Mending Fences (2 page)

Her gaze locked onto his and he felt the weight of her full attention for a moment, sending a tendril of heat through him. With a sigh, the tension unwound a bit, and she shook her head. “No, you’re fine. I’m just…I haven’t done this get-to-know-someone thing in a while.”

Hmm. A little encouragement. He leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table. “I’m out of practice myself. Let’s see, what’s the next line I should try…ah, yes. Do you come here often?”

That got her. She gave a genuine laugh, the rich sound tossing tinder on the flame her gaze had lit inside him. “Occasionally. And you?”

“About that often.” Perhaps that’s why she seemed familiar. He might have caught sight of her at the club before.

She sipped her drink. “Tell me, do they celebrate Halloween in Australia?”

He jerked back a bit and blinked. After all this time in the States, his accent had mellowed enough that people who noticed it rarely identified it properly. “You have a good ear. But I might be faking the accent. This is a night to pretend, isn’t it?”

She brushed her fingers across her forehead, shifting her curls away from her eyes. “Someone pretending would lay it on a whole lot thicker. How long have you lived here?”

“A very long time.” The wistfulness in his own voice surprised him.

She laughed softly. “Well, well, a homesick expatriate.”

He smiled. Time to turn the conversation around to her. “What about you? Are you from Park City?”

Her expression darkened slightly, an edge of wariness returning to her eyes. “No, just came into town for the party.”

“Alone?”

Her brow rose as she leaned back in her chair. “Do I live alone or did I come to the party alone?”

“Yes.”

“Both. You?”

With a bit of a chuckle, he nodded. “Both. Are you happy being alone?”

Her eyes narrowed, but a hint of a smile played across her lips. “Is that a pickup line?”

For a moment, he focused on her red-stained lips, on what they might feel like under his. That little contemplation simmered his blood. He flicked his gaze back up to meet hers. It wasn’t intended as a pickup line, but maybe it should be. Or not. He hadn’t thought this through, he was just pushing ahead full-throttle. “No, it’s a legitimate question.”

“Living alone has its advantages.” She raised her glass and took a long drink. “I can make my own rules. It’s quiet or noisy, depending solely on my mood.”

Curran nodded. “You don’t have to dress if you don’t want to. You can eat chili straight out of the can and no one will complain.”

She grimaced, wrinkling her distinctive nose. “Chili from the can, at room temperature? Gross. That’s such a
guy
thing.”

He couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, comes pre-loaded on the Y chromosome, along with belching and scratching ourselves. The same way a love of shopping and shoes is hard-wired into women.”

Her eyes widened, but her grin spoiled the look of indignation. “I do not live to shop, thank you.”

“How many pairs of shoes are in your closet?”

“I only have what I need.”

He leaned a little closer to her. “How many?”

“I don’t know…the basics. Pumps in black, navy, neutral, ivory. Running shoes. Flats in brown, black and…” She stopped ticking them off on her fingers and laughed. “Okay, okay. Let me guess, in your closet, you have running shoes and dress shoes.”

“Actually, I’m a little more in touch with my feminine side than most. I’ve a couple pairs of boots, too. And a great pair of fuzzy slippers.”

A laugh bubbled out of her, pulling a grin onto his mouth. God, her laugh…talking to this woman lightened his heart and stirred his desire at the same time. He liked it. “What about the disadvantages of living alone?”

Her smile faded. “I find they’re a small price to pay for being able to be myself.”

“And you can’t be yourself without being alone?”

She finished her water. “Not in my experience.”

The edge in her voice snagged his curiosity. It sounded like a conclusion she’d come to at some great cost, but he doubted she’d appreciate him probing for details.

The urge to touch her struck him, making his skin itch. He brushed his gloved fingers along the knuckles of her hand where she held her empty glass. Her eyes darkened and he caught the slight tremor that shivered through her. So, the chemistry wasn’t one-sided. She felt it.

It had been nearly a year since he walked away from his life. Was that long enough to give him the obscurity he needed to take a chance on this? To pursue the connection pulling him to this woman whose name he didn’t even know?

He lifted her hand from the glass and caressed her long, pale fingers. The sound of her breath catching kicked the slow burn in his gut up a notch. Oh, yeah, she definitely felt it, too. “Do you ever get lonely?”

Her gaze left their joined hands and slid into his. “Do you?”

He swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. “Frequently.”

She leaned a bit closer, enough for her scent to drift toward him. He breathed her in. Flowery, sweet, with a hint of something deeper, more exotic.

“And how do you deal with your loneliness?” Her smoky voice reached inside him, fed the fire until the sparks soared.

“I find a crowd and become a part of it for a while, until the worst of it passes.”

“Funny,” she said softly. “I do that, too.”

Curran raised his hand, lifting her fingers to his mouth. He watched the fire dance in her golden eyes, his own temperature climbing in response. He held her gaze and turned her hand, exposing her wrist, pressing his lips to her delicate skin.

Her scent clawed through him, reshaping the heat in his body into a distinct ache.

Her pulse leapt beneath his lips and lightning flashed in her eyes. She drew a sharp breath, then slid her hand from his and said, “You’re moving fast. I take it we’ve gone beyond the need for lines?”

Curran couldn’t contain the wicked grin that spread across his face. “They get progressively more pathetic from here, and you’ve likely heard them all before anyway.”

“Probably.”

“I suppose I could cut to the chase and ask if you have plans for the evening. Want to get out of here?” He tensed the moment the words tumbled from his mouth. He hadn’t intended to take their conversation quite that far, but his desire raced ahead of his brain.

Her brows lifted and she laughed. “You get points for being direct. Has anyone ever turned you down?”

Now there was a question he’d never been asked. “Truthfully? Not since I was sixteen.”

“Really. Never once, in all that time?” The Queen pushed her chair away from the table. She rose, stepped toward him as he slid his own chair back. She fisted her pale hands in the black satin of her long dress and pulled, hiking the fringed hem up to mid-glorious-thigh, exposing a hint of black lace at the top of her stockings. Without warning, she straddled him, lowering herself onto his lap.

Curran sucked in a harsh breath, his erection instant. She reached her hands into his hood. Grabbed his hair. Covered his mouth with hers.

Rational thought scattered.

She kissed him hard, her tongue thrusting into his mouth, brushing his in a tantalizing stroke. She tasted sweet and sharp. Her scent, her warmth filled his senses. Something deep inside him knotted and a groan escaped him as he slid his hands along her thighs. The whole of his existence focused on the primal need to thrust inside her.

Before he could return the kiss, or even properly respond to it, she dropped her hands to his chest and pushed herself back off his lap.

“Thanks for the drink,” She straightened to her full height and smoothed the reflective surface of her dress. A hint of a smile curved the edges of her mouth. “But I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

Curran’s head swam. His skin tingled all over, his blood surged in his veins. What in the hell had she done to him? Never had a woman kissed him in a way that completely short-circuited his brain.

It took a moment before the synapses fired correctly again, and in those few seconds, she had vanished. He leapt to his feet, scanning the club for her.

She was gone.

“No, no, no,” he muttered, cursing under his breath. “Not fair.”

The waitress came by, gathering glasses and bottles off the neighboring table, then leaned close to talk to him. “I don’t know what you said to Victoria to get a kiss like that out of her, but you’ve made a lot of guys here very jealous.”

His spine stiffened. “You know who she is?”

“Just her first name.” Miranda threw him a smile and walked away.

He turned the name in his mind. Victoria. Perfect. He’d been thinking of her as a queen already. Elegant name for a cool exterior, belying the heat of her kiss. He made his way back to the bar and downed a second beer in an effort to kill the fire inside him.

It failed. Miserably.

Half an hour later, Curran unlocked his front door. He trudged down the hall into the master suite, flicking on the lights, stripping his clothes as he went. So much for a night of fun on the town, finding rejuvenation in a crowd. God, he needed a cigarette. He’d picked the wrong time to try quitting.

He stepped into the rock-walled shower, turned the faucet to cold, and let it rip. The icy water pounded against his skin, taking his breath away, but it did little to temper the blaze she’d kindled.

Victoria.
He still felt her hands in his hair, her tongue in his mouth. Her taste, her scent, those unique eyes stayed sharp, penetrated deep into his thoughts and hardened him all over again.

Curran mentally kicked himself. How had he let this happen? He’d gone and let his hormones come out of dormancy, reminding him precisely how much of a bitch celibacy could be. It was far too easy to picture Victoria beneath him, her creamy skin soft under his fingers, her long legs wrapped around his hips.

He swore. The carnal need was bad enough on its own. To make matters worse, this wasn’t just sexual. She’d piqued his interest, and her disappearing act would nag him relentlessly. This wasn’t how it worked, damn it. He should have the opportunity to decide if she was worth investing his time before he then chose to walk away or stay.

He’d be damned if he’d end up looking back on Victoria as the proverbial one who got away. Finding her would severely test his resourcefulness. Her first name gave him next to nothing to go on, but he would find her, somehow, to finish what she’d started the moment her lips touched his.

* * * *

She knew he wouldn’t follow her. He was her fantasy, not the other way around. Still, Victoria Linden didn’t wait around Brindle’s to find out.

She drove carefully out of Park City, heading west down the interstate to the Salt Lake valley, focusing hard on the road before her and trying to keep herself from mentally replaying the evening. To keep herself from going back to him.

When she finally turned the beat-up SUV off in her parking spot, she ran her hands through her hair and slumped in the seat. The adrenaline overload had ebbed, leaving her drained.

That was probably—no, it was absolutely, hands down—the brashest, most ballsy thing she’d ever done in her life.

She’d kissed Curran Shaw. Curran multi-millionaire, owner-of-a-huge-corporation, dated-every-supermodel/starlet Shaw. What a rush!

His voice had given him away tonight, the sonorous tones and Down Under inflections revealing his identity under the black hood and half-mask. She’d always liked hearing him speak, liked the way the natural rumble in his voice vibrated in her chest.

She locked the car and hurried up the stairs to her apartment door, shivering in the cold. He hadn’t recognized her, of course. She’d attended a couple of his press conferences, and interviewed him—along with over a hundred other journalists—at a massive press junket four years ago, on a freelance assignment from Business Wired magazine. In his memory, she’d be a blonde with wire-rimmed glasses, probably blurred together with all the other interviewers who spoke with him that weekend. If he remembered much from
that weekend at all, given the partying that had reportedly gone on.

Inside the apartment, she threw the deadbolt, dropping her purse and coat on the chair near the door. She glanced at Sassy’s cage and maze, covering a table along the far wall. The rat scampered through a tunnel and into the feeding area, climbing in and out of her empty food dish. Victoria kicked off her shoes. “I know, Sassafras, hold your horses.”

Moving the rat’s home next month would be a pain. She’d have to tape numbers to each section in order to put the tunnels back together in the new apartment. Assuming, of course, that she could find a new apartment. She barely afforded this little hole in the wall, and soon her building would be torn down and rebuilt as luxury condos.

She grabbed a handful of kibble and opened the wire roof of the cage, pouring the food into Sassy’s dish. The rat turned happy circles, paused to wash her cream and white pinto face, and pounced on the food. “Relax, it’s not like you haven’t eaten today.”

Victoria stripped out of the costume, grabbed a carton of chocolate-cherry ice cream and a spoon, then sat cross-legged on the rug beside Sassy’s cage. She couldn’t begin to guess how much money an interview with Curran Shaw would bring now, nearly a year after his sudden retirement. He’d dropped off the face of the planet after stepping down as CEO of DCS GlobalTech. Simply disappeared from the public eye.