Blame It on Paris (16 page)

“It was good,” he said.

“Beyond good.”

“But we both knew it wasn't real.”

She nodded vigorously. “Absolutely. Neither of us had any crazy expectations.”

“We both knew it couldn't last. That it was just a dream.”

“Totally,” she agreed.

And then he jumped her.

He hadn't intended to. He hadn't known he was going to do it ahead of time, even seconds ahead of time.

It just seemed as if he couldn't survive another second without touching her. Being with her. Getting lost in her.

Her mouth melted under his, heated for his. Her arms roped around his waist, pressing closer to him, a soft, helpless sound vibrating in her throat at his touch.

How was he supposed to resist that?

“Will,” she murmured. “Close the door.”

He'd forgotten, that fast, that she had a roommate. That they were in this crazy rented room of hers. That there were other people in the universe.

He booted the door closed.

“Will,” she murmured. “Don't let me go.”

He hadn't forgotten, even for a millisecond, how those sexy orders from her did him in. “I won't.”

“I mean it. Don't let me go. Even for a second. Or you're in big trouble.”

More orders. Could it get any better than this?

But of course it could. Pulling the sweater over her head. Drawing the bra straps down her arms. Getting to bare skin, soft skin, real skin. Not a lot of swell over the bra cups, but more than enough to incite him to madness. It was his favorite part of her, that soft swell.

Or maybe her throat was his favorite part.

Or her navel. Once he had her pants shucked down—at least as far as her ankles, where she could shake the rest off—he remembered all those other body parts. Upper thighs. The thatch of springy hair—on the red side, redder than her head hair, anyway, which made him remember that that was a favorite part of her, too.

Aw, hell. He was in love with all of it. All of her.

Laughing, she bounced on the bed, encouraging him to dive in after her. Her low, throaty chuckle enticed him to more acrobatic feats. She practically forced him to kiss her deeper, harder, longer. Her long, slim legs scissored around his waist, her thigh muscles stronger than he would have believed, but hey, when she was in the mood, she wanted him inside her now. Now and deep.

The way he was raised, a gentleman took care of a lady. He did his best.

In fact, he did his zealously devoted, conscientious, meticulous, Boy Scout best to give her all the trouble she was asking for and more.

Aeons later, when he finally peeled off of her—dragging her on top of him, because he hadn't forgotten his orders to not allow any separation between them—he seemed to be panting like a worn-out hound…and smiling so hard he couldn't even wipe it off.

She felt…impossibly good.

He never wanted to let her go.

W
ILL FIGURED
this moment had to register as the most perfect of all time. Kel felt like treasure in his arms. His stomach had started rumbling a while back. So had hers. He was hungry and jet-lagged and had a mountain of things he had to do yet today, but he still didn't want to move. Not while he had her right where he wanted her, cheek and arms and boobs and legs sprawled or snugged so she fit just right against him.

Of course, eventually the obvious came out of her mouth. “Will, this was wrong.”

He didn't open his eyes. “Talk about déjà vu. I could have sworn we had this same conversation in Paris.”

“No, we didn't. Well, I guess we did, but it wasn't exactly the same. In Paris, I already knew I wasn't going to marry Jason, that I couldn't. So it was wrong that I hadn't severed that relationship before sleeping with you. But it wasn't wrong to fall for you.”

Thankfully he'd learned a lot since meeting her. He didn't try suggesting that was convoluted reasoning, for example. He simply said, “Damn right, it wasn't,” and then peeked under the sheet, because…well, because looking at her naked body was stress reducing.

When it came down to it, he could think of forty reasons why looking at her naked body was a good thing. And that was without even applying his mind to the task.

Kelly seemed on a slightly different mental street. “Generally, I really believe that a couple can solve problems together. That they should solve problems together.”

“Damn right,” he agreed.

“But right now I have problems you can't possibly solve. And you have problems that I can't solve. They're not
our
problems. They're individual problems.”

“Hey, that doesn't mean we can't still help each other.”

“And I'm for that,” she agreed. “But I'm not for adding more complications to the mix.”

“Which means what?” Will already knew this conversation was going in the wrong direction. He just didn't know how bad it was going to be. And she was stroking her fingertips on his chest, making it impossible to concentrate.

“Which means,” she said gently, “that if my family realizes I'm sleeping with you, they're going to think I broke up with Jason because of you. I don't want them prejudiced against you, especially because you'd be blamed for something that wasn't your fault. I need to face my own music there. I also have to figure out this housing thing, because I'll never survive living like a college kid for long. So I have to get this whole broken-engagement business off my table completely. And as for you…”

“Me? What?”

“You're in a parallel situation. I can listen to you, about your dad and your family. I can be with you, whenever you want me to. But you have to decide what you want to do about the situation. I don't even want to try to influence you. I want you to do whatever your heart tells you is right.”

He heard all that. But he still hadn't heard the bottom line. “All of which means what? Somehow I sense this has to do with sex.”

She leaned back so she could face him eye to eye. “That's just because you associate everything with sex. You're male.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, in this rare, rare case…you're right. About the nature of the problem. I think we should, um, refrain from sleeping together. Until we get our lives a little more under control.”

“I think that's a lousy idea,” he stated firmly.

“You want to get even more involved with me—if you end up deciding not to stay in the U.S.?”

He opened his mouth, closed it.

“See? We're just not in a good place to put hopes or plans on the table. At least not yet. All sex could do is make our situations messier.”

“Sex is good in all circumstances,” he began.

She slugged him. “Look. I'm not for abstinence—”

“Neither am I. Ever.” He wanted his vote on that to be crystal clear.

“—but I think a little stretch of it is necessary. Look, how long could it take for you to work through the problems with your family? For me to get my family to accept that my engagement to Jason is undeniably over? I mean…one way or another, these things are going to happen. They're just not problems that are fixable in a blink. But this couldn't take more than a few weeks to get straightened out, right?”

He frowned at her. “I don't know when you started doing all this thinking, but I want you to quit it, right now.”

“Will, we can do things together. Talk together. Even go to things involving our families together. But I think we should be able to say, to anyone who asks, that the decisions we're making right now are not connected to each other. Otherwise you're going to get blamed for my mess with Jason.”

“You think I'd care if anyone blamed me?”

“I'd care.”

He wanted to offer an argument but couldn't. Because reality was exactly what she'd said. “I don't want to make anything worse for you,” he said honestly.

“I made it what it is. You didn't. But the fact is, we've only known each other for a very short amount of time.”

“Three weeks.” Even when he said it, he couldn't believe it. How could he only have known her for three weeks?

“Exactly. Three weeks. Hardly a lifetime. Yet we fell right back in bed together as if we were…well, as if we were a couple. When there are still dozens and dozens of unsettled things between us. My life is here. Yours has been in Europe. I'm a practicing Catholic. You've got an allergy to religion. You come from money and you have money. I'm beyond broke. I'm into guilt, and that's not a small thing. I could wear you down over the long run. You could find me exhausting. Tedious. I'm trying to say…honest to Pete, Will, we really don't know enough about each other to be sure we've got anything long-term going on. We don't have to be in a rush.”

“Kel…” He wanted to wash a hand over his face. And he would have if his palm hadn't been occupied keeping her right breast warm. “I'm afraid you're all mixed-up. It's the guy who's supposed to say, why be in a rush. I'm supposed to be the one who talks you out of using sucky words like ‘commitment' and ‘long-term' and all that.”

“Will?”

“What?”

“You're in sex with me. And I'm definitely in sex with you, too. But I'm not positive we've got the scary four-letter word going for the long run.”

She didn't have to spell out the
love
word. But it miffed him that she didn't. “Maybe it isn't. But I think sex is damned important.”

She grinned at him. A roguish, impish, archly feminine grin. “So do I. With you. And actually, that means that a little stretch of abstinence could be a lot of fun.”

“No, it couldn't,” he argued immediately. “Abstinence is never fun. And it could never be fun with you. Assuming it's even possible.”

“Will.”

“What now?”

“Get serious. You know I'm only saying what you're thinking.”

He opened his mouth, but that was such a confounding thing for her to say that he couldn't think of a single response.

And then she bounced out of bed—out of his reach.

 

O
KAY
.
He accepted it. Kelly was more trouble than a pack of puppies.

Will parked his rental car in the driveway, and mentally braced before climbing out. His parents' house was an architectural wonder—lots of glass, lots of redwood, a shake-shingle roof with a variety of pitches and angles. The layers of landscaping added to the impression of a home that had endless twists and surprises, no two rooms alike, no two views alike. The place was spectacular. Aaron liked to say, with pride, that he'd managed to build it for under three mil.

Will remembered a picture that used to be in his bedroom when he was growing up—a framed photograph of a wolf in sunlight. You couldn't see the barbed-wire fence, but the shadows of the wires showed on the wolf's face. The animal was trapped. It was in his eyes. And that was exactly how Will had always felt when he was around his old man.

He climbed the steps, thinking that was exactly why he couldn't get his mind off the discussion with Kelly. The woman was damned annoying—worse, when she was right.

The truth was, he
did
have five miles of trouble without adding more to his plate. Another annoying truth was that he couldn't very well offer Kelly a life together until he had a clue what his half of that life was going to be. So she was absolutely right. It was nuts to think about their future as a couple when neither of them even knew what country they were going to live in.

Damn woman.

At the top of the front steps, he rapped a couple times on the Chinese lacquered door, then turned the knob. “It's me!” he called out.

“Will!”

His three sisters all charged him at once, with their mom letting the girls reach him first. He never could come home without being smothered in estrogen. Martha had already seen him, of course, since he was staying at her place, but not Laurie and Liz.

Liz, the youngest, had a new short haircut, very spiky, and was duded up with a bunch of gaudy baubles. Liz never saw a new style she didn't like. Laurie, the middle sister, was just the opposite—she'd worn her hair in the same sleek, smooth style since high school, had the same sapphire ring that was her only regular jewelry.

All three of them kissed and grabbed him the same way, though, jabbering at the same time, giving him more ardent smooches and hugs…until his mom's voice intervened.

“Oh, Will…you look so, so wonderful!”

Damn it. His mother crossed the room with tear-filled eyes. He swooped her up and spun her around—she never had weighed more than a half-pint. That made even more tears glisten in her eyes, but at least she started laughing, too.

“Oh, honey, you look so good,” she whispered. “I've missed you so, so much.”

Hell, he'd missed her, too. He'd forgotten her slight frame, the scent of Shalimar and the gold heart she always wore and that gentle, quiet voice of hers. She'd been there for him a hundred million times. It wasn't his mom's fault he'd taken off for France.

At the time, he'd thought an ocean wasn't enough distance to put between him and Aaron, but that wasn't to say he'd ever wanted to desert his mom.

“Hey. Did you get a face-lift?” he asked her.

“Oh, you. Of course not.”

“Are you sure? You look so young and gorgeous.”

His mom's face flushed with pleasure. “I've missed your blarney, Will. Come on, though. I made all the things you like for dinner, but there's chilled shrimp first. And lemon-meringue pie for dessert. And ribs that have been simmering all day.”

His sisters separated him from his mom and promptly grabbed both arms. “She thinks she's gonna spoil you, but I've got news, brother,” Liz warned. “You're getting nothing—no food, no water, nothing—until we hear what's going on in your life. Is there a woman? What are you working at? Did you bring pictures? If you're going to stay over there, can I come visit you for a while?”

As the exuberant chatter continued—they didn't give him a chance to answer a single question before plying another—Will kept thinking that Kelly would have been okay with every part of this. If she'd been here, she'd not only do the estrogen fest, she'd have a blast with it. If she just saw his family like this, it'd be okay.

Then the far door slammed, and his father walked in.

Aaron Maguire had always been larger-than-life to Will.

The look was tall and strong, stern-faced and handsome. The posture reflected an iron will and the character to back it up. Aaron never gave up, never gave in and, on top of stubbornness, was smart and ambitious and would kill for his family. His employees always jumped when he walked into a room, but no one could claim they outworked him, because he never asked anyone to do something he wasn't willing to do himself. But then, he wasn't human, Will had always thought.

Aaron was beyond human.

That hadn't exactly changed, only Will suddenly shifted uneasily. When had his dad gotten those wrinkles? Lost the ruddiness in his face?

Aaron strode forward, clapped a hand on his shoulder, then yanked him close for a heavy hug. “Good,” he said heartily. “Good, you came home for your mother.”

He felt his mother and sisters fall quieter than midnight. He knew the women were worried there would be friction.

“Yeah, I did,” Will agreed. “And it's really great to see everyone. I missed you all.”

And that's how it went for a while—light and easy. He kept thinking how Kelly would see it all. She'd think he'd been stupid to hide out in Paris. Stupid to miss out on the family laughter, and the big dinner spread his mom put out, and his sisters driving him crazy with all their teasing and prying questions.