Their food arrived and they headed out again. Five minutes later, they entered the local forest preserve.
“Um, I think I saw a sign that says this place is closed for the night,” Annie said.
“It is. That’s why I picked it. I want to be alone with you.”
In a forest preserve? Annie swallowed hard.
Alone they were, in a small grove with a handful of picnic tables. She saw them just before he doused the headlights.
“It’s, uh, majorly dark.”
“Don’t worry, your eyes will adjust.”
They did a bit as he opened the saddlebags and rummaged around. A three-quarter moon hung cockeyed in the star-filled sky and limned his every movement with silver. She stood still, her mouth watering at the smell of food as he set it on the nearest picnic table.
A match flared to life. Then a candle. Then two more candles.
He said, “I came prepared.”
For anything? she wondered, his voice stirring her.
And how prepared was she?
But maybe this was something she couldn’t prepare for…attraction, liking, lust. Maybe she just needed to let go and trust that, this time, with this man, things would work out all right.
Nate grouped the candles in the middle of the picnic table, then straddled the bench on the side opposite where she stood.
“Sit,” he said, ripping open the bags.
He didn’t have to invite her twice. Mouth watering at the released smells, Annie clambered onto the bench. Nate slid her a Polish and a chocolate malt, then ripped open the fries and onion rings between them. Annie bit into her Polish and smacked her lips.
“So you approve?”
“You were right. This is the best.”
“Would I offer you less?”
“Not so far,” she admitted.
“I like a woman who appreciates her food.”
“I like a man who appreciates a woman who appreciates her food.”
“Then we’re a match made in heaven.”
Were they?
His image shimmered in the dark beyond the veil of candlelight. He appeared elusive, mysterious, sexy, with his hair falling over his forehead and shadowing his eyes.
Who was Nate Bishop? she wondered.
Beneath his leathers beat the heart of a man she wished she knew better. And maybe she would.
Hope spread through Annie for the first time in years as she stuffed herself silly. She was feeling silly in general. Eating drive-in food in a darkened forest preserve with a guy who rode a Harley made her feel silly and young and free.
And good. She couldn’t ignore that she felt good about herself—better, in fact, than she had in years.
“So did you contact the exterminator?” Nate asked.
She stopped chewing long enough to echo, “The exterminator?”
“For the rat!”
He sounded a bit exasperated. And no wonder. Nate—Nathaniel—had given her the man’s card, which she’d stuffed into a pocket.
“No, not yet. I didn’t get a chance. Today was crazy,” she said, remembering the exhaustive hours and the delayed closing. “We had more customers on a workday than we normally do on a weekend.”
She saluted him with her malted and slurped some of the thick, cold chocolate through the straw.
“And the increase in customers would be due to…?”
“Word of what happened this morning must have spread like wildfire.”
“Did they just stop and stare or did they shop for real and spend money?”
“Oh, they shopped, all right. If we did such great business every day I would be a happy woman.”
“So money makes you happy?”
“Money doesn’t make anyone happy. It just gives us the means to do what we were meant to do with our lives. It’s how we use our lives that determines happiness.”
“Then someone trashing your place—figuratively speaking, that is—didn’t turn out to be all bad.”
Earlier, she’d had a similar thought about any publicity being good publicity, and yet Nate’s casually issued statement gave her pause.
Trying to shake the weird feeling she got from hearing his odd comment, Annie said, “There is no upside to someone’s being purposely destructive.”
“No, of course not.”
She pierced the veil of golden light to look at him more closely, but suddenly he seemed even more elusive. Like a stranger, in fact.
“I was just trying to put a positive spin on things.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, am a lawyer, after all.”
Swallowing a mouthful of food, she nearly choked. “Lawyer? You?”
This was the first she’d heard of his being anything but a commercial landlord. Nate a lawyer… Somehow, the picture didn’t fit. Nathaniel, maybe. But not her Nate!
“From a long line of lawyers, actually,” he admitted. “The family firm specializes in real estate, hence my interest in commercial properties.”
“So you practice law as well as own buildings?”
“Not anymore. With four commercial buildings to manage, and a few more on the horizon, I have enough on my plate to keep me busy.”
So the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree. Real estate law to real estate management wasn’t much of a leap. Suddenly too full to take another bite, Annie set down the last of her Polish.
“I take it you don’t approve?” he asked, his tone careful and very Nathanielesque.
“I’m just surprised.”
“So was my family when I left the business to my father, uncle and cousin, and struck out on my own. What they were doing was fine for them, but for me…I just wanted something a little less dry, a little more inventive…with a little less structure and a lot more freedom,” he explained.
Which made her feel better. Freedom she could understand. Now that she considered it, she really could see Nathaniel Bishop as a lawyer. But Nate was more freewheeling. Still, Nathaniel was her landlord….
Before she could dwell on the duality too deeply, he interrupted her thoughts. “So, does your family own a string of lingerie businesses?”
Annie snorted. “Hardly. Mom and Dad are both high school teachers in a conservative town in Indiana. Dad’s the drama teacher and coach and Mom’s an art teacher. She has always had her own studio, as well. She does some nice watercolors.”
They were nice, Annie thought, if not her style.
“So that’s where you get it.”
“Get what?”
“The flare for drama and artistic sense, of course. You’re the best of both of your parents.”
She grinned. “At the moment they don’t think so. They’re pretty shocked by my choice of business, I can tell you. Mom thought I should open a store selling art supplies, and Dad thought I should have gotten a nice safe job with a megacompany that would appreciate my talents and protect me.”
“But they didn’t disown you.”
“No, of course not. They love me. They just think I’ve made some poor choices with my life.”
“That’s got to be disappointing.”
“Well, we can’t have everyone’s approval.”
“You have mine,” he murmured.
His voice went all low and throaty, sending little swirls of excitement along her nerves. She wished she were clever enough to counter with a witty comment, but she just couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound nerdy.
He asked, “So, do you have siblings? Are they like you?”
“Actually, I’m an only child.”
“Ah, a true one-of-a-kind—I should have guessed.”
He was actually making her blush. She could feel the heat rising along her collar and spreading into her cheeks. She could feel it lower, as well. A worm of sensual discomfort wiggled its way to her middle, crawled through her belly and took up residence in all the fine places she could name and some that she couldn’t.
Just being with Nate made her feel special, and that was pretty scary stu
ff, because she didn’t really know him. He wasn’t at all like Nathaniel. She had known plenty of guys like her landlord and hadn’t been better for the experience, either. But maybe with Nate she could take a chance.
So when he rounded the table and sat on the bench next to her, and it rocked with his added weight, she grabbed on to him. A reflex action.
They were facing in opposite directions. His back was to the candles, which left his face in darkness. Though she couldn’t really see him, she could feel him. Sense him. And through that tenuous contact, she was caught.
“Annie…” he murmured, then slipped his right hand up to cup the side of her face. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’ve been thinking about doing this.”
This was reaching up to undo her ponytail, letting her hair hang loose over her shoulders. This was following up the action with a kiss long enough and deep enough and sensual enough to peel off her socks.
They were barely touching except where their sides met and where he tangled his hand in the back of her hair and where his mouth assaulted hers, but she felt her entire being come alive. Not just her body, not just the outer shell, but what was inside her.
“I knew you would be like this.”
“Like what?”
“Sweet…salty…luscious. Everything a man could desire.”
He sounded as if he’d thought about this, had anticipated it, and Annie wondered where she’d been while his attraction for her had been developing.
The intensity of Nate’s words were reflected in the kiss that followed. Hazy headed, Annie gave in to the moment and turned toward him so that their upper bodies pressed together. She couldn’t get close enough, and when he ended the kiss and deliberately set her away from him, she experienced an odd sense of loss.
Something deep in the night forest scolded her, but she couldn’t tell if it was bird or beast. And she didn’t want to listen to any warnings. She just wanted more.
Moonlight outlined Nate’s features as he stared into her face, as if he could read her in the near dark. He brushed her face with his fingertips and a thrill shot through her. She pressed her cheek into his hand. He cupped her face briefly before trailing his fingers lower.
A seductive breeze swept over them as he unzipped her jacket. The material fluttered like the wings of a butterfly as he worked it open very slowly, deliberately, as if waiting for her to object.
She didn’t.
Taking a shaky breath, she inhaled the sweet scent of new-mown grass as he undid the top button of her shirt. Then another. The locks of hair he’d freed fluttered around her face. His fingers brushed upward, snatched a long strand and trailed it down her throat, down the valley between her breasts.
The sensations that assaulted her also froze her for a moment.
His mouth followed, teeth nipping at her throat, tongue trailing between sensitive mounds of flesh. His fingers found a peak through her silk bra, and his thumb flicked it into a hard nub. She gasped and moaned. When he kept up a pulsing assault on her nipple, her body arched toward him, seeking greater intimacy.
“You’re mine, Annie,” he murmured. “You know that, don’t you?”
A haze of desire making her reckless, she almost agreed. She licked her lips, preparing to answer. But the words stuck in her throat.
Too fast, she thought. This was all too fast. She didn’t even know Nate. Nathaniel, she knew—or at least she thought she did—but not Nate.
Besides, words might commit her. Might commit her body to his.
How beautiful that would be at this moment, she rationalized, in this place of glorious nature, his flesh in hers, stroking hot and wet, mating as the night whispered over their naked bodies.
Precautions—she had none with her. She wasn’t physically prepared.
She wasn’t mentally ready.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he urged again, his lips working their way back up to hers.
“No condom,” she choked out instead.
“No problem. I have one.”
But the spell was broken. Her thinking about it had ended the fantasy, at least for the moment. The fires still burned, but something more urgent intruded. Common sense.
She didn’t know Nate, she reminded herself again. He hadn’t told her much about himself except that he wanted more freedom, something more inventive than the life he’d had before. That might be enough to attract her, but not to reassure her.
“Please,” she whispered as his mouth hovered over hers.
Groaning, he rolled away and thunked his back against the picnic table.
She glanced at him but, of course, couldn’t see his face.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
But as her hormones settled, her mood deflated, and she knew that she had made the right choice. If she’d had sex with Nate, she would feel even worse.
What was wrong with her? She’d nearly gotten herself into an untenable situation.
Again.
Everyone always said she was so sensible, so conservative—at least Nick and Helen thought so, when it came to men. She had thought so, too. But now, considering the things Nate stirred in her, she wasn’t feeling conservative at all. She was feeling the way she had years ago, when she’d made such a horrible fool of herself.
Fear seared her insides. Not the kind she’d felt earlier, or the night before, but the kind that had stayed with her for nearly a decade—bad memories that went back to her early college days.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course,” she lied. “I just don’t usually take things so fast.”
“Things?”
“Connections.”
“You sound like you’re making a telephone call.”
“That sounds so…so impersonal.”
“Exactly.”
She gave him a stricken look. “I didn’t mean to be insulting.” Sensing his amusement, she asked, “Are you trying to provoke me?”
“If only I could.”
Well, he’d succeeded in more ways than one, and she would bet that he knew it, too. He was making sport of something most men would get bent out of shape over.
But then he wasn’t most men, or he would be on the offensive.
Before she could think of a way to smooth things over, he asked, “Ready to go?”
She wasn’t ready. Not ready to leave him. But it was the smart thing to do, and he sounded resigned.
“Right. Rock has been alone all day. He’s probably been watching for me since dusk.”
“You think he knows that’s when you’re supposed to get home?”
“He’s a smart cat. And his internal clock is sharper than ours. He’ll be yelling about his dinner being late before I even get through the door.”
“Then let’s not keep him waiting any longer,” Nate said, sliding off the bench. “We wouldn’t want to get you in trouble with the male in your life.”
Annie gave him a quick look, but of course she couldn’t see his expression. Feeling weird—who wanted a pet to be the only male in her life?—she gathered up the discarded food wrappers, shoved them back in the paper bag and found the garbage can a few yards away. Nate doused the candle.
Then she was straddling the Harley again, pressed into Nate’s back. The forced closeness wouldn’t let her forget his touch or what she really wanted from him. Heat surrounded her all the way home.
But by the time Nate got her to her door, he seemed cool and collected, while she felt hot and frazzled. The wind in his face seemed to have worked wonders for him.
Annie fought the temptation to invite him in. Instead, she said, “Thanks for dinner and the ride home.”
“You don’t need me to check under your bed tonight?”
She needed to check him out in her bed—thoroughly—not that she was going to say so.
“I think I’ve got it covered,” she croaked, taking a step back.
Before she could turn to unlock her door, Nate swooped down on her, clench
ed her waist with an arm of steel and kissed her breathless.
Just as suddenly, he let her go, and she stood there, dazed, wondering what came next.
“I needed one for the road,” he said softly. “Now get inside while the going is good.”
Knees melting under her, she got the door open. Rock wasn’t standing there waiting for her as expected. He sat by the bed, looking as if he were ready to disappear beneath it once more.
“Rock, honey, come here,” she coaxed.
But the cat stayed where he was, meowing a complaint.
She turned for a last look at Nate, who’d already mounted up.
“Tomorrow,” he said, before starting the engine.
And she couldn’t tell if that was a promise or a threat.
5
“DO I HAVE TO SPELL it out for you?” asked a petulant voice. “I…want…Annie!”
Annie winced as she heard the demand ring out from the shop into her office, where she was downloading a couple of new orders from the Website.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hardy,” Gloria said, “but Ms. Wilder is busy.”
“Too busy for a good customer?”
“It’s not that, Mr. Hardy. You’re one of our best customers. We’ve just had so much business in the past few days that she’s behind with her paperwork.”
“If paperwork is more important than a good customer…”
“Oh, no, never. But it would be my pleasure to—”
He cut her off. “I see I shall have to take my business elsewhere.”
The statement popped Annie out of her chair and into the store, where the irritated man was glaring at her assistant manager. Normally he was a little pasty, but today he was red-faced, with the color spreading up into his thinning, pale blond hairline.
“Why, Mr. Hardy,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him, “how nice to see you, and so soon!”
Clive Hardy had taken up a full hour of her time barely a week before, and here he was again, no doubt ready to spend another several hundred dollars on her merchandise—but, it seemed, only if she waited on him personally. He’d been around a half-dozen times in the past two months. She was reluctant to lose such a customer even if he was a bit…well, eccentric, as she’d told Helen. Eccentric but harmless.
Sheer Pleasure Page 5