Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel (17 page)

She quickly moved away, into the center of the room, and was gesturing with sweeping strokes of her arms. He suspected she’d fell him with a roundhouse punch should he venture too near. It was time to show her he was a civilized man. He drew a deep breath to clear his head of the way she smelled, the way she looked, and made himself focus on the room.

“So here it is. I decided to make this space into an informal living room and play area for the kids,” she said brightly, her cheerleader peppiness doing little to hide her nervousness.

“It’s nice. Very nice.” A sweeping glance was all he needed to recognize the skill she’d put into decorating the space. She’d made it a comfortable nest of colors and patterns, a room that charmed and invited.

He remembered Jordan saying that she’d been on a tight budget. She’d chosen where to spend wisely—on wallpaper with playful motifs and on beautiful fabrics for the window treatments—and where she’d saved by choosing simple furniture that could withstand the wear and tear of little people. A sofa was rendered that much cozier by a hodgepodge of throw pillows.

His imagination revved into sixth gear as he pictured just how cozy the sofa might be if he could figure how to get Jordan on it. But the sight of the toys put the brakes on that idea.

An easel in the corner had a chaotic scribbled crayon drawing on it; wooden train tracks were laid in loops and figure eights on the carpet; a stack of multicolored building blocks was piled against the wall. In another corner, three rocking horses stood in a neat row, waiting for a good gallop.

The forcible reminder of her three very real children, and
the whole messy package of domestic commitment and responsibility they represented, should not just have dampened his libido, it should have annihilated it. That Jordan still tempted him showed the power of the attraction he was fighting.

Christ, what was it about her?

There were plenty of beautiful, talented, and beguiling women in the world. No need to get involved with this one.

When Jordan began talking, he was filled with relief. The running debate going on in his head was growing tiresome.

“As I warned you, the room’s pretty basic. I’m sure you’ll want to present a more sophisticated look at Hawk Hill. Am I right to assume that the decorating will be on spec? Or do you have a buyer lined up already?”

“No one yet,” he replied. “But over the years I’ve learned that potential buyers have an easier time envisioning themselves in a furnished home, so now I always get a decorator to put the finishing touches on the houses. Bare walls, like a blank canvas, can intimidate the hell out of people. Sometimes the buyers like what we’ve done so much they want to move into the house exactly as it is, lock, stock, and barrel.”

He watched her slender throat work as she swallowed. “So no pressure on me at all.”

And he remembered exactly how she had smelled just below the line of her jaw when he’d brought his face close. How her breath had caught …

“Not a bit,” he replied, managing to hide his distraction. “You just have to dazzle an imaginary customer. Think Nonie Harrison to the power of ten. That’ll do.”

“Thanks. Now I’ll never get any sleep.”

He could suggest lots of things that would help her sleep like a baby. Will you get a damned grip, he told himself sternly.

“Uh, the kids’ rooms are just down here if you want to take a look.”

“Sure.” Was it possible she was unaware that her reluctance to show her own room only increased his curiosity?

The first bedroom she showed him was the little boy’s. “How long have you been here?”

“It’ll be a year next month. Why?”

He shrugged, looking at the pictures and photographs that she’d affixed to one of the cork-backed walls to create a visual archive for her son. He thought of the frequent moves of his own childhood as his nomadic parents traveled from one foreign post to the next. Photographs were certainly taken, to be then stuck inside albums, which in turn were stored on bookshelves, or boxed in a storeroom if the rented apartment was too small. City after city, his bedroom walls remained invariably blank and indifferent. “Tommy’s a lucky kid.”

“Max, you mean?” she asked with a smile in her voice.

“Right, Max. Sorry.” He’d have expected her to be insulted rather than amused that he couldn’t recall her kid’s name. “So what about your room?”

“My room?”

“Yes, I’d like to see what you do with a grown-up bedroom,” he said, determined to get back on familiar footing. Quaint childhood memories and warm, fuzzy family interiors were not it. Although his parents were fine people, they simply hadn’t been parenting material. Unfortunately, they only realized their complete lack of interest and talent after he came along.

As they crossed the hallway, he assured himself that he was focusing on business. But the anticipation building inside him belied the notion. Jordan, clearly dreading what was coming, walked beside him with the boardlike stiffness of an aristocrat heading toward the guillotine.

Whereas in the other rooms she had employed an artful blend of patterns, textures, and colors, Jordan’s bedroom was a different kind of experience. His immediate thought was that they’d stepped into the soothing white of a cloud on a hot summer’s day. And like a cloud, the whiteness of
her room was actually a nuanced symphony of many shades, ranging from bluish violets to grays. The flashes of pale gold mimicked piercing rays of sunlight.

The pieces here—a vanity table topped by an oval mirror and a bench with gently flared legs, an armchair with a matching damask upholstered ottoman—were deeply feminine without being girly-frilly. But it was the bed that captured Jordan’s character perfectly.

Sensuous yet restrained. That was how to describe the four-poster bed with roped carving. He pictured her lying there against the snow white matelasse coverlet, her hair a cinnamon red, her naked body pale as poured cream, smooth and delicious.

His heart had begun pounding like a sledgehammer against a stone wall. Christ, why was he fighting his attraction anyway? There was no law against what he was feeling, a healthy dose of I-really-want-to-fuck-this-woman. They were both adults …

This was worse than she had imagined, Jordan conceded. Far, far worse. For all his smooth, worldly polish, Owen Gage was pure male, and being forced to watch him prowling around her room, her private haven, put her on high alert. When he passed her vanity table and casually picked her atomizer of Chanel’s Cristalle, she almost shrieked,
Don’t touch that!

The command died in her throat as he lifted the bottle, sniffed it experimentally, and then replaced it with a frown.

Okay, so he was obviously something of a scent freak. What really worried her, though, was that she found his preoccupation—heck, obsession—arousing.

Or was it the barely leashed energy she sensed in him that was causing her nerves to vibrate to the point where she could all but hear them hum? When he abruptly pivoted, approaching her with all the dangerous grace of a leopard, Jordan fought to suppress the whimper that threatened to tumble from her lips.

It was a miracle she could make any sound at all when she was this close to hyperventilating.

She edged toward the door. “Well, that’s it for the grand tour. Jade will have finished tacking Doc. I should head down to the ring.” She took a hasty step backward that didn’t do any good in maintaining distance between them.

He was way, way too close. “What … what are you doing?” she said breathlessly. She couldn’t remember being this nervous or this aware of another person.

“I’d think that would be fairly obvious.”

His voice was as warm as the hand he’d slipped around the nape of her neck. How had he managed to do that? she wondered stupidly, her brain struggling to process what was happening. His fingers lightly stroked her skin, his touch simultaneously thrilling and yet disconcertingly foreign. A fine trembling seized her, want warring with bone-deep uncertainty.

His face, already so close she could count the gold chips in his eyes, came nearer still as he angled his head. As if hypnotized by the sensual spell he’d cast, her lids grew heavy, her body strangely languorous. Still, some part of her resisted, tried to prevent what she feared, what she hoped was coming. “I think—”

“Bad idea to think. Especially when we can do this,” he whispered, bringing his lips to hers.

The touch of his lips was a slow and easy graze. Its very lightness sparked her desire. A millisecond that could have been an eternity elapsed while everything in her went still and waiting, just waiting, for his lips to meet, to taste hers again.

She lifted weighted lids to find his eyes focused on her. Lord, he was so beautiful, his face the sculpted perfection of a Renaissance statue, his eyes a rich, burnt umber lit with gold. Trapped in her chest, her breath escaped in a soft moan.

At the hushed sound, a signal of her acquiescence, his
gaze burned brighter. Again his mouth claimed hers, this time boldly, his lips clinging, learning. Sensations rushed through her like a storm breaking and her heart thundered. She trembled, buffeted by the force of her response.

Solid and strong, he pressed closer, his mouth commanding, silently urging her to open for him. Instinctively she obeyed, inviting the bold sweep of his tongue. She registered the taste of him—warm, exotic, slightly salty and deliciously male and then their tongues were tangling, rubbing in a sleek erotic slide that unleashed a flood of heat inside her. She breathed in citrus and sandalwood on his warm skin, the scent intoxicating enough to make her head spin, her toes curl into the rug, and her hands fist against the hard wall of his chest as everything inside her went fluid and soft, melting with desire.

Oh, oh, oh
, she chanted in a silent litany, rendered mindless by his kiss, by the touch of his hands on her fevered skin. Knowing only need and want, she opened her mouth wider, kissing him back hungrily.

Her response earned her a rumbled groan of approval and more, as he deepened the kiss, plundering ever more boldly, as the fingers of one hand tangled in the base of her ponytail, his other hand wrapped around her waist and then slipped beneath her cotton shirt, drawing her flush against his hard length … his very hard length.

The dual, high-voltage shock of his warm hand splayed over the small of her bared back and the unmistakable bulge of his erection had her jumping back as if scorched.

“No.” The word was an alarmed yelp.

Owen’s hooded eyes closed for a second and then opened.

“No?”

“No.” Dear God, what she would give to make her voice sound steadier right now.

“No,” he repeated, watching her carefully. “And no means no.”

“Yes—no. Definitely no. I don’t do that. This,” she corrected
with a wild wave of her arm as if it would clarify her inane babbling.

She couldn’t believe what she’d just done. She’d kissed him and it had been thrilling and hot and … she refused to consider what else.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. You don’t kiss? It was just a kiss, Jordan.”

Just a kiss?
That’s how he perceived what was nothing less than earth-shattering to her, the first kiss she’d shared with a man after Richard? Then again, why should this be in any way, shape, or form significant to someone like him? Owen probably had a revolving door installed in his house or apartment, the better to facilitate the comings and goings of the females in his life. It abruptly occurred to her that she’d just kissed a man and she didn’t even know where he lived. However banal this kiss might have been to Owen, for her own peace of mind she had to make sure it never happened again.

“Even so, I would rather you didn’t do it again. Ever.”

His dark brows rose in astonishment. “Never?”

“Definitely never to be repeated.” Because who knew how far things might go or whether she’d be able to resist him if he kissed her a second time.

“ ‘Never’ strikes me as a little excessive. You seemed to be enjoying the kiss as much as I did. Men and women do kiss, you know. But if you insist—”

“I do. Especially if you want me to work for you,” she added. There, she sounded calm and professional, very adultlike. An utter sham, as she wasn’t feeling any of those things. Thankfully he seemed to buy it.

Christ, he thought, irritation mixed with a good deal of frustration. Who in the world stopped a kiss that was as mind-blowingly good as the one they’d just shared and then went on to decree it should never be repeated?

But Owen rarely stooped to begging and never to forcing himself on a lady. So he offered a careless shrug instead.
“That’s fine, I got the message. For your information, though, I’m well able to keep business separate from pleasure. And since you’ll be working for me as a freelance decorator, the operating rules are a little more flexible. So, if you ever happen to change your mind and decide to lift your embargo on kissing, let me know. I might be willing to oblige.”

T
HEY HAD ONLY
just started on dessert and Jordan was finding it hard to pretend that Owen Gage wasn’t irritating the hell out of her. But to allow her family the tiniest glimpse of how thoroughly annoyed she was would surely give rise to some very uncomfortable questions, ones she definitely wished to avoid.