by Anne Rainey
“Yeah, you’re probably right. We’l see how I feel tomorrow, I guess.”
Cherry leaned down and whispered, “Cal me and let me know how it goes.”
Wade was curious, but stayed silent. After Dante and Cherry were out of the room, he looked at Gracie. “When can you leave?”
Gracie started to pick at the blanket, as if nervous al of a sudden. “The doctor said to just rest a little bit, to let the effects of the chloroform wear off.”
Wade pul ed up a chair and sat down. “It’s time we talk, Gracie.” He looked around the emergency room and shrugged. “This is as good a place as any, I suppose.”
“Before you say anything, I have something to tel you.”
Wade’s chest tightened. Was she done with him? Now that it was al over, would she give him the brush-off? “You do?”
Gracie bit her lip, her fingers tangling in the bedspread. “I know we’ve only been together for a short time, and with everything that’s happened you’l probably just think I’m crazy. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, I mean, I’ve never done this before and I’m not sure—”
“Are you blowing me off?”
Gracie’s eyes widened. “What? No! I-I’m trying to tel you, wel , what I mean is—”
“Blurt it out, baby. Like a bandage, fast and painless.”
She frowned. “I would if you’d stop interrupting me.”
Wade chuckled at her disgruntled tone. Hel , he wasn’t sure if she was about to kick him to the curb or not, and stil she managed to make him laugh. “Sorry, sweetheart. The floor’s al yours.”
“I love you.” Gracie said between clenched teeth as she continued to glare at him.
Wade’s entire body went stil . “Come again?”
“I said, I love you. Even though you drive me crazy and I’d like to clobber you right now, I love you.”
Wade shot out of the chair and hovered over her. Bracing himself on his hands beside her head, he whispered, “I love you too, my Fiery Angel.”
Gracie blinked several times. “You do?”
Wade pressed his lips to hers. Soft and warm and so damn intoxicating, that was Gracie. He lifted slightly, letting their breaths mingle. He could see the green fire in Gracie’s half-closed eyes; the sight had his blood pumping faster. “Yes, I do. I’ve never told another woman those three words.”
“It’s happened so fast,” she said, her gaze fil ing with alarm. “And I don’t know how to be in a relationship, Wade. I’m scared I’m going to mess this up.”
“I told you, I don’t need a relationship expert. I only need you, open and wil ing. We’l figure out the rest together.”
She smiled and kissed him. It was quick, too quick. “I was so afraid you didn’t feel the same way. I talked to Cherry about you, you know. She told me I should go for it. I’m glad I listened to her.”
Wade cupped Gracie’s cheek and smoothed his thumb over her bottom lip. Damn, how he wished they were back at his place. “I’m sending that woman a dozen roses. I owe her big time.”
“There’s stil a lot unsettled. My apartment, my car. My dad. I come with a lot of baggage, Wade.”
“It’s nothing we can’t handle together, Gracie.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, then let his lips sip at hers. Soon they were both panting.
“Right now the only thing I want to do is get you home. The rest can wait.”
“Yes, home. That sounds heavenly right now.” Wade stood and held out his hand; she took it and started to lift up, then stopped and frowned.
“What is it? Are you in pain?”
“No, but there is one little problem.”
Baffled, Wade asked, “What’s that?”
Gracie smiled wickedly. “The little matter of your punishment.”
“Er, Gracie . . .”
She quirked a brow, and Wade fel silent. He had a sudden vision of Gracie dressed from head to toe in leather and wielding a flogger. It was a damn good vision.
“You said I could spank you if you cursed. I’ve been keeping count. You’ve cursed a lot, Wade.”
Wade took her head in his hands and held her stil for his kiss, this time harder, more demanding. He pul ed away and growled, “Let’s go home, my Fiery Angel.”
“Yes.” Gracie smiled. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Five weeks later . . .
Gracie slammed a cupboard door, frustrated and hungry at the same time. “I’ve searched this entire kitchen, and I stil can’t find your cannel oni recipe.”
Wade tapped his temple. “It’s al up here, and it’s my little secret.”
He was sprawled out on the couch reading Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” After they’d showered together, he’d pul ed on a pair of loose-fitting gray sweats and nothing else. As Gracie stared at his powerful chest, so beautiful y displayed, her body temperature spiked. And an idea began to form.
Crossing the room, Gracie said, “I could get you to talk. I have ways, Wade.” She straddled his thighs, sighing when she felt the length of his cock nestled against her pussy. Wade would always have that effect on her, she knew.
Wade tossed the book aside and wrapped his hands around her waist. “No doubt you do, pretty baby.”
She smoothed her palms over his chest, then moved them over his rib cage to his tight abs. “How’s the arm?”
Wade rol ed his eyes. “Like I told you this morning and yesterday, and every day before that, it’s healed.”
“Sorry. It’s just . . . I’l never forget hearing that gun go off. Knowing you were shot.” Gracie shuddered as she thought of that day. So much had happened since then. She’d made living with Wade a permanent situation. Her renter’s insurance had come through, so she’d managed to replace a lot of the things Lusk had destroyed. Wade had pitched in by surprising her with her very own e-book reading device—fil ed with the rest of the books she’d lost in the break-in.
“I’l never get that image out of my head of you covered in blood.” He looked at her from head to toe, as if searching for injuries. When he took her hands in his and kissed first one palm and then the other, her clit swel ed. “Is this wrist giving you any problems, sweetheart?”
She shook her head. “It’s fine. Not even a twinge. I am so glad to have that cast off. The itching was driving me nuts.”
He bobbed his eyebrows. “Sooo, wanna fool around?”
She laughed and slid her hand beneath the elastic waistband of his pants, encountering his already hard cock. “Thought you’d never ask.”
“Keep doing that and the fun won’t last.”
She leaned forward and licked the shel of his ear, then whispered, “Have a little control.”
He cupped the back of her head, holding her in place. “I have plenty of control. But when there’s a naughty little vixen on my lap, playing with my cock and whispering in my ear, my control takes a siesta.”
She started to tel him she loved it when he lost control, but her cel phone rang. Gracie frowned. “I don’t want to answer that.”
The hand Wade had at the back of her head tightened. “Then don’t.”
Her cel phone rang again. “I have to, Wade. It could be Cherry.”
Wade cursed. “It’s probably your dad. Leave it.”
Gracie moved off his lap. “No, I can’t keep avoiding him. It’s time to settle things.”
She went to the kitchen table and grabbed her cel phone. She didn’t recognize the number, but that didn’t mean anything. Her father was always borrowing someone else’s phone. When it rang a third time, Gracie flipped it open.
“Hel o?”
“You’ve been screening your damn cal s, haven’t you?”
Gracie sighed at the bel igerent tone. “What do you want, Dad?”
“They’re threatening to kick me out, Gracie. I need the rent paid.”
“No,” Gracie said. Oh, God, her heart hurt. It shouldn’t be this painful, she thought.
“What the hel do you mean, no?”
>
“I’m done, Dad,” she answered, holding her ground for the first time that she could remember. “No more cal ing and asking for money. I’m finished.”
“You ungrateful bitch!” he screamed, his words slurring just enough to tel Gracie he was already halfway to being drunk off his ass, and it wasn’t even noon.
“Cal me whatever you want, but I’m serious. You either get help for the drinking or lose my number. Either way, I’m done.”
“You can’t do this to me. I raised you! I kept a roof over your head when no one else wanted you!”
Gracie felt each word like a slap to the face. Her gaze shot to Wade’s across the room. Immediately he was in front of her, his arms around her in a protective embrace. “You have a choice to make, Dad. If you can sober up, then we’l talk.” When he started cursing her, her mother, her grandmother, God, Gracie hung up.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Wade said.
Gracie tossed the phone onto the table and buried her face in Wade’s chest. The tears came, and it wasn’t pretty. Once she’d cried herself dry, she pul ed back and stared at Wade’s damp pecs. “You’re al wet.”
He cupped her chin and raised her head until their gazes met. “I’m so damn proud of you right now.”
“It hurts, Wade,” Gracie admitted, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I don’t feel very good about what I just did.”
“I know. He’s your father, and that doesn’t change—no matter what. But you took a very necessary step today. Like you told him on the phone, he has a choice to make. The bal ’s in his court now.”
Gracie smoothed her palms over his hard chest. “Wade?”
He kissed the top of her head and murmured, “Yeah, baby?”
“Make love to me.”
“Always, my Fiery Angel,” he vowed. “Always.”
Then he picked her up and carried her up the stairs to their bed, where they made love for the rest of the afternoon. It was, Gracie thought, the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Turn the page
for a sizzling preview
of Lorie O’Clare’s
TEMPTATION ISLAND
An Aphrodisia trade paperback
coming August 2011.
Ric Karaka stepped onto the front porch of the large, old house and breathed in the morning air. He loved the smel of the island. It brought back memories, the first good ones he’d had, from after high school when he’d original y come to Lanai, one of the smal er Hawaiian islands.
The fresh air, often mixed with the aroma of some nearby flowering plant or tree, had an erotic edge to it.
He didn’t regret living on the banana plantation, although he was stil getting accustomed to al the silence and space. It was a far cry from the inner city in L.A.
“Life goes on,” he reminded himself, voicing the mantra he’d used for years as he stretched, then tested several of the floorboards on the old porch as he headed down the stairs. The first half of his life made hel dim in comparison, but Ric had always found the energy to push himself forward. “You never would have thought you’d be here, though, did you, old man?”
Ric was only thirty, but he didn’t see any reason to try clinging to his youth. He hadn’t started enjoying life, or learning how to move ahead in it, until he’d let go of his childhood. Not that years in foster homes, being used so a family who didn’t want him could receive a government check every month, had been much of a childhood. Once he managed his emancipation at seventeen, Ric had final y taken charge of his own destiny.
Thirteen years later, he hadn’t made any mistakes yet. The old banana plantation didn’t look like much right now, but with funding, he’d turn the place around. Sweat and sore muscles didn’t bother him when they came from hard work. He wasn’t running from anyone anymore, and he knew who he was.
Ric’s ful name was Ricardo Karaka. It wasn’t until he reached col ege, managing grants so he could attend UCLA, that he had learned anything about who he was and where he’d come from. He was the son of Julio Karaka and Maria Winston, two people who’d loved the hel out of each other but were ripped from life before they were real y able to live it. Ric was al that was left of both of them. He didn’t resent their dying, especial y since he never knew either of them. And he didn’t resent the state for taking him in and placing him in foster care.
Julio Karaka came from a family of farmers. The Karaka family dated back generations here on the island. The moment Ric had discovered that, he’d hopped on a plane and flown to Lanai. The chances of him not being related to al of them, with such an odd last name, were slim to none. And he’d been right. There were stil quite a few Karakas around on the island, although none of them farmed anymore. Meeting his father’s side of the family helped explain his coal-black hair and dark skin that got even darker when he worked outside in the summer.
His mother, though, had been a blonde goddess. Ric remembered the first time he saw her picture. No wonder his father had fal en head over heels for the rebel ious daughter of a bil ionaire.
It wasn’t until he came to the island that he learned that much about either of his parents. His grandparents, Pedro and Alicia Karaka, took him in for a while. But when they lost the banana plantation, there was barely enough food, or room, for the two of them in the smal house they had moved into on the other side of the island. During the time he stayed with them, he had learned a lot about the hot, sultry romance between Julio and Maria.
Ric had politely listened to Alicia as she fanned herself and looked at him dreamily as she told him how Maria Winston had become smitten with her oldest son. Julio didn’t care about her money, and Maria didn’t blink an eye when her family cut her off for marrying a poor farmer’s son.
The Winstons never knew Julio and Maria had a son, since Julio’s death had cut them off from Maria.
Ric had managed the research and learned the details about his birth. Maria had been pregnant and alone. Her family had disowned her, although Ric would never know why she didn’t turn to the Karakas. Maybe she believed they wanted nothing more to do with her. Possibly she’d been extremely depressed after her husband’s untimely death. She could have been destitute, penniless. Whatever the reason, she gave birth to Ric in a hotel room al by herself. The motel maids found him crying in his dead mother’s arms the next morning. His mother had lived in a home with several other women for a while while she was pregnant. According to the records that fol owed him through life, Maria’s roommates said she knew she was having a boy and named him Ricardo. She had cal ed him Little Ricky while he was in her womb. Ric never went by Ricky, but he got more than many orphans received. He knew his name.
Al of that was ancient history. Ric survived, grew up, went to school, and managed a loan from the bank to buy back the Karakas’ banana plantation. It got him a warm welcome from his father’s side of the family, since the farm had been lost in a foreclosure. His grandparents and uncles weren’t convinced he would make a good farmer and were even a bit more cautious when he told them he would turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. The Karakas were wel known in the local community. Today they might be poor, but they were proud. When he shared with his grandparents and two of his uncles, Juan and Jose, his plan to renovate the old plantation house, their silence spoke volumes. They feared their newfound grandson and nephew would bring shame to their good name.
Ric turned as the screen door behind him opened, then shut with a bang. Colby, his bloodhound mix, sauntered to the edge of the porch and stared at the land in front of the house.
“They’l learn soon enough I don’t discuss plans if they aren’t solid,” he said, reaching to scratch her head as she stared up at him with soft, brown eyes. Colby might not say much, but she was the best addition he’d made to the large, rambling old house so far. He watched her prance down the steps, then fol ow her nose as she started a spiraling pattern through the yard. “It’s Karaka land. Can you smel that?”
Colby wagged her tail and continued her urgent sniffing unti
l she found the right spot to take care of her morning business. He wasn’t sure what had compel ed him to take in the bloodhound mix when she’d shown up at his door shortly after he’d moved in. No one knew who she was or where she’d come from. Ric understood her plight.
Colby was an orphan, just as he’d been. She had no family, no home, no roots. Ric had lived on the streets long enough to know there was no such thing as coincidence. Colby’s gift for tracking had brought her to the one house on the island that needed a family. Ric once believed he would find the perfect girl, have kids, and be the perfect father he never had. That dream was long gone. Ric and Colby were family, and together they would show his newfound family, and enemy one on the island, just how successful he could be.
Timing was everything. Ric knew how to keep his credit score high enough to do business. And right now, times were hard. He’d qualified for the loan and convinced the family who bought it off the bank for next to nothing to sel it to him.
As one of his foster mothers used to brag when she’d come home from her Realtor job—ignoring him and the other foster kids and drinking with her husband—“Location, location, location.”
His negligent foster parents had nurtured him more than they’d ever know. Ric stared off the front porch, down the long, one-lane driveway leading to the highway that circled the island, and at the endless ocean beyond. He had location nailed down. Some might see this old house and the untended land as an eyesore and a wasted investment.
There were stil pineapple bushes growing on the property. Ric had no intention of turning it back into a farm, though. He might plant a few banana trees just for atmosphere. It was going to take a lot of hard work to turn the place around. Sweat labor would be his saving grace. That, and a solid investor.
He had the first, and by the end of the day, he’d have the latter.
Colby finished doing her business at the same time that someone pul ed off the highway into his driveway. She bounded across the yard, baying loudly as her ears flopped, and she ran toward the old faded blue Buick Skylark. Ric made sure the door was locked and the screen door secure before fol owing his dog to greet his grandparents. They knew he was going to meet Samantha Winston today, his maternal grandmother, with whom he’d been exchanging letters for the past few months. The last thing they would do was tie him up so he couldn’t get business under way.