Pure Lust (Lust for Life) (3 page)

She didn’t add that she’d had trouble concentrating on the
chart because her thoughts kept drifting to the mom’s older brother. She didn’t
know if it was fate or that rotten bitch karma that had made sure he’d slept
there as well, then happened to make him leave at the same time that morning.
She sipped her coffee again and decided that whatever might have been behind
it, she was thankful things worked out the way they had, despite her initial
reluctance to see Diego again.

“Well, it’s the first day of your vacation,” her stepdad
reminded her, setting a plate of his delicious eggs Benedict in front of her.
“You’ve got three weeks to catch up on your rest. Are you taking a bigger trip
this time?”

It had been six years since Claire had taken more than a long
weekend off work to go on one of her three- or four-day road trips to a
B&B, lake or cottage to catch up on reading and sleep. She loved her job
with a passion that sometimes surprised her, but she realized recently that she
was in dire need of a long break.

With Spring being her favorite time of the year, and the
bathroom being the last room in her little house that needed an overhaul, she
was planning to just stay home and tackle that major project. And if all went
as planned, she would be spending some time in a hot bubble bath catching up on
her to-be-read list as well.

“Do you remember the Rodriguez family?” she asked her mom,
the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. “From when we lived in
the Old West End?”

“Of course,” her mom said, and gave her husband a smile in
thanks as he gave her a plate as well. “Brenda was very sweet. Lots of energy.
She was always volunteering at the school, and she had that not-so-tall but
dark, handsome husband. He had the best smile,” she added a little dreamily,
then patted her own husband’s hand when he raised his eyebrows at her. “The
best smile until the first time I saw yours, of course,” she told him,
playfully indulgent.

Claire envied that, the way her mother could openly admire
another man without fear of retribution. She was pretty sure her stepdad was
the only man on earth without a jealous streak now that her husband was gone.
The handful of times she’d tried dating since then had been with men so jealous
it seemed as if their mission in life was to make sure she never so much as
looked at another man.

“Didn’t her son make you cry once?” her stepdad asked.

She swallowed the bite she’d been chewing. “Apparently I
left out the part of the story where I got him back. Although I don’t think he
cried over it.” When they simply looked at her in question she added, “I ran
into him yesterday.” Quite literally.

The words
and then again this morning
were hanging
off the tip of her tongue, but she managed to hold them back.

“Oh really?” her mom asked. “How is he?”

“Just as dark and handsome as his father, I imagine,” she
answered, then shoved a forkful of food into her mouth to keep from adding
With
the best smile
.

That kiss stayed with Diego as he followed her out of the
parking garage and watched her drive away. It played out over and over in his
mind as he drove from the hospital to his downtown loft and continued to plague
him as he hit the treadmill, showered then met with a potential realtor because
he needed to sell his place.

The realtor his brother Jamie had recommended turned out to
be both beautiful and single, and she made it very clear she was interested in
Diego as much as she was his loft. For one very long moment Diego actually
considered taking advantage when she made a my-what-a-big-bed-you-have type of
comment. It would have been too easy to slake the lust Claire had inspired with
someone else, but in an odd turn of events, he was sure slaking that lust
elsewhere wouldn’t be enough.

Because the lust had little to do with simply getting laid
and a whole lot to do with the woman he’d held in his arms in that parking
garage. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way Claire’s long body had felt
pressed to his, her curves strong and fit with an ultra-feminine layer of
lushness making her deliciously soft as well.

It had taken all the willpower he had not to press her
against the side of her car, coax her legs open so he could sink his hips
between her thighs and grind against her like some kind of animal in heat.

And that mouth, that full, sweet mouth that had inspired
some of his earliest boyhood fantasies, felt and tasted even better than he
could have imagined. He wanted to bury his tongue deep inside her wet heat,
feel those lips all over his skin, watch as she wrapped them around his cock
and sucked him off until he couldn’t see straight.

Thoughts of her that ranged from remembering the unhappy
look on her face when she’d first seen him to that mind-boggling kiss stuck
with him all day. Even when he’d been telling his parents at dinner about the
promotion that was going take him off the road and move him to San Francisco
permanently, she was right there.

Which was why he found himself walking into the nurse
midwive’s office where she worked on Monday, after not hearing from her all
weekend.

“I’m looking for Claire Reagan,” he said in answer to the
receptionist’s question of how could she help him. Then he remembered. “Sorry,
Claire Snow. Is she available?”

The moment he asked he realized that even if she was there
she was probably too busy to talk to him. The waiting area was filled with
close to a dozen women in various stages of pregnancy, all of them waiting
their turn to be seen.

The receptionist looked up from the small arrangement of
pink and white roses he was holding. “Claire?” she asked, as if he’d misspoken.

At the back of the open reception area, gathered in an open
doorway that appeared to lead to the practice’s offices, three women abruptly
stopped talking and looked at him. After a split-second pause, a slender blonde
broke away from the group and headed toward him.

“Oh
please
tell me you’re the guy she went to school
with,” she said.

He couldn’t quite figure out the half-surprised,
half-smiling expression on her face, but he instantly pegged her as Claire’s
friend.

“I am.” He extended his hand. “Diego Rodriguez.”

“Lindy Valentine.” Her partial smile turned into a full-on
grin as they shook. “She wasn’t kidding when she said you grew up to be quite
the hottie, was she?”

Okay, that was definitely a good sign.

“I guess it takes one to know one,” he answered with a
shrug, then winked at the receptionist when she snickered.

Lindy gestured to the door a few feet from his left. “I’ll
be out in a sec.”

She led Diego out of the building and to one side of the
covered drive-up portico, out of the way of the main entrance.

“Claire’s not here,” she said when she finally turned to
him.

“
Okaaay
.” He tilted his head. “You brought me out
here just to tell me that?”

“The receptionist is a huge gossip,” she explained, rolling
her eyes. “I’d’ve fired her the first day she was here, but she’s one of the
docs’ nieces, so I’m stuck with her.”

“Ah, got it,” he said with a laugh. “So, Claire…” he
prompted when she didn’t immediately offer any more information.

“Is on vacation,” she said. “And she told me about the
incident at the hospital.”

“Which one?” How much, or how little in this case, had
Claire told her?

Lindy’s eyebrows went up. “She only told me that she got
snippy with you because you’d called her fat once back when you were kids.
You’re saying there’s more?”

Oh, there was a whole lot more, but it wasn’t his place to
tell.

“You’d have to ask her,” he said with an apologetic
expression. “Did you bring me out here to tell me I’m wasting my time? Because
if that’s the case, then I’d like to thank you for not shooting me down in
front of the office gossip.”

Her smile flashed again briefly. “I don’t think you’re
wasting your time, but now that we’ve met I get the feeling you work at a
little faster pace than she’s used to.”

Diego bristled despite the fact that she was right. He did
move fast, and then he moved on.

“I can go as fast or slow as she likes,” he assured Lindy,
his words measured so his point would come across loud and clear. “I’m not
looking to break her heart or take advantage. I would just like to spend some
time getting to know her.”

Preferably some of it would be spent in bed, but they could
work out the details if or when he got some face time with her.

She pressed her lips together and simply looked at him a
minute. “Listen, she and I have a standing date with a pitcher of margaritas
every Monday night.” She held her hands out. “I would be more than happy to
give those to her if you’d like.”

“I would appreciate that. May I?” he asked, pointing to the
pen she had stabbed through the base of her ponytail. She handed it to him and
he fished a business card out of his pocket, scribbled a couple of short
sentences on the back and handed her both.

Her eyebrows went up as she read what he’d written, then she
gave him a big smile and fanned herself with the card. “If that doesn’t get her
to call, you might just hear from me instead,” she told him with a sexy
chuckle.

And that was the way it always worked, Diego thought as he
thanked her and left—if one didn’t call, there was always another right behind
her who would.

* * * * *

“If you don’t call him I’m going to ask my husband for a day
pass and cash in that card myself,” Lindy said, putting one of her signature
raspberry margaritas in front of Claire before taking the seat across from her at
Claire’s kitchen table.

The plan had been to enjoy their M-n-ms—Monday night
margies—out on the small patio in Claire’s backyard, but Mother Nature had
other ideas. It was downpouring outside, so instead they were enjoying their
drinks in their second favorite place to chat, her cozy little kitchen.

Claire had remodeled the room herself, just like all the
other rooms of her house, minus the bathroom, which was currently a
work-in-progress. Claire loved the retro feel of the small space, which she’d purposely
decorated to remind her of her grandma’s kitchen—one of her favorite places to
be as a child.

She’d put up every piece of the white subway tile
backsplashes herself and painted all the walls a nice clean white. She’d taken
out the solid wood of the original cupboard doors and replaced them with glass,
then painted the inside of the cupboards robin’s-egg blue. The countertops were
black granite, and the appliances were brand new but had a mid-century look to
them as well.

She’d had simple white curtains with pretty red flowers
printed on them made for the window over the sink, and she’d even found a
vintage two-person aluminum frame diner set with a red linoleum top as well.

Claire touched her tongue to the lime-flavored mixture of
sugar and salt on the rim of her glass and sipped her drink, unable to take her
eyes off the business card she was holding, or the words on the back written in
Diego’s bold, masculine script.

This card is good for the night of your life—Exp in 48
hours.

“My God, Claire. When you said he was hot…” Lin waved her
hands in the air as if she was at a loss for words. “That was seriously the
understatement of the year. It took forever to get everyone to stop gabbing
about him and get back to work after he left.”

Great. She was the subject of office gossip.

She let her gaze wander to the bouquet of incredibly
beautiful pink and white roses sitting on the table. She had to give him credit
for not relying solely on his looks to get her attention, but she had to wonder
why he wanted her attention in the first place.

She hadn’t been nice to him at all, and then she’d taken
advantage of the way he’d persistently followed her by using him to try to get
Steve to leave her alone. Had she been doing it all wrong in the past? Did men
really prefer a bitch to a nice girl?

“What do you supposed the night of your life involves?” she
asked absently, her mind already wandering through several fairly raunchy
ideas.

Lin gave her a bland look. “There’s only one way to find
out.”

She wrinkled her nose. “He’s a salesman. A
traveling
salesman. Looking the way he does, as charming as he is, he’s got to be the
kind of guy who has a girl in every port.”

“So he wears a condom when you get to the good stuff. What’s
the problem?”

Claire sighed. “You know I don’t do casual.”

“You haven’t been doing any serious the past few years
either.”

The first half of those years had been spent in a numb haze
after Louis’ sudden death. The second half she’d tried to muster the
interest—mostly because something weird was happening to her body and mind that
made her think of sex as often as a teenage boy—but found it was too much of a
struggle to follow through.

“I tried dating again and that only got me a stalker,” she
blurted, then closed her eyes and wished really hard she could take her words
back.

She hadn’t told Lin that Steve, who she’d met online thanks
to Lin talking her into trying a dating website, was having a hard time taking
no for an answer. She’d only told her about running into Diego at the hospital.
She’d purposely left out the part about seeing Steve in his car, Diego kissing
her senseless, and Steve’s reaction.

“Honey, what do you mean stalker?” Lin asked, reaching
across the table and laying her hand over Claire’s. “What has he been doing?”

“Stalker might be too strong of a word for it.” She stood
Diego’s card against the salt and pepper shakers with that tempting handwritten
note facing away from her. “He might have shown up at the grocery store a
couple of times.” She sipped her drink, unable to make eye contact. “And when I
was leaving the hospital Saturday morning.”

“
Claire
, that’s serious.” Lin squeezed her fingers.
“And seriously scary.”

“He hasn’t really done anything. He only said hi and asked
how I was doing the two times I saw him grocery shopping, even though the store
isn’t remotely close to where he lives. And I called the security office of the
parking garage and gave them his description and car information so they could
keep an eye out for him.”
After
her brain started working again,
scrambled as it had been from that kiss Diego had laid on her.

“Have you ever seen him lurking around your house?”

The idea that he might have been and she just hadn’t seen
him sent a chill through her. “No. Not that I’ve noticed.”

“Does he call all the time? Send you creepy text messages in
the middle of the night? You could take your phone records to the police, get a
restraining order.”

She shook her head. “He called a few times after I broke it
off, but that stopped a few days before the first time he appeared at the store.
I hadn’t seen or heard from him in a while before he showed up at the hospital
the other morning.”

“I’m going to have Mike install cameras.” Her tone made it
clear that Claire protesting was no longer an option the way it had been in the
past.

Lin’s husband was the owner of a local home security
business. She’d been trying to talk Claire into letting him install front and
back door cameras and an alarm system for as long as Claire had owned her
house. But her neighborhood was relatively quiet and very friendly, with the
kind of neighbors who’d brought over gifts and introduced themselves when she’d
moved in. She hadn’t thought security was necessary.

At least she hadn’t until the incident at the parking garage
the other day.

Now she was seriously worried.

“Don’t worry about the cost. Mike won’t charge you and you
know it.”

Claire gave her a look. “You know darn well cost isn’t the
issue.”

Lin held up her hands to let Claire know the subject was
closed. “When are you going to call the tall, dark panty-melter?”

Claire groaned and slapped a hand over her forehead.

“If not for you, do it for me.” Lin clutched her hands over
her heart and gave her a beseeching look. “I’m an old married lady, Claire
Bear. Let me live vicariously through you.”

“Old married lady my ass,” Claire scoffed. “You’ve been
married two years. You and Mike still make googly-eyes at each other like
you’re newlyweds.”

“Can you blame me? He’s got that brawny construction worker
with brains thing going for him.” She grinned and fanned herself. “I’m a lucky,
lucky lady.”

Claire rolled her eyes, but Lin was right. After an
exhaustive search—meaning she’d gone through half the male population of the
city—she’d found a really good man. She’d recently turned her attention on
getting Claire matched up with someone good as well, but Claire was pretty sure
Louis had been her one shot. Lin didn’t accept her theory, and the hunt for a
new husband for Claire had been on for a good two years.