Road to Seduction (Kimani Romance) (6 page)

“Shit,” Eric said.

“Nice.” Andrew’s laughter came over the line loud and clear. “What’s got your panties in a bunch?”

“Nothing,” Eric said quickly, trying to sound more upbeat lest Andrew scent his blood and start circling like the shark that he was. “What’s up?”

“We’re having Andy baptized in Columbus on Sunday. Can you come?”

“
Sunday?
How about a little more notice? I told you Izzy and I are driving to Jacksonville for a wedding on Saturday.”

“Yeah, well, the boy’s nearly one. If we put it off any longer he’ll be able to drive to his own baptism. So you can come back a little early. Your parents’ll be in town this weekend—”

“God help us,” Eric muttered.

“—and after that they’ll be in Europe until who knows when.”

“Is that right?”

Andrew snorted. “They’re
your
parents, man. Do you ever talk to them?”

“Not if I have any other option, no.”

“Well, we’ll talk about your family issues later. Can you come?”

Typical Andrew, expecting everyone to drop everything to be at his beck and call at a second’s notice.
Jerk
. Still, Eric wouldn’t miss any of the events in little Andy’s life if he could help it. At the thought of Andrew’s adorable son who, with his smiling face, masses of curly black hair and fat little legs, was the cutest kid Eric had ever seen, some of Eric’s tension at last began to slip away.

“Well,” he grumbled, thinking of his right-hand man, with whom they could hitch a ride back to Columbus. “Brad’s got the jet down in Miami to meet with suppliers this week. I’ll have him stop through Jacksonville and pick us up.”

“Great. Appreciate it. By the way, Viveca wants you to be the godfather.”

“What?”
Eric came to full attention, his throat unaccountably tight now and his eyes misty. “
Godfather?
You sure?”

“Yeah,” Andrew said, and Eric could almost see him shrug. “It’s mostly ceremonial, so you can’t screw it up.”

Eric snorted. He knew Andrew was only kidding, but still. Teasing from Andrew, which normally would be only a minor annoyance, like a buzzing fly, had, within the last year or so, taken on an irritating new significance.

Maybe it was the absolute change that had come over Andrew since he met his wife, Viveca. Usually smug, arrogant and obnoxious—Eric’s greatest joys in life had come from needling the brother—Andrew was now insufferably…happy. Always smiling, always laughing, always sharing secret little looks and touches with Viveca, with whom he seemed to be glued at the hip.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Andrew now had a wonderful family, what with Viveca, baby Andy, and their adopted son, Nathan, who was now nine or ten.

The only good thing about the whole sickening scenario was that Andrew and crew lived in New York City, so Eric only had to endure their excruciating joy once a month or so when they came to Columbus to visit his grandmother, Arnetta Warner.

Why Andrew’s newfound happiness felt like such a personal affront to his own life, which was pretty good, all things considered, Eric had no idea. The man deserved it, Eric supposed grudgingly, and he wanted his cousin to be happy. Even so, something about Andrew and Viveca left him vaguely pissed off. Pinpointing a reason seemed to be impossible, so he’d stopped trying months ago. He just knew that Andrew’s great life suddenly made Eric’s life seem…less. Andrew’s happiness underscored Eric’s loneliness. Yeah, he was lonely. May as well admit it. That was the nameless ache he’d been feeling for a while now.

Watching Andrew with Viveca, seeing the way they exuded sex and contentment—there’d been one night when Eric saw them emerge from the pool house at Heather Hill, Arnetta’s estate, with messy wet hair and shifty looks, as though they’d been skinny dipping and making love—put the strangest thoughts into Eric’s head.

Made him wonder, for the first time in his life, if having a wife and children might be as wonderful for him as it was for Andrew. If being married could be nice rather than the cut and dried business arrangement that Eric’s parents had maintained for the last forty years. If Eric, too, could be happier—if it was also his time to settle down.

A woman’s murmuring voice on Andrew’s side of the line cut across Eric’s troubled thoughts and stretched his taut nerves. So Viveca was right there with Andrew.
Of course
.

“Hang on a minute,” Andrew told him.

Eric rolled his eyes and waited. There was a bumping and a jostling, and then Andrew’s voice came back on the line, along with the unmistakable gurgle of Andy, the world’s happiest baby.

Something tugged, hard, on Eric’s heartstrings.

“How’s my boy?” Andrew cooed to his laughing son, whom he was now, obviously, holding. “Huh? How’s my boy?”

Eric had a sudden inspiration. “Put Viveca on. I need to talk to her.”

“Why?” Andrew’s voice lost its new-father softness and assumed the faint growl it always had whenever he thought Eric was showing too much interest in his wife. “What do you want?”

“Just put her on.”

“You’re lucky I don’t hang up on your ass.”

Eric supposed that was true. Chuckling, he leaned against the SUV, checked the clinic’s front door for signs of Izzy—none yet, thank goodness—and enjoyed the gentle breeze on his face as he waited for Viveca, who came to the phone right away.

“Hey, Eric,” she said. “What’s up?”

“You got a minute? I have a little, uh, problem.” Eric belatedly had second thoughts about confiding personal issues to Viveca, who seemed to be a pipeline straight to Andrew. But she was generally very cool and he was desperate. “It’s private.”

“Okay.”

The new interest in her voice gave him pause, but he plowed ahead anyway. “So don’t tell the jackass.”

She laughed, reminding him why he liked her so well. “I won’t.”

“So…the thing is—”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to say
Izzy wants to love me and leave me,
so he decided to keep it simple. Viveca would understand because she’d once commented about the possibility of a relationship between him and Izzy. Thinking back on the comment now, he wondered at his own stupidity because he’d thought Viveca was spouting serious nonsense at the time.

Sheesh
. Could he have
been
any blinder? Maybe Viveca had seen the writing on the wall before he had. At this point he wanted to award her a million dollars for her brilliance. Taking a deep breath, he laid it all on the line.

“Things seem to be, ah,
changing,
between me and Izzy.”

“Oh.” There was a short pause.
“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Hang on.”

Eric listened to the sounds of Viveca’s footsteps hurrying somewhere in her massive Park Avenue apartment, and then a door shutting. When she came back on the line, her voice was breathless and excited.

“I
knew
it. The second I saw the two of you together, I
knew
you shouldn’t be just friends. So what’s the problem?”

“Well, this is a little, ah…sudden.”

“Right…?”

“And it’s going to take some time getting used to. I don’t want to ruin the friendship and all. And Izzy’s special. Not like the other, ah—”

“Hoochies?” she suggested helpfully.

“—well…yeah, not like the other hoochies I date.”

“You’d better not blow it, okay?”

The sudden vehemence in Viveca’s voice made him pull back a little. He held the phone away from his ear and looked at it, half-expecting to see Viveca climb out of it and point a finger in his face.

“I don’t want to hear about you hurting her, or cheating or anything—”

“Excuse me,” he snarled, pacing back and forth next to the SUV. “Before you start ranting about what a terrible person you think I am, let me just stop you right there, okay?
This
is the problem—she’s not gonna give me the chance to hurt her. She’s already got an end game in mind before the damn relationship even starts.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she says she’ll have sex with me, and that’s it.
One time
. And then she’s moving to South Africa to teach.”

Just then a stooped man and woman, one of those little old couples who look like they’ve been married since the time of the pharaohs, tottered by several feet away on the sidewalk. Hearing the word
sex
—maybe Eric
had
been talking a little louder than he’d meant to—they glanced around, looking scandalized. Eric smiled, waved, and watched as they clutched each other’s arms tighter and hurried off.

“Oh,” Viveca said in his ear, and Eric could almost see her
face fall. “Well, I could see why you’d turn down that arrangement, but—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he interjected. “I’m taking the sex. Any way I can.”

“What?”

“The problem is getting her to stick around so we can see where this thing goes. There’s no way I can up and move to South Africa. You know that. But I just don’t get what her problem is. Why would she tell me a flat-out
no?
”

“Well…” Viveca sighed thoughtfully. “If she’s anything like me, she probably doubts your ability to, ah, commit to one woman. Maybe she’s worried about that.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

That explanation certainly jibed with what Izzy had said a few minutes ago, in between her bursts of hysterical laughter, but his gut told him there was something else going on. He just didn’t know
what,
although he had the persistent and sickening worry that she was still hung up on her ex.

“But if you think there’s more to it, and you really want her—”

“I do,” he said. “You have no idea.”

“—then you need to hang in there with her. Isabella’s worth it.” Viveca paused and he heard the smile in her voice. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s a Warner man who ever lived that couldn’t, ah, win over a woman he wanted.”

Right on cue, Eric heard a door open on Viveca’s side of the line, and then approaching footsteps that could only belong to one person.

“Excuse me,” Viveca hissed, though her voice was a little muffled now, as if she’d put her hand over the receiver. “I was in the middle of a very important
private
conversation.”

“So sorry,” said Andrew’s faint voice, but he didn’t sound sorry at all, especially when he raised his voice for his next sentence, no doubt to make sure Eric heard him. “You need to tell my cousin to get his own wife because I need mine back now.”

Viveca laughed and then her unmuted voice came back on the line. “Eric? Sorry. Gotta go.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eric supposed he should be grateful Andrew had let the poor woman talk on the phone for this long. Turning back toward the SUV, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the door to the clinic open. Isabella emerged, looking grim, and saw him right away. Once again his pulse went into overdrive.

Lowering his voice, he gripped the phone tighter. “Here she comes.”

“Keep me posted.” Viveca now sounded breathless with excitement and Eric pictured her bouncing on the balls of her feet, waving her hands, and all but levitating with rapture on his behalf. “Call me any time! Good luck!”

“Thanks,” Eric muttered, turning his phone off. “I’ll need it.”

I
sabella crossed the parking lot and approached him with caution, as though she wasn’t sure what kind of reception she’d receive. She stopped when she got within two feet of him, and there was a look of contrition in her dark eyes that went a long way toward soothing Eric’s jangled nerves.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” The breeze brushed one dark strand of hair across her face and she tucked it behind her ear. “Zeus is okay. But they’re giving him an IV. We have to leave him for a couple hours.”

“Okay.”

This would put them behind in their wedding travels—he wondered vaguely whether they’d now have to skip the visit with her family in Greenville—but the wedding was the very least of his concerns right now.

She hazarded a small smile, the one that was warm and sweet and as familiar as the fingers on his right hand, and his life shifted that much more into unfamiliar territory. He was used to seeing that smile and smiling back. He was not used to seeing
that smile and wanting…everything. Longing for her tightened its hold on him and sank its fingers deep.

He waited, with absolutely no idea what to do or say.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’m really sorry. For…laughing and all. That was rude.”

One of the great things about Izzy—and there were a lot of great things about her, like her colorful clothes, free spirit and enormous heart—was her lack of posturing. She didn’t jockey for position, wasn’t a control freak and wasn’t passive-aggressive. She didn’t sulk or punish. If she was wrong, she said so, and if she was mad, she vented and moved on.

She was always just…herself. Always irresistible.

“I suppose I deserved it.” It was easier to discuss his imperfections when she’d already admitted to one herself. “I haven’t exactly been…a monk.”

That got him a laugh, one that weakened his knees and reheated his skin.

“I think we can agree on that,” she said.

A silent moment passed during which they stared at each other and he heard several cars pass on the street behind him. Other than that they were alone in the parking lot and, as far as he was concerned, in the universe.

Izzy edged closer, looking up at him with the same kind of vulnerability that currently had him in a stranglehold. “Can I tell you something else?”

“Anything.” He cleared his throat against its sudden huskiness.

To his astonishment, she took his hand and squeezed it. He clung to this lifeline to Isabella and the things he needed that only she could provide. She swallowed and tried to smile, but her lips didn’t turn up all the way.

“This is hard,” she whispered.

“Take your time.”

A flush crept up her neck and over her cheeks, infusing her with color until she looked as though she’d been kissed and loved
by the sun. “I’ve always had a little crush on you.” She paused. “Did you know that?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you did. But I saw you the second you arrived at freshman orientation. You wore jeans and a white linen shirt, and you were thinner then, and you had a tan—I think you’d been to the beach or something—and I thought you were so sexy.”

“I can’t believe you remember all that.”

“Yeah, well…I kind of always wondered why—when you pretty much had sex with every other woman who crossed your path—you never even looked twice at me.”

“Because I was
stupid
.” The desperation-fueled vehemence in his voice startled both of them, but he’d never spoken truer words in his life. “I’m just not that bright, Izzy. You should know that by now. You can’t hold that against me.”

Another laugh, but then she sobered and continued with her confession, still clinging to his hand. “It doesn’t matter now—”

“I’m sorry, Iz—”

“Shh,” she said, drawing closer until he could smell the sweet summery warmth of her skin. “Here’s what I want. Are you listening?”

His voice failing, he wagged his head like one of those foolish toy monkeys with the clanging cymbals.

“I want to make love. I want this night with you. I don’t want to miss this chance and then regret it forever. I want to know what it feels like to have your hands all over me—”

Eric shuddered, his lust making him unsteady on his feet.

“—and then I want us to go on with our lives—”

“Isabella—”

“—and I want to know that we’ll still be there for each other, the same way we’ve been for all these years. Can you agree to that?”

“Is this about…that guy?” Eric couldn’t bring himself to say Joe’s name, to put the man between them at such a crucial moment. “You still want him? Want to get back together, maybe?”

She crinkled her brow, as though she had to dig deep to figure out who he was talking about, but then her expression cleared and, with a small laugh, she shook her head.

“Joe is the very last thing on my mind. Trust me.”

The relief he felt was primitive and fierce. “Good. Then we can try—”

“No,” she said flatly. “We can’t.”

He stared down at her, mutinous and silent. Seconds passed while he fumed with anger and frustration hot enough to burn the clothes right off his body. The sharp pulse of pain up past his ear and out the top of his head told him he’d been grinding his back teeth, and he worked hard to unclench his jaw.

What should he do? Never in his life had he been so stymied.

He looked away, staring at the traffic but not seeing it, and wondered how she thought they could strike a straightforward agreement about something so intimate and important. And then he wondered how he could make love to her without outright lying to her because God knew he had no intentions whatsoever of letting her go.

Finally he looked back in her face and settled on addressing some of their issues but not all. “Don’t expect me to happily watch you get on a plane and move halfway across the world.”

Her level gaze never faltered. “Can you agree?”

Staring at Izzy, wanting her, needing her, he decided that a small lie, this one time, wouldn’t matter for long in the scheme of things. Once they were together, once he’d moved inside her body and made her his, once he’d given her the kind of addictive pleasure he knew she would give him, she wouldn’t want to leave him. He knew it. One day they’d look back on this ridiculous conversation and laugh that she’d ever tried to impose such an unworkable condition on him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can agree.”

Turning her palm up, he pressed a kiss into her hand, and then she was in his arms and they were clinging to each other, swaying. Sinking his fingers deep into those silky sheets of hair,
he thought that he’d do almost anything for this woman, including, probably, kill or die, but the one thing he would not do, could not do, was let her leave him.

Pulling away, determined to make her his before she changed her mind, he led her that last step or two to the SUV, pulled out his keys and unlocked the door.

“Let’s go.”

“The honeymoon suite?”

Isabella tossed her purse on the nearest end table in the tan, red and black suite and wondered what on earth she’d gotten herself into. After about three minutes using his in-dash computer and cell phone, Eric had selected a luxury hotel in downtown Knoxville as the place for the consummation of their relationship. Now here they were.

Isabella wasn’t certain what she’d expected, other than a room with a bed, but this high-rise palace with sweeping city views, kitchen, dining room and…yes…enormous down-covered bed and plasma flat-screen TV was not it.

“Not that I’m not grateful or anything,” she continued, “but…it’s a bit much, isn’t it? You don’t have to impress me with your money.”

Eric arranged their overnight bags in a corner and, though he’d seemed a little quiet in the last few minutes, flashed the killer smile that was one of the reasons she was here with him now. Her belly did that delicious fluttery thing she’d gotten pretty used to in the last several hours, and she shivered with anticipatory heat.

“Did you think I’d take you to one of those no-tell motels we passed on the interstate?”

She laughed and he laughed, but then the laughter died away and they were left staring at each other across the space of twenty feet with no clear idea of what to do now.

Sexual tension hummed and vibrated between them, enough to power twenty luxury hotels for a year. Isabella was already so aroused she thought she’d probably come if he so much as
kissed her cheek. Eric radiated the kind of leashed tension that could be found in a Ferrari idling by the curb waiting for someone to hit the gas. It shimmered around him, hot and bright, and was obvious in his sudden, absolute stillness.

They stood there, waiting…waiting…

His gaze slid over her body, lingering on her breasts and thighs, and there was no disguising the glittering hunger in his eyes. Swallowing hard, he shoved his hands in his pockets as though he needed to stop himself from pouncing.

In response, her body heat ratcheted up another notch or fifty, well into the red zone. It was all she could do not to vault across the room and tackle him to the floor, her need was that great. In her entire life, she’d never wanted anything the way she wanted
this
. And no one had ever wanted her as much as Eric did now; she knew that instinctively. There wasn’t even a close second. That was another reason she was here now.

Most of all she was here because she couldn’t
not
come. For years she’d wondered, in the dark little corner of her mind she pretended didn’t exist, what it would be like to be the focal point of Eric’s desire. How it would feel to have those strong hands skim over her overheated skin. How hard that heavy body would be as it slid across hers. How he would sound when he made love. Whether he kept his eyes open or closed. Whether he was tender or wild or both.

They’d been so close in every other way, told each other most of their secrets. He’d confided about his dysfunctional parents; she’d cried on his shoulder about her occasional financial woes. They’d laughed together through college and shared many of life’s ups and downs. Taking this last step with him just seemed…right.

Nevertheless, being here was probably a mistake. She knew that, too. Despite all her bravado about them getting each other out of their systems and moving on with their lives, there was no chance—none whatsoever—of her recovering from making love with Eric Warner. He occupied too much space in her life, was the central point in too many of her long-ignored sexual fan
tasies, was too
much
to ever just get over. It was an impossibility right up there with a polar bear and a seal living together in harmony atop a glacier.

Nor was there any chance of their building a relationship, although it was nice of him to suggest it. Misguided, but nice. No doubt in the thrill of first lust he actually thought such a thing was possible, but it wasn’t; she knew him too well.

How many women had come and quickly gone from his life over the years? She could probably name twenty or thirty without breaking a sweat, and those were just the ones she knew about. God knew how many more there were. None had made any impression on him, and he probably didn’t even remember all their names. He was a world-class commitment-phobe and that was fine because she knew it going in.

And anyway, she was leaving soon for South Africa.

And of course she was never getting married, not that
that
mattered.

So, no, she wouldn’t get over him, but she could insulate herself a little by keeping her vision clear and her expectations low. They had right now, this moment, and that was all. There could never be anything more or anything else. If she gave him the expiration date for their relationship ahead of time, it would spare him the awkwardness and embarrassment of trying to get rid of her nicely, and that was the best thing for both of them. Keeping it short and sweet was the only way they could hope to preserve their friendship—and her feelings—when all was said and done. In the meantime, she had this one moment with him and she would not waste it.

Eric cleared his throat and took a hesitant step closer. “Are you hungry? We can order room service.”

“Yes.” The answer was automatic because she usually was hungry and was always in favor of room service, but then she realized she didn’t need food nearly as much as she needed him. “No.”

Her knees trembling now, she took a step toward him. Eric let out a long, serrated sigh, took his hands out of the pockets of his strained shorts and eased closer.

“Did you need a minute or two to relax or take a shower, or—”

“No.” She managed a quick smile. “Unless you’re trying to tell me something?”

“No.” He’d reached her now and was only a foot away, if that, close enough for her to smell the fresh, seductive scent of Oriental spices on his skin. His gaze dropped to her lips and his voice lowered to the merest hint of a whisper. “You smell good enough to eat.”

Isabella shuddered. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

One side of his mouth hitched up and he gave her a slow, heavy-lidded smile that was a seduction in itself. “We don’t have to do this, Isabella. You know that, right?”

“Maybe
you
don’t, but
I
do.”

Something happened to him. She could tell because his eyes rolled closed and a ripple vibrated through his big frame. Maybe it was passion or excitement, or maybe it was just that his grip on his self-control was slipping. It didn’t really matter. All she knew was that the sexiest thing she’d ever seen was Eric struggling against the power of his desire for her and losing the battle.

“Isabella-aaa.” Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and they were glittering, hot and unfathomable. “I’m trying to control myself, but…I’m not sure I can.”

“I don’t want you to.” She tipped her face up, hoping he would kiss her. Touch her. Take her. The excitement and anticipation burning in her heaving chest threatened to knock her flat, and her breathing was just this side of a pant. “Do you feel like we’re stepping off a cliff?”