edge of the table before turning back to her.

  “Hell no. My first business failed before I even opened the doors.”

  “What?” She couldn’t have heard that correctly.

  She stood up automatically when he gestured her to proceed before him. His hand settled at the small of her back, pulling all of her attention to that one spot. But she wrenched her focus back to Nick’s words.

  “Your business failed? You failed?”

  “It’s not the same thing, you know.” He leaned in close to speak next to her ear and she shivered. Knew he could feel it, too, when his hand pressed more firmly at her back as he guided her through the tables. “Businesses fail for a million reasons that have nothing to do with you. With us,” he corrected himself immediately as she whipped her head around to glare at him.

  If he wanted to fly the banner of failure high that was fine for him.

  “My business isn’t going to fail,” she snapped at him.

  He shrugged. “Mine did. Opening a rock-climbing gym in a one-story building. Not a genius idea. Some hobbies should stay part-time.”

  She wanted to punch him in his non-committal, who-knows-what-might-happen face.

  “I’m not saying your business will. You’ve got a solid track record, an impressive inventory and the imagination to pivot to new solutions whenever problems arise. It’s one of the many reasons why I like you. You’re a pro at what you do and you make it look easy. If you had come to me with a venture-capital proposal, I might have hesitated, but that would’ve been a mistake. Like the kids I’m working with at Temporal, you’ve got all the right elements, Maxie.”

  Well, shoot. Now she didn’t want to punch him at all. She wanted him to keep telling her how awesome she was.

  “But there aren’t any guarantees in business.”

  The fall back to earth was brutal. She knew most businesses failed within the first five years and took it as a personal triumph that hers was still growing after six. Didn’t he realize that she was kept up at night by the stress of having so many people’s dreams, including her own, of course, depend on her?

  He propped his elbow on the table and leaned his head on his fist, looking unfairly cute when he smiled. “You all remind me of myself, I guess, when I was first starting out. I was determined to do everything independently. Wouldn’t let my parents funnel cash my way to bail me out when deals crashed.” She lifted an eyebrow. He had the grace to flush a little. “Yes, they bought me the penthouse. But I’ve earned everything else since. And the kids in Temporal are going to buy their own penthouses some day, because I can give them the boost they need to take it to the next level. I know you think finance is boring—” it was her turn to blush “—but it’s like I can wave a magic wand and the right people, the ones who bust their asses, get to see their dreams come true.” Nick blushed a little himself and glanced away. “I don’t normally talk about this. Sappy and idealistic, not a number one business strategy.”

  Maxie kind of adored him a little by the time he was done.

  Maybe more than a little.

  They stepped outside and the cool night air stroked over her heated skin like midnight skinny-dipping in a still pond.

  She opened her mouth to suggest just that—surely there had to be a deserted lake around here somewhere, wasn’t that what the country was for?—when a camera flashed bright and she threw up an arm reflexively, too late to stop herself from being blinded. The only other stragglers leaving the r
estaurant leaned against each other in a tight huddle and shouted, “Cheese!” Light flashed again. The group broke up and drifted away in twos and threes, leaving the sidewalk in front of the restaurant empty except for her and Nick.

  Nick, drat the man, kept talking.

  “But if Carving Bananas does fail, and god knows with a name like that you made it harder on yourself than it had to be—what?” He scoffed at her narrowed eyes and thinned lips. “I know it’s an inside joke, but guess what it does for those of us who aren’t insiders? Makes us feel like outsiders.”

  She opened her mouth to argue with him and he swooped in for a kiss that took her from irritated to reeling in seconds. They were just outside the restaurant entrance, on the shadowed edge of the light that shone over the entrance. She didn’t know if anyone else came outside while he opened her mouth, sucking and licking at her lips and her tongue, hands hard on her hips. By the time he pulled away from her mouth, her hands were wrapped around his neck, she had pushed up on her tiptoes, and she couldn’t remember what they were talking about.

  “If it fails, it won’t be because of you.”

  “What?” Disbelief.

  “You’re an amazing businesswoman, Maxie.” She was uncomfortable almost, with Nick looking her in the eyes, so focused on making sure she heard what he was saying. “Your skills are more than just what you’ve learned in building this one business. There’s no telling how far you can go.”

  She was still stuck back at the kissing, frankly.

  “Did you seriously not lose track of what you were saying when you kissed me?” she demanded, dropping her hands to her hips and taking a step back. “Seriously?” A horrifying thought flashed through her brain like a crackle of lightning. She took a step toward him, her hands coming up from her hips to chest level, hands curling into fists. “Are you firing me? Is this some kind of sick way of letting me down easy? Take me out of town for a slick weekend away and break it to me where no one I know can see me have a nervous breakdown?”

  “Jesus. Easy, killer.” Nick laughed at her rant. But he backed up a step, too. “Paranoid much? No, I’m not firing you, you lunatic.”

  The sudden adrenaline rush followed by the string-cutting release of tension that followed his reassurance was dizzying, but Maxie remembered one thing.

  “Let’s see you hold a conversation after this,” she muttered, and pushed Nick up against the plaster and wood-beam wall of the Tudor-style home that housed the restaurant. He didn’t resist.

  He smiled at her as she rose up to press her mouth to his. She heard the slam of a door from around the back of the building and a murmured dance of voices, servers leaving for the night. There weren’t enough streetlights in this town. It seemed weird that people would feel comfortable walking around after dark, when there weren’t enough bright lights to see who else might be walking down the street behind you. She reminded herself that probably a lot fewer people in Lake Geneva were mugged each night than in the four square blocks surrounding her apartment in Chicago and leaned into the kiss.

  Nick’s mouth was soft beneath hers, his lips relaxed and barely kissing her as she gave him a moment to remember that she was here, with him, as his lover. Not his contractor. She slid a hand up and held it against the side of his face.

  She’d meant to devour him, to ramp him up so high with desire that the brief walk back to their hotel was nothing but torture in the state he’d be in. But something about the dark and the quiet and the conversation she’d just shared with this man whom she kept telling herself was so very different from her and yet who seemed to know her so well, all combined to slow her down, kick the city out of her pace, until she found herself just breathing, sharing a breath with her mouth against Nick’s and brushing her lips against his. His hands stroked up and down her back, running from silk to skin and back again and he tugged her toward him until they touched from knees to shoulders. She stood between his legs and wondered if her body could actually merge with his, just slip inside him and stay there for a while. Forget all the reasons that everything they did together was just another step on a path that would eventually lead to their ending.

  She knew the plan. Because she always had a plan. Or rather, a dozen different plans, covering all contingencies. She and Nick would enjoy a set-the-sheets-on-fire affair during the length of the show, with, apparently, some surprisingly insightful conversations and the occasional road trip. And when the show was over, they, along with all of the other inappropriate couples who would have hooked up over the course of weeks of forced intimacy and the stress of working with intensity toward the same goal, would all be over.

  She felt like some kind of Mafia don for a moment, repeating to herself, it’s not personal. Because it wasn’t. She’d seen it a hundred times on dozens of sets. When the final curtain dropped, reality would kick back in and everyone would return to their previously scheduled programming.

  But, for once, as she stood in the shadows and leaned on this man, this man who believed in her, for once she wondered what would happen if she planned and worked and managed as hard at keeping a relationship going as she worked on the other love of her life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In a rebellious gesture, a sort of middle finger to the gods who had been screwing her so royally this week, Maxie had deliberately taken one last look at her cell phone before she and Nick left the hotel for dinner and then left it square in the middle of the top of the dresser, a Gideon’s Bible to one side and a liquor store’s worth of small bottles of booze to the other.

  The world could manage without her for the length of one meal.

  “Ow!” The doorknob was digging into her lower back and she had no idea how Nick thought he was going to manage to get the key in there if he had her pressed up against it while sliding a hand up her torso and drugged her into submission with deep, wet kisses. Her head fell back and cracked against the walnut door.

  “Sorry.” He slid a hand behind her head to protect her. But his other hand never stopped moving and his thumb flicked across her nipple until she gasped into his mouth and pushed him away from her.

  “Hallway. Inside. Now.” She wasn’t coherent, but she could get her point across all the same. Her skin felt tight and hot and she wanted to push him down on the bed and climb on top of him, naked skin sliding, and just be with him. It was so unlike her—so emotionally needy, even girly—that she blushed and hoped he couldn’t read the whole thing on her face. That was more openness and sharing than she was ready for.

  Nick was obviously okay with the “get inside and get naked” plan, although he did pause while reaching behind her with the key to run his hand appreciatively over her ass and hitch her crotch a little bit more firmly against him. She wanted to climb him like a tree, as long as the grinding hip action moved inside.

  “Seriously, do you not know how to work a lock?” she asked, pulling away from Nick when there was still no progress with the door after two full minutes.

  “It’s hard, unh,” he grunted as she slid her hand around to the front of his pants, measuring his length with her palm, “difficult to concentrate when you, ahh, do that.”

  Maxie feigned an innocent expression. “What? This?” When she squeezed him again, she leaned forward and opened her mouth on his neck, sucking lightly before scraping her teeth over the tense cords.

  Nick growled—actually growled—with a rumble she could feel in her belly, her ear. “Swear. To. God. I’ll push your pants down and take you right here in the hall.”

  She rubbed her thumb over him and bit her lip, trying not to smile. Then kissed his neck one last time and let go, lifting both hands in the air in surrender.

  “Good enough? Can you open the damn door now, Mr. Coordination?”

  He clicked the lock open in two seconds and steered her in the room so quickly she bumped against the edge of the bed in just a few steps. A quick push from Nick had her ass bouncing on the mattress. She laughed as he stripped his shirt off over his h
ead without unbuttoning it and shucked his pants in record time.

  Two could play at that game.

  Maxie had her clothes off faster than you could say “the show must go on.” She stopped when she reached her underwear and kneeled in the middle of the big bed with one thumb tucked into the side of the bikini briefs, tugging them just low enough that one more twitch would have them sliding down her thighs. Nick had frozen at the foot of the bed, eyes hot and locked on the space between her thighs.

  She spread her knees a little farther apart.

  “Don’t you dare stop now,” his voiced rasped through the silence of the room.

  She pushed one hand down her thigh, lifting the other to stroke down the center of her chest between her breasts, until Nick didn’t know where to look, eyes flickering all over her body in the bright overhead light he’d flipped on when he came through the door. He was fully hard and his hand drifted up and down his length as he watched her. Her breath stuttered as she grew wet between her legs, kneeling there, waiting for him.

  He crooked one finger at her.

  The excruciating sensation of being under a microscope strung her nerves tighter, every millimeter of her exposed skin tingling as she edged toward him. The cool night breeze drifting through the sheer curtains felt like hands stroking her skin. The scrape of the comforter’s cotton against her knees stung with sweet friction. Her nipples pebbled tighter and her muscles tensed as she came to a stop right in front of him.

  Nick reached out with one index finger and trailed it from the notch in her collarbone down past her waist, tracing the same path she’d just stroked on her own skin. She watched him touch her with fascination. His hand, so much larger than hers, drifted over her body, dipping low for a moment to stroke once between her legs, making her hips curl in an effort to chase that finger for more contact. Then trailing back up her torso, skipping over her ribs and almost making her giggle before feathering around the lower curve of her breast. She inhaled deeply and arched her back.