by Natasha Tate
“But why New York?” she asked. “I’d have thought you’d be quite content dominating Europe.”
“Don’t be modest,” he said. “You know my interest in America all began with you.”
She flushed and dropped her gaze to the knot of his maroon tie. “Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not,” he said, with the same whiskey heat of their past, firing her blood with a disconcerting blend of fear and awareness.
She clung to the fear, determined to dispel the memory of his voice caressing her in the dark.
“You didn’t even know I was in New York,” she reminded him as she raised her eyes. “I had nothing to do with your decision to buy the Renaissance.”
A small, triumphant smile crooked his mouth, straying nowhere near his eyes. “Then I guess fate has intervened, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
He cocked his head, his gaze flashing with heat before a sweep of dark lashes shuttered his response from view. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re still stubborn. Still secretive. Still confident that you can control everything.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being in charge of my own life.”
“You can’t control the world. Other lives will intercept yours whether you want them to or not.”
“Not if I don’t allow it,” she insisted, scuttling sideways. Away from him.
“I see you’re still good at pushing people away.” He tracked her retreat, robbing her of her equilibrium and the false sense of security her space provided.
She firmed her jaw. “Yes.”
“I wonder how long it’s going to take for you to figure out that I always push back.”
Facing the only man with whom she’d ever lowered her guard, the only man who’d been persistent enough to chip through her walls, she marshaled her defenses anew. She couldn’t allow him to drag her into a discussion of their past. Too much was at stake. “You kept me here to talk about my file,” she reminded him. “So, unless there’s something else you need to discuss, I really am expected elsewhere.”
His intent blue gaze told her he wasn’t to be diverted. “What did you tell Masters about your time in London?”
She scowled, trying desperately to ignore the little flip in her stomach his question elicited. “Why were you discussing me with Bill?”
“I wasn’t. He volunteered things without a single query from me.”
Sucking in a shallow breath, she squared her shoulders and prepared for the worst. “Bill talks too much.”
“He gave me the distinct impression that you’d been wounded in London. He intimated that you were skittish, single, and still smarting from an emotional hit you’d suffered overseas.”
She was going to throttle Bill the next time she saw him. “He tried to set me up with his grandson a couple of times,” she said, lifting her chin as she kept her expression unruffled and calm. “When I refused, he must have assumed the worst.”
Black lashes drifted over his probing blue gaze. “Assumptions are the damnedest things, aren’t they?”
She steeled her features and stared at him without blinking. She didn’t dare catalog the simmering intensity of his question, didn’t dare acknowledge the climbing heat in her veins. “Do you have a point?”
A smile, lazy and far too seductive, tipped to claim one side of his mouth. “I always have a point.”
“Then please make it so I can leave.”
“Right. I forgot.” He tossed her an enigmatic look. “Things get a little uncomfortable, a little personal, and rather than face it you run.”
“I don’t run,” she protested, while nervousness beat against her throat. “I leave. There’s a difference.”
“Then explain it to me.” He moved to bracket her shoulders between his powerful braced arms. “Explain how dropping everything—your job, your life and your lover—and disappearing across the Atlantic without a word to anyone isn’t running.”
“I didn’t leave without a word,” she said, while panic coiled low in her gut. He was too close. Too big and imposing and distracting. “I told you I wanted out. And you said you understood.”
“You also agreed to wait until I returned from Paris.”
She stared at him in desperate, defiant silence, refusing him the explanation she couldn’t risk giving.
He dipped his mouth even closer and murmured, “Explain why, if you weren’t running, you couldn’t wait two weeks for me to come back.”
Awareness winnowed through her, bringing a flush of heat to her face, her neck, her breasts. “Maybe I just decided there were more important things to do than while away the hours in bed with a man,” she said.
He obviously didn’t believe her, and the knowing glint of fire in his blue eyes made a reciprocal flare of heat coil deep in her belly. “Used to be you couldn’t spend enough time in my bed,” he reminded her.
“Yes, well, I was young and foolish,” she insisted. “I’ve grown up since then.”
“Tell me.” His tone, laced with sarcasm and a hint of bite, told her she’d insulted him. “What precipitated this amazing foray into maturity?”
Becoming a mother to your daughter.
His gaze trapped hers and the silence stretched out between them, a palpable weight in the air. “Did I wound you, Colette?” he taunted.
Her chest felt tight and a knot of pain she’d thought long buried thickened her throat. “Of course not. I’m the one who left, remember?”
“Yes, I do remember,” he said, and his focus tracked the line of her neck before returning to her face. “It’s you who wants to forget.”
She shifted from beneath his accusatory gaze, pressing back against the sturdy support of the door. “Do you blame me?”
“You realize, don’t you, that memories of our passion will intrude whether we wish it or not?” His eyes, heated and heavy lidded, dipped to her mouth. “All those nights and days and hours spent worshiping each other’s bodies won’t just disappear because we want them to.”
She licked her lips while her pulse gathered speed in her chest, her belly, her hands. “It doesn’t mean I have to acknowledge them.”
“You think?” he asked as his fingers slowly rose to graze her brow. “Because when I saw your file and realized we’d be working together again, I was worried. Worried about how you’d respond once you realized I was here. And the necessity of keeping things on a professional footing became undeniably clear.”
She swallowed, the glancing touch of his fingertips against her bare skin sending a shiver along her spine. “There’s no need to worry. I can keep things professional.”
“But I didn’t know that, did I? That’s why we needed to speak privately.” He stared at her from beneath hooded eyes. “Without the other employees overhearing. I needed to set the parameters of how we’d act together so there’d be no confusion.”
She maintained a tenuous hold on her composure. “I’m not confused.”
“Good.” His thumb grazed the sensitive transition from brow to cheek. “Because I can’t afford for our past to interfere with the plans I have for the Renaissance and its future.”
Flames licked low in her belly and her mouth felt perilously dry. “I know,” she said, praying she spoke the truth. “It won’t.”
“Even when we’re in your kitchen together?” he asked. His blue gaze challenged her to deny the memories of all the conversations they’d shared while she baked for him, all the times they’d explored each other’s bodies with wild, passionate abandon. “Or when I’m sampling your creations before they’re added to the menu?
“You already know my recipes,” she rushed to reassure him, lifting her face from his touch. “And the dessert menus are set.”
A single black brow questioned her assertion. “You’ve created nothing new in the five years we’ve been apart?”
Besides a beautiful child you know nothing about? “I’ve been too busy with the management side of my job.”
“That’s disappointing.” Heat gathered behind the blue of his eyes. “I was looking forward to learning another recipe or two.”
As if she’d dare to teach him again. She’d taught him every unique blend of spice, liqueur, and specialty flour she knew. She’d taught him to measure with his hands, to see with his mouth and tongue and to taste with his nose and eyes and skin. Their culinary lessons had invariably involved far, far more than mere food. Her flesh heated at the memory and she ducked her head to hide her blush.
He tilted her face back up again with one fingertip, the seductive curve of his mouth saying far more than any words he might have uttered.
“I wouldn’t teach you regardless,” she said, clearing her throat and forcing the memories aside. “It wouldn’t be a good idea for either of us.”
“Yes. I suppose it’s better to keep things impersonal,” he said he tracked the damning evidence of her blush, that single point of contact between them radiating out to every cell.
“Definitely,” she said, hating how her body craved his touch, how it rebelled at the thought of never being with him again. She wanted to maintain her distance, to keep Emma safe. So why this inconvenient yearning to connect with him as she had once before? To dissect every minute of the past five years they’d spent apart? To learn all the secrets of his past that she’d never had the courage to uncover?
Inhaling against the urge to press for details she had no business knowing, she lifted her chin and said, “You’re right about the Renaissance. It’s struggling. We all need to be focused if we’re going to turn it around. We can’t afford any distractions or rumors.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” His voice, smooth as silk, jarred her with its undertones of controlled, tempered steel.
Though he appeared to be relaxed, something was dangerously off. She could feel it humming in the air between them, making her skin prick with awareness.
She swallowed noisily and tried to muster a smile. It felt horribly forced and strained. “Well, then, I’m glad we got that cleared up.”
“As am I.”
She dropped her gaze to her watch, lifting her wrist between them. “I really need to go.”
“This appointment of yours … is it personal?” The question, delivered in a light, conversational tone, felt like a test. A test she had no chance of passing.
“Does it matter?” she asked in a thin voice.
“Unfortunately …” he began. His unrelenting focus trapped hers, and then he slowly lifted his palm to her cheek and stared down at her before saying, “I find it does.”
“But it can’t,” she answered on a thready exhale. “We agreed to keep things professional.”
“You’re right,” he said with a sardonic smile. “But our bodies don’t seem to be listening, do they?”
“Mine is,” she lied, while the seductive warmth of his hand sent a current of longing down her limbs. She wanted to bolt, to lurch away from his commanding touch, but her brain’s ability to control her muscles seemed to have shut down.
His eyes dipped to her traitorous body, taking in the flush of her skin, the agitated rise and fall of her breasts, and then returned. “Liar.”
She trembled with her denial. “I’m not lying,” she whispered. “I don’t want this.”
“Prove it.”
Unable to speak, she sucked in an unsteady thread of breath while his thumb tracked back and forth along her sensitive lower lip.
“What if this is just fate’s way of dealing with the past we never resolved?” he asked. “What if I was meant to find you again? To pick up where we left off?”
“I told you. I don’t believe in fate.” A sharp flare of desire shot through her belly as he abandoned her mouth to align both hands along the sides of her jaw. Immobile, her heart clamoring against her ribs, she remained frozen as she felt the imprint of his fingers along her flesh.
“I miss seeing your hair down,” he told her. “Do you remember how you used to wear it loose around your shoulders and down your back?”
Yes, she remembered. She remembered the way he’d buried his hands in its length, pulling her head back to expose her throat to his mouth. She remembered the way he’d drawn strands of it over his lips, tasting her scent while he stared deep into her eyes. She remembered, too, the way it had fallen like a rippled curtain of candlelit gold over the two of them while she rode them both to completion.
Before she realized his intention his hands moved, his wide palms skimming her ear and nape as he released her giant hairclamp in one smooth, efficient move.
Her hair tumbled down her back in a single coil and she immediately reached to repair the damage. But before she could lift the heavy mass from her nape his hands stalled hers.
“Don’t,” he murmured. His fingers tunneled through the mass of her hair, spreading the curls over her shoulders. “Do you know I still dream about your hair?”
The low rasp of his voice, soft as velvet, made her tremble. He must have detected the subtle shiver along her flesh because his grip tightened against her shoulders and he dragged her closer. As much as she wanted to pull free, another part of her responded to the demanding strength of his touch, to the command underscoring his nearness.
Lifting her hands to push him away, she froze when her fingertips touched the warm thickness of his wrists. Her thumbs pressed against the channel of tendons at the base of his palms while her fingertips involuntarily recalled the hard landscape of bones and flesh in his forearm. She heard his swift intake of breath, watched his chest expand and rise, and her hands refused to abandon his smooth, hair-dusted skin. Time stretched, grew taut, while the silence beat between them.
His head sank lower, until she felt the heat of his breath against her neck. “Colette—”
Dismayed by her irrational response to his nearness, she pressed him back, releasing his wrists and breaking the tenuous contact. “No,” she told him, retreating a sideways step. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
Confusion warred with her need to escape. Now.
“Tell me you feel it, too.” He followed her, his low voice urging her to reconsider. To relent. “Tell me you remember how good it was between us.”
Hypnotized by the fiery intensity of his blue eyes, she knotted her fists at her sides and swallowed. He didn’t move again, simply waiting in silence while she battled her desire to touch him again. “It doesn’t matter. We’re over.”
His mouth pressed into a sober line, lending a grimness to the perfection of his face. “Are we?” he asked quietly.
Before she had a chance to prepare herself, his warm palms cupped her face and tilted her mouth toward his. Her startled inhale did nothing to deter him, and his dark head dipped toward hers with unerring accuracy. Her fingers flew to his forearms even as the muscled wall of his chest bumped her breasts, pressing her against the closed door while his mouth covered hers. The fiery, voracious, delicious assault of his lips stunned her. Consumed her.
An incendiary blaze of sensation tore through her and her hands tightened at his wrists, floundering between the urge to shove him back or pull him closer. He made the decision for her, releasing her head and dragging her up against the granite cove of his body. Curving over her, he possessed her within the hard circle of his arms, the wide arc of his shoulders and chest. She felt secure … desired … needed. All the things she’d always felt with Stephen. All the things she knew could never be trusted. It was all happening so fast. Too fast. She inhaled raggedly through her nose, filling her senses with a combination of crisp cotton, cedarwood, and the clean bite of his soap.
His mouth released hers and then withdrew, to create a hair’s breadth between them. He hauled in a deep breath and then exhaled, wafting mint-scented warmth over her trembling lips. She felt the bump of his nose against hers, and then the glancing brush of his mouth against her temple while the splayed fingers of his hands against her back and shoulderblades kept her from sinking to the floor in a bone
less heap.
Stephen had always kissed her this way, hauling her close enough to sample her flesh with his lips and tongue, tasting her as if she were a banquet and he a starving man. It made it difficult to remember that being with him was a risk she couldn’t afford to take.
“I think you should go now,” he whispered, leaning close to her ear. “You don’t want to be late.”
CHAPTER FOUR
STEPHEN waited for several long, torturous moments after she’d left the conference room, struggling to control his breathing and the flare of arousal that had caught him so completely off guard.
What the hell was he doing?
Just as he had the first time he’d seen her, he’d reacted without thought to the consequences, rushing into the firestorm that was Colette without regard for the fact that he’d get burned.
He’d done the same thing when they’d met, when he’d dared to enter her kitchen just as she was taking a trio of soufflés out of the oven. He’d startled her, making her jump, and the soufflés had fallen before they could be served.
The new American pastry chef he’d hired sight unseen from Cordon Bleu’s new crop of graduates hadn’t known that he was her boss, and she’d laid into him for being a clod-footed klutz. When he’d had the audacity to apologize for his clumsiness, she’d ranted at him as if he’d skinned her favorite cat.
Amused and surprised by her outburst, he’d simply waited while she lashed him with her sharp tongue. He hadn’t been able to remember the last time a woman had scolded him, and certainly not one as fierce as the hazel-eyed Colette Huntington. Her candor and her lack of fear had enthralled him, and he’d been enchanted. Intoxicated. He’d asked her out the minute she stopped to draw breath.
He still didn’t understand why he’d done it. His tastes usually ran to petite females who were sweet, dulcet, and brunette. But for some reason Miss Huntington’s long, lanky limbs and fierce, freckled lioness mien had piqued an interest that had lain dormant for years.