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His hands moved lower, grasping her hips, thrusting her against another hardness; like flame, desire surged through her veins. Knees weak, she clung to him. Her tongue danced with his, their mouths welded in a kiss that she wanted to last forever.
Then he thrust her away so roughly that she stumbled, bumping her hip against the table. He said harshly, “Forget I did that—it won’t happen again. I’ll see you at eight-thirty tomorrow.”
The image of her shocked face imprinted on his brain, Luke strode down the hall as though all the demons in hell were after him. What had possessed him to kiss her like that? Like a man starved for nourishment. Like an addict needing his fix.
He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone. Never had.
He unlatched the door and stepped outside into the chill star-spangled night. That was what he needed, he thought savagely, a sense of perspective. The stars were good at providing that.
He’d just broken two of his cardinal rules: never get involved with an employee, and never make the first move without explaining the way the game worked. Not that kissing Kelsey North could in any way be called a game. From the moment his lips had found hers he’d been engulfed by her. Absorbed in her. Desperate for her.
Thank God he’d found the strength to walk away from her. And away from her was where he intended to stay.
His car was parked under the trees. He fumbled for his keys in his pocket, then whipped around as he heard steps behind him on the gravel driveway.
Kelsey said jaggedly, “You forgot the photographs.”
Her hair was in a wild tumble around her face, her eyes huge dark pools. Through the thin fabric of her shirt he could see the little bumps of her nipples. Goddammit, he wasn’t going to kiss her again. He took the envelope from her with the tips of his fingers. “Thanks.”
She stepped back, hugging her arms to her chest. “I’m not one of your super-sophisticated Manhattan women, Luke. Don’t toy with me like that—kissing me as though I’m the only woman in the world and then dropping me as though I disgust you.”
“Disgust?” His laugh had no amusement in it. “If I hadn’t dropped you, we’d be making love on the kitchen floor right now.”
She took another step back. “Am I supposed to believe that?”
“You know I wanted you.”
Shivering, she said in a low voice, “I’ve never met anyone like you. I don’t know what to believe.”
He was suddenly pierced with guilt; wasn’t she telling him she was way out of her depth? “Go inside—you’re cold. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With a tiny sound of distress, she whirled and ran for the house. The door slammed shut behind her.
Luke got into his car and drove back to Griffin’s Keep, grimly concentrating on the road. He was going to put her right out of his mind. His lifestyle didn’t begin to accommodate women like Kelsey North. Never had and never would.
The mansion’s dark bulk loomed against the stars, secretive and unwelcoming. Could he blame his mother for running away? Would the contents of the boxes bring him any closer to understanding her?
He went inside, and in the room where he and Kelsey had been working he spread the photos over the table. They were all images of Rosemary as a young girl; she looked happy and carefree. He couldn’t ever remember her looking happy like that.
Briefly he buried his head in his hands, his nostrils assaulted with the long-ago smells of the apartment block where they’d lived. Rotting garbage, urine, cigarette butts, the lazy drift of dope.
He’d never have to go back to a place like that. The money he’d made since then guaranteed it. He was safe. As that little boy in a slum apartment block hadn’t ever been safe.
THAT NIGHT LUKE went through four more boxes, rewarded by finding some of Rosemary’s school reports. Doesn’t like to sit still and Stirs up trouble were repeated themes. It was nearly three in the morning when he trailed upstairs, every limb weighted with exhaustion. But when he fell into bed it wasn’t Rosemary who kept him wide-eyed and awake, staring up into the darkness. It was Kelsey.
He loathed how desperate he’d felt, how driven. He liked sex as much as the next man. But he also liked being in control.
Tomorrow—today, rather—he wouldn’t lay as much as a finger on her. If she had any sense, she’d wear the brown tweed suit to work.
Trouble was, now he knew what was hidden underneath it. And he could remember all too clearly how she’d opened to his kiss, digging her nails into his nape, her hips pressed to his erection.
Hell, he’d never get to sleep at this rate. With a superhuman effort, Luke forced himself to focus on the trend in oil prices, and eventually he did fall asleep. To dream a long-familiar dream of the shadowy woman who had been his mother. She was holding out a pretty red candy and promising it could be his. As he reached for it, already tasting its sweetness, she snatched it back at the very last minute…
Later, much later, he gradually sank into another dream. One of Kelsey lying naked in a field of summer flowers, opening her arms to him, voluptuous and beautiful.
EVEN THOUGH SHE was tempted to do so, Kelsey didn’t wear the brown tweed suit the next morning. But the jeans she chose were loose-fitting, and her sweater enveloped her from throat to hip in bright green wool.
If Luke Griffin made the slightest move toward her, she’d belt him first and then she’d quit.
In January’s weak sunlight, Griffin’s Keep looked ridiculously like the haunted house of a thousand books and movies. She marched up the front steps and found the door firmly locked.
Yesterday Luke had unlocked it before she’d arrived. Not in the mood for subtlety, she leaned hard on the bell. Once, twice, three times. With absolutely no effect. His car, a sleek Mercedes, was parked by the garage, so she knew he was here.
Had he changed his mind overnight and fired her? If so, would he bother to let her know? He was the great Luke Griffin, accountable to no one.
She banged on the panels of the door, hurting her fist. Her jaw set mutinously, she then walked around the house until she came to the room where they worked. Standing on tiptoes, she peered inside. Empty. So was the kitchen. By now it was a quarter to nine.
Kelsey had slept very badly, her dreams full of enough torrid sex for ten women. The man she’d cavorted with in purple satin sheets that exactly matched her toenails had been Luke, an unabashedly and gloriously naked Luke.
No wonder she felt out of sorts this morning. She stormed back to her car and laid on the horn. Although for all she knew, he slept at the back of the house. She then went through the whole bell-ringing routine again. No Luke, apologetic or otherwise.
Fine. She’d go home and scour Kirk’s room from one end to the other.
However, as she thrust the key in the ignition, the sun went behind a cloud and the ugly turrets and pinnacles of Griffin’s Keep were shrouded in shadow. It wasn’t just a depressing house, she thought, it was downright foreboding.
Maybe Luke had slipped on the stairs and hurt himself? Maybe he was ill? Should she go for help?
Unease nibbling at her composure, Kelsey got out of the car and circled the house one more time. Against the south wall a stout Virginia creeper clung to the worn shingles, climbing all the way to the brick chimney. Partway up, it skirted a window that was open several inches.
She’d been a daredevil climber as a kid, outdoing the boys because she had no fear of heights. She shucked off her jacket, glad she’d worn her hiking boots, and started to climb.
It was a cinch. She placed each foot with care, wrapping her fingers around the stout branches, the exercise warming her, the little adventure lifting her spirits. Her life had been too dull for too long. She should add adventure to the list. Near the top, with a capital A.
The window slid open on its hasp. Kelsey levered herself over the sill, landing with a small thud on the floor.
She was in a bedroom. Luke’s bedroom.
He was fast asleep on the double bed, his face buried in the pillows, the sheets twisted around his waist. He was also naked, the light falling over the long curves of his spine.
Her dream had collided with reality. Except the sheets were white, not purple.
Kelsey crept closer across the worn floorboards. His torso was rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing; his hair lay dark on the pillow. He had, she thought unwillingly, a most impressive set of muscles.
Clearly he wasn’t sick. She should go straight downstairs and get to work. Then her heart leaped into her throat as he stirred, muttering something under his breath. She froze to the spot, watching in dismay as he turned over. He rubbed his eyes, their vivid blue focusing on her. As she opened her mouth, with no idea what she was going to say, he said, in a voice still blurred with sleep, “I was dreaming about you—come here.”
She gave a startled yelp as he seized her wrist and tugged her toward him. Losing her balance, she fell on top of him, her hands splayed on the sheet, her breasts crushed to his bare chest. He looped one thigh over hers, pinning her down, and buried his hands in her hair, pulling her head down to his. She had time to think, I’m in bed with a man who’s tall, dark and handsome. Then his lips were locked to hers, moving slick and hot until she dissolved into a pool of longing. She moaned his name in helpless surrender, assaulted by the heat of his body, the shock of bone and muscle and sinew.
With strong fingers he dragged her sweater up to her waist; a shudder rippled along her spine as his palms stroked her back, warm and very sure of themselves. “Your skin,” he muttered. “I knew it would feel like silk.” Then he was fumbling with the clasp on her bra, freeing her breasts.
As his fingers, those clever fingers, found her nipple, teasing it to the hardness of stone, she closed her eyes, drowning in pleasure and a raging hunger she couldn’t possibly have denied. She leaned forward, finding his mouth with hers, greedy to taste, frantic to give.
So she was generous, Luke thought in a rush of gratitude. Hadn’t he known she would be? Hadn’t he known how perfectly her breast would fit his palm? How the scent of her hair would envelop him?
He had to have her. He’d been a fool last night to think he could walk away from her without a backward look.
Rearing up, carrying her with him, he covered her with his body. His kiss deepened until he could scarcely breathe, his heart hammering in his ears. Or was it her heart? Swiftly he hauled her sweater further up, baring her exquisite breasts, all ivory curves and pink tips in the pale light. As he flicked her nipples with his tongue, desperate to taste her, she arched to meet him, her eyes wide-held, shining dark with desire. Her hips moved beneath him, nearly driving him out of his mind. He thrust once, twice, against the denim of her jeans, and heard the tiny cry as her breath caught in her throat.
He had to have her, Luke thought again, striving to breathe past the tightness in his chest. But not here. Not in this joyless house, in a bed not his own, where he’d been visited by nightmares.
He said jaggedly, “Kelsey, we’ve got to stop. God knows I want you. But this isn’t the time or the place.”
Had he ever done anything so against every instinct in his body? So contrary to his own impulsions?
Kelsey was clutching him by the shoulders, her nails digging in his flesh. His voice seemed to come from such a long way away that she had to struggle to take the words in. Stop, he’d said. We’ve got to stop…
Her body, so lissom, so wanton, was a stranger to her. And it was he who’d brought that about. His skillful mouth, his roaming hands, had changed her into a woman she scarcely knew.
She pushed hard against his chest, shaking her hair back, yanking at her sweater to hide her nakedness. Swiftly Luke brought a hand up to still hers. “Wait,” he said huskily, “let me look at you.”
“I—”
“You’re so lovely… Stroking you is like stroking a pearl, smooth and exquisitely shaped.”
Poetry was the last thing she would have expected from Luke Griffin. Dumbstruck, Kelsey watched his eyes wander from her shoulders to her peaked breasts, then lower to the gentle narrowing of her waist and the dip of her navel. The expression on his face brought sudden tears to her eyes. Had anyone ever looked at her like that? As though she was the most beautiful creature in the world?
It was he who then pulled her sweater down. Smiling at her, he patted her on the bottom. “Up,” he said. “We’re going to finish those boxes today if it’s the last thing we do.”
How could he switch so quickly from assaulting her with pleasure to everyday practicalities? This isn’t the time or the place… Did that mean he still wanted to make love to her? His words, those lyrical words that had melted her heart, they must have meant something…mustn’t they?
She still had her hiking boots on, she noticed distantly.
“Kelsey, are you okay?”
He was untangling himself from the sheets. He was, as she’d suspected, stark naked. Her eyes skittered away from him. “Fine,” she said in a choked voice.
“Coffee,” he said authoritatively. “An order from the boss.”
Kelsey stood up, her eyes flicking over the unmade bed, the tattered wallpaper. Anywhere but at him, in this dingy, too-small bedroom, where a man’s body had drowned her in desire. With a strangled gasp she fled the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Briefly she leaned against the panels, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. Her exit had been about as undignified as her entrance. Neither had been even remotely sophisticated.
She was beginning to hate that word.
Behind the panels she heard the floorboards creak as Luke moved around the room, and she took to the stairs as fast as she could. He’d better be fully dressed when he came downstairs, or she wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences.
She could have eaten him alive, devoured him without a thought for the consequences.
For once, Kelsey was glad to be in the archaic kitchen, where she now had a small area clean enough that making coffee had become a comfortable routine. As the scent of Colombian blend teased her nostrils, she hooked her bra, patted her cheeks with cold water, and tried very hard to think.
Torrid sex. She now knew exactly what it felt like.
Wonderful. Overwhelming. Powerful. Frustrating. Oh, she could go on forever.
But was it what she wanted?
Freedom to be herself, to be on her own, was what she wanted. If torrid sex translated itself into an affair with Luke Griffin—even a short-lived affair—wouldn’t she lose something she’d craved for years?
Or would she berate herself for cowardice instead? Sex, so she’d read, was supposed to free the creative impulse, feed the artistic muse. Somehow she didn’t think what had happened upstairs in that gloomy bedroom had had much to do with her muse.
With a wry twist of her mouth, Kelsey decided caffeine was necessary for tackling such philosophical issues. But at least she’d distanced herself from that woman in the bedroom who would, in an instant, have begged for more, more, more…
She was seated at the table in the room down the hall, busily working, when Luke wandered in ten minutes later. “Great coffee,” he said absently, and sat down at the adjoining table.
Just as if he hadn’t kissed her senseless only minutes ago, she thought furiously, flicking through a pile of bank statements and subduing several shrewish replies.
“Did I forget to lock the door last night?” he added. “Is that how you got in?”
“I climbed the Virginia creeper up to your room.”
He gave a choked laugh. “A cat burglar—where did you learn to do that?”
“In the ivy on the old oak tree behind our house.”
“I must remember to keep the silver locked up when you’re around.”
“You do that.”
“You’re cute when you’re annoyed.”
He was openly laughing at her, teeth gleaming, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Her own teeth gritted, she fought against his charm. “I’m glad I amuse you.”
“You do more than amuse me—that’s the problem,” he said. “But why did you bother climbing the creeper? Why didn’t you just go home?”
“I thought you might have broken your neck on the back stairs.”
“You were worried about me?” he said, taken aback.
She was scowling at him. “Yes.”
“Oh,” Luke said. He wasn’t used to anyone worrying about him; he wasn’t at all sure he liked the sensation. “Thanks,” he said shortly. “And now we’d better get to work. We’ll quit at noon for lunch.”
If she was smart, Kelsey thought, she’d quit right now. She took another sheaf of papers out of the box and bent to her task.
She had a delightful profile, Luke decided, her nose straight, her chin with a decided firmness. She was certainly no push-over. Unfortunately, she was no sophisticate either.
He had to have her. That hadn’t changed. Even though he’d doused himself in a tepid shower and done his best to conjure up images of Clarisse and Lindsay.
His best hadn’t been good enough. They’d dropped off his radar. Kelsey was the one he wanted. And Kelsey wanted him. She was twenty-eight years old, he thought, old enough to know that affairs, by definition, didn’t last. Besides, after bringing up three boys, she must be all too ready to break out.
