Love's Road Home (20 page)

But she wasn’t going anywhere. This was exactly where she wanted to be.

In his arms.
Forever.

Oops. There was that annoying second voice again, sticking its nose into business that had been settled years ago.

Needing even more distraction, Beth forced Tom’s arm downward, leading his hand to her breast.

Another low groan came from his lips, and he instantly molded his fingers around her curved flesh, extremely sensitive beneath the dress she wore. The style of the clingy spandex hadn’t allowed for a bra, so her taut nipple was clearly outlined through the black material.

Tom pulled his head back to look down at what his ministrations had done to her. "Oh,
darlin
’, you are so beautiful."

He came forward again to kiss her while his hand moved to slide the thin strap of her dress off her shoulder.

Wanting his skilled fingers on her bare skin, Beth didn’t utter a single sound of protest. She’d completely forgotten other people were less than six feet away.

"Hannah, we need to talk about this!"

But the memory of where they were came rushing back as Jack and Hannah erupted through the French doors and onto the balcony next to them.

Tom dropped his arms and stepped away, keeping Beth out of view just enough for her to subtly readjust her dress.

"Jack, I told you I’m fine—oh, hi, Tom." Hannah’s eyes widened at the sight of Beth next to him. "And Beth?" Avid curiosity was so apparent on the woman’s face that Beth decided maybe she hadn’t been as subtle as she’d thought.

Jack shot Hannah a quelling look. Then he addressed Tom and Beth, his questioning gaze moving between them. "We’re not interrupting anything, are we?"

Tom quirked an eyebrow at his friend.
"Maybe I should be asking you the same thing."

Hannah sent Jack an indecipherable glance, but the two of them remained silent.

When a minute had elapsed with no one speaking, Beth decided to break the stalemate. "Tom, we should probably go back inside anyway."

"Yeah, all right."
He once again laid a guiding hand on her lower back, and they moved past Hannah and Jack and into the light spilling out of the suite. "See you two later."

"See
ya
." Beth added her own goodbye to Tom’s.

"Hey, Tom," Hannah said, "
wait
a minute." She dug into the tiny purse hanging off her shoulder and came up with a tissue. She handed it to Tom. "Wipe your mouth."

Beth looked closely at Tom’s face as Hannah continued on. "Plum Passion looks better on Beth than it does on you."

Tom grinned as he wiped traces of Beth’s lipstick from his face, but Beth felt a flush rise over her own skin.

The man had driven her crazy with lust in public places too many times. And he might be enjoying himself, but she couldn’t take it anymore.

The next time they engaged in a make-out session, it would be in private. And she was determined their activities would follow through to their natural, mutually satisfying end.

Three weeks of foreplay was enough, for God’s sake.

As Tom and Beth re-entered the parlor, the slim figure on a nearby balcony turned and went back inside
her own
room, slamming the door shut behind her.

•

The trip to
Erie
,
Pennsylvania
, and the ensuing performance there were uneventful—a blessed change from the hubbub surrounding the previous shows.

Throughout the concert and the autograph session afterward, Beth had been riding high due both to the crowd’s energy and to Tom Crowley. His proximity to her on stage and at the signing table later on was a big tease: Look but don’t touch.

It made her want to scream.

So as they arrived back at their hotel, Beth was torn. On one hand, she wanted to grab Tom and shove him into the first empty room they came across. Broom closet, public rest room, it didn’t matter. She just wanted him alone and naked.

But on the other hand, the adrenaline rush that had kept her going before was severely depleted, leaving her fighting to keep her eyes open. She wanted nothing more than a leisurely soak in her room’s big tub, but she was afraid she’d end up drowning if she tried it.

"Poker in our suite.
You girls up for it?" Leo apparently was still raring to go, even at this late hour.

As the group filed into the elevator, Hannah said, "Yeah, I’m game.
How about you, Beth?"

She gave a weak smile in reply. "Sorry, guys. The way I feel right now, I wouldn’t be much of a challenge to beat."

"Oh, come on. Compared to how Dylan plays, you’d be giving us a run for our money!" Jack’s comment started a bout of good-natured teasing among Hannah and the guys, with everybody voicing an opinion of the others’ poker skills.

They all had such fun together that Beth wished she had the stamina to join their card game. But she was totally wiped out.

Good thing they had time to recoup before their final concerts. Which meant the tour was almost over, and that thought made her head, and heart, ache.

Yeah, a long soak was definitely what she needed in order to forget about things for a while.

The elevator doors opened and everyone stepped out. Hannah moved to the right, saying to the men, "Give me about twenty minutes. I’m
gonna
shower and change first."

Tom grasped Beth’s wrist, pulling her aside as Hannah and the guys went their separate ways down the hall.

"Are you sure you’re not up to playing? Or even just hanging out with us?" His eyes searched her face. "Never mind. I can see how tired you are. Maybe we can do something tomorrow?"

She nodded and gave him a weary smile, then pulled his head down to kiss his cheek. "Thank you for understanding."

So much for her drag-Tom-into-a-janitor’s-closet-and-jump-his-bones idea.
With her luck, she would’ve fallen asleep in a mop bucket as soon as his clothes were off.

"I’ll walk you to your room," he said, taking her hand and leading her down the hall.

Minutes later, Beth was sprawled out, face down and fully dressed, on her double bed.

She knew she wouldn’t have made it through a bath, but she couldn’t even muster the energy for a quick shower. Perhaps after a short nap she’d feel better...

"Hey, Beth."
Someone was shaking her leg. "Hey, sweetie, you should change."

Beth turned her head to find Hannah sitting on the bed next to her, freshly showered and dressed in an olive tank and
capris
. A white sweater was draped over her shoulders to guard against the hotel’s overworked air conditioning.

"Man, you weren’t kidding when you said you were tired. I wasn’t in the bathroom more than ten minutes and you were dead to the world. But you wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping in that dress all night, so I figured I’d better wake you before I left."

Hannah gave a friendly pat to Beth’s back and then stood. "It’s too bad you don’t feel well. When we play poker it usually turns into an all-night thing." She smiled as Beth rolled to her back. "So there I’ll be, crashing in the guys’ suite, and you’ll be in this room all alone. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it?"

Beth rolled her eyes. That was the understatement of her life lately. "Gee, thanks for pointing that out."

She stood and stretched her arms over her head. Since she was up, she may as well take that shower. It might refresh her even more than her catnap had. And then maybe she’d see about getting Tom’s attention off of cards and onto her...

As Beth kicked off her heels and moved toward the bathroom, Hannah took a last look at herself in the wall mirror. "You sure you don’t want to come along?" she asked as she fluffed her bangs. "I can wait."

"No, you go ahead," Beth replied. "I may come by later, but I’m not sure yet."

Hannah smiled once again and let out a muffled chuckle. "Want me to save you some time and effort? I’ll just tell Tom to get his ass down here pronto. You won’t even need to get dressed. I’ll give him my key card and you can wait in the bed for him … naked!"

Beth joined in with Hannah’s laughter even as she grabbed a nearby pillow and tossed it at her friend’s head.

The sad thing was
,
she was seriously considering taking Hannah up on her suggestion.

"Okay, okay. I won’t say anything to him." Hannah’s expression turned serious. "But I hope you do. You guys deserve some special time together. Everyone can see you really care about each other."

Beth’s own smile slipped. "Thanks, Hannah. You’re a good friend. I’m glad we met."

"Me, too."
The women moved to give each other a quick hug.

"Now," said Hannah, stepping back, "I’m off to
whup
some guys’ butts in poker." She pulled open the door and began to step into the hall. "Ooh!
A present!"

Hannah leaned down to pick a festive-looking box off the floor. Beth moved to her side as Hannah looked at the gift tag. "Rats. It’s for you." She looked at Beth and arched an eyebrow.
"Looks like someone else doesn’t want to spend the night alone."

"Oh, stop it," was Beth’s reply as she took the package from Hannah. It was a florist’s box.

Now, how could Tom arrange for a flower delivery at this time of night?
Unless he’d received the box earlier and had waited to put it outside her door.

Maybe Hannah was right, and he, too, had hoped for a different end to this evening.

Well, Beth was fully awake now, so satisfying their mutual desires before the sun rose was a distinct possibility. She smiled as she loosened the huge red bow holding the box together.

Wouldn’t it be fun to tease Tom with his gift? To lightly drag the flowers over his body, barely grazing his skin with the velvet-soft petals, tickling him in his most sensitive areas?

She couldn’t wait.

But as she lifted the lid off the package, Beth’s smile froze, and she did something that was totally out of character.

She screamed.

Chapter Twelve

At the sound of Beth’s scream echoing in the hallway, Tom dropped the beer bottles he’d been carrying and raced toward her room.

What he saw stunned him.

Beth stood in the open doorway of the room, eyes wide and hands clasped over her mouth. At her feet was an open box. Black
roses,
complete with thorn-laden stems, spilled out onto the gray carpet.

The flowers were covered by black and white flecks which, on closer inspection, turned out not to be the floral potpourri he’d thought. They were animated masses of maggots, beetles, and spiders.

And while Beth stood petrified, a look of horror on her face, Hannah angrily stomped on any creature that dared to venture too far from the box, cursing all the while.

Hannah threw Tom an indignant glance as he knelt to gather as much of the mess as possible back into the package. "Can you believe someone would do this to her? How disgusting—gotcha!" She slammed her sandaled foot down onto a spider making its way toward Beth’s stocking-clad toes.