“No, no. There is beauty there, too, of course, but one doesn’t surpass the other.” As a matter of fact, the wine region of her small homeland was very similar to this. But she and Jack had left Ardenia when she was fourteen and he was twenty-one and some of its fabled splendor had faded from her mind due to time and circumstance. “And when it comes to growing up” - she affected the Southern drawl she’d been steeped in during high school - “did y’all forget I spent so many formative years in Georgia?”
That caused him to crack a smile as he slung an arm around her neck and drew her close enough to kiss the top of her head. “It’s one of my life’s ambitions to see you shelling peanuts in cowboy boots.”
“Cowboy boots and nothing else?” She held her breath.
Emerson dropped his hold on her to put inches of space between them. “It’s not time for that kind of talk.”
Why? she wanted to demand. It wasn’t that they hadn’t kissed and touched during their courtship, but once they were engaged, it seemed as if Emerson had put up a barrier between them. It had only seemed to grow stronger and higher as their wedding date drew closer. Her fingers clutched the wine stopper like she wanted to clutch Emerson himself. He was the man she loved, the only man she would ever love, while he looked a million miles away again.
“What is it?” she asked, desperation making her voice a little breathless. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
He didn’t look at her. “I wonder if you’ll enjoy Washington, DC. It’s a long way away.” His gaze found her face. “And you like Edenville, don’t you?”
Emerson loved Edenville, that was certain. He’d been based here all his life, though his family had a residence in San Francisco, an hour away, and another in the nation’s capital, where his mother had been a U.S. senator for nearly two terms. It was why he’d make an excellent representative for the area - and why she was sure he would be elected to congress in the next election, just as he and his mother planned. After that … well, when Lois Platt retired from the senate some years hence, it would surprise no one if her son stepped into her shoes.
Roxy slipped her hand through Emerson’s arm and hugged it close to her. “I will love wherever you are.”
He pulled away and took a few steps from her. “My mother wants me to hold a press conference before the rehearsal dinner.”
“What?” His distance was more alarming than his words. “Why would she want you to do that?”
“Why do you think?” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks and tilted his head skyward. “Local boy marries a beautiful royal princess … your mother and father will be here -”
“Without scepters and ermine robes, I assure you.” Though, to be honest, it was hard to predict how Queen Rayette would present herself. Roxy made a mental note to extract a promise that her mother would attend all California events crownless. She could envision the pouts already.
“Still,” Emerson said. “The press will eat it up and voters will get a kick out of the glamorous aspect of it.”
Roxy lifted her arms from her sides. In brown wool pants, boots, and a cream-colored cashmere turtleneck, the most glamorous aspect of her was the diamond solitaire on her left ring finger. “I’m no movie star.”
Emerson turned to face her, his expression set in serious lines again. “Are you worried about the attention? About someone seeing you and wanting to -”
“That isn’t an issue!” The mention of it sent her heart thumping against her chest. “What happened was a long time ago and can never happen again. I have no doubts about that.”
“I won’t let that one past event send me scurrying like a mouse to a hole ever again.” Her hand slid into her pants pocket and she worried the wine stopper. “I lost ten years of feeling free, but I’m over that now. Completely.”
He studied her face. “What if I had never met you?” he asked quietly. “What
if you hadn’t braved your fears and gone to the first party, practically, in your entire life?”
She shrugged. Maybe you’d be marrying Stevie Baci at the end of the month. Local boy with local girl, and the voters wouldn’t need any trappings of glamour to be ecstatic about that. But Roxy had gone to the party and the person Emerson was marrying was her.
And she loved him so very much.
He subsided into silence again. Maybe if she had more experience with men, she’d have a better chance of reaching him and what was at the root of what troubled him. But though she had three half brothers as well as Jack, she was much younger than all four. When she left Ardenia for her grandfather’s farm in Georgia, she’d gone to an all-girl’s Catholic high school and from there to a women’s college in California’s Bay Area.
The only man who’d gained her trust beyond her family members was Emerson, starting from that very first night. She’d talked and laughed like any young woman and felt safe and secure, as if a light had been lit inside her, one that couldn’t be extinguished no matter how dark the night. How close the walls. Though they hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, she’d been certain she’d see him again.
Maybe she was more like her father than she’d thought. He’d glimpsed her mother across a marble parquet floor and instantly decided she’d be his queen. Emerson had handed her a glass of sour and semi-warm white wine from the charity event’s cash bar and she’d seen herself in a wedding veil with a glass of something chilled and sparkly.
She’d fallen in love, just like that.
And now she had this terrible feeling she was losing him.
Her fingers wrapped around the wine stopper, she stepped closer to her fiance. Emerson
He turned to her, and his handsome face arrested her all over again. He was hers! He should be hers forever! But with Stevie Baci practically standing between them and the altar, Roxy wasn’t certain that Emerson was as certain as she.
Another woman would demand answers or reassurance or both. But Roxy Parini wasn’t that strong. When she was fourteen years old, she’d stepped into the sunlight for the first time in five days and told the policeman, “Call me Rocki.” It had seemed such a steady and strong nickname. It hadn’t stuck. She’d been back to Roxy by the time she’d reached home.
That statement of bravado hadn’t been fulfilled until she’d talked with Emerson, laughed with Emerson, managed to meet Emerson in a coffee shop and agreed to go out with him that night on their first date.
Her first date ever.
Where was that courage now?
He glanced at his watch. “I have meetings. I’d better get back.”
“All right,” she said and watched him unlock his car and climb in.
“You’ll get a ride with Jack?” he asked. At her nod, he closed the door. Then his window rolled down. His frown was back.
“Yes?” she forced herself to ask again, hoping, praying, wishing that this time he’d tell her what had come between them.
“Does your brother have a thing for Stevie?” he demanded.
Roxy shrugged helplessly. As he drove off, she could only hope that Emerson hadn’t just actually, finally, articulated what was bothering him - because if it was that, she didn’t want to know.
Then He Kissed Me
5
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The click of the door as Emerson and Roxy left the office made Stevie jump. Jack Parini was still in the room - standing just behind her desk chair - and the walls seemed to close around her when the only certain getaway was blocked by a soundproof wooden panel.
Who would rescue her if she called for help?
And she needed help, because her palm throbbed like a new tattoo where Jack had pen-inked his number onto her skin.
She scrambled to her feet just as he shifted, preventing her from escaping the narrow space between the work surface and the wall at her back. Her pulse picked up and a flush rose to the surface of her flesh. It felt like cowardice not to look him in the face, but her
gaze dropped anyway, skittering along his black sweater, past his worn jeans, to the toes of his polished black loafers.
“Excuse me,” she said to them, her voice tight.
They stepped to the side, and she brushed past Jack. Her shoulder grazed his chest and icy prickles shot down her arm. The sensation seized the breath in her lungs and she had to force her feet to keep moving.
“The Platts are having a dinner party Wednesday night,” he said. “I need a date.”
She barely registered the words, so intent she was on putting more space between them. “You’ll find one.”
“Stevie.” His voice was low. Soft. “I want you.”
The breath halted again in her throat, stuck just as surely as the bottom of her boots to the polished wood floor. Though she was still six feet from the door, her legs wouldn’t move. I want you.
Damn it. Damn him. To salvage her pride, she’d agreed to playing event coordinator, but not plaything for the princess bride’s brother. Yet he enjoyed unsteadying her, and at that realization, annoyance overcame breathlessness. “You’re not supposed to say that,” she told him.
“What?”
“Don’t even try the innocent act. You know what. ‘I want you,’ you said.”
“I do.” There was a laugh in his voice. “I have to do this dinner thing Wednesday night and I heard the Platts are a stuffy, staid group. We can liven things up with the sparks we set off every time we touch. It’ll be fun.”
Again with the fun. Not to mention the sparks. This was so wrong on so many levels that she didn’t know where to begin. Exasperated, she gazed at the shelving in front of her, staring without seeing the family photographs and the collection of vintage wedding cake toppers that had been her mother’s.
“You look like her,” Jack suddenly said.
She glanced at him in surprise. “Who?”
“Your mom.” Two strides, and he was standing beside her. His hand indicated the photo of the little girls. “That’s the three of you and her, right?”
“At our annual grape stomp. At harvest every year our father would insist we carry on the Baci family tradition, despite Mom’s protests.” The memory made her smile for a moment, then it died. “She didn’t like the mess, and Jules and Allie, dutiful daughters, would follow directions and stay as stain-free as possible. While I…”
Not your, new shirt, Stevie.
How could you lose another, button?
Stephania, you’ll be the death of me.
She cleared her throat. “My mother claimed I must be a changeling or that her real middle daughter was stolen by gypsies. She despaired that the tomboy left in her place might never develop any feminine qualities.”
“Obviously she was teasing,” he replied. “You look just like her. And as for feminine qualities…” His hand slid over the back of her hair to settle on the nape of her neck. “We both know you’re female to the core.”
At his touch, her skin broke out in a rash of goose bumps - and that core he mentioned? It went hot. Melting inside, she stiffened her knees, trying to throw off her ridiculous, helpless response. “I - I don’t look like her,” she mumbled, hardly knowing what she was saying.
He applied gentle pressure on her nape, compelling her to face the photograph again. “Of course you do.”
And Stevie saw it now, when she looked at her mother instead of at that figure-in-action that had been her little-girl self. The same triangular face, smooth hair, long legs. Her mother was regarding her daughters with an indulgent smile-no, she was focused on Stevie, the changeling, the child left behind by gypsies, with that fond expression.
“Wow,” she said, glancing back at Jack. “I…” The rest of her thoughts disintegrated as his hand left her neck and one finger traced the length of her spine. Her body felt like a pincushion, points of sensation spreading from her vertebrae to her scalp, toes, and fingertips.
Again, there was the melting heat below her belly and an empty ache between her legs.
God. His hand lingered at the small of her back, and that empty place clenched. “You shouldn’t…” She had to swallow and start over. “You shouldn’t touch me like that.”
“Because it turns you on?”
Heat flooded her again, even as she whirled away from him. She sent out a stern glare. “Come on. Don’t talk that way.”
There was a lazy smile in his eyes. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
She crossed her arms over her chest just in case the physical evidence might show through her bra and thin sweater. “Is this a European thing?” she demanded. “Do Ardenians feel free to talk about … to discuss…”
“Sexual arousal, sexual attraction, good old-fashioned lust?”
She made a sound that was half despair, half impatience.
He laughed.
“It’s not funny!”
“That’s what you say,” he answered. “But a lot of the world considers Americans’ squeamishness about sexual matters amusing. Must be those Puritan roots.”
“Not jumping into bed with every man I meet doesn’t make me squeamish.”
“I was only referring to talking about sex, mon anqe, not actually doing it.” He shrugged, a smooth roll of his shoulders that made her feel a gauche fifteen. “But I understand your conflicts. When I visited my grandfather in Georgia, I spent a lot of time with good Southern Baptist girls.”
“No dancing, no drinking, no making out?” she guessed.
He stepped near again, the knuckles of one hand edging the curve of her cheek. “No, mon anqe.” Humor threaded his voice again. “Just a lot of praying about indulging in all of the above come Sunday morning.”
Meaning those good Southern Baptist girls hadn’t resisted him. And despite her New Year’s anti-man vow and his obvious playboy expertise, part of her didn’t want to, either. But she didn’t really know the man, and…
His thumb brushed across her bottom lip. His lazy eyes were on her face, his half smile revealing he was totally in control - and that he enjoyed toying with her. Over his shoulder, Stevie glimpsed the photograph on the shelf and she recalled that wild little girl she’d been, the one who’d gone into new adventures feet first.
Perhaps her mistake in handling Jack Parini had been in hesitating to assert her own will.
And wants.
Without a flicker of warning, she went on tiptoe and kissed the prince.
It was more flash than sparks.
More explosion than exploration.
He grunted, a sound of surprise, but he recovered quickly. His hands were at her waist, biting her flesh and then yanking her close. His body was as hot as hers, his mouth just as insistent as he slanted his head to take the kiss deeper, harder, more fiery.
Their mouths parted under the pressure, but she moved her tongue first, determined to keep the upper hand. As their tongues met, dueled, one of his big palms slid down her hip to clutch the curve of her butt. She shuddered against his hard chest and slid her fingers through his hair, tugging at the silky strands.
He bit her tongue.
She gasped, lifting her mouth to take in air, then retaliated with a nip to his chin. His head dipped and he had her mouth again, his free hand holding her jaw so she was captive to the onslaught of his kiss.
As if she wanted to get free.
But she wouldn’t be at his mercy, either. Her fingers raced down his sweater and she burrowed beneath the soft wool at the small of his back to touch sleek skin. He shuddered, and the flesh burned against the caress of her palm.
Her heart thumped in her chest as she continued trading greedy kiss for greedy kiss. Then he grasped her shoulders and thrust her from him, keeping her at arm’s length. His lips were wet.
“You play dirty,” he said, his voice hoarse, a glint of irritation in his eyes.
She shook her head, trying to manage her breathing. “You’re just mad that I didn’t let it be your game.” Every tomboy knew she was destined to lose if she let the boys control the field and s
et all the rules.
His gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth. “Shall we call a time-out, then?”
She was tingling all over, her breasts felt swollen, and that emptiness between her legs was a keen ache she’d never experienced before. Though her nature was far more brash than cautious, those feminine instincts her mother had despaired of fostering in her were right now waving their aprons and muttering warnings like junior high health teachers.
They told her she should back away, get out of his arms, cross her legs.
She looked Jack Parini coolly in the eye. “Hell if I’ll cry uncle,” she said, ignoring all that fluttering to move back into his arms.
His hands slid down her back. He gripped her hips and tilted them against him, and she could feel his thick erection pressing her belly. She wiggled against it until he groaned and tightened his fingers to restrict her movement. Frustrated by his unspoken direction, she rose on tiptoe and wrapped an arm around his hips, pulling him tighter to her. Their mouths met.
A laugh, sexy and deep, rumbled in his chest. “What did I start?” he said as they again came up for air.
Afire, she thought, dazed by the sudden influx of oxygen. A conflagration. It was overwhelming, maybe, just a little, but she wasn’t overwhelmed. The brazen Baci sister hadn’t backed down, and it had saved her from … from
But Jack Parini was no threat to her.
Never, she promised herself with a fierce frown.
He laughed again, as if he could read her mind and had his own opinion on the subject. That made her annoyed enough to kiss him again, because when kissing him, the upper hand was hers
Until he changed it up. What before had been hot and consuming, he altered now, halting the trade of heavy tongue thrusts to trail his mouth along her jaw and down her neck.
He licked her pulse point.
Her body tensed, hovering on a tight tremor like a tuning fork. His mouth turned even more tender, and she backed up, trying to retreat. He followed, until he had her against the edge of the desk.
Then He Kissed Me Page 6