by BETH KERY
Another two hours alone in the car had caused him to reevaluate his strange, strong feelings for Sophie Gable, however. It slowly dawned on him as he stared at the back of Sophie’s BMW sedan that her behavior tonight had been odd. More than odd.
Suspect, even?
Why had she showed up in that parking lot, intent on preventing him from entering the building? It’d almost been like she’d known Mannero, Inc., was about to explode into flames. And Fisk had been there, as well. Thomas couldn’t help but draw the lines between the unexpected bystanders at the crime scene.
Was Sophie somehow connected to the FBI investigation of his father?
The thought unsettled him for several reasons, some of which he could put into words, and some which were unformed, but caused an uneasy feeling in his gut.
The main reason he didn’t want to be suspicious of Sophie was selfish. He wanted her more than he ever recalled wanting a woman. The realization didn’t diminish his slightly queasy feeling.
He noticed a storm brewing as they pulled off the interstate. Gold light flickered in the western sky, briefly illuminating the outline of ominous-looking thunderheads.
Thirty minutes later, Thomas followed Sophie down a pitch-black, tree-lined lane. He admitted to himself that there could hardly be a better place than the secluded Haven Lake to get his footing after everything that had happened lately—Rick’s and Abel’s deaths, the soul-scarring funeral, the FBI’s investigation of his father. . . the exploding warehouse.
Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to feel out the lovely Sophie even further, to spend an uninterrupted weekend with her . . . to plumb the depths of her secrets and her soft, inviting body as well.
Fortunately, the sharp lust he felt for her would only help him in getting closer. If the elusive Dr. Gable was keeping something from him, Thomas vowed she wouldn’t keep her secrets for long.
Sophie felt as if the entire scenario from the previous evening—had it really just been a little over twenty-four hours ago that Thomas had wandered, shell-shocked and dazed into her life?—had been reversed after they’d entered the lake house kitchen. The long drive to Haven Lake had kept her from dwelling on the explosion, but nothing prevented it now.
She stood next to the sink, glancing up when she felt the glasses she’d been holding slide out of her gripping hands. Thomas touched her upper arm, capturing her attention. It took her a few seconds to realize she’d been standing at the sink, holding onto two empty glasses, staring at the faucet and all the while seeing that silent, expanding bright orange ball of flame and then hearing that boom rip through the night.
She said nothing, just watched him numbly as he set down the glasses and opened a few cabinets.
“There’s wine in the pantry,” she said, sensing he was searching for something stronger than the water she’d been about to get them.
His purposeful, confident stride across the kitchen struck her as being the polar opposite of his appearance last night. He came out of her small pantry holding a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. She recognized the label and suspected Thomas knew his wine. That particular bottle was the most full-bodied, potent spirit she had here at the lake house. She’d been saving it for visitors and steaks on the grill.
He didn’t fumble through the cabinets this time, but walked directly to the drawer that held her wine opener. He uncorked the wine with a brisk efficiency of movement that she admired, even in her muddled state.
“Drink,” he said firmly when she accepted the filled glass he handed her.
She tipped the red wine between her lips, her gaze never leaving Thomas’s stare as he did the same.
“Sophie, what were you doing there . . . at Mannero, Inc.?”
She shivered at the impact of his low, hoarse voice. She experienced a nearly overwhelming desire to ask him to hold her. But she needed to accept, here and now, that their potent physical attraction to one another didn’t give her the right to run for reassurance into Thomas’s arms.
Especially when he didn’t even recall some of that volatile lovemaking; especially when he was the one who suffered so greatly.
“I don’t know, Thomas. I just . . . I had a feeling you were in danger. I didn’t want you to go to that place. Not after what you’d told me earlier.”
She shifted uncomfortably beneath his hard stare and took another sip of the rich wine.
“You expect me to believe that? That you had a ‘feeling’ that warehouse was going to be torched?”
“No!” she corrected abruptly. “I never said I thought that place would explode. How could I know something that bizarre would happen? I said I thought . . . felt as if you were in danger.”
“Who or what would I be in danger from?” he demanded, taking a step closer to her.
“I don’t know, exactly. It was just a hunch.”
“A hunch,” he repeated flatly. His gaze narrowed. “I thought doctors were scientists. The other physicians in your practice must be surprised when you have these precognitive moments.”
She threw him an irritated glance and set the glass down on the counter. She stepped a few paces away from his burning stare, needing the space his dominant presence refused to grant.
“You have to admit it’s strange, Sophie.”
“I could say the same about you. You’ve been acting strangely around me, as well.” When he didn’t speak, she inhaled slowly, steeling herself before she faced him. “Is it any wonder I was worried about you? You’ve been behaving very erratically.”
She waited, her breath stifled in her lungs, for him to reply. What, exactly, would cause a memory to trip in his brain?
Light flashed outside the window and thunder rent the night, startling her. Thomas never stirred. From the fierceness of his stare, she was convinced for a few seconds that he was about to close the distance between them and shake the truth out of her.
Instead, his jaw stiffened and he took another swig of the wine. His put-together business look had started to come apart at the seams given the events of the past several hours, reminding Sophie of the tense, desperate, slightly disreputable appearance he’d had last night when he appeared on her dock. His long hair had fallen forward, bracketing his cheekbones and shadowing his eyes. Whiskers darkened his lean jaw. Her gaze flickered down over his neck and broad shoulders.
She muttered under her breath and headed toward the hallway.
“Sophie?”
She turned at the sound of his harsh query.
“Where are you going?”
“Your neck is cut, Thomas. From the glass,” she replied softly.
He touched the skin above his bloodied collar.
“Just give me a moment to get some things to clean it up. Why don’t you sit down in one of those chairs,” she suggested, nodding at the breakfast bar that took up one side of the kitchen. Her gaze skimmed over the long length of him. “I’ll be able to reach you better from there.”
For a second she thought he’d accuse her of purposefully changing the subject, but then his face settled into an impassive mask.
In her bathroom, she wrapped some cotton balls, tweezers, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, adhesive bandages, and some antibacterial ointment into a clean towel.
She paused when she walked out of the hallway, carrying her supplies.
Thomas stood by one of the chairs she’d indicated earlier, unfastening the last button on his dress shirt. Her gaze stuck on the tantalizing strip of bronzed skin and ridged muscle between the stark, white fabric. The memory of him shoving apart the placket of that very same shirt impatiently while his cock was buried deep inside her flashed into her brain in graphic detail. She noticed that he’d frozen just like her, his stare on her unwavering. Outside, lightning flashed and thunder answered.
She swallowed thickly when she saw the flicker of his eyelids. Had he guessed what she’d been thinking?
His long fingers worked the button through the last hole. He whipped the shirt over his shoulders and draped it across
the back of the chair.
“I thought you’d want me to take off my shirt. So you can tend to my wounds. Doctor.”
Sophie ripped her gaze off the glorious expanse of lean, prime male flesh. The sight of his sexy lips shaped into a small smile was nearly as unsettling as his naked torso.
“Thanks. It’ll help,” she said, infusing a brisk sense of purpose into her voice. He must be used to having females temporarily short circuit at the sight of his body, after all. No reason to swell his male ego even further.
She scowled at her automatic thought as she set down the items on the counter and tore two paper towels off the roll. She was honest enough with herself to recognize her own defensiveness. Thomas never acted like a strutting rooster, despite his rugged male beauty, so it was unfair to cast him in that light. Just because she had a father whose conceit exceeded his considerable good looks didn’t mean that every man who was handsome was equally invested in his appearance.
He sat compliantly in the chair when she approached, saying nothing while she inspected the cuts on his neck.
She extracted most of the slivers easily, but one large piece was more deeply lodged than the others. He didn’t flinch when she finally removed the shard using the tweezers, but she saw how his shoulder muscles tensed, absorbing the pain.
“Sorry,” she murmured as she placed the glass and tweezers on the paper towel. “It looks like that’s all of it.”
“How’d you ever find this house?” Thomas asked a moment later, interrupting the silence between thunder bursts.
She paused in the action of cleaning his neck with cotton balls soaked in hydrogen peroxide. She’d been doing her damndest to attend to her task and ignore the compelling odor of combined male musk and spicy cologne that lingered so richly at his nape.
“My parents left it to me.” She noticed he was staring at some photos on the wall—black and white, highly stylized images of a beautiful couple walking and posing on the beach. “That’s them—there in the photos.”
He twisted his chin around to see her. “Have they passed away?”
“No. They’re just sort of absent. Psychologically speaking, anyway,” she said matter-of-factly. She looked up from unscrewing the antiseptic and noticed that his dark brows were furrowed in puzzlement.
“My parents are completely, utterly involved with two things: each other and their careers. They moved me to Hollywood when I was eleven years old. My father was chasing after a dream to become a famous actor, and my mother wanted to be in the thick of things, as well. She modeled when she was young, and started writing screenplays after she had me.” She glanced around the comfortable lake house with the mismatched furnishings, embroidered pillows, the old stereo with her parents’ extensive—and probably valuable, at this point—record collection stored in painted wooden crates. She loved the homey appeal of the house—perhaps because it represented what she’d never really had.
“We used to come here when I was little,” she explained in a low voice. “I usually got to bring a friend. It was a childhood dream come true: swimming until nightfall, running around the woods like savages, roasting marshmallows over a bonfire at night. My parents became a little less obsessive while they were here . . . a little happier.”
Thomas didn’t speak as she rubbed the antiseptic cream into his skin, but she sensed he waited expectantly. “Once my parents moved to California, they never came back to Haven Lake. The house stood empty until I returned when I came to Chicago for college.”
Thomas peered at her over his shoulder.
“You said you came here for a month every summer?”
“That’s right.”
“And they’ve never come back? Never met you here?” he asked as she rubbed cream into the final cut. Fat raindrops began to spatter on the window panes. She tried to ignore how intimate the scenario was—their quiet conversation about family, the cheerily lit kitchen, the storm outside.
Her fingertips on Thomas’s skin.
“No. I have to go to California to see my parents.” She nodded distractedly toward one of the photos on the wall as she peeled the paper off a Band-Aid. “That’s their house there, in the background of that picture. It sits right on the beach; it’s modern, fashionable . . . very clean.”
She paused in the act of affixing the bandage to his neck when he twisted his chin around farther and forced her to meet his stare. Even though she’d kept her tone level, he’d sensed her irony anyway. She read something in the depths of his eyes. A memory from yesterday evening came back to her in graphic detail.
I used to tell Rick you were like the little girl in the neighborhood who was always so clean; the kind that Mama wouldn’t let play rough with the other kids . . . the kind that was never allowed to get dirty.
She held her breath when he suddenly grabbed the wrist of her outstretched hand and turned himself on the swivel stool. He widened his long legs, bracketing her hips between his knees.
“So what you’re telling me,” he began, his low, gruff murmur causing goose bumps to rise on her neck. “Is that it wasn’t your parents who made you all prim and proper? You did that on your own, didn’t you, Sophie? They were too busy with each other . . . fulfilling their own dreams to make you into a good little girl.”
“They weren’t negligent, if that’s what you mean. I had everything I needed.”
His dark eyebrows went up on his forehead in a wry expression. “So you didn’t starve and you had clothes on your back.”
She smiled. “My upbringing would be considered ‘privileged’ by most,” she said as she began to clean up the items on the counter. “I’m far from being the only person on earth who had self-involved parents. I was lucky to have my mother and father in the household at all.”
Her smile faded when she saw his mouth flatten. She didn’t tell herself to move, but suddenly she’d stepped deeper into the harbor between his spread knees. She cupped his jaw with her palm.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Why?”
Awkwardness crashed through her at his taut inquiry.
“I . . . I had heard that your parents were killed.”
His hand covered hers. “That was a long time ago. I was lucky enough to be blessed with two sets of parents. Iris and Joseph Carlisle have loved me like their own son.”
She glanced down. “I must sound ungrateful to you. Complaining about my parents.”
He lifted her chin. “I didn’t hear you complaining. We were having a conversation. You were just telling it like it is.”
For a full few seconds, their gazes clung. Sophie was distantly aware that the storm had swelled to its full fury. Rain lashed at the windows and thunder rumbled all around them. She blinked when she realized she’d been staring fixedly at Thomas’s mouth. His hands settled on her waist and his head came nearer.
“I should put another bandage on your neck,” she warned.
“Later,” he muttered before his mouth brushed hers in a questing kiss. His lips felt warm and firm. She opened her mouth, sandwiching his lower lip between her own, caressing him and biting softly.
He groaned and pulled her tighter against his body.
“What am I doing here, Sophie?” he asked in a gruff whisper, his mouth hovering a fraction of an inch above hers. His fingers delved with a gentle possessiveness into the flesh of her hip.
“You need time, Thomas. To heal.”
He lifted his head, looking a little stunned, perhaps at the sound of her authoritative tone. He abruptly slid to the edge of the chair and pressed her into his body.
“And you think you can heal me, Sophie?” he rasped, a sardonic smile tilting his lips. His hands opened over her buttocks. She whimpered at the feeling of his cock hardening against her belly. Her hands rose to his waist where her fingers relished the feeling of thick, smooth skin. She found she couldn’t get enough of the sensation. She’d learned last night that Thomas possessed a proclivity for restraining her during sex. The moments
when he’d allowed her to touch him, to get her full fill of him, had been too few and far between.
“I . . . don’t know,” she responded, distracted by the feeling of his body beneath her fingertips. “Time is what you need. But . . . I want to be here. With you,” she added, holding his stare.
She felt the tension rise in his muscles. He shook his head slowly. “I feel like someone else has come and taken over my body. You have no idea the things I want to do to you. If you knew, you’d run. Take your chance now, Sophie. Tell me to go.”
She felt her pulse throbbing madly at her throat when she saw the feral gleam in dark green eyes.
Maybe she should heed his advice? She knew that it would be the smart thing to stay away from him. But for some reason, Sophie didn’t want to be careful and rational. Not in the case of Thomas Nicasio.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she whispered.
His mouth slanted into a snarl before he seized her mouth with his own and flexed his long fingers into her ass. Sophie moaned into his hot, consuming mouth as desire swelled in her breast and lust tore through her veins. She would have thought such a ravenous kiss would bank their fires but by the time he raised his head both of them panted with need. One look into Thomas’s blazing eyes and she knew what was coming.
“I should shower first,” she said, thinking of their former heated lovemaking, of lying on the gravel beneath Thomas while glass and singed fragments flew through the air, and then the long car ride that followed.
He stood from the chair, sliding his body against her. His height and presence—the sheer impact of him—struck her as if for the first time.
“You’ll shower later. Much later,” he mumbled. “Personally, I want my scent all over you, Sophie.”
Her mouth hung open as she stared at his retreating back. He paused and looked back at her, his manner perplexed and a little impatient. He grabbed her hand.
Wild anticipation swelled in her as he led her down the hallway.
CHAPTER SIX
When they got back to her dark bedroom, Thomas flipped on the lights.