Every Breath You Take (20 page)

Kate remembered the hotel manager’s brief discussion with Mitchell in the lobby, and she aimed an accusing look straight at Mitchell while directing her question to Diederik. “Where are the young newlyweds now?”

“I had them dragged out of here and thrown off a cliff,” Mitchell replied.

“They are in another suite,” Diederik provided simultaneously, “which Mr. Wyatt very kindly offered to pay for. The young bridegroom was greatly distressed over the cost of this suite, which they were unable to enjoy.” Satisfied with his garnishment of the prawns, he looked at Kate and said, “I will unpack for you before I leave. Do you have anything with you that you would like me to press for you?”

“No, thank you,” Kate replied as she picked up half a watercress sandwich and walked over to the chesthigh balcony wall for a better look at the view below.

Behind her, Diederik said, “I’ve pressed your clothes, Mr. Wyatt, and hung them in your closet.”

Unaware that Mitchell had followed her, Kate whirled around and almost smashed her sandwich against his chest. “You have clothes to wear?” she exclaimed in delight.

Bracing his hands on the wall on either side of her, he trapped her and studied her with amused fascination. “You look ready to cheer with relief.”

Before Kate could respond, Diederik said politely, “When I finish unpacking, may I be of any further service?”

With his smiling gaze still fixed on Kate, Mitchell replied, “Please turn down the bed before you leave, and see that we are not disturbed.”

Kate gaped at him in horror. “Could you possibly be more obvious?”

“This is a hotel,” he pointed out reasonably.

“I know it is. But in the last five days I’ve checked into two of them with different men. I’m feeling like a complete floozy.”

He chuckled at her description of herself and ran his
knuckles up her arm in a lazy caress. “So you thought I didn’t bring any clothes with me?”

“You didn’t have a suitcase with you in the taxi,” Kate pointed out, trying to sound less affected than she was by the touch of his skin against hers.

“I dropped it off this morning when I came out here to try to arrange for this suite or at least a better one than what the reservations clerk was offering me.” His knuckles slid across her shoulder and followed the curve of her jaw, which allowed his fingertips to slip beneath the neckline of her shirt and glide over her bare collarbone. “Just out of curiosity, what did you think I was going to do about clothes while we were here?”

“I thought you’d decided you weren’t going to need any clothes,” Kate said shakily, trying to concentrate on his words and not his fingers. “According to the tourist pamphlets, some beaches in St. Maarten are nude.”

“The casinos aren’t.”

“No, of course not. I thought maybe you intended to skip the casino tonight.”

“And do what instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Swallowing a laugh, Kate glanced toward the doorway. “Shhh. Diederik is in there. He’ll hear you.”

“Who cares?”

“I do. This may sound hopelessly unsophisticated to you, but I’ve never actually checked into a hotel for the sole purpose of going to bed with someone, and I’m a little self-conscious about it. I suppose you’ve done it lots of times, haven’t you?”

“Now
I’m
feeling self-conscious.”

“I shouldn’t have asked that question,” Kate said ruefully.

“Probably not,” he whispered.

Kate stiffened at the implied reprimand, but before she could think of a suitable response, he twined his left hand through her hair and tipped her head back. His warm lips came down on hers in a long, slow, searching kiss filled with lazy hunger. Finally, he lifted his mouth from hers. “Let’s go inside.”

Kate nodded agreement. By then, she would have nodded agreement if he’d suggested they jump off the balcony headfirst, but once they were in the suite, his tone and his words startled her out of her sensual haze.

“We need to talk, Kate; sit down.”

Surprised by his businesslike tone, Kate perched her hip on the arm of a sofa and watched curiously as he walked over to the windows, shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked down for several seconds as if composing his thoughts. When he turned, his expression was friendly but resolute. “Before you get into that bed with me, I want to be sure you don’t have any false illusions about what’s going on between us. I’m telling you this because I never want you to look back on our time together with any kind of regret.”

“Go on,” Kate urged when he paused to let his words sink in.

“By your own admission, you’re a ‘romantic,’ and last night, we were caught up in a situation that might have seemed more … meaningful … than it actually was. What I’m trying to say is that there’s an amazing amount of physical chemistry between us, but last night, on the beach in the moonlight, those few kisses of ours may have seemed … What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Magical?” Kate suggested, using the word that best fit her own impression of last night. The instant she said it, she regretted betraying that much of her own
feelings about the night before, but Mitchell seemed to agree with her assessment.

“‘Magical’ is close enough. You weren’t the only one who was influenced by the setting and the moment. I was influenced enough by it that I actually came back to you to answer your questions, which is something I never would have done under ordinary circumstances. However, that was last night and last night was an … aberration.”

Struggling desperately not to leap to any conclusions and to appear serene, Kate tipped her head to the side and asked with a slight smile, “Are you trying to warn me off?”

“Not at all. I’ve been dying to get you into bed since we sat down to dinner last night.”

“Are you trying to establish some sort of ground rules, then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m having an attack of scruples,” he said with disgust, “and I’m trying to deal with it.”

“Is this an unfamiliar occurrence for you?”

“In these circumstances, it’s
unprecedented,”
he said bluntly.

“In that case, I’m flattered,” Kate replied, but she wasn’t flattered; she was confused and uneasy and becoming more so by the moment.

“I’m trying to explain that I need to be sure you’re here with me now for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Until this morning, I didn’t know your father had just died. The two of you were obviously very close, and you’re feeling a little lost and alone. On top of that, you’re faced with the burden of trying to run his business. You’re worried and you’re scared. All those emotions may be clouding your judgment about what
you and I are doing.” He paused for some response from her.

Wary of saying anything, Kate simply nodded that she understood, even though she didn’t. Not completely. Not yet.

“Until an hour ago,” he continued, “I thought your boyfriend in Chicago was some middle-aged jerk who likes showing you off and traveling with you. Are you following me so far?”

Kate nodded slowly.

“Good. Then here’s the reality: In Chicago, there’s an eligible man who wants to marry you. Here, in this room, there’s a man who wants to take you to bed and make love to you until neither of us has the strength to move anymore. But it can’t go any further than that. It would get much too complicated.”

“And you don’t like complications?”

“No,” Mitchell said. “Especially not the kind we’d have.”

“I appreciate the warning,” Kate said, struggling to view her predicament unemotionally, without feeling mortified that she’d let herself land in this predicament in the first place. Viewed from the right perspective, she knew she was better off finding out now, rather than later, that Mitchell’s only interest in her was as a brief, convenient partner for a little recreational sex. Now that she understood, she also knew she’d end up feeling guilty and disgusted with herself for betraying Evan for something as tawdry and meaningless as what Mitchell was blatantly suggesting.

Furthermore, Mitchell’s summation of her state of mind was probably right: she was an emotional mess over her father and she wasn’t thinking rationally. Thankfully, Mitchell was thinking very rationally and behaving very honorably by letting her know how he
felt. And to give him even more credit, he wasn’t pressuring her to settle for what he was offering her, either. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Having arrived at these conclusions, Kate felt truly relieved and blessedly clearheaded—and, somewhere deep inside of her, painfully disappointed and thoroughly wretched. For the moment, however, there was nothing she could do except try to be philosophical and good-natured, and then deal with the mental turmoil later, when she was alone.

“You were undoubtedly right when you said I’m overly emotional these days because of my father’s death, and my judgment is probably impaired, as well.” Even as she said that, Kate’s instincts and her heart insisted that although she may have been wrong about everything else, there
was
something special about the “connection” she felt with him and that he damned well felt it, too! She decided to take a small risk and lay that all out for him. There was nothing he could do but make fun of her, and she didn’t think he would do that. Raising her eyes to his, she said softly, “I think fate may have intended for us to meet the way we did and to become friends—that it was predestined.”

The instant she said “predestined,” he gave her a skeptical look, leaned his shoulder against the window, and folded his arms over his chest.

His body language was an eloquent rejection of any supernatural influences being involved, but Kate refused to let him mock her theory before he understood it. “I like you very much,” she persevered quietly, “and I think you like me, too—”

“I do. Very much,” he admitted with a sudden smile that was warm and genuine.

“That’s what I meant when I referred to fate and
Predestination. I’m usually slow and cautious about really liking someone, and I was totally
predisposed
to dislike you—”

“Why?”

She chuckled. “Have you ever taken a good look at your face?”

“I shave it every morning.”

“Well, it’s too good-looking to be owned by a man who also possesses kindness and character and—and a lot of layers.” Out of words and explanations, Kate gave him the only actual example she could think of. “The best way I can illustrate what I’ve been trying to say is this—” Holding her hands out palms up, she smiled wryly and said, “Look at us now. We’re in a hotel room, the topic is sex, and we’re discussing it as if we’ve been friends forever. Without any anger or pretense, we’ve been deciding we shouldn’t go to bed together.” Finished, Kate waited for him to agree.

With eyes narrowed in thought, he nodded slowly as if he was arriving at a conclusion that surprised and somewhat displeased him.
“That’s
what we’ve been deciding?”

Since he seemed to be asking himself that question, Kate saw no reason to answer it. Furthermore, it was an odd question under the circumstances, and she was running low on clever, rational answers. Instead of replying, she stood up and strolled over to the balcony doors. “Now, since I haven’t cheated on my boyfriend,” she said lightly, “and neither of us has done anything we’ll regret later, why don’t we do what two new friends should do on such a gorgeous island—let’s go sightseeing. When I’m back in Chicago and you’re—wherever you are—we can exchange postcards from other places we go, and write things like—’Remember that charming little café in St. Maarten?’ After we’re done sightseeing, you could drop me off at the vet’s
office, if you wouldn’t mind. I’ll pick up Max and take him back to Anguilla.”

When Mitchell didn’t reply after several moments, Kate glanced over her shoulder and saw that he hadn’t moved. He was still standing with his shoulder propped against the window and his arms folded over his chest, only now he was looking at her with his brows drawn together. She studied his handsome, inscrutable features and could not make out even a hint of what he was thinking. “Can I ask you something?” she said hesitantly.

He nodded.

Unable to meet his gaze while she asked her question, Kate turned back toward the balcony, absently rubbing her arms. “Are you disappointed that there was no real magic between us last night? That it was just the setting and the moment?”

When he didn’t immediately answer, she flicked a glance over her shoulder. No longer looking at her, he’d tipped his head slightly down and to his right, as if he were studying the carpet. “No,” he said curtly; then he lifted his head and looked straight at her. “No,” he repeated.

A realization hit Kate like a physical shock from an electrical outlet. As clearly as if he’d said it to her, she knew it was true, and surprise made her turn fully toward him. “You’re not disappointed that the magic is missing, because you didn’t
want
it to be there in the first place, did you?”

“You used the term ‘magic’ to describe last night, I didn’t,” he said as he straightened from his lounging position. Strolling toward her, he gave her an impatient lecture on his reality: “I do not believe in ‘magic’ or ‘magical’ events in the human experience. I also do not believe in fairy tales, miracles, spells, witchcraft, fairies, or leprechauns.”

“Watch your tongue,” Kate tried to joke.

Some of the tension went out of his face at her joke. “You don’t really believe in that garbage, do you?”

The disappointment Kate felt earlier was turning to hurt, because now she realized he was pleased with their situation today and even purposely causing it to some extent. Struggling to keep her tone neutral, she said, “At this point it no longer matters what I believe.”

“Pretend it does.”

“All right, I do not believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. But I know magic when I feel it, and I felt it last night. I’m willing to agree that you weren’t the cause of it, but—”

He cut her off with a mocking challenge: “I suppose you’re going to try to convince me you have ‘magic’ with your lawyer boyfriend?”

Kate sobered. “First of all, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. Second, if the answer to your question was yes, I wouldn’t have been with you last night and I wouldn’t be here now. Third, and most important of all, do not mention him again,” she warned implacably. “You have no right to discuss him, and neither do I.”