The silence stretched out, then he said, “Look at me.”
She looked up. His darkly stubbled jaw emphasized the liquid gold floating in his light green eyes. “While we’re here, if you’re in trouble, you are going to call me first.”
Just nod, she told herself, desperate and tired of being alone. She knew she was too vulnerable, feeling too impulsive to trust her mouth. She tried to nod, but she blurted out, “Even for sex?”
Three
Nick took a step toward her before his brain kicked in. It was the damned pink panties. When she’d opened the door and he’d seen her wearing a thin pink tank top, she’d taken his breath away.
Then he’d seen the panties and his blood went south. He’d hardened so fast it was a wonder he didn’t get dizzy.
Clenching his fists, he knew his hard-on strained against his pants. “Lexie—”
She stepped up to him and put her hand on his chest. “I’m tired of being cautious and worrying about tomorrow. I want to try impulsive.”
He caught her hand and inhaled. Damn, she smelled like that flower, night jasmine or whatever, mixed with warm skin. His whole body throbbed with hard-core lust. They were both on adrenaline overload. He could control this, he would control it. “No. No sex.” He barely got the words out.
Her body deflated, and her hand slid from his grasp. “Okay. Thanks again, Nick. I’ll call you if I’m in trouble, but not for sex. Good night.” She reached for the door.
She was making him crazy, infuriating him. He wanted her naked and under him, looking up with unfocused eyes while he drove himself into her. He wanted her breath to hitch and pant as she lost control, her body shivering and spasming with pleasure while he watched.
Then she had the nerve to pull open her door, put a hand on her hip, and stare at him expectantly.
He had to shock them both back to reality. “If anyone walks by, they are going to see you in your panties.”
She looked down. The expression on her face was priceless—total shock.
Nick reached over, closed the door, and locked it. Then he turned to see Lexie walking quickly to her dresser. Away from him. Her tight ass covered by the sheer pink panties twitching in her rush. He was going to burst into flames. Before he realized it, he was moving. He scooped her up in his arms.
“Nick! What are you doing!”
“Putting you in your bed and covering you up before I do something stupid.” He all but dropped her on the bed and wrenched the covers up over her.
She sat up, leaning back against the pillows. “I’m not going to attack you!”
He stared down at her.
Her gaze moved to his crotch. Then her gaze slid up. “Oh.”
“I don’t get emotionally or sexually involved with my work. Ever.” He’d learned that the hard way, and he never forgot the lesson.
She blinked, her mouth tightening as she seemed to battle with herself, then she lowered her gaze back to his crotch. She jerked her head, looking everywhere but at him. “Okay. Got it. You should leave now.”
Nick leaned down, putting a hand on either side of her hips so he was nose to nose with her. “I’m not leaving you alone so another lunatic can break in here. I’m staying. And if you don’t stop talking, or wiggling that prime ass of yours in front of me, I’m going to strip you down to your skin and fuck you until you are screaming my name in pleasure, over and over. And then when I regain my senses and realize that I screwed up, I will be forced to take you back to Santa Barbara immediately and insist that you be locked up in a cell where you’re safe until we find your stalker. Your choice.”
“I’ll stop talking.”
The phone woke her up. “Hello?”
“It’s nine in the morning! And you’re sleeping!”
At the sound of her brother’s irritated voice, Lexie snapped awake. “Larry? How’d you find me?” She sat up in bed and looked around. The patio lounge chair had a pillow and rumpled blanket on it…
The night came back to her, the memory of Nick sleeping in her room. Where was he?
“By calling all the hotels in your honeymoon file. What the hell is the matter with you, Lexie? How can you be so selfish? Mom is having chest pains. She had to do two weddings and you know she’s not up to it after her heart attack! Amber is hysterical. Dad is threatening to cut you out of the will. Clients are screaming. You have to get your ass back to work!”
She shoved her heavy hair out of her face, heard the shower turn off, and assumed Nick was in there. Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she forced herself to deal with her brother. “Mom is fine. The doctor said she could go back to work months ago.” Her sister, Amber, had been hysterical from the day she was born; that was nothing new.
“You were always selfish, Lexie, but I never thought you’d pull something like this. One of the cakes for a wedding this weekend was wrong. Wrong! The Pattersons screamed at me for a whole hour. I don’t have time to fix your screwups! I’m running a business, and you know Patricia and I are buying a house and selling our condo. How could you just run away and leave us all to clean up your mess?”
She knew damn well it wasn’t her screwup, but Larry’s. Her brother was lazy and she had to double-check every cake order he did, just as her mom had done. Fatigue weighed down her shoulders as she dropped her gaze to the green mosaic pattern in the white tile. “I didn’t run away…”
“Yes, you did. You left us all in a bind. Mom is afraid to book any weddings. She’s afraid! She had a heart attack, remember? And just how am I going to make a living, huh, Lexie? We have a potential buyer for the condo, which means I have to worry about a bigger mortgage on the new house. Does it always have to be about you?”
Shame pressed down on her chest. She really thought her mom had been taking advantage of her. That she’d had her first taste of real freedom after being a workaholic for decades. But maybe she was wrong, maybe the heart attack had damaged her mom’s confidence. “Is Mom all right?”
“No! What have I been telling you! And I need more cake orders. You have to come back.”
Her stomach cramped with real fear. “I can’t, not yet. Larry, someone has been getting into my apartment. If you know anything…”
He cut her off with a rude noise. “Don’t start that shit again. You are ruining my life, trying to blame me because you can’t remember using your laptop or keep track of your clothes! I was in your apartment once, once! It was a mistake. I’m under a lot of pressure here, Lexie.”
Right, and screwing a woman who wasn’t his wife in Lexie’s apartment was the obvious way of relieving pressure. She wouldn’t have found out if her dumb brother hadn’t left the condom wrapper on her nightstand. It hadn’t taken Lexie long to figure out he’d swiped her house key from their mom. “I’m not trying to ruin you. I just need to figure out who is getting into…”
“For God’s sake, stop thinking about yourself! We’re all sick of it. Especially Harry. He doesn’t even come around anymore. He’s too humiliated after you attacked him and caused his fiancée to dump him right before the wedding.”
A noise made her look up.
Nick stood there. His hair was shower wet, his skin still damp, and his expression was ice cold. “Who are you talking to?”
She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “My brother.”
He reached over and took the phone from her. “Your sister is being threatened by a stalker. Any idea who it might be?”
Lexie was stunned. No one took control from her like that. She stood up to grab the phone back.
Nick slung his arm around her shoulders and held her to his side.
She heard her brother bellowing that Lexie was just trying to get out of work when her family needed her, and something about her making wild accusations. It was easier to concentrate on the feel of Nick’s chest expanding as he breathed, along with his warm, damp skin scented with the soap from his shower. She sank into the pleasure of having his arm around her and wondered when she had become th
is pathetic.
“Now I know why she ran.” He leaned over and slammed the phone down.
Lexie took the opportunity to put some distance between them. It was one thing to think about seducing Nick in the middle of the night. Before he knew that she’d run out on her family. That her own family didn’t believe her. Shame and embarrassment rolled around her gut. But she faced Nick. Better to just get it over with.
He turned on her. “You’re not going back there until it’s safe. You sure as hell can’t count on your asshole brother to help you.”
She bristled. Only she could call her brother an asshole. “Don’t talk about my brother like that. It’s a lot of work to own a bakery, plus he’s selling his condo and he’s worried about our mom. He depends on wedding cake orders from My Perfect Wedding.”
He stepped toward her. “Then he’s a leech and an asshole. Let him get his own damned cake orders. If you were my sister, I’d have looked into this stalker situation the first time you told me.”
He was close enough to kiss her. And it hit her that she only had on her sleep shirt and panties. She felt her face heat at the memory of his reaction to her panties last night. She needed distance, now. She couldn’t risk him dragging her back to Santa Barbara. “Your sister is lucky. I’m going to take a shower. There’s no reason for you to stay here, I’m perfectly safe.” She escaped into the bathroom and closed the door.
Once she finished showering, she decided on her black bikini. She’d brought two with her and kept them in the bathroom to dry out. Brushing out her wet hair, she looked into the fogged mirror. She decided against blow-drying and left her hair down. Opening the door, she walked into the cool room.
“You’re trying to kill me.”
She jumped, her heart slamming in her chest. And yet, part of her was pleased. Nick sat at the table by the sliding glass door, drinking a cup of coffee from the in-room coffeemaker and reading the complimentary newspaper.
“I thought you’d left.”
He ran his gaze down her length and back up to her face. “I should have and saved myself. Jesus, Lexie.”
Was that a compliment or insult? And since he’d made his position on sex with her clear, why did she care? “It’s just a bathing suit.” She went to the closet, pulled out the wraparound dress she used as a cover-up, and shoved her arms in it. Concentrating on tying the strings to secure the dress, she added, “No one’s stopping you from leaving now.”
Nick stood up and approached her. “I’m not an asshole like your brother. That’s what is stopping me.”
She knew he was close behind her, too close. Shoving her feet into her flip-flops, she said, “Stop calling my brother that.”
“Stop defending him.”
She turned to him. The room was flooded with daylight, and Nick looked even more gorgeous. His hair was dry, black as night, and had a slight wave. His green eyes focused on her. There was no more hiding. “My mom had a heart attack. I took over running My Perfect Wedding for her. For a year, I hated every single minute of it. I begged my mom to come back, but she kept putting me off. Then the groom, William Harry Livingston, got drunk at the rehearsal dinner and flashed me. I lost it and stapled his pants to his waist. Then the arrest, the stories in the tabloids, my stalker…I just left. I went to my parents’ house, dumped all the open files for upcoming weddings on my mom’s table, told her it was her business, not mine, and left.” She stopped talking. What else was there to say?
“Back up. Livingston exposed himself and that’s why you stapled him?”
She looked at his chest. “Yes.”
“Then why the hell were you arrested?”
Startled, she backed up a step. “Because I didn’t report it. I figured he was just drunk and stressed. I was arrested the next day when he filed a complaint against me. I told everyone…” She took a breath. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. The point is that my brother—”
“Is an asshole.”
“Will you stop—”
He reached out and tugged her to him, close enough that she could see the icy anger in his green eyes. “Did I miss the part where your brother found Livingston and beat the shit out of him? How about your dad? Did anyone in your family take your side? Back you up?”
His eyes bored into her like green ice.
“It’s not like that—”
“No? It sounds like they blame you and side with Livingston.”
Embarrassed, she wasn’t going to tell him that Larry took Harry’s side because Harry brought him business from his real estate connections. Instead, she blurted out, “I can take care of myself. I could have handled Harry better, he was just drunk and stupid.” A pocket of air caught in her chest. In order for her family to love her, she had to be the good girl. Part of her had thought when she dropped everything and left, they’d realize that she was in trouble. That she needed them for a change. It didn’t happen.
He let her go.
She glared at him, desperate to get away. “You have my car keys, Nick, I’m not going anywhere. All I’m going to do is get something to eat, go to the beach, and work on my laptop. Alone.”
He opened his mouth.
She was at the edge. “Please, just leave me alone!”
Nick drank his beer and stretched out his legs. People were milling around the balcony bar overlooking the ocean. The cool breeze did nothing to calm his lust.
Damn Lexie and that bikini. He’d managed to keep tabs on her all day, and she’d done just as she said she would. She’d spent time sitting on the beach working on her laptop. After lunch, she’d stowed her laptop and swum in the pool. Then she’d disappeared into her room, probably to sleep.
Nick had talked to her PI, Tate Zuckerman. Tate was an ex-cop, and it turned out that he and Nick had some mutual friends with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department. Those friends had vouched for Tate and evidently told Tate that Nick was an okay guy. Lexie had given the PI permission to tell him anything related to her stalker, but unfortunately, Tate had nothing, not a single sign of her stalker hanging around the apartment. The PI was worried and said he was going to talk to people in Lexie’s life to see if something popped. Nick swore under his breath. Her stalker should be agitated by now, hanging around, looking for any sign of Lexie.
It was Monday. They had four more days until Lexie had to be back for court at 9:00 A.M. on Friday.
He couldn’t take one more day of watching her and wanting her. She was getting under his skin, threatening his self-control. He couldn’t help but admire her resiliency in spite of her family’s lack of support. She had found a very good PI and hired him, then removed herself from the situation. Smart, resourceful, and so damned sexy his dick wasn’t listening to his brain.
But he couldn’t take her back to Santa Barbara if they didn’t know who or where her stalker was.
A man dropped into the chair next to him, jarring him out of his thoughts.
“Rough night, Vardolous?”
Nick nodded to Mac Koontz, head of security at Sand Castle Resort. They went way back. Koontz wore slacks and a blue and white polo shirt with a Sand Castle logo on the pocket. “Lounge-chair sleeping sucks.”
Koontz laughed. “Your questionable charm didn’t get you into her bed, huh?”
He turned his gaze to Koontz. “I don’t mix sex and work.”
Mac’s face tightened. “I thought you were putting it behind you. It’s been eight years. Let Ellen go.”
Nick stared at him. “I watched her die, I let her go. But I haven’t forgotten that I screwed up and got her killed.”
Mac stared back with his intense blue eyes. “The fact is that no amount of martial arts will win against a gun.” He took a deep breath. “We both learned that. You walked away, Nick, but you never stopped training or teaching. You’re making the right decision getting back in now. All you have to do is sign those papers and we’re partners once again.”
He forced his clenched hands to relax. “You’re awfully sure I’ll
sign the partnership papers.” He loved karate, and through those long dark days after Ellen’s death, karate kept him sane. He taught some classes at a friend’s studio. He had done what he could as a bounty hunter to put the past behind him. More and more, he wanted to get back into teaching karate full time in his own place.
Sighing, Mac said, “We sold our studio because neither one of us could deal with what had happened. But we’re older now, and it’s time to get back to it.” Looking at Nick, he added, “Share a little of our life experience. Give students a foundation for the shit life throws at them, you know?”
He knew. And it was too close to the truth for Nick, so he grinned. “Marriage is making you old and soft.”
Mac raised his eyebrows. “Maybe, but I’m getting it every night too.”
Nick let the dark memories slide away. “You’re damned lucky. Shelly’s too good for you.”
“I’m off duty now. Come over, we’ll barbecue, make margaritas.”
He shook his head. “Can’t. Got a skip in my custody.” Cozy domestic scenes weren’t his thing.
“Bring her. Lexie is a nice woman. I’ve gotten to know her a little bit while she’s been here, and everyone here loves her. She’s friendly to all the staff, making her an instant favorite guest. She can’t really be a fugitive.” Mac shook his head.
“It’s a bogus charge.” Nick stared at the cold bottle. Lexie was doing something to him. To his guts. She was reaching into him and finding the man he’d once wanted to be.
Before he’d let his emotions make a decision that caused a woman he loved to suffer a brutal death.
That man was gone, dead, and it ticked him off that Lexie made him remember. Made him want to be the kind of man worthy of a woman like her.
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