All of You (13 page)

“I’m not all that complicated. I’m an investment banker, which is a fancy way of saying I do a lot of research and analyze stocks and bonds for my clients. I’m more of a personal banker in a small but competitive bank. It’s a good living and I’m good at it.”

“So both you and your brother are good with numbers,” she murmured.

“I wouldn’t tell him this if I were you—” because Lucas was definitely capable of shooting any messenger, “—but we’re still alike in a lot of ways. He likes to think he’s the more efficient version.”

“He does make very efficient tea,” she allowed.

Kyle smiled, glad to see some of the tension seeping out of her.

“So where do all the models come in?”

“Excuse me?”

“The vapid models Lucas talked about. According to him, you’ve practically been drowning in them.”

Yet another reason to disown his sibling. “Drowning is a strong word.”

“Which means you’d rather not say.”

He laughed. “Exactly.”

“Too bad, cough it up. How’d you find yourself surrounded by the young and the senseless?”

“Only because you’re beside yourself with worry.” Which was thankfully starting to take a backseat as the minutes passed. “A number of my clients are in the sports industries. I travel up and down the coast to meet with them and they connect me to other clients. The models are with the clients. I just occasionally get in the way. Since they like me, I started getting a reputation for being with them.”

“That’s possibly the lamest excuse for womanizing I’ve ever heard.”

“You caught me my by surprise. Ask me again tomorrow, I’ll have a better one.”

She shook her head, her mirth not lasting as long as he’d have liked. He saw when her smile turned brittle. “Thanks for coming, Kyle. It…I know I wasn’t very nice to you the last time we saw each other. It means a lot that you came. And I know it’ll mean a lot to Dory too.”

He clenched his fists in his pockets, wanting to put an arm around her and give her the comfort she so clearly needed. She wasn’t ready, though. Dory had been right about that. If he wanted Jessica to take him seriously, he had to start respecting her boundaries. “Thanks for calling.”

Keeping Jessica distracted became interesting work. He still couldn’t get her to say much about herself, but he got a few bits out here and there, all of it related to Dory. Things Dory had made her see about herself, their surprise trip to a strip club which resulted in Jessica’s first—and, he hoped to God, last—lap dance, Dory’s constant rhetoric about her son needing to settle down with a woman who wasn’t a whore. It was around the fourth time he asked reception about Dory only to be told they had no new information for him that something finally happened.

A bear of a man strode into the ER in a pair of leather chaps over jeans, a studded leather vest over a faded black T-shirt, looking sun-ruddy and windblown. Dark brown hair came past his shoulders and his thick beard nearly matched the length in the front.

“I’m looking for Doreen Pierson. I’m her son,” he rumbled in a graveling, dry voice.

The unflappable receptionist stared up, her mouth agape.

“Please,” the biker added pointedly.

“Oh, yes…she’s in the ICU.”

“You just told me there was no information.” Kyle frowned at her.

“He’s family.”

“So am I!”

That earned him a raised bushy eyebrow from the biker.

“Well, all right, I’m not, but she is.” He pointed back to Jessica, who was already standing.

The biker turned. “You’re Jessica Saunders?”

She stared up at the man with huge eyes, but she didn’t gulp. “Daniel?”

He chucked his head once. Not the talkative type. “Where’s the ICU?”

“Fourth floor,” the receptionist replied to his back.

Daniel started walking away, then looked over his shoulder. “You two coming?”

Kyle heard the click of heels before he could reach out for her arm. She stayed by his side as they followed the behemoth to the elevators.

Stable. Jessica had always liked that word before. It sounded safe, secure; a dream word. Looking down on Dory’s sleeping form, tiny in the giant railed bed, stable had seemed utterly lacking. Now, pushing her key into her front door, Kyle at her side, stable was the last word she could use to describe their situation.

He’d been wonderful at the hospital. He’d gotten her to talk—seemed to be his special gift—but he’d been kind enough to only make her talk about inane things. When Daniel took them up to Dory’s room, she was asleep but thankfully not touched with blue as she had been. The doctor said it was definitely a moderate heart attack, but they were unsure about any heart damage as yet. The next forty-eight hours were the danger hours. If she continued without another attack during that time, they would tentatively upgrade her condition. Daniel took that news with a grim, unblinking stare, then sat down at his mother’s bedside and took her hand. If he moved again in the next hour, Jessica didn’t see it.

They stayed until Dory awoke and smiled at them. She pooh-poohed the doctor’s diagnosis, claiming to feel just fine, but made no move to get out of the bed. Jessica promised to come back the next day, leaving mother and son to themselves, probably a little too eager to escape the warmth of their connection to cover it well. Kyle had given her a confused glance but had kissed Dory’s cheek and come along with her.

Now how was she going to deal with him?

“Kyle—”

“Uh-oh.” He smiled sheepishly and looked down at his feet before leaning on the wall outside her apartment.

Jessica frowned. “Uh-oh what? I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“That was rather the point in saying your name.”

“You have that distant, ‘it’s been a nice evening’ look on your face.”

“I seriously doubt that.” She made sure to smooth her features, turning her key to unlock the door.

“She’ll be okay, Jess.”

“I know,” she said automatically. His hand on her shoulder startled her into looking at him.

He looked at her firmly, his blue gaze penetrating her with surprising intensity. “She will be okay.” Not a platitude. More a statement of fact.

Her mouth curved against her better judgment. “You really think saying a thing makes it come true?”

“Doesn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Life doesn’t work that way. Most of the time, the harder you try to make something happen, the further it gets from your control.” Just look at how things had gone between them.

“That doesn’t sound like a woman who put herself through law school and into a renowned firm.”

“Well, there was a bit more to that than saying I would become a lawyer.”

“It starts with believing,” he said quietly. “I believed you’d call me.”

Her smile fell. “Kyle—”

“I know, you called me for Dory. Maybe I wasn’t specific enough with my affirmation. How about, you will ask me in for coffee?”

He didn’t even know how to stop charming her. “Sounds more like hypnotism.”

“Would it work?” He picked up his hands and wiggled his fingers at her as if concocting some sort of fake hocus-pocus from the air. “You will ask me in for coffee,” he said, using an absolutely horrendous Dracula accent. “You will sit back and relax with me while we talk about how good we could be together.”

“Kyle—”

“You will let me rub your feet while we have this conversation.”

Hypnotized into a foot rub? The thought gave her pause. Her feet did hurt…but he didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d be content to rub her soles and leave the rest of her alone. And she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to stop him. Knowing her body, by the time he got to her ankle she’d be wet, aching and demanding. Not a good plan…

“Hmmm, a difficult specimen.” He pretended to muse, half-crossing his arms and tapping his mouth with a pseudo-thoughtful finger. “I know a twenty-four-hour bakery around here that serves a chocolate torte we can eat while you get rubbed.”

Chocolate and a foot rub?

So I’m not the rock of Gibraltar. She turned the knob and opened the door. “Come on in.”

“Nope, have to run to the bakery. You get comfortable, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Twenty minutes?” That didn’t sound nearby.

“Tops.” He leaned forward to kiss her, the brush of his mouth so fast she never even thought of saying no.

He stopped suddenly, a frown on his face before he cupped her cheeks and settled a gentle, caressing kiss on her lips. One lick, just one, and she opened for him, moaning, her hands curling around his wrists to hold on. Their bodies fit to each other, her tingling breasts flattening to his chest while he leisurely took her mouth, teasing and stroking and generally curling every nerve ending in her entire body. In a split second, she remembered being kissed just like this, naked, Kyle buried deep inside, stirring his hips slowly against her, driving her absolutely insane with pleasure. She whimpered, wanting to tighten her legs around his waist just as much as she had then.

Right when she was about to grab his shirt and tear it open right there in the hall, he pulled back and inspected her face, rocking her back on her heels.

“That’s better. Back in a few.” He was gone before any second thoughts had a chance to form.

Not that she was sure she was really going to have any. The truth was, she wanted Kyle there, even if she didn’t want to want him. She walked into the apartment with a sigh, turned on the lights and looked around with a critical eye. Better to concentrate on the room than the hormones demanding to know where their favorite candy went. He was coming in because of a foot rub and a torte. Sex was not on the menu. Period.

I’m not sleeping with him and I mean it this time.

And she had to make sure he knew it. The living room looked decent enough, colored in sedate creams and mauve, its couch and stuffed chair oversize and plush. The art on the wall was a little impersonal, but she wasn’t changing that on the off-chance he went into investment mode and started quoting her art values. She fluffed every pillow, carefully adjusted the lights so it was neither too bright nor too dark. Intimate. No, inviting. She wanted him to feel invited, not intimate. He didn’t need any extra help getting her naked.

Because you’re not getting naked. You are not sleeping with him.

She eyed the couch again, this time picturing him sprawled across it wearing nothing but that teasing grin, aroused to his full, thick length, just waiting for her to decide if she wanted to take him in her mouth or simply slide him in and ride him until he was begging for release.

Her smile turned self-mocking. Yeah, right, she didn’t even believe herself anymore. And while her imagination might cast her as a sexual goddess who called all the shots, in reality, the odds were way better that he’d have her bent over the cushy couch arm in seconds, her skirt up to her ribs while she hung on for dear life and he pumped into her from behind.

Her breath shuddered out of her and her sex clenched tight at the visceral imagining.

No, definitely not helping him. It always started with sex. Give him an orgasm and he’d take the next fifty years of her life, turning her into something she wasn’t. Not even for chocolate torte could she let it happen. To make sure, she brightened the room just that little bit more. Her retinas stung, but that was the price she could pay for freedom.

A knock sounded at the door. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes had already passed. One more glance around the room made her shrug. Time was up.

She entered the hall, ran a hand over herself to smooth her once-crisp white shirt and gray skirt. Expelling a deep breath, she reached over and opened the door with as good a smile as she could muster.

But instead of Kyle waiting there, she found a different surprise.

Twenty minutes, on the dot. Not bad. Sure, he’d had to blaze a trail back across town to the bakery he liked best, and there might have been a few casualties on the return route, but he had the torte and in just a few seconds, he’d have Jessica to himself. With Dory safe at the hospital, maybe he’d have that opportunity to see if Jessica was willing to give him a chance after all.

He mentally rallied his arguments. They had a special chemistry that would be a crime to ignore. He made her laugh and you couldn’t throw away a good laugh, could you? He’d be willing to give her foot rubs as often as she wanted. The sex was incredible, though he figured that would be a last-ditch reminder.

So last ditch, he should forget he even thought of it…the way her mouth made that soft little O shape right before she came, or how when he was inside her buttery-soft pussy, there wasn’t a sensation on earth that was better.

No, he needed to wipe it from his mind. No reliving the taste of her pussy, sweet and tart, or the little grumble-groan she made when he licked through her folds, teasing her clit by the barest of strokes. Nope. Don’t think about it…at all. He closed his eyes, since his erection was threatening to blacken his vision anyway. Time and a place, buddy. Time and a place…

He needed more, stronger arguments—she was a lawyer, she’d be able to talk him in circles if he didn’t have enough. He thought harder. He enjoyed her as a person and he was pretty sure she felt the same about him. They both had time-consuming jobs, so they’d never fault each other for needing to reschedule here and there. At least, until they got married and started having kids. Then she’d need to slow down quite a bit. He filed that as probably unwise to bring up until at least the fourth date. That idea made him grin like an idiot. He hadn’t had a fourth date since high school.

He could do this. They could do this. It would be great. She’d realize how perfect they were together. They’d spend some time getting to know one another better, get married and have two—no, four—kids, and life would be complete. That thing missing from both their lives would be filled. He just had to get through this one conversation and they could have the future he’d been dreaming about for months.

He knocked on the door and waited for it to open. Waited a while, actually. He knocked again, then stepped back and frowned when it opened. “Daniel?”

The big man smiled. At least, it looked like a smile. Both sides of his beard moved up in a shrug. “Hey, Kyle. Forget your key?”

He stepped inside while Daniel turned around and strolled into the living room. Kyle absently set the locks with one hand, holding the torte in the other by its knotted twine.

“Is that cake?” Daniel asked.

“Uh…yeah, kinda.” Kyle followed him, stifling the urge to check his watch. How long had he been gone, again?

“Great, I’m starving. I didn’t eat before I came out and it’s been a hectic time at the hospital. A lot of paperwork.” Before he’d even realized the man had moved, Daniel had lifted the pink box out of his grasp and went past him into the kitchen. Like he had every right.

“Kyle, is that you?” Jessica called from what sounded like the room at the very end of the apartment, the one he’d once thought was her bedroom.

“Yeah,” he called back, not sure what he should do next. What should have been pretty easy to call had suddenly spawned into a twilight zone of bad situations. He followed her voice and looked into the only dark room he’d seen so far. Burgundy walls and dark wood paneling. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves hugged a large desk in front of a window that faced the street. Leaning in further, he saw Jessica bent over and stretching to put the corner of a fitted sheet over a hide-a-bed mattress.

She bounced, creating an instant ache in him. She sighed with satisfaction when the sheet went into place, then looked over her shoulder at him when he groaned. Her eyes were wide—he noticed once he got his own eyes off her firm, raised ass—possibly surprised that he found something as mundane as making a bed to be suggestive. Shocked the hell out of him, too. Then again, she could be emptying the trash in that position and he’d instantly be capable of hitting the first-ever hands-free home run.

She scrambled to her feet, brushing her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ears, her cheeks flushing to an adorable shade of pink. “I’ve never had to use this aspect of the couch before, didn’t realize the mattress was so irregular. I guess calling them full-sized sheets isn’t a guarantee that they’ll fit, but they’re all I have.”

He nodded. She nodded. Great.

“Kyle, dude, this cake is the best!”

Jessica had the grace to look pained. “He showed up a few minutes ago. He dropped everything to come here for his mom. He doesn’t have anywhere to stay tonight.”

Kyle blinked. Maybe if he smacked himself in the head a few times, that would make some sense. “Why can’t he stay at Dory’s?”

“She lives in senior citizen condo community. They have strict rules about visitors and they especially don’t allow motorcycles. Since she doesn’t have a car, it’s not like he can use hers to get around. Besides, look at him. The way she talks about her neighbors, he’d give half of them heart attacks just sneaking past the gates.”

“So…he’s staying here? With you?”

“I thought it was the least I could do.”

“Jess, you don’t know the first thing about this guy.”

“I know Dory. I’ll be fine,” she said, her brows coming together, her back going up.

Not a good set of directions. Hoping to keep himself out of trouble, he considered other options. “What about a hotel?”

“I can’t just throw him in a hotel.” The whispered response sounded more like a hiss.

“Why not? My parents stay in one when they come visit.”

“Because I’m not heartless.” She seemed to realize what she was effectively saying because she pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to start over. “I don’t know if he can afford it, honestly. And he’s worried about Dory. She wanted him to get some rest. He doesn’t have a cell phone and if anything goes wrong, they’ll call here and we’ll both know.”

Call him a caveman, but heartfelt words escaped his oddly gritting teeth before he even realized he was saying them. “I. Don’t. Think. So.”

Irritation put a line between her brows. “I don’t remember asking your permission.”