T is for Temptation (6 page)

“Were you in love with him?”

Potent tension electrified the moist sea air, and he met her eyes with a fierce intentness as if some important fate rode upon her answer.

“No, never,” she said, and her jaw clenched. “He proposed in the middle of one of my mother’s dinner parties, the whole romantic bit, with a violinist in the background. All of a sudden, everyone was congratulating us, and the next thing I knew, a date had been set.” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”

A loud, old-fashioned ringy-dingy rent nature’s musical background, the tone vulgar and abrasive above a gentle ocean lapping at the rocky beach, leaves rustling in the slight breeze, and the soft warbling of gulls having settled territorial fights. When the ringing repeated, Jake frowned, and Tee stood.

“Probably my mother,” she said and strolled over to the ancient rotary instrument with a separate, tubular earpiece.

“Hello.”

She listened to the caretaker’s problem and promised to help while doing a quick check of the room. Giving Jake her back, she whizzed away the platter of cupcakes, sending it to some magical purgatory. A good thing this interruption, she couldn’t risk losing control again. After disconnecting, Tee spun around, straight into Jake’s solid chest.

“Something wrong?”

His low rumble strung shivers down her chest, a delicious intimate caress and a deep yearning to have the right to demand this, anytime, anyplace, stoked her penduluming emotions.

“That was the caretaker. His engine’s flooded, and he’s stranded in the bay next to this one. I have to go and get him. I’ll probably have to tow him to the club.”

“Did you plan this with him?” A rough grittiness edged his deep voice and tightness strained the corners of his mouth.

“Pardon me?”

The thumping of her heart hammered in Tee’s ears, and guilt, prompted by the secret witchy part of her, made her normal agility falter. She stumbled backwards. Certain she hadn’t heard correctly, she asked, “What did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

“Did I plan his boat breaking down? Of course not. Why on earth would you think that?”

“Why are you so relieved about the interruption, then? Just how well do you know this caretaker? Someone was in this house before us.”

A wash of remorse made her groan aloud, and she pressed her fist against her mouth. Then temper flared. “Is this typical after-sex protocol, an interrogation?”

“You have to admit after this morning, with the burglary and the drug accusations, I have reason to be suspicious.”

“Of a caretaker’s boat breaking down? Of me planning something with him?” She jabbed her hands on her hips. “You, of all people, know I can’t be having an affair with him.”

“Okay, maybe I’m off base there, but why the consistent flashes of guilt? When I mentioned those cupcakes, you looked like a condemned woman. Were you involved in Tony’s schemes?”

Hell, he wanted Tee to be innocent, but every gut-wrenching intuition told him she was hiding something.

Something vital.

A secret she was both ashamed of and one related to her marriage to Tony. Not Graziella, although a slice of true venom sparked when she spat out the other woman’s name.

The look on her sweet face earlier when he mentioned those cupcakes scrambled his smoke alarms and set his teeth on edge. Forged predatory traits so predominant in his makeup provoked a barrage of staccato questions, and he went for the gusto.

“What are you hiding, Tee? Who was in this house before we got here? Where did those cakes come from, and how did they conveniently disappear in the few minutes we were on the patio? Did you really come here for those stupid decorations, or was this house part of Tony’s drug-running operations?”

Her full lower lip trembled for such a brief instant he wasn’t certain he hadn’t imagined the movement. Then a dart of sheer rage flared in those widening big browns, arresting any further investigative intent on his part. He recognized the expression lighting her face and retreated, putting a good two feet between them.

She wore the same look the day her stallion had reacted to a command with a frenzied bucking and thrown her to the ground. He’d never seen the likes of such a furious, instinctive reaction. Nothing could’ve stopped her.

With a flying leap, Tee mounted the horse like a Native American Indian, grabbed the reins, and kneed the animal into a tight circle, around and around, until the steed trembled and frothed at the mouth. Then, she’d led the stallion through the same paces, which had sparked his defiance over and over, until he accepted her domination.

Now she aimed that precise wrath at him.

“Go to hell.” She splayed each word out in a ferocious snarl and bounded to her feet.

With a rueful grimace, Jake acknowledged her genuine reflexive response with not a minute hint of deception. A wash of immediate regret swamped him, and his first thought was he’d never get inside her again.

Fierce need brought the blood to his prick, engorging it and slapping his testicles tight. Blast, the woman spurred conflicting responses in him, destroying the years of logical restraint he’d honed to perfection building his company.

She glared and stomped one bare foot, knocking the wine glass off the table, and sending scarlet liquid splashing over the pale tiles. Snatching the glass up before it hit the floor, she twisted and shot him a look of pure rage.

“Hell,” he said as he stood. “That was out of line.”

The words fell on thick, empty air, and he followed her angry strides into the house until the shadowed interior hid her form. Doors slammed, a glass connected with a hard surface, and she reappeared, whizzing by him with the boat keys clanking from a hooked forefinger.

Blast, blast, blast. She seemed incensed enough to strand him on the tiny islet. He retrieved his deck shoes from where he’d left them in the kitchen and rushed after her, snagging through the thick cobwebs filling the space between the sliding glass doors.

Cobwebs?

The sticky translucent mass coating his hands served as a brief impediment, and he spun around to investigate the peculiar phenomenon when the loud thrumming of powerful engines met his ears. Jake spotted Tee in the boat, hopping over a tackle box to unsnarl the docking ropes. A quick choice had to be made, so he jogged down the wooden pier and barely jumped onto the boat’s deck before the cruiser blasted into full throttle.

Strong whipping air slicked the hair back from his face, renting his skin with stinging licks. With considerable difficulty, he made his way to where Tee stood behind the wheel, almost losing his balance as the boat slapped through the Remous current she described earlier. As they rounded the craggy promontory, Jake spotted the fishing trawler listing in the waves, sliding close to shipwreck-dangerous gray boulders.

“What can I do?” he shouted into her ear, realizing the urgency of the situation.

“I’ll line the boat up as close as I can to him,” she yelled as she squinted at the other vessel.

Foam-crested waves walloped the gleaming yellow sides of the boat, and he grabbed the metal rail near the curved plastic windshield to stabilize his unsteady strides.

“Twist the towing line in the back into the grappling hook and tie both ropes together. You can do a sailor’s knot?”

He nodded.

“Get going on it, and then throw it to him. Hurry, we don’t have much time.”

They worked in unison, Tee giving cryptic, concise instructions while he relayed them to the caretaker. It took neck-bunching minutes before they secured the two ships together, and Tee edged the engine’s speed up a notch at a time as the trawler swung away from the rocks and followed in their wake.

The cruiser drew a semicircle in the rough waters, a wave trough dipped the boat, and he stumbled. Regaining his balance as they completed the U-turn, out of the corner of one eye, Jake caught the caretaker’s gaze, and he recoiled at the blaze of seething rancor the man barely kept in check. Not fifteen feet separated the two vessels, and the flash of insolent malice from the caretaker couldn’t be mistaken. The man had it in for him for some reason, or maybe for Tee. He followed the caretaker’s gaze. Since they stood parallel to each other, it could be either of them. Jake filed the observation for further analysis.

They conducted the twenty-minute ride back to the yacht club in complete silence. Hostility radiated with Tee’s every abrupt movement, and distracted by her sullen mood, Jake focused on regaining lost momentum, making up with her. Uncertain, unconvinced she and the caretaker didn’t have some sort of connection, he had to admit one salient, intractable fact; she’d been a virgin scant minutes ago, so they couldn’t be involved physically.

Jesus, thinking about Tee’s reactions to his lovemaking had him hard from inhale to exhale, one breath, one second. In his fantasies, they made slow, luxurious love, and he brought her to the point over and over until she begged, pleaded for release.

He snorted. She’d climaxed upon penetration, mewling, “Oh my,” but the words echoed around the bay, and he’d lost control.

By the time a huge trailer dragged the caretaker’s boat onto dry land, his tension matched Tee’s collected anger, and not a single brilliant resolution to their impasse came to mind.

“I need to get back to the Main House,” she said, marching through the club’s opening glass doors. “I’ll call a cab. I’m sure you have business matters to deal with.”

Tee disappeared past wooden doors with the words
Ladies’ Lockers
carved into them.

He followed her in.

At the far right end of the locker room, three women in various stages of undress emitted a sequence of shrieks, gasps, and squeals. A swift survey to the left showed a low bench opposite shower curtains and farther down a series of gleaming metal toilet stalls. Jake propped one foot on a burnished wooden bench away from the women’s direction, giving the three females his back and the privacy to finish dressing.

“Excuse me, ladies, I’m waiting for someone. Won’t be a minute.”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell, Jake Mathews.” The terse mutter came from a stall two doors down, and he spied Tee’s strappy white sandals. She had pretty feet and wore red, really red, paint on her toenails.

The impudent color had him hard again, and for brief seconds he thought it might be a fun way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon, painting those toes. From limp to full arousal in less than ten seconds, hell, she’d bewitched him.

“Then I might as well get comfortable.”

He turned to face the now-dressed fascinated women at the other end of the sumptuous room. “Would you three ladies mind if I relocated that chair to this end?”

In mute, bewildered unison, they shook their heads and followed his movements as he grasped the padded arm of a gold upholstered chair, lifted it over his head, walked to the corner opposite Tee’s stall, and set it down. He slouched into the luxurious fabric and crossed his long legs at the ankles, mulling various strategies.

“By the way, I have your mother’s crystal things. When did you say she needed them by?”

A muffled curse spewed out from the stall.

“I’m positive part of finishing school training eschews swearing of any sort.”

Delicate laughter erupted from the three ladies who had all edged closer, wearing beaming smiles.

Another expletive, this one clearer.

“Come on out, darlin’,” one of the old biddies coaxed. “He can’t have done anything so unforgivable.”

“Dearie, if I had a handsome young man like this waiting to say sorry and make up, I’d give in—soon.”

The blue-haired woman flashed Jake a flirty smile, and he sent her a corresponding conspiratorial one. All three women wore cheeky expressions and, as one unit, they edged closer, sandaled feet shuffling over the marble floor.