Sun-Kissed Read online

  “Oh, come on,” he begged. “Go for it. Now you’re just taunting me.”

  “Mack,” she said between her teeth. “If you think I’m wasting my energy on a slap, you don’t know me very well. I’m going to knee you right in the groin.”

  His teeth showed sharp. “Yeah? You going to take it into the physical? Go for it, Anne.”

  He looked so damn hungry. Nerve endings were shooting alive everywhere, and they made her almost frantic with the need to do something. Anything. Knee him in the groin.

  “Mack Corey, you have lost your mind due to some empty-nest syndrome, and I’m going to restrain myself in consideration. Also, because think of the pictures in the paper tomorrow when I knock you out in your own home. I’d probably get arrested again.”

  “Why? I wouldn’t press charges. It would be pretty fucking funny, if you ask me. Especially if you managed to get cake smashed all over yourself in the process. If you want to start a brawl with me, trust me, I’m game.”

  Her teeth snapped together on the nearly overwhelming urge to smash her head against his to knock some kind of sense into him. “Go dump your head in a bucket of water. Come back when you’re using your brain again.”

  “Already dumped something much more sensitive with a glass of ice water,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She gaped at him.

  “Might have to do it again,” he added, with the tiniest flick of his blue gaze down over her body. Hers flicked down his own body involuntarily to—was he aroused again?

  “Mack.” She drew her stomach muscles in tight and pressed her thighs together, against this squirmy something that needed to behave.

  “I don’t know if I’ve told you this in the past twenty years, but since you’re already at the point you’re ready to knee me in the groin, I might as well go for it. You’re hot, Anne.”

  She stared at him, her jaw dropped. And nothing got her to drop her jaw. Not even an announcement of “Guilty” and “six months in prison”.

  “I really like that new cut on you.” Without dropping the cage of his arms, he nodded to the short, short haircut she had adopted in a moment of temper during her prison sentence.

  One of the other women there had plans to open her own hair salon once she got out and kept eyeing Anne’s classic bob avariciously, and at a certain point, Anne had just said, Go for it. It was a minimum security prison, but they’d still had to get permission to set up the hair salon under strict guards, because of the scissors. Anne was occasionally tempted to disillusion people of their Club Fed illusions about life in a minimum security prison, but she wouldn’t give anyone in the media the satisfaction of telling them how horrible it had been.

  “Makes you look like some elf queen, all frost and timeless power.” Mack gave one of his tight, aggressive grins. “I especially liked the way you told the journalists it was because of prison lice, all while looking like the graceful elf queen. That was pretty damn hilarious.”

  “I kind of lost patience with idiots, in prison,” she admitted. Not that she had ever had too much, but she never used to say things like that. Some shift had occurred, some perversity, some desire to provoke when once she would have held it all in, under calm, cool control.

  Telling the journalists she’d had lice had kind of been another way of saying fuck you.

  “And you’re being an idiot right now,” she warned him.

  He held her eyes with those vivid blue ones of his. The man had never been able to back down from anything or anyone but his own children. Neither had she. “Well, go ahead then, Anne. Lose your patience with me. I dare you.”

  “I’m mentally counting the glasses of champagne you must have had. To encourage myself to stay tolerant.”

  “It’s sexy as hell,” he mentioned. And lifted one hand from the wall to run his finger down the nape of her neck. A frisson ran through her. “That haircut. All elegant and cool and remote, and your nape so exposed like that. You have a beautiful neck.”

  She couldn’t stop shivering. It was the strangest thing. As if that one involuntary and perfectly natural shiver that had come from a finger brushing such a sensitive spot just kept going. Shivering and shivering through her, this tiny subtle earthquake whose aftershocks were bringing down defenses she’d been taking for granted for decades. Defenses older even than their friendship.

  “You’re going to be so embarrassed in the morning,” she told him desperately. The desperation pissed her off. If she didn’t let an idiot grand jury make her desperate, she didn’t see why she should give the power to him.

  He snorted. “Can’t remember the last time I was embarrassed. No, I take that back. When my own daughter was getting headlined as a chocolate thief, that was pretty bad. She finally managed to beat out Jaime’s headlines for G8 protests with that one. If I can handle that, I sure as hell can handle the embarrassment of knowing I hit on a woman who froze me out. Especially when she has that little V of pale hair pointing right down to her nape that way.” He followed it with his finger again, and again the touch shivered everywhere. “How is a man supposed to keep himself from touching that?”

  “I’ve had this haircut for several months,” she said dryly.

  “We’ve been friends for a long time, Anne. I’m used to respecting those walls of yours. But you did agree to be my date for this damn thing, you know.”

  “I was doing you a favor!” The underhanded—

  “I even brought you flowers,” he added smugly.

  He had, too. Of course, he always brought her flowers when she agreed to go with him to a function. They’d been doing that kind of thing for at least a decade now. It had started, what, a couple of years after the walks on the beach? He’d just asked her, out of the blue, while they were strolling past a beautiful piece of driftwood, to help him out by being his companion at some charity dinner, and what was she supposed to do? Leave him hanging alone?

  “Mack Corey. If you want to find yourself fending off money-grubbing, twenty-year-old, wannabe kept women at every single dinner you go to for the rest of your life, just keep this up.”

  He winced. “Jesus, Anne. That’s nasty. All you have to do is raise your eyebrow to wither them, and you’re going to abandon me? Cade’s based in Paris now!”

  Cade had a pretty effective way of raising her eyebrow at younger women who wanted to date her father, too.

  “You’re bluffing,” Mack decided firmly.

  Anne raised an eyebrow at him. Nobody knew when she was bluffing, not even Mack. You didn’t create a billion dollar empire from scratch by being an easy read.

  He didn’t noticeably wither at her raised eyebrow, however.

  “The thing is, Anne, I’m pretty sure after three dates, a man’s supposed to be able to at least get a kiss. And I’ve lost track of how many dates we’ve been on. I’d have to lock you up against your doorway when I got you home and kiss you all night before I’d even start to make a dint in the ones you owe.”

  A sudden and dissolving image of herself locked up just like this between his body and a door, only they were all alone on her porch, sheltered by the climbing roses, with no one to see or stop them but…them. And Mack talked as if he had no intention of stopping.

  So…that left it all on her.

  “You know what I thought about two seconds after I dashed a glass of ice water over my dick?”

  “‘Ouch’?” She could not believe Mack Corey was using the word dick in front of her. He did believe in calling a spade a spade, but that didn’t usually extend to calling a penis a dick. He’d had to watch his mouth raising two daughters. Although Cade had once confided that her father had personally taught her to say, Fuck you. He’d said she would need to be able to at least say it in her head, to survive at the head of a multinational corporation.

  He grinned. “After that. I thought, to be precise, Fuck, God damn it, that’s cold. And then I thought if there was ever in this world a woman who could take anything I threw at her, it would be you, Anne Wi
nters. So why the hell have I spent so much time enjoying those fantasies of you only in the privacy of my own room? It’s almost selfish, when you think about it.”

  She stared at him. Her whole world whirled, and all that whirling seemed to concentrate itself in her erogenous zones. Little spirals, twirling, twirling, twirling, pressing against her nipples, stirring in her sex, and yes, twisting over the nape of her neck. Fantasies of her? That he’d been enjoying in the privacy of his own room? “What fantasies?” she asked icily.

  He grinned. “Oh, good. You want to know.”

  “Oh, no, I damn well do not, Mack Corey.” She ducked under his arm, while her breasts and her sex beat the lie at her, and started to walk away.

  A hand caught her arm and swung her right back. She stared at it and then up at him with an incredulity somewhat akin to if he had reached out and drawn a finger down one of the wedding cakes right in front of her and then licked the icing off. “Told you that you’d run,” he said, with that glittering challenge in his eyes. “Of course, the problem with running is that then somebody can catch you.”

  “I want you to go sleep this off, and then we’ll talk again tomorrow morning,” she said between her teeth.

  “Can’t. It’s our dance.” He pulled her toward the floor.

  “What do you mean it’s our—”

  “I danced with Jaime. I danced with Cade. Now I get to dance with my date. Before Dad grabs you.”

  Anne almost smiled at that. It was true that Jack Corey usually insisted she dance at least once with him. He liked to dance, and he had a healthy fear of twenty-year-olds, too. It’s creepy, he complained. They’re like vampires. Going for the old rich guy because they’re hoping I’ll die fast.

  Then he would wink at her. Now, the last I read, the rule of thumb for a man was he could date anyone half his age plus seven years, so that makes you and me perfect, right? Honestly, you’re too old for me.

  Jack Corey was a handful.

  “Fine,” Anne said, but only because Mack was a fantastic dancer. As soon as she rested one hand on his shoulder, one hand in his, her whole body relaxed, ready to glide around this floor in perfect harmony of movement for hours. “But if you talk anymore, don’t sue me for damages later.”

  “Not a peep.” He gave her a cat-got-the-canary smile. “I’ll just think.”

  She stared at him. And then drew a deep breath for patience, and also in the determined hope to breathe all those thoughts he’d stirred up out of her own body and just release them into the atmosphere. Leaving her calm, clear, clean. Like a sea breeze had swept through her and restored her peace.

  His hand pressed firm on the small of her back and guided her in close for a turn to get them started. She smiled up at him automatically, because dancing with him always made her smile, and then she remembered that she wasn’t in a smiling mood. In fact, she was very close to dumping one of his son-in-law’s friends’ chocolate structures on his head, which would have the added benefit of removing a disruption to her wedding cake arrangements. Possibly erase some of that smug “I am the most perfectionistic genius in the world” arrogance off their faces, too. No, I am, kids.

  True to his word, Mack didn’t speak. He just watched her with a little smile on his face and intent blue eyes and—danced. Danced with power and control and confidence, with grace and strength.

  But…here was the thing about Mack. He was the most powerful man in the place, easily. And he knew it. He knew how to dance, and he knew how to control her. But if she wanted to do something—a spin or a dip or just shift the direction of their dancing to another part of the floor so she could catch the caterer’s attention—she could just give the tiniest little signal with a pressure of her hand or a subtle leaning of her body, and he would do it. He teased her about her need to lead, but what really happened was that, without losing his control of the dance, he acknowledged her control, too. And it never seemed to lessen his confidence in himself at all.

  That confidence, right now, radiated through every pore of his body and into hers. I know how to handle you.

  Heat spread from his hand, and she couldn’t get it to stop. It just poured out of him, into her.

  She was used to his hand radiating heat, of course, it was one of the things she loved about dancing with him. Loved the firmness of the heat from his hand, the elusive, all-embracing brush of warmth from his whole body moving in such close harmony with hers. But she normally gathered that heat into her belly and held it there. Let it ride snug at the base of her spine. Right now that heat was misbehaving. Slipping out from where his hand rode like an impudent wildfire, snaking arms down toward her thighs and lingering on the way, stretching up toward her breasts. He pulled her in closer for a turn, and their bodies rubbed just before he dipped her, bringing all her weight into dependence of his hard arm. Into this position of utter trust. Of course he won’t let me fall. Her body never even stiffened against the dip, never tried to resist it and stay upright at all.

  She loved that dip. More even than the spin of their bodies close together, or when he twirled her out and brought her in a lovely whirl back in tight against him again. More even than the heat of his hand, or the utter sense of relaxation and aliveness from the perfect way their rhythms matched. She always wanted that dip. That moment, when she was suspended on the weight of his arm wrapped around her, holding her in close to his body while he looked down at her.

  She loved that dip so much, she who could not stand to trust anyone, depend on anyone. And she had never, ever let herself wonder why.

  “How much have you had to drink?” she asked, mostly to throw something challenging into the moment, to throw up walls. But also—how could he be drunk enough to say some of the things he had just said and still dance so well?

  Mack brought their joined hands to his mouth, so that for one shocked instant her hand thought he really had caught that French hand-kissing infection from his sons-in-law, their curious, easy public intimacy and sweetness. And possessiveness, of course. My hand. She belongs to me. Anne had never belonged to anyone that way. Not like something precious the other person wanted to keep.

  But instead of a hand kiss, Mack extended his strong index finger from their clasp and laid it over his lips. Shh. He drew the tip of his finger over his firmly closed lips, as if sealing them together, and smiled at her. That little, amused, smug damn smile he had when he was beating his opponents.

  And her knuckles, the back of her hand, brushed elusively against his jaw and the edge of his mouth, but never really touched his lips at all.

  He lowered their hands. But not his gaze. Those blue eyes just held hers. Watched her as he turned them, as he danced them around the floor, neatly negotiating the other couples without ever brushing against them and without ever looking away from her.

  I promised not to talk. But I’m thinking.

  Anne was the one who had to look away. And she hated being the one to look away, the one to lower her gaze from a challenge. She pretended she was checking to make sure the wedding guests were all being taken care of.

  But he kept thinking. It was probably why his hand was so aggressively hot like that, reaching into all these places his hand wasn’t supposed to go. She could feel his thoughts just pushing down between her legs, cupping her breasts, invading her panties, doing things his thoughts should never have the nerve to do. His thigh pressed against hers a moment on the next turn, and now his damn pushy thoughts were thrusting a thigh up between her legs, pulling her in to ride on it, spreading her legs for him.

  She wanted to slap him, or better yet hit him, knee him as she’d threatened, fight him to protect herself from the invasion without her permission, and yet he hadn’t said one damn word. He hadn’t made one inappropriate touch. He hadn’t even flicked that intense blue gaze of his down over her breasts in a lewd way.

  For all she really knew, his thoughts could be analyzing the latest stock reports by now, and everything else was in her own head.

&nb
sp; She tried thinking about the latest stock reports, too. Numbers blurred in her brain, columns dissolving in a wash of black and white, and she gasped with the sense of vertigo that left in her.

  Maybe she needed to buy a new house, make it an even two dozen. Or redecorate one of the ones she had. She grasped onto that, calming, and ideas flooded her brain instantly, driving out his persistent thinking. Yes. Maybe she would do something very small. That would be different. Take on that “reduce” movement and show how small spaces could be made workable. Something quiet and private, in some gentle, intimate landscape, low, old mountains, maybe. Maybe she would have the house built from repurposed material. Five hundred square feet, no more; she needed to show she could handle the space challenge better than anyone else.

  She’d need to use her outdoor area well, with a space that size. A porch or a patio, a swing for two, canvas loungers. And inside, something delicate to separate the bed from the living area, without reducing the sense of space. It would be a white bed, a queen or a double, maybe, big enough for two people who were comfortable with each other. This fragile white fabric, more a suggestion of fabric than anything else, would drape from a centerpiece above it, like old mosquito netting maybe, and the couple could just reach out and brush fingers across it to release it, let it float down and turn the bed into their little room for two.

  The sheets would be old Egyptian cotton, washed so many times there was nothing left in them but softness and comfort, and the two people would stretch out on those sheets and—

  Her body flowed into a dip, a hand firm under her waist, her body tucked in safe against hardness, blue eyes holding hers.

  Lowering her at just the angle she might be lowered onto a bed.

  Sure and strong that arm, suspending her just on the edge of something, her position so entirely precarious and entirely safe. She stared up at him, her heart beating hard.

  The song had ended. He straightened her effortlessly, and she took a breath to step back, to say thank you, to mention she needed to check on the caterer, as notes to a new song started.