Temptations: A Limited Edition Contemporary Romance Collection

by Blue Saffire

  “I do, but you should stay. Help out.”

  I bounced and rubbed my gloved hands together. “You’re not as cute as a toddler, and I’m not so easily bamboozled. My feet are dying.”

  “So we better move fast. Little Dude won’t build himself.” Ian had already started rolling a second, smaller snowball.

  “Little Dude?”

  “It’s what I’m calling him. Don’t ask questions. Help.” Ian squished his handful of snow and threw it at me, hitting me in the chest. I caught the icy clod before it fell and threw it back.

  “I’ve never built a snowman in my life.”

  “That’s the perfect reason to start.” Ian wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Are you wearing mittens? How old are you?”

  “Mittens are warmer.”

  I blinked against the snow glare illuminating everything around me. “Huh. I didn’t realize. See. I’m not suited for this cold-weather stuff.”

  “You get snow in Dallas, don’t you?” He packed more volume onto the growing snow dude.

  “Most of the snow we get is closer to ice, and maybe just enough to nail each other in the face with an ice ball.”

  “Ice is much less fun than snow. And an ice ball to the face sounds brutal.”

  “Michelle and I have outgrown that part—mostly.” I laughed. Growing up, we were competitive. About grades and friends and boys. Add in the stepsister element, and we were downright nasty sometimes in our teen years. My leaving for college improved our relationship greatly.

  “Mostly got over it doesn’t sound so great.”

  I scooped up an armful of fluffy snow to add shape to Little Dude’s lower body. “Michelle’s dad took off before she was two, and my dad became her dad. I didn’t always appreciate having a new baby sister.” My voice dropped to a grumble. “Or a stepmother.”

  “You two aren’t close?”

  A sigh clouded my vision in the frigid air. “We’re not not close. Michelle and I are close. Gayle is Michelle’s mother. She means well. My father died a few years ago,” I said and then tamped another handful of snow onto the growing ball. “To her credit, my stepmother tries. She wants to give me what I don’t have anymore, but we’re very different. She’s really girly. After my dad and she got married, she surprised me with a brand new room, floor to ceiling bubble gum pink. I think my dad tried to tell her I wouldn’t like it, but she’s…pushy. And my dad listened. I think he thought, ‘She knows little girls. She knows what’s best.’ I was getting to an age where he was looking for help figuring me out.”

  “So he got you a stepmother.”

  “Yes.” He’d also wanted a wife—a replacement of the love and companionship he’d lost. I’d felt betrayed on my mom’s behalf. “I didn’t want one. I wanted my mother.”

  Ian stopped working on Little Dude and dusted snow from his pants. “How old were you when she died?”

  “Six.”

  “That’s young. I’m sorry. That—it’s hard to know what to say.”

  “I know. Thanks.” Sometimes I had trouble remembering my mother. That used to frighten me, but as I got older, I learned to cut myself some slack. “I look like her. Sometimes when I see pictures I do a double-take and have to remind myself that it’s her and not me.”

  “Then, she must have been beautiful.”

  I hid my cringe from him. The compliment made me uneasy. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “How old were you when your dad remarried?”

  “Eleven.” I avoided Ian’s inquiring eyes.

  “So you spent your tween years in a bright pink room?”

  “Sort of. I asked if I could re-paint it because I didn’t like pink, and it caused a big to-do. She called me ungrateful and made my dad tell me no. I think she partly wanted to punish me and partly to tell me how to be a girl. She really cared about that. I got fed up when I was fourteen and bought my own paint. Dark, dark purple—like almost black—and I put up posters from comic books. Jean Grey, Storm, Emma Frost—an X-Men lady fest.” Gayle’s pinched lips and flared nostrils popped up in my mind. “She told my dad to keep an eye on me. I think she thought the color and all the comic book boobs were the portal to a life of drugs and lesbian sex orgies or something. I think she still wonders if I’m a lesbian.”

  Ian threw his head back. His loud cackle cracked and echoed in the crisp air.

  I giggled. “How else does a woman like that explain why I’m thirty-three and not married?”

  Ian bent over to pick up more snow. “I could correct her, you know. Send her a report on last night.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. I could still be a lesbian,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Not likely. You definitely like men.”

  I glanced at him sideways. “Maybe you should feel more proud of yourself. It could just be you.”

  “Not even I am that arrogant.”

  I raised a brow behind my sunglasses. He wasn’t arrogant at all, really, considering who he was.

  His disarming smile warmed me down to my winter-stiffened toes. “I guess you could be bisexual maybe. I’d love to test that theory.”

  I walked over and punched him in his parka-padded arm. “There’s the arrogance. You men thinking you can take on two women. Most of you can barely handle one.”

  Ian towered next to me, lifting a second ball up for the snowman’s midbody. “I don’t know. I had a good showing last night, and I would have this morning too if you hadn’t faked being asleep.”

  Warmth flooded my cheeks, but since they were likely already flushed from the cold, I hoped he wouldn’t notice. I glared in his direction. “I don’t fake anything.”

  “Then I definitely did well last night. I’m ready for a new challenge. Let’s test this bisexual thing. After all, we’re stuck up here for another day.” His grin slanted to the left, creasing his beard.

  I bit back a giggle. “Where are we going to get another woman? The roads are closed.”

  “I know a local who owns a snow plow, and from what I can tell, she might be quite interested. At least in you.” The frost of his breath tumbled out of him as he chuckled.

  “Do you want to go in and make your phone calls? Architecting a threesome is really getting you excited, and my feet could use a thaw by the fire.”

  Ian dropped his handful of snow and stepped toward me, lifting my chin with the back of his Gore-Tex mitten. His voice took an edge. “That’s okay. Sharing isn’t my thing.”

  “So selfish.” I pulled back my chin and shook my head in exaggerated disapproval. “Were you an only child?”

  Ian nodded. “I absorbed every ounce of parental attention myself, and I’ve been told it’s turned me into a monster.”

  He squatted down and poked around in the snow, digging through to the ground.

  “I’m assuming not by your parents.”

  “No, never. Of course.” He laughed. “By a couple of ex-girlfriends.”

  “That means two. Just a couple?”

  “Loosely. Plus or minus.”

  Ian stood and pushed three small rocks he’d found into the snowman’s chest.

  “What makes you a monster?”

  “Mainly, that I’m a self-obsessed workaholic. Building the business, keeping it going, takes focus. And the bigger it gets, the more people I have depending on me. It’s not like I don’t tell them upfront that my time is limited. I can’t afford distractions or dead weight.”

  A speck of dismay colored my idea of him—even though I had no reason to have constructed an image of him at all. “If you’re calling your girlfriends distracting dead weight, then they’re going to think you’re a monster.”

  Disgust contorted Ian’s face. “I don’t say that. And I don’t think that. I had a girlfriend. A fiancée actually. I thought I’d found someone who understood the level of commitment I have to have for SoulM8. She had her own career. We both traveled. I thought things were great.”

  “They weren’t?”

/>   Ian packed and smoothed the center snowball again and again. “No.”

  This was none of my business, but I plowed on anyway. “What happened?”

  Silence fell between us. A chapping gust of wind blasted my face. I licked my lips and opened my mouth to withdraw the question, but then, he answered.

  “As it turns out, Irina felt neglected, or so she said.” A shadow crossed Ian’s face. “It’s hilarious. I think she had plenty enough attention.” Ian slapped both sides of the snow man’s torso as if giving him a pep talk. “It’s a blessing. I found out what she was like before the wedding.”

  “When were you getting married?”

  “We talked about May.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” That seemed like the right thing to say, but a wriggle of excitement danced inside me. Ridiculous. This was a stupid fling, and I was not the kind of woman billionaires dated. I needed six more inches of height, twenty fewer pounds, and a bleach job on the hair. Men this rich dated shiny blonde women in eating disorder recovery who yachted and took spa vacations to decompress from the daily travails of painting, primping, and polishing themselves into the perfect arm candy.

  Caring for a wounded male ego would be a shitty New Year’s project, anyway. His broken engagement is probably why he didn’t come to the wedding.

  I punched a divot into the top of our creation and bent down to start on the snowman’s head. Ian was already ahead of me.

  “Add that to this. I’ll go see if I can find some sticks. He needs limbs and more rocks for eyes. I think I have a carrot in the house.” Ian stepped back and surveyed our effort with a sigh, then looked up into the sun. His face shifted in the light as his smile returned. “Ella will love this. I should pack this up and ship it to California.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Cold shipment?” He tilted his head to the side in thought. “There’s a way to do practically anything.”

  “It’ll be heavy.” And cost an arm and a leg, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “I’ll talk to Griffin.” Then Ian shuffled off in the snow, and I knew he was plotting how to get a five-foot-tall snow man packed and shipped from Montana to California on a whim for a three-year-old girl. And he’d make it happen. I’d known him less than twenty-four hours, and I could already tell. Ian Hart was a man who got whatever he wanted.

  8

  True to his word, Ian called Griffin and arranged to have our finished snowman — complete with a carrot nose and fancy Burberry scarf and hat—stored and shipped to his assistant’s house.

  I changed clothes and slipped downstairs in my warmest, fuzziest socks as he was finishing up the arrangements on the phone in the kitchen.

  “Done. It should arrive at Denise’s on Christmas Day.” He put his hands on his hips like a superhero.

  I climbed into a counter height bar stool at the kitchen island. “That’s what you’re getting your assistant’s daughter for Christmas?”

  “Yes.” He pulled the leftover chili from the refrigerator and began heating it up in two stoneware bowls. “Denise won’t allow me to buy Ella gifts anymore. She says I go overboard.”

  “Like cold storing and shipping a snowman?”

  He pointed at me with his index finger. “Technically, that’s a homemade gift. Those are allowed.”

  If Ian ever had his own kids, they would either be generous at a Mother Teresa level or complete monsters. I could totally see them. They would be tiny, dark-haired children with lemonade stands who either donated all the earnings to homeless children or saved them up for designer doll clothes.

  “You’re a really nice boss.”

  Ian shrugged and rifled through a kitchen drawer. “Denise is like family. Most of my employees are.”

  “My boss treats us like indentured servants that he pays every two weeks out of benevolence as opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment.”

  “That sounds awful,” he said and dropped a spoon and napkin in front of me.

  I leaned onto my elbows, gripping my hands together like a prayer. “It is. I emailed him to let him know I’m delayed. He’s pissed. I just hope he doesn’t whack me before I get my bonus. That’s the only reason I’m staying at this point.”

  Ian grabbed the warmed bowls of chili and put one in front of me before sitting next to me on the corner of the island. “That’s the worst kind of work environment. A good leader should know that. You want people to feel invested. Many of my employees have been with me since the beginning. They have a stake in the company. Denise was employee number three.”

  His devotion to his assistant brought up the question I still hadn’t asked him, which was why he’d missed Michelle and Steve’s wedding. He obviously felt close enough to Steve to let them have the wedding here. At first, I’d assumed this place was just a vacation house, but Ian spent a lot of time here. This place was special to him.

  “Your friends and family are important to you, aren’t they?” I inhaled sharply, summoning courage.

  “Family and true friends are all there is. It’s why I founded SoulM8.”

  “Why’d you miss the wedding?” I asked and then exhaled.

  His mouth pinched, and his eyes closed for a second. “I had an unavoidable personal situation. I talked it over with Steve.”

  All his family at the wedding told the rest of the guests that he’d been working, and that’s what Michelle had told me. Whatever was going on didn’t sound like work. I wondered if Steve had even told Michelle the truth. Whatever it was, it sounded like a shitstorm of drama, and I’d had enough storms for the time being.

  “Well, I hope you got it settled. Whatever it was.”

  “Not quite. Hopefully, soon.”

  I felt like shit for bringing the mood down. I’m pretty sure sirens weren’t supposed to be killjoys.

  “Listen.” I rubbed my hands together and forced a brighter expression on my face. “I promised to make hot chocolate. I’ll make some after we eat.”

  Ian turned and pointed around his kitchen. “Everything you need is in the pantry and the refrigerator.”

  After finishing our lunch of leftovers, Ian ducked out to make his calls while I made hot chocolate from scratch with decadent gourmet cocoa. Then, he joined me on the couch watching a marathon of cheesy holiday romances on cable.

  As the first one started, he propped his arm up on the back of the sofa, and I rested my head on his bicep. For five minutes, I debated whether to lean into him or stay put. He smelled like fresh air and man, and what I really wanted to do was bury my face in his neck and just inhale. I could hardly focus on the movie, but Ian had no trouble.

  “What do you think? Is this the one where the guy is secretly a prince from a made up European country where everyone speaks with a British accent or is this the one where the high-powered heroine goes to a small town and discovers she wants to chuck her MBA and churn butter for her cowboy sweetheart the rest of her life?”

  I turned my head toward his and responded with a smile. “For all your snide remarks, you sound pretty familiar with these movies.”

  Ian patted my leg, which melted and froze simultaneously at his touch. “At Christmas, my mother has these movies on nonstop. They’re ridiculous.”

  “They’re romantic. You’re supposed to be into romance.”

  I poked him in the ribs twice, and he caught my hand, entangling his fingers with mine to stop the assault.

  “I am. I’ll go call Sheila right now.”

  “Sheila?”

  “Sheila’s Tow and Plow. Didn’t we already discuss this?” He laughed.

  “Yes. You said you didn’t share.”

  “I did. That’s right.” Ian snapped his fingers and grimaced in mock disappointment.

  “Plus, threesomes aren’t—”

  Ian smothered my flirty reply with a kiss. His tongue slipped against mine, raising my pulse with each soft thrust. His fingers trailed up the back of my neck into my hair. His mouth explored mine
slowly like he didn’t want to miss any opportunity to make me moan.

  Pulling away for a moment, I closed my eyes in search of a mental respite from the emotions surging through me. Ian caressed my cheek. “Let’s go to my room.”

  “We’re watching a movie.”

  “No. We’re biding time, trying not to jump each other on the couch again.”

  A breathless giggle bubbled from my lips. “I’m really into this movie.”

  “What does the heroine do for a living?”

  I stared at the TV. The heroine and hero were somewhere baking cookies. A cabin? Some kind of inn or the North Pole? I had no clue. “Churn butter?”

  “Exactly.” Ian jumped up and backed away toward the stairs, waving me forward. “Come on. On your feet, Savannah.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” I cocked my head to the side. He bent over, pulling my chin up to look him in his smoldering eyes.

  “You want to.”

  My throat went instantly, achingly dry.

  “Tell me your nipples don’t miss me, and I’ll sit right down and keep watching Snowbound Butter Churners in the North Pole or whatever the fuck this movie is.”

  He trailed his fingers under my chin, down my throat, and rested them on the dent above my sternum. “Or get up. Come with me. And I keep going.”

  His hand slid lower to the juncture of my V-neck sweater.

  I stood. He took my hand, and I followed.

  My stubborn irritation at his being so right evaporated in the heat of anticipation that shot through my body a few minutes later. Stretched naked on my back in Ian Hart’s bed, I could feel nothing but the scrape and drag of his palms across my eager flesh.

  Propped up on one elbow, he swept his free hand slowly along the curve of my hip to my waist, up my rib cage, and then settled on my left breast. My nipple strained toward his stroking thumb.

  Ian added his finger and pinched, rolling the nub until my other nipple tightened with envy. My belly quivered, waiting.

  “I could do this all day,” he said, amused—almost nonchalant. Still, his admiration emboldened me.

  “You’ll snap before I do.” I shifted my weight under his, rubbing my thighs against the hardness of his cock between our entwined legs. He groaned and lifted his hips.