“I was fine with it. I understood what my mother needed to be happy.”
His brow arched, but he didn’t say anything. But when he turned away, she could tell he didn’t believe her.
“Either way,” he said, “while I’m certainly not one to cast stones, even I know that Lila hasn’t been interested in dolls for years, and I can’t imagine this bra is appropriate for any eleven-year-old girl. A thirty-year-old hooker, maybe.”
Whatever she had felt before evaporated, and instinctively she defended her father. “Unfortunately for me,” she said tightly, “I hadn’t learned the memo system of communication that you and Lila have mastered.”
Max only tilted his head and smiled. That heart-melting, knee-fusing curve of lips that made her heart beat faster.
“Touché,” he offered.
The phone rang, then rang again.
“Are you going to answer that?” he asked when it rang a third time and she didn’t make a move.
She stared at it in horror, then forced a smile. “Nope. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.”
Her voice whirled through the room, tinny and cheerful, followed by a beep.
“Vivi, this is Velda from Velda’s Salon. I’m sorry to have to call, but the checks you wrote to us last week have bounced. I’m sure it’s a mistake, but if you could, please give me a ring.”
The answer machine beeped to an end.
“Checks? As in plural?” Max inquired. “To one beauty shop?”
Almost instantly, the phone started ringing again.
“I take it you aren’t going to answer that one either.”
“Can’t see why I should.”
“Miss Stansfield, this is Lionel Neesan from the El Paso Tribune. I’m writing a piece on your father and wondered if you might know where he is.”
Dread raced down her spine, then she nearly jumped when Max came up behind her.
“You never did say where your father was.”
“I told you, he’s traveling.”
“You didn’t tell me where.”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“You don’t like to answer. My guess is that you don’t know where he is.”
His tone caught in her mind. A mix of sympathy and pity. Her thoughts hardened defensively. She didn’t want anyone’s pity, least of all his.
“My father is an adult,” she stated. “He doesn’t have to leave me an itinerary. He’ll call.”
Max turned her around to face him, his strong hands gentle. Her heart started that slow, steady rise to awareness. He took her in, his gaze lowering to the pulse in her neck. He didn’t even have to touch her for her nipples to tighten.
She felt seared by his heat, her nerve endings raw. She felt the need to lean close and forget imperfect desserts and flowered push-up bras, fiancés who wanted other women and fathers who didn’t bother to mention where they had gone. And that was ridiculous. She didn’t need Max or anyone. She had always managed on her own.
And what was all this emotion that she kept feeling?
“I better check the mail,” she whispered past the lump in her throat.
He didn’t move out of her way, and she brushed against him when she headed for the front door, the feel of his eyes burning into her back.
Don’t think about Max, she told herself, breathing deeply, counting, when she came to the row of metal mailboxes lined up along a single wall. Sliding her key into the slot, she nodded with determination as she pulled open the little door. Instantly, bright white business envelopes slipped out to land at her feet.
One by one, she picked them up, then stared at each. Wanting to run away as far as she could, she shook her head and returned inside.
“What are those?” Max asked when he saw the pile in her hands.
Instead of answering, she opened each one, her mood growing bleaker by the second. When she was done, she forced a smile. “Surprise! More bills,” she said.
“Hell. Let me see.”
“Max, I do not need your help. I’m a grown woman, and I’m going to make sense of the situation on my own.”
She waited for him to make some damning remark, but it never came.
Crossing to her, he tugged the envelopes away, his blue eyes locking with hers. “Sometimes we all need help, Vivienne.”
Her pulse slowed. Perhaps it was panic being pushed back, or perhaps it was the novel experience of suddenly not feeling alone.
“I’m still happy to lend you the money—”
“Absolutely not,” she whispered.
He smiled at her, then took her hand and guided her to the tiny kitchen table. This was a different man who sat down next to her, the impatience left behind as if he had wiped it off his feet at the door. This was a man who solved problems all day long in a business world far more complicated than hers.
With a caring that surprised her, he brushed a strand of hair from her face. “If you won’t take the money, then at least let me help you determine what needs to be done.”
After she had spent days refusing to give in to confusion and betrayal, his simple words made her feel something she hardly recognized. Sweet and soft. And cared for. It was a sensation that drew her in and made her want to run in the opposite direction at the same time.
Over the next half hour, they went through each of her accounts, her bank and credit card statements, and a whole stack of wedding bills her father had insisted he would pay. Now creditors were sending them to her.
After that, Max and Vivi calculated just how much was owed, and determined what she could cancel and what companies would give her refunds on wedding items she hadn’t yet received. All the while she prayed the end result wouldn’t be so bad.
Between the information she supplied and the phone calls she made, Max tallied her debts and balances. The final result was not as bad as she feared. It was worse.
A vise clamped around her chest.
“You spent five hundred and fifty dollars at Velda’s Salon?” he asked, stunned. “No wonder she called. How many times can you get your hair done in a week?”
Breathe in, breathe out.
“I do my own hair.”
“Then what are you doing at Velda’s Salon?”
“I pay for women with difficulties to get their hair cut and styled, to get makeovers to help them get a fresh start.” She forced herself to be calm. “Sort of like projects,” she tried to enthuse.
Max’s blue-eyed gaze bored into her, and for half a second she was certain she saw his hard stance softening. But then he spoke. “You need to stop worrying about other people’s problems and start worrying about your own. Look at this. Three hundred and ninety-five dollars charged at Nicks and Nacks. What kind of a doodad costs that kind of money?”
She wondered if she should put her head between her knees. “Doodad?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Or maybe breathe into a paper bag. She’d heard that worked. “I’m not, I was just marveling that not only is there a word like doodad, but that you would use it. Have you mentioned it to Lila? She’s making a list of interesting words.”
“Stop marveling at Lila and the English language and do a little marveling at the sheer amount of money you spend. You could run a small country on your budget. Good God, look at this. A two-thousand-dollar country club bill—in the bar. That’s an awful lot of champagne cocktails.”
Insult piled onto panic.
“What do you do there every month?” he demanded.
She felt dizzy. She didn’t do anything there. It was her father who spent time at the country club. Why would his bills come to her?
As much as she had not wanted to admit it, the week before her father had left town, he had been distracted. He hadn’t looked good. His last wife had left him six months before, and Vivi had assumed his usual post-divorce prowl was keeping him up late.
“Last I checked,” she said, searching for the calm, flip voice that had always served her well, “
you weren’t my keeper.”
“No, but you have every creditor in town, not to mention every bill collector within a six-hundred-mile radius, breathing down your neck. And believe me, as much as I’d like to think of myself as a generous employer, you aren’t making close to what it will take to pay off these debts.”
She stared at bright cherry red pillows on the no doubt rented sofa, and it was all she could do not to hum. She wanted to be alone. She wanted Max to go away.
After long, silent seconds, he said, “Okay, this is the deal.”
He proceeded to give it to her straight, telling her how long it would take to pay off the obligations based on minimum payments. She’d be old and haggard by the time that happened.
Pressing her eyes closed, she held back a groan. “You mentioned that I have weekends off. Maybe I could get a second job at the Taco Bell. I saw they were hiring.”
“You need more than a second job. You need a miracle.”
She swallowed hard, swallowing back emotion, searching for flip. “Maybe I’ll apply at the nearest street corner and see what kind of business I can drum up.”
She felt the shift in Max, the censure riddling through the room.
“You know I’m joking,” she said with a wan laugh.
But Max still stared at her.
Vivi rolled her eyes. “I mean really, do I look like the type who could even get business at a street corner?”
“Yes.”
Straightening in surprise, she said, “It’s all the pink, isn’t it? Or the short skirts?”
“When are you going to start being serious, Vivienne?” he asked sternly.
But right then, serious wasn’t going to help. Serious didn’t change anything that mattered. Serious would come soon enough when she woke up alone at two in the morning, thinking of all that was wrong, wondering how the world as she knew it could be crumbling, her perceptions false. She had believed in her father. She had believed Grady loved her. She had never guessed he thought her a cold fish in bed. She hated to think that something so superficial bothered her the most.
That’s when she got mad, breaking yet another of her rules, the sensation rocking through her, foreign and unfamiliar. She got mad at herself. At Grady. She felt like flying away from this mess and herself. She wanted to be someone different. She wanted to let loose, be wild, live like there was no tomorrow. She wanted to forget about being perfect, because look where it had gotten her. Wildness slid through her veins like champagne bubbles, pushing her on.
She smiled through lowered lashes, then moved closer to Max, walking her fingers up the buttons on his shirt. “I am serious.”
Max went still. “This is not the time to play games, Vivienne.”
She pressed her hand against his chest. “What kind of games did you have in mind?”
“How about the Opposite Side of the Room game.”
“How do you play?”
“You stay on the opposite side of the room from me.”
A sizzle of power slid through her at the thought that she was making this strong man uncomfortable. Biting her lip, she skimmed her hand lower. “I never would have taken you for a prude.”
Just when her fingers got to his belt buckle, he grabbed her hand. The heat that had been on simmer flared bright and hot.
Suddenly the game turned dangerous. Respectable, impatient Max Landry disappeared and she found a man no woman should toy with.
He took her hand away from his belt and placed it back on his chest. “You want to play, sweetness?”
The “sweetness” part was a really bad sign, and she knew she was in over her head. Every ounce of her wildness disappeared like a black cat in the night. She cursed her stupidity, then cursed herself for starting something that she was a fool ever to have believed she could control.
“Now, Max,” she said, her voice not so steady.
He didn’t respond, only pulled her close, reeling her in, his grip like a manacle on her wrist, until their bodies touched. The sensation was a shock, the press of his hard thighs against hers, the heat of him burning through the layers of their clothes.
She tried to tug free.
“Not quite so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot,” he said, his breath brushing against her ear as he nipped the delicate shell.
“Other foot?” She tried to concentrate. “Interesting choice of words, given my love of shoes. In fact”—she summoned up a look of outrage—“can you believe how irresponsible I was for buying those leopard mules at Shoe Haven?” She gave an exaggerated scoff.
“Too late for distractions,” he said, his voice sending shivers along her skin, making her tremble.
Then he leaned down and captured her mouth with his own. He kissed her. Softly. Exceedingly soft. His arms came around her.
She knew it was foolish to give in, crazy to melt against his hard frame, playing a game that neither of them could win. But when his palm brushed against the tip of her breast, she managed only a feeble protest.
“Let’s talk about a budget,” she murmured. “Fiscal responsibility.” Her fingers curled into his shirt. “Plus columns, minus columns.” She inhaled, breathing him in. “Just the kind of serious, no-fun topic that I imagine you love.”
The other side of his mouth crooked up, pulling his lips into a full smile. “Or not.”
Then he lifted her up in his arms.
Chapter Eleven
He wanted her.
He wanted her with a driving need that pulsed through his body like a flame he couldn’t douse. He wanted to bend her over the small kitchen table, gently bite her neck, and drive his hard shaft deep inside her heated center.
But that’s all he wanted. The sex. Nothing more.
Vivienne Stansfield was complicated and spoiled, and he wished he knew how to purge her from his mind. But her body turned his control to putty, and he alternately wanted to damn her and fuck her at the same time.
His body reeled with the desire, every nerve ending pounding and alive. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted a woman so badly. Perhaps never.
He was a man who had sex often, with many women, careful to protect them and himself. He had sex with a single-minded detachment. Giving pleasure, gaining release. But he never got emotionally involved.
Vivienne was different. She made his skin grow tight across his abdomen and his cock pulse with a driving ache. She made him want to consume her, peel the petals away with his tongue until she screamed out and trembled with longing.
But he had promised himself he wouldn’t give in to the need to take her, to sink deep. Because need of any kind, he had learned long ago, made him weak.
But now he felt his control slipping. The vulnerability in her eyes, the way she tried not to want him but did, undercut his always ironclad ability to remain detached.
Like a dying man, he gave in and kissed her again, lowering her body as his lips grazed hers. Feeling greedy for more of her, he cupped her hips and moved her against his erection. Her soft moan sent fire rushing through him.
Gently he pressed her back against the wall and pushed one breast high, his thumb finding her nipple beneath the silk of her blouse.
Her pale gray eyes turned the color of a turbulent sky. Her hands came up, clasping his arms, undoing him even more. He could feel her uncertainty, her hesitancy, as if she hardly understood what she was experiencing. But he knew. He recognized the craving inside her. Another reminder of how she wanted him, but was afraid of that desire, sent a bolt of heat through him. It was all he could do not to push her to the floor and lick the sweet center of her until she realized what her body could feel.
But he knew that would frighten her. It was too much, too fast, and he understood that this woman needed to be taught about the power of her body.
The hot Indian summer sun of October lowered on the horizon. Vivienne felt the hard definition of Max beneath his shirt, making her feel tiny and fragile. She could lose herself in him, she realized. She could lose
herself in the strength of his body. Like a drug, his touch made the world seem distant. She realized that this man didn’t see her as too perfect, someone to put on a pedestal. And when his fingers began to work the buttons of her blouse, it was all she could do not to rip the material off herself.
His lips trailed back to her ear, his breath sending shivers through her body. He undid the fastenings with an ease that should have given her pause. But the sensation of air hitting skin overwhelmed her thoughts when her blouse fell open.
He coaxed her lips apart, his tongue twining with hers. When she groaned, he pulled her even closer.
“You taste as sweet as I remembered,” he murmured.
“You’ve been thinking of this?”
A deep, guttural chuckle rumbled in his chest. “You know I have.”
“What else have you been thinking?”
“Hush, Vivienne. Stop talking,” he commanded, brushing a kiss across her mouth. “I want you.”
The simple, straightforward statement brought an electric current of feeling curling low in her belly. Then his hand slipped under the fluttering edges of her blouse and he found bare skin. She could feel the change in him. She could feel his desire, and she didn’t want to say no.
In all the time she had dated Grady, he had never made her feel desired. Important? Yes.
But this was different. This was a wild yearning that burned in Max’s eyes, a heat that said louder than words what he wanted from her. Sex. Hard, demanding sex. It didn’t matter that she was Vivienne Stansfield. In fact, if anything held him back, it was that.
She focused on Max, saw his dark gaze glittering as it raked over her, nothing polite—only an animal desire. But when he glanced up and their eyes met, she saw something else. Something deeper that made her think that this heat would burn him up.
The thought surprised her, and her mind narrowed against the idea. She was the one in danger of being hurt by giving in to a man who clearly didn’t like her.
Her instinct was to race back to the world she was used to, the one that despite its flaws she knew how to manage and survive in. She didn’t need this complication in her life added to her laundry list of complications. But somehow she couldn’t make reason penetrate the hunger that filled her, pushing her farther away from who she was. She no longer cared why he was there. She wanted to feel his touch.
The Wedding Diaries Page 10