One Summer Night

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Emma grinned back at him. “Busy making the world less safe for confirmed bachelors like you.”

  His demeanor totally changed when it came time to greet Connie. He kept his distance and provided her with only a quick nod. “Connie.”

  “Jonathan. I almost didn’t recognize you. It’s been so long since I’ve seen your face in the news,” Connie replied, firing the first salvo after his abrupt greeting.

  Jonathan grinned again, but there was nothing friendly about it. “I should have known you were around when all the sharks migrated to safer waters.”

  “Professional courtesy,” she shot back quickly, downplaying any upset his comment might have caused.

  “Now, now, children. It’s time to play nice,” Emma said, pulling out her smoothest and most calming wedding planner voice to control the situation.

  “Of course. Sorry. Let me get back to the sauce,” Jonathan said. He returned to the stove where he stirred whatever was in the pot as capably as he had stirred up Connie’s emotions, Maggie thought.

  “Make yourselves at home. I’ll open up some wine,” Owen said and motioned to the big oak table that had been set for five.

  “Let me help,” she said and followed Owen back out to the living room and a dry bar at one side of the room.

  As he deftly opened a bottle, he whispered to her, “I thought this was a Pierce-Sinclair family feud.”

  Maggie chuckled and glanced back toward the kitchen, where Connie and Emma had taken seats side by side at the table and his brother was still at the stove, working at another pot as it boiled over. “Connie is family, so maybe she’s part of the feud by extension,” she quipped.

  “Or maybe there was more to those climbs up the vine than any of us knew,” Owen said, confirming what she had been suspecting all day.

  “Maybe,” she acknowledged and followed him back to the table. As Owen poured the wine for all of them, she grabbed one glass and walked over to Jonathan. When she handed him the wine, he smiled and glanced back toward her friends and his brother.

  “Sorry for starting off the night so badly, Maggie,” he said in tones low enough that only she could hear.

  “Never too late to set things right,” she responded and was surprised by the sad, almost wistful glance he shot her friend.

  “Some things just can’t be fixed,” he said dejectedly, and as the pan with the hot water began spitting and spilling over again, he took off the cover and started stirring it.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  He jerked his chin in the direction of a large colander sitting on the counter.

  “Put that in the sink for me.”

  It wasn’t really what she’d been asking, but she did as he requested, prompting hoots and claps from her friends.

  “Maggie’s getting domestic again,” Connie kidded.

  “Is that not her thing? She made the cheesecake, right?” Owen asked.

  Maggie tried to tune out the assorted tales with which her friends—maybe soon to be ex-friends—regaled Owen. He laughed out loud at one incident involving an egg in the microwave, but she had no time to defend herself, since Jonathan recruited her into the role of sous chef. He instructed her on how to drain the pasta he dumped into the colander so he could finish off the sauce. Once she was done with that, he thrust a bowl full of salad at her and asked her to take it to the table.

  “We’re eating family style,” he explained.

  She walked around the island separating the work area from the kitchen table and placed the bowl in a spot directly in front of Owen.

  “Having fun?” she challenged with a quirk of her eyebrow.

  His dimpled grin was her only answer before he said, “Sit down and let me help Jon finish up. After all, I did invite you.”

  She took a spot at Owen’s right and across from Emma, who was in the chair closest to where Owen’s brother would sit, providing a buffer between him and Connie.

  A second later, Jonathan came over with a big bowl of pasta covered with a rich meat sauce. Owen followed and placed a large gravy bowl with more sauce beside it as well as a plate with a hunk of Parmesan and a grater.

  “Smells delicious,” Emma said, and Connie grudgingly agreed with a reluctant grunt.

  Maggie eyeballed Owen as he sat beside her and waited as Jonathan took each person’s plate to spoon out some pasta. Afterward, he dolloped on more of the sauce and, with an expert’s ease, garnished the pasta with freshly grated Parmesan.

  While he did that, Owen served everyone salad and then went back to the work area before returning with a basket filled with warm Italian bread. He sat and raised his glass in a toast, and Maggie held her breath, not sure what might be an appropriate topic.

  “To friendships renewed,” he said, creating an obvious maelstrom of emotions around the table with those simple words.

  She clinked her glass against his, thinking that they were far more than friends and yet not. As his gaze met hers steadily, it occurred to her that building their friendship might be a better way to move along their relationship, since sex could only complicate matters.

  With a smile and subtle dip of her head, she acknowledged his toast and turned to scrutinize the others at the table. Emma and Connie merrily tapped glasses, as did Emma and Jonathan. But Jonathan and Connie were slow to move, obviously uneasy, until Jonathan’s gaze briefly met hers and he finally, reluctantly, touched his glass to Connie’s and repeated the toast. “To friendships renewed,” he said, clearly having taken their earlier discussion to heart.

  Maggie hoped whatever had happened between them could be fixed in time.

  “Mangia,” Jonathan shouted, and in a flurry of activity, everyone dug into the meal he’d prepared.

  The pasta was deliciously al dente while creamy at the same time. The freshly grated Parmesan was sharp against the sweetness of a Bolognese sauce packed with bits of pancetta, onion, and tender veal.

  “Amazing,” Maggie said at the same time Emma said, “I need this recipe. Where did you learn to cook like this?”

  Seemingly self-conscious about the praise, Jonathan shrugged and said, “I had to work with some Italian designers and spent about six weeks in Bologna. While I was there, I decided to take some cooking classes in my free time.”

  * * *

  Owen smiled as his brother went on to delight them with tales of that trip and then another business excursion as Maggie asked what he had just worked on. It pleased him to see the respect and admiration the women had for his little brother and how comfortable Jonathan quickly got with them and their praise. It was something they had both sorely lacked from their father. He’d always thought Jonathan’s daring experiments were a negative way of getting the attention he’d repeatedly lacked.

  Attention like he was getting from Maggie and her friends. It made him wonder if he, like his brother, wasn’t looking for attention in a wrong way.

  She must have sensed the change in his mood, since she laid her hand over his. The subtle gesture garnered awareness from every person at the table that made her quickly rip her hand away and deftly ask Jonathan another question that brought everyone’s focus back to his brother.

  The meal passed quickly, and before long, they were slicing up pieces of Maggie’s cheesecake. Owen took the first bite, and the flavors came alive in his mouth. The slightly tart but smooth sweetness of the cream cheese had just the right hint of vanilla. The tasty whipped cream melded well with the earthiness of the dark chocolate.

  “Not too shabby for someone who isn’t domestic,” he teased but with a big grin to let her know it was more than all right.

  “I think this is the first thing I’ve made that didn’t require having the poison control number handy,” she replied and dug into her own piece.

  He liked her self-deprecating humor. Liked the easy way she had around her friends and his b
rother. More than liked the sexy half glance she tossed his way and the little twist of her mouth promising laughter was on its way.

  Her eyes glimmered with crystal-blue light, a sure sign she was happy, which made him happy and created a nice, warm feeling in his heart.

  Dessert finished way too quickly, but it was still early, and he didn’t want the night to end just yet. Possibly not for a long time, since they all seemed to be having such a nice time. Even Connie had mellowed and appeared to be enjoying herself after the initial dustup with his brother.

  He glanced outside to where the low-lying fog from earlier that morning had dissipated. Even though there had been a brisk feel to the late-summer air all day, they could start up the fire pit he’d prepped earlier to stay warm.

  “If you ladies would like, I could get a fire started, and we could sit out on the lawn and have some after-dinner drinks.”

  “Or s’mores. We have all the fixin’s,” Jonathan said, earning immediate agreement from the three women.

  Obviously, his brother was more in tune with what these ladies liked, but Owen was fine with that. “I’ll go get the fire going,” he said but detoured to a nearby mudroom to snag some of the blankets they used on the beach just in case the fire couldn’t warm the night air enough. Outside, he tossed the blankets on the wooden Adirondack chairs and some chaise longues they’d hauled out of a storage area earlier in the day. He hoped that the paper he’d tucked in between the logs in the fire pit hadn’t gotten too damp in the couple of hours while they’d eaten. He struck a match and guarded it against the slight ocean breeze that had kicked up. Touched it to the newspaper, which immediately caught fire. Seconds later, the first little pop from the wood and glow along the edge of the log confirmed the fire had taken hold. He waited a few more minutes, and as the flames grew stronger, he tossed on a couple more pieces of wood.

  The rest of the crew—and he liked to think that they were a crew now—spilled out of the house, laughing and carrying the ingredients for s’mores. They placed the trays with the chocolate, graham crackers, marshmallows, and the long barbecue skewers on tables by the fire. Emma and Connie grabbed the Adirondack chairs. His brother plopped down onto the chaise longue next to them, leaving him and Maggie to sit side by side on the second.

  Maggie grabbed a skewer and two marshmallows and handed them to him.

  He tapped his chest and said, “Me hunt. Make fire. You cook.”

  “Neanderthal,” she teased back, grinning.

  She took back the skewer, shoved the marshmallows on, and set the skewer over the fire, but he took hold of her hand and drew the skewer back a little to the edges of the flames.

  “You want to melt them, not incinerate them,” he kidded.

  “Not domestic, remember?”

  He shook his head and chided her. “It’s a wonder you’ve survived this long,” he said but helped her cook the marshmallows and then assemble the treats.

  She took a bite, and squishy, gooey marshmallow and softened chocolate oozed from the sides of the graham cracker. She licked all around the edges, and his gut twisted as he imagined her licking him with as much gusto. As her gaze met his briefly, it was obvious she knew just where his thoughts were, since her blue eyes darkened to the color of the ocean at night, and she did a very deliberate lick all along one edge.

  His dick jumped to life in his jeans, and he leaned forward and took a bite from her s’more, making sure to brush his lips against her hand as he did so.

  “Very tasty,” he said and was extremely satisfied with the way her hand trembled as she popped the last bit of the treat into her mouth.

  “If you two are done with your foreplay over there, maybe you want to take a walk on the beach,” Jonathan called out, earning a forceful elbow from Connie that made him grunt with pain.

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Maggie said, flying to her feet and holding her hand out to him.

  Not quite how he had expected to get her alone on the beach, but he’d take it and kill his brother later. Hopefully much later.

  Popping to his feet, he grabbed the blanket off the longue, tucked it beneath his arm, and slipped his hand into Maggie’s.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Chapter 13

  Nothing about the night had gone quite the way Maggie had pictured it.

  Not Connie and Jonathan. Or how all of them had gotten along like a group of long-time friends, maybe because they were friends on some level, considering how many years they’d all known each other. Or how she and Owen were now strolling along the sand at the water’s edge, hand in hand. Silent. Tucked close to ward off the unseasonable chill of the night, their hips and shoulders brushing together as they moved. His presence was comforting, the night peaceful with no need to fill the silence.

  After a few minutes and a sharper gust of wind that bit into them with a chill made worse by the damp fog blanketing the shoreline, Owen led them back up toward the dunes that provided some protection from the breeze and from prying eyes. He spread out the blanket and sat. Urged her to rest between his outstretched legs, her back to his chest to protect her from what was left of the wind. He wrapped his arms around her and tucked his face against her cheek, creating delicious warmth from the contact.

  They were virtually alone, with only the muted shadows of a few distant beachgoers far down the beach at the water’s edge.

  Long moments passed until he said, “You know what they expect us to be doing, don’t you?”

  She peered at him from the corner of her eye. His features were neutral, giving away nothing of what he was thinking.

  “I do,” she said, but then plunged onward. “So do we do what they expect because they’re expecting it?”

  “In which case are we doing it because of that expectation, or do we really want to do it?” he finished for her, so in sync with her thoughts that it was almost downright scary.

  She turned in his arms because she wanted to see every aspect of his face for this discussion. Possibly a mistake. The kiss of moonlight made his hair seem almost impossibly black and brightened the shards of silver in his amazing eyes. The ephemeral light cast shadows on his features but chiseled the sharp edges of that very masculine and handsome face. Gilded the strong line of his lips, so irresistible. She ran her index finger across his upper lip and then down to the spot where she knew that damn irresistible dimple lurked.

  Meeting his gaze, she saw how his pupils had dilated with her caress and were now pools of a gunmetal hue. “Do you want to do it?”

  He cupped her jaw and skimmed his thumb across the ridge of her cheekbone. “What do you think?”

  If he had asked her last night or even earlier that night, before his toast, the answer would have been a resounding yes.

  Now, she wasn’t so sure it made sense, although she had no doubts that she wanted him physically. All the signs were there as he scraped his thumb across her cheek again. The little twist of desire between her legs. The heat racing across her body and the tightening of her nipples beneath the sexy lace bra she’d worn in anticipation of tonight. But wanting more than that?

  “I think we both want…” she began but faltered.

  “I want to touch you. Kiss you. I thought about it a lot since last night and this morning, but I think we need to take it slow, Mags,” he said.

  “Slow is always good,” she kidded, although she knew where he was going, and she was actually surprisingly on board with it.

  He grinned, and that enticing dimple emerged, prompting her to lean forward and drop a kiss there before shifting to lightly brush her lips all along the edges of his lips.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  She chuckled and repeated what he’d said to her that morning, which now seemed like ages ago. “If you can’t tell, I must not be doing it right.”

  He barked out a laugh so loud, she feare
d the others up on the lawn might hear. She covered his mouth with her hand and felt his smile there. Saw his amusement in the silvery glitter alive in his gaze.

  “You always surprise me, Mags,” he whispered.

  “Maybe because we don’t know each other well enough yet to take this to the next step.”

  One dark eyebrow quirked upward. “Which is?”

  She rolled her eyes and gave a rueful shake of her head. “I don’t think I need to spell it out for you, Owen.”

  “S-e-x,” he spelled out, and disappointment slammed into her because deep down, in some part of her, she’d been hoping it would be more than s-e-x. More like l-o-v-e.

  But maybe s-e-x was a first step to more. To the happily ever after that Tracy was always chasing, Connie didn’t have time for, and Emma just didn’t believe in. She was like none of her friends that way. She’d always thought it would happen if the right man came along. But for lots of reasons, she wasn’t sure Owen was Mr. Right.

  He must have sensed the change in her mood. He stroked his thumb across her cheek again, his touch both reassuring and sensual.

  “Let’s get to know each other better, Mags,” he said, and before she could agree, his lips were on hers again, coaxing a response. Gentle but demanding. Exploring the edges of her lips with quick little kisses and her bottom lip with a sexy nip that he soothed with his tongue.

  She huffed out a breath as her nipples tightened even more, and deep in her center, that intimate bite had her insides pulsing with need.

  “Owen,” she whispered and dug her hands into his thick hair, urging him close.

  * * *

  Owen opened his mouth as she licked the seam of his mouth with her tongue. Groaned as she darted and withdrew in a sexy tease.

  He ran his hands down her back to her buttocks and cupped them. Pulled her tight to him so that her center was poised right over the long, hard ridge of his erection.