An Affair of Deceit (18 page)

With a sense of dread, she opened the single cabinet in the room. It was empty, of course, just like the rest of the house. Why had she thought otherwise?

“Riley?” she called.

“Wrmph?”

“What did you use to dry off?”

“I didn’t.”

“Do you ever?”

His laugh was muffled. Probably still facedown in a pillow, then.

Frustrating man!

Then she noticed that he’d left his nice Cuban shirt on the bathroom floor.
Serves him right,
she thought as she picked it up to dry her body.

But when she ran his shirt over her hair, his tea-and-lemon cologne hit her like a freight train.
That smell.
Whatever it was, she couldn’t get enough of it. She hesitantly pressed the shirt to her nose. The scent was undeniably masculine, organic, and rich. And yes, good. Really, really good. Like water in a desert, and she wanted to drink her fill.

Feeling deviant, she buried her face in his shirt and inhaled deeply, sensing that now-familiar tea fragrance but also other, deeper smells that were his alone. The various aromas came together as something difficult to describe but distinctive, belonging only to Riley. If she ever smelled it again, she would know it instantly. In the place reserved for him in her memory, the warm scent of his shirt joined his lopsided smile and crooked nose, his olive-green eyes and messy hair.

She caught herself smiling in the mirror. He was more than a sum of parts, even as handsome and nicely scented as his parts were. He was the kind, joyful man who understood how it felt to straddle two very different cultures. He was the ceaselessly
optimistic man who nonetheless knew that life’s joys were fleeting and took them when he could.

He was the man sleeping half-naked in the next room.

She wondered whether there might be a little joy worth taking right now.

She gave his shirt one last sniff before she carefully hung it over the side of the tub to dry. Unsure of her intentions, she rummaged in her bag for something to wear. She found a white T-shirt, pulled it over her head, and stepped into cotton underwear. It wasn’t a uniform of seduction, but she wasn’t the sort of girl who owned such things.

She looked up. Her face in the mirror was still flushed, but now only in her cheeks. Her eyes were wide open, her exhaustion erased by the cold bath. Her hair was in strings and her face was completely free of makeup, but if a man required such artifice, then he wasn’t worth her time.

Unwilling to stop and think any further about what she was going to do, she tugged open the bathroom door and walked into the bedroom where Riley slept.

A
BIGAIL HAD BEEN
making an angry ruckus in the bathroom for about five minutes before the old house suddenly became very quiet.

What was she up to now? Maybe she’d fallen asleep on the bathroom floor. She’d been knocked out cold when Riley had joined her in bed, but she was apparently unaccustomed to sleeping next to a half-naked man.

Whatever. She was being silly, and he was exhausted. Sleep, like food, he grabbed when he could. He heard the door open, but no accompanying footfalls. He looked in the direction of the bathroom.

His breath caught in his throat.

Prim, proper Abigail Mason stood in the doorway wearing nothing but a tiny T-shirt and the sexiest pair of underwear he’d ever seen: simple white cotton. He wasn’t a man who liked satin and lace. He liked to see the woman wearing the clothes, not the clothes themselves. In fact, the sooner she was out of them altogether, the happier he’d be.

Holy shit. Was that what was happening here?

His eyes met hers, and she dropped her chin in the proud, admonishing way he’d seen her do a dozen times before when she was feeling stubborn. Before, it’d served as a rebuke. Now it looked an awful lot like a seduction.

Slowly, she walked toward the bed, her hips swaying like palm fronds in a gentle breeze.

He forgot to breathe.
Jesus, this really was happening.

She paused at the foot of the bed, uncertainty causing her dark eyes to flinch.

He needed to make a move, but how to make a move on a woman like Abigail? She was as skittish as a feral cat. At any moment she would regain her senses and scamper, hissing, out of sight. Whatever happened between them had to be her decision, but he didn’t see the harm in encouraging her to consider his point of view. He didn’t need anything from her, but Lord knew he
wanted
whatever she would give him.

“Come back to bed,” he said, trying to not sound lewd. He pulled her side of the bedcovers down in invitation.

The flourish revealed his naked torso. He hadn’t meant it, but he made no attempt to hide from her stare as her attention trailed down his body. Her jaw loosened in trepidation or desire. He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that if she would just join him on the bed, he would prove to her just how beautiful life could be.

She came to him, slipping between the covers and into his arms without a word. Their lips met without a breath’s hesitation, and Riley’s physical senses took control. He knew nothing but that her mouth was soft and her taste was sweet. Her kiss was a spring from which he drank deeply, slowly, never-endingly.

His body ached to press itself against her, but he didn’t allow it. He kept his hands cupped around her face, afraid of what would happen if he reached lower to touch her throat, her breasts, her thighs. She didn’t move to touch him, and he couldn’t breach that boundary without her leading him.

He told himself that her kiss was enough. As much as his body wanted more, he cared about her too much to take advantage of her exhaustion. There would be other opportunities.

There had to be. Otherwise he’d spend the rest of his life wondering what it would have been like to make love to the most beautiful woman in the world.

Abigail awoke cocooned against Riley’s warm, strong body. One of his arms wrapped around her waist and the other underneath her head, supporting her better than any pillow had ever managed. She’d never felt so comfortable, at least until she fully realized where she was and whom she was with.

Then she began to think, and thought is the enemy of intimacy.

She wriggled out of his arms and into the bathroom, where she stood bracing her hands on the sink, her head dangling loose from her shoulders.

What have I done?

Nothing more than you desired,
she told herself.
Nothing more than kiss a man you wanted to kiss, and fall asleep in his arms.
They were simple things, but she felt appalled to have done them. Hell, she might have done more, but she’d been too exhausted to keep her eyes open. Thank goodness he hadn’t taken advantage of her—not that she’d expect any less from him. He was too considerate, too kind. He had been a willing participant, certainly. But perhaps he only did what his masculinity directed him to do. After all, wouldn’t any healthy, single man take what a reasonably attractive, half-naked woman offered?

She hated thinking of herself as the half-naked woman throwing herself at such a nice, gentle man as Riley. Gentle man. He was, truly, a gentleman. How uncouth she’d been to presume that he desired her simply because he’d fallen into bed wearing nothing but boxers.

Embarrassment spread through her body, making her shiver and sweat and want another cold bath.

But it had felt so
good
to be kissed by him! It couldn’t be wrong when it felt so perfectly right. He’d taken her out of that dusty bed and into a timeless space where nothing mattered but the touch of his lips on hers. Yes, she’d kissed other men, but never had she felt a rise of desire like she had with Riley. Even now, as she recalled the feeling of his mouth, the taste of his tongue, the barely contained tremor that shook his body as he held her, her knees threatened to buckle.

She clutched the cool porcelain sink and shook her head. It would not do for her to act like a little girl in front of this man. Surely he’d kissed other girls—surely he’d done a lot more than kiss them—and he was unlikely to think of their encounter as anything beyond two lonely, exhausted people seeking comfort in the basest of ways.

Base but beautiful,
a voice in the back of her mind whispered as she climbed back into the bathtub for another invigorating splash.

Many minutes later, she opened the door to find Riley dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked up as she stepped into the room. No trace of embarrassment clouded his clear green eyes. If anything, she thought she saw a hunger for more. Panicked by it, she fell back on her most constant and trusted companion: emotional detachment.

“We’d best be going.”

His face fell. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” she asked, but she’d already turned back into the bathroom to gather her belongings.

“Don’t pretend nothing happened. Don’t pull away from me now.”

She paused. How could he speak so directly about it? She didn’t know how to answer, so she continued packing her things.

“Come here.”

“I’m busy.” She shoved a shirt into her bag.

“We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I was tired. I don’t entirely remember what we did or didn’t do.”

“Bullshit. You remember. And if you don’t, come on over here and I’ll gladly refresh your memory.”

She stiffened. “Calm yourself, Dr. Riley. We have work to do today, and I can’t be bothered by hormones.”

“This is life, Abigail. Not hormones. Or maybe it is hormones, but those are as real as anything else in life. Just because you didn’t ask for something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

She zipped up her bag and stood, facing the bathroom. “I don’t accept feelings that I don’t ask for. That’s my way. If you don’t like it, you are more than welcome to leave me alone.”

The bed squeaked and his footsteps came close. Before she could turn he embraced her from behind, wrapping one strong arm around her waist. He lifted her chin with his other hand, forcing her to look in the mirror at their reflection.

“This is who you are. This woman, right here. Look at her.”

She rolled her eyes and avoided looking into the reflective glass.

“Look at her,” he insisted, and leaned down to brush his lips against her neck. “See her.”

His lips on her skin were soft and velvety, like a bunny’s ears. How could she do anything but what he asked? So she looked at her own reflection in the mirror.

She saw a young woman with wide black eyes and flushed skin being kissed by a handsome man. He looked up, pressing his cheek to hers, and together they stared at themselves. Slowly he smiled. Her chest thawed. She smiled too. He kissed her cheek, and her smile grew larger, wider, and bigger than she’d ever seen it before. Then he nuzzled her ear, and she giggled.

Abigail Mason, giggling!

She couldn’t think of the last time she’d felt so young, and she wondered whether she hadn’t been doing something wrong with her life up until this very point. As she watched herself laugh, she found
that she hardly recognized the happy girl in the mirror, but she knew the man, knew him so well she couldn’t see him without thinking of how much she liked being around him. His green eyes were ringed with red, his shirt could use a pressing, and his sandy brown hair was volcanically disarrayed, but he was James Riley, teasing her, kissing her, and gently cajoling her into accepting his affections.

As though she could resist.

She turned in his arms and kissed him hard, knowing that if he kept his eyes open he could still see his reflection in the mirror. It would be sexy, she thought, to watch in a mirror while you kissed someone.

Apparently he agreed, for against her belly she felt him harden. He pulled away almost immediately, but it wasn’t alarm that darkened his eyes. It was passion. She recognized it clearly.

“Thank you,” he said and took her hands in his.

“You’re welcome,” she answered, thinking that he was very old-fashioned to thank her for a kiss.

“We’ll continue this later. Right now we’ve got work to do.”