Sweet as Sin (4 page)

“So this is what, build up for one hell of a one night stand?”

He wanted to say yes but a gnawing appetite told him one night wouldn’t be enough. She was too mouthwatering to be ravished. He wanted to savor her spice until it burned him, let her sweetness flood his bitter soul until his teeth ached with it. No, one night was nowhere near enough time.

Inez Kelley

35

He couldn’t resist one last taste from her lips before whispering against her cheek. “A night, a week, a month, who knows? It’s for as long as we’re both enjoying ourselves. And you
will
enjoy it, Livvy.”

She shivered and his stomach tightened against the urge to take her mouth again. The soft pink tongue he’d just tasted skimmed her upper lip and her gaze dropped to his chest. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw her hand shake as it floated toward him. It landed with a butterfly touch above his heart.

“I need to think about this.”

“You know where I live…and what I want.”

John walked into the backyard and she deflated with a loud sigh. There was no denying they’d been kissing. Her wet handprints marked him as if she’d staked a claim. Damn, the man lit her burners like no one ever had. Her fingers trailed over a swollen mouth that could still taste him.

Greedily, she wanted more.

“I’m sorry.” Andrea peeked around the corner of the dark room before sliding in. She opened the freezer and bright yellow light framed her embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to walk in on anything.”

“It’s okay.” Husky with unfulfilled passion, Livvy’s voice cracked.

36

Sweet as Sin

“So? Tell me.” Andrea bumped the door closed with her hip, a paper-wrapped Popsicle in her hand. The darkness surrounded Livvy like a blanket, isolating her from the outside. She wanted to grab it and hold it close. John tempted her like Godiva chocolates, sparking an appetite in her that shocked her. She hadn’t known how hungry she was.

“He isn’t looking for permanence.”

“Are you?” Andrea asked.

Livvy closed her eyes. She’d been hitting the snooze button on her biological clock for a while.

She wanted the white wedding, the picket fence, the baby bottles. But those things were out of her reach right now. Many times she’d been told that one day she’d make some lucky man a very good wife. Vain or not, she believed that. So far, someday and some man hadn’t arrived together.

Perhaps her standards were a bit high, but she had no intention of lowering them. She’d had

relationships and affairs, some serious, some fun, some nothing more than avoiding empty nights.

Nothing inflamed her like one caress of those navy eyes.

Her face swung to Andrea and she saw not her baby sister but a mature woman about to be married, a wife long before her older sister.

“Someday, sure, but John Murphy isn’t the type you bring home to Mama, you know? He’s the Inez Kelley

37

guy you sneak out to meet after your nice date drops you off. The kind you give your virginity to under the bleachers. He scares me.”

Andrea stiffened and went into a mother-lion protective stance. “Scares you? How?”

“Haven’t you looked into his eyes, Andy?

There’s no laughter there. None. It’s very dark and secretive and…dangerous. Not in a beat-you-behind-closed-doors way but in an I-have-

baggage-like-Samsonite kind of way. Intense.

That’s the word. He’s intense…and it’s not that I’m frightened
of him
so much as what he makes me feel is scary, kind of out of control and reckless.”

Livvy ran her hands over her face and stopped cold. Her hands smelled like John—rich, earthy, sexual. A coil of need wrapped tighter around her chest and she tried to dispel it by blowing through her mouth.

“I don’t need this right now.” Livvy tried to shove the longing away but it hummed through her blood with a tempting growl. “I’ve got enough on my plate dealing with the Shack’s financial troubles. I do not need a man distracting me.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what you do need,”

Andrea offered. “The past couple months have been a real bitch for you. It’ll do you good to think about something other than cash flow.”

38

Sweet as Sin

“I’m fine. The Shack is fine.” Livvy plastered a deliberately calm expression on her face. She’d eat glass before she let Andrea know how tight things really were. She wouldn’t let anything destroy her sister’s joy. “Don’t worry about me. I want you to have a wonderful wedding.”

Andrea stared for a long breath then an impish grin appeared. “It looked hot. You were definitely wanting something else a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, I want him.” Livvy smirked. “Maybe I just need some hard, hot monkey sex. It’s been a while.”

Andrea tore the paper from her icepop and headed for the glass doors. “Listen, Liv, if you want it, go for it. Have a summer fling and enjoy.

It’d take your mind off money. If it leads to more, great, if not, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is he lives next door. What if things end badly? Then what?”

“Then you put up a privacy fence and we egg his house. Just because you’re in the market for a minivan doesn’t mean you can’t test drive a hotrod.” Andrea stopped with her hand on the door handle. “And if the engine purrs the right way, take several trips around the block.”

Night fell and couples paired off to blankets and chairs, snuggling and waiting for the show. A few single friends congregated around the picnic table. John folded into a chair beside Tow and Inez Kelley

39

Andrea, never turning his head toward the kitchen.

One of Andrea’s nursing buddies strolled over to him, her flirting evident even from a distance.

Livvy bristled. She waited. John said something that made the woman laugh but he made no move to open the small circle to her and she wandered away. He didn’t watch her leave.

The cool grass licked at her ankles as Livvy walked to the Adirondack chairs, skirting one couple’s blanket and outstretched legs. On top of the closed cooler, citronella candles illuminated the night and beat back mosquitoes. The pale yellow flickering highlighted one side of John but the other side lapsed in the night.

“Fireworks are scheduled to start anytime,”

Andrea offered. Livvy pulled a folding lawn chair beside the candle glow.

In the distance, the sounds of children

screeching and muffled bangs from purchased fireworks drowned out the crickets. Livvy shifted in her seat. Her skin prickled and she knew John was watching her, but she refused to look in his direction. The chair’s woven nylon bit into her thighs and she kicked off her sandals, bracing her toes on the cooler to prevent having waffle-ass when she stood up.

Andrea tossed her pager onto the cooler with a dull clatter. “I’m on call.”

40

Sweet as Sin

“As what?” John’s deep voice stroked the night as he had her skin.

“I’m an RN down at St. Bartholomew’s ER. If I can make it to midnight without getting called in, then I’m off for three glorious days.” She jabbed the air with her fist, making everyone smile. She wiggled her eyebrows and blew a kiss to Tow.

“And you don’t have court for two days so prepare to be completely molested.”

“Can’t molest the willing.” Tow chuckled and settled Andrea’s feet on his thigh, stroking her ankle absently. The move was intimate, instinctual, personal. Livvy’s heart leaped and she dared a glance at John. He hurriedly drew his attention away from the tender act. Some things, some actions, although not sexual, were private.

The sky exploded with a dazzling bloom of pink and a deafening crackle. Everyone’s

concentration shot up toward the flashing fireworks when Livvy made her subtle move. She propped her feet on the side edge of John’s chair, beside his leg. He glanced down at her painted toes then looked at her questioningly. Her lips tilted upward and she lowered her lashes shyly then raised them and caught his gaze. Slowly, she slid her feet onto his thigh.

Understanding shone on his face and the corner of his mouth lifted in acceptance. Deliberately, he covered her instep with a firm hand.

Chapter Two

The green-eyed monster and his master can bite
my ass.

Livvy glared through her window at the

beautiful dark-haired woman on John’s deck. Her hair reflected the afternoon sun as she laughed, her face turned up to him. He smiled, tweaked her nose and leaned in to kiss her cheek. The closeness was evident.

Fingers white-knuckled on the counter, Livvy ground her teeth. No promises and no heartache, he’d said. He’d made no mention of other women, but then she’d never asked.
Fool! This is what you
get when you let your hormones do the thinking
for you.

Livvy whirled around and marched into the living room. She’d spent most of the night kissing him. Still, they’d managed to talk for hours, seated on the wooden picnic table, sharing words and light caresses. She wasn’t sure which she’d enjoyed more. When the first brush of dew made her shiver, John had kissed her goodnight, a scorching kiss that left her breathless and eager for more. She’d had multiple erotic dreams about 42

Sweet as Sin

him all night. Well, he could just stay there, in dreamland, far away from the reality of her bed.

The pages of the pastry magazine blurred under the haze of her anger. She’d learned to swallow many things in life but that was just one thing she couldn’t stomach. She’d shared her toys, her clothes and her house but there was no way in hell she could ever share a man. Not even a man she wanted for only a few nights.

Her father’s first girlfriend, or at least the first one she’d known about, had also had black hair. It had stood out against the white of his car and the blue of the sky that frosty November morning.

Her mother, lips thinned into a tight line, had snapped “Get in the car” and jerked the seatbelt tighter across her little sister’s lap.

Andy whimpered, the boys fought for the

window seat, and Livvy stood frozen. “Mom, who is th—?”

“I said get in the car!”

Livvy couldn’t tear her gaze away from the motel parking lot across the street from the grocery store. They were laughing, kissing, and looked so happy. She had never seen her parents act that way. Her father never turned his head, never looked across the street to see his wife blocking the car window from her younger

children. But Livvy saw it all, and a childish Inez Kelley

43

innocence died with a shutting of a motel room door.

Nothing was said on the way home. Her

mother grabbed the grocery bags and Livvy herded her brothers and sister inside the quiet house. She stripped off their coats, found cartoons on the television and promised to bring them some cookies if they behaved.

She tiptoed into the kitchen. Her mother stood staring out the window, ignoring the paper sacks of defrosting frozen dinners and marked-down meats. Livvy put the groceries away, filled the cookie jar and took a handful into the living room.

Her mother hadn’t moved when she returned.

“Mom?”

“He’s a good man…most times. He stood by

me when I got pregnant with you, and he loves you all. It’s been hard but he’d eat dirt before you kids went without.”

Just to fill space, to have something to do with her shaking hands, Livvy dumped potatoes in the sink and scrubbed the skins clean. She started dicing them into a pot until she couldn’t see for the tears blurring her eyes.

“Are you…are you getting a divorce?”

Her mother sucked back a sob. “And do what?

Live on welfare? Get a job waiting tables? Giving half my paycheck to some daycare to raise you 44

Sweet as Sin

kids? No. Never you mind what you saw. It doesn’t mean anything. Never does.”

But it had meant something that time. That time, when her parents’ loud voices filled the hall after bedtime, she knew why they argued. Pulling the blankets higher on her brothers and looking into their round faces, she made a promise to herself. She would never stand in a kitchen and stare out a window while her man was with someone else. She would never be so dependent on someone else that she turned her head when he came home smelling of perfume. No child of hers would ever lie in bed and listen to her mother’s crying.

John could go fuck himself and that little bitch on his deck but he’d never fuck her.

When the phone rang, she snagged it and

barked out a greeting.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Hey, Leo, no, I was just watching TV.” Livvy used the lie to cover her shaking voice.

“Well, change the channel if it ticks you off that much.” His chuckle made her smile. “Look, I know it’s short notice but I scored two tickets to the Sunday Smooth Jazz show tonight. Since you’re the only other person I know who likes it, want to tag along? We could grab some dinner and make a night of it. Kelsey has to work and, well, she listens to that country crap anyway.”

Inez Kelley

45

Livvy flashed on John’s arm around the pretty brunette and tapered her eyes.

No harm, no foul.

“Leo, I’d love to go.”

Reflected in the glass, his stony face mocked him like a ghost unable to move on.

“What’re you doing, Johnny?”

With one hand, he drummed a steady rhythm on the sketchpad on his knee. He twirled a pencil in the other hand. “Nothing.”

Gina peered out the window and then smiled.

“Looks to me like you’re spying on the

neighbors.”

“Maybe.”

“Which one’s your neighbor, the man or the woman?”

“The woman.”

“Ah, I see.” The smug-attorney tone in her voice irritated him and he shot her a stern look.

Gina ignored him and sat on the arm of his easy chair. He shifted to the side so she wouldn’t fall off and resumed his surveillance of Livvy and her date.

Date.
The word sent a tangy jolt of infuriation through him. How could she kiss him breathless and then go out with another man? A fierce sense of possession swelled in him and he fought it like a rabid dog. He had no claim over her, wanted no 46