Three to Tango (2 page)

“I know and I appreciate it.” As she’d assured them several times already. “But I have to be up at all hours and have my equipment running. It’s too much to ask.” Plus it would take up a great deal of space. And they didn’t have air-conditioning. As much as she adored the two of them, it was August, and she hadn’t lived in the deep South for a decade.

Luca stole a fry when the cheeseburger arrived, and she nudged him with an elbow, sending him a playful glare.

“Ava, I have room at my house. It’s on the lake, so it’s quiet. I have a home office if that helps.”

Maryellen grabbed on to that quickly. “It’s a big old house, Ava. Enough out of town that you won’t be bothered.”

“He does always have that fancy coffee I bet you like, too.” Jasper winked. “We’d feel much better if you stayed with Luca.” The man had gone with her to the bank in Riverton where she opened her first savings account. He was more of a father to her than the one she was born to, that’s for sure.

“I can help you get your stuff from the hotel and get you settled in,” Luca, ever so helpful, chimed in.

“I already paid and everything.” But they sensed her weakness, and she knew it was a done deal.

“Lynell is a cousin on my daddy’s side. I’m going to call him right now.” Jasper stood, off on a mission to call the hotel’s manager. “I’ll tell him you and Luca will be over after you finish eating.”

And that was that.

Two

A
va sat on the bed with its handmade quilt folded at the foot and sighed. The room was cool, shaded by a huge weeping willow just outside the window and the marvelously efficient air-conditioning she thanked heaven for.

She lay back and tried not to think about how close Luca kept getting to her over that afternoon. He’d sat right up against her at the café. And then he’d stayed to help her move her things, touching her, crowding her and generally making her as skittish as all get-out.

He’d kept the conversation light enough, but she hadn’t failed to notice the way he watched her put her underpants back in her suitcase. So much remained unspoken between them, even as their back and forth had come fairly easily.

He’d been … so much to her. Everything at one time. The way she’d left it wasn’t the best, she knew, but she didn’t know how to bring it up.

She’d wanted to take his hand and tell him how those times with him and Angelo had thrown something inside her open wide. How understanding her sexuality wasn’t some horrible, shameful thing had freed her. They’d both shown her she was beautiful and worth love and respect.

But then she got embarrassed just thinking about it and left it unsaid. After all, he might have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or maybe he looked back on those times a decade before through a different lens.

The last time she’d seen him, some seven years before, he’d been a man. Someone else’s man, though no less sexy and desirable. The scent of him drove her crazy. The solid wall of his chest, the way his forearms looked with his shirtsleeves folded up, his hands—lordy, she did love the look of a sexy pair of hands, and he had them in a big way.

She rustled around, trying to find relaxation so she could sleep. He’d left her in the sleek and elegant spare bedroom about twenty minutes before, and now she lay on the bed, the ceiling fan lazily cooling her skin, filled with all sorts of filthy urges and no one to fulfill them.

The heat had leeched the small bit of energy she had left, and so she lay there, tired and emotionally frazzled and feeling exposed. Bone-deep exhaustion sapped her will after all the air travel and the details of her presentation, and this sort of up-close examination of her past didn’t help. Her eyes hurt and a steady throb beat at her temples. Her mother was dead, and she couldn’t find any part of her that felt empty because of that fact. This made her far more sad than the actual death.

She needed to make it all disappear for a few hours. Claim unconsciousness and find the sort of rest she couldn’t get until she conked out. But sleep would not come. Probably because she was so horny.

Only one way to deal with that. She headed to the shower.

Luca had stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to his guest room for a very long time.

The last thing he needed to do was start something with Ava Rand. Ava with her big, beautiful eyes. The years had been very good to her. Time, the sunshine and most undoubtedly the distance from her parents had fleshed her figure out. Her legs were long and shapely, rather than the skinny ones she’d left Petal with. Her tits, well, they’d been nice back then, only now she wore them in a pretty bra made to keep them mounded just right over the top of her blouse.

She’d had a ton of computer stuff with her. She’d told him she worked for a midsize software company. That had been unexpected.

Everything about that day had been unexpected, he supposed. Ava just popping up, looking so beautiful, and now, like a dream, she was in his house, just a few stair treads away.

He got all the way out to his favorite chair overlooking the water before he pulled his phone out and dialed the familiar number.

And of course got voice mail for the second time in a day. Cripes, Angelo really needed to listen to his damned messages every once in a while. Luca left a brief update and hung up, looking back at the house.

Skittish. She’d been nervous around him, and at first it had hurt. But then he realized she was uncertain, unsure of what they’d mean to each other all these years later, and he relaxed and gave her a little bit of space, which seemed to relax her as well.

Then they’d sort of clicked back into how they’d been before. And that, he thought, sweating because he’d begun to pace in the sun instead of sitting in his shaded chair, had disconcerted
him
.

Only Angelo shared that space in Luca’s life, that sort of effortlessness of being with someone you trusted completely.

She’d left. He’d woken up to find her gone, leaving behind nothing but a note begging for forgiveness because she had to get out of Petal or die.

He’d understood. They talked about her leaving, but he and Angelo hadn’t wanted her to do it. He came from good people. From a family who’d loved and cherished him. He had a bright future. To him, Petal was a town filled with possibilities because he wanted to take his place in it, build an adult life there, have a family and do all that great stuff.

To her, it had been a place of contradictions. The kindnesses of people like his parents were contrasted by the way many judged her for her parents. It had been a dead end for her in many ways. He’d known it, but hadn’t wanted to face her not being there.

And one day she was simply gone.

But his feelings for her, feelings he’d carefully boxed away, had never gone, and the shadow of her had remained. Like another person in the room each time he’d gone out with other women.

He still wanted her. Wanted the woman she’d become. He brought her to stay with him to have her near, and he couldn’t find the energy to deny it to himself.

With a sigh, he stopped pacing and headed back toward the house.

She didn’t answer when he knocked. His heart kicked with worry. She’d been pale, clearly tired. He shouldn’t have even come back, but now that he stood there, worried, he had to be sure.

“Ava?” he called out as he opened the door.

She walked out from the bathroom on a puff of steam, wrapped in a towel.

A towel that slipped to the ground when she saw him and screamed, jumping three feet into the air.

“It’s me! Ava, it’s Luca.” Feeling helpless and more than a little like a dumbass, he held his hands up. “I knocked and you didn’t answer …” God her body was beautiful. He nearly lost his mind when he caught sight of the tattoos and pierced nipples.

How totally unexpected. He liked it. Especially his cock. Energy built as they stood there—her naked, hair slowly drying and beginning to curl. He remembered her taste, the feel of her skin against his lips.

She remembered, too. Right there, she stood and remembered it the way he did. Her pupils swallowed the color of her eyes, her skin pinked. That knowing passed between them, heavy and sticky.

It hung there with a delicious ache until the dryer sounded that it was done, the noise breaking the tension.

She bent to grab the towel and then sent him a raised brow. “Oh. Shit, sorry.” He turned away while she rustled, getting dressed.

“I was taking a shower.” She sighed. “You can turn around now. Not like you haven’t seen it all before.”

When he did she was in jeans, rolled up at the hems, and a pale yellow T-shirt. She wore no bra.

“I have, yes.” He’d said it, meaning to tease, but once he took her in totally, he stood there without speaking.

Nothing like a totally silent moment to make a girl more nervous. It would have been worse had she not taken in the rather impressive line of his hard-on, pressing against the zip of his jeans. She was only human after all. The denim was so well used and faded it’d gone nearly white in some places. Threadbare glimpses of his thigh only added to the overall effect. No shoes. Just a pair of lowslung jeans, a slice of sun-kissed belly when he reached up to run his hand through that mass of golden hair. That downy trail of hair leading from his navel inside the waistband of his jeans led to places she’d never forget.

He was beautiful right then, but naked, well, he did naked really well, too.

Ava couldn’t make him leave. Didn’t want him to. She lost her exasperation and put a hand at her hip. “Why did you come in?”

“I was worried about you. You were tired and pale, and I had a brief moment of panic that you’d hit your head or something and I came in.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why did you come back to my door to begin with? Is everything all right?”

“I tried to stay away. I stood outside in the sun, sweating and having a vicious argument in my head about why I needed to just keep moving and leave you before I did something.”

He seemed nearly fierce as he began to pace. The sun behind him seemed to light him in gold. Against the fine hairs of his arms, exposed from mid-biceps down. His shirt clung to his body just right. A lot like his jeans did.

His hair had always reminded her of honey. Currently it was just a bit too long. But with the practiced scruff of his beard and the sleepy, big brown eyes, the package was one of a kind of sexy. Mature man sexy. The kind of sexy that drove women crazy.
This woman for damned sure.

Luca had always been that boy all the girls had crushes on. The bad boy who was a good guy under the skin. Raced his car and rode a motorcycle, but he opened the door for a lady. He was intelligent and articulate, funny and generous.

Her ovaries were doing cartwheels just being in the same room with him.

“Do something like what?”

In two steps he was on her, pulling her to the very solid wall of his chest. His mouth found hers as she gasped in delight. Her fingers slid into his hair, as she’d wanted to do ever since she’d seen him just hours before.

His tongue slid into her mouth, dancing along hers. The shock of memory hit her. She’d had this with him before, had been marked by it in some way and she wanted more. Wanted it right then and now.

She arched against him, tugging on his hair when he made an attempt to break the kiss. He hummed his satisfaction, and she eagerly swallowed the sound. He sucked her bottom lip, nipping it until she shivered at the edge where pleasure slid into pain.

He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. “Something like that.”

She laughed. “For future reference, I’ll go on record to say I approve of something like that.”

“You wanna come out for a drink? Relax a little? Catch up?” He licked his lips, as if to taste her again. Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch him again, but she forced her hands into her back pockets to keep from hauling him closer and grabbing a handful of cock.

Still, he’d surprised her by asking. The tentative nature of his voice relaxed her a little. He was as uncertain as she. “I do. But it’s two days before the funeral. It would look bad. Everyone will only say how much like her I am.” She shuddered.

He caressed her cheek, sliding his palm down to cradle the side of her neck. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “You’re nothing like her, Ava. That you’re here, that you’re actually thinking about how your actions might affect others shows that. But I understand your discomfort. We can stay here. I can make dinner and drinks. Or you can sleep.”

“My internal clock is off. I’m dead tired, but not sleepy. I’m going to try to stay awake until at least nine or I’ll be all wonky tomorrow.” She’d been hoping an orgasm would help make her drowsy, but his presence lit her up like a Christmas tree.

His smile was crooked, his eyes lit with something more than general amusement.

“I can think of things we can do here.”

“That so?”

He kissed her again, his mouth warm and hungry as it settled over hers. She moaned, arching into his hold, which tightened around her, keeping her snug against him. Her hips jerked forward of their own accord when he sucked her tongue.

Her nails dug into his shoulders as she opened to him, to the kiss, to the direction the day was taking.

“I want you, Ava. Can I have you?” he panted as he broke the kiss.

“God yes.”

He smiled, sliding his hands along the edge of her pants, along her waist, leaving goose bumps in his wake.

“You feel good,” he murmured, kissing her neck. “Smell good. Taste good.” As he spoke, he backed her against the dresser. “I’ve been hard since the moment your name came up earlier today.”

Huh? “It’s very hard to follow what you’re saying when …” Oh yes yes yes.

He slid a hand down the front of her jeans—thank God they were loose—and into her panties. She gasped when he slid the pad of his middle finger along her labia and then between, against wet, sensitive, already swollen flesh.

“You drive me crazy. You know that? Widen your stance, baby. Yes, like that so I can get at your pussy better.”

Hoo boy.

He petted her clit and she hissed, her hips jutting forward. “Mmm, you need this don’t you? Shhh, let me give it to you. Take the edge off.”

“I just had it,” she murmured, letting him lever her back a little so he could pull her T-shirt up, exposing her breasts.

“Pierced. I need to see up close.” He licked over each nipple, all as he continued to finger her. “You just had it? What does that mean? God I love these.” He worshipped her nipples as she struggled to form a coherent sentence.