Chapter 3

“Who was that pretty woman you were talking to earlier today?” Alec’s mother, Miranda, asked.

“How old am I?” he countered, but he was smiling down at her all the same.

She sipped her pre-dinner cocktail, a skinny margarita, her preference. Trim and youthful-looking despite time and tragedy, she gave a gentle but reproving slap to his forearm. “Thirty years old might as well be three to a mother.”

“I caught on to that when you warned me away from the edge of the pool a few minutes ago.” The guests of the Thatcher anniversary party were gathered at tables and chairs near that spectacular, lagoon-shaped feature before a dinner to be served on a private patio in an hour.

“I notice you didn’t answer the question.” She smoothed her honey-blonde hair, now layered in a fashionable style. It gleamed with good health and he supposed some high-end product from a high-end salon. Alec couldn’t be happier at this proof she was taking an interest in her appearance again.

“Even your dad noticed you looked…animated,” his mom continued. “He thought the young lady was very pretty too.”

Alec shot a glance at his father, seated a table away. Vic Thatcher had passed on his big-boned, lean build to his sons, and there was no stoop to his shoulders despite having recently celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. He kept himself in shape by golf, hiking, and participating in day-long beach clean-ups on a monthly basis. “Dad expressed an interest in Lilly? You better watch out, Mom,” he teased, knowing Miranda didn’t have a bit of concern on that score. His dad bought his mom flowers every Monday and left her love notes each time he left for a round of golf.

“So her name is Lilly…” Miranda said, casting him a curious glance. “Now that I have a name, you know I have to learn the rest.”

Alec brought his beer to his lips, and swallowed his sigh with a swig of craft brew. Now that his mother had her verve for life restored, she wasn’t going to give up. Lowering his bottle to the table, he scooped up some peanuts out of a bowl and tossed a couple in his mouth.

“Alec?”

Yeah, she wasn’t going to give up. “Lilly Durand.”

His mother beamed. “She’s French.”

Hmm. “Maybe so.” It might explain that exotic dash about her. And there was something lurking beneath the cadence of her speech that made him wonder now if she’d grown up in a household with another language besides English. Maybe the lullabies she’d heard as a baby had been sung in French.

“You’re looking animated again,” his mom said.

Christ, he hoped that wasn’t a euphemism for aroused. Because this morning he’d been pretty damn close to having a boner at the bar when he’d been stroking Lilly’s skin and holding her hand. He shifted in his chair and took up his cold bottle again. “Mom—”

“For goodness’ sake, just tell me how you met her! Is that so much to ask?”

He laughed. “Then you’ll let it drop?”

“How come it’s such a big secret?”

Making her work for it was just feeding her curiosity, he realized. “It’s no secret. She was to be the maid of honor at Jacob’s wedding. Her best friend Audra was the bride to be.”

His mother’s face fell. “Oh, that must be terrible for the poor girl—being jilted at the last minute.”

“Yeah. So Lilly happens to be here at the resort with Audra for some post-cancelled-wedding R & R, I guess. We’re mere acquaintances.” And he’d had to accept she wanted to keep it that way. “Satisfied?”

His mother sipped contemplatively from her margarita. “Then how about Tina?” she asked, sending a significant look in the direction of the blonde bombshell—and daughter of old family friends—whom he’d once dated and who’d interrupted his conversation with Lilly at the bar.

Alec groaned. “Mom.”

“What?” she asked, all innocence.

“Tina and I were over and done with five years ago. So drop that, okay?”

“I can’t help myself. I’m at the age where I need to believe there’s hope of future grandchildren.”

“When is Jojo expected to arrive?” he asked, referring to his sister Joanna. “You can go to work on her about grandkids.”

“Jojo won’t be here until a couple of days from now,” Miranda answered. “And since her divorce, she’s been very distrustful about romance and marriage.”

“And you think I’m an enthusiast?” His mom had to know he hadn’t been pursuing anyone or anything seriously outside of work.

“I think you’re spending too much time at the office,” she said. “I think we all retreated to our preferred refuges and now it’s time to step out of them. You could go see my—”

“Mom, unless you’re about to recommend a masseuse, I don’t want to hear about it.” He rubbed at the itch at the back of his neck. There was only so far he’d let his mother into his personal life, no matter how much he loved the woman. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Have you ever tried online dating?”

“Oh my God, you’re insatiable.” He glanced around, trying to catch the eye of someone to save him from this conversation. Then his gaze found Kane Hathaway threading his way through the tables, in one hand the end of a leash attached to a roly-poly fluff of chocolate brown with short legs and a pink, wet tongue.

“Hey, Auntie M,” Kane said, greeting Alec’s mom. “Thanks for letting me show off your new puppy.”

Alec stood to give Kane his chair and then bent to rub his palms over the wiggling, boisterous chocolate Lab. Twelve-week-old Buster went ecstatic at the attention, his velvet-furred body quivering with joy as he tried to bathe every inch of Alec’s available skin in puppy slobber.

“Give him to me,” Miranda said, and Kane scooped up the dog and lifted it onto her lap. Alec’s mom kissed the top of the puppy’s head and hugged him close, her clear joy in the little guy written all over her face.

One of the resort’s other guests—not of their party—came over with a small child in tow, and Alec and Kane moved off so the kid could have a chance to admire and pet the squirming creature. They both watched the antics and Alec knew he wore an identical smile to the one on his second cousin’s face.

“It’s so great to see Auntie M like this,” Kane said. “And with a new pet besides.”

“Yeah.” Glancing over, Alec saw his dad was smiling at the sight too. “I think she’s turned the corner.”

“I think she’s passed it by a few blocks,” Kane said.

“You joining us for dinner?” Alec asked the other man.

He shook his head. “Got a date. New girl.”

For some reason Alec’s mind leaped to Lilly, though he didn’t think that Kane would go there, having seen Alec’s reaction when he’d mentioned it before. “Do you ask women out that you meet on the job?”

“You mean resort guests?” Kane mocked a deep shudder. “God, no. The ghost of Great-Great-Grandfather Hathaway would rise from the grave to haunt me. Very unprofessional.”

Now relieved, Alec smiled. “Of you or Grandpa Hathaway?”

“Hah hah,” Kane said, then glanced at his watch.

“You seem eager,” Alec pointed out. “Might this new girl be the one?”

Kane shuddered again. “If there will ever be the one, now is not the time. I am not looking for the one.”

“Don’t tell that to my mother. Besides planning parties and raising puppies, her new lease on life includes meddling into romantic affairs. You talk like that around her and she’ll take it as a personal challenge.” And bad though it might be of him, Alec hoped she’d switch her focus to Kane. At least it would get her off his back.

“I have no problem explaining to Auntie M that I am not in the market for anyone serious.”

“At the moment.”

After a pause, Kane concurred. “At the moment.”

“But what if the right woman passes into your life now?” Alec asked. “When you’re not expecting her, or looking for her, or ready for her?”

“If I’m not ready for her, then I won’t see her, right? Well, maybe I’ll see a pretty face across a crowded room and all that, but if I approach I’ll be able to tell she’s looking for something serious and move on.”

Alec raised a brow. “How do you tell that?”

“I’m pretty upfront about what I’m interested in, aren’t you?”

His exchange with Lilly floated through his mind. Her: I suppose you’d be satisfied with something you’d think of as ‘simple,’ like a one-night stand. Him: It’s probably the best I’ve got. Well, possibly a few nights.

Yeah, he’d been honest.

“But what if she’s the right woman and you lose her forever?” Alec heard himself say.

Kane was staring at him, a quizzical look on his face. “You’re disturbing me, man. Maybe we can trade diaries tomorrow. I’ll let you borrow my glitter pens if you lend me the ones you have that smell like bubblegum.”

“Fuck off.” Maybe he was disturbing himself just a little too. Gritting his teeth, Alec looked away.

And as if he’d conjured her, across the pool he saw Lilly strolling along a bordering pathway. His senses went on alert as he drank her in. She wore that little silky dress she’d had on earlier in the day and in his mind he could smell her perfume, the scent floral and clean. Then, he’d wanted to bury his face against her throat and breathe her in before stripping her clothes from her once and for all, ending the torment of not knowing the color of her nipples and the taste of her arousal. He’d been dying to get his hands on her, a palm cupping her mons, a finger sliding into her wet heat.

Just a single time with her and he’d be able to move on.

This fierce need for her would be assuaged in bed and he’d be able to understand it for what it was…a bad case of desperate lust. No big deal.

Now she paused and brushed her hair off her shoulders, giving him a better look at her face. His hand curled into a fist as he took in her pensive expression and the small line of worry between her brows.

Damn, he hated to see that. But Lilly was devoted to her friend and likely fretting over Audra’s state of mind. It seemed likely that Alec’s small exotic brunette could use a friend of her own at the minute.

Without thinking, he began striding in her direction, planning to cut off her path so that he could…what?

His feet halted. She’d given him the grocery store, dim sum, and his favorite coffee place. He couldn’t repay her generosity by a pursuit she’d rejected.

The fact was, she had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want to see him again.

Fuck. Fuck. Now all ten fingers were curled into frustrated fists as his brain struggled against his gut instincts. They demanded he go to Lilly, to hold her hand again, to smell her hair, to do what he could to erase that disquiet on her face.

But she’d given him the damn dim sum, so he had to keep his distance.

A commotion behind him caught his attention. He swung around at the shouts and the sounds of chair legs screeching. Shit.

In one sweeping glance he understood the trouble. Rambunctious puppy Buster had freed himself somehow and was scampering about, evading capture by going under loungers and around people. Kane nearly cornered the pooch, but then he zigged and Alec’s father had to zag to head off the pup so he wouldn’t fall into the pool. That gave Buster a clear shot at the adjacent lobby.

And Buster took it, his leash trailing behind him.

The action had drawn Lilly’s attention and Alec saw her head toward the lobby as well. The woman and puppy’s paths should cross.

“Can you get a hold of him?” he called out to her from across the pool.

“I’ll try!” she called back and reached for the speeding pup.

It just eluded her grasp. Still, she followed after him and Alec followed after her, their own little parade through the lobby as the dog dashed around chairs and people and suitcases, toward the wide opening that led to the portico covering the wide drive.

Cars came and went there. Shit.

“Lilly—”

“I’m on it,” she yelled, her pretty legs churning, the hem of her dress riding up her thighs. The sight distracted Alec for a second and when he managed to yank his gaze back to the dog it was to see the pet dart out and around a parking attendant who made his own unsuccessful yet valiant effort that left him crashing into the valet stand.

Buster was still moving. Lilly was still in full pursuit. At that moment, a limo came speeding up to the entrance, all three on a collision course.

Alec’s blood ran cold and his gut seized. The sound of alarmed shouts dimmed as horror filled him. With a noiseless plea for mercy, he raced headlong toward what looked like certain disaster.

 

Lilly wanted to be anywhere but poolside, sitting in a cushioned chair and surrounded by a ring of people, their attention focused on her. “Really, I’m fine,” she said for the dozenth time, trying to rise.

Alec pushed her back down with a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Not until you’re patched up.”

“In my room—”

“Here, Alec,” a handsome, thirtyish man said, pushing through the small crowd to stand beside him.

“Thanks, Kane.” Alec grabbed the round bar tray bearing various first aid supplies.

Lilly’s eyes bugged out. “Is that a disposable scalpel? I don’t need to lose any more skin.”

The handsome stranger grinned at her. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I just grabbed everything we had on hand.”

Alec muttered something that might have been “She’s not your sweetheart” and then crouched down to inspect Lilly’s skinned knees again, sliding the tray onto the pool deck at her feet. He pushed up the hem of her skirt a little, then glanced up, sincere contrition in his eyes. “I really am sorry.”

“You’ve already said,” she replied, a little testily. The scraped skin was stinging and she really just wanted to go back to her room where she could be away from Alec and his hands and the way she felt when he did something as innocuous as slipping her dress two inches up her thighs. Both gave her the most childish urge to give in to tears and she never did that.

Her surreptitious little sniff did not go unheard, however.

“You can go ahead and cry,” he said quietly, and pressed a tissue into her hand.

She threw it back in his face. “I never cry,” she said, her voice low.

Alec’s eyebrows rose. “Okay. I believe you.”

“Good.”

He bent his head over the worst injury, and blew gently on it. “I shouldn’t have asked you to chase after Buster,” he said. He took up a brown bottle of something and a cotton ball.

“I’m happy to have helped with the puppy.” She pushed his hand away when he moved to dab at one of the wounds. “What is that?”

“Something to clean the scrape. You have dirt in it.”

“I like that dirt. I saved a dog’s life for that dirt. You said so yourself.” With the black limo speeding toward the portico, she’d managed to step on the pet’s leash and halt the animal’s forward momentum—and potential clash with said limo—but in the process had fallen onto her knees. The injuries were minor and she hated being fussed over.

Well, she wasn’t used to being fussed over and having Alec do it made her feel all…squirmy inside.

He sighed. “Lilly—”

“Just slap an elastic bandage on it,” she said, throwing out an impatient hand.

“We can’t do that.” Alec frowned. “That’s just covering up the problem.”

“I like covering up problems. Just as much as I like avoiding them. Just as much as I like avoiding certain people.” She sent him a narrow-eyed look, reminding him of their agreement to steer clear of each other.

“We need to tend this.” His expression turned stony. “Stop being such a baby.”

Her temper flared. “Stop trying to impersonate Dr. McDreamy, because you’re not even close.” She glared at him.

He returned the favor.

“Children,” an amused female voice said, and a new person entered Lilly’s field of vision that, as usual, had diminished to just Alec, as it always did when he got too close.

The woman was middle-aged and pretty, in a dress splashed with tropical flowers that screamed Expensive Resort Chic. In her arms slept an adorable Buster—she’d learned his name during the debacle—presumably worn out by his earlier mischief.

“Can I help here?” the woman continued, handing over the puppy to the guy who’d delivered the first aid stuff. “Alec, you’re sounding very bossy.”

He rose to his feet, not looking the least bit abashed. “She needs those knees cleaned up,” he muttered.

The older woman stepped closer. “I’m Miranda Thatcher, Dr. McDreamy’s—uh, Alec’s mother.”

Embarrassed all over again, Lilly shook her proffered hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“I hope you think so after I bandage those wounds.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—”

“Buster’s my pet, so it’s the least I can do.” She instructed her son to pull another chair closer and then proceeded to quickly and efficiently clean Lilly’s scrapes and place bandages over them.

“There,” she said, when she was done.

“So brave, sugar,” Alec said, with overdone admiration. “Do I need to find you a lollipop now?”

“No, Alec.” His mother gave her son a scolding glance. “What you need to do is find the catering manager and tell her to set another place at our table for dinner.”

Uh-oh. “I hope you don’t intend that for me,” Lilly said quickly. “I appreciate the thought, but I really couldn’t take advantage of your hospitality.”

“You saved my dog,” Miranda said, reaching over to take Lilly’s hand. The older woman’s was slender and cool with short, manicured nails covered in clear polish. “Surely you can be our honored guest tonight.”

Somehow Lilly found herself on her feet, her hand still held. Then Miranda tucked it into the curve of her elbow and drew Lilly away from the pool area. “It’s going to be a lovely meal,” she said, leading her to a long, outdoor room created by a canopy of fabric. Twinkle lights ran along the edges of the “roof” and inside was a long table set for forty, with gleaming plates, cutlery, and glassware. The space was warmed by strategically placed heaters.

Dazzled by the pretty setting, Lilly noticed other people choosing seats. Miranda guided Lilly to one at the middle of the table and when a server pulled out the chair, what else could she do but slide into it? The older woman took the one beside her.

“Won’t this be nice?” Miranda said, with a sunny smile.

Lilly wasn’t quite sure how it had come to this. Hadn’t she protested? “I’m not sure…” she began.

Alec dropped into the chair on her other side. “Just go with it,” he advised. “Believe me, her iron will is more than a match for yours.”

“But Audra…”

He glanced over. “Shall I call your rooms? We can invite her to join us.”

“No, no.” Audra had hacked at the hem of her wedding dress again, shortening it to her hips, but she was still wearing the damn thing. Lilly wasn’t sure her usually meticulously groomed friend had showered or even brushed her hair since receiving the disastrous text.

“Is she expecting you back?” Alec asked.

Lilly considered lying, but instead let out a sigh. “She’s barricaded in her bedroom. I can hear the TV but she says she doesn’t want to watch it with me. Maybe tomorrow, she said.”

“Then you can enjoy our company.”

Around the table was a sea of unfamiliar faces who were already chattering amongst themselves and were clearly in a collectively upbeat mood. “I can’t barge into…whatever this night is about.”

“It’s part of the celebration of my parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

She gasped. “It’s a family event. I can’t stay. I’m intruding, I don’t know anyone—”

“Hush.” Alec found her hand in her lap and gave it a squeeze. “You know me. You’ll know Mom by the time the meal is over, I promise you. But be careful, she has a way of getting people to talk about themselves. If you don’t want to spill your deepest secrets, I suggest you say as little as possible to her.”

“Uh…okay,” Lilly said, even though her doubts were redoubling by the second. She didn’t want anyone knowing her secrets. Yet she didn’t want anyone to know she didn’t want anyone to know her secrets either, which Alec would suppose if she skedaddled like a skittish rabbit now. “I suppose I can stay,” she mumbled.

“Good girl.” He leaned closer, his lips an inch from her ear. “And if you want to sidestep Mom, all you need to do is give me your full attention.” The hand holding hers shifted, his thumb caressing the cove of her palm.

The light touch ignited Lilly’s nerve endings, one flaming after the other so her skin grew tight and her breath short. It was so simple, that gentle stroke, but the intensity of her reaction to it made her hot with shame. Delicate shivers rolled down her back and she stared at the table in front of her, hoping he wouldn’t notice her intemperate response.

“Hey,” he said, his voice going lower. “What’s the matter?”

A sudden longing overtook her then, a yearning to close her eyes and put her head on Alec’s shoulder and surrender to all that he could make her feel. This insane attraction compelled her to turn herself over to him, to cling, as if he were her rock.

He did that to her. He made her that weak.

She couldn’t afford to be weak.

“Lilly.” His voice sounded part concerned, part amused. “You look like you’re about to faint and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”

“Don’t,” she said, her throat suddenly tightening. There was a hot pressure behind her eyes. “Don’t…tease me.”

Alec’s hand left hers to tuck under her chin. He brought her face around to meet his. “Sugar. Seriously. What’s the matter?”

She hauled in a breath. “It’s been a stressful couple of days, that’s all.” Swallowing hard, she tried choking down all these unwelcome feelings. “I should probably go to my room and pull the blankets over my head.”

“Don’t do that. You’ll disappoint me. You’ll disappoint Mom.”

“You have all this family—”

“But she’s interested in you,” Alec said, then he hesitated. His fingers drifted to the side of her head, where he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Here’s the thing. She’s gone through some bad stuff and we’re trying to keep her happy.”

Lilly stole a quick glance at his mother, who was in an animated conversation with the person sitting across from her. Bad stuff? She looked healthy, perfectly happy. “Alec…”

But then servers converged upon the table, setting crisp salads in front of them and fresh rolls on the bread plates. Lilly’s stomach grumbled and she realized she’d had nothing but a smoothie and a quarter of a deli sandwich that day.

At that moment Miranda turned to her and offered up a charming smile. “Lilly. Now tell me what you do when you’re not rescuing wayward puppies.”

Her chance for a gracious escape was officially lost.

But the meal was delicious as promised, and Alec’s mother was an accomplished interviewer, also as promised. Lilly, however, was experienced in keeping much of her life private and talked easily of her current job as well as casually explaining that her parents had traveled around so much that she’d been raised by an aunt and uncle, along with a male cousin.

No one would tell by her expression or her words that in reality, her unwed mom had wandered off with some lowlife and never returned. No one knew the name of the man who had fathered Lilly.

Alec hadn’t noticed anything unusual in what she said, she was sure, because halfway through dinner he’d been easily coaxed by some teenage relatives to leave his seat for another at their end in order to mediate a heated dispute over a college basketball game. She’d waved away his look of apology, assuring him she was fine on her own.

Which she was. She wasn’t bad at extracting information either, so she learned that Miranda and Vic Thatcher lived in northern San Diego County, in a beach house they’d completed the previous year. Miranda worried about her daughter who’d recently been divorced and she thought Alec worked too much and didn’t spend enough time relaxing.

“Or pursuing romance,” she said, giving Lilly a pointed look.

“We’re just friends,” she said hastily. “Less, really. Acquaintances. We only met a few days ago. And the situation, with the wedding that’s never going to be, it makes it very awkward to think…impossible, really. Not to mention I work a lot too and I’m totally not interested in romance. Then there’s…”

Oh, God. When she realized how she’d gone on and on and on—the lady doth protest too much—she almost put her heated face in her hands.

“Never mind,” Miranda said, taking obvious pity on her as she patted her hand. “Tell me more about your job. You work at the Montgomerys’ sustainable energy company, you said?”

By the time the dessert plates had been cleared away and coffee was being served, Lilly decided she could make her getaway. Pleading a need to check on Audra, she gave her thanks to Miranda and her husband Vic and sketched a goodbye to the others around her. Then, hoping to leave without attracting Alec’s attention, she pushed up and out of her chair, quickly heading in the opposite direction from where he sat.

Within a few minutes she realized she was once again lost.

Standing amongst the ground’s lush foliage, she cursed her lousy sense of direction. She withdrew her phone from the pocket of her dress and was trying to call up a map of the resort when a hand touched her elbow. A powerful jolt nearly crashed her nervous system and she whirled to face the newcomer.

Alec, natch, the shadows caused by the landscape lighting etching his cheekbones and jaw making him even more impossibly handsome. She frowned at him. “What do you want?”

“You snuck off,” he said.

She slipped her phone back into her pocket. “That was the plan,” she said, hearing the disgruntled note in her voice. Being around him, as always, set her hackles up.

He grinned. “Sugar. You should know already that doesn’t work out for us. We’re each other’s bad pennies. We keep turning up.”

“It’s wrong.”

He drew closer, close enough that she could smell the aftershave he wore. She’d noticed it before, the scent something classic, like lime and salt. “Why?” he asked.

Lilly glanced down, unwilling to meet his eyes. “You already know. You already said.” Bringing up what he referred to as “the pull” wouldn’t make it go away any faster.

“I should tell you,” he began. “My family…we’re here until next Sunday.”

Her head came up. Damn. “That long?”

Alec nodded. “Mom wanted a very special celebration.”

“How…nice.” What could she say?

“It means we’re destined to run into each other again.”

Lilly grimaced. “I suppose.” It was the way her luck ran, after all.

Alec smiled, seeming amused by her displeasure. “So,” he mused, taking hold of her chin to lift her face. “I figure we should just get this out of the way.” His head bent over hers.

Lilly froze. She felt his breath on her lips and they began to tingle in crazy anticipation. He was going to kiss her! Alec Thatcher was going to kiss her! God, half of her wanted to bolt, and the other half wanted it so much that goose bumps broke out all over her body.

“Alec…” Her voice sounded unsteady. Breathless. “W-what are you doing?”

His voice lowered. “I’m just taking another moment to anticipate kissing you. I’ve been fantasizing about your mouth, the heat of it, the taste of it. Your tongue. God, Lilly, you have the pinkest tongue I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Her pulse scrambled and fire shot through her veins.

“Your tongue makes me think of what else you have that’s pink and I want to taste that like hell too.”

Her eyes went round, between her thighs rushed a damp heat. “You can’t…you shouldn’t…” Her limbs were trembling now and she couldn’t string three words together.

With a low, throaty laugh, Alec’s hand left her face, only to envelop her in his arms, bringing her body flush against his. Heat to need. She tried to keep herself from melting against him, told herself to be a mannequin, to not surrender, to not let him know how much he affected her.

But then came the bittersweet knowledge that this was the one time, the only time, she’d have this experience with sensual, beautiful, so-attractive Alec Thatcher.

Of their own accord, her arms lifted and wrapped around his powerful body and she buried her face in his throat, breathing him in. Sealing his scent, his feel into her memory.

His hold tightened. “Lilly,” he said, and there was tender demand in his voice.

She looked up and then his lips crushed hers, all tenderness gone and only that demand as he claimed her with his mouth. He ate at her lips, stinging bites, that had Lilly clutching him as he opened them for his tongue. It plunged inside, wet and insistent, and she went pliant, surrendering to his unspoken command of her.

She reveled in the surrender to him as the kiss went on and on, wrecking her, leaving her thoughts in ruins and her heartbeat wild and untamed.

Decades passed, and then his head lifted and he drew in air. “Lilly,” he murmured and his head lowered again. She anticipated another bruising kiss—longed for it, to be honest—but he changed tactics now, going from marauder to would-be lover as he brushed comforting, gentle kisses along her hairline, temple, eyebrows.

Player, she thought woozily, shivers rolling down her spine, one after another. Only a player could so thoroughly mess with a woman’s mind by switching from fierce, burning kisses to nearly affectionate caresses. But they weren’t calming her thrashing heart.

“Sugar,” he said, kissing first one cheek and then the other. “Breathe, baby. Your head will stop spinning.”

The fact that he could read her so well did that instead. Her mind sharpened and she scrambled to reassert her willpower and common sense. “Okay, that’s done,” she managed to croak out, hoping he’d read that as a signal to let her go and step back.

He did neither, instead keeping her close. “I came on too strong,” he said, apology in his voice as he ran a soothing hand down her back.

She should say yes, except for the small fact that she’d loved every raw, domineering, moment of it.

“You can only blame yourself,” he continued, then laughed a little. “Christ, you do something to me.”

“It’s not my fault.” Why wouldn’t her legs obey her command to move?

“Don’t pout, sugar,” he said. “Think of it as a power you can use for good.”

He was teasing her, but she had to straighten out the situation, right now. She forced in a long breath. “I’m not going to use the ‘power,’ as you call it, ever again. We got it out of the way, right? Out of our systems. That was your intention.”

Finally, finally, Alec backed off, putting space between their bodies, though his hands cupped her shoulders to keep her in place. He studied her face and she didn’t avoid his gaze, though hoping she didn’t look as disheveled as she felt. Of course the damn man only appeared sexier. Even in the low landscape lighting she could see a flush of color on his cheekbones and across the bridge of his nose.

He shook his head. “That damn mouth.”

Wariness added to the mix of emotions inside her. Yeah, fine, she told herself. Caution should have arrived a little earlier.

“I want to kiss it again,” Alec confessed.

Yes, she clearly had every right to be concerned. “That was it. It’s over.” Why did she sound so damn unsure of herself?

Alec shook his head. “Over? Did we start something that I don’t know about?”

She glared at him. “It” had started the moment they met and he knew it.

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen next,” Alec said, his big hands massaging her shoulders. “You’re going to stop running from me. We’re going to do some talking, we’re going to spend time together like reasonable, grown-up adults, we’re going to get to know each other. Then we’ll see.”

“See what? We don’t want an involvement with each other.”

“That’s what we’ll see about.”

If it wasn’t so childish she’d stamp her foot. What would it take to reach this stubborn man? “Alec—”

He cut her off with another kiss. Before it caught fire, a cheery voice intruded.

“I knew there was something going on between the two of you,” Miranda Thatcher said, her voice gleeful. “How very wonderful.”