“Where’s Leo?” she asked as several hors d’oeuvres shifted precariously close to the edge of the tray.
Sebastian, being Sebastian, had made himself at home with Joyce’s red wine and held a glass near his hip. “He said he’s taking a break.”
“At the carriage house?”
“Yeah.” Sebastian’s gaze lowered from her eyes to her mouth, then slid slowly to her holly berries. He pointed at her with his glass. “You look good in red.”
“Thank you.” She took a few steps forward and set the tray on the island in the middle of the room. He looked good too, in a totally edible way, and she purposely kept her distance. Her stomach felt light and heavy all at the same time, and she made an attempt at polite conversation. “What have you been doing since yesterday?”
“I was up all night reading.” He took a drink of his wine.
The distance between them allowed her stomach to settle, and she took a relieved breath. “What about this time?”
He looked at her over his glass, then said, “Pirates.”
“Internet pirates?”
“Internet?” He shook his head and one corner of his mouth slid up into a smile. “No. High seas. The real swashbuckling kind.”
Her first two books had been about pirates. The first featured Captain Jonathan Blackwell, bastard son of the Duke of Stanhope, while the second had starred William Dewhurst, whose love of plundering the South Pacific was second only to his love of plundering Lady Lydia. During her research for those books, she’d learned that piracy was still a problem. It certainly wasn’t as prevalent as it had been several hundred years ago, but was as brutal as ever. “Are you writing an article about piracy?”
“No. No article.” He walked toward her and set his glass next to the silver tray, effectively removing the nice safe distance between them. “How’s the party going?”
Clare shrugged a shoulder. “Berni Lang told me that my eggs are withering.”
He simply looked at her through his deep green eyes, clueless as to what she was talking about. But of course he was. Men didn’t have to worry about ticking clocks or aging eggs.
“She’s concerned that if I don’t get to it, I won’t be able to conceive outside of a petri dish.”
“Ah.” He tilted his head back and lowered his gaze to her abdomen. “Are you worried about that?”
“No.” She placed a hand on her stomach as if to shield herself from his sexually potent gaze. If there was one man who could impregnate with just a look, it was Sebastian Vaughan. “Or at least I wasn’t until today. Now, I’m a little freaked.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.” He glanced into her face. “You’re still young and beautiful, and you’ll find someone to make a baby with you.”
He’d said she was beautiful, and for some stupid reason, that left her light-headed and feeling a little warm and fuzzy. It touched the little girl in her that used to follow him around. She tore her gaze from his and looked down at the hors d’oeuvres. She’d come into the kitchen to do something. What?
“If not, then you can adopt or find a sperm donor.”
She grabbed the silver tray and moved toward the sink. “No. That may be fine for some women, but I want a father for my child. A full-time dad.” Talk of sperm and donors made her think of making babies the old-fashioned way. And that made her think of Sebastian standing before her in just a towel. “I want more than one child, and I want a husband to help me raise them.” She pulled out the garbage from beneath the sink. “I’m sure you know the importance of a father in a boy’s life.”
“I do, but you know that life isn’t perfect. You know that even with the best of intentions, fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce.”
Thinking of him in that towel made her think of him without the towel. “But fifty percent don’t,” she uttered, not thinking about what she was doing as she dumped the hors d’oeuvres. As she watched them slide into the trash, she remembered that she’d come into the kitchen to warm them up, not dump them out.
“You want the fairy tale.”
“I want a chance at it.” Damn. She’d spent hours making those mushroom rolls. For a split second she thought about picking them out of the trash. This was Sebastian’s fault. He just seemed to suck the air from the room and leave her brain deprived of oxygen. She shoved the garbage back beneath the sink and shut the door. Now what?
“Do you really believe in the happily ever after?”
Clare turned and looked at him. He didn’t appear mocking, just curious. Did she still believe? Despite everything? “Yes,” she answered truthfully. Perhaps she no longer believed in a perfect love, or love at first sight, but did she still believe in lasting love? “I do believe that two people can be happy and make a great life together.” She set the tray on the counter next to a plate of butter mints pressed into the shape of little Christmas trees. She popped one into her mouth and leaned her behind against the counter. She’d cooked all the hors d’oeuvres and set them out already. She looked down at her red toenails as she recalled some frozen fish in her mother’s freezer, but there wasn’t anything she could do with that.
“Our parents never did.”
She glanced up at Sebastian. He’d turned toward her and his arms were folded across the chest of his bulky sweater. “That’s true, but my mother and your father jumped into marriage for the wrong reasons. Mine because she thought she could change a charming womanizer, and yours because…well, because…”
“My mother was pregnant,” he finished for her. “And we know how that turned out. It was a disaster. They made each other miserable.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“What’s to stop it? Hearts and flowers and grandiose declarations of undying love? Don’t tell me you actually believe in that?”
She shrugged. “I just want someone who loves me as honestly and as passionately as I love him.” She pushed away from the counter and moved toward the refrigerator. She pulled open the freezer and looked in at an old gallon of ice cream, packages of chicken, and the trout Leo had given Joyce the last time he and Sebastian had gone fishing. She closed the freezer and asked, “How about you?” She was tired of talking about herself. “Do you want children?”
“Lately I’ve been thinking that I’d like to have a kid someday.” Clare glanced back at him as she opened the refrigerator. He took a drink of his wine, then added, “But the wife is a different matter. I can’t see myself married.”
She couldn’t see him married either. She bent forward and placed her hands on her knees to peer into the refrigerator. “You’re one of those guys.”
“One of what guys?”
Milk. Grapefruit juice. Jars of salsa. “Those guys who can’t see themselves tied down with one woman for the rest of their lives, because there are so many woman out there just waiting to be conquered. The ‘why have oatmeal every day for the rest of our lives when we can eat Cap’n Crunch, Lucky Charms, and Tasty O’s kind of guys.” Cottage cheese. A piece of something shaped like a pizza slice. “Do you know what happens to those guys?”
“Tell me.”
“Those guys turn fifty and are alone and suddenly decide it’s time to settle down. So they get some Viagra and find a twenty-year-old to marry and pop out a few children.” Cheese. Pickles. Eggs. “Only they’re too old to enjoy the kids, and when they’re sixty, the twenty-year-old leaves them for someone her own age and cleans out the bank account. They’re sad and broke and can’t understand why they’re alone.” She reached for a jar of Kalamata olives. “The kids don’t want them to come to school programs because they’re nearing retirement and all the other fourth graders think their dad is their grandpa.”
Wow, she thought as she straightened, that sounded cynical. She’d obviously been listening to Maddie too much. She read the pull date on the olive jar. “Not that I’m bitter or anything,” she said through a smile as she glanced over her shoulder. “Not all men are immature jerks,” she ad
ded, and caught Sebastian staring at her behind. “But I could be wrong about that.”
He raised his gaze up her back. “What?”
“Did you hear one word I said?” She shut the door and set the olives on the counter. She didn’t have a plan for them, but they looked better than anything else in the refrigerator.
“Yeah. You assume I don’t see myself married because I want to ‘conquer’ lots of different women and eat their Lucky Charms and Tasty O’s.” He grinned. “But that’s not the case. I don’t see myself married because I’m gone a lot and, in my experience, distance does not make the heart grow fonder. While I’m gone, either she’s moved on or I’ve moved on. If not, she suddenly sees my work as her competition and wants me to cut my schedule to spend time with her.”
Clare couldn’t fault him for the last. She knew what it was like to have to work while your boyfriend wanted to play. She felt an affinity with Sebastian until he said, “And women just can’t leave anything alone. If everything is going along just fine, they have to pick at it and torture it and talk it to death. They always want to discuss feelings and talk about a relationship and make a commitment. Women can never just lighten up about that shit.”
“My God, you should come with a warning sign.”
“I’ve never lied to any woman I’ve been in any sort of relationship with.”
Maybe not in so many words, but Sebastian had a way of looking at a woman that made her feel as if she were special to him. When in reality she was only special until he moved on. And she herself, who knew Sebastian for a silver-tongued snake, was not immune. Not immune to the way he looked at her and kissed her and touched her and drew her in even as she knew she should run screaming in the opposite direction. “Define relationship.”
“Jesus.” He sighed. “You’re such a girl.” He held up one hand, then dropped it to his side. “A relationship…as in dating and having sex with the same person on a regular basis.”
“And you’re such a guy.” She shook her head and moved to the other side of the kitchen island. “Relationships should be about more than dinner, a movie, and hitting the sack.” She could have said more on the subject but didn’t believe it would do any good. “What’s been your longest relationship?”
He thought a moment, then answered, “About eight months.”
She placed her hands on the white tiles and drummed her fingers as she looked across the safe distance into his eyes. “So, you probably only saw each other half that time.”
“More or less.”
“So in all, total, it was more like four months.” She shook her head again and walked across the room to the pantry, the sound of her high heels making little click-click sounds. “I’m shocked.”
“What? That it didn’t last longer?”
“No,” she answered as she opened the door. “That it lasted that long. Four months is a long time not to bother you with talk of commitment and feelings.” She frowned at him, then walked into the pantry. “That poor woman must have been mentally exhausted.” She moved passed the stepstool and looked for a box of this or a tin of that. Anything to whip up for her mother’s friends.
“Don’t feel too bad for her,” Sebastian said from the doorway. “She was a yoga and Pilates instructor and I let her work out on me in bed. If I recall, her favorite position was dog down.”
Which proved, yet again, woman did all the work in a relationship. “You mean downward-facing dog.”
“Yeah. You know that one?”
Clare ignored the question. “So, the yoga instructor had to bend herself all around to please you. I imagine she had to rock your world in and out of bed, but what did she get out of the relationship? Besides toned abs and buns of steel?”
He grinned like a natural-born sinner. “Out of bed, she got dinner and a movie. In bed she got multiple orgasms.”
Oh. Okay. That was good. She had never had a multiple orgasm. Although she thought she may have come close once.
He shoved one shoulder into the door frame. “What? You don’t have anything to say?”
Really, though, she wasn’t greedy. It had been so long, she wouldn’t mind just having one. “Like?”
“Like a relationship is not just about sex and a woman needs more than multiple orgasms.”
“Yes. They do.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We do, yes. And a relationship is more than sex.” She looked back at him standing there like a hunk of the month. She was allowing him to get her sidetracked with thoughts of orgasms. She’d come into the pantry to find crackers or something…
He pushed away from the frame and closed the door with his foot.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He moved forward a few steps until she had to tilt her head up to look up into his face. “Apparently, I’m stalking you.”
“Why?” He was doing that thing again. The thing where he sucked out all the air in the room and made her feel light-headed. “Are you bored?”
“Bored?” He took several moments to consider the question before he answered, “No. I’m not bored.”
Thirteen
Sebastian was far from bored. He was intrigued and interested and very turned on. It wasn’t his fault, though. It was hers. He’d read her second book, The Pirate’s Captive, and was shocked by how much he’d enjoyed it. It was a real swashbuckler filled with high seas drama and lots of “wenching.” Any woman who could write hot wenching like that had to be hot in bed.
Clare. Clare Wingate. The girl with the thick glasses who used to follow him around and annoy him a lot had turned out to be as interesting and intriguing a woman as she was beautiful.
Who would have thought?
After his cold shower, he’d sought her out to ask her if she wanted to escape the party and have a late lunch with him downtown somewhere. Somewhere public where he wouldn’t be tempted to kiss her as he had the day before. But she’d started talking about men eating women like Lucky Charms and Tasty O’s, and that had started him wondering if she was magically delicious, and here they were. Shut inside the pantry.
“Then why are you stalking me here?” she asked.
He slid his hands up her arms to the shoulders of her fuzzy sweater. The height of her shoes brought her mouth just below his. “Remember when we hid in here and gorged on Girl Scout cookies? I think I ate a whole box of Thin Mints.”
She swallowed hard as her amazing blue eyes stared up into his. She blinked. “You followed me in here to talk about when we used to eat cookies?”
He brushed his hands across her shoulders to the sides of her warm neck. Her pulse quickened beneath his thumbs. “No.” He tilted her chin up and lowered his face just above hers. “I want to talk about eating you like a Tasty O.” He continued to look into her eyes as he said, “I want to talk about all the things I want to do to you. Then we can talk about all the things I want you to do to me.” All the things he’d already thought of her doing to him.
She raised her hands to his chest and he thought she might push him away. Instead she said, “We can’t do this. Someone will walk in here.”
He wondered if she realized that her only objection was that they might get caught. He smiled. Her red lipstick had been driving him crazy, and he brushed his mouth across hers. “Not if we’re very quiet.” He pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “You don’t want Joyce to walk in on us. She’d be horrified to find you in here kissing the gardener’s son.”
“But I’m not kissing you.”
He chuckled silently. “Not yet.”
She sucked in a breath and held it. “Your father could find us.”
He brushed his thumb across the soft skin of her jaw as he continued to tease her mouth. “He’s taking one of his twenty-minute naps that usually last an hour. He won’t ever know.”
“Why do I let you do this to me?” she asked through a sigh.
“Because it feels good.”
She swallowed and her throat moved beneath his hands. “Lots of things fee
l good.”
“Not this good.” Her fingers curled into his sweater. “Admit it, Clare. You like how this feels as much as I do.”
“It’s only because…it’s been a while.”
“A while since?”
“I’ve felt this good.”
It had been a while for him too. A while since he’d thought about a woman as much as he did Clare. Especially since he wasn’t even having sex with her. He tilted her face up a little more, and while his mouth lightly touched hers, he waited. Waited for the last sweet moment of hesitation. The moment right before she lost the battle with herself and melted into him. When she was no longer the perfect Clare. No longer hiding behind bland smiles and rigid control. The moment right before she turned soft and passionate all at the same time.
He felt the hitch in her breathing and the press of her fingertips into the weave of his sweater the second before her hands slid up his chest, leaving a trail of fire to the back of his neck. Her lips parted with a barely perceptible ahh, and she was his. Her acquiescence excited him almost as much as her fingers combing through the back of his hair. It raised the flesh on his back and chest and turned the interest in his pants as hard as rock.
He kept the kiss light, taking his time to taste a hint of mint on her breath and feel the soft warmth of her mouth. He let her set the pace and settled into a hot, wet kiss that was as excruciating as it was sweet. He felt her passion grow and build. He felt it in her touch and heard it in the little moan in her throat.
She pulled back, her breathing rapid, her eyes wide and dilated. Her hands gripped his shoulders and she said just above a whisper, “Why do I always let this happen?”
Frustration clawed at his chest and between his legs. His breathing was only slightly calmer than hers. “We already covered that.”
“I know, but why with you?” She licked her wet lips. “There are lots of other men in the world.”
He pulled her against his chest until her breasts were pressed into the front of his sweater. “I guess I make it feel better than those other men.” Talk time was over, and he lowered his mouth once again. There was no hesitation in her this time. Only passion, hot and fluid and every bit as needy as his own.
I’m In No Mood For Love Page 16