Susan Connell - Rebel's Spirit

Resting a fist on his hip, he lowered his chin to deliver a challenging stare over his reading glasses. “Is that so?”

She tapped her nails against the red-foiled flowerpot and narrowed her eyes. Her voice was suddenly stronger. “I live here. Remember?”

“And you’re working for Megan Sloan now?”

There it was again: that skeptical edge to his voice that said he wasn’t sure about any of this. That maybe there was more she wasn’t telling. And perhaps a trip to the principal’s office might be in order.

With a long-suffering sigh, she answered him. “Just for tonight. And you can stop sounding so concerned. I haven’t pebbled the cookies.”

He waited five thoughtful seconds before he appeared to succumb to the inevitable. Folding the sheet of paper he’d been holding, Raleigh slid it in his shirt pocket. The action managed to tug his shirt sideways, exposing a flat, dark nipple surrounded by another whorl of dark hair.

“Of course you haven’t pebbled the cookies, but Megan knows exactly how I like these things done. Not too formal—”

“She explained everything to me. So if you’ll get those desserts and the containers from the van,” she said, whipping his jacket from her shoulders and shoving it against his naked midsection, “I’ll get started.”

Closing a hand over the bunched tweed, he gave her a stiff nod. “Dining room’s through that door over there.”

Even though she’d managed to cover the tempting sight of his well-muscled, hair-roughened chest and abdomen, achy heat was already pooling between her thighs. Making an effort to appear unfazed, she breezed by him into the dining room.

“You are not going to get to me, Hanlon,” she murmured to herself as she plunked the poinsettia on the credenza and pulled a tablecloth out of the shopping bag. Giving the rectangle of white damask a snapping shake, she spread it over the table, then began smoothing it into place. “So what if you happen to have mankind’s most gorgeous chest and nipples that make my fingers itch? The idea of you and me ever…it’s…just impossible,” she said to herself in an angry whisper.

But as she kept picturing his exposed chest, her effi cient moves to straighten the cloth slowed then stopped. Tilting her head, she stared at the white-on-white design in the tablecloth. The soft, lustrous swirls reminded her of the patterns in his chest hair. Tracing one swirl and then another with the pads of her thumbs, she began imagining the rougher texture of his hair, the heat of his skin below and the steady thumps of his heartbeat. When she realized she was holding her breath, she drummed both sets of fingers against the cloth and shook her head. She really had to start dating again now that her tour business was doing so well. Pushing up from the table, she reached for the potted red flowers and plunked them on the center.

With more determined effort, she went looking for dessert plates. While she was kneeling beside the opened credenza door, Raleigh came into the room.

“I put everything but this in the kitchen,” he said over the cake box. “Finding everything you need in there?”

“I think so,” she said, stopping to watch him settle a cake box on the table. In an unguarded moment he lifted the lid and leaned down for a quick sniff. Closing his eyes, he took a longer one. His obvious pleasure mesmerized her, then quickly made her blink. Of course, everyone had a sensual side, she’d just never thought about him having one.

Biting back a smile, she reached inside the credenza. “Megan said the dessert plates are supposed to be in here, but all I keep pulling out are these old photo albums.”

Raleigh dropped the lid over the cake, then quickly kneeled beside her. “I’ll take those,” he said, removing them from her grasp and setting them out of her reach.

Before she had time to lower her hands, he was ducking his head near her lap to peer inside the credenza. Her heart skipped a beat and then another. Minutes ago she wasn’t sure he was going to allow her into his house; now he’d positioned his face inches from the most intimate part of her anatomy. His clean male scent, mixed with his light, woodsy after-shave only added to the stunning immediacy of the moment. She held her breath as visions of them tangled together on the floor moved through her mind. In this position it would be so easy to sink her fingers into his hair and…

“Here we go.” Pushing aside a soup tureen, he pulled out two stacks of gold-rimmed, red dishes. “Twenty ought to do it.” Moving back on his heels, he set the dessert plates on top of the furniture then stood up.

“Well, thank you,” she said, forcing herself to stare at the albums on the floor while she waited for her heart to reestablish a normal rhythm. Before that medical miracle had time to happen he took her hands, still raised in midair above her thighs, and pulled her to her feet.

When he held on a few seconds longer than necessary, the courteous act began snowballing into something altogether different. She tried telling herself it was the casual way his unknotted tie slid over her hands that gave the moment its intimate feel. The sensation of fine quality wool on her skin reminded her of a caress. Gentle. Masculine. And, because it had been ages since she’d had a lover, leaving her wanting more. She looked up as he looked away.

“My cleaning lady stored those albums in there by mistake,” he said, still inexplicably holding on to her hands.

The oxygen in her body seemed to be disappearing-probably feeding those sparks zipping up her arms, through her heart, into her stomach and then, heaven help her, even lower. He looked back at her as she parted her lips to draw in an extra breath.

“Are you all right?” he asked, letting go of her hands to place his around her elbows.

“I’m fine…just stood up too fast,” she said, fighting the compelling desire to lean her cheek against his chest and her forehead against that tuft of hair where he still hadn’t finished buttoning his shirt!

“Back to work,” she announced, reaching for the first stack of plates with shaky hands. Why wasn’t he saying something? Or moving away? Or taking her in his arms and kissing her silly? She squeezed her eyes shut. Was she losing her mind? What had gotten into her? Tonight was her opportunity to show him she’d changed.

“Yes, back to work,” he finally said, as he leaned down to pick up the photo albums from the floor. “I have more notes to go over before people start arriving.”

“Don’t let me bother you.” She kept her eyes on the gold circle rimming the red plate in her hand as he walked into his library.

For the next twenty minutes she kept herself busy by folding napkins, preparing coffee, mixing the cranberry punch, setting out the dessert buffet and pretending that what she’d felt when he’d been so close was nothing more than a fluky moment of hormonal insanity.

After setting a pitcher of milk on the table next to a matching sugar bowl, she glanced across the hall into the library where Raleigh paced before the fire. He’d put on music, a Bach concerto, if she wasn’t mistaken. As he read through his paper, she found herself pressing her hand to her midsection. If what she’d felt was nothing more than one fluky moment of hormonal insanity, why were her hands still tingling? Her throat still dry? And that disturbing heat still pooling where it shouldn’t be? After all these years what was it about him that she suddenly found so compelling?

She walked across the carpeted hall to the open pocket doors of the library. Without a doubt he was an attractive man. Standing well over six feet, he was broad shouldered, classically handsome and, unlike most indoor career types, sporting a healthy tan. His thick, dark hair threatened to spill over his forehead in a little-boy tousle of loose curls.