Business or Pleasure? (11 page)

She couldn't be absolutely sure because this was all pretty new to her, but this sounded very much like he was trying to let her down easy. Dread filled all the places inside her that had been filled with happiness a few minutes earlier. “I don't remember asking you to change.”

“No, you didn't but—”

“I'm a big girl, remember? I make my own choices.” She'd waited too long for this to happen. She wasn't going down without a fight, dammit. “Besides, I know exactly who you are.”

His hand moved reflexively and she thought he might reach out to touch her again but then he let his arm drop to his side. “You think you do but you—”

“Alec, wake up.” She leaned forward and covered his hand with hers. “Who knows you better than I do?”

He sucked in a big breath, let it out. She bit her lip, waited for him to deliver the whopper he'd just tried to swallow. “Daze, you want…hell, you deserve more than I have to give.”

She did. She wanted everything. The whole matrimonial enchilada. But last night—sometime between act of passion number one and act of passion number nine—she'd decided that she could live with the fact that she wasn't going to get that from him. She could and she would.

Of course, there was always the possibility that he would fall in love with her…

Ah, there it was, she thought as she grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to her. Her optimism, right back where it belonged. She slipped her arms around his neck and tipped her head to whisper in his ear, “I know what I want.” She nipped at his earlobe and he sucked in a breath and then she said, very softly, “Thank you for hiring me back, Alec.”
Nibble.
“For wanting me here with you.”
Nibble.
“I wouldn't have missed this for the world.”

He stiffened in her arms for a beat, so she nibbled on his ear some more and let her lips play around a sensitive spot on his neck she'd found last night.
C'mon, give it up, Mackenzie.

Alec groaned and said, “Ah, hell,” and after that it only took a second for him to roll her beneath him and a second more for him to find her lips and urge their kiss to an immoral, feverish place that had him crushing his mouth against hers, bruising her lips in a way that sent her mind spinning and her heart soaring. He tossed away the sheet that separated them, and the absolute perfection of his skin against hers made her sigh into his mouth, made her rejoice all over again that fate had seen fit to make this magnificent man her first.

His strong, callused hand slipped down over her breast and cupped it gently while he used his thumb to tease her nipple into a hard, aching peak. Then he took her into his mouth and pulled gently, again and again, and she moaned as a thick, warm flush of pleasure slipped down her body and pooled between her trembling legs.

Her skin burned beneath his hand as he moved down her body, caressing and stroking across her stomach, then lower until he found her, wet and ready. and slid his fingers inside her. She clutched the sheets in her fists and arched up to meet
him, then she bit down hard on her lower lip when she felt his breath, hot and fluid, on her skin as he used his lips to follow the same path his hand had just taken.

Oh, yes,
she thought as he lifted her to him with clever, urgent hands and used his tongue and mouth to take her, thrashing and moaning and begging, to the very boundary of her being. She buried her hands in his dark hair and let the waves of sheer pleasure take her, pulling her down, deeper and deeper, until finally a wondrous, delicious release seized her and swept her away in one fast, furious, unstoppable surge.

He smiled down at her as he stripped off his jeans and then, with his breathing ragged and reckless in her ear, he entered her while her body still vibrated with sweet aftershocks. She took him, all of him, took him gratefully, and loved that he filled her so completely.

And then she forgot to think at all as they began to move as one, and her body and her heart opened impossibly further to him. Their pleasure deepened and swirled and intensified and then finally he, too, surrendered, crying out her name with one last thrust, taking her with him to a place she knew in her heart she'd only ever be able to find again in his arms.

 

Daisy tore the concrete contractor's bid out of the fax machine, read through it quickly, initialed her approval and fed it right back into the machine. While the pages zoomed through the ether, she updated her costs spreadsheet, printed a copy and laid it on Alec's desk.

Busy
did not begin to describe the last few days, she thought as she absently began straightening his messy desk.
Monday morning, right after they'd gotten out of the shower—another lovely, erotic, heart-stopping first for her—a local contractor they'd hired to do some framing had knocked on the door and soon after that the phone had begun ringing, packages had started arriving, meetings had started happening.

The Santa Margarita job had officially begun.

It had taken no time at all for Alec and Daisy to settle into a routine. When it came to work, they were a well-oiled machine. Daisy handled everything behind the scenes—the bids, the books, the orders, the deliveries, phones, blueprints, permits and, of course, her specialty—inspectors. Alec handled design and everything that happened on-site, from dealing with contractors to making sure that no one tried to stick them with a truckload of knotted, warped boards. And while this division of labor worked well and made good sense, the downside was that it kept them apart a great deal of the day.

Fortunately, they were both passionately committed to making the most of their nights.

And oh, the nights, Daisy thought as she gathered up the pencils he'd left strewn about the table and put them all into the empty cup where they belonged. They'd been the most amazing three nights of Daisy's life. She felt her face flush when she thought about how bold she'd become so quickly, how much time she'd made up for in Alec's arms.

The only problem was that each caress, each moan and gasp and overwhelming climax made her fall harder and more hopelessly in love. And with that realization came the knowledge that when the time came, she was going to have one hell of a time letting him go.

The phone rang, dragging her back to Thursday, day six of the ninety or so she'd spend here on Santa Margarita, making love with the man who was most definitely going to break her heart.

“Mackenzie,” she said into the receiver as she dropped into Alec's desk chair.

“Kincaid,” Alec said with mock gravity, his low, sexy voice causing her blood to pop in her veins.

Her heart rate kicked up to a cha-cha beat. “You on your way home?”

“As fast as this damn cart will take me. You okay?”

“Yes.” How domestic this all sounded, she thought, while it was anything but. For one crazy second, she considered telling him that she loved him. That, in spite of what she'd said, she was dreading the day she was going to lose him. “It's been a busy day.”
Coward.

“Hey, if I haven't told you already,” he said, concern heavy in his voice, “you're doing an amazing job. I don't know how I would be handling this without you.”

“Thanks, Alec.” She loved the job. In fact, staying busy all day was the only thing that kept her mind off their future—or lack thereof.

“I have an idea,” he said, then quickly added, “and I'm still the boss, so you can't say no.”

She smiled, thinking how much their relationship had changed in recent days. “What's your idea, boss?” she asked, leaning on the final word.

“Ohh, I like that,” he said, and she could almost see him stroking a nonexistent villain's beard. “Subservience. Hmm. That gives me another idea…”

“Stick to the first idea, Snidely Whiplash.”

“Oh, that.” He managed to inject disappointment into the simple words. “What was that again?”

“Alec…”

“Take an hour and treat yourself to something at the spa over on Catalina Lane.”

“Thanks, but there's so much to do—”

“Did I mention I was the boss?”

“You did mention that, yes,” she said, her tone dry.

“Then go on. Chop, chop. No dinner meeting tonight so I'll pick something up.”

“I don't know,” she began.

“I'm having a hard time being this nice,” he said, “so the offer expires in exactly ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six—”

“Okay,” she said as she reached for her purse.

“And, Daisy?”

“Yeah?”

“Don't get an overhaul. I like you just the way you are.”

Damn him.

 

Alec took a long pull on a tall beer and collapsed onto the suite's overstuffed couch. Something was definitely wrong. He was sure of it because he was starting to do things that only jerky, sensitive, New-Age guys did.

For starters, he'd been calling Daisy all day long lately—always under the guise of talking about work, but he knew he just wanted to hear her voice. Tonight he'd even called her on the way home—like a husband, for pity's sake. Then he'd offered to pick up dinner, which wouldn't have been a big deal except that he'd made it a big deal by calling the chef at
Pitcairn
and bribing her to whip up a special menu. Then he'd spent the next hour running all over town picking stuff up,
making nice with the surly proprietor of the wine shop and telling flagrant lies to the girls at the bakery who'd already closed up for the night.

All in all, he was definitely having an out-of-body experience.

A sigh loud enough to wake Daisy's cat didn't make him feel any better, either. He had to admit it, he thought as the cat got up, stretched his back into a perfect Halloween cat arch and settled down to lick one soft paw. He wanted Daisy the way he'd never wanted any woman. Not in a forever kind of way, of course, but in ways that alarmed him and ways that intrigued him and ways that made him feel like he'd already lost his freaking mind.

He looked over at Daisy's neatly ordered desk and all the familiar things she'd laid out on its surface—coffee cups filled with pens, a rack that held her color-coded folders, a stack of Post-its, a framed photo of her with her late mother. It struck him as ironic that all of that was so predictable while the woman herself had turned out to be anything but.

The cat—whose name was Barney or something—chose that moment to give him one of those cat looks that said, “You don't like me so I'm going to love you up until you start sneezing,” and promptly jumped onto Alec's lap.

“Aw, c'mon,” Alec said, holding his arms away from the cat in hopes it would get the hint.

It didn't. It just turned in a dozen tiny circles, curled up into a neat yellow ball right there on his legs and began to purr. Loudly.

Alec tried to harden his heart against the furry monster, but when he looked down at the contentment on the cat's face, he gave up. “All right. But don't make this a habit.”

Barney just blinked and purred louder. Then he dropped his head down on his front paws and exhaled with a little wheeze.

“You got a pretty good gig here, don't you?” he asked as he began to scratch the cat behind the ears absently. “Eat. Sleep. Love. The end.”

Barney let out a little
snore-snuffle
combo. “Maybe I'll take a page out of your book, Barney. Maybe I'll try being domesticated for a while.” Alec took another swig of his beer. “I sure am tempted.”

“I thought you and cats didn't get along.”

Startled, Alec coughed and gagged as he twisted around in his seat. “Daisy,” he said as he sat up straight, ejecting the cat in the process. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know that you weren't paying attention when I told you his name was Bam Bam.”

“I knew it was one of the Flintstones.”

“Rubbles.”

“Whatever.”

Daisy stood in the doorway, her curvy figure silhouetted by the orange-purple glow of the sun's dying light behind her. A warm breeze had slipped in with her, bringing with it the unique island scents of sand and sea and passion.

She stepped inside and shut the door and he saw a tempting glimpse of her flat stomach beneath her cropped red shirt, a long, enticing stretch of her tanned legs below an abbreviated denim skirt and a bad girl's smile lighting up her pretty face.

His throat went bone dry.

“What's for dinner, honey?” she asked, teasing him as she walked toward him, her hips swaying with each graceful step.

Heat sizzled in his veins. How was he supposed to resist thinking what it would be like to come home to this every night, when he'd had more fun in the last five days than he'd had in the previous five years?

“Just a little something I threw together.” He put down his beer and stood. “Come on,” he said, and took her hand and led her through the French doors and out onto the patio where he'd laid out a red-checked tablecloth and the most decadent spread he could muster on such short notice.

Daisy didn't say a thing. She just nibbled on her bottom lip. When she looked up at him, her eyes were suspiciously shiny. “You did this for me?”

“Only the best for you,” he said as he pulled out a chair for her.
Except me. I'm not the best thing for you but, heaven help me, I can't seem to stay away.

She spread a napkin out on her lap and chewed a little harder on her lip. “This is so sweet.”

Sweet, he thought. Only sensitive, New-Age guys were sweet.
Damn.

“Don't worry,” he said with a wink as he took a seat across from her. “I'll make up for the sweetness with a little bit of sin later, I promise.”

And he was a man of his word. After they ate the oysters on the half shell and the French bean salad with sea scallops and the salmon filet with goat cheese gratin and the Tahitian vanilla crème brûlée, he took her to bed and showed her that even newly minted, sensitive, New-Age guys could turn wicked when they wanted someone the way he wanted her.