Patty Salier - The Honeymoon House

He heard Danielle’s voice behind him.

“Paul, what’s wrong?”

He turned around to find her staring at him with a concerned look on her face. Her soft voice was like a peaceful drug that soothed his insides. His agitated, frustrated feelings slowly subsided.

“Danielle, I’ve got problems at a construction site,” he began. “I can’t stay for dinner. I spoiled your great Italian meal and I’m—”

“Hungry,” she finished for him. “I’ll pack you some meatballs, lasagna, garlic bread and salad. You can take it along.”

Before he could protest, she hurried into the kitchen, with him right behind.

The phone rang again, and he saw Lisa jump up from the kitchen table.

“It’s Manny!” she said excitedly. “Paul, you’re the shortest dinner guest we’ve ever had, but it was great meeting you!” Then she was out of the kitchen.

“Danielle, I didn’t mean to mess up your evening,” Paul apologized once more.

“Forget it, will you?” Danielle insisted. She packed him a scrumptious dinner in a pan with tinfoil covering. She even added a plastic spoon, fork and knife.

She handed him the hot bag. “Just like my mother used to do for me when I had late classes at architectural school.”

“You’re lucky,” he admitted. “Nobody ever packed a lunch or dinner for me.”

Danielle looked surprised. “Not even your mother?”

He felt a sudden cold void inside. “My mother died when I was a baby,” he explained. “And my stepmother—she didn’t have time for me.”

Danielle’s turquoise eyes held his, almost as though she could feel his pain.

“I’m glad to be your first time.”

He felt an instant closeness to her. “Me, too.”

Danielle walked him out of her apartment into the hallway. He held her warm package of food in his arms, wishing he didn’t have to leave.

“Danielle, I want you to know something,” he began. “You don’t have to worry about your job at the honeymoon house.”

“I don’t?” she asked in an anxious voice. “How do you know?”

“Just trust me,” he whispered.

Danielle appeared so vulnerable. Her silk-covered body was close to his. Her pink lips looked so tempting. Paul wasn’t thinking. He leaned his face to hers and covered her mouth with his. Her lips tasted sweet like honey, and he wanted more.

His tongue caressed her mouth. She parted her lips, welcoming him inside. His tongue gently danced with hers and he wanted to let her know that he was with her, not against her.

He impulsively moved his body closer to hers, aching to feel her womanly curves. But the bag of food in his arms became crushed between their bodies.

Her lips formed a smile against his. He gently released his mouth from hers.

“Your dinner is steamy hot,” Paul whispered, meaning more than her food.

Her turquoise eyes twinkled at him. Her cheeks flushed. He could still taste the honey of her lips.

“Don’t let it get cold,” she said in a shaky voice. “The meatballs, I mean.”

Being close to her, nothing felt cold on his entire body. “Danielle, I wish I didn’t have to go.” He wanted to spend the rest of the evening with her.

“Another time,” she whispered back.

He touched her cheek. “I’ll see you at work.”

“As soon as I get the honeymoon house plans approved by the building department.”

“Yeah.” He had to force himself to finally leave.

Inside her apartment, Danielle leaned against the closed door, touching her lips where Paul had kissed her. Why had she let him kiss her? Didn’t he have the power to hurt her on Mr. Harrington’s project? But Paul had said to trust him. Isn’t that what Kevin had told her?

Lisa entered the kitchen. “You didn’t tell me that Paul Richards was a hunk!” She nibbled on a slice of garlic bread. “He seems nice, too. Why don’t you forget what Mr. Harrington’s secretary told me?”

“I can’t,” Danielle said, plopping into a chair. “Why do I always pick a man whose career is entangled with mine?”

“Don’t compare Paul with Kevin,” Lisa advised. “I don’t know why, but Paul feels honest to me.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “In fact, if I wasn’t going to marry Manny, I’d go after Paul Richards myself.”

“Marry Manny?” Danielle repeated. “Did he ask you to be his wife?”

Lisa nodded, bursting with joy. “Manny’s moving back to Los Angeles in a few months for our wedding!”

“Oh, Lee, what great news!”

Danielle hugged her, remembering Lisa and Manny falling in love in college when he was still living in Los Angeles. When Manny transferred to a university in New York, their love never ended. Manny had promised to come back and marry her. He’d kept his promise.

Paul Richards flashed in her mind. Could she ever risk getting close to him, when he had the power to destroy her career?

“Danielle, will you be my maid of honor?”

Lisa cut into her thoughts. A lump formed in her throat at her sister’s request. “I can’t wait.”

“I’m calling Manny to tell him!” Lisa quickly picked up the wall phone in the kitchen.

Danielle went into their shared bedroom and closed the door to give her sister privacy. She opened the bureau drawer and pulled out her lavender nightgown.

In a few months, her sister would move out of their apartment. She’d be living alone, with no family around to share her thoughts and feelings. She loved living with her family. When her parents were killed, she’d been so thankful to still have Lisa.

You’ll get used to living alone, she told herself as she stripped off her clothes in the bathroom to take a bath. Many women enjoyed living alone. But she knew she wasn’t one of them. She was a family person, and she hoped to someday have a family of her own.

So far no man had felt like family to her. No man except Paul Richards. Having him at her apartment was so natural, almost as though he were living with her.

She caught her naked reflection in the bureau mirror. She wondered what it would feel to have Paul Richards’s strong hands caress her breasts. Her bare nipples grew hard at the thought.

Stop fantasizing about Paul, she ordered herself. Don’t repeat what happened with Kevin.

But lying in the bubbly warm bathwater, she couldn’t get Paul Richards out of her mind. She visualized him climbing into the bath with her. She could almost feel his powerful masculine body sizzling against hers. She quickly turned on the cold water to startle her body back to reality.

At the burglarized construction site, Paul held in his frustration as he showed the Barrys, a young married couple, the damage inside their remodeled house. Butch began repairing the built-in drawers in their bedroom bureau that had been yanked out, scratched and thrown to the floor.

“Mr. and Mrs. Barry,” Paul began, feeling at blame for the entire situation, “my company’s insurance will cover everything that’s been stolen. Tonight, I’ll have my men spick-and-span your home until it’s shiny clean. We’ll even repaint the nicks in the walls and have the new carpeting steam-washed. Whatever you want. You just tell me.”

When Paul saw a hopeful smile on their faces, his muscles relaxed a little. Though burglaries occasionally happened on construction sites, Paul hated seeing his customers unhappy. He guaranteed superior construction and worked on their houses as if they were his own. His goal was for his customers to move into their new or remodeled homes totally satisfied with his work.

When the owners left, Paul put on his leather tool belt and joined Butch and two laborers to make the house brand-new again.

At three o’clock in the morning, an exhausted-butsatisfied Paul finished painting and cleaning up. As he packed his tools into his van, his mind drifted to Danielle. He wished he could have stayed at her apartment longer.