As if sensing the charged atmosphere, the girl tried to back out. “I’ll come back later.”
Wyatt stood abruptly. “No. Don’t leave. It’s okay, honey.”
Honey. Ouch.
The girl’s brow shot up, but she stayed. “You’re sure I’m not interrupting? Is this a business meeting or something?”
Wyatt’s expression was wary. “I’m not sure what this is.”
A business meeting. She seized on the explanation. Because no way did Cassandra want to launch into a you-broke-my-heart-now-sign-this-and-go-away speech right now when the man she’d once been wildly in love with was looking at a younger, adorably perky girl with such affection and warmth.
Formulate a battle plan, she reminded herself, thinking again of how Grandmother would handle this. The most important element in an emotional battle was to be close to the enemy. Business would ensure close proximity, and proximity would give her time to figure out these wildly erratic feelings she’d been having since seeing Wyatt again.
Because, frankly, getting his signature, telling him off and walking out the door just didn’t seem like the right move anymore. Diving across the desk and leaping into his arms suddenly sounded more appropriate. Even if he had broken her heart all those years ago by being so angry—so hateful and cold—when she’d admitted to having a crisis of faith and going to her parents for help.
He’d walked out without even trying to see her side of it. Her side had been the scared, lonely college girl who missed her parents and hated to see her young husband put in fourteen-hour days, once even nearly cutting his hand off in the lumberyard where he worked. All when she knew her family would help.
Sure, it’d been a mistake, she knew that now. But at twenty-one, surely she was entitled to make a slip-up or two.
Huh-uh. Wyatt Reston allowed no slip-ups, he’d made that brutally clear with the loud slamming of the door.
So why, oh why, did she still want him so much?
“As I said, I do a lot of business traveling, and that’s why I’m in Boston now,” she finally murmured, looking around the office at the variety of framed poster-sized print ads, many of which she recognized.
Wyatt remained standing behind the desk. “Sorry, Cass, I’m not in the market for eyeliner or skin cream. So whatever you’re selling, maybe you ought to find another customer.”
Slowly rising to her feet, Cassandra gave a quick thanks that she’d worn the heels with her slacks. Staring up at Wyatt was bad enough. At least the shoes put her on eye level with the other person in the room. The dark-haired girl.
“I’m not selling,” she said pleasantly. “I’m buying.”
Wyatt’s mouth tightened.
“I need some fresh ideas for our latest cosmetics line,” she added. “I’m here to hire you. I want to see what you can come up with for a new ad campaign.”
He said nothing for a long moment. Cassie willed herself to meet his even stare, not intending to give him the tiniest hint that she was bluffing, that her reasons for coming here today had nothing to do with business and everything to do with the past. Their past.
“Excellent! Wyatt is the best,” the dark-haired girl said, breaking the silence. Then she started babbling. “I just figured out who you are—you’re much prettier in person. I always thought the pictures of you were airbrushed, but you’re totally gorgeous. What was Bradley Cooper like? I saw that picture of you with him at Sundance.”
Cassandra’s head spun as the girl prattled on, but she was aware enough to note Wyatt’s expression. His unsmiling face had pulled into a frown and his eyes were flinty.
When the young woman finally paused to take a breath, Wyatt finally spoke. “Forget it.”
As if his words weren’t answer enough, he shook his head and strode toward the door. Not even looking back, he added, “There’s absolutely nothing on this earth that would ever induce me to work for your family, Cassandra Devane.”
Then he strode out of his own office, slamming the door behind him, leaving her, and the pretty young woman, staring at each other in shock.
Chapter 2
Wyatt reeled over Cassie’s unexpected reappearance in his life throughout the rest of the day, and the following day, too. He was still so stressed about it the next evening that he decided to pound out his frustrations at the gym. The office building had a well-equipped fitness center on the third floor. It was rarely used, so since moving his company’s office here, he’d become accustomed to visiting the gym a couple of times a week. He usually had it to himself, and most times ran on the treadmill or pressed a few weights.
Tonight, however, he was beating on a punching bag.
Trying to land a major campaign with a Japanese automotive company had cost him a lot of energy and a lot of sleepless nights over the past few weeks. But now…he’d have to say the stress he was feeling this evening was personal, not professional. And the sleepless nights in his immediate future were not going to be caused by a tough foreign executive but by a sexy American one.
He still couldn’t get over Cassie showing up in his life again. Or what she wanted—for him to work for her family. It would have been laughable if it weren’t so infuriating. Because her trying to get him to work for her family had been the match that had lit the fuse on their troubled marriage all those years ago and made it explode to pieces.
When he’d graduated college a month after they’d married, he’d been a young kid with big dreams of advertising success in his head. His bank account…well, that hadn’t been so big. He’d refused to think it was a major problem, even though deep inside, he’d suspected it was. Still, love and canned ravioli had been just fine for the first six or seven months of his marriage to Cassie.
Those had been the best of times. He’d fallen more in love with her as every day had gone by—in love with her spirit and her intelligence, her sense of humor and her kindness. He’d realized how fortunate he was to have actually found the love of his life. There had been some nights when he’d lain awake in their small bed, simply watching her, listening to the sounds of the breath passing her lips. Wondering what he’d ever done in his life to be so damn lucky.
But as the months had come and gone and he’d still been working at the lumberyard, trying to break into advertising—his real dream—she’d gotten nervous. Concerns about money had turned into arguments, which was why she’d gone to her controlling, disapproving parents for help.
That’d been the match. His reaction to her utter lack of faith in him had been the fuse. Their resulting fight had been the TNT. Goodbye marriage.
Now she was back in his life. Hello, heartache.
“Go back to New York City, little girl, because I am not going down this road with you again,” he muttered as he used his arm to wipe off the sweat dripping from his brow.
“I’m not ready to go back to New York yet.”
He froze, recognizing the voice, not to mention the amused tone. Closing his eyes and willing her to be a figment of his overactive imagination, he slowly turned around. But he didn’t have to open his eyes to know he hadn’t imagined Cassie’s presence. A sweet, feminine scent that made him think of wildflowers blooming under the hot summer sun filled his head. Evidence enough of Cassie’s very real presence in the room.
“Hi again,” she whispered, sounding nervous.
That made his eyes open, because Cassie and nervous were two words that didn’t go together. Cassie and sweet. Cassie and quiet. Cassie and sexy. Cassie and smart. Cassie and insanity. Yeah, they went together. But nervousness had no connection to the woman he knew.
“What are you doing here?” He looked at her, standing wide-eyed and openmouthed a few feet away.
She didn’t respond at first. It wasn’t until he saw a flush of pink color rise up her throat and into her cheeks that he realized why. She was staring at him. Hard. Looking at his body as if she’d never seen a sweaty, shirtless guy dressed in just a pair of gym shorts.
When he realized he was seeing feminine app
reciation in her stare, he took about two seconds to savor it. A visceral, completely instinctive sensation of warmth flooded his veins, making his pulse roar even harder than it had during his workout. Because the bedroom was one place where they’d never had any trouble. They’d had an incredibly erotic relationship, especially for two people who’d been pretty young and inexperienced.
He’d tried, in the ensuing years, to have that kind of relationship with other women. But despite having sated his more powerful sexual appetites with more than his fair share of willing females, nobody had ever made him feel the way he had when making love with Cassie.
Wyatt had to forcibly shake off the memories that instantly filled his head. Vivid, evocative memories of long, sultry nights and hot, steamy days. Both before their wedding and after. To this day he couldn’t smell the ocean without remembering what it had been like to lie on the sand with her, kissing, tasting and stroking every inch of her body. Or how erotic it had been one day to stand in the waves, the windblown whitecaps hiding the fact that beneath the surface, his hand was inside her bathing suit as he stroked her to an absolute frenzy.
God, he wanted to touch her, ached to touch her. But that was the very last thing he could afford to do. Because one touch would never be enough.
Finally, he managed to mutter through a very tight throat, “I said, why are you here?”
She swallowed deeply before answering. “You left so soon yesterday, we didn’t get a chance to finish our conversation.”
“I was finished,” he said as he unlaced a boxing glove with his teeth, not having the strength to look at her anymore. He’d sooner go ten rounds with a heavyweight than spend ten minutes looking at Cassie, being tormented by what had, for Wyatt, been the biggest failure of his life.
“Well, I wasn’t finished with you,” she said. “Fortunately, your sister is a good listener and she heard me out. She thinks you could do remarkable things to bring Fresh Face Cosmetics to the average woman. Up until now we’ve been focused on the upscale department-store market, but we have to diversify.”
His sister. Damn. He should have known better than to leave his office when those two were together. Jackie—his baby sister—had probably spilled every detail about Wyatt’s personal life to Cassie in exchange for a single tidbit about Brad Pitt. “Yeah, well, Jackie doesn’t work for me. She’s a student.”
“It was nice to meet her,” Cassie said. She stepped closer, bringing that intoxicating cloud of woman-scent with her to mess with his head some more. “You should have introduced us.”
“When, yesterday? Or eight years ago?” he muttered as he removed the second glove. Tossing them into a bin in the corner, he walked over to a stack of towels and used one to dry the sweat off his face and neck.
She followed, so he moved again. And so did she. It was like being in a human chess game, with her countering his every move, until they stood only a foot apart.
Wyatt tried to ignore her, tried not to notice the warmth of her breath on his shoulder, so sensual against the cool air-conditioning in the room. Focusing on the faint sound of the terry-cloth towel scraping against his skin, he tried to tune out her low, steady inhalations that seemed to deepen with every passing moment. Unfortunately, he didn’t think anything could muffle the raging beat of his heart, which had been on overdrive since he’d found her in his office yesterday.
Too bad the fitness center didn’t have a pool because he could use a few bracing laps right about now. Though, honestly, he knew that wouldn’t help. With Cassie watching his every move, every Y chromosome in Wyatt’s body was at full attention. No swimming pool, no cold shower, not even a dip off a glacier in the Arctic would do a thing to cool him down.
Not when Cassie was wearing that aware, hungry look.
It was the same one she’d had on her face the day they’d met on the beach. She’d never been able to hide her emotions behind those big blue eyes or that expressive face. When Cassie was interested in something—be it a book or a male body—she could never disguise that interest. Just one of the things he’d found so utterly fascinating about her, since no girl he’d ever known had been so open.
Right now, the physical desire was dripping off her in buckets. Palpable. Intoxicating. And Wyatt was unable to prevent himself from sharing it. As if their marriage and the ensuing years weren’t hanging there between them, he allowed himself a few luxurious moments to study her through a lover’s eyes—not an angry ex’s, as he had in his office.
She looked different than she had yesterday, no longer the cool professional woman. She now wore a pair of tight white jeans and a sleeveless red top. The color contrasted brightly against her strawberry-blond hair. Her time in Texas had given her skin a healthy glow, and she wore almost no makeup. Damned if there weren’t a few freckles on her nose.
Wyatt’s jaw tightened, because Cassie looked like a coed again. The beach angel he’d found utterly irresistible.
She wasn’t, however, exactly the same. Her casual, tight clothes did sinful things to her body, reminding him that Cassie was no longer a lean, willowy, college girl. She was a curvaceous, soft, desirable woman. And she was looking at him like she wanted to gobble him up.
Which, he realized, was probably the last thing she’d want him to see. Knowing for sure how to get her to back off, he decided to call her on her interest. Curving up one side of his mouth, he gestured toward the weight area. “There are no beds in here, but some of the weight benches are padded.”
She sucked in a quick, surprised breath.
“What?” he pressed. “You gonna deny you’re eating me up with your eyes?”
Her chin shot up and for a split second he thought he had her, that she would back down, go away, leave him with his sanity.
He should have known better. Because he recalled a moment too late that she had never been the quiet, demure girl some people had thought her to be. She’d always had a danger-loving streak. And now, she was every inch a sexy, confident woman. No way would she be embarrassed into backing down.
“How could I not when you’re standing there half-naked?” She stepped even closer and put a small, soft hand on his bare chest, her fingers tangling in the dark hair that surrounded his nipples. “Could you please either put a shirt on or take your shorts off?”
Whoa. Wyatt’s jaw dropped and his fingers clenched reflexively as though to reach for his waistband and do as she asked.
It was tempting. So goddamn tempting. They were no longer kids, they were two mature, consenting adults. He was attracted to her, she obviously wanted him. So why shouldn’t he push her onto that weight bench and fuck the memory of her out of his soul?
He tried to resist the urge, shoving his shockingly imaginings out of his mind. “You’re playing with fire.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, Wyatt.” She moved even closer, until the fabric of her pants brushed his bare leg, and her warm exhalations touched his skin. “Maybe I like taking risks now.”
He swallowed hard, unable to resist dropping a hand to her hip, cupping her waist. Cassie was petite, but shapely, and her hips begged to be cupped. “You always took risks,” he said, his voice low, remembering how much she’d risked on him so soon after they’d met.”
Nodding, she leaned closer, pressing her lips against his collarbone, her soft tongue flicking out as if she wanted a taste of his sweat. Wyatt couldn’t contain a groan as he imagined her using that wicked mouth on every inch of him, and his hand reflexively tightened at her waist.
“I’m not the only virgin in Fort Lauderdale like I was the day we met.”
He bent to brush his cheek against her soft hair, closing his eyes, trying to find some last hint of reserve in the deep well of need she aroused in him. “You weren’t a virgin for long,” he growled.
“No, I definitely wasn’t.”
Her soft hands slid around him and she traced her fingertips up and down his back as she stepped so close their bodies met from neck to knee. Wyatt felt the warmth of h
er skin, the softness of her hair, and his every breath was filled with that oh-so-warm-and-sultry scent that was unique to this woman alone.
“You chased away every one of my good-girl instincts,” she whispered, kissing her way across his chest, her soft lips and warm tongue driving him more than little insane.
“Forever?” he asked. “Are you now one hundred percent bad girl, like the tabloids say?”
A soft groan. “Not even twenty percent,” she whispered as that wicked little tongue toyed with his nipple. “But around you, I shoot right back into the nineties.”
Wyatt knew this was crazy, dangerous, and stupid. But he was acting on pure adrenaline, pure physical need. His desire to have this woman outweighed everything else. Everything. And with a low, helpless groan, he lifted her by the hips and brought her high enough for his kiss.
Their mouths came together hot, hard, and hungry. He tilted his head, his tongue plunging deep, and she met every deep thrust. Kissing her had always been one of his favorite things in the world, and although it had been eight years, he quickly lost himself to that familiar sensation of rightness and pure, utter desire.
Cassie wrapped her legs around his hips, and Wyatt couldn’t resist pressing into the warm, moist place between them. He was rock-hard for her, his cock thick with need. His body recognized her, understanding on a primal level that this was the woman who had always given him more pleasure than any other. This was the only one whose embrace he’d have died for.
This was the woman who’d ripped the heart right out of his chest.
He stiffened, his whole body growing tense, and pulled his mouth away. Lowering her to stand in front of him, he staggered back a step. He swiped a hand through his hair, wishing he could back up ten minutes, start this encounter over. Or back up ten years, start everything over.
Or avoid it altogether?
No. He couldn’t even allow himself to imagine that—never having met her, never having held her, having loved her. Not even his anguish over losing her could make him wish for that.
KISS AND MAKE-UP Page 3