Authors: Lucy Francis
Instead of opening the passenger door, he backed her against it, leaning into her, his chest and legs flush against hers. Her heart skipped and pounded, a rhythm she felt between her thighs.
“So,” she whispered. “Does this mean I get a proper kiss hello?”
“I can’t help it. I know women hate having their lipstick mussed, but I very much want to kiss you.” His low voice made her heart trip again.
“I use the good stuff, it’s not going anywhere. Go for it.” The blood rushed from her head when he pressed his lips to hers. He nipped at her lower lip, and she met his tongue with her own, tasting him. Minty.
He rarely tasted of cigarettes anymore. He’d worked hard to quit over the last few weeks, but she knew he could do it. Curran had the strength to do anything.
Pride welled in her heart and she stroked his face and smiled at him when he ended the kiss. He grinned back, crinkling the slight lines beside his eyes, then settled her in the truck.
“Have you eaten at Fusion Cafe before?” he asked as he drove out of their canyon and headed southwest toward Park City.
“Once for my cousin’s birthday. It’s great.”
He nodded. “I went there several times during the film festival, before I moved here. The owner, Dakota Grant, is a real fireball. She dated my friend, Jamie, for a while.”
“Ahhh, that explains being able to secure reservations at the last minute.”
Fusion Cafe took up a ground-floor wing addition to the Silver Lode hotel, just off historic Main Street in Park City. The interior was spartan, with tables divided by etched chrome and glass half-walls. Sound deadening panels on the ceiling provided a decent atmosphere for conversation even on a busy night. Being a Thursday didn’t diminish the crowds much. Several groups and couples waited in the hotel lobby for their tables.
Curran placed a hand on the small of her back, guiding her to the restaurant door. A pretty, petite, delicate blonde standing at the host desk smiled at them, then did a double-take and left her desk to throw her arms around him.
“My gosh, Curran, I heard you were coming in tonight. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
He laughed. “No one’s seen me in ages, so don’t feel bad about it.” He stepped out of the hostess’ embrace and wrapped his arm around Victoria’s shoulders. “Honey, this is Georgia Grant. She manages the Silver Lode and is apparently filling in as maitre’d tonight. Georgia, my girlfriend, Victoria Linden.”
Girlfriend
. Automatic pilot forced Victoria’s hand out to meet Georgia’s. Huge, multi-colored fireworks exploded inside her, leaving her unable to control the huge, beauty queen grin plastered on her face as Georgia showed them to their table in a private corner. She forced down the urge to run home, call her old high school friends and scream over the phone in delight. God, she hadn’t been this giddy since Dale Whitby asked her to the Junior Prom.
Dakota Grant, her lithe form wrapped in a pristine white chef’s coat, arrived at their table shortly. Fusion’s owner and head chef was Georgia’s identical twin, save the hair, which Dakota wore short, spiky and burgundy.
She hopped up and down on the balls of her feet as Curran rose from his chair. She, too, greeted Curran like long-lost family, flinging her arms around him.
In her happy daze, Victoria noticed the way his eyes lit up, the way his innate charm kicked up a notch. He introduced her, then laughed as Dakota badgered him with questions.
“Where have you been, anyway? I thought for sure I’d see you in here during Sundance.”
He shrugged and ran his hand along the chef’s back. “Sorry, lady. It wasn’t that I didn’t miss you or your cooking. Just trying to stay out of the camera’s eye, you know?”
Dakota snorted. “Whatever, C. Glad to see you, anyway. Try the veal medallions tonight. The sauce is one of my better creations.”
She said goodbye to Victoria, then pulled Curran down and kissed him on the cheek before returning to the kitchen.
Victoria noted the glow in Curran’s eyes and wondered. In the last month, she had gotten no closer to knowing why he ended his highly public lifestyle. She didn’t know quite how to work the conversation around to it, and he didn’t volunteer anything.
No matter his reasons, he had obviously missed it. It showed on his face, in his delight at seeing the Grant sisters. She heard the joy threaded through the rumble in his voice.
Tonight, he’d taken himself back into his element. Curran Shaw had returned home, and claimed her as his own.
Her insecurities ate at her self-confidence. The things she’d been told so many times and thought she’d pushed out of her system rose in her mind. She wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, warm enough… anything
enough.
Not for a man like Curran. He was simply toying with her. How long could she possibly expect it to last? Especially when she wasn’t sleeping with him.
Then he took her hand and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. His smile, the warmth and sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her helped her chase away those old, hurtful words.
If she were truly that worthless, she wouldn’t be here, now would she?
He leaned close and kissed her, his lips firm yet tender slanting against hers.
Here and now. It was all she could ask for. It was all she could handle.
It was enough.
“I forgot to tell you, Mrs. Campbell called this morning.” Victoria dropped onto the couch in her great room after her first real night out with Curran. She pulled her knees up, giving him room to join her on the couch.
“Confirming their plans to return next month?”
“No, telling me they’re joining friends on a trip across Asia. Looks like I’m staying here until the middle of April.”
And staying close to you.
The comfort of knowing where she would live for the next two months bubbled into a froth with the anticipation shivering in her belly. They’d barely returned from the movie, and though he’d been a perfect gentleman all evening, a palpable tension filled the space between them.
Curran set down a bottle of lotion he’d retrieved from the bathroom and closed his fingers around her left ankle. She raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me.” He loosened the laces on her boot, slid it off, dropped it on the floor. He tugged her sock off.
She leaned back against the arm of the couch, unable to suppress a moan of delight as his strong hands slathered lotion onto her foot.
She knew what was coming. Every time she looked at him, the predatory darkness in his eyes singed her skin. He’d taken his time getting to it, but his intention was obvious. After a month of dating, he intended to change her status from merely girlfriend to lover.
She sucked in a sharp breath when he worked her arch with his knuckles.
“Does that hurt?”
“Ohhh, but it’s a good hurt. Keep going, please.” She watched him as his hands traveled over her skin, her insides tingling in lazy circles, matching the path his hands massaged around her foot.
He was clearly trying to seduce her, and damn, it was working. Her thoughts fast-forwarded past the obvious enjoyment of making love with him to the very distinct possibility of ending up alone again afterward. That dash of reality helped her focus outside the sensual stirrings in her belly.
Curran continued the massage beyond her ankles, sliding her trouser leg up to work her calf. “Does that mean you’re canceling your apartment-hunting plans for the weekend?”
“Yes. Does it bother you that I don’t keep my own place?”
He reached for her other foot, discarding the second boot and sock, then filled his palm with lotion. “No, not at all. Why pay rent if you aren’t living there? Though I suggest you don’t tell your employers about some of the things that may go on between us in this house in the next few weeks.”
He gave her a look that sent flames of desire licking over her skin then returned his attention to the foot rub. She sighed, part contentment, part resignation. She couldn’t give him what he wanted. What she wanted.
She had to get her mind on something else. “Question.”
“What?”
“Why haven’t you ever gone back to Australia?”
“I told you, not everyone wants to go home again.” He worked her arch, pulling a gasp from her.
“Don’t you ever miss your mother?”
Through half-closed eyes, she caught the way his jaw clenched. It was the only outward indication she’d hit a nerve.
“I was hard on my mum. We talk on the phone occasionally. She’s even learned how to send email in the last couple of years.”
She frowned. “I’m surprised she hasn’t flown over to see you, at least.”
He paused, his jaw ticking, then rubbed his knuckles against the ball of her foot. “Mum doesn’t fly. She’s deathly afraid of aircraft. Doesn’t do boats, either, so if she can’t walk, drive, or take the train, she doesn’t go.”
“Oh.” Heavens, getting information out of him was like herding cats sometimes.
When he was in the public eye, Curran managed to keep his family private. Even with all her research, all she found at the time she wrote the article was that he had a sister, his mother lived in Australia, and his father died when Curran was twenty-five, leaving him DCS GlobalTech. Her curiosity piqued, she gently nudged for more satisfying answers. “You don’t speak of your family much, besides Kelli.”
He blew out a breath, then glanced sideways at her. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything you’re willing to tell me. If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t.”
Curran lifted her feet, slid closer to her, then lowered her legs over his. “All right. Mum and David Shaw were never married. He met her on holiday in Gold Coast—do you know Australia?”
“Uh, sort of.”
He nodded and drew a map in the air. “It’s on the east coast in Queensland, just south of Brisbane, right? So, they met, spent three solid months together, then he went back to the States, and she was blessed with me.”
Victoria shivered. The single-mom subject hit a little too close to home. “Did he know?”
“She didn’t tell him until I was three or four years old. She wanted to see if he’d come back for her without knowing he had an obligation. He never came. She finally told him, hoping he’d help provide for me.”
“And did he?” Nate wouldn’t have.
“Yeah. He was neck-deep in building his business, so it wasn’t like he could pick up and move halfway around the world. He wanted us to come to him, but she refused to leave her family, her country, deal with that fear of flying. So, he sent funds, and she raised me with the help of my grandmother.”
Victoria trailed her fingers along his arm, enjoying the feel of corded muscle under his soft sweater. “Where does Kelli come into the picture?”
“Mum married Jack, Kelli’s dad, when I was nine. He’s a decent type, but he wasn’t my father. I wouldn’t let him be. By the time I was a teenager, I had raised enough hell to get kicked out of the house.”
“Where did you go?”
He leveled a look at her. “You know, this is not what I had in mind tonight, talking about my childhood.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Curran feathered his fingers into her hair, stroked his thumb down her cheek. “You didn’t, but it’s a conversation for another time.”
Her heart tripped hard as he shifted her onto his lap and kissed her. The room faded away until nothing existed beyond the feel of him, the faint musky hint of aftershave on his skin, the heat of his mouth. Victoria lost herself in the pounding of his heart beneath her hand, the security of his arms, the fiery trail of kisses he imprinted on her jaw, her throat.
He slipped an arm beneath her knees and lifted her, laying her down on the couch and stretching himself out full length beside her. He kissed her, his tongue flirting with hers, dipping into her mouth until her head spun. She gasped when he turned his attention to the hollow at the base of her throat. Nothing else in the world mattered. Nothing but his tongue tasting her skin, his teeth nipping at her collarbone.
A hot throbbing grew between her thighs, achy and demanding. She became more aware of her own skin when he ran a hand down her side, barely touching the curve of her breast, following the path of her waist, along her hip. Down her leg until he tucked his fingers behind her knee, bringing her leg up and over his side as he shifted, resting his own leg between hers. It was so quick, so fluid, it left her no time to think. The throbbing intensified, pulsing against the weight of his thigh. It had been so long, and she didn’t recall the prelude ever being this good. It was all she could do to resist the urge to rock her hips and rub herself against him.
She drew a ragged breath, wove her fingers into his thick hair and pulled his mouth back to hers. She tasted him, kissed him deeply. He eased back, his smoldering gaze locked onto hers as he reached his hand under the edge of her sweater, sliding the fine wool up to her breasts.
A pinprick of cold opened inside her, snapping her out of the heat-induced haze.
Think, Victoria, think!
Her mind returned to the day she signed the adoption papers. That was all it took. The chill grew, washing over the throbbing, leaving only wisps of smoke curling in her stomach.