by Ward, Susan
“Only if you want to, Jackson.” She laid her hand atop mine and leaned in. “Unless I don’t like whatever else I find out before we get there.”
A flash fire raged across my skin, sharply reminding me I was out of my depth with her and, worse, she’d probably been right and I should have gone home.
I relaxed back into my seat. “Something tells me I’m just along for the ride. You’ve pretty much made up your mind about everything and I’m pretty confident you are used to getting what you want.”
She moved her hand from mine. “Then you would be wrong, Jack.”
“Really?” It was my turn to be amused by her. “You got me into the car, didn’t you?”
Her eyes flashed and I wasn’t sure what her reaction was about. “No. I didn’t. I was leaving. You decided to join me. Remember that.”
I frowned. Something wasn’t right here. She switched from capricious goddess into something…I wasn’t even sure what was on her face, but it was fragile and a hint sad. A little humor was suddenly needed here, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.
“That sounds ominous. Maybe I should climb out of the car at the next stop light.”
She looked up at me, startled, then laughed. And oh, her laughter was everything I’d hoped for and more. A low purr from deep in her throat to match her sultry sexiness.
Her lips twitched holding back a smile. “I hope you don’t climb out of the car. I think I’m going to like you, Jackson Parker.”
I grinned. “I wasn’t planning to. I always go with my gut first—and by the way, you already like me, so don’t pretend you don’t. I wouldn’t be in the car if you didn’t—so it’s a good thing I listened when my gut told me, Jack follow her.”
She had to bite her lower lip, but I still got a smile out of her. “What else does your gut tell you?”
“Oh, lots of things. First impressions of people are usually always correct.”
Her brows lifted. “Really? So what was yours of me?”
I feigned a face of annoyance. “You think I’d tell you? Not now. Not yet. You haven’t admitted you like me. I’ll tell you”—and because the way she stared at me made me feel bold when I was anything but that with Lena Mansur—“in the morning.”
She crinkled her nose, but I could tell she was still amused and enjoying this. “Do corny lines like that work with all the girls?”
I took a sip of my scotch and shrugged. “I didn’t think it was corny, so there is no way to really answer that.”
“Then don’t answer.”
She leaned in to me and the smell of her flooded my senses, a deliciously faint, sweet aroma I couldn’t identify. Maybe just her. But it was potent.
She placed her palm on my cheek and her fingers spread wide. “Kiss me instead and I’ll let you know if you can stay until the morning.”
She was toying with me—for what reason I didn’t know—but beneath the flirtatiousness of her manner I could tell this was sort of a test of some kind.
I made a bold move of my own.
I brushed her lips with my thumb, then eased back and said, “Oh, I’m kissing you, more than once. Just not now. I never hurry anything worth doing well and we’re at your hotel.”
I opened the door before the driver could reach it, climbed out, and held my hand for her. Those bedroom brown eyes stared up at me and she didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if I’d surprised her, amused her—again—or if she was having second thoughts about what she’d started by letting me into her car. She held the look of uncertainty as if she’d bitten off more with me than she wanted to and was undecided if she should send me home.
Damn. It wasn’t what I’d intended by answering her challenge in kind, and for a half second I kicked myself, wondering if I’d ruined this already.
My only intent was to make a few things clear to her without having to bother with voicing them. While I was younger than her, I wasn’t an inexperienced guy and it would be foolish for her to continue thinking of me that way, as I was sure she did. That I’d been raised with exposure to a variety of circumstance that made me every inch her match. And that I was sincerely interested in her. I didn’t want her thinking this was some game we were playing, and I couldn’t help feel that she thought it was.
“Aren’t you going to take my hand?” I asked.
Her mouth spread wide in a stunning smile. “You are sure of yourself, aren’t you, Jackson Parker?”
And because I was an inherently honest guy, I replied, “No, I’m not sure of anything with you. Like I said, I follow my gut and we followed you here. But sure? Not sure at all.” I puckered my lips flirtatiously. “But I’m hopeful.”
Husky laughter filled the air as her hand slid into mine and my fingers closed around hers. “Hopeful. I like that. Smart answer, Jack.”
“Does that get me to your room?”
She did a little frustrated shake of the head, smiled, and laughed harder. “Not until morning, but maybe, if you don’t make a misstep, to my room for a drink.”
“Ah, and here I thought I was doing so well.”
“Well enough to get into the lobby with me.”
We were both laughing as we headed into the Biltmore Hotel, a five-star luxury beachfront facility, and she looked more nervous about being seen with me than I was with her.
Once through the door, she tugged me into a hall located before the main foyer to what I could only assume to be a service elevator.
The doors opened and she stepped in before me.
I stared at her, and words spilled out of nowhere from my mouth. “You could always just tell me what room you’re in and I could call you in the morning.”
My statement surprised her.
“Is that what you want to do, Jack?”
She looked almost flustered, and fretful after that.
I leaned against the opening to keep the doors from closing. “No. But if joining you in your room tonight isn’t something you want me to do, I want you to know it doesn’t change anything for me.”
One dark brow hitched upward on her face. “Anything, huh? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. What won’t change if I say no tonight?”
I leaned in just an inch. “Me wanting to get to know you.”
We stared at each other for more minutes than I could tell, and the truth of my statement coursed all through me. There was no power on earth that could change my desire to know this girl.
She shook her head, and the sparkle of amusement shimmered on her face. “I can’t imagine the thoughts in your head. I only offered you a drink. It’s nice to have company when you’re in a strange city. I don’t know what to make of you, Jackson Parker.”
I touched her cheek. “Don’t try to make anything of me. Instead, why don’t we just get to know each other. I’d like that.”
She smiled. “I’d like that, too.” Her dark eyes were enormous. “So do you want the drink or not, Jack? We can’t keep the elevator on the first floor forever.”
Six
When we entered her hotel suite there were many signs that Lena was nervous, but I missed every one of them. Maybe I was just too young, for all my bravado earlier about my experience; too young to know what was on her face.
Or maybe it was because being with her made me overly claimed by what I felt. A liveliness, a vivid awareness, that we would be something unlike anything I’d ever known with a girl.
Or maybe it was just the beauty of her. I doubted any man could see anything but her when Lena was in a room. She was so commanding and yet fragile and striking, like a Fabergé egg.
I stood awkwardly in the center of the suite’s small sitting room and watched as she set down her bag and gloves, and then removed the pink cardigan, leaving her shoulders bare. Underneath was just a pink sleeveless top, cut high on the collarbone. The look suited her and did full justice to her shapely upper body.
For the first time I noticed her short strand of pearls hoverin
g just at the base of her long graceful neck, and my gaze fixed on their whiteness against her pale olive skin. She kicked off one shoe and then another, and it was then I realized she wasn’t wearing hose. There was just the right hint of color, naturally, to her creamy flesh that made her skin look exactly how women wanted it without bothering to cover them.
Damn, I wished I’d touched her leg in the car…
“Pour us a drink, Jack,” she said, running her hands through her curls and leaving them delightfully mussed. “There’s a full bar over by the terrace door. I’ll be right back. I just want to change out of these clothes. I’ve been in them since sunrise.”
“Sure. Any preference to what I fix?”
A little laugh as she reached for a cigarette to take into the bedroom with her. “Scotch, like you this round. Straight up. It’s been an exhausting day.”
Those dark eyes fixed on me and I felt like I was covered in blisters. Christ, she was still fully clothed. A handful of hours earlier I’d watched Bonnie’s strip show in the cave, but oh, it couldn’t compare to what Lena was doing to me. She set down her lighter and smiled at me through a little cloud of smoke. “The drinks, Jack.”
I flushed and went quickly to the bar. That easily she knocked me off my game and was in full control over where this was going. As I poured the booze, out of the corner of my eye I watched her disappear into the bedroom. She hadn’t completely shut the door behind her and I had to fight not to try to catch a peek at her.
Pathetic, Jack. Pathetic.
She wouldn’t be the first girl I’d seen nude—that is, if she let me.
She wouldn’t be the first girl I’d been sexual with—that is, if she let me.
She wouldn’t be a first in any way—except that every thought in my head was rapidly followed with if she let me. Self-doubt was a first for me. It settled in my body such that I wondered if this was what Georgie felt around Patty—as if each move he made was so important because she was just enough out of reach that it was maddening—and if that was why he never quite made it across the finish line with her.
Was that all it was? Was that why I was behaving like such a clumsy fool like Georgie too often did with Patty? Lena mattered to me. That thought alone, another first out of nowhere, was an intimidating thing.
As I kept my gaze locked on the amber liquid in our glasses, I shook my head, no longer surprised I wasn’t managing well here. This wasn’t a new truism, it was an old one I’d learned long ago: to really want something made it harder to have it.
I felt a pang of apology and sympathy for my best friend, because right now I was muddling through my first minutes with Lena no better with the girls than him. And Christ, I was ten steps ahead of the best place he’d ever reached with Patty; I was alone in a hotel room with a woman I ached for—ached, yes I ached, for a girl I didn’t even know, less than a half hour after meeting her—as I waited for her to return from the bedroom.
Fuck, pathetic and ridiculous.
I took our cocktail glasses to the coffee table, set them down, and settled on the couch to wait for her. The radio switched on, music began to play softly from the bedroom, and I could hear her whispering voice singing along. In surprise, I realized it was Connie Francis’s “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.”
It was a favorite among our surf club’s beach bunnies. Georgie liked to rib me that it was Jackie’s song— And there are no exceptions to the rule, Yes, everybody's somebody's fool—but hell, Georgie didn’t mean it, for all he warned me that my exploits with the girls would get me into trouble.
Everybody’s somebody’s fool.
Maybe true for some guys, but not for me, only I couldn’t figure out why hearing that song now made me edgy. Maybe because from another girl I would have thought nothing about the song; it was a big hit. Or maybe because she was a classical violin virtuoso and it never occurred to me popular music might appeal to Lena, that we had some commonality in music. Or maybe it was because the lyrics I had always thought catchy though a trifle trite—The tears I cried for you could fill an ocean—somehow seemed a poignant thing when coupled with Lena. There was no mistaking at this point that the lingering shadow present in her eyes, whether smiling or laughing, was sadness.
I unexpectedly found myself wondering if she’d cried an ocean for someone, if she’d been the fool and that somehow explained the cause of her notorious status with my father. I didn’t like the thought that she’d cried over some guy, any more than I liked the thought she might have cared for someone that way.
It never once occurred to me that that song might have been a message to me. It was just in the room, what had come on the radio when she’d switched it on. Just something for me to focus on and make more of than I should as I tried to avoid my mounting nerves while I anxiously waited for her.
And yes, Jack Parker, ladies’ man, was nervous as hell his first night with Lena Mansur. Though I consoled myself with the notion what man wouldn’t be waiting for her.
“What are you thinking about? You have the most droll expression on your face.”
Snapping out of my thoughts, my gaze shifted and then my heart stopped.
Lena was watching me from the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame, one arm pressed against the wood stretching high above her head, and oh my, what she was wearing sent hot lava shooting through my veins instead of blood. She was wearing a silky, long nightgown set. Black. Sexy. The kind of thing Susan Hayward would wear in a movie, but oh fuck, seeing the real deal was a breath-robbing thing.
Susan Hayward had nothing on Lena Mansur.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a beautiful woman dressed this way. Gloria had a habit of doing that on the nights of her inappropriate sexual advances on me or when my father was home, as if to tease me beneath the senator’s nose.
Nope, this wasn’t a first, but it might as well have been. She was a vision. Maybe not every guy’s fantasy, but she became mine from this moment on. It also cleared up—or so I thought at the time—why she had brought me to her hotel room.
She was an experienced older girl with some kind of history, which I was pretty sure was tangled up with a man, and that made the rules I’d known with most girls no longer in play. My understanding of the situation inverted.
I wasn’t pursuing her; she was pursuing me. If I was reading this right—and dear God, I hoped I was—for whatever reason, she had decided on me and all I needed to do was stay along for the journey.
The smile was in both her eyes and on her lips as she waited for me to answer, ratcheting up the heat in me.
“Whatever I was thinking is definitely nothing I want to remember now,” I somehow managed to say before I rose to my feet as she entered the room.
She took her glass from the table and ran the rim along her lower lip. “I’m sorry I made you wait so long. I wasn’t sure if I should change into something casual or something for bed. I think my body is still on east coast time. I almost fell asleep undressing. I just flew to Santa Barbara yesterday.”
That didn’t set well with me since I wasn’t sure why she was telling me that. A warning that the night wouldn’t go long or a warning that things would move quickly now. I wasn’t sure which, but I knew which one I wanted.
I put down my glass. “Maybe I should go.”
I’d amused her again.
She sank onto the sofa, curled her legs beneath her, and turned her body slightly to face the spot where I’d been sitting.
“Don’t be silly. Sit down and finish your drink with me. I meant it. I enjoy company when I travel, it’s been a long time since I’ve had an evening of pleasant conversation with anyone, and I thought you said you wanted to get to know me.”
Conversation? The only thing I wanted at that moment was to see her spread naked across the bed wearing only those pearls still circling her neck.
I shoved a hand deep in my pocket, because that mental image was no help in battling back my cock’s e
ager thickening.
I sat down beside her and reached for my drink.
“How long are you in town for?” I asked.
“Not long. A few days. I was supposed to fly out tomorrow, but I’m here through Wednesday. An unexpected schedule change. Then back to New York again. Why?”
“I thought you might like to see Santa Barbara while you’re here.”
She placed an arm across the back of the couch. “I’d like that. I’ve not really spent any time on the west coast. I’ve always lived in New York with my father.”
I nodded, my chin jutting out slightly. “New York. Must be exciting.”
She shrugged. “It has its moments. Good and bad, like any place, I imagine. Santa Barbara is a beautiful city.”
“It’s unique. There isn’t another place like it in the world. At least, that’s what everyone says.”
“Really? So what do you do to amuse yourself in your unique place? What kind of sights are you going to show me if I take you up on your offer? There doesn’t seem much to do here other than the beach and visit State Street and the mission. That is pretty much the entirety of the activities list the concierge gave me.”
She said that with just a hint of lofty, east coast superiority.
“There’s a lot to do. The concierge for the hotel must be from out of town if that is all he could suggest.”
“So what do you do?”
I shrugged. “School. Surf. Go to the clubs. Just normal things.”
My answer—pathetically immature sounding when I wanted desperately not to come off that way—made her laugh.
“You’re in college?” she asked.
“I start Harvard next month.”
Her gaze clouded. “You haven’t really started living yet, now have you? I knew you were younger than me, but I didn’t think fresh out of high school.”
For the first time in my life, I didn’t like talking about me, since my existence sounded woefully inadequate compared to hers.