Wild Lover Complete Series (9 page)

              Jeff paused in the open doorway. Mia came up behind him, ready to push him out the door, until she saw that someone stood on the other side.

             
Blaine stared at her over Jeff’s shoulder. His chest rose and fell and his chin jutted.

             
Jeff smirked. “Ha, looks like someone is here to pick up my leftovers.” He brushed past Blaine and clipped down the building’s open staircase.

             
“Blaine—” Mia said. She rubbed at her mouth.
Damnit,
she thought.
Why did I even put on lipstick?
“Blaine, this isn’t what it looks—”

             
Blaine didn’t answer. He turned and stalked down the stairs.

Wild Lover Book 3

Mia ducked back into her apartment for a pair of flip-flops before following Blaine. Unlike him, she preferred to wear shoes, especially since she’d gotten a pedicure the day before. By the time she caught up to him in the parking lot, he had one hand on the door handle of his rented truck.

             
“Wait!” she cried. “Please, Blaine. Wait.”
              He paused, his mouth a thin line of resentment. “What, Mia?”
              She started to open her mouth, but he beat her to it and answered his own question.

             
“There’s not much to be discussed,” Blaine said. “I come over here to try and convince you to come to St. John with me—” He laughed, as if he was remembering a mission that should have been declared impossible before it commenced. “—and I find you all hot and bothered with your ex-boyfriend. You wanted me to be honest with you. You could have returned the favor.”

             
“Seriously, Blaine,” Mia said. “It’s not what you think.”

             
“That’s such a cliché. Why didn’t you just tell me you were thinking about going back to him? I could have saved myself the embarrassment of trying to convince you to go with me.”

             
“I don’t want—”
              “It’s so obvious. Your story about your parents disapproving?” He laughed again, and even in his bitterness she’d never seen a more handsome man. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”
              “Stop, I don’t want—“

             
“No hard feelings.”

             
Mia felt as if her head were going to explode if he interrupted her one more time. “Will you please stop talking?” She balled her hands into fists at her side. “Please! Let me get a
word in edgewise?”

             
“Miss?” said an unfamiliar voice from behind her. She turned to see an elderly couple, no doubt retirees from Detroit or Pittsburgh. The man continued. “Or—senorita? Is everything alright?”

             
She forced a smile, and admonished herself for screaming in the middle of the complex’s parking lot. She didn’t exactly need to add police intervention to the list of crap she was dealing with today. “Oh, yes. Thank you.”

             
The man raised his eyebrows and took his wife by the arm. Mia heard him muttering as he got into the car. “Latinos…”

             
Normally his racial profiling would have caused Mia to read him the riot act, but instead she read it to Blaine. “If you’d listen to me for five seconds I could explain what happened. You’re convinced I’ve done something horrible without even getting the facts.”

             
Blaine took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t look convinced, but she took his nod as a hint to continue. “Jeff has been bugging me to talk about our breakup. I’ll be honest, as confused as I was when I left your place earlier, I thought I should hear him out.”

             
“Exactly,” said Blaine. The smug look on his face irked Mia.

             
“So… as I was saying… he came over to talk. As soon as he arrived I knew it was a mistake. He wanted to try to work things out. All I could think about was how I might have ruined everything with you by storming out.”

             
Blaine hung his arms at his sides and looked up at the clear blue sky above them.

             
“I told him he had to leave. He tried to kiss me—” She decided to be brutally honest. “Well—he succeeded. It was like—like a stealth kiss.”

             
He cracked the tiniest hint of a smile. “Like MI5.”

             
“What?” she asked.

             
“CIA. Brit version.”

             
“Oh—right. Like MI5. I pushed him away, but he didn’t go at first, I guess. Hence the clown makeup.” She pointed at his mouth, which was probably still covered in smeary lipstick. No wonder the old couple thought she was trouble.

             
“I told him to leave,” she said. “He was going when you arrived. He was in my apartment for a total of like twenty minutes. So I stormed out on you earlier, and now you’re storming out on me. Should we call it even, or just keep this up?”

             
Blaine leaned against the truck. He ran his hands through his hair. “Look Mia,” he said, “I’m crazy about you. I think you’re amazing. But all this back and forth… yes…no… it’s driving me crazy. I’m not a masochist.”

             
“You’ve had your own back and forth,” she said. She’d always let Jeff blame all their relationship problems on her, and she wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

             
“I know, I’m just as at fault. It just seems like we’re both bringing so much baggage to this situation. I’ve only been divorced for six months, and that took the mickey out of me.”

             
“The mickey?”

             
Blaine smiled, and to Mia’s relief it seemed genuine.

             
“Sometimes I forget my English can be just as confusing to you as your Spanish would be to me,” he said. “It’s just a phrase we use in the UK. It means, like, to take the fight out of someone. My last divorce exhausted me. I just want peace.”

             
Mia closed the space between them. “I understand. But I still think it’s worth trying.”
              He opened his arms and she fell into them. Heat radiated off his body, and even off the truck’s black paintjob. In a weird paradox, the warmth made her shiver. “What about St. John?” he asked. “I don’t want to spend five weeks away from you. Not when we’re just getting started.”

             
Mia closed her eyes and breathed in his smell. Aftershave and something he’d been cooking… maybe grilled steak. “Yes,” she said. “Yes to St. John.”

             
He tilted her chin toward his face and kissed her. “It will be worth it. We’re going to have an amazing time.”

             
She spoke between kisses. “I hope so. As long as you don’t expect me to go offshore. I don’t think there’s enough Dramamine in the world to keep my tummy from rebelling out in the middle of the ocean.”

             
“That’s a deal,” he said. “We’ll keep you on land as much as possible.”

             
So the decision is made,
Mia thought. One problem down. Blaine promised he’d humor her need to be a landlubber. Another problem down. The biggest problem awaited, however. Mia sent her mother a text.

             
Hey mom, I need to talk to you about something.

*

“Aye, Mimi,” said Mama Maria. “You’ve lost it. Loco.”

Mia and her mom sat at a table at their favorite coffee shop, but neither had touched their lattes. Maria wore a cute blue sundress that complimented her tan skin. Mia took a moment to marvel at her mother’s youthfulness and pray it was genetic.

“Mom,” Mia said. “Please just hear me out.”

“Where will you sleep? Where will he sleep? Who will pay for all this?” She tsk-tsk’ed. “You know what a man will be expecting…if you go live with him on a boat for a month. No. Your father won’t allow it.”
              “You have to convince him!”

“I don’t allow it either! We don’t know this man. He could be a kidnapper. Or a drug dealer.”

Mia knew her mother had a flare for the dramatic, but that was taking it a bit far. “We know he’s not a drug dealer. He’s Blaine Daniels. Software mogul. You were the one who figured out who he was in the first place, with all your snooping around and your man-hungry friends.”

“Perhaps we should go to Mass. Consult with the pastor afterward.”

“That’s absurd! We already know what he would say.”

“
Exactamente. And he’d be right.” Maria finally took a sip of her coffee, as if the priest at their local church was the final word on daughters, morality and parenting in general.

Mia kept a hold on her temper. That would get her nowhere. She needed to make Maria feel like she came to her own conclusion. Mia quickly came up with a way to do just that. “Will you at least meet him? He’s been asking to meet you.” Not exactly true, but Mia was banking on Blaine’s desire for her to come with him to St. John. Maybe it was early to meet the family, but it was also early to go on a month long vacation.

“Hmmm,” Maria said. “I don’t see how it can hurt.”

“Great. We can have a glass of wine on his boat.”

“Is it a yacht?” Maria’s eyes widened, and Mia felt she was getting somewhere already.

“No, but it’s as valuable as a yacht.” She proudly rattled off the information that Blaine had given her about his charter fishing boat. “It’s a Grady White. Thirty-four feet. You don’t get much nicer than that.”

Maria sniffed, and Mia imagined her mother’s plan to hang with Beyoncé and Jay-Z had been snuffed out. Queen B and Jay didn’t hang out on fishing boats. Still, Maria was game.

“Yes, we can do that. I will size him up.” She wagged a finger at Mia. “Just because he is rich, he won’t impress me.”

“I know,” Mia said. “Don’t you always tell me I need to find a real man? That guys like Jeff are too childish, and not going anywhere?”

“Aye, you’re right.”

“I tell you, Mom, Blaine Daniels is someone who can take you places.”

*

To Mia’s surprise, Blaine seemed thrilled at the idea of entertaining her mother. She’d arrived at his apartment with a speech planned, as if she were running for some sort of election. Blaine, however, seemed to think it made total sense.

“I put myself in her shoes,” he said. “You’re an adult, of course, so you can do what you want. But if my daughter was going away for a month with some guy, I’d want to at least meet him.”

Mia hugged him from behind as he chopped vegetables for the soup he was making. “Thank you. That makes me happy. You’re right. I mean, I’m coming regardless. But it will be nice to have her blessing.”

“What about your dad?”

Mia shrugged. “My mom rules the roost. Daddy pretty much goes along with whatever she says.”

Blaine set down the knife and turned around. He rubbed Mia’s back and her bottom through her jeans. “He just does what she says, huh?”

Mia nodded and pressed her breasts against his chest. “I know that voice. Something I said got your blood pumping.” She slid her hand to the crotch of his jeans. She felt him, hard through the denim.

“You’re getting to know me so well,” he said. “How about you tell me what to do, and I’ll listen?”
              She pulled back and laughed. “You mean, tell you step by step?”

He nodded.

“I can’t…I’ll be too embarrassed.”

He squeezed her bottom with both hands. “Baby, I don’t think there’s anything left to be embarrassed about.”

“Okay,” she said, in an effort to humor him. She stepped away. “Take off your clothes.” She felt ridiculous, like a game show host.

Blaine obliged with sweet seriousness. It wasn’t gratuitous, like some kind of strip tease. If he’d done that, she would have cracked up for sure. He just watched her while he undressed, slowly but steadily, like a creek retreating at low
tide.

Mia realized she’d never really looked at Blaine when he was naked.
Or at any man, really. Of course she’d seen his naked body in segments, but usually she was caught up in the rush of stripping him down so she could take him into her, or he was in control and the focus was on her body. There was something vulnerable in him standing before her naked as the day he was born. He tipped his head, as if asking for her approval.

She smiled it. He wasn’t just handsome, he was beautiful in the way a roman statue or a sketch by da Vinci was beautiful. She moved from his tightly muscled legs to his groin. His hard manhood commanded much of her attention, but she still had the wherewithal to notice the ridges and dips of his chiseled lower abdomen. His chest and arms were
picture perfect, not too heavily muscular. No one would mistake Blaine for a New Jersey gym rat. Older model Abercrombie model, possibly, but beefcake on steroids, nope. His broad shoulders set off his narrow waist. And of course, atop everything, his strong-jawed but sensitive face. His blue eyes and unruly dark hair.