by Lori Foster
He must’ve gotten the joke because he chuckled at her sarcasm. She had more where that came from. Not that she was bitter. For the most part, she’d come to terms with her lot in life, but every so often anger would give her a hard shove and every step she’d taken forward, figuratively and literally, was ripped out from under her.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” he said, his gaze brimming with humor.
She liked a man who knew how to laugh. A lot. And she just might learn to like Burnett Dupree a whole lot more than was wise for her continued her self-preservation.
The bad thing about not throwing him out of her house after he’d practically stormed his way into her kitchen was that she could get used to seeing those get-lost-in-me blue eyes across the table from her on a regular basis. Better yet, a few inches above her. While she was flat on her back with her legs wrapped around his hips.
The food on her plate suddenly held a great deal of interest when she realized exactly how long it had been since she’d last had sex. She missed sex. Missed the closeness of a man’s body, the touching, the kissing, the lovemaking. She kept her eyes averted and hoped she hadn’t had one of those hungry, eat-you-alive looks showing on the good side of her face.
She pushed those thoughts out of her head, almost, and concentrated on slathering a square of butter over her corn on the cob. “I design lingerie and exercise wear for women,” she said, finally looking at him and answering his question.
He cocked a single eyebrow upward, making him look even sexier. Damn him.
“You any good?” he asked.
She ignored the rudeness of his question because of the genuine interest in his eyes and that heart-stopping smile. How was she supposed to think straight when he was smiling at her like that? Actually smiling and not shrinking away in horror. Plus he showed honest-to-goodness interest in what she had to say. No way could she ignore that.
“Of course I am.” Not that she was arrogant, but her designs were selling out more and more quickly each time she supplied the French Quarter boutique with fresh inventory. She had high hopes for her new lingerie line, too.
“So, why New Orleans?” he asked her before pulling the meat from the shell and sprinkling it with hot sauce.
“It’s not New York.” She held the head, then twisted the tail on a crawfish, exposing the meat. “And it’s home.” A decision that had come easily once she’d secured the services of one of the best plastic surgeons in the country who specialized in reconstruction and craniofacial surgery with an office right there in New Orleans. “What brings you down south?”
“It’s not New York,” he mimicked, then popped the meat into his mouth.
New Orleans wasn’t just miles away from New York geographically but culturally as well. The city wasn’t all about Mardi Gras beads and topless college students hanging from the famed wrought-iron balconies. They didn’t call New Orleans the Big Easy for nothing, because there was an ease about the city, a sense of belonging that no other city in the world offered to anyone who graced her presence—if they were smart enough to accept what the grand lady had to offer.
“And it’s home,” he added as he reached for the salt.
“I had no idea the infamous Burnett Dupree hailed from the Crescent City. Where ’bouts?”
“Not far enough away from the city to stay out of trouble,” he said, then added a sheepish grin. “Misspent youth.”
“I longed for a misspent youth,” she told him.
“Let me guess,” he said slowly while eyeing her critically. “Honor student. Probably valedictorian or at least salutatorian. Head cheerleader. Prom queen.”
“You’re forgetting head of the yearbook committee and cocaptain of the debate team.”
“Overachieve much?”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. The sound came out a little rusty and felt just a tad awkward, but after such a long time of nonuse, what did she expect?
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “My older sister did it all, so I thought I had to as well.”
“Competitive?”
“Ruthlessly.” She aimed for slyness, but figured her smile was crooked at best on a good day. “So, how misspent was this misspent youth of yours?”
“Terribly,” he said, his grin turning positively wicked.
Suddenly all she could think about was sex. Not the gentle, tender kind, but the kind of sex that was raw and hot and sensual. The kind of sex that would leave them spent and breathless with their hearts pounding out of their chest.
She let out a long, uneven breath. “How do you do that?” she asked, frowning. Annoyance crept into her voice, and she blamed him. He was the one responsible for making her think of the things that had been missing in her life since the accident.
He ripped apart another crawdad and drizzled it with Tabasco. “Do what?”
Her frown deepened at his totally innocent expression. Maybe she was to blame for going down that very sexy road, not him. Still, mistrust had her narrowing her eyes.
Was he flirting with her? She appreciated the thought, but really? Not likely.
“Never mind,” she said, then snagged the little bottle of hot sauce and doused the crawfish she’d just freed from its shell.
His innocent expression turned to one of concern. “Did I do something wrong?”
She regarded him as she popped a crawfish into her mouth, then shook her head. He hadn’t. Not really. She was what was wrong. Her. And her broken body.
“Why are you flirting with me?” she asked. Her head and heart couldn’t chance another rejection even if he did appear interested in her. The accident had taken away not only her looks but her confidence as well.
“Because I flnd you attractive.”
That was a statement she’d thought she’d never hear again in her lifetime. Nor one that she believed, not because she was scarred but because of the source of the flirtatious compliment.
“Coming from the playboy playwright? Yeah, that’s reliable.” She forced the laughter, hoping to take the sting out of her cynicism. “Is there a woman you don’t find attractive?”
His grin turned sheepish, and she thought he looked adorably embarrassed.
“Actually, yes,” he admitted. “There have been a few.”
“That many, huh?”
“Several, now that I think about it.”
“Oooh,” she said before taking a quick sip of juice. “A whole seven or eight? Why, I think I might actually be impressed. Apparently you are more discriminatory than your online critics implied.”
“My reputation may precede me, but like I said, don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
Despite her skepticism, she was enjoying herself a whole lot more than she should. In truth, she decided she didn’t much care. Although he made a great verbal sparring partner, she was in no danger of falling for her über-sexy tenant. The man was a known womanizer. Yet on the other hand, with a guy like him, a woman always knew where she stood.
Sex. That’s what the Burnett Duprees of the world were all about. And if she were being honest, she couldn’t deny a certain appeal in such a situation. No strings, no commitments, no drama. Just . . . sex.
A half hour later, their meal finished, Maya stood to clear the table. Burnett joined her, and before she knew it the leftovers were tucked in the fridge and the dishwasher loaded. For as much as she hated their midnight rendezvous to end, she did still need to complete her nightly exercise ritual.
She leaned back against the tiled counter and folded her arms in front of her. “Thank you for dinner,” she said. “It was nice to share a meal with an actual human.”
“The pleasure was all mine.” His mouth quirked as he dried his hands on the dish towel hanging from the hook next to the sink. “Perhaps we can do this again.”
A statement, not a question. Interesting, she thought. Presumptuous, too, as if he expected her to agree. She was half inclined to turn him down flat, but she was nothing if not a south
erner. Manners dictated that she return the favor. Common sense told her to run as far away from him as humanly possible. The man was a lethal combination of good ol’ boy Southern charm and New York sophistication. And impossible to resist.
“Are you free for Sunday supper?” she asked, ignoring the satisfied glint in his sexy-as-sin blue eyes. “I can fry a mean chicken.”
“I’d be honored,” he answered, then took a step in her direction, narrowing the already too short distance between them. Before she could react, he reached toward her and reverently cupped her scarred cheek in his warm palm.
Heaven help her, she wanted to crawl away and hide somewhere safe. She should protect herself from the exact thing she craved—the promise of more.
“Say around four?” Her voice warbled, making her come off nervous and pathetic, not at all like a woman who’d seen a thing or two in her lifetime.
“Four sounds perfect,” he said, his own voice a soft, sexy, and velvety caress of sound that ignited her imagination.
With every ounce of strength she possessed, she fought the strong urge to turn her face more fully into the warmth of his palm. The gentleness of his touch overwhelmed her, and she nearly wept. When he bent down and brushed his lips lightly over hers in a feathery kiss, she closed her eyes and for that one second where his lips rested against hers, she pretended she wasn’t damaged goods.
He pulled back and when she opened her eyes to look at him, she didn’t know what to say. “Thank you” seemed just a tad too sad, so she searched for something a little less needy. “Care to join me for a swim?”
“I’d love to, but I didn’t pack any trunks,” he said.
He did that on purpose, she thought. Used his deep, lazy drawl to put the image of him naked and wet and hard in her mind for the sole purpose of making her crazy with desire. She knew what this was all about, this impossible wanting she’d been suffering with since the minute she’d laid eyes on him.
Depravity, that’s what. Making her crave him. She couldn’t help herself, either. Twenty-four months without sex did that to a girl.
“Perhaps another time,” she said politely before she did something really desperate, like start rubbing up against him like the cat in heat she was obviously channeling. Because as of right this second, abstinence was a virtue she no longer wished to practice.
six
In the two weeks since that night he’d barged into Maya’s kitchen with a bag full of crawfish and a whole lot of attitude, Burnett had learned a lot about his sexy landlady. First and foremost, despite her previous career, Maya Pomeroy was in no way, shape, or form a good-time girl like so many of her former contemporaries. She might scoff at the idea of marriage, but he suspected her stance more of a defense mechanism courtesy of a shallow boyfriend who’d taken one look at her post-accident and disappeared. No doubt the scarring she was so conscious of was the culprit, because now that he knew her better, he didn’t need Google to peg her as a white-picket-fence, lots-of-babies, forever kind of girl.
He usually avoided her kind like he avoided bad reviews. But something had changed because he couldn’t seem to get enough of being in Maya’s company. Sobriety, maybe? Perhaps, he thought. Or perhaps the change had nothing to do with his previous booze-soaked existence and everything to do with the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about for more than a minute.
Not that he needed an excuse to see her. They’d spent practically every night together having supper and talking into the late evening hours before she’d excuse herself shortly before midnight. He’d return to his apartment where he pretended to write but instead would watch her from the window as she worked out in the pool. He thought about joining her. He ached to join her, to slip into the cool water with her and make her his in the most elemental way possible, but after that first night, she hadn’t issued him another invitation.
Better that she hadn’t, he thought. Why invite trouble? With a capital T trouble. The kind that changed ideals and preconceived notions.
Tonight would be no different from the rest of the time they’d spent together, he thought, as he helped her clear the supper dishes while she put the leftovers into a plastic container and tucked them into the fridge. As she bent over, he caught sight of her sweet backside encased in a pair of soft denim capris and his testosterone gave him a hard shove. The urge to smooth his hands over her rump had his fingers tingling.
God help him, he couldn’t take it any longer. He’d been a gentleman for two long weeks. Screw chivalry. He wanted Maya. Gallantry be damned.
She said something he couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears. Straightening, she closed the refrigerator and turned to face him. Confusion lit her gaze as he took a determined step, then two, toward her.
“Enough already,” he said roughly. He took hold of her hand and gave a gentle tug, pulling her to him. The space between them evaporated as she easily slid into his embrace. His hand moved to the curve of her throat where he pressed his thumb against the pulse wildly beating there. He waited, and when she didn’t protest he lowered his head and kissed her.
Her lips were smooth, yet firm beneath his. She tasted of ripe strawberries from the dessert she’d made. Despite her tentative response, she kissed him back. No, not tentative, he thought, cautious. Protective. From who? Him?
He lifted his head and looked down into her wide eyed gaze. “Relax,” he told her, then dipped his head to nuzzle the smooth skin of her neck. “Enjoy.”
“Burnett, I don’t . . . Oooh . . .” She moaned when he laved the spot right below her ear. Tipping her head to the side, she gave him better access and he took advantage of the invitation to trail hot kisses down her throat, to her chest, to the V of her blouse where the gentle slope of her breasts taunted him.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispered when he dipped his tongue between her breasts, then lightly nipped her skin. A tremor passed through her and he smiled against her skin. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman actually trembled in his arms.
“The worst,” he agreed, but that didn’t stop his hands from sliding down her back to cup her bottom. God, how he’d fantasized about touching her, the feel of her skin against his hands, the weight of her body on his as she rode him hard.
“We probably shouldn’t,” she murmured, shifting her weight so she was pressed against him. “We do have a signed contract.”
“I promise not to sue.”
She made a sound that bordered on laughter. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s just a kiss.”
“Right.” He flicked his tongue over the swell of her breast. “A kiss is all this is,” he said, seconds before his mouth settled over hers. A kiss was all it ever would be.
Right?
Maya closed her eyes and the room spun when Burnett deepened the kiss. His tongue swept over hers, teasing her, tasting her until she was convinced she’d slid into a whirlpool of pleasure. She clung to his wide shoulders for support, convinced if she let go, she’d drown.
From a kiss.
From a hot, openmouthed kiss that had her toes curling and her insides melting.
In her opinion, it wasn’t a matter of if she made love with Burnett but when. The sooner the better, as far as she was concerned.
Quick! she thought. Get him naked before he comes to his senses and realizes he’s making love to a freak.
She’d boarded the Pity Party Express tonight and despite the heat and desire unfurling through her, she couldn’t shake off the melancholy. Not only had it been a while since she’d been with a man, in all honesty she hadn’t thought any man would ever find her attractive again. She was scarred. The skin on the right side of her face and neck so twisted and marred that Poe, the darling of the runway, was unrecognizable. Then there were the other physical issues she dealt with, like the constant pain from the muscle and nerve damage to her right side. All that was left was Maya, a scarred, unknown clothing designer trying to scratch out a worthwhile existence while living in a rambling old house far
too big for one person.
She squeezed her eyes tighter, determined to shove the self-loathing aside and enjoy what time she had with Burnett. He didn’t belong in New Orleans, and he sure as hell didn’t belong in a furnished apartment over her garage. Burnett Dupree was the Prince of Broadway and his days of slumming would be over soon. Once the play he was working on was finished, he’d be on his way back to where he belonged. Exactly when that would be, she was afraid to even ask.
She shoved her fingers into his thick, black as midnight hair. The low moan deep in his throat emboldened her. She clung to him, pressing her body against his, crushing her breasts to his wide chest, imprinting the feel of him on her memory so she could have this moment forever in her mind where it would never end. His hands slid up her back and settled on her shoulders, and before she could beg him to take her right there on the kitchen table, he abruptly ended the kiss and gently set her away from him. With every ounce of willpower she possessed, she kept her moan of protest silent.
He dragged his hand through his hair, his bluer than sin eyes the color of purple irises in spring and still blazing with desire. For her.
“Was it something I said?” she asked in an attempt at levity she was nowhere near feeling.
“We should say good night.”
Stunned, she stared at him. The rejection ripped through her. Like a javelin to her heart, she ached. She hurt so badly she wanted to throw something. Directly at Burnett’s head. The first time she decides to make an effort to experience what she’d been missing out on for two long years, and she ends up rejected, her fragile confidence obliterated.
“Good night?” She hadn’t meant to ask a question. She’d meant to tell him good night, as in good-bye. As in get the hell away from her before she started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said, then stepped around her, walking away without explanation.
Not that one was necessary, she thought as she gripped the counter for support, catching a glimpse of her own hideous reflection in the darkened window.