Caught between shock at her candor and admiration for her courage, Mitchell gave her the tribute of an honest answer. “No.”
“I knew that,” she whispered with another smile, and pulled her hand slowly from his cheek, sliding it down over his shoulder until she finally forced herself to lift it away from him entirely. “Now go away before I change my mind.”
Mitchell noticed the way her hand lingered, he heard the slight shake in her voice, and he knew beyond any doubt that he could pull her into his arms and change her mind. He even sensed that on some level, she wanted him to do precisely that almost as much as he was tempted to do it. Instead he decided to do exactly what she said she wanted him to do, partly because he knew that was probably the wisest course. However, rather than end their brief acquaintance on a grim note, he deliberately joked with her about her decision as he prepared to leave. “You’ll regret it,” he predicted with sham gravity.
She nodded in complete agreement and matched his tone perfectly. “Without a doubt,” she assured him, but her eyes were suspiciously bright.
Attuned to each nuance of her expression now, Mitchell assumed tears were responsible for that sheen in her eyes. “If you change your mind about tomorrow—”
“I won’t,” she interrupted quietly. “Good-bye,” she added, and held out her hand to shake his, just as she’d done twelve hours before when she introduced herself after spilling a drink on him.
He looked down at her hand, and without warning or reason, he felt a sharp compulsion to change her mind for her and spend the night with her after all. Ignoring her outstretched hand, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilted her face up to his, and smiled into her eyes. “In Europe, when a man and woman have spent an evening together, they kiss each other good-bye.”
If she’d looked away or tried to free her chin from his grasp, Mitchell would have forced her to kiss him and subdued the rest of her objections with his mouth and hands. Instead she gave him a confused, innocent look. “What part of Europe would that be? Would it be France? Or Sweden? Or Belgium?”
Mitchell’s brows snapped into a scowl. “You’re stubborn as hell, aren’t you?”
“Or Spain? Or Transylvania?” she persisted. Mitchell dropped his hand in irritation. She stepped back. “I’ll show you out,” she said politely, and turned to walk into the suite with him.
He declined her offer in a bored, impatient voice. “Don’t bother; I’ll take the path around the building instead.”
Fighting back tears, Kate watched him walk off the terrace and turn left, striding along the back of her villa, but as he reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his keys, he stopped for a moment, his dark head bent in thought, then he turned toward her. Kate’s hope soared at the sight of his brief smile, but the words he spoke yanked her back to painful reality. “You made the right choice.”
Inwardly, Kate flinched at the additional damage he inflicted on her with his perfunctory smile and indifferent words, but she forced her aching facial muscles into an answering smile. “I know,” she lied.
He nodded, as if completely satisfied with matters between them now; then he strode down the path and disappeared around the corner of the villa. And out of her life.
In the trees at the border of the garden behind her, something made a rustling noise, but this time Kate didn’t feel any alarm or bother to look around. Since she knew it wasn’t Mitchell, she didn’t care what else was back there. Squeezing her eyes closed, she dropped her head in a losing battle with doubt and shame.
The reasons she’d given Mitchell for putting an abrupt end to their time together were nothing but half-truths. When she originally decided to go to bed with him, she hadn’t needed to know how many languages he spoke or how many siblings he had before she could make that decision. The reasons she’d given herself for backing away were logical, but lame and dishonest. She’d realized all along that she might feel guilty or mortified later if she slept with him tonight, and she’d been prepared to risk that, and accept it if it happened. What she had not been prepared to do was go back to Chicago and torture herself with more unanswerable questions. The reason for her father’s death was a mystery; the future of the restaurant he’d devoted his life to was an uncertain mystery with Kate in charge. When Mitchell refused to talk about himself, she’d panicked at the realization that yet another frustrating mystery was presenting itself to her—standing right in front of her, in fact, looking at her with sexy, heavy-lidded eyes and a deceptively lazy smile while he practically dared her to try to unravel what was going on inside him.
And what made Kate so furious with herself now, and so ashamed, was that she could have done it, at least partway. She had a master’s degree in psychology and several years of experience dealing almost exclusively with the living results of dysfunctional families. At dinner tonight, she’d realized within minutes that there were carefully erected emotional barricades around Mitchell, and she’d presumed that they’d been there a very, very long time—probably since childhood.
Instead of granting him the right to have boundaries and admiring the amazing amount of warmth and strength he obviously possessed—instead of letting him put all that irresistible, confident sexuality of his to use, which he’d intended to do with her, Kate had focused on the probable foundation of his barricades and started digging there with probing questions about his family members.
Finally, he’d asked her the one-million-dollar question: “What the hell difference does it make?”
And the answer to that question was, Kate admitted miserably—no difference. Every adult male had some sort of useful emotional barricades. Sometimes, they let them down for a woman they cared deeply for, but never did they let them down simply because a woman they scarcely knew wanted to make them do it—and do it immediately!
Swallowing back tears, Kate stepped off the terrace where she’d laughed and joked and danced with him … and been melted by one unforgettable kiss. Lifting her hand, she rubbed the aching muscles at her nape, then dropped her hand to her side. Less than half an hour ago, she remembered poignantly, his long fingers had been at her nape, shoved into her hair, his mouth hungrily on hers.
The music had ended when he left, she realized as she wandered aimlessly toward the beach. The night had died when he left.
She thought about the way he’d turned back when he was walking away, as if the act of taking his keys out of his pocket had suddenly reminded him of another act he needed to perform … “You made the right choice,” he’d told her with a brief smile; and for the first time, Kate finally understood his seemingly odd behavior: He was politely assuming all the blame for the failure of the evening—like a perfect gentleman. His manners weren’t merely excellent, Kate realized, they were impeccable. Whether he was being doused with an ice-cold drink or sent away with unfulfilled sexual expectations, he lost neither his temper nor his composure.
She paused, trying to link that vaguely familiar behavior with something she knew, and then she remembered what it was: Supposedly, the British upper class behaved as if they were impervious to chaos. Any outward display of temperamental frustration was regarded as a sign of bad breeding. Evidently, Mitchell had somehow acquired the manners of the British upper class.
She would never be sure if she was right about that. Because of her own cowardice and her infatuated eagerness to know everything about him, she’d spoiled her chance to discover anything about him at all.
Knowing that made her feel so miserable that it was almost a consolation to think he hadn’t really given a damn about her. At least she couldn’t blame herself for spoiling chances she’d never have had with him.
Chapter Eleven
LISTLESSLY, KATE WANDERED TO THE EDGE OF THE GARDEN. IMmersed in regret and helpless yearning, she watched the shimmering surf spill onto the sand and then chase itself back into the moonlit sea.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice soft footsteps in the grass behin
d her until a shadow moved directly across her line of vision. She froze, afraid that if she glanced around, she’d discover that it was only a hotel guest going for a late stroll on the beach. A breathless moment later, her dread exploded into a burst of elation when Mitchell put his hands on her waist and moved so close behind her that his shirt brushed her back and arms. For several moments, all Kate heard was the pounding of her heart and the restless rustling of palm fronds overhead. And then he said solemnly, “My brother’s name was William.”
His use of the past tense told Kate that his brother was dead, and she dropped her head in shamed remorse for forcing him to talk about it.
As if to reassure her, he said, “We barely knew each other. We had the same father but different mothers. I grew up in Europe and Bill grew up in the States with his father’s family.”
“I’m so sorry for asking,” Kate whispered, “but thank you for telling me.”
He slid his hands soothingly up and down her arms, and when he spoke again, he hesitated between each sentence as if he found it difficult to articulate what he was trying to tell her. “Neither of us knew the other one existed until a few months ago when he discovered by accident that he had a brother. He traced me to my address in London and sent me a letter explaining who he was. The next week, he telephoned several times. The week after that, he packed up his wife and teenage son, and the three of them arrived, unannounced, on my doorstep.”
Warning flags went up in Kate’s mind about his father’s apparent lack of any role in this reunion, but the last thing she wanted to do was pry further. Instead, she seized on the most uplifting part of his story and smiled as she turned around to face him and made her comment: “Your brother was a good strategist.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, by bringing his wife and son, he demonstrated that his family was in complete accord with his desire to know you.”
“Actually, he brought his wife and son in order to make it more difficult for me to throw him out.”
“Why would he have expected that you might do something like that?”
“Probably because I hadn’t answered his letter or accepted his phone calls,” he said drily.
“You hadn’t?”
“No,” he said, but his expression had softened enough to make Kate hazard a guess: “When you got to know him, you liked him, didn’t you?”
He looked away from her before he answered and stared over her head at the sea. “Yes,” he said, and after several seconds, he added in a low voice, “I liked him very much.”
Tears stung the back of Kate’s eyes at the wealth of concealed emotion in that last sentence.
He tipped his chin down and looked at her. “What else would you like to know?”
The only thing Kate wanted to know now was how to extricate them both from this painfully serious topic. Despite her earlier belief that she was utterly insignificant to him, the truth was that he’d come back here to tell her whatever she wanted to know. He’d actually come back. That was all that mattered. After a moment’s thought, she came up with a playful way to answer his last question and hopefully transform their mood. Trying to look extremely solemn, she said, “There is only one more question I really need an answer to—it’s very personal, but it’s extremely important to me to know the answer.” His brows lifted inquiringly, but his expression was so wary and unenthusiastic that Kate laughed and asked the “extremely important” question: “How many languages do you speak?”
His startled chuckle transformed into a lazy, sensual smile as he pretended to seriously contemplate his answer. “I’m not certain,” he said, shifting his hand down her spine and drawing her closer. “I’ll name them for you and you can count them.” His gaze fixed on her mouth, and he bent his head. “I’m fluent in Italian—” His warm mouth touched hers and slid languorously from corner to corner and back again in a long, slow exploration of the shape and texture of her lips that twisted Kate into knots.
“And Spanish—” He deepened the kiss, his mouth stroking hers insistently, his arms tightening. His tongue slid across the seam between her lips, and Kate’s pulse rate soared.
“And French—” His hand curved around her nape, his mouth slowly opening on hers. His tongue made a brief foray into her mouth, probing lightly, and Kate returned the intimate kiss, wrapping her arms fiercely around his neck and molding her body to the hardening contours of his. To Kate’s surprise, her response made him abruptly end that kiss. Instead, he brushed a light kiss on her forehead and whispered, “I also speak some German and some Greek …” Touching his lips to her temple, he added, “and a little Russian, and a little Japanese.” He slid his mouth across her cheekbone to her ear, and his warm breath made her shiver and lean into him as he finished playfully, “and almost no Dutch.”
Despite Mitchell’s lighthearted tone, her shivering response made him yearn to make her shiver again, only harder, and longer, and he had to force himself to lift his head. He could not fathom why kissing her had such a powerful physical effect on him, and he was genuinely relieved that he’d managed to name all the languages he spoke while keeping things from getting out of hand.
Kate stirred in his arms and tipped her chin up. “You forgot to mention English,” she said with a smile.
In the interest of conformity, Mitchell suddenly felt that the English language needed to be mentioned in the context of a kiss, just as the others had been. “Did I?” he asked, slowly rubbing his thumb over her soft bottom lip; then he looked at what his thumb was doing. His restraint snapped. He pressed his thumb down hard, forcing her lips apart, and abruptly seized her mouth in a hungry, devouring kiss. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and the kiss went wild. She kissed him back, her fingers flexing against the muscles in his back, clasping him to her while his hands slid restlessly over the sides of her breasts, then swept behind her, cupping her hips and pulling her tightly against his rigid erection.
When Mitchell finally pulled his mouth from hers, lust was raging through his entire nerve stream, and the idea of walking toward her villa in the condition his body was in struck him as being too humorous to consider. Instead, he held her in his arms, her face pressed to his chest, her titian hair spilling over his arm in a rumpled cascade. Lifting his gaze from the top of her head, he looked out at the shifting sea, his emotions caught somewhere between excitement, amusement, and disbelief. She was leaning against him for support, her hand splayed over his pounding heart, her fingers moving slightly in a feathery caress. He liked the way she was touching him. He knew she was in much the same emotional and physical state he was in, and he liked that, too.
In fact, he liked everything about her.
He liked her humor, her warmth, and her sensuality. He liked her courage and her candor and her pride. He liked her smile and the musical sound of her laughter. He liked her face, and her hair, and the way she’d laid her hand on his jaw earlier, when she said, “I have a feeling you’re a whole lot more than just another pretty face.”
He liked the way her body fit itself to his, and the way her breasts felt in his hands. Mitchell checked the direction of his thoughts and tipped his chin down, ready to relinquish his hold on her and walk back to the suite. “How many languages was that?” he asked with a grin.
She lifted her head from his chest, leaned back in his arms, and looked at him blankly for a moment; then she gave him a smile filled with charming chagrin. “I don’t know. I lost count after you said French.”
“Then we’ll have to start over.”
“Oh, God—” she said on a choked laugh, and dropped her forehead weakly against his chest.
“But not here,” Mitchell said, amused and flattered by her reaction; then he curved his arm around her waist and directed her toward the villa. As they walked across the grass, he tried to remember the last time a woman had made him experience such strong, frequent, and repeated transitions from laughter to lust, and frustration to fascination. He couldn’t remember that e
ver happening to him before. The experience was surprising, challenging, and exhilarating. He didn’t want to do anything to diminish it, or the woman who affected him that way, and as he glanced at the open terrace doors, he wondered if it was a mistake to take her to bed in her boyfriend’s hotel room. Then he wondered exactly who he thought that would bother—her? Or him? Or both of them?
The possibility that he might not like the idea of going to bed with her in another man’s hotel room seemed ludicrous, since he’d done similar things in the past and without the slightest qualm. In view of that, Mitchell decided that his concern was strictly for her sake—until they walked into the suite and they both saw his navy sport jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the living room.
Kate reacted with a surprised statement of the obvious. “When you left earlier, you forgot your jacket.”
“That might have been difficult to explain to the lawyer,” Mitchell replied without intending to say any such thing. The lawyer was an off-limits subject under the circumstances, and he couldn’t believe he’d just been foolish enough—or crass enough—to bring him up at such a time as this.
“I would have noticed it and …”
“And what?” Mitchell inquired, even though that completely compounded his last transgression and made him even more annoyed with himself.
Kate shot him an uneasy smile and bent down to check on the sleeping dog. Max’s nose was cool and moist, and he opened his eyes when she touched him; then he gave his tail a feeble wag and drifted back to sleep. Satisfied, she stood up and rubbed her palms on the sides of her pants. She was trying to think what she would have done with Mitchell’s jacket, and she wished the subject hadn’t come up, because it was making her feel sneaky and guilty about going to bed with him here in Evan’s suite, when moments before she’d been happy and excited. “I guess I could have left it at the front desk in a bag with your name on it.”
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