BARELY MISTAKEN

by Jennifer Labrecque

  She dropped her legs open. Exposed. Vulnerable. Powerful. "They're spread. For you."

  "You're so beautiful. I can see you naked on those silk sheets with your legs open. You're wet, aren't you?"

  The curls brushing against the back of her fingers were drenched. "Yes."

  "I'm going to touch you now. Do you want me to touch you?"

  Want surged through her, clenched deep inside her.

  "Yes." She cupped her wet mound. In a state of near delirium, Olivia could almost believe it was Luke.

  "Go ahead. Touch yourself. That's it. Are your lips swollen and slick?"

  Sensation arched through her body, her nerve endings so sensitive her pleasure bordered on pain. "Yes." A whimper bloomed in the back of her throat.

  "Baby, I can't hold on much longer. I want to hear you say my name when you come."

  Luke's voice faded, becoming one with the stimulation that overwhelmed her. She chanted his name in an orgasmic litany as she spasmed to a point beyond mere pleasure.

  Luke's groan on the other end penetrated as she regained coherence. "Oh, Liv, that was incredible. You're incredible."

  Her essence perfumed the room. She tugged the sheet up over her spent body.

  Cold reality began to edge out blinding passion. "Thank you." Was that the appropriate thing to say to the man you'd just shared mind-blowing phone sex with? She couldn't quite believe she'd just done what she'd just done except she had that sated after-sex lethargy and Luke's seductive voice in her ear.

  "I'm glad you called, Liv."

  "Sure. Maybe we can do it again soon." Dear God, her mouth and her brain had disconnected—possibly short-circuited by sex.

  "Anytime. Don't lose my number."

  She'd better get off the phone before she said something else consummately, supremely stupid. "Good night, Luke."

  "'Night, Liv. Sweet dreams."

  Olivia hung up the phone and buried her face in her pillow. Her emotions might be a jumbled mess, but her head clearly recognized the dangers inherent in any kind of relationship with Luke. Moderation—which had marked her life, her decisions, her emotions—flew out the window when she was with him. He brought out the wildness she'd fought so hard to control and subdue all her life.

  She had to stop this madness with Luke.

  * * *

  If he hadn't been abundantly clear that he and Olivia had shared an extraordinary experience via the phone line last night, Luke might've thought he'd fantasized it. All morning she'd politely, distantly avoided him like the plague. He'd tried to talk to her when she'd finished up the ten o'clock toddler story time. Instead she'd hustled off to handle a checkout, claiming her assistant needed a break. Sooner or later, she'd have to talk to him.

  Olivia, chatting with her assistant, had her back to Luke. If she didn't see him coming, she couldn't run. Luke approached quietly.

  "Cristo's? Wow. That's a pretty swanky place." Her assistant was impressed.

  Olivia couldn't possibly think she was going to keep that date now. Not after last night.

  "I need to leave early. Can you close for me tonight?" Even now her voice turned him on—until what she'd said sunk in. Incredulity gave way to searing anger.

  "Excuse me, Ms. Cooper. Could I see you in your office? We seem to have a problem." Without giving her a chance to do more than blink, he took her by the arm and hustled her to her office, leaving her assistant somewhat dumbfounded.

  Olivia eyed him as if he'd lost his mind—and indeed he felt very close to it. She spoke over her shoulder, "I'll just be a minute, Cindy."

  "Hold her calls," Luke barked and slammed her office door behind him. A framed print skewed drunkenly on the wall. The leaves of a tall, potted plant swayed.

  Chest heaving, gray eyes shooting fire behind her glasses, she stood toe-to-toe with him. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" She bit off each word and flung it at him.

  "No, honey, what in the hell do you think you're doing? Over my dead body are you going out with Adam." He knew he was behaving like a heavy-handed jerk.

  "Then prepare to die, Mr. Macho, because I'm going." She shoved her glasses up onto her nose. "Not that it's any of your business."

  "None of my business?" She could make a production about her sister being off-limits, but he was supposed to stand around like some eunuch while she went out with Adam? They were about to get on the same damn wavelength. "I believe I gained a vested interest the first time I came inside you."

  Defiance and denial flickered across her face. "That doesn't count: It was a case of mistaken identity."

  Her answer further infuriated him. He took a step forward, backing her against the edge of the wooden desk. She needed contact with reality and he knew just the man to give it to her. "But you did know who I was last night, didn't you sweetheart, when we talked on the phone? There wasn't any confusion that it was me when you were writhing and moaning on the sheets I gave you, was there?"

  The memory of last night slipped into the anger pulsing between them. Naked skin. Mutual cries of satisfaction.

  Her chest rose and fell. She moistened her lips with her tongue. Even in the midst of anger, his gut tightened in response. "That was a mistake. I should've never called. Next time I'll send a note."

  That's why she'd frozen him with the cold shoulder all morning? One of the most potent sexual experiences he'd ever had and she referred to it as a mistake. He was damn tired of her reducing everything about them to mistake status.

  Luke struck back. "If your notes are as interesting as your phone calls, I'll look forward to it. You're teaching me so many new things—doors, sheets, phone calls." She was like a potent drug and the more he had of her, the more he craved her.

  Frustrated with her and equally frustrated by his response to her, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the closed door. "But you are not going out with Adam."

  She planted her hands on her hips, her breasts jutting beneath her blouse. "I don't take orders or ultimatums."

  Luke reeled himself back from the tempting thrust of her chest to the matter at hand. "So, it's tacky for me to go out with your sister, but I'm supposed to sit back like Mr. Wimpy while Adam wines and dines you?"

  "Did it ever occur to you, you testosterone-laden moron, that I'm trying to break it off with him?" She shoved her glasses up and narrowed her eyes. "And I didn't know you were so eager to go out with my sister."

  "Dammit, I'm not. I just don't understand how it's different."

  "Let me spell it out for you. S-E-X. Dating Tammy means sleeping with Tammy. Going to dinner with Adam means going to dinner."

  "Yeah? Well, much like your sister having a different agenda, I don't think Adam's just looking for dinner." He'd been spinning so out of control, he hadn't really listened to her earlier comment. "You want to break things off with Adam?"

  "That's what I said. I told you that Friday night, after … after I discovered I'd made a mistake."

  "Oh." Adam wouldn't take no for an answer. It would be so easy to tell her now. He wants your father's land. He's using you. The words sat on the tip of his tongue but wouldn't come. He wanted her to make a choice independent of the land deal. And the knowledge was sure to hurt her. And the last thing he wanted to do was hurt the woman he loved.

  The realization didn't floor him. Hell, he wasn't even surprised. In a way, he thought maybe he'd known thirteen years ago that there was something between them that very few people ever experienced.

  She braced against the edge of her desk. "Oh? You act like a raving lunatic and all you can say is oh?"

  He shoved away from the door. "You're right." He swallowed hard and forced out the words that didn't come easy. "I'm sorry, Liv. I kind of lost my mind at the thought of him touching you." He skimmed the soft satin of her cheek with his hand.

  She swallowed convulsively. "Apology accepted."

  Luke gentled the backs of his fingers against the delicate line of her collarbone. Her nipples stab
bed against her silk blouse, in response. "I want you to tell Adam about us, Olivia."

  "You promised you wouldn't—" Panic blanched her face.

  He dropped his hands to his sides. "I promised I wouldn't say anything and I won't. You tell him, honey."

  She wrapped her arms around her middle and looked away from him. "Isn't it enough that I won't see him again?"

  "No, it's not enough. Tell him about us."

  She faced him once again, her eyes filled with regret. "There is no us, Luke."

  Luke had bared his soul to this woman last night. And now she'd taken the piece of him she'd always had and ground it beneath her heel. "Oh, I see. I'm just the dirty little secret tucked beneath your bed that you pull out when you need a little late-night phone sex."

  "Luke, it's not that way—"

  "No? Then why don't you explain how it is. Make me understand." Dammit, he wanted to understand. Desperately.

  "I don't know how I feel. Everything's so confused in my head. You push me too far."

  If she'd stop denying the part of her she'd suppressed so long, she might stop denying them. Woo her. Court her. "Go to dinner with me tomorrow night."

  "A date?"

  She looked as surprised as if he'd asked her to dance naked on top of the desk. That actually wasn't a bad idea. He shook his head to clear it. He was supposed to concentrate on the wooing, not the… "A date. You know, that thing where I pick you up. We go to a restaurant. Talk about the weather, books, movies, my job, your job. I bring you back home. A date."

  "People would talk."

  Ah, Olivia's golden egg of respectability.

  "Yes. They probably would." Luke wasn't a man of half measures. If he wanted something, he went for it. If he believed in something, he stood behind it. It was time to lay it on the line. "I love you, Liv."

  Panic flared in her gray eyes. "Don't confuse lust with love."

  Luke smiled, more amused than offended. "I have shocking news for you, my sweet. I wasn't a virgin the other night." A blush crept along the ridges of her cheekbones and a flash of something satisfyingly akin to jealousy flashed in her eyes and tightened her lips. "I know all about physical lust. And it's true that you make me hard," he molded his hand against her skull, his thumb brushing against her temple, "just like I make you wet. That's physical lust and it's a powerful force between us." It shimmered between them now, drawing them closer, tightening his body to a throb. "But it's my soul that hungers for you."

  Luke reached for the doorknob behind him. She had to make her own decision. "Give us a chance, Liv. Some people search a lifetime to find what we have."

  Tears pooled in her lovely gray eyes, confusion and indecision marked her delicate features, but she offered him nothing in return.

  * * *

  12

  « ^ »

  Olivia stared at the lady-in-waiting costume hanging on her closet door. Could she follow her original plan? Could she put on the dress, don the mask and go to dinner with Adam, hiding behind some trumped-up excuse for breaking up with him? She could, but she wouldn't have much respect for that woman.

  She flopped back on her bed. This was all Luke's fault. How fitting he'd disguised himself as a pirate. He'd stormed her defenses, discovered a hidden part of her, and besieged her senses. He'd shaken her preconceived notions at their very foundations. He'd convinced her they could build on something more than a physical attraction.

  She'd spent years denying—had gone to great lengths to bury—the wild passion Luke brought out in her. She'd always thought her passion meant she was like her mother and her sister. She had hidden behind the literacy council and her job and her reputation. How many years had she used other people's standards to measure her own sense of self-worth? For as long as she could remember. How much longer would she appoint others as the keepers of her self-esteem?

  Luke loved her.

  "Luke loves me," she spoke the words aloud to her empty room. They felt awkward against her tongue. She reached beneath the comforter and rubbed the sueded silk sheets, as if they represented a tangible measure of his feelings.

  The notion nearly frightened her out of her mind. What if she dared to believe him? What if she opened her heart and her mind to his love? She'd tasted the depth of passion between them. Loving Luke, being loved by Luke, would be all-consuming. Could she open her heart to that kind of joy? That kind of hurt? She hadn't allowed herself that level of vulnerability since her mother had walked out the door.

  Her heart mocked her head. You foolish woman, as if you really have a choice. Her head rejected her heart's chiding. Loving Luke Rutledge would prove downright inconvenient. She wanted a love that felt safe and warm and dependable, rather like slipping into a comfortable bathrobe at the end of the day. And while she did feel safe and warm with him, for the most part it was more along the lines of staring over the edge of a dizzying cliff.

  Olivia hauled herself off the bed and crossed to her costume. She ran her finger over the material. Regardless of how much starch she'd sprayed on the pleats, they wouldn't conform to their initial stiffness. Luke had bamboozled, befuddled and bedeviled her to the point that whether she liked it or not—and she didn't—he'd insinuated himself in her heart.

  Hortense padded into the bedroom. Olivia scooped her up and scratched beneath her chin. "You know that man that's been over the last few days? You know the one—dark, dangerous, sexy. What would you think if I was beginning to care for him?"

  Hortense slitted her eyes.

  "Hmm. Trouble. That's what I say too."

  She stretched her neck, inviting Olivia to continue to pamper her. Olivia settled her on her bed, earning a baleful glare. "Sorry, princess, I've got to take care of that trouble."

  She couldn't—no, wouldn't—put on that dress. Her course of action was crystal clear. She checked the clock. Half an hour until Adam arrived.

  She snatched up the phone with one hand and fished out the business card Luke had given her the morning he started the project with the other. She punched in his cell number. An odd calm descended upon her. He answered on the second ring. "Yeah?"

  "Luke, it's Olivia."

  "Yes?" His tone was guarded. Had he changed his mind? Did he regret their earlier conversation? There was only one way to know.

  "I accept."

  "I need a little more information to go on." Was that wary optimism on his end?

  She sucked in a deep breath of courage. "That date? Our date. You know, where you pick me up. We go out for dinner. We talk about books, movies, your job, my job. You bring me back home. Perhaps you could walk me to the door. I have a new one you know." Joy cautiously bloomed inside her.

  "People will talk." She heard the grin in his voice.

  "I suppose they will." The thought unnerved her. "I'm going to tell Adam."

  "What are you going to tell him?"

  "About us." She plunged over the side of the emotional cliff she'd avoided since she'd met him.

  "Say it again."

  A tingle raced down her spine. There was something very sexy when he issued those directives over the phone.

  "Us. You and me."

  "Our date."

  "Yes. Can you be at my house in twenty minutes?"

  "Give me fifteen. I love you, Liv."

  "I … like you a lot." It was the most she was capable of. Faint laughter echoed on the other end as she hung up. Or perhaps it was her mocking heart.

  * * *

  "Wrap it up, Sam," Luke yelled to his job foreman. "I'm out of here for the day."

  She liked him a lot. Luke grinned as he wheeled out of the library parking lot. That was a damn sight better than I don't hate you. Lady Olivia was coming around. He'd almost given up on her, unsure whether she could get past the rigid insecurities that held her prisoner to public opinion.

  Luke prepared for battle as he drove. Adam, faced with losing Olivia and her father's land prospects, wouldn't be a happy camper. Luke, however, was ready. He'd made a few inquir
ies this afternoon, called in a few favors. The Rutledge name did carry a certain measure of power.

  He sat impatiently through a second red light. Brother Adam and the Colonel had crossed the line between shady dealings and breaking the law. Luke had more than enough ammunition to win the battle and the war.

  Luke pulled into her driveway and parked beside Adam. Adam climbed out of the Beemer, decked out in full pirate regalia. Good grief, if Liv had mistaken him for Adam, she could've only been barely mistaken.

  Luke slammed his truck door behind him. "Evening, Captain Hook."

  "Go home, Luke. You don't have any business here. Olivia and I have a date."

  "I asked him to come, Adam." Olivia stepped out of the front door. "Come in, please."

  Tension marked her smile and stiffened her shoulders. He met and held her eyes with his own. You can do this, baby, he sent her a silent message.

  Adam marched up the sidewalk, scowling. "Where's your costume? Why aren't you dressed?" He glanced back over his shoulder at Luke. "What is going on?"

  Luke followed at a more measured pace. Olivia was calling the shots on this one.

  "We need to talk." She closed the door behind them. "Why don't we all sit down?"

  "I prefer to stand if you don't mind." Adam assumed the pose of a swashbuckler, one arm on the mantel, a foot propped on the hearth. Brother Adam had watched one too many late-night flicks.

  Luke settled on the couch. Olivia perched on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs flanking the fireplace. Fat Cat eyed Adam and hissed. Luke knew he liked Fat Cat for a reason. Tension, thick enough to slice, hung in the air.

  Adam frowned at Fat Cat and Olivia. "Now, what is the meaning of all this?"

  Olivia wove her elegant fingers together and settled her clasped hands in her lap. "Adam, I can't see you anymore."

  Adam momentarily forsook his Errol Flynn pose and gaped in surprise. Clearly, he hadn't expected that. "But … Olivia … darling … we're an item."

  "There's something you should know." Her gaze flickered to Luke and then back to Adam.