The Fifth Favor (31 page)

“Rudy speaks Italian?”

“And a little Spanish.”

Billie smiled to herself as Christopher led her down the hall. “Does he sleep in your room?”

“Not tonight.” They rounded the corner and stopped for him to throw open a set of double doors. Then he stepped aside and allowed her to enter the bedroom before him.

In silence, Billie took in the queen-sized cherry bed and its accompanying furnishings. At the foot of the unmade bed, a weathered travel trunk held a stack of hardback books and a folded chenille blanket. Beyond that, two large windows flanked a sitting area containing a plaid loveseat and a leather club chair. Books were scattered everywhere, piled on the bedside table, the loveseat, spilling from the ottoman by the chair. He was obviously a voracious reader, something that didn’t surprise her.

Soft light spilled from a brass floor lamp to her left and two table lamps behind her.

The golden glow played across Christopher’s features and gilded his complexion as he watched her from the doorway.

The man fit the furnishings, Billie mused as she ran her fingertips across a copy of Henry James’
The Bostonians
lying open and facedown on the night table.

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The Fifth Favor

Her eyes flickered over the bed’s rumpled sheets as she kicked off her tennis shoes, resolve wedging itself before impatient desire. Ever aware of his searing regard and the wash of heat it poured over her, she unfastened her shorts, let them slide down her legs and tossed them on the ottoman. Then she crooked a finger at him. “Come here.”

Christopher straightened from the doorjamb and crossed to where she stood. He waited before her in silence; the only sign of puzzlement the slight furrow between his brows.

“Hold up your arms,” she instructed, and when he lifted them, she caught the hem of his T-shirt and drew it up and over his head in one strong sweep, leaving his raven hair ruffled, his lean cheeks flushed.

He reached for her, but she evaded his touch.

“Now your sweatpants.” Moving with excruciating care, she slipped her fingers between the drawstring waistband of his jersey bottoms and his hard, flat stomach, the soft trail of hair there tickling her knuckles as she found the strings and tugged them loose. His pants slackened on his hips, and he said nothing as she tugged them down and let them fall in a puddle at his ankles. With a single step, he freed himself and kicked the garment aside.

Billie wanted nothing more than to drink in the sight of his smooth, hard-muscled physique clad only in a pair of white cotton boxers, but she averted her gaze and led him by the hand to the bed, where she held back the sheet for him.

For the first time, genuine humor played around his mouth. “Tucking me in?” he asked, his voice husky.

“And myself with you, just for a little while.”

After a surprised hesitation, he climbed beneath the sheet and scooted over, and she followed, waiting until he’d situated a pillow behind his head before she stretched out on the mattress beside him.

“Closer,” he murmured.

She aligned herself against him and her cheek found his chest, the place where the skin was warm and stretched tight over muscle, beneath which his heart beat firm and steady. Her arm encircled his waist, and when she was comfortable, she released a deep, contented sigh.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to act,” he spoke against her hair as he stroked her arm, bared by the sleeveless tank.

“Happens to the best of us,” she said drowsily.

Beneath the sheet their legs tangled, naked skin sliding together, sleek against hirsute.

His fingers settled at the curve of her backside, his touch warm through the thin silk of her panties. Above her, he shifted his head to meet her gaze. “What happens now?”

“Now you sleep,” she whispered.

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His mouth quirked. “I suppose I deserve this, to have the woman I desire take me to bed to…sleep.”

“You’re drunk.” She reached up, found his cheek and brushed her fingers through his tousled hair. “Close your eyes.”

His chest rose beneath her temple as he drew in a breath, released it in a slow, heavy sigh. His lashes lowered, opened again and then slid closed.

Gradually Billie felt the tension seep out of his body, and soon his breathing came deep and even.

She nestled her cheek against him, reveling in the sexy scent of his skin: faded soap, laundry detergent and something else deliciously, wholly male. Desire thrummed as forcefully through her veins as the blood that carried it.

She could teach him a thing or two about making love, no question. Show him the difference between sex born of love and mere copulation.

But not now. Now he slept, and after a moment, without meaning to, she followed.

* * * * *

Somewhere in the night, Christopher stirred awake. A blinding light pierced his eyelids. He held up a hand to block the glare before he realized it was only the dimmed light spilling from the bathroom.

God almighty
. To his pounding eyes, the glow seemed as intensely bright and relentless as a spotlight, and he turned to bury his face in the pillow, wondering how the hell he’d slept through it in the first place.

Ah, yes. Beer, then beer, then more beer. Then whiskey.

Then Billie.

The scent of soft, warm female filled his senses and he shifted his head, squinting against his rumba-rhythm headache to look at the woman sleeping next to him.

Her face was turned slightly away from him, dark hair puddled on the pillow like a midnight halo. He could only see the curve of her cheek, the fringe of her lashes, tipped gold by the glow pouring through the bathroom door.

A strand of hair threaded through the diminutive silver hoop in her earlobe and curled against her cheek. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the thin white tank top with an almost imperceptible motion. She slept as silent and motionless as if she were under an enchanted spell.

He braced himself on an elbow to get a better look at her and held his breath, momentarily forgetting the pain behind his eyes. There was something excruciatingly intimate about watching a woman sleep, especially this woman. Because even with a vicious hangover battering his system, all he could do was stare at her, wanting and needful, while desire quickened the flow of blood in his veins.

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The Fifth Favor

She’d stayed and held him through the storm, wrapped her warmth and comfort around him…and for that alone he cherished her, but there were so many more reasons he’d fallen in love with her.

As if sensing his regard, Billie stirred and turned her face toward him, dark lashes fluttering. Her lips parted, expelled a sigh. One hand brushed at her nose, then flopped onto the pillow beside her, palm up, and she settled back into stillness.

Christopher let his gaze slide down to her lips and imagined them curved in humor. It had sucker-punched him in his solar plexus the first time he heard her laugh…and since then, she’d hardly smiled at all, and laughed even less. He’d seen far more confusion and unhappiness in her features in the time they’d known each other, and the burning compulsion to banish the foundering past, to bring her to a place of joy, reared up within him.

Make it right, Christopher
, she’d said.
Give me a reason to stay.

He loved her. He wanted to wake her up and tell her, show her in the only way he knew how.

In the end, though, his hammering headache demanded a return to sleep. Settling back against the pillow, still half-drunk on liquor and the scent of her skin, he laid his hand in hers, closed his eyes…and smiled when her fingers curled around his in response.

* * * * *

Billie awoke with a start, wide-eyed and instantly alert. The cheerful morning sun glowed beyond Christopher’s bedroom window.

Oh, God, what had she done?

She’d only meant to close her eyes for a moment; instead she’d slept through the night, and the three articles she owed Nora for the upcoming issue of
Illicit
still needed last minute polishing. Nora would kill her if she overran this morning’s deadline.

Beside her, Christopher was still positioned on his back, sheet slung low across his bare stomach, one tanned arm flung above his head, as though he hadn’t stirred even once during the night.

Sleep of the dead—or the drunken. A fresh wave of consternation swept over her at the memory of last night’s strange unfolding, and she slid from beneath the sheets, careful not to wake him.

As she stepped into her shorts and fastened them, her gaze drifted back to him.

Desire dried her throat. All she wanted was to forget
Illicit
, forget her obligations, climb back into bed with him, run her hands over his bare chest, kiss his delectable mouth…and he wouldn’t push her away. Deep in her feminine soul, she knew how 173

Shelby Reed

he’d wanted and needed her last night, and that nothing, not even the dissolution of the alcohol’s effects, would change that now.

Wake him
.

Briefly, thoughts of deadlines and rushing home to dress for work faded away.

Heart thudding with indecision, Billie moved in silence around to his side of the bed and gazed down at his face.

In repose, his features were seraphic. His lashes lay like ashy shadows on his cheeks; the untold stress of the last few days had worn lines in his complexion. Even in rest, a frown left two shallow creases between his brows. His fingers still rested on his stomach, tanned against the stark white linen; they twitched once, and his dark head shifted slightly on the pillow.

She wondered what he was dreaming.

Easing down on the mattress, she studied his hand, the long fingers that had plied and caressed her body with such skill, the broad wrist and smooth skin. Veins stood in rigid roadmaps along his forearm; the inside of his biceps was a little paler than the rest of him.

There was so much she didn’t know about him…like how he would taste there, in that fair-skinned, vulnerable place where she so wanted to press her lips.

A soft ticking drew her drugged regard from his body, and she glanced at the alarm clock sitting on the granite-topped night table. God, now she really was late.

As she rose from the bed, Christopher stirred and rolled to his side, reaching for her hand. “Where are you going?” he murmured, voice husky and sleep-slurred.

“I have to go home and get ready for work,” she whispered. “Don’t wake up.”

His lashes never lifted; he settled back against the pillow with a deep sigh, and the veil of unconsciousness softened his features again.

Unable to help herself, Billie leaned down and kissed his mouth, letting her lips linger for a sublimely sweet, breathless instant.

Loving Christopher Antoli, she reminded herself, was like waltzing on quicksand.

Tiptoeing out the bedroom door with tennis shoes in hand, she glanced back at his sleeping form and heaved a sigh of regret. For the mistakes she’d made. For the mistakes he’d made. As much as she wanted it, how could their relationship grow from the muddied place it had begun?

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The Fifth Favor

It was gone.

The CD-Rom containing Adrian’s interview was gone!

Frantic, Billie ruffled through the loose reports and documents on her desk, then dug into the desk drawers, yanking out folders, notebooks, paper supplies. A glint of silver caught her eye and her pulse leaped. Lifting out a file filled with interview notes, she snatched up the computer disc. The label read, “Women Over Thirty Dating Interviews.”

Her heart plummeted…and a sick, clairvoyant-like suspicion gnawed at the edge of her mind.

Pulse racing, she picked up the phone and buzzed her editor’s office.

“Nora Richmond.”

“If I come down there right now, you’re going to reassure me that you know nothing about the disappearance of a disc off my desk, right, Nora?”

Silence. “Come to my office,” Nora said finally. “We need to talk.”

The trek from Billie’s desk to the editor’s door took a century and drained every last ounce of strength from her body. Her darkest desires were on that CD-Rom. She felt as though she’d been marched onto a platform and stripped naked.

Stepping into the sleek, contemporary office, she closed the door gingerly behind her, panic widening her eyes as she sought to read the truth on Nora’s face. “Did you take my article about Adrian?”

Nora squinted at her from behind a mug of steaming herbal tea. She’d been trying to kick her caffeine habit for the past week and was crankier than a junkie on the wagon. After a hesitation, she wheeled back on her chair, opened a desk drawer and slid the incriminating evidence across the desk toward Billie. “I had a feeling you’d be angry.”

Hysterical laughter threaded with relief bubbled in Billie’s throat as she reached for the CD-Rom. “It’s a total invasion of privacy.”

“An inadvertent one, and I’ll explain that in a minute. First, I don’t understand why you lied and told me the article was incomplete and that you had no interest in finishing it.”

“It wasn’t intended for anyone’s eyes but my own.” Tension banded the muscles in her neck, and a relentless throbbing began behind her left temple. “You read it?”

“Of course I read it. It’s brilliant.” Nora stood and braced nail-bitten fingertips on the desk blotter. “I don’t normally snoop through your work, Billie, but as usual you 175

Shelby Reed

ran late this morning, and I had a deadline! I sent one of the interns into your office to find the articles you were supposed to deliver to me at nine o’clock. She came back with three discs. Lo and behold, I stumbled across the finest, most provocative writing I’ve ever seen you produce.” Her frown deepened. “And speaking on a strictly personal basis, I made a few assumptions based on what I read.”

Billie swallowed her anger and crossed her arms across her breasts, the CD-Rom rapier-edged as she twirled it between her fingers. “So now you know.”

It shouldn’t matter. There was no shame in loving Christopher. The shame lay in using him for his favors—paying him, but denigrating him all the same—as Nora had once done.