The Specialist

by Rhonda Nelson

  She ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing it a little to get rid of the bed-head, and fumbled through her purse for her compact. A little powder, a little gloss—God help her, Emma thought, realizing she was doing the frou-frou thing because Payne was more than likely downstairs. Sheesh. Disgusted with herself, she jammed the cap back on her lipstick and tossed it back into her bag. She was an idiot—an absolute idiot—and, as a bracing act of defiance, she immediately wiped off the newly applied gloss.

  Muttering under her breath, she snagged her purse and walked downstairs.

  “Ah,” Norah said as she approached the dining room. “You’re here.”

  “And very hungry,” Emma added with a significant grin. “Something smells good.”

  “Dad made pot roast. It’s fabulous.”

  It certainly smelled fabulous, Emma thought, her mouth watering.

  “Come with me,” she said, herding Emma forward into the dining area. “Your dinner companion is already seated. I’ve paired you up with the best-looking man here. With the exception of my husband, of course,” she added with a knowing twinkle.

  Emma’s gaze tangled with Payne’s from across the room and she felt a sick smile catch the corner of her mouth and tug. “Oh, how nice,” she said, because an “Oh, shit,” didn’t seem appropriate. “Did he ask you to do this?” she prompted, trying to sound secretly thrilled as opposed to ready to wretch. She wouldn’t put it past him in the least.

  “It was my suggestion, but he was quite pleased with it.”

  She’d just bet he was, Emma thought, inwardly seething.

  “I think he may like you,” Norah confided, her gaze warm. “We’ve had more than one couple begin their romance here.”

  Romance? Her and Brian Payne?

  Emma’s heart gave an odd little jolt and a nervous chill hit her belly. Now, that was certainly a frightening thought, one her foolish heart thankfully had sense enough not to entertain.

  Now…sleeping with him? Sure, she could do that. It would be mutually satisfying, and everybody would go home happy. But falling for him? Saying, “Here’s my heart, please don’t flash-freeze and break it?”

  Absolutely not.

  In the first place, she knew what a hardened bachelor looked like, and he was it if she’d ever seen one. A man didn’t manage to get to the ripe of age of thirty something as a bachelor without a reason. He was either vehemently opposed to the idea, had commitment issues or was gay. She could personally rule out the latter and pegged him for a mutant combination of the other two.

  And in the second place, a guy with those kinds of issues—particularly one with Payne’s considerable fortitude—was more than she reasonably imagined she could tackle. The temptation was there, of course. He’d be a challenge. But she instinctively knew that if she dared to offend him with any kind of tender emotion, he’d freeze her out so fast her hair would turn to ice. Risking her heart while knowing the outcome would be emotional suicide and frankly, all recklessness aside, even she had better sense than that.

  Pity though, Emma thought as she made her way across the dining room. If he ever cared enough to focus some of the legendary attention-to-detail on loving a woman, she’d be one lucky girl.

  For whatever reason, the idea was wholly depressing.

  Possibly because she knew that girl would never be her.

  PAYNE FELT his lips slide into a smirk as Emma took the seat opposite him. “Haven’t lost your appetite, have you?”

  She placed her napkin in her lap, then looked up and blinked at him. “Why would I do that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He took a hefty drink of wine, hoping to drown some of the irritation he was feeling. “I guess because you looked nauseous a moment ago when you saw me sitting here.”

  “Have I hurt your feelings?” she asked with mock concern, being her typical smart-ass self. The galling answer was yes, but he’d rather have his balls sawed off with a pair of dull hedge clippers than tell her that. Furthermore, he wasn’t supposed to have feelings for her to hurt, so that telling realization made him distinctly uncomfortable.

  “No, I’d just prefer you not puke on my food,” he drawled, purposely sounding uninterested. “So long as you’re just sick of my company and not sick, we should be fine.”

  Emma paused to look at him and he had the momentary uneasy sensation that she’d somehow picked up on the lie. That she could see through him. She rolled her eyes, looking miserably contrite. “I’m not sick of you, per se,” she told him and gestured wearily. “I’m just sick of…the tension, if that makes sense.”

  Of the sexual variety? he wondered, or of the find-the-pocketwatch kind?

  In either case, he knew what she meant. After all, it was only Day Two and he felt as if he’d been through a week of hell. His broody gaze swung back to Emma.

  And it was all her fault.

  Women, he thought darkly, the historical downfall of all the men in his family. But no matter how much she mucked up his game, she wouldn’t be his downfall. In fact, if this mission played out as successfully as every other one in his life had, then it would be the other way around.

  For whatever reason, that thought wasn’t as comforting as it should have been. He supposed because in this instance, he wasn’t busting up a terrorist cell or freeing prisoners of war. He was here on another man’s whim, protecting his honor for the sake of a historical trinket whose actual authenticity was still in question. There was no honor in this errand, no greater good to be won and, in this case, winning meant making sure somebody lost. Her.

  Time to mine for a little more information in that regard, Payne thought, telling himself it was strictly for professional reasons. So he’d be better armed and all that. It couldn’t possibly be because he was fascinated by her and wanted to know everything she’d willingly share about herself. That would be pathetic and Brian Atticus Payne was not, under any circumstances, pathetic.

  “What do you say we call a brief truce?”

  She cocked her head and regarded him through cautious eyes. “How brief?”

  “Dinner,” he replied. “Let’s just eat and be cordial. Do you think you can do that?”

  Her lips twitched. “If I put my mind to it.”

  Payne snorted. God, she was adorable.

  Emma released a small breath and relaxed back into her chair, seemingly at a loss now that she was supposed to be nice to him. She folded her hands primly in her lap and he watched her gaze dart around the dining room, evidently prepared to look at anything but him. She almost appeared…nervous, but that hardly fit the balls-to-the-wall little spitfire he’d come to know.

  “So,” he said, deciding to toss an old line into the conversational pond, “what made you decide to join the military?”

  That violet gaze finally found his and her lips slid into an endearing, self-deprecating smile. “A dare.”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek to hide his smile. “A dare?”

  She nodded. “Hardly the noble reason I’m sure you joined. You probably had grandiose notions about God and country, protecting our borders and freedoms.” She paused while Harry slid steaming plates filled with pot roast, potatoes, carrots and onions in front of them. “While I, on the other hand, let some bone-headed guy taunt me into it. I joined simply to prove a point.”

  Given his recent encounters with her, he could easily see that. “I take it you proved that point.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “I served eight years. What do you think?”

  He barely knew her and, oddly, wouldn’t expect anything less. “Eight years, eh?”

  “Yeah,” she confessed with a wistful sigh. “I would have re-upped, but my grandfather was dying and my mother needed me at home.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “Ah, well. You do what you’ve got to do, eh? Family comes first.”

  He wouldn’t know anything about that, because his had always been a dysfucktional mess, to borrow Guy’s
word for it. Still, it was reaffirming to see that some families were normal, or had achieved an approximation thereof, at any rate. An unexpected pang of wistfulness for that kind of bond washed over him—odd, when he thought he’d beaten that longing into submission years ago—but he managed to wrestle it away with images of his feuding, miserable parents.

  “So what’s next for you?” Payne asked. “Your mother had mentioned something about vet school to Guy.”

  She smiled. “She thought he was a potential boyfriend. She would have told him that I was out saving kittens from a drainage pipe if she’d thought it would have made me seem more attractive.”

  Payne felt a laugh break up in his throat. Finished eating, his pushed his plate away. “So she was lying?”

  “About vet school? No. I want to go. It’s Plan C.”

  Thoroughly intrigued, he leaned back in his chair and sipped his wine. “What happened to plans A and B?”

  “A was the military. It didn’t pan out.” A wry smile ripened her lips. “Right now, Plan B constitutes checking groceries at the Hefty Hog and picking up every bit of work I can until I can afford Plan C.” Her brow clouded. “My grandfather’s care was…a strain. I’m helping my mother out right now.”

  Payne stilled, digesting that little bit of information. So it was as bad as Guy had said, possibly even worse. Hastings’s timely offer had been a much-needed shot of financial breathing room, and the only thing standing between her and a better life was him. He’d known this, of course, but he hadn’t fully absorbed it until now. Something about her glib, resigned tone made the enormity of what she stood to lose if he won all the more stark and ugly.

  “Having an attack of nobility?” she drawled, utilizing that uncanny method she had of reading his thoughts when no one else, even his closest friends, had ever been able to do so.

  “No,” Payne lied, slightly perturbed.

  “Good. Don’t. It’s insulting.”

  “Insulting?”

  “That’s right.” She regarded him with cool amusement. “It implies that you actually don’t think I can find the pocketwatch before you do—that I am incapable—and that, Sir Brainiac, is insulting.”

  A smile meandered across his lips. “I take it we’re finished being cordial.”

  She grimaced adorably, then grinned. “Cordial’s boring. I’d much rather fight with you.”

  And he’d much rather take her to bed, but that was hardly polite dinner conversation, now was it? “I’d finished eating, anyway,” Payne said.

  “Good. Then I didn’t break any rules.”

  No, she just liked bending them shy of breaking them—just like Guy, Payne realized with an uneasy start. Now that was a comparison he should have made before now, he thought, not altogether sure he liked the similarity. Before he could articulate a response, she stood.

  “This wasn’t so bad,” she said. “Maybe we should do it again sometime.”

  “Back to being a smart-ass, I see,” Payne remarked, shooting her a long-suffering look as he stood.

  She batted her lashes at him. “It’s part of my charm.”

  “You should slap whoever told you that.”

  “Bite your tongue,” she admonished with a patently false frown. “I’d never hit my mother.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you up.”

  “There you go again. I think I know the way.”

  “I didn’t say you didn’t. I was being a gentleman,” he said through partially gritted teeth. Good Lord, she seemed determined to step on each and every one of his already shredded nerves.

  “Oh. Well, thank you, then. I wasn’t aware I was in the company of one.” She mounted the stairs, then turned and faced him at the top of the landing with an exaggerated frown. “Was that what you were being when you picked me up off the floor today and kissed me without permission?” she asked innocently. She fished out her key from her purse and started toward her door.

  Payne’s face burned. “Sorry. My mistake,” he said tightly. “I must have misinterpreted your tongue in my mouth.”

  She unlocked her door, but didn’t open it, then turned around and glared at him from between narrowed eyes. “It was a reflex.”

  A reflex, eh? Payne thought, goaded—drawn—into her personal space once more. He was being a bully again, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. She did that to him. Made him act first and think later.

  He backed her into her door, forcing her to look up at him, and braced his hands on either side of her head, effectively boxing her in. Her eyes widened and a wild pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. “Does that mean you’d reflexively kiss me back if I did it again?” he asked softly, lowering his head.

  He stopped a hairbreadth away from her mouth, could taste her sweet breath, but purposely didn’t close the distance between them, forcing her to make the call. Her gaze tangled with his—hot, hungry, desperate and torn—then drifted down to his lips once more. Another one of her sighs caressed his lips, then she whimpered, said, “To hell with it.” And then kissed him as if her very life depended on it.

  10

  I AM SUCH A MORON, Emma told herself as she wrapped her arms around Payne’s neck and her legs around his waist. In the nanosecond after she decided to accept his dare—because that had been what it was and the self-serving wretch knew she couldn’t resist, dammit—and had closed the paper-thin distance between their mouths, Payne had scooped her up and was feeding at her mouth as though she was a feast and he hadn’t eaten in…forever.

  Her back banged against the door, forcing a startled oomph from her mouth, which he promptly savored. With one powerful arm wrapped around her waist, she felt him fumble for the doorknob behind him. The latch gave way and he stumbled forward, his mouth never leaving hers. Utterly on fire for each other, he kicked the door shut with his foot and they bounced off walls and furniture like human pinballs at the mercy of the paddles in a machine. It was mindless and thrilling and every cell in her body rejoiced with the sheer madness of what was to come.

  Namely her.

  Emma clawed open his shirt, then trailed a desperate kiss down the side of his jaw and onto his neck. She wanted to taste him everywhere. The sweet salty tang of his skin exploded on her tongue, making her senses sing with wild, uncontrollable need.

  Payne’s big hands cupped her bottom, aligning her along the hard, jutting ridge of his arousal and he flexed against her, forcing a gasp of sheer delight out of her mouth. Her feminine muscles clenched, coating her folds with hot joy juice and her clit tingled with an achy heavy heat. She drew back long enough to tug her shirt over her head and cast it aside, and a second later, they were tumbling onto the bed. She felt it shift as he landed beside her. He was big and strong, a modern warrior, and for the moment, totally hers.

  She almost came, just thinking about it.

  Payne’s hot breath slipped over her ear, eliciting a shiver, then his tongue licked a hot path along the side of her neck. Her lids fluttered, drunk with sensation, with the scent of Man and arousal and a woodsy fragrance that was all his. Meanwhile, one hand had found her breast and was thumbing her budded nipple through the gauzy material of her bra.

  Desperate for the feel of him, Emma grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled it up and over his head. The bedside lamp illuminated broad, sleek shoulders and muscles upon muscles, the perfect male form, and for one heart-stopping moment all she could do was stare…and enjoy. Her palms found his chest, slid over each and every ridge and valley, savoring the feel of his warm supple skin.

  His dog tags dangled between them and a tattoo of an eagle with a ribbon and the inscription In Memory of Danny Boy trailing from its beak had been inked upon his chest, directly over his heart. Her own heart squeezed for him, suddenly remembering that he’d lost a friend a little over a year ago. Danny Levinson. She had a vague memory of curly auburn hair, green eyes and a mischievous smile. It must have been a lot harder for Payne than she realized, Emma thought, if he’d inked a permanen
t memorial onto his skin. She frowned, suddenly—

  “Don’t,” he said, then popped the front clasp of her bra.

  Emma shivered as her bound breasts suddenly broke free. “Don’t what?”

  “Analyze me.” A soft smile slid over his lips as he looked at her, making her belly all warm and muddled. “It’s insulting.”

  Emma chuckled, recognizing the phrase. Then his hot mouth closed upon her puckered nipple and all thoughts of his fallen friend and the touching tattoo fled from her mind.

  She could only feel.

  And it was amazing.

  He suckled first one breast and then the other. He’d take long deep pulls into his mouth, then lave the bud and whisper a breath across the wet peak, making her shiver. He might have been playing at her breasts, but she felt a corresponding tug deep in her womb, most particularly in the heart of her sex. It was as though a tiny thread connected the two, and by the time his talented fingers had slid down her belly, unbuttoned her jeans and forced them over her hips, Emma’s panties were drenched.

  She felt his fingers slide under the elastic, then part her curls and the first brush of his thumb over her clit had her arching up against him, a silent plea for more.

  He instantly accommodated.

  “Mmm,” he murmured. “So wet.”

  She pushed shamelessly against his fingers, bent forward and nipped at his shoulder, then kissed the spot she’d bitten. Gratifyingly, she felt his dick jump against her thigh and a satisfied smile slid across her lips. Emma quickly found the snap of his jeans and pulled the button from its closure. His zipper sang, opening his pants wider so that she could work them off his lean hips. Multitasking, she dragged his boxers right along with them. Payne lifted himself up, then shucked them off where they landed at the foot of the bed.

  Mercy.

  Brian Payne. Gloriously naked, grandly proportioned.

  He was huge and magnificent and so beautiful it made her chest ache and her belly tip in a wild delighted roll of sexual pleasure. He was a stallion, Emma thought, her mouth alternately drying then watering. She abruptly rolled him onto his back, licked a path over his nipples, suckled him and smiled against him as a startled hiss tore from his lips. She mapped his chest, her hands greedy for the feel of him—latent power, honed to perfection. Sweet God, she wanted him.