Neck & Neck (31 page)

Russell’s expression then turned as cold and hard as granite. “Did he—”

“No,” she replied quickly. “But he tried. A few times. My mom didn’t believe me when I tried to tell her, so I took off. I did okay on the streets until I got pregnant. Not great, but okay. But I knew I couldn’t raise a kid. Not like that. So I got help from a cop who’d busted me a few months earlier for shoplifting. She set me up with some good people, and by the time Mai . . . by the time my daughter was born,” she hastily amended, “I knew I wanted to keep her and raise her myself. By then, the cop had become a friend, and she was close to retirement, so she sort of unofficially adopted me. That’s who I called last night, because she lives with me and takes care of Mai . . . of my daughter while I . . .”

She started to say,
Go to school and work
, but finished with a simple “work,” because it was Amber who did that and Ginny who went to school. And right now, Ginny needed Amber way more than she needed herself.

Russell said nothing for a long time after she concluded her story, only studied her face and met her gaze fiercely, as if daring her to look away. But Ginny didn’t look away. She would never apologize for who she had been or who she was now. Accept responsibility, sure. Be accountable, you bet. But apologize? Never.

“You were a street kid,” he finally said, punctuating the comment with a period, not a question mark.

She nodded.

“Arrested for shoplifting.” Another sentence. Not a question.

“Among other things,” she admitted. “Nothing heinous like prostitution or drugs, but I’ve got more than one B and E on my record. A few burglaries. Mostly because I needed a warm place to sleep or something to eat.”

He nodded at that. “You had your daughter when you were fifteen?”

“I was fifteen when I got pregnant. I was sixteen when she was born.”

“That would make her how old now?”

“Thirteen.” She smiled, unable to help herself. “Thirteen going on thirty-five.”

“My son is fourteen.” He smiled back. “Fourteen going on thirty-five. What does your daughter want to be when she grows up?”

Ginny crossed her arms over her midsection and took a few experimental steps toward the bed. When she’d first come out of the shower to find him there, she’d thought he just wanted to have sex one more time before leaving, to start his day off right. Now, however, she realized he wanted to have an, ah, intercourse of another kind. One that was even more intimate.

She climbed into the bed and piled a few pillows against the headboard the way Russell had, then curled her legs up beside her. “Maisy,” she began, suddenly unafraid to tell him her daughter’s name, “wants to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. How about your son?”

Russell smiled at that, too, but this time it was one of those full-blown grins that just about made a woman want to spontaneously combust. “Does she now?” he replied instead of answering her question about his son.

Ginny nodded, unable to disguise her pride in her daughter. “She’s been involved with this group called Kids, Inc., since she was ten. It’s
such
a wonderful organization, but so woefully underfunded. It teaches disadvantaged kids about entrepreneurship and business and how to take an idea and turn it into a viable product. She’s become quite the little capitalist.”

He nodded his approval, which didn’t come as any shock. “My son, Max, wants to be a professional skateboarder,” he said. “Or a professional surfer. Or a professional snow-boarder. But if none of those things works out, he’ll deign to play for the NBA.”

Ginny laughed at that. Kids and their unrealistic dreams. Then again, she thought, when she was Maisy’s age, she hadn’t had any dreams at all. She started to say something else about her daughter, but a knock on the door halted her. It was punctuated by a muffled announcement of room service, so Russell rose from the bed to answer.

“Looks like we’ll be finishing our conversation over breakfast,” he said as he strode across the suite. “And then, afterward . . .” He paused before turning the doorknob. “We can make plans for the rest of the day.”

“As long as I’m home by two thirty,” she said. “That’s when I have to leave to pick Maisy up at school.”

“Not a problem,” Russell assured her. “Maybe, eventually, we could even . . .”

“What?” she asked when his voice trailed off.

“Well. Maybe, eventually, we could even make an excursion as a . . . foursome.”

Something inside Ginny warmed at that, a gentle, affectionate warmth for the innocence of the suggestion. He wanted her to meet his son, and he wanted to meet her daughter. She did her best not to feel too hopeful about that. Chances were good he just wanted his son to have someone close to his age to hang out with for a day. Maybe he just wanted Ginny and Maisy to take them sightseeing.

But maybe, just maybe, there was a little more to it than that.

THE SECOND TIME NATALIE AWOKE IN FINN’S BED, things were very different from the first time. For one thing, where she’d awoken on top of the bedspread that first time, now she was tangled amid a bundle of sheets. For another thing, where she’d been dressed that first time, now she was, um, not. For yet another thing, where she’d been alone that first time, now she was, um, not. And for a still another thing, where before she’d been reasonably confident no one had copped a feel after dumping her onto the mattress, now she was
extremely
confident that there had been a lot more than feeling going on.

The problem—not that all those other things didn’t present their own unique dilemmas, mind you—was that, at least in Natalie’s case, the feeling had gone way beyond the physical.

And therein lay the biggest problem and dilemma of all. When it came to feelings, she sincerely doubted that Finn was of the same mind as she. For him, last night had been about the physical. He’d more than made that clear before their lovemaking.

Sex, she corrected herself. To him, it had been sex. To her, it had been . . . something else. Something more. Something she probably shouldn’t even try to identify since there were so many reasons not to.

She closed her eyes and replayed the entire evening in her mind, trying to figure out where the road to physical attraction had taken an abrupt detour into emotional need. No, not detour, she corrected herself. Detour suggested that she would eventually come out safely on the other side and return to her normal route. After the night she’d spent with Finn, there was no way she could go back to her usual way of doing things.

Wrong turn, she amended. At some point last night, she’d made a wrong turn off Physical Avenue and onto Emotional Street, which appeared to be one-way. Then again, she was beginning to think her emotions had become engaged long before last night. Otherwise, last night never would have happened. Natalie wasn’t the kind of woman to succumb to physical desire just because she needed to, as Finn had said, “scratch an itch.” Oh, maybe she’d told herself that last night, but it had been her conscious mind speaking, not her subconscious. Because now that her itch had been scratched, she was in no way satisfied. On the contrary, she wanted more. Way more. More than Finn, she was certain, was willing to give. Last night hadn’t been a physical response to a sexual attraction. It had been the physical response to feelings she’d been having since . . .

Well. Maybe since that first day sitting at the bar in BBC trading lighthearted jabs. Maybe since that conversation when he’d opened up about the past he shared with Russell. Maybe since that moment in her kitchen when he leaned in close behind her and his scent surrounded her. Maybe since last night when he walked into Dean’s place with a breathtaking blonde on his arm.

Then again, the
when
of it really didn’t matter, did it? Nor did the
why
,
where
, or
how
. What mattered was the
who
. And what Natalie was going to do now.

She opened her eyes again, waiting for her vision to adjust to the semidarkness of the room. When it did, she saw Finn’s face mere inches from her own. They were sharing a pillow—she remembered how he’d tucked the other one under her fanny last night to bring her closer to his voracious mouth—and he had draped both an arm and a leg affectionately over her body.

Affectionately, hah, she immediately chastised herself. Possessively was more like it. And he wasn’t being possessive because he wanted to keep
her
by his side. He wanted to keep her
body
there. And only long enough for a repeat performance. Though now that he’d had her, now that he’d scratched his itch, he might not even want her body anymore.

Carefully, she turned over in bed, thinking maybe it would be easier for her to collect her jumbled thoughts if she wasn’t looking at him. But the more she moved, the more, ah,
possessive
his embrace became, his arm curling more snugly over her belly, his leg bending to keep her firmly in place. He covered her breast with his hand just as she felt his taut erection pressing against her backside, and it was all she could do not to groan aloud her response.

In spite of her confusing thoughts, she wanted him now even more than she had the night before. Instinctively, she moved, too, pressing herself against him, so that they were spooned from shoulder to ankle. He tucked his other hand between her legs, stroking her softly until she was wet with wanting and breathless with desire. That was when he slipped inside her from behind, his hard length delving deep, and jerked his hips upward until he was buried fully inside her. Again and again he pumped her, the hand on her breast squeezing in time with his motions, his hot breath dampening the skin of her neck. He came quickly this time, her own orgasm rocketing through her on the heels of his release, and then they lay there quietly for long minutes, their bodies still joined, neither saying a word.

When Natalie tried to turn over again to face him, he hindered her movements with a soft “No. Don’t move. I want to lie here inside you for a little while. This just feels too good to mess it up.”

Yeah, it did, she thought. But she probably wasn’t thinking that it felt good in the same way he did. To her, everything about the morning felt too good to mess up. The awareness of him—all of him—so close to her. The warmth of the sheet twining their bodies together. The softness of the pillow they shared. The musky aroma of their coupling. The gentle thumping of his heart between her shoulder blades. The simple joy of being with him. She wished they could have more mornings like this. Hundreds more. Thousands. Mornings where they shared themselves, utterly and completely, both body and soul. He was probably just thinking about how good it felt to have a breast—any breast—in his hand, and an ass—any ass—in his lap.

Still, she’d never know for sure if she didn’t ask, would she?

She purred a soft sound of contentment, wriggled herself more intimately against him—eliciting an equally satisfied sound out of him—and murmured, “It does feel good. I wouldn’t mind waking up like this . . .” She deliberately hesitated before adding, “. . . with you . . .” because she wanted to hammer that part home, then concluded, “. . . every morning.”

She knew the hammer had hit exactly where she’d aimed it when she felt Finn stiffen behind her—only not in a good way this time—and the temperature in the room dropped fifty degrees. Evidently deciding their position didn’t feel as good as he’d initially thought, he carefully disengaged his body from hers and rolled to the far side of the bed. By the time Natalie turned to look at him, Finn was sitting up, leaning against the headboard, studying her the way a chemistry professor must inspect a boron molecule under a microscope.

She wished she could be as dispassionate about him. But one glance at that brawny, naked chest sprinkled with dark hair, and those broad shoulders and arms cambered with muscle, and the shadow of rough beard, and the stormy eyes, and the last thing Natalie could be was dispassionate. On the contrary, even knowing he felt about her the way he did—specifically, that he seemed to have no feelings at all—she still wanted him. More than she’d ever wanted anything—anyone—before. With all her heart.

And that, she supposed, was the core of the problem. Maybe she didn’t know exactly
what
she felt for Finn—this thing was still too new and tentative for that. But whatever it was, the feeling did indeed come from her heart. His feelings for her, whatever they were, came from someplace else in him. His libido. His testosterone. His sex.

“You can’t wake up like this . . .” He hesitated the same way she did before continuing, “. . . with me . . . every morning, Natalie. For one thing, I’ll be leaving in a little over a week. For another thing, it’s never as good again between two people as it is the first time, so all the mornings after pale in comparison. And for another thing, I—”

“Don’t want to,” she finished for him, because she could tell by his expression that that was what was coming next, and she didn’t want to hear him say it. It would be much less painful coming from her. Hah. “You don’t want to wake up like this every morning. Not with me, anyway.”

He said nothing to either deny or confirm her allegation, but that was pretty much tantamount to an agreement as far as Natalie was concerned. Sure, he’d like to wake up next to a woman every morning after a night of spectacular sex. It just didn’t necessarily have to be Natalie lying there. But Natalie didn’t think she’d ever be able to wake up again without thinking about the night she’d spent with Finn. There might be other men in her life someday—maybe, possibly, perhaps, in the far distant future—but none of them would make her feel the way Finn Guthrie did. Emotionally
or
physically.

“Natalie, we need to talk.”

Whoa. Things were worse than she thought. It was supposed to be the woman who wanted to talk after lovemak . . . uh . . . after sex. The man was supposed to get dressed and run out of the room, with a hasty, “Gotta go, but I’ll call you,” tossed over his shoulder. If the guy really liked a woman, he’d be sincere about that. But never, ever, under any circumstances did a man utter the sentence
We need to talk
. That was venturing way too deep into Oprahland. And it was encoded knowledge in a man’s DNA that guys who visited Oprahland never returned quite the same. They started eating hummus and listening to Micheal Bublé and wearing oven mitts that
weren’t
shaped like lobster claws. Guys who went to Oprahland were doomed. They’d never go there on purpose.