“If they want the ladies to love them they do.”
Burt gave his sister a look that was pure-young-adult-male. “I’ll settle for lust.”
“Burt, that may be why you are working tonight instead of being out on date like Isabella.”
Winking at Harris, he said, “Maybe I stayed home to help you out.”
“We have staff,” she reminded him.
Sarah was different around her sibling. And the difference told him he should back away right now. This wasn’t a woman who would be interested in at best five weeks with a man who lived across the continent.
The pictures in her office of her family. The romantic music she’d been listening to and the caring in her eyes as she teased her brother. This was a woman who truly believed in the romance and fairy tale that was happily ever after.
“You want to learn, right?” she asked pinning her gaze on Harris.
He had a feeling this was test. Damn, he wished he’d stayed in the limo instead of giving into the impulse to see her again. He knew better than to follow his whims, they always led to trouble. “Uh…”
“Go on, Harris,” Ray said.
“It’s not that bad. The Millers are already out there and the other customers aren’t paying any attention to the dance floor.” Burt said.
“Let’s go,” Harris said.
He led Sarah to the dance floor and realized she was nervous. She chewed on her lower lip. Dammit. He wanted to taste her. To suckle that full lower lip with his mouth. He cared less about the mambo or humiliation. He wanted her in his arms. Once he had her there then he’d feel like he was in control again.
And nothing was more important to Harris Davidson than control. He took her in his arms and told himself she didn’t feel as if she’d been made for his embrace. It was only physical compatibility. Nothing more.
“Do you feel the same way Burt does?”
“About what?”
She pinned him with her gaze. For such wide brown eyes they could be very intense. “Lust or love?”
“Lust, remember?”
“The quantitative thing?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see if one dance can change your mind,” she said.
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the mambo. I can tell you that.”
“We’ll see. I’ll show you the steps of the dance. You seem smart, so you should pick it up quickly.”
“Glad to know I seem smart. I’d hate to think my M.B.A. from Harvard was a fluke.”
“Harvard?”
He nodded.
“I might have to rethink my position on your intelligence.”
Sarah took one of his hands from her waist and placed it on her hip. She moved the other one up to her shoulder.
She showed him the movements of the dance. The footwork was simple. And he intentionally flubbed it a few times to feel her leg rub against his. Her legs felt as good as he’d known they would. Her hips moved with each step and she watched him intently from under the long curls framing her face.
There was something so earnest about her that he had a moment’s pause. Hurting women wasn’t his thing. He’d never deceived anyone before and didn’t intend to start now. This woman with her warm and friendly restaurant deserved better from him.
He’d recognized the property when they’d driven up. This was one of the locations the consortium was preparing to buy out. And he knew this group of men well enough to guess there’d be no place for Sarah’s restaurant in their new complex. But that was business. And that was also why he couldn’t get involved with Sarah. Too many complications.
A smattering of applause brought him back to where they where.
“One more time?” Burt asked.
Sarah shook her head. But never took her eyes off Harris’s face. “I’ll go check on your food.”
Harris knew she was trying to get away from him. Knew he should let her go. But he followed her. The kitchen was busy. Harris took her hand and tugged her into her office instead.
“I didn’t come here tonight for food,” he said.
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why did you come here?”
“For this,” he said, lowering his head and taking her mouth with his.
Three
D
amn.
He smelled too good to resist. Sarah knew she’d been dancing around the fire, since the moment she first met Harris. If the flames were only coming from her she could resist it but she saw something in Harris that called to her soul. Something that said he’d been wounded as often as she had. Something that called to her heart and said she could heal him.
There was something in his frozen eyes that made her want to force a reaction from him. She wasn’t surprised when he lowered his head toward hers. Or when his mouth moved on hers with subtlety, seducing her with gentle nibbling kisses that made her blood run heavy and brought all her nerve endings to life.
She sensed the passion seething beneath the surface and had wanted to unleash it but now that she had—she knew that she may have released more than she could handle. She’d made love with men before but they’d never made her feel a tenth what Harris was making her feel with this one kiss.
He was a man who appreciated fine things. She’d noticed that first about him. And he treated her in his arms as if she were a living breathing work of art and he wasn’t letting go until he’d uncovered all her secrets.
She shuddered. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to him. He had defenses she wasn’t sure she could ever breach and she wasn’t in the market for heartache.
But his touch left no room for doubt. No room for thought even. The heat generated by the dancing and being in his arms fanned the flame.
Harris wasn’t a novice kisser. His mouth moved expertly over hers. Nibbling at her lower lip before sucking it into his mouth. She rose on tiptoe and tilted her head to the left to better accommodate him.
He lifted his hands to support her neck as he thrust his tongue deep inside her mouth. He tasted of breath mints and something else. Something salty and masculine. Something she’d never tasted before but wanted to again.
She slid her hands around his neck under his collar. His skin was hot to her touch, and his pulse beat a steady tattoo against his skin. Hers was beating just a strongly. It gave her a sense of power to think she affected him as deeply as he affected her.
It was only passion, she warned herself. But passion like she’d never experienced before. A wildfire out of control, she thought.
His hands slowly moved down her back, spanning her waist and pulling her more fully into his body. His chest was as hard as she’d suspected it would be. He pushed one of his thighs between her own. Her balance was no longer her own, but she didn’t feel vulnerable in his arms. She felt completely safe and supported.
His mouth left hers as he dropped nibbling kisses down the length of her neck. “Tell me to stop now if you don’t want more.”
Sarah tried to think. She didn’t know what she wanted. She couldn’t find words to make him stop or urge him to continue. She took his jaw in her hands and stared up at him.
He ran one long finger down the side of her face. His touch stirring to life longings that she knew she shouldn’t be feeling for him. Everything about him had warned her this wasn’t a man who’d want more than her body. But her soul had been stirred from the first time they’d met.
She wanted to be the one to awaken the emotions she sensed he kept locked away. But she wasn’t sure she was willing to pay the price.
She stepped back, taking his large hands in her own.
“I…oh, damn. This is more complicated than I thought it would be.”
“Only if you make it complicated.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Come back to my hotel with me.”
She wanted to. More than anything else it was what she wanted but life wasn’t as simple as it had seemed just minutes earlier in his arms. And she’d never been able to sleep with a man and not let her emotions get involved.
“I need more time.”
“I’m only in town for five more weeks.”
That’s it, she thought. Only five weeks. A keen disappointment filled her. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I can’t add another complication to my life right now.”
“You’re a woman of honor. And there are damn few of those around.”
“It’s not honor that’s driving me now,” she said. She wanted Harris. But she wanted him for more than one night in her life.
“No?” he asked.
“I need more from you than just a few nights.”
“That’s all I have to offer,” he said. “I like you Sarah, but I’m not going to change who I am.”
“I’d just like to know you, not change you.”
“You say that but at the core we’re different people.”
“Man and woman, I know.”
“Not only that. You surround yourself with people you love—”
“And this is a bad thing?” she interrupted. Some guys didn’t like women with family commitments. She knew that firsthand.
“It can be.”
“Why?” Her first serious relationship had ended with her parents’ death, because Paul hadn’t wanted to be saddled with the guardianship of the twins.
“I don’t love, Sarah.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Not now. But you will.”
The surety in his tone bothered her in ways she didn’t want to examine. She knew herself well enough to know she loved a challenge. But asking a man to love her, she knew better than to do that. “You are a little too sure of yourself for me.”
He shrugged. “It’s not that I think I’m so irresistible.”
“Then what is it?” she asked.
“It’s you,” he said. Walking around her office he fiddled with the pictures on the wall showing various poses of her and the twins, her parents and the various members of the Taste of Home staff. Would he guess from the pictures that she treated her employees like family?
He walked out the door and she watched him go. Not sure if she’d had a near miss with something fatal or something too wonderful to live without.
Harris had never had luck with women. His mother had abandoned him when he was three. His father’s two subsequent wives had quickly left as well. The longest relationship he’d had with a woman had lasted three weeks and by the end of that time he’d realized the truth for him about women. He was meant to live alone as a confirmed bachelor—non-family man. But deep inside he was tired of the silence.
Discovering that Sarah’s brother had left and Ray had promised to give her a ride home shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Harris. It seemed that if he kissed a woman and then made up his mind to do the noble thing, fate would of course intervene. All he wanted to do was to get as far away from Sarah as possible and to recover some of the control that he’d always taken for granted. Instead he found himself ensconced in the back of a dark limo with her.
Sarah stared out the window. It was the first time since they’d met that she had nothing to say. He searched his mind but small talk wasn’t his forte.
“I’ve finally discovered a way to make you quiet.”
“Happy?” she asked.
Since he was accustomed to silence, he should have been, but he wasn’t. There was something sacrilegious about a hushed Sarah. He thought he might have hurt her and he regretted that because he’d never intended to make her feel bad about herself or anything that went on between them. But saying that out loud wasn’t something he was comfortable with. “No.”
She looked at him then and he wished she hadn’t. Her eyes were wide and bruised. He knew the blame for that look lay squarely on his shoulders.
She’d taken the same seat in the limousine as she had the first time they’d met. Her skirt had pulled tight over her hips when she’d entered the car and he’d watched her with hungry eyes. Despite the intimacy they’d shared she was still a mystery to him.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Harris,” she said. He liked the way his name sounded when she said it. Wished that her voice didn’t sound so husky though. This is why he should never have let Ray convince him to visit Taste of Home. He knew better. He’d spent thirty-five years learning that when it came to women he didn’t have an M.B.A.
Damn.
He didn’t want to be having this conversation, though he felt compelled to be honest with her. Not that he’d planned to lie to her previously. “I don’t know what I want from you either.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“How do you know?” he asked. They’d just met. They were still essentially strangers. No, that wasn’t right. He knew her better than some of the woman he’d slept with. He knew she talked a lot except when she was nervous. He knew she nibbled her lower lip when she was unsure. He knew the sounds she made when he kissed her.
No, they weren’t strangers.
“Your character is stamped on every move you make,” she said at last.
He arched one eyebrow at her. How did a man respond to something like that? He hoped she really didn’t know him as well as she’d just intimated because if she did, he was already in trouble. But then trouble and Sarah seemed to go hand in hand.
She moved next to him on the seat. She smelled faintly of Spring—flowers and rain and all the things of rebirth. Never had he felt more like Hades—alone and cold in his damp, dark underworld.
“I’m willing to meet you halfway,” she said, placing her hand on his knee.
Her eyes sparkled with hope, he thought. Damn, he knew then that he should break it off. Take her hand off his leg and place it back on the seat between them.
But instincts older than common sense were in charge now. He as still partially aroused from holding her earlier and he hardened. If he moved her hand anywhere it would be a few inches higher, he’d be in heaven. “Halfway to what?”
“This thing between us.”
Sarah wasn’t like other women he knew, but suddenly she didn’t seem so different. This was a relationship conversation. And he didn’t know what he was looking for from her but it wasn’t a relationship. He’d learned the hard way that Davidson men didn’t do the long-term man-woman thing very well. “I’m leaving Thanksgiving weekend. I can’t stay longer even if I wanted to.”
“We’re talking vacation fling, right?” she asked. She drew triangles on his thigh with her fingernail. Her nails were painted a deep red color. The same shade as American Beauty Roses. He knew roses because his father’s obsession had been his rose garden.