by Nora Roberts
Her hips pumped like pistons, urging him on, driving him closer to his own jagged brink. He hammered himself into her, holding onto the edge by his fingertips. Watching her, watching her while the need for release clawed viciously at his gut. Then her body went taut, a drawn bow of shock and pleasure.
It was her scream he swallowed as he let himself fall.
HE COULDN’T possibly move. Cam was certain that if someone held a gun to his head at that moment, he would simply lie there and take the bullet. At least he’d die a satisfied man.
He couldn’t think of a better place to be than stretched out over Anna’s curvy body, with his face buried in her hair. And if he stayed there long enough, he might get his second wind.
The music had changed again. When his mind cleared enough for him to tune in to it, he recognized Paul Simon’s clever twists of lyrics and melody. He nearly drifted off as he was invited to call the singer Al.
“If you fall asleep on top of me, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
He drummed up the energy to smile. “I’m not going to sleep. I’m thinking about making love to you again.”
“Oh.” She stroked her hands down his back to his hips. “Are you?”
“Yeah. Just give me a couple of minutes.”
“I’d be glad to. If I could breathe.”
“Oh.” Lazily he propped himself on his elbows and looked down at her. “Sorry.”
She only grinned. “No, you’re not. You’re smug. But so am I, so that’s okay.”
“It was great sex.”
“It was great sex,” she agreed. “Now I’m going to finish dinner. We’ll need fuel if we’re going to try that again.”
Both delighted and baffled, he shook his head. “You’re a fascinating woman, Anna. No games, no pretenses. Looking the way you do, you could have men jumping through hoops.”
She gave him a little shove so she could wiggle free. “What makes you think I haven’t? You’re exactly where I wanted you, aren’t you?” Smiling, she rose and walked naked to the closet.
“That’s a hell of a body you’ve got there, Miz Spinelli.”
She glanced over her shoulder as she wrapped herself in a short red robe. “Same to you, Quinn.”
She headed out to the kitchen, humming to herself as she turned the heat back on under the sauce, filled a pot with water for the pasta. Lord, it was lovely, she thought, to feel so loose, so limber, so liberated. However reckless it might be for her to take Cameron Quinn as a lover, the results were worth every risk.
He’d made her aware of every inch of her body, and every inch of his. He made her feel painfully alive. And best of all, she mused as she took out the bread she wanted to toast lightly, he seemed to understand her.
It was one thing to be wanted by a man, to be satisfied by a man. But it warmed her heart to be liked by the man who desired her.
She turned and picked up her wine just as Cam came out of the bedroom. He’d pulled on his slacks but hadn’t bothered to hook them. Anna sipped slowly while she studied him over the rim of her glass. Broad shoulders, hard chest, the waist that tapered to narrow hips and long legs. Oh, yes, he had a terrific body.
And for now it was all hers.
She lifted a pepper from the tray and held it up to his lips.
“It’s got bite,” Cam said as the heat filled his mouth.
“Um-hmm. I like . . . bite.” She picked up his wine and handed it to him. “Hungry?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“It won’t be long.” And because she recognized the look in his eye, she slipped around the counter to stir her sauce. “The water’s nearly on the boil.”
“You know what they say about a watched pot,” he began and started around the counter after her. It was the sketch on the refrigerator that distracted him from his half-formed plan to wrestle her to the kitchen floor. “Hey, that looks just like Foolish.”
“It is Foolish. Seth drew it.”
“Get out!” He hooked a thumb in his pocket as he took a closer study. “Really? It’s damn good, isn’t it? I didn’t know the kid could draw.”
“You would, if you spent more time with him.”
“I spend time with him every day,” Cam muttered. “He doesn’t tell me dick.” Cam didn’t know where the vague annoyance had come from, but he didn’t care for it. “How’d you get this out of him?”
“I asked,” she said simply, and slid linguini into the boiling water.
Cam shifted on his feet. “Look, I’m doing the best I can with the kid.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. I just think you’ll do better—with a little more practice and a little more effort.”
She pushed her hair back. She hadn’t meant to get into this. Her relationship with Cam was supposed to have two separate compartments, without their contents getting mixed up together. “You’re doing a good job. I mean that. But you’ve got a long way to go, Cam, in gaining his trust, his affection. Giving your own. He’s an obligation you’re fulfilling, and that’s admirable. But he’s also a young boy. He needs love. You have feelings for him. I’ve seen them.” She smiled over at him. “You just don’t know what to do with them yet.”
Cam scowled at the sketch. “So now I’m supposed to talk to him about drawing dogs?”
Anna sighed, then turned to frame Cam’s face in her hands. “Just talk to him. You’re a good man with a good heart. The rest will come.”
Annoyed again, he gripped her wrists. He couldn’t have said why the quiet understanding in her voice, the amused compassion in her eyes made him nervous. “I’m not a good man.” His grip tightened just enough to make her eyes narrow. “I’m selfish, impatient. I go for the thrills because that’s what suits me. Paying your debts doesn’t have anything to do with having a good heart. I’m a son of a bitch, and I like it that way.”
She merely arched a brow. “It’s always wise to know yourself.”
He felt a little flutter of panic in his throat and ignored it. “I’ll probably hurt you before we’re done.”
Anna tilted her head. “Maybe I’ll hurt you first. Willing to risk it?”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or swear and ended up pulling her into his arms for a smoldering kiss. “Let’s eat in bed.”
“That was the plan,” she told him.
THE PASTA WAS cold by the time they got to it, but that didn’t stop them from eating ravenously.
They sat cross-legged on her bed, knees bumping, and ate in the glow of the half dozen candles she’d lighted. Cam shoveled in linguini and closed his eyes in pure sensory pleasure. “Goddamn, this is good.”
Anna wound pasta expertly around her fork and bit. “You should taste my lasagna.”
“I’m counting on it.” Relaxed and lazy, he broke a piece of the crusty bread she’d put into a wicker basket and handed half to her.
Her bedroom, he’d noted, was different from the rest of the apartment. Here she hadn’t gone for the practical, for the streamlined. The bed itself was a wide pool covered in soft rose sheets and a slick satin duvet in rich bronze. The headboard was a romantic arch of wrought iron, curvy and frivolous and plumped now with a dozen fat, colorful pillows.
The dresser he pegged as an antique, a heavy old piece of mahogany refinished to a rosy gleam. It was covered with pretty little bottles and bowls and a silver-backed brush. The mirror over it was a long oval.
There was a mahogany lady’s vanity with a skirted stool and glinting brass handles. For some reason he’d always found that particular type of furniture incredibly sexy.
A copper urn was filled with tall, fussy flowers, the walls were crowded with art, and the windows framed in the same rich bronze as the spread.
This, he thought idly, was Anna’s room. The rest of the apartment was still Miz Spinelli’s. The practical and the sensual. Both suited her.
He reached over the side of the bed to the floor, where he’d put the bottle of wine. He topped off her glass.
“Trying
to get me drunk?”
He flashed a grin at her. Her hair was tangled, the robe loose enough to have one shoulder curving free. Her big dark eyes seemed to laugh at both of them. “Don’t have to—but it might be interesting anyway.”
She smiled, shrugged and drank. “Why don’t you tell me about your day?”
“Today?” He gave a mock shudder. “Nightmare time.”
“Really.” She twirled more pasta, fed it to him. “Details.”
“Shopping. Shoes. Hideous.” When she laughed, he felt the smile split his face. God, she had a great laugh. “I made Ethan and Phillip go with me. No way I was facing that alone. We had to practically handcuff the kid to get him to go. You’d think I was fitting him for a straitjacket instead of new high-tops.”
“Too many men don’t appreciate the joys, challenges, and nuances of shopping.”
“Next time, you go. Anyway, I had my eye on this building on the waterfront. We checked it out before we headed to the mall. It’ll do the job.”
“What job?”
“The business. Boat building.”
Anna set her fork down. “You’re serious about that.”
“Dead serious. The place’ll do. It needs some work, but the rent’s in line—especially since we’re strong-arming the landlord into paying for most of the basic repairs.”
“You want to build boats.”
“It’ll get me out of the house, keep me off the streets.” When she didn’t smile back, he shrugged his shoulder. “Yeah, I think I could get into it. For now, anyway. We’ll do this one for the client Ethan’s already got lined up, see how it goes from there.”
“I take it you signed a lease.”
“That’s right. Why putz around?”
“Some might say caution, consideration, details.”
“I leave the caution and consideration to Ethan, the details to Phillip. If it doesn’t work, all we’ve lost is a few bucks and a little time.”
Odd how that prickly temper suited him, she mused. It went so well with those dark, damn-it-all looks. “And if it does work,” she added. “Have you thought of that?”
“What do you mean?”
“If it works, you’ll have taken on another commitment. It’s getting to be a habit.” She laughed now, at the expression of annoyance and surprise on his face. “It’s going to be fun to ask you how you feel about all this in six months or so.” She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. “How about some dessert?”
The nagging worry the word “commitment” had brought on faded back as her lips rubbed over his. “What-cha got?”
“Cannoli,” she told him as she set their plates on the floor.
“Sounds good.”
“Or—” Watching him, she unbelted her robe, let it slide off her shoulders. “Me.”
“Sounds better,” he said and let her pull him to her.
IT WAS JUST after three when Seth heard the car pull into the drive. He’d been asleep but having dreams. Bad ones, where he was back in one of those smelly rooms where the walls were stained and thinner than his drawing paper, and every sound carried through them.
Sex noises—grunts and groans and creaking mattresses—his mother’s nasty laugh when she was coked up. It made him sweat, having those dreams. Sometimes she would come in to where he was trying to find comfort and sleep on the musty sofa. If her mood was good, she would laugh and give him smothering hugs, waking him out of a fitful sleep into the smells and sounds of the world she’d dragged him into.
If her mood was bad, she would curse and slap and often end up sitting on the floor crying wildly.
Either way made for one more miserable night.
But worse, hundreds of times worse, was when one of the men she’d taken to bed slipped out, crept across the cramped room, and touched him.
It hadn’t happened often, and waking up screaming and swinging drove them off. But the fear lived inside him like a red-hot demon. He’d learned to sleep on the floor behind the sofa whenever she had a man around.
But this time Seth hadn’t waked from nightmare to worse. He fought his way out of the sweaty dream and found himself on clean sheets, with a snoring puppy curled beside him.
He cried a little, because he was alone and there was no one to see. Then he snuggled closer to Foolish, comforted by the soft fur and steady heartbeat. The sound of the car coming in stopped him from drifting back to sleep.
His first thought was cops! They’d come to get him, to haul him away. Then he told himself, even as his heart jumped up to pound in his throat, that he was being a baby. Still, he crept out of bed, padded silently to the window to look.
He had a hiding place picked out if one was needed.
It was the ’Vette. Seth told himself he’d have recognized the sound of its engine if he hadn’t been half asleep. He saw Cam get out, heard the soft, cheerful whistling.
Been out poking at some woman, Seth decided with a sneer. Grown-ups were so predictable. When he remembered that Cam was supposed to have dinner with the social worker that night, his eyes went wide, his jaw dropped.
Man, oh, man, he thought. Cam was bouncing on Miss Spinelli. That was so . . . weird. So weird, he realized he didn’t know how he felt about it. One thing for sure, he realized as Cam whistled his way to the door—Cam felt just fine and dandy about it.
When he heard the front door close, he snuck to his own bedroom door. He wanted to get a quick peek, but at the sound of feet coming up the stairs he dived back into bed. Just in case.
The puppy whimpered, began to stir, and Seth slammed his eyes shut as the door opened.
When the footsteps came slowly, quietly toward the bed, his heart began to pound in his chest. What would he do? he thought in a sick panic. God, what could he do? Foolish’s tail began to thump on the bed as Seth cringed and waited for the worst.
“Guess you think this is a pretty good deal, lazing around half the day, getting your belly filled, having a nice soft bed at night,” Cam murmured.
His voice was slightly slurred from lack of sleep, but to Seth it sounded like drugs or liquor. He struggled to keep his breathing slow and steady while his heartbeat pounded like a jackhammer against his ribs, in his head.
“Yeah, you fell into roses, didn’t you? And didn’t have to do a thing to earn it. Goofy-looking dog.” Seth nearly blinked, realizing Cam was speaking to Foolish and not him. “It’ll be his problem, won’t it, when you’re grown and take up more of the bed than he does.”
Cautious, Seth slitted his eyes open just enough so he could see through his lashes. He saw Cam’s hand come down, give Foolish a quick, careless stroke. Then the tangled sheets and blanket came up, smoothed over his shoulders. That same hand gave Seth’s head a quick and careless stroke.
When the door closed again, Seth waited thirty full seconds before daring to open his eyes. He looked straight into Foolish’s face. The pup seemed to be grinning at him as though they’d gotten away with something. Grinning back, Seth draped an arm around the pup’s pudgy body.
“I guess it is a pretty good deal, huh, boy?” he whispered.
In agreement, Foolish licked Seth’s face, then yawning hugely, settled down to sleep again.
This time, when Seth dropped off to sleep, there were no sweaty dreams to haunt him.
Thirteen
“YOU’RE AWFULLY damn happy these days.”
Cam acknowledged Phillip’s pithy comment with a shrug and kept on whistling while he worked. They were making decent progress on what Cam jokingly thought of as their shipyard. It was hard, sweaty, filthy work.
And every time Cam compared it to laundry detail, he praised God.
Though what windows weren’t broken were open wide, the air still carried a vague chemical scent. At Phillip’s insistence they’d bought a batch of insect bombs and blasted the place with killing fog. When it cleared, the death toll was heavy. It took nearly a half a day just to clear out the corpses.
Replacement windows were slated to be del
ivered that day. Claremont had bitched bitterly about the expense—despite the deal he got on them because his brother-in-law managed the lumber company in Cambridge and had sold them to him at cost. He’d been only slightly mollified that the Quinns would rip out the old windows and install the new ones, saving him from hiring laborers.
If the fact that the improvements to the building would spike the potential resale value pleased him, he kept that small delight to himself.
They’d pried or punched out rotted boards and hauled them outside to a steadily growing pile of discards. The metal banister of the stairs leading up to the overhead loft was rusted through, so they yanked it out. Claremont was able to finesse the proper permits, so they were tossing up a couple of walls to close in what would be a bathroom.
Because Cam considered this kind of work a hobby, one he enjoyed, and he came home most nights to a clean house and had a pretty woman willing to tango with him whenever time and circumstances permitted, he figured he had a right to be happy.
Hell, the kid had even been doing his homework—most of the time. He had turned in the much-despised essay and was halfway through his probation without incident.
Cam figured his luck had been running hot and strong for the past couple of weeks.
As far as Phillip was concerned, it had been the worst two weeks of his life. He had barely spent any time in his apartment, had lost his favorite pair of Magli loafers to the gnawing puppy teeth of Foolish, hadn’t seen the inside of a single four-star restaurant, and hadn’t so much as sniffed a woman.
Unless he counted Mrs. Wilson at the supermarket, and he damn well didn’t.
Instead, he was handling and juggling and bouncing details that no one else so much as thought about, getting blisters on his hands swinging a hammer, and spending his evenings wondering what had happened to life as he’d known it.
The fact that he knew Cam was getting regular sex fried the hell out of him.