Guilty Pleasures (11 page)

“I’ll take you. Why don’t you keep Bobby here? He’ll be safe, Polly. Probably much safer than with your mother. He won’t be the first child Dusty’s protected. He’s good at it.”

Something close to terror darted into her eyes. “Bobby shouldn’t need protection.”

“And maybe he doesn’t. But be grateful it’s here just in case.”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t want to stop looking at you to find out.”

She breathed deeply, expanding her breasts.

A man was only a man. He studied her breasts.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’ve got to. I’m always going to have to look at you.”

“Fab will be expecting me at TGIFriday’s.”

Her mouth was a magnet. “You’ll be introducing me as a date.”

“She
…
Nasty, Fab and I share everything. I haven’t said anything to her about a man in my life.”

Gripping her shoulders, he slowly lowered his lips to hers, and said, “You’re going to say something about me tonight,” before he sucked her top lip, very gently, between his teeth.

He felt her coming apart in his hands. She filled her fingers with his cotton shirt and clutched him closer. Her moan filled his brain. They kissed ferociously, driven by the power of fear—her fear, and his desire—for her.

She tore her mouth away and rested her brow on his chest. “We’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to stay away from each other.”

“Why? Because we both want the same thing.”

“No—”

“Yes! I’ve been hard for days.”

“Please.”

“Anytime,” he told her, deliberately twisting her meaning. “I can lock the door. We’ll have each other here. Now. But it’ll only be a start. You’re a drug to me. I can’t get enough of you, and I’m never going to get enough of you.”

“This never happened to me.” With her palms flat on his chest, she raised her face. “I’m not like this. I know I got pregnant when—”

“You don’t have to talk about that.”

“Yes, I do. If you think you want me so badly, you need to know who I am. Who I was. I was a wild kid. I thought I had something to prove. Getting pregnant was the best gift I could have had. I was on my way to the end of my world until Bobby. But I wasn’t promiscuous. Sam was the man who got me when I didn’t have anyone else. He made me feel important. I’d never felt important before. But then I grew up. There isn’t a man who doesn’t think I’m cold,
Nasty. I don’t lust after…
Sex.” Her lips remained parted.

“But,” he said softly, “you lust after sex with me, don’t you?”

Her hands became fists.

He said, “That sounds so calculating—so self-indulgent. I lust after you. All I have to do is think of you, and I spring to attention, love. When I look at you, I’m in pain. When I touch you”—he framed her face—“torture of the best kind is what you do to me. I want to take your clothes off.”

She cried out, then covered her mouth.

“Don’t worry. They’re too busy making their own plans to miss us.”

She shook her head.

“Love, love,” he murmured, and cupped her bottom. He was a great deal taller than Polly. He had to all but lift her off her feet to bring their pelvises together. “You’re going to keep on seeing me, Polly. And every time you do you’ll know I’m
thinking about this. I’ll be thinking about putting my hands between your legs and opening you up. And I’ll be thinking about slipping inside you.”

“Stop it.”

“D’you want me to?”

She held her tongue between her teeth.

“Do you want me to stop?” he repeated.

Polly unbuttoned his shirt. “We’ve got to go back to the kitchen.” She pulled the shirt open and kissed his chest. She kissed with her mouth open and used her tongue and teeth, and she forced her hands between them to seek out the part of him that throbbed and strained.

“Kiss me,” he ordered, gathering her hair in one hand at her nape to pull her head back. He didn’t wait for her to comply, but took what he wanted.

She jerked her face away. “This is mad.” Her hands shifted around his body. “Mad.”

“Yeah. Completely mad.” Deliberately, with the kind of willpower no man should be expected to have, he pried her hands loose and settled them on top of his shoulders instead. “And you’re right. We’d better cool it.”

Instantly, her eyes filled with tears.

“Hey! Hey, what is it, love? Hey—”

“Nothing,” she said, sniffing. Tears overflowed. “I don’t understand any of this. Someone’s threatening to kill me. I’m scared about that. But all I
can really think about is…
”

He held his breath.

“All I can think about is making love with you.”

“Yes!” He let it all out. “Oh, yes. Me, too. In every possible way.”

“Nasty—”

The kiss he allowed himself, one kiss, left them both gasping for air. “Now,” he said when he raised his head again. “First we get your mother safely on her way home. Then we have Dusty take Bobby over to show him around the shop.
Then I take you to TGIFriday’s to meet your sister. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

“Just a minute. Please. You’re going much too fast.”

“It couldn’t be fast enough. After we’ve met with your sister, I’m going to take you home.”

“You can’t plan my life like that.”

“Watch me.”

“Bobby—”

“I haven’t forgotten Bobby. I’m a responsible guy. Even when I’m having difficulty thinking of more than one thing, I’m still responsible.” When in doubt, attack.

Her hands slipped from his shoulders to his chest once more. “I love touching you,” she said, talking as if to herself. “I love the feel of you.”

Some things had to be taken care of or a man might die of needing them. “I’m going to take you home from the restaurant, Polly.”

“Mmm.”

“You’ve seen where I live. It’s only fair for you to show me your place.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Okay, I know. And after we get there I’m going to take my time loving the feel of you. We’re going to take our time. We’re going to make love.”

Six

T
he older model black Porsche didn’t give Nasty enough room. His bent knees amused Polly.

So far he’d done exactly as promised. Venus had returned to Bellevue and Hole Point—happily accepting Dusty’s offer to “take the boy and go meet some old friends.” Bobby remained with Dusty to learn about the shop.

And Polly sat beside Nasty while he drove through a pretty evening into the crammed lot at Park Place, the bustling shopping center and movie complex on Central Way.

“Next comes Fabiola,” Nasty said as if he could crawl inside her mind.

Polly smoothed her thin cotton dress over her bare legs.

He looked sideways at her. In this light his eyes turned oddly amber. “Is she like you to look at?”

“Taller. Prettier.”

“Not possible.”

She smirked. “Of course she can be taller.”

“Smartie.
”

“I love this area. It feels sort of San Francisco to me.”

He regarded riotous blooms cascading from planters, brightly filled windows in an eclectic array of shops, little tables arranged around a fo
untain and crowded with coffee-
drinkers, and he made an assenting noise. “Coffee aficionados and microbrew junkies all. Readers and talkers—walkers and bikers—and boaters. Civilized renegades. Or maybe domesticated mavericks. People here remind me of settlers with a lot of respect for having found nirvana. I love this place, too.”

“Are you from here?” She’d been waiting for an opening to see if he’d be protective of his background.

“Nope.”

One more “nope” and she’d know how protective he was. “So you’ve only lived in the area since you came to Kirkland?”

He swung the car into a slot not far from a line of waiting moviegoers. “Nope.”

Okay. “I was bo
rn
in Marysville—that’s a little town—”

“North of here on 1405—just the other side of Everett. Pretty place. Rural, really.”

“So you know Washington well.”

“Well enough.” He pulled on the emergency brake. “I spent some time in Issaquah when Dusty used to live there. That was while my friend, Roman, ha
d business connections at a…
a sort of health club in the mountains. Foothills of the Cascades. In a place called Past Peak. Have you been there?”

“Of course.” She turned sideways in her seat to look at him. “I like to ski. In the winter Bobby and I go up to Snoqualmie. It’s not far from Past Peak. Do you ski?”

He stared straight ahead. “I used to.”

His ankle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“I’ll ski again. I’m already a hundred percent better than I was after it happened.”

“That’s great.” Relief at his optimism eased her breathing. “How long ago was the accident?”

“Twenty months. Not that I’m counting.” He faced her. So enigmatic. So compelling. The final rays of a setting sun turned him gold.

“Did you do it skiing?”

His lips flattened. “No, Polly, I didn’t do it skiing. Are we ready for beer and noise?”

She’d hit yet another of his nerves, this one very raw. “We’ve got a few minutes.” She should know when to quit.
She did, but wanted to know more. “You sound as if you’ve been to TGIF before.”

“Yeah.” He ducked his head to see up to the second-story balcony, and the red-and-white striped canvas awnings over the windows of the restaurant. “Cheerful.”

“Good American food. I have simple tastes.”

“So do I. In food. Not in women.”

He had the power to stop the blood in her veins. “What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t have a simple taste in women. Not if the woman’s going to be important to me. I’ve had a lot of difficulty making any choices at all. But now I have, and she isn’t simple. I choose you, Polly.”

Nasty did everything he did so well. He speared her easily in place with a clear, unwavering gaze.

“Do you have folks?” she asked.

“Everyone has folks.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. You mean you’re curious about me. I take that as a compliment.”

Polly rubbed her cotton skirts again. “And you also take it that I’m nosey. Isn’t that what you’re suggesting?”

“I want to know about you, Polly. That doesn’t make me nosy, it makes me interested. I want you to be interested in me, too—it means you care. I was bo
rn
in Montana. On a ranch.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re kidding.”

“Why would I
be? Don’t I look like a guy who’d be at home in the saddle?”

Polly considered. “I think you’re a guy who’d be a heart-breaker in the saddle. With one of those hats tipped over your eyes, and worn jeans. Scuffed boots. An oilskin duster that looks like someone had a war in it. Yes, I—”

“You’ve got quite an imagination.” He stroked the bridge of her nose. “I left Montana a long time ago. I was seventeen. I’ve never been back.”

“Why?”

“You and Seven should be great pals.”

“What does that mean?”

“You both want to know everything about everything. I haven’t had a reason to go back. I may now that my friend Roman and his wife live there. Wanna come?”

Polly blinked, and shook her head. “You just keep dropping things on me. Get serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life than I am right now, with you.”

He wasn’t giving her a chance to weigh what had happened between them.

“Cool it,” he told her, and spread his big, right hand on her thigh. “I’m not going to try to drag you off to Montana tonight, or anywhere else, except to bed.”

“Nasty!” Her heart smote her ribs. “You know you don’t mean that.”

“Okay. I don’t mean it.” That warm, hard hand rubbed her leg to the knee and back to the groin. And that’s where it stayed. He didn’t even let his small finger quiver, but it rested where it shouldn’t rest—and they both knew it. His grip tightened. “I do mean it.”

“Fab’s zany,” Polly said, making a grab for safe ground. “She says the first thing that comes into her head.”

“I’ve got a one-track mind.”

Polly eyed him quizzically.

“I can only think about you, right now. For the rest—I’ll just be going through the motions.”

She’d missed safe ground. Every second took her farther down the slippery slide toward crawling into his arms and taking whatever they could have together, and to hell with the rest.

“What’s that look about?”

She started. “We should go into the restaurant.”

“Did the guy who left the pep talks on your answering machine make any comments about you having dangerous new
friends?”

She shrugged and prepared to
brush the questions off again.
Instead, she averted her head and frowned unseeingly at the windows of nearby Park Place Book Company.

“That’s a yes,” Nasty remarked conversationally. “Isn’t that interesting? New friends. Who do you think these people are talking about?”

In some cases she had no idea. But when the man had berated her for the thin cotton skirt, he’d been talking about her walking on the dock and meeting Nasty. He’d been jealous of Nasty seeing her, that much had become very clear to Polly. And she no longer believed this man could be a threat, not the kind of threat she’d originally feared.

“You aren’t afraid of me anymore, are you?”

“Not the way
…
No.”

His short laugh held no mirth. “You’re afraid of me, but differently from the way you used to be afraid of me. Great. How about explaining that to me?”

“I’ve got to meet my sister.”

When she reached for the handle, he shot out a hand, palm up, inviting her to hold it.

Hesitantly, Polly rested a hand on his.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he told her. “I think I understand. You’re afraid being around me is bad for your health. That it’s making someone jealous.”

“Something like that.”
Why continue to avoid the truth?

“What do you think happens next? In this setup?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. If I’m out of the picture, your champion watches for any other man who looks in your direction, and threatens you until you get rid of him, too. And so it will go. Until or unless this creep gets the balls to approach you himself.”

“Don’t!”

“There’s no point in pretending. That won’t make it go away.
The time to make a stand is now—with me to help you. But you’ve got to stop walking around smelling of fear.”

“If I keep to myself, he might be satisfied.”

“You’re not listening. It’s not
me,
Polly. It’s anyone you might get close to. You do see that?”

“I guess so. But I feel helpless. You can’t fight an enemy you don’t know.”

He took her hand to his lips and kissed it. He closed his eyes and kissed each finger, each bone in the back of her hand her wrist.

Polly stroked his hair, she couldn’t help herself. He raised his face and settled the side of his head against the rest. “I can see the enemy. Not his face. I don’t have to. But I can see him—or feel him’s a better explanation. That’s what I’m trained to do. To get you, he’ll have to come through me. The guy’s a coward, a sneaky coward. He won’t risk coming face-to-face with me. And wherever you are, I’m never going to be far away.”

“You’ve got work to do.”

“I run the diving classes, and we’re between sessions. Dusty doesn’t like my shopkeeper efforts.”

“So you can squeeze in saving Polly before the next set of diving lessons.” She sounded disgustingly petulant.

Nasty put her hand back in her lap. “However long it takes to get my hands on this clown, that’s how long I’m going to take. I’m going to flush him out and bury him.”

Alarm unwound in Polly. “Violence never solves anything.”

“Wrong.” The cynical downward turn of his mouth shook her. “Violence often solves a lot of things. Unfortunate, but true. But don’t worry, I’m not planning to kill this jerk, just maim him for life.”

“Nasty—”

“I’ve got to live up to my reputation. Keep in practice, too. Nail-pulling is an art. I’d better get my pinking shears sharpened, too.”

Polly felt her eyes widen. “Pinking shears?”

“Most effective tool fo
r an attractive circumcision.”

She screamed. She couldn’t help it.

“As I said,” he told her when she’d covered her mouth. “You don’t have a thing to fear, Nasty’s here. So’s Dusty. God help this dickless little bastard.
Whoops!” A blush gave Nasty a f
ascinating extra dimension. “S
orry about the language. Take
me up and introduce me to Fabiola.”

Baskets of scented hybrid petu
nias and trailing ferns swung
a little in the breeze. Polly registered their colors, and their heady smell, but didn’t s
top moving until Nasty reached
around her to push on the brass door handle at TGIFriday’s. Noise, heat, and essence o
f charbroiled meat blasted her
face. The instant they passed fro
m the foyer through the second
set
of doors, a crowd of men about
a
co
rn
er
table
told
her
where she’d find Fabiola. Men flocked
to
Fab,
they
couldn’t
help themselves; yet she had never found one she wanted on
more than a temporary basis.

“Follow me,” she told Nasty
, passing tables overhung with
Tiffany lamp shades that allowed only a muted glow through colored glass. Perched on high stools, patrons watched banks of television screens around an elevated bar. Red light flickered in the face of an oversize clock.

“
Hey, Polly! Come and join us.”

She sought and found Art Loder’s pleasant, smiling face at a nearby table. He sat with Jennifer, with Jack Spinnel, and several members of the crew. Polly squeezed Art’s shoulder. “This place is bursting. Hi, guys. This is Nasty Ferrito. He owns a local dive shop. Nasty, this is Art and Jennifer Loder— our monsters. Jack Spinnel, writer, director, and producer. Willie Wonka—not his real name, I’ll tell you about that another time if you want to know—Willie does magic with makeup. Seamus, and Caroline. Wardrobe and camera respectively. We’ll come and visit later. We’re meeting my sister, Fab.”

“The microbrew girl?” Art said
, grinning. “Bring her over,
too.”

“Don’t buy into it, Polly,” Jennifer said. “He’s been trying to get her attention ever since she came in.”

Polly didn’t miss Jack’s cold stare—or the fact that it was directed at Nasty. “Later,” she told Art. “Business first. Then pleasure. See you, Jennie.”