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2
“EMILY.”
“Rand McConnell, you conceited jackass,” she snapped, seething with anger she hadn’t realized she was capable of feeling. It choked her, enveloped her. She wrapped the rage around herself, well aware that she’d need it to keep her defenses high.
Being angry wasn’t hard. The man’s ego was unbelievable. He really believed she was some groupie who’d been trying to seduce him by, what, wagging her butt up at him from the floor and begging him to climb on top of her and make her howl?
He could. You know he could.
That was beside the point.
She leapt to her feet, too mad to feel any mortification about him catching her with her pants down. Er, well, with her skirt up. “You assumed I was lying in wait to take advantage of you?”
“It’s you.”
“Of course it’s me.”
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Not lying in wait to take advantage of you, that’s for sure! What on earth kind of women do you meet if they wait for you on all fours in hotel rooms?”
A slow, wry grin spread across his face, that sexy grin of Randy’s that had graced magazines and cereal boxes. His amazing smile had made her dizzy with lust when she was a mere teenager and he not much more than that.
That grin still elicited a reaction. Something inside her twisted and lurched—her heart, her sex, her stomach? All of the above?
God, this was just how she’d felt the first time she’d seen him. Back when she’d been an innocent virgin, a good girl raised in a sheltered home who was looking to spread her wings and be a little bad.
Rand had been a few years older, already so handsome he had girls following him everywhere. But, as she’d learned, he’d also come from a pretty sheltered, small-town background. They’d also had another sad connection, both of them having essentially lost a parent as a teenager, though not in the same way. Rand had lost his father to cancer—a true tragedy. Em had lost both her parents to prison on embezzlement convictions, which was more infuriating than tragic, as far as she was concerned. But still a loss for a young girl yanked from the only life she’d ever known. As their friendship had developed, they’d talked a lot about the paths their lives had taken after those losses...and the paths they had not.
She shook her head hard, willing the sweeter memories of Rand away, forcing herself to focus on the bad ones.
“I never meet women as interesting as you, believe me,” he said. And she did believe it, because the rat had the ability to make any woman believe whatever words came out of that beautiful face.
Oh, God, why did he have to be so impossibly handsome? Why had his dark brown hair retained its luster, why hadn’t it started to go gray or, best of all, fallen out by the fistful? Why were his cheeks so sharply defined, and why was his jaw so rugged and his mouth so eminently sexy and kissable? Why was that body even more strong-looking, broad-shouldered and muscular than it had been when he’d been a college ballplayer just starting out? Why did those green eyes still take in so much more than she wanted to reveal?
Why are you here, Rand?
“You’re all grown up,” he said.
“Seven years will do that to a person,” she replied, her tone sugar-sweet, reminding him that it had been seven years since they’d spoken, seven years during which he’d never once tried to reach her, not even to see if she was okay after what had happened between them. “Despite appearances, I’m not the dumb girl I was.”
“You were never dumb.”
To be fair, he’d never treated her as if she was dumb, just as a sweet little innocent. Until that last night.
She’d met Rand when she was visiting her brother, Seth, who lived in L.A. Seth was a sports agent, just building a name for himself back then. Now, he counted some of the most famous, successful athletes in the country as his clients. Rand McConnell had been one of them.
He wasn’t anymore, though. Because of her.
“You were always pretty spectacular.”
Her spine went ramrod straight and she forced away the hint of pleasure his compliment created. The guy was a womanizing ballplayer who probably fed every woman that same line. “And you were always a jerk.”
He flinched, visibly affected at last.
She instantly regretted the comment. Because he hadn’t been a jerk. In fact, Rand had been anything but a jerk when they’d first met. He’d been cute and funny and charming, even if he hadn’t been later.
“Wow, that’s new. You’ve grown a sharp tongue to go along with that perfect face,” he said, sounding rueful.
“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “This was an awkward reunion at best. If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going.”
She began to walk toward the door but he stepped in front of her. She had to drop her head back to stare up at him—he’d had a good six inches in height on her when he’d been twenty-one and he seemed even taller now.
She suddenly realized why. “Wait, where are my shoes?” she asked, still not believing he’d pulled her out from under the bed—and not believing she’d been about to walk out of here barefoot and with her skirt still twisted out of place. The man had fried her brains and made her forget everything else. As always. She untangled her skirt and yanked it into position.
“I hid them.”
“You didn’t have a chance to hide them.”
“Okay, so I threw them. They’re in the corner.”
She walked over to get them and shoved her feet in the pumps. Turning to leave, though, she found he’d stepped right in front of the doorway, blocking her exit.
“I’m curious, if you weren’t, uh, lying in wait, what were you doing under my bed?”
“I was trying to unhook the...”
The words died on her lips. She did not want to talk to Rand about the fur-lined handcuffs attached to his bed, apparently left there by the hotel owner. She’d heard rumors about the wealthy owner’s revolving-door love life. Evidently it wasn’t just his money that kept the women coming to the penthouse night after night when he was in residence.
Although the room itself was probably part of the attraction. The three-bedroom suite was the final word in opulence. It included every creature comfort a person could desire, from a private pool on the rooftop patio, to a ten-headed shower in the master bath, to a bar fridge stocked with Perrier-Jouët champagne and Beluga caviar.
And, as she’d discovered when doing one last sweep after the maids had departed, a bit of a kink factor. She’d found a pair of cuffs in a drawer in the bathroom, which had prompted her to double-check the bed. Good thing. There’d been another set attached to one of the decorative wooden slats that ran vertically down the center of the thick, massive headboard.
“Let me guess—you were trying to unhook the handcuffs?” he said, a teasing note to his voice.
Heat rose in her face. “How did you...”
“I heard you mumbling to yourself.”
Yet he had still assumed she was a stranger lying in wait to, uh, seduce him. Did women regularly handcuff him to the bed to have their kinky way with him? She did a mental eye-roll at the very idea, then quickly pulled her thoughts off all things handcuffy and sexual. And Randy. Oh, yes, randy was definitely on the no-no list right now.
“Yes, well, I was just doing a sweep to make sure everything was acceptable.”
“And you found handcuffs.”
“Would you shut up about the freaking handcuffs?”
“Are they still there?”
“Do I look like a locksmith to you?”
“Are they the fake plastic ones? Because, if so, they should have a release button that enables them to just be snapped open.”
Her jaw fell. “And you would know this...how?”
“Who doesn’t know that?”
“I didn’t know that.”
He tsked. “Never played cops and robbers as a kid, huh?”
Yeah, right. She’d just bet that was how he’d discovered release buttons.
He sure discovered your release button.
She ordered the sassy mental voice in her head to shut the hell up, even as her brain flooded with images of how he’d found the most vulnerable spots on her body and plucked them like a virtuoso fingering the keys of his instrument. She’d been so sheltered, with no adult female influence throughout her teenage years, that she hadn’t even been sure where her clit was until Rand showed her. Oh, God, had he shown her that one night when she’d been a wild child, rather than a good girl.
Being wild had been spectacular. But it had also caused a whole lot of misery. So she’d gone back to being a good girl, never tempted to push the limits with any other guy. And that seemed to be just fine with the men she’d dated, all of whom were okay with nice, quiet, reserved Emily who didn’t get on the floor and wag her fanny at them, or call them jerks or tell them to shut up.
God, why was Rand always able to get her riled up like this? More important, why did part of her love being riled up?
“I certainly never played games with real handcuffs,” she finally replied.
“So you think they’re real, not plastic?”
“Must we talk about the handcuffs?”
“Let’s just say you’ve aroused my...curiosity.”
“Well, you’re welcome to satisfy your...curiosity once I’m out of here. Despite the faux fur lining, they are not toy handcuffs and they’re still dangling from your headboard.”
“Fur-lined but still real? I doubt it. Show me where they are and I’ll try to open them.”
She rolled her eyes, wondering if he believed her a total sucker. Then again, her boss had made it pretty clear that she had to make Rand happy. If word got back to Dawn that a pair of handcuffs had been left for a valued customer to find and a staff member had refused to help remove them, the general manager would make good on her threat to fire Emily.
“Fine,” she snapped, heading toward the bed. He followed her, and she forced herself not to dwell on his being behind her. She didn’t want to remember the wild, angry, erotic thoughts she’d been having as she crawled out from under the bed, torn between humiliation, fury and the same crazy desire she’d felt for Rand from the day they’d met.
Dropping to her knees on the bed, close to the headboard, she bent over and reached her hand between the frame and the mattress. The metal cuffs dangled near the bottom of one slat, and she hooked her fingers into the free cuff and began to tug the set up. “I tried to open them from up here but it’s a pretty bad angle, which is why I was under the bed when you arrived.”
“I see.”
She looked over her shoulder and found him eyeing her backside. Yeah, he saw all right.
“Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful a little while ago?”
“No such thing as enough of an eyeful at something that great.”
Again torn between the anger and embarrassment and pleasure reactions, she turned and plopped her butt on the mattress. He sat beside her, watching as she drew the cuffs up the slat. Metal jangled as she lifted them as high as they would go. He reached over her lap and took the wrist cuff from her, which left both their hands hovering over her lap.
Heaven help me.
He examined the cuffs, testing the weight and the locking mechanism. “Pretty real, I’d say. There’s no matching one on the other side?”
Confused, she scrunched her brow.
“Well, one set wouldn’t do you much good. Unless you could somehow attach the chain part to the bed, leaving both wristcuffs free to be used.”
Now she got the picture. Oh, boy, did she ever get the picture. Being kept helpless on the bed, both hands restrained, able to do nothing but accept the pleasure a lover—Rand—wanted to give her...what woman wouldn’t immediately let her imagination drift?
But she couldn’t afford to drift and she certainly couldn’t afford to imagine. She wanted to get off the bed, remembering all too well that the last time she and Rand had been together, it had also been in a bed. A much smaller one, in a faraway state, but she’d certainly never forgotten the incident.
Unfortunately, his cuff-laden hand still blocked her path. If she lunged up, she’d be pushing her hips up against him in a way that would say anything except get off me.
“Wait a second,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a key chain that held a small utility knife. “Hold the cuff while I try to open the lock. If I can figure out how this side opens, I can climb under to get the attached side.”
That made sense, she supposed. No use breaking a wrist trying to open the attached side by shoving his big, powerful arm down behind the mattress. And no use crawling under the bed until he knew if it could be done. “Okay,” she said, watching as he bent to the task.
“You’re absolutely sure there’s only one set attached to the bed?”
“There’s only one.” The other one was in the bathroom drawer. “Even one is too many. Handcuffs definitely aren’t a hotel perk.”
“No, I suppose not. Glad you spotted them,” he said, an amused twinkle in those green eyes.
“I was double-checking the room to make sure it was ready for a guest; this one is usually not rented.” Realizing she hadn’t totally explained, she added, “I work here.”
“I know.”
Obviously he’d figured it out from their conversation and her attire. Yet, something in his expression made it seem like more than that, as if he’d been aware of that even earlier.
Ridiculous. He couldn’t have.
“Small world,” he said.
She grunted. “Too small.”
This had to be the most unlucky coincidence anyone had ever experienced. Okay, maybe getting engaged to a guy and then finding out you were twins separated at birth would be worse. But this was pretty damn bad.
“It’s been a long time, Em.”
“Not long enough.”
“Ouch.”
She was being bitchy, but she couldn’t help herself. Of course, considering that she hadn’t heard word one from him in years, even after the way they’d spent their last moments together, he deserved a little bitchiness.
In fairness, she’d been young and stupid and had instigated something she wasn’t ready for. She’d blamed herself a lot over the years for the way things had turned out. But Rand’s hands weren’t lily white. His falling-out with Seth hadn’t been entirely her fault.
“How’s your brother?” he asked, as if reading her mind.
