“I hardly know you and you’re already blackmailing me?”
Terri smiled wryly. “It’s the Caroselli way.”
“I’ll definitely be there, but I’ll find my own ride.”
“Well, I should go,” Terri said. “If there’s anything you need, or if you have a question, just give me or Nick a call.”
“It was really nice talking to you,” Carrie told her.
“I think so, too,” Terri said, looking a little embarrassed. She struck Carrie as the type who probably had more male than female friends. While Carrie had very few of either.
“And thanks for the advice,” Carrie said.
“Anytime.” Terri pulled on her coat, then fished a set of keys from her pocket and handed them to Carrie. “Those open the front and garage door.”
“Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
When she was gone, Carrie started to explore the kitchen cabinets, feeling a little like a snoop. But she was sure that Terri would have removed anything of a personal nature before she rented out the condo.
She opened the refrigerator and smiled. On the shelf sat an unopened half gallon of low-fat milk, a dozen organic eggs and a loaf of organic nine-grain bread. One shelf down was a bottle of very expensive champagne.
Terri had gone above and beyond to make her feel welcome, and Carrie hoped they would have time to get to know one another better.
Carrie returned to the hotel to collect her things, then took a cab back to the condo, doing her best to memorize the street names so she could find her way around when she had a car. It had begun to snow, so rather than have the driver track it through the living room and potentially ruin the carpet, she had him leave the bags in the garage.
She opened the door to total darkness, cursing herself for not remembering to leave a light on. She felt around on the inside wall for a light switch. She found it and as she was flipping it upward, she felt a cold hand settle on top of hers.
She shrieked and yanked her hand back, the bright light temporarily blinding her. She blinked hard and when she opened her eyes again, no one was there. She peeked around the corner, but the only thing there was a door. Probably to the basement.
She took a slow, deep breath to calm her pounding heart. It was just her imagination. No one was there. She’d clearly been watching too many episodes of
Ghost Hunter
.
She turned to grab her bags, nearly colliding with the very large person standing there. She shrieked again, then realized that it was only Rob.
“You scared me half to death!” she said.
He wore a long black wool coat and black leather gloves…and an amused grin. Fat flakes of snow dotted his dark hair and he’d left snowy footprints on the garage floor. “A little jumpy?”
“What do you want?”
“What made you scream?”
“
You
did!”
“No, the first time.”
“Nothing. I was imagining things.”
“Imagining what?”
She shook her head. “
Nothing
. It wasn’t real.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What wasn’t real?”
She blew out an exasperated breath. “If you must know, when I reached around for the light switch, I could swear somebody put their hand over mine, but when I turned on the light, no one was there.”
“It must have been the lady in the basement.”
She blinked. “The
who?
”
“We call her the lady in the basement. Not everyone senses her. Terri and Nick never did, but a lot of other people have. Sometimes she touches people, some people hear her walking up and down the stairs. Some hear her crying. I smell her perfume.”
She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or just messing with her. “Really?”
“I can smell it from the instant I step in the garage door until I step into the kitchen. Maybe three feet. Then it’s gone. I’ve felt her brush against me, and once I felt a hand on my shoulder.”
“No way.” She leaned into the doorway and sniffed, but all she smelled was pine cleaner and bleach.
“You have to actually step inside,” Rob said. “Or it doesn’t work.”
She eyed him skeptically. Had she honestly just rented a house with a dead lady living in the basement? And wasn’t that sort of thing supposed to be disclosed before the lease was signed? Or was Rob just full of it?
Of course he was.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“I’m dead serious. Try it if you don’t believe me.”
It was walk in this door or walk around to the front door, which would make her look even more ridiculous than she probably did now. So basically she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
Promising herself that no matter what happened she would not react, she lifted her foot and stepped up over the threshold, then followed with the opposite foot, and the second it touched the floor—
A hand clamped down over her shoulder, and even though deep down she knew it was Rob, a startled screech ripped from her throat.
Heart pounding, she spun around and gave him a hard shove. “You’re an
ass
.”
“And you are
way
too gullible,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “I can’t believe you fell for that.”
“I didn’t think it was possible, but I like you even less than I did before.”
“It was worth it to see the look on your face.”
She stomped into the house and switched on the kitchen light, expecting him to follow. And he did, hauling two of her bags inside with him.
“What are you doing?”
“Where do you want them?” he asked.
She was about to tell him she would do it herself, then thought, what the heck. He might as well get used to following directions from her. “They all go in the bedroom.”
He had clearly been there before, because he seemed to know where all the light switches and the bedrooms were located.
She shrugged out of her coat, wondering if she might find a box of tea bags somewhere.
On his second trip through to the bedroom, Rob asked, “Are you sure you packed enough stuff? These things weigh a ton.”
“You try packing three months’ worth of stuff,” she called after him as he disappeared down the hall. “That’s a long time to be away from home.”
Two of the smaller bags had nothing in them but shoes. One was filled with casual clothes, though she realized now that much of it was too light for the cold weather. She would have to do some clothes shopping, and soon. The rest was work clothes, some of which were also inappropriate for the season. Living in a warmer climate, it was difficult to imagine how cold Midwestern winters could be.
“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked on his final trip back to the garage. “And how did you even know where I was?”
He walked back in with the last two bags. “I talked to Nick.”
Of course he would know, because Terri told Nick everything. Not that it was some big secret. She just didn’t want Rob thinking it was okay to come by and hassle her whenever he felt like it.
This time she followed him into the bedroom. He set her bags down with the others by the closet, then turned to her.
“Which doesn’t explain why you’re here,” she said, folding her arms, giving him her stern look.
“To give you this.” He tugged his gloves off, pulled a flash drive out of his inside coat pocket and handed it to her.
“What is it?”
“The financial reports you asked Elana for.”
“Oh. She could have given them to me Monday.”
He shrugged. “I figured you would probably want to get an early start on this.”
Actually, no, she planned to start Monday, when her contract started. But it was interesting that Rob chose to bring it when he didn’t have to.
“Thanks,” she said, and crossed the room to set it on the nightstand. But when she turned back around, Rob was no longer standing by the closet. He was in front of the bedroom door, blocking her only exit from the room. And he was wearing that
look
.
All the parts of her that had been craving his touch shivered to attention. What on earth had possessed her to follow him in here? If there was a single worst place for them to be together, it was a bedroom.
Rolling her eyes in response to the visual overture, she walked over to her bags and grabbed one that was filled with shoes. She went into the closet with it, found a good place to put them, then bent at the waist to unzip the bag—and not just because she was trying to make her butt look good either. One by one she pulled the shoes out, pairing them together on the floor.
She heard him in the bedroom, just outside the closet, the hiss of his arms through the satin lining of his coat sleeves. Okay, so he was taking his coat off. That didn’t mean he would try anything. He had been the one to proclaim that it was over the other morning. What was he going to do? Break his own rules? Although it would be fun to turn the tables again and turn him down.
She could do that. Right? All she had to do was call Alice and she would talk her out of it.
Before she could make up her mind, she felt his hands slide around her hips, his fingers gripping as he rubbed his crotch across her behind. He was already noticeably turned on, and she wasn’t faring much better.
“Really,” she said, looking back at him. “This is so…cliché.”
“You’re one to talk.” He slid his fingers under the hem of her sweater, brushing them across her bare skin. “Besides, you didn’t seem to mind it like this the other night.”
No, she hadn’t, had she? And it was very cliché of him to remind her.
Where the hell was her phone? She needed to call Alice pronto.
As she straightened up, he slid his hands around to her belly, pulling her back against him. Oh, that was nice. But not half as nice as when his hands slid up to cup her breasts a second after.
She sighed and let her head drop back against his chest. “I distinctly recall your telling me that this was not going to happen again. And you were right.”
“Well, I changed my mind.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I just did.” He tucked her hair to one side, kissed the back of her neck, the heat from his body melting her brain.
“We’re coworkers,” she reminded him.
“Technically we’re not. Not yet. Your contract doesn’t officially begin until Monday.”
He made a valid point. And because they had already slept together, the pre-working-relationship part was already a lost cause. Right?
So what was the big deal if they did it one more time? If she held it up beside the “big picture,” it was a tiny, tiny thing. Barely a blip. And why bother Alice when this was clearly going to be the last time?
His hands were under her sweater now, his hot palms scorching a path across her skin. He nibbled the side of her neck, then sucked hard.
A guy hadn’t given her a hickey since she was fifteen, but it was unbelievably erotic to think that he was marking her, branding her as his.
She turned to face him, sliding her arms around his neck. “Okay, but just this one time, and that’s it.”
“Agreed. Unless we have to do it again tomorrow, because it’s only Saturday. Then of course there’s Sunday…”
“But not after Monday.”
“Definitely.” He lifted her right off her feet and carried her to the bed. There was no better way to make a house feel like a home than to have really awesome sex in it.
Seven
R
ob tossed her not so gently onto the mattress and pulled his shirt up over his head.
She pulled her shirt off, too, then her bra. “For the record, I still don’t like you.”
“I know,” he said, red-hot lust in his eyes as he unfastened his pants. “Take off your jeans.”
She unfastened them and shoved them down, and his dropped to the floor. His pants
and
his underwear.
“This is just sex,” she told him, as he tugged her panties down her legs. “We’re not friends.”
“Definitely not.” He knelt at the end of the mattress and began to kiss his way up her legs, pushing them apart as he worked his way higher, and when he reached the apex of her thighs, he kissed her there, then took her into his mouth.
She had forgotten that he had such a talented tongue. But as good as it was, she wanted him inside her when she came, and he must have been thinking the same thing. He moved over her, settled between her open thighs, his weight pressing her into the mattress in the most appealing way.
He took her hands in his and pinned them over her head. “Tell me you want me.”
“This was your idea,” she said. “So clearly you’re the one who wants
me
.”
He lowered his head to lick her nipple, then suck it into his mouth.
Hard
. She gasped and pushed up against his grip.
“Tell me you want me,” he said, and the devilish look in his eyes said he would take whatever measures necessary to make her cooperate…like slide his erection against her, teasing her with the tip, until she was restless and needy.
“Fine, I want you,” she said, shifting underneath him.
His deadpan expression said that wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. But there was something else, an undercurrent of emotion that made her wonder if he actually
needed
to hear it.
She looked into his eyes and said, “I want you.”
With a swift and not-so-gentle thrust that stole her breath, he was inside of her. Then he pulled back and thrust again and pleasure rippled through her like a shock wave. A few more of those and it would be all over for her. She held her breath, anticipating the next thrust, but instead Rob stopped, cursing under his breath.
“Something wrong?” she asked him.
He looked down at her. “Are you using any kind of birth control?”
She shook her head.
“At present, neither am I, so before it’s too late…”
She shoved him off her. “Yes, definitely. Please.”
Thank goodness he’d noticed in time. She couldn’t even imagine what a disaster it would have been if he hadn’t. She was at the worst possible time in her cycle to be taking chances.
If there was a world speed record for rolling on a condom, she was sure he broke it. But this time, as he lowered himself over her, he took things a bit slower. Fast, slow, she didn’t care, so long as he was touching her.