Queen of Hearts: (Family Stone #6 Shelley) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) (6 page)

“Okay well, let’s go back a few months. Sometimes these things fester.” Ric was thinking about how engaging she was, how funny, how hot, and how sweet. How she could lure away a guy without even trying.

“No one.” She ducked her head, and an embarrassed flush covered her cheekbones. Ric smiled at the tumble of her hair.

“Come on, Shel.” He cajoled. “I know this is a little awkward but we need to start somewhere.”

“Right. Well, my last date was three years ago. I went out to dinner with an older gentleman who was on the Food for Life food bank board with me. He subsequently died a week later. They figured out he had a weak heart.” She snapped, “I really doubt his fifty-year-old daughter has hatched some evil plan to come after me.”

Ric wanted to laugh at her snarky comeback. But he was stuck on the first part of her confession. “Three
years
?”

She flushed again and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Ric looked to Jack for confirmation because really, that couldn’t be true. No way had the amazingly sexy, hot woman who’d smoked up the sheets with him last night not had a date in three years.

But Jack just nodded.

Three years.

Five

Shelley wanted a giant sinkhole to appear in the hotel room suite and swallow her up. The humiliation was almost more than she could take.

She knew she should be upset about the fact that her hotel suite was trashed but seriously it was just stuff. She was more dismayed that her one night stand was now quizzing her about her sex life.

Ric was still standing there, unmoving.

Well, wasn’t this special? She’d struck him dumb over her serious lack of sex life.

Now he knew how sexually deprived she was and how much of a total novice she’d been at the whole hook up process. Which would have been fine, if she didn’t have to spend the next four days with him shadowing her every move. And explaining her life in excruciating detail.

“That’s a great idea,” Jack gushed.

Shelley had no idea what idea Jack meant. “What are you talking about?”

“Since I think it’s wise not to advertise that you’ve got a bodyguard, the cover can be that you’re dating.”

Dating? Oh, hell. That was even worse.

Shelley and Ric winced at the same time. Neither one of them had had any intention of seeing each other again after last night. It was supposed to be a one night hook up and stress free encounter.

Oh my God
.

For the first time, ever, she had a one night stand and now Jack wanted him to become her bodyguard. By their nature, one night stands should be anonymous, and over in
one night
.

She shouldn’t have to share the embarrassing and scant details of her dating and sex life.

When she was younger and moved into the Stone Mansion, she didn’t date. At all. The kids had enough upheaval in their life with a father who was a total man-whore. She’d believed that they needed stability and kept the focus just on them. So, she didn’t date when the kids were in the house. By the time she was ready for a date, she’d been thirty-five and had more money than she could ever spend in her lifetime which meant that any interest was slightly suspect. She’d also been unsure about how to go about finding a date.

Now Jack wanted her to ‘pretend date’ her one night stand.

She wanted to mouth the word, sorry, to Ric. His dark brows were lowered over his deep, secretive eyes while he seemed to be assessing facts.

“It’s best if Shelley stays here,” Ric said. “I don’t think it’s safe for her to return to her room.”

Jack was nodding complacently as if he hadn’t just been chewing her out for spending the night with his friend.

“What?” Stay here. As in stay with him? This just kept getting better and better. “No.”

But Ric and Jack didn’t acknowledge her growing distress.

Ric shot a guarded look at Jack. His face set in serious lines. “Did you check the room for bugs and cameras?”

Jack said, “Waiting until the cops are gone.”

Bugs? Cameras? “You think someone was spying on me?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe they wanted to see your reaction to the destruction.” Ric was thinking out loud.

It occurred to Shelley at the same time she saw Ric and Jack exchanged a weighted glance. “It’s possible that not going back to your room last night was a good thing.”

They’d been waiting for her?

Shelley’s heart beat in an uneven rhythm. “So someone could have been watching me? Or waiting for me?”

That tidbit caused her more anxiety than the destruction of her clothes and stuff. The grim looks on both their faces told the story. Her stomach rolled, pitching like she were on a sailboat in the Monterey Bay.

“I have some pics I took before security got to the room.” Jack thumbed through pictures taken with his phone to show Ric.

Ric said quietly, “That’s an awful lot of rage.”

“Let me see.” Shelley tried to grab the phone but Jack held it up and over her head. “Jack!”

“It’s her life. She needs to see.” Ric peeled the phone from Jack’s hand. “Besides, she’s tough. She can take it.”

The off the cuff compliment caused a pleasant tingle in her belly. He casually curled his bare arm around her back, the thick bunch of his bicep was firm and solid behind her shoulder blades while he held the phone so she could see the pictures of her room.

Shelley’s breath caught.

But not because of the pictures. Ric’s heat seeped through the thin cotton of the t-shirt he’d given her to wear. The memory of her straddling his thighs, her palms pressing on his shoulders, when he’d ab curled to a sitting position and completely rocked her world, had her going wet.

Last night, he had curved one arm around her shoulders and the other low around her hips and guided her as she rode him, his cock splitting her in two, and his arms alternately lifting her up and then slamming her down. They’d bounced so hard the bed had been squeaking and her hair had been flying until he’d taken his fist and gripped her hair to the edge of pain. He had slanted her head so their mouths could meet in a brutal kissing match.

His strength had cocooned her. He had pounded up into her until they came together in a burst of physical ecstasy. His groan had been long and loud against the curve of her breasts as her sex had convulsed, sucking him dry.

It had possibly been the most explosive sexual encounter of her life. She’d clutched his head to her breast and sat in his lap impaled on his cock. He had throbbed inside her, hitting her g-spot and pulsing against her cervix, her ass on his muscular thighs as they flexed and released. Sweat had slicked their skin and sex had smothered the air.

Her heart had been pounding so hard she’d thought she’d pass out from the force of its beats. He’d completely overwhelmed her.

Shelley could feel the flush start in her belly and spread outward like ripples in a pond. She came back to herself, and hoped neither man had figured out where she’d gone mentally.

Super, she was getting turned on. In front of Jack no less.

Right now, Shelley felt protected and safe in the curve of Ric’s arms. She was so much shorter without her heels that she felt almost delicate. Shelley realized she’d yet to breathe, and she made the mistake of looking into his eyes.

The black pools reflected awareness back at her. As if he’d been caught up in the same memory, the skin on his cheeks had tightened and his body hardened. Heat shimmered around them, like a physical wrap of chiffon that made everything go hazy and filmy. For a moment, she thought it was only her being fanciful, until his gaze dropped to her mouth and lingered before his lashes fluttered down over his eyes. She noted the slight beads of sweat on his upper lip, as if he were restraining himself from pushing into her space and claiming her mouth.

God, was it hot in here? All the air sucked from the Universe and her lips buzzed with the reaction to his scorching glance.

Caught in the mesmerizing haze of sexual awareness, she wasn’t sure who had leaned closer—her or him or if it was mutual—but the spell was broken by Jack clearing his throat.

“Need my phone back.” He reached between them and gently pried the phone from Ric’s fingers. “I’ll get back to you on any surveillance equipment.”

Ric broke their connection, shifting his gaze to Jack. He took a step back from her. And she was momentarily bereft. The air conditioner kicked on and a blast of cool air blew over her, shaking her out of the sexual thrall.

“Good.” Ric nodded. “Bring anything salvageable here and then we can discuss an op plan.”

Jack seemed unnaturally eager to get out of the hotel room.

But once Jack left the buffer that kept the tension between her and Ric to a low simmer was gone. The silence was fraught, at least on her end, and she started to voice her objection to the arrangement he and Jack had worked out. “I really don’t—”

“I know this will be awkward.”

That was an understatement. “Ya think?” she snarked.

In the giant sweat pants, soft on her bare bottom and thighs, and the simple cotton t-shirt abrading her nipples, she felt underdressed and out of sorts. She needed the comfort of her own clothes.

Her clothing had become her armor. Her attempt to hide her feelings from the judgment and censure of her neighbors. There were two kinds of wives in Monterey. The old guard who’d been married to their husbands for years, frequently before the men had made their fortunes. And the trophy wives, who’d pushed out wife number one and sometimes number two, to get to those fortunes. The trophies were younger, hotter, and ironically more on edge than wife number one.

Both kinds of wife had something in common. They were always on the lookout for a woman trying to steal their man. Shelley had been a double whammy, she was younger but she wasn’t married to Jack Stone Sr. So both sets of wives feared her and shunned her.

Finally she’d found her place, in the philanthropies she supported and the charities she worked tirelessly for, while raising the four Stone children. Over the years she’d developed her armor to shield herself from the venom and jealousy of those wives.

She learned to choose her outfits carefully as a kind of protection from their suspicion, and to guard her feelings from unnecessary hurt.

Without her regular clothing, and clad in Ric’s soft casual sweats, she was stripped of her regular armor and stratospheres outside her comfort zone.

“We’re adults,” Ric finally replied. “We’ll handle it.”

Now that Jack had left, the giant elephant in the room, the unmade bed, sat in silent condemnation. The passion from their night was obvious in the absolutely wrecked state of the linens.

Shelley wasn’t really familiar with post-one-night-stand procedures. And she wasn’t supposed to leave. So what did she do next?

To give her something to do, she leaned over the disheveled bed and tugged on the sheets. She kept her focus on the white linen so that she didn’t have to look at him.

She was doing fine with ignoring him until she smoothed the sheet under the pillow and found her lace bra.

The tiny ‘oh’, that whimper of distress, was loud in the room.

“What’s wrong?” Ric asked.

“Nothing.” Could this get any more embarrassing?

“As the principal it’s your job to tell me if anything is out of the ordinary.”

Oh my God.

She gripped her lacy bra in her fist and shook it at him. “Okay. It’s out of the ordinary for me to find my freaking bra underneath the pillow in a strange man’s hotel room.” Shelley’s face was as red as the rare steak she hadn’t eaten last night by the time she finished. She whirled around so that her back was to him and blinked away tears.

It was too much, the last straw in an emotionally fraught few hours. “That enough intelligence for you?” She shoved back the tears and hoped he couldn’t hear them in her voice. Dammit. She hated crying.

God, the temptation to just burrow in the closet and hide, the way she’d wanted to do all those years ago when she’d first arrived in Monterey, was really powerful. But she was stronger than that. So she did exactly what she’d done twenty years ago.

She put her shoulders back, shoved her chin up, and channeled her inner Eleanor Roosevelt. No one could make you feel inferior without your consent.

She wasn’t going to be a victim.

He moved so quietly she hadn’t realized that Ric was right behind her until his palms curled over her shoulders. “Hey. Sorry.” He turned her around gently and brushed the tears from her cheeks. His voice rumbled from his chest. She stared at his naked torso, amazed all over again that this man had taken her to bed and engaged in hot, sweaty, messy sex with her. But, last night was over, and they needed to move on.

This was going to be awkward enough as it was.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged off his embrace and marched over to the puddle of clothing on the floor. She picked up her dress and shook out the wrinkles. She opened the large closet in the bedroom and hung it on one of the heavy wood hangers, then discreetly looked around for her shoes.

The whole time she tidied up the suite, Ric watched her.

Waiting for her to break again? Good luck with that.

“You want breakfast?” he finally asked.

“Sure.” She couldn’t eat a thing.

He picked up the hotel phone and proceeded to order for both of them. “I’ll grab a shower. Do not under any circumstances open the door for any one.”

“What about room service?”

“If they come in the next five minutes, which is doubtful, no. Just tell them to leave it outside the door.”

She really didn’t see what the big deal was. Why would room service in a hotel this big be a threat? However, she wasn’t stupid. If Mr. Security wanted her to not open the door, she wouldn’t open the door. “Okay.”

He nodded once.

Shelley heard the shower go on, tried not to imagine Ric with water running over his head and down his body, his dark swarthy skin glistening. But the more she tried not to imagine it, the more the images bombarded her. His wide palms and thick fingers rubbing soap over the hair of his chest and following that happy trail down to his groin.