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Her question hung on the air between them. When the silence dragged out to one minute, then two, she tossed the shopping bag on the counter.
“I can’t believe you just stopped by, Noah. No one just stops by an island in the middle of a lake in the middle of the fall. What’s going on?”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “A guy can’t get nostalgic?”
“A guy? Sure. A guy can get plenty nostalgic. But you’re not just any guy. You don’t do anything unless you’ve thought about it six ways and sideways.”
Noah let his gaze slip from Laurel to the case of sex toys. Her hand was on the counter, and he slid his over hers. “I’ve thought about you six ways and sideways.”
“No. You haven’t.” Laurel shook her head, but she didn’t pull her hand away. “You haven’t thought about me, and I haven’t thought about you. I thought we made that pretty clear the last time we saw each other. We promised—”
“We didn’t exactly promise.” Noah barked out a laugh. “I have a photographic memory, remember? Even if I didn’t, I think I’d remember that promise is way too nice a word to describe the things we said to each other. The way I remember it, you said you’d never waste another minute thinking about me,” he reminded her.
“And you said you were glad,” she countered. She pulled back her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “You said you’d already spent enough time worrying about a woman who wasn’t worth worrying about.”
“And you said you didn’t care because you didn’t want me worrying about you, anyway.” Noah skimmed his hand up her arm. “You said you could look after yourself, that you didn’t need anyone to tell you what you wanted out of life.”
“And you said that was just fine, because you weren’t going to tell me, anyway.” Laurel’s voice rose along with the tempo of her words. “You said that was great. It was terrific. It was really, really good. You said I should grow up and figure out what was really important. What was important to you, you said, was your career. And you weren’t going to throw it away on some backwater island where—”
“Where the only thing a doctor ever got to treat was broken bones and beestings. Yeah, I know.” Noah had no intention of getting pulled into an argument. Not the same argument. Not all over again. But if that was the case, why was his voice as loud as Laurel’s? He found himself clutching her arm a little tighter. “You said you were happy to finally get things out in the open.”
“And you said goodbye.”
Their words hung in the air, as bitter and painful as they had been four years earlier. Nothing could change the things they’d said or done. Noah knew that. Nothing could erase the pain or the regret. Nothing could bring back the years and the happiness they might have shared.
Nothing.
Noah loosened his grip on Laurel’s arm. He couldn’t change the past but he could, at least, do something about the present. The moment. The instant. And in that one instant, Laurel’s eyes were as pretty as ever, her lips were as full. Her breasts were as lush, and when she pulled in breath after shaky breath and they strained against her sweater, he knew it was one moment he couldn’t let pass.
As quickly as he loosened his hold, he reached for her again, and leaning over the counter, he brought his mouth down on Laurel’s.
Chapter Three
Big mistake.
As soon as the thought formed in her head, Laurel amended it.
This wasn’t just a big mistake. This was a whopper. A screwup. The mother of all mistakes.
Which explained why she felt like a complete idiot.
Which didn’t explain why she was enjoying Noah’s kiss quite so much.
The thoughts tumbled through her head at the same time a riot of sensations assaulted her body. Lips that were skilled. A taste that was unique. A certain heart-stopping sizzle that bubbled through her bloodstream. And the heat.
Laurel tipped her head back, and when Noah parted her lips with his tongue and deepened the kiss, she heard a moan of pure pleasure rise from deep in her throat. The heat of Noah’s hand seared her skin even through her sweater. His lips scorched hers. An answering heat built inside her. She leaned closer. The hard edge of the glass display case poked her in the ribs, and Laurel cursed her luck. If it wasn’t for the display case, she’d be feeling Noah’s arms around her. If it wasn’t for the display case, she’d be pressing her body against his. If it wasn’t for the display case, she could get closer still and let her hands roam over him, exploring and remembering.
If it wasn’t for the display case, she’d be making an even bigger fool of herself than she already was.
The heat that pounded through her veins froze with the icy realization, and Laurel flattened one hand against Noah’s shoulder and pushed away from him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She stopped just short of screeching the question and struggled to collect herself. With any luck, he was as confused as she was. As overwhelmed. As flustered. Otherwise, he might catch on to the fact that she wasn’t sure if she was asking the question of him or of herself.
“Are you nuts?”
Another question she could very well have aimed at herself. Instead, Laurel ran a hand through her hair and moved back a couple steps. It might have been easier to ignore the thread of desire wound tight inside her if she didn’t find herself with her back against a display of itty-bitty panties and teeny-tiny bra tops and eentsyweentsy wisps of lace that tickled the back of her neck and her imagination in ways it shouldn’t have been tickled. At least not when Noah was in the room. Or at the Hideaway. Or on the island.
Beyond the point of knowing or caring if what she was about to do looked as much like a retreat as it felt, Laurel darted from behind the counter and headed for the door.
“Where are we going?” she heard Noah call from behind her.
On her way past the front desk, Laurel grabbed the first set of room keys she could get her hands on. She glanced at the name etched into the heart-shaped brass key chain. “Almost Paradise,” she told him.
Behind her, she heard Noah’s footsteps against the antique Oriental rug. She felt his arms go around her waist, holding her in place. At the same time, his breath brushed against her neck, soft and warm. “Cool,” he murmured. “I have to admit, I wasn’t really planning for that little kiss to turn into a full-scale seduction, but if you’re willing…”
This time, Laurel did screech. She screeched her annoyance and her frustration. She screeched not because of Noah’s suggestion, but because what he was suggesting sounded good to her. Way too good.
“You are crazy.” Laurel spun and darted out of his reach. She slapped the room keys into Noah’s hand. “If you think I’m going to go up to that room with you and—”
“Isn’t that what you just said?” Noah looked from the key to the stairs that wound to the second floor to Laurel. He gave her a lopsided, devilish smile, the kind that in the old days packed the magic punch that could make her do anything. “Let me get this straight. You kiss a guy—”
“I didn’t kiss you, you kissed me.”
“You kiss a guy and you’re having a really good time and—”
“I wasn’t having a good time.” Laurel set her jaw. “You’re imagining that part of it.”
“You’re having a really good time and then you make a move. Not just any move. You move quickly, conclusively, dare I say…” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Enthusiastically toward the lobby.”
“Not enthusiastically,” she insisted. “I was never enthusiastic.”
“You move enthusiastically, a woman with a mission. You can’t wait. You can’t wait to get out of the gift shop. You can’t wait to get across the lobby. You can’t wait to—”
“Oh, I can wait, all right. I can wait until hell freezes over.”
“And you grab a set of room keys and you tell me we’re headed to paradise and you mean…What?” He looked at her, his expression hovering halfway between I dare you to try and talk your way out of this one and Go ahead, make my day.
“What I mean…” Laurel moved back one step. Two steps. It was well past time to put some distance between herself and Noah. Some distance between herself and the memories he had a way of evoking, like a magician conjuring something beautiful and tempting where only moments before there had been nothing but thin air. “I mean it’s time for you to go to your room and stay there.”
“You mean…” Noah gave her the sort of wide-eyed, dramatic, smart-aleck look that told her he was going to milk her discomfort for all it was worth. “You mean…good night?”
“I mean good night. What else would I mean? How could any woman in her right mind mean anything else? I mean good night. I mean goodbye. Because I won’t be here in the morning, and that’s when you’ll be leaving.” She hurried to the other side of the front desk. At least with a few hundred pounds of solid mahogany between herself and Noah, she felt as if she stood a fighting chance. “You’ll find everything you need in your room,” she told him, using the kind of honeyed tones that seemed to suit an innkeeper. “Towels. Soap. Shampoo.” She glanced at the little pink shopping bag he’d managed to bring along with him from the Love Shack. “I see you’ve got everything else covered.”
“I do.” Noah moved toward the desk, and Laurel found herself automatically moving back. Even then, he managed to reach across the sign-in book and the room keys and the pile of mail she hadn’t finished sorting. Gently, he touched her arm. His cocky grin softened and so did his voice. “Take it easy, Laurel,” he said. “It was only a kiss.”
Only a kiss?
Laurel could hardly believe her ears. Only a kiss? That? What happened between them in the Love Shack was only a kiss like Pavarotti was only some Italian guy who liked to sing in the shower.
She shook off the thought. And the memories. And Noah’s hand. She supposed she should be grateful that he’d laid it on the line. It was only a kiss. At least to him. At least she knew where he stood. At least she knew where she stood, and where she stood was on the edge of an abyss. She could take a step forward and free-fall headlong into the void. She knew what waited for her there. For a while she’d feel as if she was floating, as if she was flying, and while it lasted, it would be awesome. Like the feeling she had the first time someone called her doctor and the buzz of Fourth of July fireworks and Christmas morning all rolled into one.
But sooner or later she’d land, and when she did, she knew she’d land hard. There was nothing waiting for her but a rocky pit and nothing as sure to make her forget the good times as the bad times.
She had to choose and she had to do it right here and now. She could take the step and start on a dizzying trip that was sure to end with nothing but heartbreak. Or she could convince herself that Noah was right. It was only a kiss.
“Only a kiss, huh?” Laurel congratulated herself—she sounded nearly as nonchalant about the whole thing as he did. “That wasn’t only a kiss, Noah. That was an aberration. A deviation. An anomaly. A freak of nature, like two-headed snakes and those fish that live deep in the ocean where there’s no light so they have these antenna things…” She wiggled her fingers over her head. “And these sort of little lightbulb thingies that flash so they can see where they’re going and—”
“I get the message!” Noah laughed and held up one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry. Honest. I wouldn’t have kissed you if I knew it was going to make you so nervous.”
“I am not nervous.” Laurel tucked her hands behind her back before he could see that they were shaking. She forced herself to look Noah in the eye. “I don’t get nervous,” she told him. “Not about things as inconsequential as that.”
“Of course not,” he agreed. Looking at her looking at him, the smile faded from his face, and he glanced away.
That was a first. Laurel made a mental note. Noah was never the first to back down from anything. Interested, she tipped her head and watched him shift the shopping bag from one hand to the other. Was it her imagination, or had a little of the swagger gone out of Noah? It must have been a trick of the soft pink lighting. She could have sworn he looked as disconcerted by what had happened in the Love Shack as she was feeling.
“I don’t want you to get the wrong impression,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that I was expecting that you—”
“No!” Laurel jumped in to interrupt as quickly as she could. She didn’t need Noah to spell it out for her. She didn’t need him to detail exactly what he’d been expecting. She didn’t want to think about what he’d been expecting. Or what she’d been expecting in return. Or what she’d been expecting him to expect.
“I mean, I don’t want you to think that I thought I could just waltz in here after four years and—”
“Of course not.” Laurel decided it was better to agree with him than it was to risk further discussion. Kissing her former fiancé within minutes of running into him after a long separation and a nasty breakup was not the kind of thing a woman wanted to discuss in detail. At least, not with her former fiancé.
Laurel wasn’t prepared for the stab of regret that followed fast on the thought. She could take the surprise and the anger that was part of the package of seeing Noah again. She could deal with the embarrassment she felt at losing her head and giving in to the potent pleasures of his kiss. But regret…
She pulled in a slow breath and let it out.
Regret used to be her best friend. It was one friend she didn’t want to get chummy with again.
Holding fast to the thought, she raised her chin. “Good night, Dr. Cunningham,” she said.
For a second, it looked like Noah wanted to say something. She watched his lips part and his eyes spark, the way they always did when he was headed into some particularly interesting discussion. He apparently changed his mind. Hanging on to the shopping bag, he headed to the stairs. “Good night, Dr. Burton.”
Laurel didn’t watch him go upstairs. There was something just a little too twisted about enjoying the sight of that nice, tight rear of his.
“Don’t need it. Don’t want it,” Laurel mumbled to herself. Maybe if she said it often enough, one of these days she’d finally convince herself it was true. Before she could forget it, she moved to the front of the desk and hurried through the routine Maisie had taught her to follow each night—check to make sure the fire was out, check to make sure nothing was cooking in the kitchen, check to make sure the doors were locked. When it was all taken care of, Laurel grabbed her car keys off the counter in the kitchen and her jacket from where she’d tossed it over one of the kitchen chairs. She thought about stopping to say good-night to Maisie and Doc Ross and decided against it. Something told her they had other things on their minds.
Things she refused to have on her mind.
Laurel headed out of the kitchen and across the lobby. She’d left her car parked in front of the inn so she decided to go that way and lock the front door behind her. On her way through, she flicked off the overhead chandelier and flicked on the couple small stained-glass lamps Maisie left burning all night. She slipped into her lightweight jacket, turned toward the front door and ran headlong into Noah.
“What are you doing?” Laurel pressed a hand to her heart and jumped back a step. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”
He gave her a small smile of apology. “What I’m trying to do,” he said, “is get into my room.” He jingled his key at her. “Doesn’t work,” he said.
“Doesn’t work?” Laurel plucked the key chain out of Noah’s hand and held it up to the light. “Almost Paradise.” She read the room name on the brass heart. “Are you sure you were at the right room?”
“I can read signs,” he said, a bit of sarcasm creeping into his voice. “And I’m pretty good at unlocking doors. One of life’s basic skills. But I’ve been trying the door for the last five minutes, and it’s not working. I didn’t want to bother you, but…well, I don’t think the place will ever get a five-star rating if you leave your guests sleeping in the hallway.”
He was right. Or at least it looked as if he was right. Laurel gave Noah a quick once-over, as if the assessment would tell her if he was telling the truth. “You’re not trying to trick me, are you?”
“Scout’s honor.” Noah crossed his heart. “Besides, what would I possibly be trying to trick you into? Get you up to the room? Lock you in? Take advantage of you?” He laughed, and Laurel bristled at the sound. Was there something so ludicrous about the thought of him taking advantage of her? Before she could answer the question, Noah gave her a friendly pat on the back. “Lighten up, Laurel,” he said. He leaned a little closer and grinned. “It was only a kiss, remember?”
“Right.” Telling herself not to forget it, Laurel led the way up the stairs. Almost Paradise was the first room on the left, and she stopped outside the door. Maisie had opened the inn eighteen months earlier, and by now, Laurel was used to the place. She was used to the wacky decor and the titillating gift shop, used to her grandmother’s sometimes screwy, sometimes explicitly suggestive gimmicks for adding a little romance to the lives of the people who came to stay there. But of course, Noah wasn’t. While Laurel tried the key, Noah eyed the sign outside the door, the one that looked like it had been carved from a tree branch. The words Almost Paradise were engraved into the wood in undulating letters. They were partly obscured by the fat, satisfied-looking snake wound around the branch. Above the wooden snake on a second branch was a bright red apple.
Noah didn’t comment. It was just as well. If he thought the sign was bizarre…
Laurel set aside the thought and turned the key in the lock. It worked just fine. But the door didn’t open.
“That’s funny,” she said. She wrinkled her nose, thinking through the problem. “This door never sticks. The door in Love Me Tender, now that door always sticks. But this one…” She tried turning the handle again, lifting a little this time, thinking that might help. It didn’t.
“The key works.” She locked the door, then used the key again to show Noah there was no problem there. “But the door…” She put her shoulder to the door and pushed. “It’s stuck.”
“Here. Let me help.”
Before Laurel could decide it was a bad idea for Noah to step up right beside her and lean against the door with her, he was already doing it. “On three,” he said. “One…two…three!”
They pushed together, and the door popped open. Unfortunately, neither Laurel nor Noah was ready for it. They staggered into the room together, and Laurel fought to regain her footing. It would have worked nicely if someone hadn’t left one of the tropical plants that should have been by the window in the middle of the floor.
The force of opening caused the door to slam against the wall, then swing shut behind them. Even though two of the walls in the room were floor-to-ceiling glass blocks, it was past sunset, and they were facing the lake. The room was dark. Laurel saw the plant at the last second. She sidestepped it, pivoted. She would have been fine if she hadn’t tripped over her own feet. She heard herself let out a yelp of surprise, felt herself falling. She braced her arms to stop herself from hitting the floor and waited to feel the impact.
It never happened.
From behind her, she felt Noah’s arms go around her waist. He caught her so fast, he knocked the wind out of her, and while she struggled to catch her breath, he lifted her, held her. And completely lost his balance.
“Hang on,” she heard Noah warn, but by that time, it was too late. Fortunately for her bones, she landed on her back on the bed. Unfortunately for the rest of her, Noah landed on his stomach right on top of her.
Above her, she heard Noah try to catch his breath. She saw him smile. He adjusted his weight against her. “You folks have a great way of making guests feel welcome. Is this what you call room service?”
“This is what I call annoying.” Laurel tried to squirm out from under him. It was a bad plan from the start. Squirming only made her breasts scrape against Noah’s rock-hard chest. Squirming only made her legs tangle with his. Squirming brought her hips in direct contact with his, and direct contact told her more about the situation than she wanted to know. Noah hadn’t changed. He’d always told her that she could arouse him at the drop of a hat. There were no hats dropping at the moment, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
“It’s only a bed,” Laurel told him, the emphasis on only.
“Uh-huh.” Noah settled himself more comfortably, his hands on either side of her. “And it’s only a little physical contact.”
“You bet.” Laurel hoped the breathy voice she heard wasn’t coming out of her. It was hard to be sure when she was feeling so light-headed. Hard to get her bearings when her heart was pounding so violently she was sure the entire island could hear it. “Only a little physical contact,” she agreed. “And it’s going to stop right now.” She braced her hands against Noah’s chest and pushed, and when he sat up, laughing, she thanked her lucky stars and whatever guardian angels watched over doctors with more lust in their hearts than they had brains in their heads.
Laurel tugged her sweater into place and sat up. She knew Cupid’s Hideaway as well as she knew her own house in town and she knew there was a lamp close by. She leaned forward, reaching for the lamp on the bedside table. “Let’s get some lights turned on,” she said, and even to her own ears, her voice sounded too tight and her words sounded a little too rushed and formal. “Then you can get settled for the night.” She turned the switch on the lamp, and nothing happened.
“What the heck?” Laurel tried again. “The bulb’s burned out,” she grumbled. Moving carefully in the dark, she stood. “Maisie keeps more lightbulbs in the bathroom,” she told Noah. “You stay here. I’ll just go…Ouch!” Her shin slammed into a second potted plant, one she swore wasn’t in the middle of the floor the last time she’d been in the room. She rubbed the spot where she knew there would be a bruise by morning. “I’ll get a bulb.”
Carefully, Laurel negotiated her way through the room. Even in daylight, finding a path through Almost Paradise could be a challenge. The room had been designed by Maisie and brought to life by an architect who was skeptical at best. Not a romantic and not possessing Maisie’s imagination or her fondness for fantasy, he didn’t understand why a room needed winding paths covered with carpet that looked like grass and bordered with tropical foliage. He didn’t understand about the waterfall, either, and listening for the gurgle so she could maneuver around it, Laurel headed into the bathroom. She hit the light switch at the same time she heard a splash. Noah barked out a curse.
Laurel spun around just in time to see him ankle-deep in the pond that took up one corner of the room.
She fought to control a smile. “I told you not to move,” she said.
“You told me not to move. You didn’t tell me there was a lake in the middle of the room. Damn!” Noah lifted up one foot and watched water drip off the leg of his expensive trousers.
“You didn’t hurt any of the fish, did you?”
