Fearless (4 page)

“Yes, indeed,” the old man says heartily. “My life has been quite an adventure. I have a legacy I want to leave, and that's where you come in. I was thinking if you can come over several days a week I'll just tell you the whole story, from the beginning, and then you can put it down on paper.”

I nod. “That's fine. Do you want to do any of the writing yourself?”

“No, no, no,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Both Beckett and Agnes say no one can read my writing, and I'm hopeless with computers unless I'm doing research. You're the expert, so I'll let you do it.”

“Alright then,” I agree with a smile. “Done.”

He tells me a little bit about his agent, whom I will be working with and keeping up to date on our progress. By the time we have agreed on a tentative weekly work schedule it's almost six o'clock.

“You should join us for dinner,” he says. “I'm sure Agnes has made enough for an army and would love the opportunity to play hostess. And I could get to know the delightful Miss Hart better.”

“No thanks, Dad,” Beckett says, pulling himself up from the small loveseat and extending his hand to help me up. “You'll have Emmaline all to yourself next week. I have plans for her tonight.”

Once we've said goodbye and are in the car, I say teasingly, “You have plans for me tonight?”

“I do,” he replies, completely serious. “I want to get to know you. I thought we'd start with dinner. ”

My breath catches with the realization that
starting
with dinner implies something more
after
dinner. Oh god, am I ready for this?

“Do you need to be home at a certain time?”

I think about giving myself an out and telling him a time I have to be home, but this is the opportunity I've been looking for to follow my heart and my senses (and okay, my libido), instead of my mind. He makes my heart beat faster just being around him, and he's so freaking gorgeous I'll be kicking myself for the rest of my life if I don't at least see where this little flirtation might go. I want this, whatever it is, and him more than I have wanted anything in a long time. I'm never reckless, but for once I want to be.

“No,” I say, making my decision. “My daughter is sleeping over at a friend's house so I don't have to be home by any specific time.”

“Good,” he says with satisfaction. “Do you like sushi?”

“Uh, I don't really know.”

“How can you not know if you like sushi?”

“I've never really had it,” I explain with a shrug.

“Well, Miss Hart, we must see to your education. Are you willing to give it a try?” he asks. “You never know what you might find you have an appetite for,” he adds, that raspiness I heard on the phone creeping back into his voice.

“Sure,” I say, although the way he says it makes me feel like he's talking about more than sushi.

We end up at a sushi bar that is somehow both hip and luxurious at the same time, with dark wood tables, subtle lighting, bamboo plants, and a long copper topped bar.

“Good evening, Dr. Black,” the hostess greets him warmly. He clearly comes here a lot. “Would you like a seat at the bar?”

“Not today,” he says. “A quiet and private table tonight please.”

“Of course, follow me,” she says, grabbing several menus before leading us to a tall, bar height table for two in what has to be the best location in the restaurant, surrounded by lush bamboo and immensely private.

Once we're seated, Beckett says with a faint smile, “I'm a quick learner so I won't order for you without your permission, but since you've never been to a sushi bar perhaps I could make a few suggestions?”

Since I have glanced at the menu long enough to know that I have no idea what anything is, I smile at him and say magnanimously, “Tonight, I wholeheartedly give you my permission to take charge.”

A slow smile lights up his face. “Is that so?” he says deliberately. He reaches over and rubs his thumb across my bottom lip, and the intimacy of the gesture makes my stomach flutter. “I will remind you of that later.”

My breath catches but I'm saved from responding by the arrival of our waiter. Beckett turns his attention to the drink menu, discussing the merits of several different types of sake with the server before ordering a bottle, along with several other things that sound completely foreign to me. A few minutes later, the waiter brings a cold, green glass bottle with Japanese characters on the label to the table along with two cocktail glasses, which he efficiently fills before discreetly disappearing. Suddenly, every nerve in my body is on high alert. Beckett reaches over and in one quick motion pulls my chair toward his until our knees are touching.

“That's better,” he says. He lifts one of the glasses and holds it to my lips.

“Taste it,” he commands, and I obediently open my lips, letting the cool, dry liquid slide down my throat.

“It's good,” I manage to say, although my voice sounds strangled to my own ears.

Silently he holds out his hand, palm up. I stare at it, not quite sure what he wants at first, and then tentatively place my hand in his. He smiles at me approvingly as if I've passed some sort of test and wraps his fingers around mine, resting our clasped hands on his thigh. I can feel the heat of him through his jeans and my stomach drops.

“I want to know you,” he says simply.

“Well,” I begin. “You already know that I'm a writer, where I've been published, and that I get bored easily when waiting for doctors. I'm divorced and I have one child, my daughter Nikki, who's thirteen. What else is there to know?”

The steady way he's looking at me is unnerving, but it's somehow setting a fire burning in my belly, a slow burn that I haven't felt in a very long time.

“I want to know whether you always wear a thong, or whether you just wore one on Monday when you came into the office.”

I gulp. How had he known?

“I want to know every inch of your body. I want to know what your hair feels like in my hands when I possess your lips. I want to know what turns you on, and whether you come with your eyes open or closed. I want to know what you taste like, and what your skin feels like when it's slick with desire. But since I can't know any of those things while we're sitting in a restaurant, why don't you tell me something else about yourself.”

“Well,” I say, letting out a shaky breath. “I guess that clears up where this is going.”

Beckett leans forward slightly, studying me intently. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” I whisper. I blush again, because it's true.

Satisfied, he sits back as the waiter sets several plates of sushi on the table. Using his chopsticks, Beckett picks up a sushi roll and brings it to my lips. I automatically open my mouth to take the bite, and I sigh as my taste buds process the unique blend of tastes and textures.

“Mmmm,” I murmur. It tastes divine, although my senses are so overloaded by the sexual tension that is crackling between us that anything would probably taste good.

“Tell me about your marriage,” he prompts, lifting another bite to my lips. I open my mouth, the tip of my tongue flicking out to taste it.

I chew slowly and swallow, take a healthy gulp of sake, and begin. “Tim and I met our last semester of college. He was in my Renaissance Lit class at the University of Texas, and we both wanted to be famous writers. We spent hours drinking coffee and discussing modern literature, and later, drinking wine and making love in his apartment. It was all very literary and F. Scott Fitzgeraldish. In April, I found out I had gotten an internship at
Redbook
for the summer, and we planned to move to New York together after graduation and set the world on fire with our literary brilliance. Then, two weeks before graduation, I found out I was pregnant.”

I empty my glass and Beckett reaches over to refill it, keeping his eyes on my face and my hand firmly held in his.

“His dad got him a job here in Houston with a marketing firm, which he hated, we moved here, and I gave up my internship. Nikki was born the following December. We couldn't afford child care so I stayed home with her and started writing articles while she napped. I had my first article published in
Woman's Day
magazine when she was six months old and that led to other assignments. Once you've been published in a national magazine it's easier to get published in others, and before I knew it I was writing half a dozen articles each month and making more than Tim was at his marketing job. He decided to quit and look for a writing job. He worked as a copyeditor for a while for a small tabloid newspaper, but he thought it was beneath him to be stuck in a copy editing job and he eventually quit.”

“So he took over taking care of your daughter while you wrote?” Beckett asks, feeding me another bite of sushi.

“You would think so, but no. He actually didn't spend much time at home because he was always ‘networking,' which generally meant staying out late drinking with his friends.”

“So you were the primary caregiver for your daughter and the primary breadwinner?” he asks.

“Pretty much,” I say with a sigh. “Someone had to be responsible and he certainly wasn't stepping up to the plate. Of course it wasn't all bad. We had some happy times, especially when Nikki was younger. But the more successful I became the more despondent he became, and ultimately I stopped telling him about the assignments I got or when one of my pieces was nominated for an award because he would sulk for days. It was lonely. And even though he had in essence made me become the responsible one who took care of everything and everyone, he always complained that I didn't know how to let loose and have fun. Which, actually, is probably true. Eventually, he went back to school to get his master's degree and fell in love with a twenty-five-year-old grad student at the University of Houston where he's a teaching assistant. She worships the ground he walks on. We got divorced and he married her. But,” I add, “I got Nikki out of the deal, and I love my job and the flexibility it provides, so I don't have any regrets.”

The feel of Beckett's taut thigh muscles under my hand is making my stomach do flip flops and I try to pull it away, but he just tightens his grip and says, “Nuh uh.” Relinquishing, I relax my hand back in his.

“What about you?” I ask. “I assume you're not married or you wouldn't be sitting here with me.”

“Divorced,” he says. “I married my college sweetheart but it wasn't terribly fulfilling for either of us. She enjoyed the status of being married to a doctor, but not the hours I spent away from home that it required, and we parted amicably after five years. Luckily, we didn't have children so we just divided our assets and went our separate ways.”

“So, uh….” I look down, worrying my lip. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight,” he says. “My birthday is April 10
^th
, I grew up in Houston, did my undergrad at Harvard, went to Johns Hopkins for medical school, and then came back here to do my residency before starting my medical practice with several of my colleagues. I like to travel and have been to every continent in the world, I devote my spare time advocating for prostate cancer, and I like to be in control in every aspect of my life. What else do you want to know?”

“How's this going to work,” I ask him teasingly, “with both of us control freaks?”

He runs his thumb lightly along my jawline, stopping at my lips. Obeying some primitive instinct I didn't even know I possessed, I part my lips and he slips his thumb into my mouth. It's ridiculously erotic, and I press my tongue against the rough pad of his thumb, sucking tentatively.

“I don't think you are a control freak, Emmaline,” he says softly. “You just need to learn how to let go.”

“Let's get out of here,” he says abruptly. Seeing the dark need in his eyes, I drain the rest of my sake while he pays the bill, aware that I have probably drunk too much already but needing the extra jolt of confidence the alcohol provides. I am determined not to overthink or overanalyze this and if a little extra alcohol helps, then so be it. The responsible part of my mind is telling me I absolutely shouldn't sleep with him on what is technically only our second date, but the long repressed reckless part of me is not listening. That part is reminding me that I have put myself and my needs second for thirteen years and I deserve this. I also want it more than I have wanted anything in a long time. For once, I'm determined to allow myself an indulgence, and this sexy, powerful man is definitely an indulgence. One that might be completely wrong for me and possibly my career, but suddenly I don't care. I feel like I've just woken from a long sleep and every fiber of my being feels renewed and alive. I want to bathe in his sensuality, to revel in the erotic feelings he creates simply by touching me. I don't want to think anymore. I only want to feel, to experience what he has to offer.

His arm around my waist steadies me as we walk to his car, and I quietly nod when he asks if I want to go to his place. In the early days after my divorce when I tried dating, I always insisted on meeting my dates at a public location and I never, ever went back to their apartment, afraid I would end up a statistic in the morning newspaper. But I have no reservations about Beckett. Of course he's technically not a stranger; I know where he works after all, but more importantly, I feel safe when I'm with him.

He pulls into a covered parking space in a refurbished brick warehouse and we take the elevator to his penthouse apartment. His loft is, quite simply, amazing, with one entire wall made up of windows that gives a panoramic view of the whole city twinkling outside.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asks.

“Okay,” I say, suddenly nervous. I watch as he goes into the kitchen, uncorks a bottle of wine, and pours two glasses. Desire is spreading through me like wildfire. He hands me the wine glass.