Allison Leigh - Once Upon a Valentine

He shifted, bending his knee into the crook of hers. Every inch of her skin from knee to neck felt singed by him, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was well and truly awake. “I can feel you thinking,” he murmured. “And it’d be much more fun if we just settled on the feeling.”

If she really were thinking, she would have found some way to resist him. She wouldn’t be yearning, even now, to feel him moving possessively over her. Again.

She steeled herself against the seductive warmth sliding through her veins and rolled onto her back, looking up at him.

At the best of times, Pax was impossibly handsome.

At the worst of times, like now, he was even more so.

It was just something about that whole unshaven look, whiskers blurring the hewn angle of his long jaw and wavy brown hair tumbling down over his dark brown eyes.

She fought the urge to drool a little and ruthlessly slapped her palm against his chest, shoving him away as she scrambled from beneath the canvas. “This was a mistake.”

He propped his rumpled head on his hand, managing to look amused and sexier than ever in one fell swoop. As if he knew good and well that she was just as hot for him as he apparently was for her. Or maybe that was simply his usual state whenever he wakened on a cold office floor covered in nautical canvas.

“You weren’t saying that earlier.” His lips stretched into his familiar, lazy smile. “I definitely remember things like...more.” His voice dropped. “More.”

The problem was that she did want more.

Which was a bad thing. Capital B. Capital T.

“I’m not saying it now.” Goose bumps crawled over her skin as she moved around the model. She snatched her sweater off the boat’s bow where he’d hung it to dry and wondered if it had ever been draped with female items of clothing before.

Knowing Pax, it probably had. The man seemed to have his own set of groupies. Every time she’d done a story—and there had been eight of them now, featuring him or his partner, Erik—he’d been surrounded by beautiful women.

She dragged the damp knit over her head and was glad that it reached her thighs. She’d left her wet bra in the bathroom when she’d changed into Pax’s dry shirt, and she was pretty certain that her panties were bunched somewhere under that canvas with him and that darned shirt of his.

She was also pretty sure that now was not the time to go hunting for them.

Instead, she yanked her corduroy pants up her legs, wincing at their cold dampness, and headed to the windows that overlooked the deserted street fronting the ancient brick building.

Her traitorous little economy car was still parked in front. She could see the icicles dripping from the bumper like Christmas decorations. She hoped it wasn’t going to cost a fortune to fix whatever had gone wrong this time. Her bank account had just now stopped gasping for air thanks to starting her part-time gig next door for Cornelia.

“How does it look out there?”

“Frozen.” She didn’t let her gaze linger on him any longer than necessary when she turned away from the icy sight. She already knew he was the exact opposite of icy.

The room was cold. Her clothes uncomfortably damp. But warming herself with him again was absolutely out of the question.

She didn’t have one-night stands. She didn’t have stands, period. Repeating that mistake was not going to happen.

She picked up the three coffee mugs and set them on the table next to the sloop. “I’d kill for a cup of hot coffee.” Better to focus on a craving for caffeine than a craving for him.

“The swill here is stone cold and gonna stay that way until the power is restored.” He was sitting up with the canvas wrapped around his shoulders. He ought to have looked silly. He didn’t. “We’ve got the rest of those saltines Ruth kept around, and that’s about it.”

Her mouth was watering. Unfortunately, it was not for the package of stale crackers that his secretary had left behind before going out on maternity leave.

She shoved her hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. It felt like a rat’s nest to her, but that hadn’t stopped him from twining his fingers through it earlier.

Her stomach gave an excited swoop and she swallowed hard, escaping to the restroom. Flipping the light switch in the small room yielded no results, but there was at least enough light from the high, narrow window to see by. The tiled room was clean and neat, and Shea wanted to hide out there as long as possible, but it was too cold. Her bra was just as damp as the rest of her clothes and she balled it up as best she could and shoved it in her pants pocket, unable to face adding yet another damp layer against her skin. She used the toilet, washed her hands in cold water, cringed at her bedraggled reflection in the mirror and reluctantly returned to the reception area.

Pax had shed the canvas blanket and pulled on his jeans. He’d left the top button unfastened.

Her gaze lollygagged over the hard ridges of his abdomen, and she felt her cheeks flushing when her eyes finally reached his.

Definitely, she blamed it all on his shirt.

He was grinning slightly, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, and then he leaned over to pick up the white button-down offender from the floor.

“I need to get home,” she announced, her voice abrupt and too loud. “My cat is sick.”

He straightened, smiling outright. “That’s an excuse I haven’t heard before.”

“Marsha-Marsha,” she prattled, hating the nervousness bubbling up inside her as much as she hated that weird feeling in her stomach whenever she looked at him. “She’s sixteen years old. I, um, I have to give her antibiotics right now.”

The amusement in his dark brown eyes turned to something else. Something softer. Something unexpected. He pulled on his shirt. “How long have you had her?”

She managed to look away from him and focused on the wooden model ship sitting on the table. She didn’t know much about boats, but the gleaming structure looked like it belonged in an art museum. “Since she was a kitten. My, um, my stepfather Ken gave her to me.” Ken had been number three in the line of her mother’s seven marriages. He was long gone now, but Marsha-Marsha was still here.

“Well then,” Pax said, as if the decision were easy. “You need to get home.”

Her car hadn’t started the day before. She doubted sitting in a storm gathering ice would have cured its ills. “You think the buses are running again?” Everything had ground to a halt the afternoon before.

His smile was immediate. “Doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t. As long as the roads are passable, I’ll get you home.”

Again with the swoop inside her.

She shook it off. “I live on the far side of Fremont,” she warned. Her apartment wasn’t exactly right around the corner.

“I know.”

She studied him for a moment. “I don’t remember telling you where I lived.” Their conversations, outside of any interviews he’d given her, were light-hearted in the extreme, usually ending with him suggesting that her life wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t go out with him. He’d invited her out for everything from coffee to a sail around the world.

She’d never once taken him seriously. It was simply part of his genetic makeup to flirt with women.

“Just because you get paid to ask questions doesn’t mean you’re the only person who ever does.” His voice was dry.

“Who’d you ask about me? Mrs. Hunt?” She couldn’t imagine the very elegant, über-wealthy Cornelia Hunt gossiping about anyone, even with the ridiculously charming Paxton Merrick. But then again, Shea could hardly imagine Cornelia’s unusual business venture either, despite having been a witness to its very birth. The woman had no need to ever work because she was married to one of the richest men in the country, yet she’d set up shop to help women succeed in business even when many of them didn’t realize they needed help. And now Shea was a minor contributor because Cornelia had hired her part-time to conduct background checks on her prospective clients. At least she took Shea’s investigative abilities seriously, whereas her boss at the Washtub didn’t.