Led into Temptation

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What was wrong with her? He was a stranger. And he was looking at her as intently as she was looking at him. Devouring was the word that came to mind. She was sure she’d never even thought of devouring a man with her eyes before. But wasn’t that exactly what she was doing now? And there was a part of her that wanted to do more than think about it. Her pulse raced, and she felt a little breathless, as if she’d just run up the long flight of stairs from the beach.

It was then that he stepped fully into the courtyard, and she saw what she hadn’t seen before.

A Roman collar.

For a moment, her heart stopped. Her knees went weak, and heat flooded her body. The man she’d just been devouring with her eyes was a priest. He didn’t just look like the priest she’d fantasized about when she was fourteen. He was a priest. And the realization had shot the attraction she’d been experiencing into overdrive.

No. This was not going to happen to her again. Willing her legs to work, she turned away from the railing and made it to one of the small love seats before she collapsed.

Leaning back against the cushions, she stared straight ahead, forcing herself to concentrate on the details—the pale green paint she’d selected under Jillian’s direction, the oriental rug with its pastel colors, the gleam of the honey-colored wood beneath. Gradually, the image of the man—the priest—she’d just seen in the courtyard dimmed, and a flame of anger burst to life inside of her.

This was all due to that piece of parchment paper she’d drawn out of Hattie’s box. Her fantasy crush on Father Bouchard had happened so long ago, and she’d outgrown it. She’d been a young, impressionable fourteen when she’d read The Thornbirds. That was when the idea of making love with a priest had first taken hold of her.

All the girls at the school had had a crush on Father Bouchard. The confessional had never been busier. One would have thought from the long lines that Our Lady of Solace boarding school had become a den of iniquity. She’d even figured out how to spend extra time with the young priest by volunteering to clean the sacristy each day after he’d said Mass. That was when he always lingered and found the time to listen to her. And talk to her. Later she would record in her diary each word he said, no matter how casual, and each smile he gave to her.

In her mind, in that place where fantasy/puppy love flourished, she’d fallen in love with Father Pierre Bouchard. She’d even taken to writing her name as Naomi Bouchard over and over again in her diary and notebooks. All simple, innocent things.

In the beginning, the fantasies she’d spun in her mind about Father Bouchard had also been innocent—taking long walks, their hands and arms brushing occasionally. But the heat that had rushed through her at every imaginary contact hadn’t been so innocent.

And eventually, her fantasies had become more explicit, at least as explicit as she’d been able to spin them at fourteen. And even though she knew it had to be a sin to continue to indulge in them, she’d never confessed them to anyone. Until today when she’d told Avery.

When Father Bouchard was transferred to a small parish near Monte Carlo, she’d cried herself to sleep for weeks. But the fantasies had gradually faded. She’d put them out of her mind years ago. Up until the day she’d drawn that parchment paper out of Hattie Haworth’s hatbox.

THE MOMENT NAOMI disappeared into her room, Dane cursed himself silently. Ms. Brightman was definitely going to be a problem for him.

Bottom line—he wanted her. And she was his best link to the man he was determined to find. Anyone who thought you could mix business with pleasure didn’t make a successful businessman.

With an inward sigh, he faced what he’d known from the first moment he’d set eyes on her. This was not going to be a simple job. At the top of the list of possible complications was the fact that he was impersonating a priest. His game plan was to convince Naomi to confide in him. That would call for some up-close-and-personal time with the woman.

And even if he was tempted, as he already was, to make a pass at her, to do so could blow his cover and cost him what chance he had of nabbing Michael Davenport.

She’s off-limits, MacFarland. He’d just have to get more deeply into the role of being a priest. Think holy and celibate thoughts. His ability to assume different personas had always been his primary survival skill. And to be forewarned was to be forearmed.

The laughter pierced his concentration first. But it was only when a young couple entered the courtyard from the steps to the beach that Dane realized he hadn’t moved since Naomi Brightman had disappeared from the balcony. And he hadn’t taken his gaze from the open door to her room.

Was he waiting, hoping for her to come back out?

Way to go, MacFarland. Disgusted, he strode to the entrance of the main lobby. He had a job to do. And step one was to arrange a personal meeting with Naomi Brightman. He spotted Avery Cooper behind the registration desk and started toward him. Avery might look more like a bouncer in an upscale club, but according to the research Ian had done, the man had graduated top of his class from Harvard Business School. And from what Dane had gathered from their reunion at the pier, he was a friend to Naomi. That made Avery Cooper a good man to have on his side.

And the perfect man to arrange his first meeting with Naomi. Tomorrow, Dane decided. That would give her time to settle in, and it would buy him a little time to get deeper into his role.

As a priest, Dane reminded himself. A very celibate priest.

3

“YOU’RE SURE you don’t mind?” Avery had arrived with her room service order and they’d shared a meal and some wine. Now he lounged on one of the love seats, his long legs extended beyond the edge of the coffee table that separated them. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“I’m sure I want to meet with Father MacFarland in the morning.” And she was. However, Naomi noted that Avery didn’t look completely convinced. That was entirely due to her initial reaction to his news that Father Dane MacFarland had requested a personal meeting with her in the morning.

She’d dropped the wineglass she’d been holding, then she’d cut one of her fingers in her hurried attempt to pick up the shattered shards.

And that had made her angry enough that she’d immediately agreed to meet with the priest. In fact, she’d insisted on it. She was not going to allow herself to get caught up again in a ridiculous adolescent fantasy. After all, she was an adult woman. An attorney. She’d been engaged to a man she’d thought she loved.

And then she’d been dumped and fired. Was it any wonder her nerves were on edge? A lesser woman might have had some kind of breakdown. Or at least asked her personal physician for some really good drugs.

Instead, she’d come to Haworth House to put her life back together. And she wasn’t going to hide out in her room simply because of … a priest.

“Father MacFarland seems to be a charming man,” Avery said. “If Tess hadn’t spilled the beans that one of the owners was in residence this week, I might have been able to handle it myself. But he specifically requested you. And his idea of booking a block of rooms together with conference space to hold spiritual retreats as a recruiting device for new seminarians is brilliant.”

“Doesn’t the church already have facilities for holding retreats?” Naomi asked.

“Sure.” Avery spread his hands. “But there’s a growing shortage of priests in the United States, and Father MacFarland is hoping a venue like this will increase attendance.”

“And you began to hear the little echoes of cha-ching, cha-ching in the back of your mind.”

Avery grinned at her. “Well, that, too. If Father MacFarland likes the place, it could be very profitable for the hotel in the off-season.”

“I’m happy to talk with him,” Naomi said. “In fact, it could be good for me. I haven’t been out of the tower floors since I got here.”

“Then I’m happy I let myself get carried away,” Avery said as he rose. He glanced at his watch. “I’ll ring the good father’s room and let him know that it’s all arranged—ten o’clock tomorrow morning in the courtyard. One more thing.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

Naomi glanced at them. “What?”

“If we’re going to get you out of your room, you’ll need transportation. As long as you’re on the island, I want you to have full access to my car.”

Her eyes widened. “Your Corvette?”

“That would be the one.”

Naomi knew how much he treasured his car. “Avery, I can use the car Jillian keeps here if I want to go into town.”

He moved toward her, took her hand and dropped the keys into her palm. “Think of driving it as part of your exploration of discovering the new Naomi Brightman. I’ve always found when something’s troubling me, a fast ride in a car with the top down helps, and it’s a lot cheaper than therapy. Try it.”

“Okay.” She threw her arms around Avery and hugged him. “Thanks.”

Stepping back, he grinned down at her. “Enjoy. And since my mission here is accomplished for tonight, I’ll get my nose back to the grindstone.”

The moment Avery left, Naomi locked the door and turned around. While they’d eaten, the sky had darkened, and the only illumination in the room came from the moonlight streaming through the filmy curtain she’d drawn across the closed balcony doors.

Another surge of anger at herself had her pacing to the balcony doors and throwing them open. It was bad enough that she’d run away from her troubles in Boston. She was not going to allow herself to hide out in her room. That was not the way she was going to explore who the new Naomi Brightman was.

That’s when she saw him. He was in a room directly across from hers and one level down. Naomi’s throat went dry. The doors to his balcony were open, and the drapes billowed inward. Because he had the lights on, the thin material of the curtains had become transparent, and she could see him very clearly.

There was no Roman collar now, nothing to indicate he was a priest. But she recognized that body. And this time she could see a whole lot more of it. He wore only a towel around his waist as he strode across the room and picked up a phone.

He stood with his back to her, his dark hair wet and slicked back, his broad shoulders still glistening from a shower.

Her mouth literally watered as her eyes traveled down the well-muscled back to his waist. The towel was short and damp and clung like a second skin to the curves of his tight butt. It would be hard to the touch, she thought, then marveled at the tingling rush of heat in her fingers. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to run her hands over every plane and hard angle of that body.

And she wanted to taste him, too.

As she thought of doing both of those things, her insides melted. She couldn’t feel her legs below her knees, but she discovered that all on their own, they’d moved her to the railing of her balcony.

She continued to stare, fascinated by the angle of his arm, the strength in his wrist, the grace of his movement as he lowered the phone to its stand. And then she saw it. Lying right next to the phone. The Roman collar. And that should have had the effect of stepping into a cold shower.

But it didn’t. Instead, everything she was feeling intensified. Her pulse hammered at her wrists, at the base of her throat. The heat she’d felt from the moment she’d spotted him ratcheted up several degrees. Her brain cells clicked off, and she forgot to breathe.

When he turned and met her eyes, she suddenly couldn’t think. All she knew was desire—a scorching wave of it that she couldn’t control. Didn’t want to. What she was feeling wasn’t anything like the illicit puppy love she’d experienced at fourteen.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there or how long she might have remained on her balcony, but the fact that someone had knocked on her door finally penetrated. It had to be room service come to clear the dishes, she thought as she turned and moved on legs she still couldn’t feel.

But when she opened the door, there was no one in sight. Just an envelope lying on the floor. She blinked, still trying to clear her head as she leaned over to pick it up. She’d closed and locked the door and made it back to her bed before it sank in.

The envelope was made of the same yellowing parchment that she’d pulled out of Hattie’s box in the secret room.

And she knew even before she opened the envelope what the folded piece of parchment inside would say.

Your secret fantasy has always been to make love with a priest. Now you will experience all those forbidden pleasures.

NAOMI GLANCED at her watch, then pressed a hand against the nerves dancing in her stomach. Nine forty-six. Exactly two minutes since the last time she’d checked. Too early to go down to the courtyard. With a quick, impatient step, she strode to her closet and inspected her image in the mirror. For the fifth time.

It hadn’t improved. She still looked like a lawyer. The linen suit was a pearl-gray color and the white silk tank top she wore beneath it was prim and suitable for the office. Normally, she liked neutral colors. In fact, her entire wardrobe was a tribute to the practicality of the word neutral.

So why was drab the word that came to mind now? It was the perfect suit to wear to court in Boston in the summer. And dammit, she was a lawyer. Not to mention a hotel owner.

Lifting her chin, she stared at herself defiantly. She was appropriately dressed for a business meeting. None of the more casual outfits she kept here at Haworth House—T-shirts, a couple pairs of shorts, a bathing suit and some jeans—would do for a meeting with a prospective client. And certainly not a priest.

Pressing her hands to her temples, Naomi walked back to the side of her bed and sank down on it. Never in her life had she taken such care, never had she worried so much about how she looked. Not for the office. Not for a court appearance. Not for Michael Davenport.

Not even for herself.

Perhaps that was the problem. Maybe to become the new Naomi, she had to focus more on pleasing herself. Pulling open the top drawer of the bedside table, she glanced at the parchment envelope she’d placed there the night before. She had no idea how it had ended up on the floor outside of her bedroom.

Had Hattie put it there? That had been her first suspicion. But the only manifestation she had experienced of her presence was on that day in Hattie’s boudoir when she and her sisters had toasted their purchase of Haworth House with champagne.

There’d been nothing since. Not even a little chill in the air. Still, Naomi had often felt her presence.

A less fanciful explanation would be that Jillian had confided in Avery about the hatbox and the secret room. And since he now knew just who her first crush had been, he might have somehow dug out the parchment and left it for her. As a joke? Or as another little incentive to live on the wild side, like giving her the keys to his Corvette. Avery might think that doing something as outrageous as seducing a priest could be just the ticket to jettison her down the road to reinventing herself.

Whoever was responsible, receiving the parchment with her fantasy written on it had helped her to think everything through and reach a decision. Since she’d locked the tote with her notebooks in Hattie’s secret room, she’d used the hotel stationery to jot her ideas down.

Making love with a priest was a particularly alluring fantasy because it was so forbidden. And impossible. Talk about being star-crossed. Absolute secrecy was another essential element of the fantasy. When she was fourteen, the fact that no one knew about her crush on Father Bouchard had been ninety percent of the thrill.

Most of the guilty pleasure she’d experienced had been private, the result of writing those diary entries by flashlight in the middle of the night and those vivid and tantalizing dreams she’d had after she’d fallen asleep. During the day, she’d been very careful to act in a perfectly respectful and normal way around the young priest.

And there was absolutely no reason why she couldn’t handle the attraction she was feeling for Father Dane MacFarland the same way. If the intensity of the attraction persisted, she would record everything she imagined she might do to him in her diary, and make sure the fantasy stayed right there on the page.

Before she’d fallen asleep, she’d considered going up to Hattie’s secret room and retrieving one of her notebooks out of her tote bag. But they were a part of her old life. Right after her meeting with Father MacFarland this morning, she’d go into town and buy some new notebooks to record her new fantasies.

And she already had one to record—the dream she’d had during the night. Even now as the memory slipped into her mind, Naomi felt her eyes close and her breathing become more rapid.

It had been dark in her bedroom. The moon had shifted in the sky, so only starlight had filtered through the curtains. But she’d known that the figure standing just inside her balcony doors was him. She’d known it by the sensory shock her body experienced.

He’d stood there, his dark hair slicked back, wearing nothing but the skimpy towel she’d seen him in the night before. The towel that she’d wanted very much to rip off him.

The urge to get out of bed and cross to him was strong. But the dream seemed to paralyze her, and all she’d been able to do was push herself into a sitting position. She couldn’t even lift her hands, and her voice hadn’t worked. All she could do was look at him as a rush of hunger seared through her. The needy ache that followed freed one of her hands and she lifted it to beckon him closer.

He moved then from the faint illumination of starlight into the deeper shadows of the room. Flames licked along her nerve endings and a hotter fire burst to life inside her. He knelt on the bed, took the hand she still held extended and drew her to her knees. They knelt facing each other, their bodies nearly brushing. That was when she saw it—the thin strip of white at his throat. It made such a stark contrast to the bronze tone of his skin. Raising her free hand, she ran her fingers over the stiff material of the Roman collar and felt the shocking thrill move through her.

This was wrong. So wrong. Was that why she wanted it so desperately? Raising her eyes, she met his. They were so hot that when he dropped his gaze to her mouth, she felt her lips burn.

Finding the strength to move, she dug her fingers into his shoulder to draw him closer. He settled his at her waist. Together they moved until their bodies touched. Pleasure exploded at each contact point. Her breasts and thighs ached where they softened against his muscles.

He rocked into her and she felt the length of his erection sink into the skin of her stomach. Wrong. So wrong, she thought as heat rocketed through her with the speed of a wildfire.

More. She remembered then what she’d thought of doing earlier and she ran her hands to the back of his waist to slip her fingers beneath that towel. His muscles were tighter than she’d imagined. She kneaded them first, then dug her nails into them.

In response, the exact one she’d wanted, his hands gripped her waist and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around him and wiggled until his erection was pressed flush against the raging heat at her center. There were still barriers separating them—the towel and the prim cotton of her bikini panties. But she couldn’t bear for him to stop moving, couldn’t make herself stop. Instead, she gave herself over to the building wave of pleasure until she finally crested and let herself be tossed over.

When she’d awakened, he was gone. Because all he’d been was a fantasy.

Ignoring the piercing sense of loss, Naomi opened her eyes. Even the memory of the intense pleasure she’d experienced in her dream had weakened her so that she had to brace herself with her hands or she would have collapsed on the bed.

It was sad but true. The fantasy sex she’d had with her imaginary Father MacFarland had beat out any sex she’d ever had with a real man. The new Naomi was going to have to do something about that.

She let her gaze stray to the foot of the bed where her T-shirt and panties lay folded. The one regret she had was that she hadn’t worn more accessible clothing in her dream. She was going to remedy that, too. It wasn’t only notebooks that she intended to purchase in town today. She was going to visit the boutique Jillian had recommended.

Shifting her gaze to the parchment envelope, Naomi pushed the drawer shut and drew in a deep breath. She’d made the right decision. She was going to continue to indulge her fantasy. Hadn’t she gotten the best night’s sleep she’d had in weeks?

Handling challenging situations and keeping in control had always been two of her strengths. All she had to do was keep her daytime meetings with Father MacFarland brief and businesslike. Then in the dark hours of the night, she was going to indulge herself with no-holds-barred, wild sex. As hot as she could possibly imagine it. And she was going to record every single detail in her diary.