Every Breath You Take (15 page)

He liked the way her body fit itself to his, and the way her breasts felt in his hands. Mitchell checked the direction of his thoughts and tipped his chin down, ready to relinquish his hold on her and walk back to the suite. “How many languages was that?” he asked with a grin.

She lifted her head from his chest, leaned back in his arms, and looked at him blankly for a moment; then she gave him a smile filled with charming chagrin. “I don’t know. I lost count after you said French.”

“Then we’ll have to start over.”

“Oh, God—” she said on a choked laugh, and dropped her forehead weakly against his chest.

“But not here,” Mitchell said, amused and flattered by her reaction; then he curved his arm around her waist and directed her toward the villa. As they walked across the grass, he tried to remember the last time a woman had made him experience such strong, frequent, and repeated transitions from laughter to lust, and frustration to fascination. He couldn’t remember that ever happening to him before. The experience was surprising, challenging, and exhilarating. He didn’t want to do anything to diminish it, or the woman who affected him that way, and as he glanced at the open terrace doors, he wondered
if it was a mistake to take her to bed in her boyfriend’s hotel room. Then he wondered exactly who he thought that would bother—her? Or him? Or both of them?

The possibility that
he
might not like the idea of going to bed with her in another man’s hotel room seemed ludicrous, since he’d done similar things in the past and without the slightest qualm. In view of that, Mitchell decided that his concern was strictly for her sake—until they walked into the suite and they both saw his navy sport jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the living room.

Kate reacted with a surprised statement of the obvious. “When you left earlier, you forgot your jacket.”

“That might have been difficult to explain to the lawyer,” Mitchell replied without intending to say any such thing. The lawyer was an off-limits subject under the circumstances, and he couldn’t believe he’d just been foolish enough—or crass enough—to bring him up at such a time as this.

“I would have noticed it and …”

“And what?” Mitchell inquired, even though that completely compounded his last transgression and made him even more annoyed with himself.

Kate shot him an uneasy smile and bent down to check on the sleeping dog. Max’s nose was cool and moist, and he opened his eyes when she touched him; then he gave his tail a feeble wag and drifted back to sleep. Satisfied, she stood up and rubbed her palms on the sides of her pants. She was trying to think what she would have done with Mitchell’s jacket, and she wished the subject hadn’t come up, because it was making her feel sneaky and guilty about going to bed with him here in Evan’s suite, when moments before she’d been happy and excited. “I guess I could have left it at the front desk in a bag with your name on it.”

Mitchell knew that was a perfectly logical solution, but for some reason he suddenly found the notion extremely distasteful—almost as if it were he, rather than merely his jacket, that she would be pulling a bag over and hustling out to the front desk.

“Or I guess I could have put it in the closet and waited for you to phone and tell me what to do with it.”

Mitchell restrained the idiotic urge to ask her if she thought the lawyer and he wore the same size jacket; then he glanced at the telephone and imagined the lawyer standing there, answering Mitchell’s phone call about the jacket or playing back Mitchell’s voice mail about it. As he looked at the telephone, it occurred to him that the red message light was no longer flashing, as it had been earlier. That meant Kate had already retrieved her voice mail message sometime during the evening.

He glanced at her, half expecting her to be looking at the telephone, too, but she was looking at the bed with a decidedly guilty expression, rather than the soft, yielding expression she’d had a few minutes ago. Although the lawyer wasn’t present in the room, he’d become a pronounced obstacle to their unrestrained enjoyment of each other, Mitchell realized with disgust. “Is he still planning to arrive tomorrow?”

Kate shook her head. “The day after tomorrow,” she said, but their conversation about Evan had made her feel so uneasy that she couldn’t look at the bed in the alcove without feeling despicable about being there with Mitchell. Ethically speaking, this wasn’t her hotel room or her bed. Evan was paying for them.
Decide now
, her brain prompted.
Decide. Decide
. Engaged in her personal struggle with ethics and logistics, Kate turned in shock when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Mitchell shrugging into his jacket. “Are you leaving?” she asked, sounding as stricken as she felt.

He nodded; then he partially dispelled her fears over his reasons by capturing her wrist and pulling her firmly into his arms.

He looked amused, not annoyed, she noted. “But, why?”

“Because,” he said drily, “something tells me that nice Irish choir girls think it’s naughty to sleep with a man in another man’s room.”

Kate’s eyes widened at his acuity, but the term
choir girl
seemed so inappropriate under the circumstances that she couldn’t hide behind the falsity of it. “I am hardly behaving like a choir girl.”

“Did I guess wrong about the room?” he countered with a knowing smile.

“Not exactly, but—”

“And I also think that if we sleep together ‘on the first date,’ one of us will decide tomorrow that our behavior tonight reeked of tacky, indiscriminate sex.”

“Do you mean you?” Kate said dazedly, and he gave a short bark of laughter.

“Not me. You.”

Kate thought about what he was saying, and she made no effort to hide the yearning or confusion she felt. “I never realized what a prude I must be.”

In reply, he slid his fingers through the sides of her hair and turned her face up to his for a demanding kiss that ended on a gruff command. “Get over it by tomorrow.”

Kate tried to think of a clever rejoinder and instead said softly, “I will.” Satisfied that the matter was settled, he dropped his hands and turned toward the terrace doors, apparently intending to walk outside and around the building. “There’s a front door in here, you know,” Kate pointed out.

“If I walk past that bed with you, I’ll have you in it in thirty seconds.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” she teased.

He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and said, “Please, just dare me to prove it. Just give me one excuse. That’s all I need right now—just one infinitesimal excuse and my fragile new scruples won’t matter.”

Kate wisely decided not to do that, and he opened his eyes. “I’ll pick you and Max up at ten o’clock. We’ll take him to a vet in St. Maarten and spend the day on the island. And the night,” he added meaningfully. When she didn’t object to that, he said, “Do you like to gamble?”

Kate looked at the man she’d agreed to spend the night with after knowing him only a few hours and said with a winsome smile, “Obviously.”

He caught her meaning and grinned. “Then bring a change of clothes for the evening—something nice.”

He turned and disappeared through the doorway.

S
EATED ON THE AFT DECK OF
Z
ACK BENEDICT’S YACHT
with a cup of coffee, a plate of toast, and a newspaper on the table in front of him, Mitchell looked toward the railing as the yacht’s captain swore under his breath and glared at an approaching boat.

Clad entirely in white, from the starched collar of his short-sleeved shirt to the toes of his spotless deck shoes, Captain Nathaniel Prescott was tall and gray-haired with a ramrod posture and an aura of exacting competence. “Brace yourself,” he warned Mitchell. “Here comes another one.” As he spoke, a ferryboat, bound for one of the neighboring islands and loaded with tourists, slid by the yacht less than fifty feet away, and the ferry captain’s voice blared an announcement over the boat’s loudspeaker to his passengers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, lying off to our starboard side—that’s ‘right’ to you—is the 125-foot yacht owned by movie star Zack Benedict, which is named the
Julie,
after his wife. Get your cameras ready, and I’ll take us in a little closer. I see a man aboard who could be Benedict.”

Mitchell swore under his breath and raised the newspaper, concealing his face. “I don’t know how Zack puts up with this. I’d start waving a shotgun at them.”

Until yesterday, the
Julie
had been peacefully docked at a pier in one of St. Maarten’s beautiful marinas, but some avid fans of Zack’s had seen the yacht and realized to whom it belonged. The word had spread like wildfire
across the island. Within hours, their pier became a tourist attraction of its own, with Zack’s fans milling around the boat, hoping for autographs, taking photographs, and making a damned nuisance of themselves. Some of them were still hanging around last night when Mitchell returned from his evening with Kate, and to give Mitchell some peace, Zack’s captain had moved the boat away from the pier as soon as Mitchell was aboard. Now the yacht was anchored just outside the marina, which isolated them from annoying pedestrians, but gave them no protection from tourists on the ferries and tour boats.

“I’m checking with the other marinas to see if they have a slip available that’s large enough to accommodate us,” Prescott said in the resigned tone of a man who’d been through this drill many times in the past. “Unfortunately, for now, we’ll have to use the launch to get you back and forth to shore.”

“That’s fine,” Mitchell said. “I have some errands to do in St. Maarten this morning.”

“I’ll tell Yardley to have the launch ready to leave in—?” He paused, waiting for Mitchell’s answer.

Mitchell glanced at his watch. It was 8:15. “In half an hour.”

“I’ll call you on your cell phone, and let you know where we’re docked so you can find us this evening,” Prescott volunteered.

“I won’t be back tonight. I’m staying in a hotel.”

“You’ll probably get more peace and quiet that way,” Prescott said with an apologetic sigh. He started to leave; then he turned and said with a slight smile, “Mr. Benedict phoned from Rome earlier. I told him we’d been forced to move out of the marina last night. He said to tell you everything is delightfully quiet and pleasant where
he
is.”

Mitchell acknowledged Zack’s joke with a brief smile.
Zack was staying at Mitchell’s apartment in Rome while he finished shooting scenes for his new movie there; then he and Julie were flying to St. Maarten to join Mitchell.

When Prescott left, Mitchell leaned back in his chair and watched a flock of seagulls wheeling in circles overhead, his thoughts drifting to his extraordinary behavior with Kate Donovan the night before.

This morning, in the bright light of day, he was amused and a little embarrassed by the lengths he’d gone to to please her. When she’d asked him to help a stray mongrel, he’d promptly summoned an ambulance and physician and then volunteered to help take the dog to a vet. Later, when she refused to sleep with him or see him again unless he told her about himself, she’d been giving him an ultimatum, and he’d known it at the time. He’d known it, he’d refused to be manipulated, and he’d left—exactly as he should have done. But then, driven by the severest case of brain-numbing lust in his recollection, he gave in and went back to answer her questions. And if that weren’t strange enough, he’d then suffered an unprecedented attack of comical chivalry and decided
not
to take her to bed in her boyfriend’s hotel room, but to wait until today and take her to a hotel in St. Maarten instead.

That particular decision to wait was doubly bizarre in view of the fact that he’d been needlessly and outrageously blunt with her all evening about his intentions to sleep with her. In hindsight, most of his behavior the night before was baffling and yet, not entirely. Minutes after he’d arrived at her hotel last night, everything about her began to resonate with him.

At least, that’s how he’d felt yesterday. But this was today, and without the moonlight and music—without the combination of circumstances that had made the night before seem somehow momentous—it was possible the “magic” would be gone. Right now, Mitchell
wasn’t completely certain which way he wanted it to be. Ever since his brother and his family had arrived in London, Mitchell had felt at times that he was getting “soft” inside, and it was an alien and rather disturbing sensation. First William had gotten to him; then he’d let his aunt Olivia get under his skin, and he’d even shaken his grandfather’s hand. Now, a redheaded Irish girl was getting to him.

In the midst of that thought, Mitchell noticed another ferryboat headed straight toward the yacht. Instead of reaching for his newspaper, he reached for a slice of toast, tore off a piece, and tossed it overboard. Seagulls screeched and dove. He tossed four more pieces overboard, and white gulls came from everywhere.

“Ladies and gentlemen,”
the ferry captain’s voice blasted out.
“If you’re fans of the movie actor Zack Benedict …”

Mitchell flipped two more pieces of toast overboard, and seagulls rained down out of the sky, screeching and diving.

“… Get your cameras ready …”

Mitchell picked up the rest of the toast and slowly flipped the slices overboard one at a time. Seagulls by the hundreds descended in a thick curtain of gray and white.

“… Look out for the gulls …”

Mitchell glanced at his watch and pushed his chair back. He still had to pack an overnight case.

Shielded from the ferry’s view by flocks of frenzied gulls, he strolled across the deck.

Kate’s dark blue suitcase lay at the foot of the bed, packed and ready.

From the white sofa in the sitting room, she idly petted Max’s head while she stared at that piece of luggage and nervously tried to recapture the emotions she’d had last night—emotions that had made it seem completely
appropriate and perfectly right for her to agree to spend the night with him. This morning, what she was planning to do seemed a little insane.