Sweeter Temptation (Kimani Hotties) (3 page)

Chapter 4

A
spring pushed up through the cracked leather of the truck’s bench seat stabbing Kyle’s frozen butt cheek.

He didn’t care. Nor did he mind the stench of motor oil permeating the interior of the battered truck or the AM band radio squawking in the background. Right now, the heat kicking out of the truck’s vents made it better than any of the status vehicles lining the garage of the Ellison estate.

He held his bare hands over the vents and sighed as warmth surrounded them.

“I’m Nia, by the way,” his rescuer said.

“Ky-le.” He managed to push out through teeth that hadn’t stopped chattering. He turned toward her, but the fur-trimmed hood of her parka blocked the side of her face. Not that he blamed her. He wished he had a thick hood on his head blocking the elements.

“What were you doing out in this weather?”

“Stuck,” he replied, too cold to elaborate. He stretched his numb fingers over the vents, wishing he had gloves too.

“Guess it really doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Well, Kyle, there’s no place else to take you tonight but home with me. So I’m taking a leap of faith here and assuming you’re not a Ferrari-driving serial killer who doesn’t know how to dress for cold weather.”

“Businessman.” Dammit. His teeth wouldn’t stop clacking together. “Cold.”

“My place is just a few miles up the road. Actually, it’s my grandmother’s house, but I inherited it....”

The soothing feminine voice continued talking, but Kyle was too busy giving himself a mental kick in the ass to register anything she’d said.

Between his cousin’s appearance and his own gung-ho exuberance to demonstrate to his uncle he could handle his latest assignment, Kyle had been thrown off his game.

So now he sat freezing his tail off in a beater of a truck headed to who knows where.

Kyle continued to shiver as his rescuer turned off the main road and down what probably was a side road before it had been blanketed in snow. Shortly afterward, a lamppost illuminated a yellow wood-frame house surrounded by snow-laden evergreens.

“Here we are,” she said.

Kyle eyed the shin-deep layer of snow covering the path leading to the covered porch. The idea of wading through it made his barely thawed feet ache. At this point, he’d gladly trade his handcrafted Italian driving loafers for a pair of cheap boots from the nearest Walmart.

He felt a hand on his forearm.

“The longer we sit out here, the deeper it’s going to get,” Nia said.

He nodded, taking in the night sky. The snow wasn’t letting up. If anything it was coming down even harder, and he was only a few precious yards from shelter.

Once inside, Kyle continued to shake wondering if he’d ever be warm again. His gaze trailed his hooded rescuer as she went straight to the thermostat and adjusted the dial.

“I turned up the heat,” she said. “You should feel it soon.”

He wanted to thank her, but decided to wait until his teeth stopped chattering. So far, he hadn’t been able to utter more than a word or two.

Kyle looked around the room. His eyes flicked from walls covered in peeling, avocado-green wallpaper to faded faux-leather furniture he guessed was orange in its prime. Chunks of snow fell off his coat onto matted shag carpeting in a throwback shade of brown he didn’t think existed anymore.

Where in the hell am I?

Then he remembered the woman mentioning she’d inherited the place from her grandmother, who’d obviously been trapped in a time warp or served as curator for a 1970s museum.

But whatever the place lacked interior designwise, it was beginning to make up for in the temperature department. Kyle wasn’t positive, but he thought his toes were starting to defrost.

He pivoted to the parka-clad figure, hovered over a fireplace feeding wood into the fire she’d started.

“Let me help you with that.” Dropping his bag on the floor, Kyle strode toward her.

She stood abruptly, and her head collided with the center of his chest. Instinctively, he grabbed her arms to steady her, and a pair of startled brown eyes stared up at him.

He dropped his hands. “Sorry, I was trying to help.”

“Uh...um, I was just getting a fire started as backup.” The hood fell back from her head. “You know, in case the power’s knocked out.”

Kyle nodded and moved past her, closer to the flames. Extending his hands toward them, he flexed his fingers, oblivious to the tiny sparks catapulting off the crackling wood. The snow was melting off him in earnest now, rendering him a cold, soggy mess.

He sneezed once, then again.

“Bless you,” she said. “You’ll probably want to change out of those wet clothes before you end up with pneumonia. The bathroom is down the hall, first door on the right.”

Kyle hesitated not wanting to move away from the intense heat the fire was throwing off, but his host was right. He didn’t want to make a bad situation worse by getting sick. He spent a few more minutes soaking up the fire before picking up the leather duffle he’d managed to grab from the car and following her directions.

The bathroom was also a blast from the past he’d only seen on old television reruns. But it was clean and warm.

Kyle had no idea what was inside his duffle. Thomas “Chief” Gayle, better known as the Ellison household’s chief of staff, had saw to it his bags were packed and waiting in the Ferrari. Kyle hoped the bag he had contained his essentials and not the suitcase he’d abandoned in the trunk of the car.

He unzipped the bag and immediately saw his favorite fleece warm-up jacket on top. He breathed a relieved sigh and sent a silent thanks to Chief for once again saving his ass. Rummaging through the bag, he also discovered his toiletry kit and enough clothes to last him a day or two.

Kyle shed his lightweight wool coat, which had been worthless against the snowy onslaught. Next came his shirt, which was also soaked.

He heard his name along with a light rap on the door. He opened it. Nia stood in the doorway holding a set of fluffy, white towels.

“In case you wanted to warm up with a hot shower,” she said.

It was the first time he’d had the opportunity to see what she’d looked like, undistracted by his shivering or chattering teeth.

She was average, he figured, taking in her smooth coffee-colored skin. She wore her hair in a short Afro, which flattered her heart-shaped face, but was the polar opposite of the long, silky tresses he liked on a woman.

She was plain, when he liked flashy. Short, when he preferred tall. Round, where he preferred svelte.

Simply put, Nia wasn’t his type. Not at all.

The sound of Nia clearing her throat pulled him out of his own head.

“Do you want the towels?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” he said, taking them from her. “Thanks.”

His space-cadet moment must have made her nervous, Kyle thought as he watched her dart down the hallway. She was probably asking herself what kind of strange man she’d taken into her home.

He chuckled to himself as he shut the door and turned on the shower. “So much for being smooth, player.”

* * *

After all her big talk to Amy about sex being nonexistent on her priority list, one delicious eyeful of Kyle’s bare chest had left Nia wiping drool from her mouth.

Pull yourself together, girl.
She blew out a sigh and headed to the kitchen. She surveyed the refrigerator’s meager offerings before pulling out cheese and butter. There were no cans of soup left in the cabinet, but fortunately, there was half a loaf of bread in the breadbox.

She was hungry and figured her guest was too. Grilled cheese seemed like a better option than the other choice, peanut butter.

The shower water stopped, and Nia’s thoughts shifted back to Kyle’s gloriously naked torso. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip as she pictured water raining down on those mile-wide shoulders, droplets beading on those defined pecs and rolling over his washboard abs.

Just stop, she silently scolded herself again as she added the bread and cheese sandwiches to the butter sizzling in the cast-iron skillet.

First off, everything she’d told Amy had been true. She had more important things on her agenda than sex, like finally getting her job promotion and fine-tuning the proposal she prayed would save the town of Candy from financial collapse.

Furthermore, it didn’t take a genius to realize she wasn’t Kyle’s type. She recognized his dismissive expression. As the girl who used to run home to her grandmother in tears after being teased for her big eyes and thick lips, she’d seen it before.

Besides, men that looked like him didn’t give women who looked like her the time of day, let alone a second look.

“Smells good in here,” Kyle said.

It was the first time he’d uttered more than a word or two, and his deep voice rippled from the back of her neck down to her toes.

Nia looked over her shoulder to find her houseguest leaning against the kitchen archway dressed in jeans. Fortunately, he’d covered that flawless chest of his with a thermal shirt and a fleece jacket.

“I was hungry and thought you might be, too,” she babbled nervously. “Hope you like grilled cheese.”

“Grilled cheese sounds great.” Kyle stifled a yawn with his hand. “Guess my appetite thawed out with the rest of me.”

The scent of his soap, masculine and outdoorsy, tickled her nose, and his presence made the space of the small kitchen feel even tighter.

Nia licked her suddenly dry lips. No doubt about it, her dormant sex drive had awakened from its long hibernation—and it was demanding satisfaction.

“Why don’t you have a seat in the living room, and I’ll bring your sandwich out to you when it’s done.”

Anything to get him out of there and buy her a few moments to rein in her errant hormones. Nia flipped the sandwiches and tried to block out Amy’s words echoing in her mind.

...take off those goody two-shoes of yours just once...

Sliding the sandwiches onto plates, Nia exhaled, and braced herself for sharing a meal with her sexy guest.

“Kyle, food’s ready,” she called out.

She walked into the front room with his dinner and found him asleep on the ancient orange sofa her grandma had stubbornly refused to let her replace.

“Kyle,” she called again.

He didn’t stir. If the man was exhausted enough to fall asleep on that rock-hard sofa and not hear her calling him, Nia reasoned, he needed rest more than food.

“Chicken,” she muttered to herself as she retreated to the kitchen.

After eating and washing dishes, she nixed her original plan of a bubble bath and opted to work instead.

Diving into her proposal was just what she needed to get her priorities straight and Amy’s nonsensical advice out of her head.

Nia grabbed her notes from her tote bag and headed to the dining room, which had become her makeshift office since she’d taken up the cause of the candy factory.

Unfortunately, the dining room didn’t have a door, and the wide archway separating it from the living room gave her a perfect view of her dozing houseguest.

Nia stole another peek at him, and for the first time since she was a little girl, she wished she were like her late mother,
pretty.

Shaking off the thought, she powered on her laptop. No use pining for something she would never be.

She double-clicked the trackpad to open her web browser. A pop-up message indicated she wasn’t connected to the internet. She walked over to the wireless router and sure enough the usual green lights blinked red. She could deal with no internet access, as long as the power remained.

Closing the browser, she opened the file with her proposal and studied the artist rendition an architect friend had drawn up for Peppermint Village—an all-encompassing holiday destination that would surround an expanded Peppermint Lane Candy Factory. It would include tours of the factory, shops and a theatre. A Christmas-themed indoor amusement park would keep children entertained while a resort hotel spa would provide adults with a respite from the holiday hubbub.

Nia knew it was ambitious, but it was also a solid plan. She’d come up with it after giving up hope on ever finding her grandmother’s mysterious file.

All she had to do is figure out a way to get an audience with Jonathan Ellison and sell him on it. Easier said than done, since he’d rebuffed all of their attempts to contact him.

Nia was so caught up in fine-tuning the proposal, she hadn’t noticed hours had passed. She yawned and stretched as she pushed back her chair and stood.

Eyeing her guest, she saw he was still knocked out. Sleep had relaxed his handsome features, and she allowed herself a long, unencumbered look. The man was gorgeous, she thought, with skin a shade of caramel that was downright lickable.

Nia continued to stare, taking in the hard, masculine angles of his face. His grooming was impeccable even with the sexy, shadow of beard clinging to his square jaw and chin.

Finally, she let her gaze dip to his body. God, he was tall. And sculpted, she mentally added, remembering his bare chest. He must have been what the ancient Greeks had in mind when they’d hosted the first Olympic games in honor of Zeus.

Kyle’s long legs stretched out in front of him.

Big hands.

Big feet.

She’d bet he had a heck of a big...

A hint of a smile suddenly touched Kyle’s lips, but he didn’t stir or awaken. Still, if Nia didn’t know better, she’d swear her houseguest had read her dirty thoughts.

She briefly debated waking him so he could settle into the guest room, but tossed a blanket over him instead. Then she headed to her bedroom, where she hoped a good night’s sleep would put the sex drive her houseguest had awakened back into its coma.

Chapter 5

D
aylight tugged at Kyle’s eyelids, and he squeezed them tight hoping to keep it at bay.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t block out the morning or the aches in his shoulders and back.

“Damn,” he muttered, rubbing at the knot at the base of his neck.

He sat up and peered around the room. The previous day came back to him in flashes. His car sliding off the road. The snow bank. Freezing his tail off.

And a woman in a beat-up, old truck coming to his rescue.

The ancient sofa emitted a scrunching sound as he stood and stretched out the kinks it had left in his neck and back. Kyle immediately went to the window and pushed the curtain aside, hoping the storm had passed.

No such luck.

The snow showed no signs of stopping.

After a detour to the bathroom, he went to the kitchen and began rummaging through the nearly-bare cabinets. His stomach growled, and Kyle remembered he hadn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.

Growing up with a household staff had rendered him useless in the kitchen, but he could manage coffee.

The coffeemaker started its brewing cycle just as he heard the shower water running. Good. Nia was awake. The sounds coming from his stomach reminded him of how delicious the sandwiches she’d made last night smelled and how he’d missed out on them.

He’d spied bacon and a few eggs in the refrigerator. Now that Nia was up, she could hook him up with a hot breakfast. The plain ones were always eager to please, he thought with a smile. Kyle poured coffee into a mug he’d found in the ancient cabinets, leaned against the kitchen counter and waited.

Fortunately for his stomach, she didn’t take long.

“Morning.” Nia’s voice was still husky with sleep, and her eyes darted past him to the coffeemaker. “Great, coffee’s ready. I was hoping the smell was real, and I wasn’t hallucinating.”

He acknowledged her greeting with a nod and ventured another sip of the awful coffee. There was a reason coffee came from freshly ground beans and not a can, and this was it. Struggling not to grimace, he forced himself to swallow and not spew it all over the kitchen.

“Mmm.” Nia moaned after the first sip, apparently having acquired a taste for the kerosene-tasting brand. “Now I’m awake.”

Good, Kyle thought. She could start cracking eggs into a skillet.

Kyle cleared his throat. “Sorry, I fell asleep on you and missed dinner.”

“It didn’t go to waste. I ate yours, too.” She took another sip of the horrid coffee.

Kyle wasn’t accustomed to dropping hints. At home, the estate’s cook had perfect timing. He could count on breakfast being on the table the moment he entered the dining room.

On the nights he spent in a woman’s bed, most of them practically tripped over themselves the next morning to prove their cooking skills were on par with the ones they’d demonstrated in the bedroom.

“Well, I’m wide-awake now.” He gave the stove a pointed look, and then flashed her the smile that never failed to melt a woman’s defenses.

Nia eyed him over the rim of her coffee mug, before slowly placing it on the counter. “Ok-ay,” she said, stretching out the single word’s syllables. “I picked up on your not-so-subtle hint.”

Kyle winked. “In that case, I take my eggs scrambled with a splash of milk.”

“Of course you do.” She sauntered to the refrigerator, and he watched her pull out the carton of milk. “So do I.”

Good, he thought, satisfied she was on the case. “I’ll just get out of your way and let you get to it.”

Kyle smiled to himself as he plunked down on the orange pleather recliner in the living room. If there was one thing he knew, it was women.

“Breakfast.” Nia called from the kitchen a few minutes later.

Kyle frowned. That was fast. He felt a flicker of disappointment his nose didn’t detect the smell of bacon frying, but quickly dismissed it. He couldn’t be picky. After all, they were in the middle of a snowstorm. Eggs, buttered toast and maybe a side of home fries were acceptable.

He strolled into the kitchen prepared to throw down on whatever she’d prepared.

The smile died on his lips as he zeroed in on the kitchen table. A green, cartoon leprechaun grinned at him from a box of Lucky Charms cereal.

Cold cereal.

His hostess, if you could still call her that, dug a smug spoon into her bowl. She hesitated, leaving it poised midair. “They’re magically delicious.” She snickered and shoveled a spoonful in her mouth.

Nia chewed slowly and then swallowed. “Pull up a chair.” She cocked a perfectly arched brow, and merriment sparkled in her huge, brown eyes. “Bowls are in the cabinet, spoons are in the drawer.”

Kyle stood dumbfounded. Either he’d run into the rare woman, besides Marjorie, who was immune to his charms, or he was losing his mojo. Apparently, there was more to his hostess than he initially thought.

He decimated the first bowl of cereal and poured himself a second. “I haven’t eaten a kiddie cereal since I was nine. I’d forgotten how good this stuff tastes,” he said. “Back then, I’d dump half the sugar bowl on top of the loads of sugar already in it.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret.” She leaned in, and her voice adopted a conspiratorial tone. “Sometimes I still do. Eating all the sugar and candy I want is one of the best perks of being an adult.”

Kyle laughed aloud. Something he hadn’t done much of lately. It felt good. They quickly fell into an easy conversation bantering back and forth about the best candies of their childhoods.

“No way.” Kyle waved off her ludicrous suggestion that plain M&M’s were better than Snickers. “M&M’s are just chocolate, while Snickers is a quadruple threat. You got peanuts, caramel and nougat in addition to chocolate,” he argued. “It’s like a party in your mouth.”

“But M&M’s melt in your mouth, not in your hands.” She held up her hands to illustrate her point.

Kyle laughed again. So did Nia, and he couldn’t help notice she smiled with her entire face. Her full lips pulled back revealing even white teeth and a dimple in each cheek. The big brown eyes he’d initially judged as too large transformed into her best feature as they sparkled with the same merriment he’d detected earlier.

Her smile was genuine. Real. And he found he liked looking at it.

“So what’s your all-time favorite, best of the best candy?” She asked, breaking the spell of her smile.

“That’s easy,” Kyle said. “Teeth-rotting candy corn. Hands down, the best candy ever.”

“Candy corn? Ewww.” She scrunched up her nose.

“What’s better than candy corn? And please don’t say gummy bears.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good, because they aren’t even in candy corn’s league.”

“Actually, I was going to say my grandmother’s homemade almond toffee is the best candy I’ve ever tasted.”

Kyle shook his head. “No fair using a sentimental favorite. Brand names only.”

“But her toffee truly is the best, and I can prove it.”

Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m waiting.”

Nia left the table and returned with a small green canister he’d seen on the kitchen counter earlier.

“Grandma made a big batch of it before she got sick,” Nia explained. “It’s in the freezer, but I defrost a bit at a time and ration it out to myself as a treat.”

She handed him a piece. “I dare you to say this isn’t the best candy you ever tasted.”

“Or you’ll kick me out into the storm.”

“It won’t come to that,” Nia said. “Because I know I’m right.”

“We’ll see.”

Kyle bit off the piece she gave him. The ultra-rich flavors of butter, chocolate and sugar assaulted his tongue, and he straightened in his chair. He chewed slowly, savoring the rush of sweet, creamy flavors and the crunch of almonds.

Damn, this
was
good, he thought, finishing the piece in two bites. Really, really good.

“So what do you say?” Nia asked, but her smug expression told him she already knew his answer.

Kyle looked at the green canister, containing what he now had to admit was indeed
the best candy he’d ever eaten.

“More.” He held out his hand.

Nia pursed her lips together as if she were contemplating his demand. “Okay, but just one more. I’m rationing it, remember?”

Kyle nodded, his eyes focused on the second piece of candy she pulled from the tin. “I guess I don’t have to tell you that you’re absolutely right,” he said. “Your grandmother’s almond toffee is hands down the best candy ever.”

He polished off his second piece and looked up to find Nia still eating hers, a look of utter bliss on her face. Her enraptured expression captured his attention and held it, and he found himself unable to turn away.

“Something wrong?” Nia asked.

“Uh...I was just thinking about work,” Kyle lied, unable to explain even to himself why he’d been gawking at her.

He glanced up at the kitchen clock. Margie should be in the office by now. He needed to let her know the weather had him tied up, and also, that he’d talked with the owners of the skin cream company, he hoped to acquire for Ellison’s new personal care division, during yesterday’s drive.

“Mind if I use your phone?” He’d left his back with his car, and the battery was dead anyway.

“You’re welcome to try, but there was an outage when I tried to make a call last night,” she said. “It’s on the end table in the living room.”

Kyle retrieved her phone, silently praying the service problems had been resolved. The phone rang several times, but instead of his assistant’s voice, he heard the phone beep a few times before going dead. He tried a half dozen times with the same result.

Then it hit him. His briefcase, which contained both his iPad and laptop, was also in the trunk of his car.

Damn, he silently swore, running a hand over his short-cropped hair.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t be so concerned about being out of contact with the office for a day. However, Logan’s return had him worried.

If his long-lost cousin had managed to finagle a vice presidency by just showing up, who knows what he’d wheedled out of Uncle Jon over dinner last night, Kyle thought.

He returned to the kitchen where Nia was drinking a second cup of that awful brew.

“Do you have a computer I can borrow?”

His work files were backed up to a server that allowed him to access them remotely. He could also email both his assistant and his uncle.

“I have a laptop, but...”

“Don’t tell me, the internet is down, too.”

Nia simply nodded.

Kyle shook his head in exasperation. “I can’t believe I’m stuck out here cut off from the phone and internet.” He ranted out of frustration. “What in the hell am I supposed to do now?”

His hostess’s eyes narrowed, any glimmer of humor in them gone.

“You can start with being grateful you’re not still in your car.”

* * *

Good, he’s arrogant, Nia thought, almost relieved.

Being attracted to the man was bad enough, but this morning, he’d compounded it by being down to earth, charming and fun to talk to.

She’d needed a reason to dislike him. A reason not to wonder, each time her eyes roamed over his tall, muscular body, what he’d be like in bed.

“I don’t think you understand,” Kyle spoke slowly.

Even better, he’s condescending, too, Nia thought.

“It’s crucial I stay in touch with my office,” he said. “I’m important...”

Nia sat her mug on the table with a thud. She didn’t care how hot he was, she’d had enough.

“Are you a police officer or fireman?” she asked. “Or perhaps the letters
M.D.
are behind your last name?”

“None of the above,” he replied.

“Then it’s not crucial. You are not indispensable, and whatever it is can wait until this weather blows over.”

Darkness gathered in his brown eyes until they were almost as black as the dregs of coffee at the bottom of her mug, but Nia refused to melt under their scrutiny. She took crap back at her job in suburban Chicago. She refused to take it here.

Moments ticked by, before Kyle blew out a long breath. His angry stance deflated as he exhaled. He returned to his seat at the table.

“I apologize. My fight is with Mother Nature, not you,” he said.

His apology, free of the haughtiness of his rant, pierced her armor of indignation. It made it hard to squash the part of her starting to like him, and even tougher to shut down the woman in her that wanted him.

But she definitely had to shut down the latter. Her body may desire him, but her brain knew sex with him was the last thing she needed.

Her grandmother was gone. Still, Nia was determined to do the woman who had raised her proud, and make up for the disappointment and heartbreak Nia’s mother had caused the elderly matriarch.

“Mother Nature’s getting the best of us all today,” she finally said.

Nia rose from her chair. Grabbing the mugs and bowls, she began washing them at the sink.

She didn’t understand it. She hadn’t even thought about sex in eons. Kyle’s under her roof one night, and she’s constantly shoving thoughts of it—of him—from her head.

Nia felt a touch on her arm and flinched. She looked up to discover Kyle standing beside her.

“Oh.” She blinked.

Too bad she couldn’t blink away the heat radiating off his big body or the current his touch sent sizzling through the layer of her sweater down to her skin.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, but I called your name a few times. You didn’t answer.”

She dried her hands on a dish towel and walked past him out of the kitchen in an attempt to undo the spell his presence had on her. Although considering they were snowbound it was easier said than done.

“Nia.”

The sound of her name from his lips sent a shiver through her, and she locked her knees to keep them from melting. She turned around.

“I asked if there was anything to read around here,” he said.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “My grandmother kept some books upstairs. Follow me.”

Nia led him upstairs to the room that once belonged to her mother as a girl, but that her grandmother had used for knitting. Like everything in the house that belonged to the older woman, her stash of yarn remained.