Chapter Four
After stripping off Tom’s coat, Peach put an extra sway in her hips as she returned to the table. She imagined herself a tigress on the hunt, prey in her sights. The blond tresses brushed her neck with every step. She embraced the cold, savored it. At the table, the soup had been served in a silver bowl with steaming bread. “Why are you not eating?”
He rose as she approached. “I was waiting for you. Which did you want? The lobster bisque or baked potato?”
He looked as tired as she felt, and she needed him in a talking mood. “You eat the potato, Tomas, and here, some bread. Fill your empty stomach.” She placed the soup in front of him and selected bread. Being out in the weather took an extra toll. She had felt it, too, but had packed for it and then eaten at home before she dressed. “Eat,” she ordered when he merely looked at her.
The first bite was reluctant. The rest was gone in the blink of an eye. So was the bread. When he reached for his wineglass, she put water in his hand. His tired smile conveyed gratitude. The smug expression he wore the night before was gone, replaced by the real man.
She tasted his selection. Sunkissed may have been a bit optimistic, but it was enjoyable. Dry for a white but lighter than a red would be. Most importantly—regardless of what the connoisseurs said—it tasted good. “This is good. So a structural—”
“Catalina?” He ran a hand over his face, into his thick hair, sending it in all directions. “I don’t want you to think I’m rude. I mean, more rude since I ran into you. I’ve just had a very, very long day. I don’t want to talk about work. I don’t want to think about it. In fact, for the next few hours, I would like to forget it exists. Would you help me do that?”
It had been his turn for a decision: confess or lie. He had opted to confess when he could have lied, blown her off, or otherwise shut her down. Her experience was that nothing came without a price. She needed information, and the price was distracting him.
Her fingers tamed his errant curls. His dark hair was soft as rabbit fur and thick as a pelt. “I lived for an entire summer with a family of gypsies. Give me your hand. I will read your past, your present, and your future.” She took his hand, cradling it. Nearly twice the size of her own, he had thick callouses at the base of his fingers. She traced the lines, teasing his palm.
“What do you see?” His head nearly rested on her shoulder, his breath tickling her neck.
She traced the longest line across his palm. “Ah. I should have known.”
“What?”
“You are stubborn. Very stubborn.”
“No, I’m not.” His voice pitched too high. “Where’s that?”
She traced the line again. “You see how this runs off your palm? You are so stubborn, you hand can’t contain it.” She glanced over her shoulder. His brows were pressed together, and he nearly pouted.
“I am not stubborn. I’m determined and, and, focused. There’s nothing wrong with being focused.”
Chuckling, she changed the angle of his hand and traced another line. “This line says you are very smart. You have achieved what few have.”
“My PhD. I am very close to finishing my doctorate. I defend my thesis in six weeks. I have my own company, well, co-own, and we’re expanding.”
“You like,” she brought him close, using the nail of her thumb to tease his palm, “games. No, not games but, um, puzzles.”
“Yes, I do. How did you know that?” There was triumph in his voice. His cheek brushed hers as he looked down at his own hand.
Her index finger drew circles in the smooth area at the base of his thumb. “Here. You are a fair man, yes? You, um, respect facts, yes. You put them in an order.”
“Yes. Yes, that is exactly me. As a forensic engineer, I look at failures and figure out how they happened.”
“You find blame.” That one slipped out with bite and in a Northeast Ohio accent.
“Blame? Why would I find blame?” His face was too expressive, too honest. “I mean, there’s always a reason something fails. There can be a force that the engineer missed or underestimated. Water can do a lot of damage. So can wind. There can be flaws in materials, either in the material itself or in the size or thickness. I guess, one way or another, it can come down to a human action, but I wouldn’t call it blame.”
“What would you call it?” she asked, Catalina back out front.
“Well, the reason.”
And then Peach understood. Notwithstanding the handsome face and charm, Tom Riley was a nerd. You didn’t get a PhD in engineering without having a love affair with numbers and calculations. This was a good thing. He would work hard—honest and hard—for the reason the crane failed. If Rico was used as a scapegoat, it would be by the bastard Fabrini. She didn’t trust that man farther than she could throw him. She needed to be prepared with her own cache of facts and calculations.
“You have family. A wife?” She looked at him slyly, tracing circles on his palm.
“Family, yes. Wife…no. You?”
Peach smiled broadly. “I do not have a wife, either.” She released his hand, but he didn’t pull away.
“Husband? Lover? Boyfriend? No sane, straight man wouldn’t do anything to be with you.”
Behind her false identify, her battered ego took notice. “I…no. There is just my grandfather and me, now. He has the same twinkle in his eye that you have, Tomas. That is how I know you are a stubborn man.” Emotions swelled, but they were all good. A memory came to mind, one she hadn’t thought of in a long time. “When I was little, he decided I needed to play baseball. He had played in the minor leagues and loved the game. Every day, after dinner, we would go to the park, and we would play catch. He pitched to me, but I just couldn’t get the hang of batting. Day after day after day. As I said, he is a stubborn man. Then one day he had an idea and put the bat in my left hand.”
“Knocked it out of the park?”
“You would have thought I did. He spun me around, hugging so tight I couldn’t breathe. He always wanted a left-handed pitcher in the family. Did you play baseball when you were little?”
He noticed the difference immediately. Catalina had finally shed her invisible shield and let him see the real her. He didn’t blame her, holding back on an unexpected blind date, but he wanted to get to know the real woman. Dinner arrived, and he served her. She had surprised him with her insistence on the soup and water. She was right, finally warm, he would have drunk the entire bottle of wine when his body needed water.
“I grew up on a construction site. My father and uncle run the company and raised us kids. Me, my two brothers, and my cousin, Katie.”
“I can see you loving it. Building and digging and playing with your ‘reasons.’ How old were you when you drove your first,” she waved her hand, looking for a word, “construction machine?”
“I was ten when my father let me drive a Bobcat. That’s a small loader we used to move things around the site.”
She cut a piece of steak and held the bite to his lips. “And how old were you when you drove one without your father knowing?”
Laughter burst out, a renewed energy coming with it. “Seven. My older brother, Mike, said I was too little. He was right. I wasn’t tall enough. Solved that problem by tying foam packing blocks to my feet.” He took the offered bite, trying not to stare at her eyes, but damn it, they got to him. Her every word was music to his ears—he didn’t know a woman’s voice could be so potent. It was breathy and smooth, like the crush of waves on a shore. Not weak or mousy by any means, but understated with just a hint of the unexpected. “I’ll bet I didn’t move it more than twenty feet, but I did it, then jumped down, tripped with the stupid blocks tied to my feet, and sprained my wrist. Of course, we didn’t tell our father. We’d have both been in trouble. Me for being stupid. Mike for watching me be stupid.”
“That is where I was fortunate to be an only child. No one to run to Mommy.”
“My mom died of cancer when I was four. I can remember a little about her…” He thought of cookies, the homemade kind, and then he could feel her. “Long as I can remember, Uncle Ed and Kate have lived in our house. His wife left when Kate was still a baby. So no, we didn’t play baseball. Summer time was work time.”
“You worked? From such a young age? I thought America had rules about children and working.” Her attention was focused on him, and he liked having it. Heads turned when she returned from the bathroom, his coat over her arm. At that moment, she could have picked any man in the dining room and they would have heeled at her side. She didn’t see any of them. Her eyes were for him only.
That did something to him. Something uncomfortable but not unwelcome.
Since college, he only dated blondes. He knew a psychiatrist would have a field day with it, so he’d never told anyone about that first blonde and the ring he’d bought. He’d learned the hard way that, to quote lyrics, love is a battlefield. While he lost that day, he’d come away a winner. His life was exactly what he wanted because he didn’t do long-term relationships. He didn’t get bogged down with someone else’s needs. He wanted to travel, he traveled. He wanted to work, he worked. Life on his own terms brought happiness.
Sitting here with an exotic woman he would never see again, he felt a pang of doubt. He forked a bite of lobster, dipped it in butter, and held it out to her. “I’m sure it wasn’t as much work as I remember. But we really loved rainy days. My dad and uncle always made rainy days fun. Have you ever been to a water park when it rains?”
“They close, correct?” She took the bite, butter dripping onto her lower lip.
His thumb caught the small drop, then caressed the soft skin. “No, see, everyone thinks that, but if there’s no lightning, they are open. One time, I was maybe thirteen, and we had the run of the place. They had this one tube ride, I still remember it was called Thief’s Gulch, that we could all ride together. It was enclosed, dark as night, and the water hit from different directions, so it was never the same ride twice. Tony, my younger brother, hated the dark. He would sit with me, and we would scream at the dark together, telling it to go pound salt. I think we went on it thirty times. Then the sun came out, and so did everyone else. It wasn’t as much fun when we had to take turns.” He shrugged.
“Is your brother still afraid of the dark?”
“Naw. He’s a diver. He lives in the dark.”
The more they talked, the better he felt. She told stories of her adventures in South Carolina and D.C., in her home country and across Europe. Every place came to life with the words she used, her tone. She even sang at one point. His life wasn’t nearly as interesting, but he wanted to entertain. He told lots of stories from his childhood, most he hadn’t thought about in years, and more recently from Nashville.
“You didn’t really get an alligator, did you?” Her green eyes sparkled, and he wished he had gotten the damn gator to guard that first job site.
“Kind of. We hired a retired principal with a reputation for his bite. Anyone messing with the site would have had a better chance with the animal variety.” The ache in his neck was gone. So was the headache. Laughing had taken care of the weight on his chest.
The table was cleared, and she rested her chin on the back of her hand. “I think…I am very glad you ran into me. Dinner out of Styrofoam would not have been nearly as interesting.”
He crossed his arms on the table and filled the space between them. “Did I pay my debt off?” he teased to draw her closer, attracted by her wit and her sense of humor.
She ran her fingers through his hair. “More than. In fact, now I owe you.” She came closer, her breath brushed his cheek. He turned his head and pressed his lips to hers. The simple kiss ricocheted through his body. An electric kick. Her wide eyes said she felt it, too. Slowly, she took his lips, offering something very different than he ever had before. The puritan kiss hinted at the world behind the curtain, one kept staunchly closed to him. One he yearned to tear open.
His hand curled around her nape, keeping her in his space. “I…I’m not ready to let you go.” He couldn’t explain the awkward phrasing, but it exactly expressed what he was feeling.
She rested her forehead against his. “Me, either.”
…
Monday, April 10 midnight
If Peach didn’t know better, she’d have sworn the man had dropped something in her wine. She was so relaxed, she considered that her bones may have been made of rubber. Tom Riley was every bit as attentive a lover as he was a dinner companion. He had discovered places on her body she didn’t know existed. Turning her head, she rubbed against his chest like a cat. He had tamed the tigress, stroking her until she purred. They were on the floor, her sprawled across him, the room lit only by the urban lights that filtered through the sheer privacy curtain.
The hand stroking her back stopped and then moved her aside. “I love Cleveland.”
She doodled on his back as he removed the condom and added it to the small trash can. Crawling across the floor, he uprighted a lamp. The switched clicked, but the room stayed dark.
“I think that lamp is broken. You kicked it.” Peach maintained Catalina’s accent, a damn hard thing to do when he was blowing her mind. She bundled the cover under her head, looking for a comfortable position.
“I did? I didn’t notice.” He climbed to his feet, looked down at her, and grinned like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Well worth the cost.” Going to the corner of the room, he turned on the floor lamp. “You are beautiful.”
Behind the hand that protected her from the blinding light, she grinned. “We shall see if you think that when they add four hundred dollars to your bill.” Her eyes adjusting, she abandoned the cover and crawled onto the oversize arm chair, happily naked.
“I love listening to you. I could spend hours and hours listening to words roll off your tongue.”
“Ha!” she said, coming to her feet. She picked up her purse and headed toward the pile of clothing in front of the door. “That is not all you would like my tongue to spend hours and hours rolling off.” She wasn’t a short woman, but without her shoes, he had almost a foot on her. Six foot three, maybe six-four, with long legs and lean muscle. Unwrapping him had been an unexpected pleasure.
He snagged her arm as she walked toward the bathroom and climbed to his feet. Taking her face in his hands, he showed her again just how talented his own tongue was. “I’m not finished with you.”
She pulled his hips against her stomach and ground against him until he groaned. “Tomas. It is I who am not finished with you. Order some dessert for us. I’ll just be a moment.”
She walked into the large bathroom, turned on the lights, and locked the door. A stranger looked back in the mirror. Her face was flush, her lips swollen, her dark skin marked by possessive hands. She touched the blond hair and found it miraculously still in place.
This was not going according to plan. She’d had fun with him at dinner. He was smart, funny, and witty. He got all her jokes and laughed at her stories, too many of which were true. She expected him to press for details of Catalina Barco’s life, but he didn’t. All that time she spent building the back story wasted. She took a glass from the vanity and filled it with water.
Then there were the three orgasms he’d given her. Dr. Thomas Riley was a very generous and skilled lover. And talk about stamina. Who knew a man could do more than pass out face down and saw through a forest of trees after cumming?
Not her. She’d have to rethink her opinion of past lovers.
She dug into her bag for Poppy’s sleeping pills, putting two in her hand. Decision point: truth or lie. She froze, torn between what her head and her heart said. What mattered? Poppy. Definitely. Rico. Absolutely. Tom?
His heavy hand knocked on the door. “Catalina? We have to wait twenty minutes for room service.”
She jumped and hurried to crushed the pills to a fine powder and scooped it into the full glass. Twirling to dissolve the white powder, she committed to returning his generosity before getting back to work.
She turned on the shower, made sure everything was safely stowed away in her zipped purse, and opened the door. “I know how you feel about waiting. Come here. Let me show you how to savor the passing of time.”
An hour later, she rolled to her stomach and used both hands to lift her upper body off the floor. The man was a machine. He had to be part cyborg, part marathon runner, part rutting buck. He just would not wear out. It had been tomorrow for a few hours, and still they were going strong. And he wouldn’t drink the damn water. He’d ordered champagne with strawberries. And whipped cream. Oh, and chocolate sauce.
She was tempted to see if they could make it until dawn—or at least through the chocolate sauce—but she was on a deadline. Taking control of the matter, she rolled on top of him.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“I am going to torture you. I am going to bring you to the edge of heaven and leave you hanging until you are in a glorious hell. I will own your very breath, and only when you beg me will I grant you release.” Straddling Tom, she ran her hands over his chest, fingering the straining muscles to find his taut nipples. She bowed her head and caught the nub in her teeth. His big body convulsed, and thus began the torture.
Twenty minutes passed. Another lamp had been broken, the dessert dishes rolled over, the couch was moved and table was askew, and yes, he was begging.
“Anything! I will give you anything!” he promised as she denied him yet again.
“I want everything,” she said softly.
“I’ll give it to you. I will. I will. I just need…”
His large body shook as she took his rigid cock and rolled the condom into place. She took him inside her again and began moving with the strength and dexterity of a belly dancer. Her hips undulated, rolling until his heavy body arched, and then she took him to the promise land. Tom jackknifed, his strong arms locking around her while his body was emptied of every sane thought. His thick chest heaved, struggling to contain those pumping lungs. At once, his strength waned, and he fell back to the floor, taking her with him.
The hands fell heavily from her back, and she lifted her head.
He was out.
She kissed his jaw and snuggled.
No reaction.
She lifted her hips and separated them for the last time. The loss of his body heat left her cold. She scrambled to her feet and wrapped him like a burrito in the blankets on which he lay, not wanting the chill of the air to wake him. She pulled his shirt from the floor and slid it on as she ran into the bathroom. She retrieved her gear, came back into the room quietly, confidently, and got down to work.