by Leslie Kelly
She shook her head hard, willing the sweeter memories of Rand away, forcing herself to focus on the bad ones.
“I never meet women as interesting as you, believe me,” he said. And she did believe it, because the rat had the ability to make any woman believe whatever words came out of that beautiful face.
Oh, God, why did he have to be so impossibly handsome? Why had his dark brown hair retained its luster, why hadn’t it started to go gray or, best of all, fallen out by the fistful? Why were his cheeks so sharply defined, and why was his jaw so rugged and his mouth so eminently sexy and kissable? Why was that body even more strong-looking, broad-shouldered and muscular than it had been when he’d been a college ballplayer just starting out? Why did those green eyes still take in so much more than she wanted to reveal?
Why are you here, Rand?
“You’re all grown up,” he said.
“Seven years will do that to a person,” she replied, her tone sugar-sweet, reminding him that it had been seven years since they’d spoken, seven years during which he’d never once tried to reach her, not even to see if she was okay after what had happened between them. “Despite appearances, I’m not the dumb girl I was.”
“You were never dumb.”
To be fair, he’d never treated her as if she was dumb, just as a sweet little innocent. Until that last night.
She’d met Rand when she was visiting her brother, Seth, who lived in L.A. Seth was a sports agent, just building a name for himself back then. Now, he counted some of the most famous, successful athletes in the country as his clients. Rand McConnell had been one of them.
He wasn’t anymore, though. Because of her.
“You were always pretty spectacular.”
Her spine went ramrod straight and she forced away the hint of pleasure his compliment created. The guy was a womanizing ballplayer who probably fed every woman that same line. “And you were always a jerk.”
He flinched, visibly affected at last.
She instantly regretted the comment. Because he hadn’t been a jerk. In fact, Rand had been anything but a jerk when they’d first met. He’d been cute and funny and charming, even if he hadn’t been later.
“Wow, that’s new. You’ve grown a sharp tongue to go along with that perfect face,” he said, sounding rueful.
“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “This was an awkward reunion at best. If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going.”
She began to walk toward the door but he stepped in front of her. She had to drop her head back to stare up at him—he’d had a good six inches in height on her when he’d been twenty-one and he seemed even taller now.
She suddenly realized why. “Wait, where are my shoes?” she asked, still not believing he’d pulled her out from under the bed—and not believing she’d been about to walk out of here barefoot and with her skirt still twisted out of place. The man had fried her brains and made her forget everything else. As always. She untangled her skirt and yanked it into position.
“I hid them.”
“You didn’t have a chance to hide them.”
“Okay, so I threw them. They’re in the corner.”
She walked over to get them and shoved her feet in the pumps. Turning to leave, though, she found he’d stepped right in front of the doorway, blocking her exit.
“I’m curious, if you weren’t, uh, lying in wait, what were you doing under my bed?”
“I was trying to unhook the...”
The words died on her lips. She did not want to talk to Rand about the fur-lined handcuffs attached to his bed, apparently left there by the hotel owner. She’d heard rumors about the wealthy owner’s revolving-door love life. Evidently it wasn’t just his money that kept the women coming to the penthouse night after night when he was in residence.
Although the room itself was probably part of the attraction. The three-bedroom suite was the final word in opulence. It included every creature comfort a person could desire, from a private pool on the rooftop patio, to a ten-headed shower in the master bath, to a bar fridge stocked with Perrier-Jouët champagne and Beluga caviar.
And, as she’d discovered when doing one last sweep after the maids had departed, a bit of a kink factor. She’d found a pair of cuffs in a drawer in the bathroom, which had prompted her to double-check the bed. Good thing. There’d been another set attached to one of the decorative wooden slats that ran vertically down the center of the thick, massive headboard.
“Let me guess—you were trying to unhook the handcuffs?” he said, a teasing note to his voice.
Heat rose in her face. “How did you...”
“I heard you mumbling to yourself.”
Yet he had still assumed she was a stranger lying in wait to, uh, seduce him. Did women regularly handcuff him to the bed to have their kinky way with him? She did a mental eye-roll at the very idea, then quickly pulled her thoughts off all things handcuffy and sexual. And Randy. Oh, yes, randy was definitely on the no-no list right now.
“Yes, well, I was just doing a sweep to make sure everything was acceptable.”
“And you found handcuffs.”
“Would you shut up about the freaking handcuffs?”
“Are they still there?”
“Do I look like a locksmith to you?”
“Are they the fake plastic ones? Because, if so, they should have a release button that enables them to just be snapped open.”
Her jaw fell. “And you would know this...how?”
“Who doesn’t know that?”
“I didn’t know that.”
He tsked. “Never played cops and robbers as a kid, huh?”
Yeah, right. She’d just bet that was how he’d discovered release buttons.
He sure discovered your release button.
She ordered the sassy mental voice in her head to shut the hell up, even as her brain flooded with images of how he’d found the most vulnerable spots on her body and plucked them like a virtuoso fingering the keys of his instrument. She’d been so sheltered, with no adult female influence throughout her teenage years, that she hadn’t even been sure where her clit was until Rand showed her. Oh, God, had he shown her that one night when she’d been a wild child, rather than a good girl.
Being wild had been spectacular. But it had also caused a whole lot of misery. So she’d gone back to being a good girl, never tempted to push the limits with any other guy. And that seemed to be just fine with the men she’d dated, all of whom were okay with nice, quiet, reserved Emily who didn’t get on the floor and wag her fanny at them, or call them jerks or tell them to shut up.
God, why was Rand always able to get her riled up like this? More important, why did part of her love being riled up?
“I certainly never played games with real handcuffs,” she finally replied.
“So you think they’re real, not plastic?”
“Must we talk about the handcuffs?”
“Let’s just say you’ve aroused my...curiosity.”
“Well, you’re welcome to satisfy your...curiosity once I’m out of here. Despite the faux fur lining, they are not toy handcuffs and they’re still dangling from your headboard.”
“Fur-lined but still real? I doubt it. Show me where they are and I’ll try to open them.”
She rolled her eyes, wondering if he believed her a total sucker. Then again, her boss had made it pretty clear that she had to make Rand happy. If word got back to Dawn that a pair of handcuffs had been left for a valued customer to find and a staff member had refused to help remove them, the general manager would make good on her threat to fire Emily.
“Fine,” she snapped, heading toward the bed. He followed her, and she forced herself not to dwell on his being behind her. She didn’t want to remember the wild, angry, erotic thoughts she’d been having
as she crawled out from under the bed, torn between humiliation, fury and the same crazy desire she’d felt for Rand from the day they’d met.
Dropping to her knees on the bed, close to the headboard, she bent over and reached her hand between the frame and the mattress. The metal cuffs dangled near the bottom of one slat, and she hooked her fingers into the free cuff and began to tug the set up. “I tried to open them from up here but it’s a pretty bad angle, which is why I was under the bed when you arrived.”
“I see.”
She looked over her shoulder and found him eyeing her backside. Yeah, he saw all right.
“Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful a little while ago?”
“No such thing as enough of an eyeful at something that great.”
Again torn between the anger and embarrassment and pleasure reactions, she turned and plopped her butt on the mattress. He sat beside her, watching as she drew the cuffs up the slat. Metal jangled as she lifted them as high as they would go. He reached over her lap and took the wrist cuff from her, which left both their hands hovering over her lap.
Heaven help me.
He examined the cuffs, testing the weight and the locking mechanism. “Pretty real, I’d say. There’s no matching one on the other side?”
Confused, she scrunched her brow.
“Well, one set wouldn’t do you much good. Unless you could somehow attach the chain part to the bed, leaving both wristcuffs free to be used.”
Now she got the picture. Oh, boy, did she ever get the picture. Being kept helpless on the bed, both hands restrained, able to do nothing but accept the pleasure a lover—Rand—wanted to give her...what woman wouldn’t immediately let her imagination drift?
But she couldn’t afford to drift and she certainly couldn’t afford to imagine. She wanted to get off the bed, remembering all too well that the last time she and Rand had been together, it had also been in a bed. A much smaller one, in a faraway state, but she’d certainly never forgotten the incident.
Unfortunately, his cuff-laden hand still blocked her path. If she lunged up, she’d be pushing her hips up against him in a way that would say anything except get off me.
“Wait a second,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a key chain that held a small utility knife. “Hold the cuff while I try to open the lock. If I can figure out how this side opens, I can climb under to get the attached side.”
That made sense, she supposed. No use breaking a wrist trying to open the attached side by shoving his big, powerful arm down behind the mattress. And no use crawling under the bed until he knew if it could be done. “Okay,” she said, watching as he bent to the task.
“You’re absolutely sure there’s only one set attached to the bed?”
“There’s only one.” The other one was in the bathroom drawer. “Even one is too many. Handcuffs definitely aren’t a hotel perk.”
“No, I suppose not. Glad you spotted them,” he said, an amused twinkle in those green eyes.
“I was double-checking the room to make sure it was ready for a guest; this one is usually not rented.” Realizing she hadn’t totally explained, she added, “I work here.”
“I know.”
Obviously he’d figured it out from their conversation and her attire. Yet, something in his expression made it seem like more than that, as if he’d been aware of that even earlier.
Ridiculous. He couldn’t have.
“Small world,” he said.
She grunted. “Too small.”
This had to be the most unlucky coincidence anyone had ever experienced. Okay, maybe getting engaged to a guy and then finding out you were twins separated at birth would be worse. But this was pretty damn bad.
“It’s been a long time, Em.”
“Not long enough.”
“Ouch.”
She was being bitchy, but she couldn’t help herself. Of course, considering that she hadn’t heard word one from him in years, even after the way they’d spent their last moments together, he deserved a little bitchiness.
In fairness, she’d been young and stupid and had instigated something she wasn’t ready for. She’d blamed herself a lot over the years for the way things had turned out. But Rand’s hands weren’t lily white. His falling-out with Seth hadn’t been entirely her fault.
“How’s your brother?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
“Fine. Married.”
He looked surprised. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody I’d know?”
“His old high school sweetheart. They’d lost touch, but met up again at their ten-year reunion a couple of summers ago.”
His brow furrowed. “Hmm...Laura? Lauren? He talked about her once.”
Her turn to look—and feel—surprised. Not only that Seth would have told Rand about Lauren Desantos, but that Rand would remember her name so many years later.
“We were tight once, me and your brother, even before I became his client,” he said by way of explanation.
He didn’t continue, didn’t say the next logical sentence: Until you came between us.
She had, which was her biggest regret of all. And, possibly, one reason she was being so nasty to Rand. Her own sense of guilt and responsibility still weighed on her.
Rand and Seth had been friends in college, Seth being only three years ahead of the star athlete. And when their business partnership broke up, their friendship had, too. All because Seth’s horny, pushy little sister hadn’t been able to keep her hands to herself. And because Rand hadn’t seemed to mind all that much.
“So you haven’t spoken to him since—”
“No. I see him once in a while, at banquets and events, but we don’t speak.”
Her heart clenched in her chest and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Regret choked her, and she acknowledged again just how selfish she’d been.
“I’m really sorry about that, Rand,” she murmured, aware that the words were long overdue. She’d said them in the letters and messages she’d sent him after their last encounter, but they deserved to be spoken out loud. “I never meant to come between you two. I wouldn’t have...”
“It’s okay. Besides, it wasn’t all your fault. It takes two to tango.”
“Yeah. And you danced that night, too.”
He didn’t smile, that sexy grin didn’t flash, he simply stared at her, his eyes intense, as if he, too, recalled their last night with utter clarity.
“My turn to say I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I shouldn’t have let things go so far.”
She stiffened. “Don’t try to claim you weren’t interested.”
“Oh, I was interested,” he insisted. “Way too interested than I was supposed to be in my friend’s baby sister.”
“I wasn’t a baby!”
Well, she’d been kind of a baby.
They had met a month before Emily’s eighteenth birthday. She’d just graduated from high school and was primed to have a fun visit in SoCal with her big brother. She’d been thrilled to get away from her overprotective grandfather, who hadn’t let her even talk to a guy on the phone, much less actually go out with one. Having been a good girl for so long, she’d dreamed about getting a little wild even before she’d met Rand McConnell.
Once she’d met him and gotten to know him as an amazingly smart, funny, nice guy who was also über-hot, she’d been a goner.
“I was too old for you,” he said.
“Three years...”
“Is nothing now. But then? There’s a big difference between just-turned-eighteen and twenty-one, and I should have known better.”
Rand had graduated early from UCLA—he was gorgeous, talented and smart, talk about a triple threat—and had been expected to land in the big leagues. Ever
yone predicted he’d be a big star. Seth had signed him, worked with him, helping plan his career, which was supposed to be brilliant.
Well, his career had been brilliant, but Seth hadn’t taken him there. Because her brother had caught Rand and Emily in bed together and not only sent Emily back to their grandfather for the rest of the summer, but had dumped Rand as a client.
She hadn’t heard from the star athlete since. Not one phone call, not one email, not even a pathetic nice-to-have-known-you-and-almost-relieved-you-of-your-virginity text. Nothing but silence from the guy who’d walked away from the girl and the agent, but had gotten a hefty, multimillion-dollar career instead.
That’s what she hadn’t been able to get over. She’d thought there was a connection between them that went beyond that one night in his bed, but he’d dropped her from his life as if she’d never existed. As if she meant nothing to him.
It’s your own fault.
Man, she hated that little voice in her head, the sensible, fair one that forced her to admit that Rand hadn’t exactly invited her into his bed that night.
He had definitely flirted with her, though, on the nights she’d gone out with Seth and his friends. He’d etched his way into her heart every time he flashed that sexy, dimpled smile. He’d even kissed her one night—serious kisses, not you’re-the-cute-little-sister-of-my-friend kisses.
It had been a few days before her birthday. Seth had been working and Rand had offered to take her to Disneyland, since she’d never been there. Maybe it had started out as a big-brother/kid-sister kind of thing in Rand’s mind, but as the hours had passed, the two of them had realized just how in sync they really were.