The memories surfaced, and when his teeth flashed wide in a white smile, there was no future in Florida, no painful past, only Garrett and his coat, and the rain outside.
He grabbed the door handle. “All right, Kate, here we go.”
Heart pounding with emotion as she remembered other times he’d saved her just like this, she watched him sprint around the car and jerk the door open, holding his jacket over both their heads as he pulled her up against his side and onto the sidewalk. As her flats began getting soaked, she pressed close to his massive chest and suddenly his arm slid around her waist, his eyes glinting. “Ready? On three.”
She nodded breathlessly, a gasp already poised in her throat.
“One, two, three!”
They ran for cover to the door, the fresh puddles at their feet splashing at each step as they both burst out laughing. Kate knew this wouldn’t have happened if her catering van hadn’t been parked in the middle of her driveway, but rain in Texas was truly rare and she hadn’t expected it at all.
Once at the door, she struggled to fit the key into the doorknob, and she could hear Garrett breathing at her back as he hunched his shoulders over her, the jacket covering them both.
“Katie, be any slower, and we could just shampoo here already.”
“I’m getting it!” she cried, laughing at her own awkwardness as the angle of the rain managed to get them both wet from the sides. The door clicked open at last, and she hurried inside, turning to see him standing just outside the door, getting wetter by the second. She couldn’t bear to leave him there like that, so she motioned him inside and slammed the door after him. His white shirt clung damply to his back and right side.
She squeezed a couple of raindrops out of the tips of her hair as Garrett shook his jacket in the air and hooked it on the coat stand. When Kate kicked off her shoes, their shoulders touched, and she realized Garrett smelled of fresh rain.
She couldn’t miss the way his broad chest jerked and stretched his white dress shirt with each breath. And she knew her nipples were poking into her dampened blouse; she caught his dazzlingly sexy white smile as he stared down at her. “Someone looks wet,” he said laughingly.
“You should see yourself.”
“I’m perfectly aware that I’m wet.”
“Take your shirt off, and I’ll dry it for you. I’d do the same for your jacket, but I assume it’s dry-clean?”
“So is the damn shirt.”
“Then at least let me hang it.” Without thinking, her hands flew up to start unbuttoning him, and by the time she started to undo the last button, she realized that he’d gone utterly still. His eyes had darkened completely, and emotion clogged Kate’s throat as their love-making vividly came back to her mind.
“Katie, if you don’t want this—stop me...stop me now....”
He seemed to notice that something had made her hands fall still, for he angled his head downward and peered mischievously into her eyes. “Just say you want me naked and I’ll take it all off.”
“You’re so easy,” she scoffed, but she dropped her hands when she realized the danger, and his shirt fell open to reveal his beautiful tan abs. She shouldn’t be talking to him. She shouldn’t even want to, need to, be close to him. She could have almost kicked herself when she asked, “Do you want some dinner?”
He didn’t hesitate, even when the tension between them as palpable.
He followed her through the living room. “I don’t want to put you to work.“
“It’s not work to me. I’ll cook us something easy. I hate eating alone and miss Molly terribly,” she said.
But was that really why she’d asked him to dinner? Or was it because she knew that as soon as she left San Antonio, she would never be able to enjoy his company like this again?
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
For a moment, she didn’t know what he was sorry about. He’s sorry about you missing Molly, Kate. Get your head in the game. “But she’s so happy,” she finally answered. She smiled as she eased into the adjoining kitchen, quietly slipping on an apron.
“Aren’t you a cute one,” Garrett murmured.
His gaze was so openly admiring that Kate’s stomach squeezed. She grabbed a knife and gestured dramatically with it. “Flattery will get you equal portions, so don’t waste your breath.”
“I’m not wasting it. I’m holding it.”
Ignoring the butterflies in her stomach, Kate rummaged through the fridge and pulled out her almond flour, eggs, milk and a bunch of vegetables. She set the veggies on a cutting board and transferred them to the kitchen island. “Help me with these while I work on the dough?”
“Of course. Just tell me what to do.”
“Cut the mushrooms, red peppers, onions and zucchini into small but pretty slices.”
“I can do small, but I don’t guarantee pretty.” His lips curled upward as he grasped the knife that she offered and his fingers closed warmly over hers.
Shivers of delight shot from the place he touched, and she couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran down her limbs. “They’re not going to a beauty pageant. Just small will do,” she whispered, impulsively pressing in behind him and leaning to watch as she showed him how. She shifted her hands so that he held the knife, and she held him, and then she slowly guided him to cut in the size she wanted.
Garrett stood utterly still and compliant, letting her guide him, and suddenly her nipples pressed painfully into his hard back as she realized how intimately her arms were going around his narrow waist.
“What are we making?”
She swallowed when he turned slightly and glanced directly at her. His voice was smooth and calm, but when she spoke, Kate’s wasn’t. “Vegetable goat-cheese pizza.”
He turned back to watch her cut a slice of pepper. “Kate, you’re going to kill me.”
“Why? I thought you liked it?”
“Exactly. My mouth is watering.”
Her cheeks flamed up as she thought of his mouth, and she instantly released him and went back to her spot to prepare the dough. Moments later, she lifted her head when the rhythmical sounds of Garrett’s chopping stopped. He was watching her massage the dough. A lock of his dark hair fell over one eye. Her legs weakened at the sexy look, and her heart grew wings in her chest. Garrett looked incredibly beautiful in her kitchen. As beautiful as he did in bed with her.
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it when her cheeks burned at the memory. She really shouldn’t have slept with him. Now she couldn’t even look at him without becoming hyperaware of the electricity between them.
A smile slowly formed on his lips as if he could read her thoughts. Then he turned his attention back to his chopping, his profile hard and square, but the expression on his face also thoughtful. Kate swallowed and mixed her dough, then slammed her fists into it and rolled it a couple of more times.
“Bring the veggies once they’re cut so you can help me arrange them.”
He didn’t answer, but soon, he brought over the cutting board. He set it on the counter, and as Kate began to arrange all the little pieces on the flattened pizza crust, his hands gripped her waist from behind. Her breath was knocked out of her when his fingers squeezed her and his lips brushed against her ear.
“Why’d you sleep with me, Kate?” he murmured.
Heat arrowed from her ear straight to her toes, and she stiffened against the dissolving sensation in her bones.
He didn’t sound angry. He sounded confused, but patient, much as he did when he wanted to get to the bottom of something.
He surprised her by pressing into her body, trapping her between the counter and himself. Kate had nowhere to go, her spine arching up against his chest as she closed her eyes and tried to still her racing heartbeat.
His voice sounded in her ear a
s his fingers started a trail up her rib cage. “Did you feel pity for me because I was sick—?”
“No.” She could barely utter the word.
“Then why?”
His breath was warm, and damp, and it made her shiver. “It was a mistake. We weren’t thinking clearly.” Trying to gather her wits, she nervously turned in the cage of his arms, gripped the tray and slid the pizza into the oven, forcing him to step back as she bent forward.
When she shut the door and turned, Garrett had stepped back and merely stood watching her. His snowy-white dress shirt was still parted at the middle, and her saliva glands went crazy at the sight of his bare chest, his flat, hard abs and his belly button.
“Maybe it was a mistake, Kate, one I’ve spent all my life avoiding. But what if it isn’t a mistake?”
Her blood started heating in her veins as she remembered the delicious way he’d moved in her. Kissed her. Gripped her.
She knew they had to talk about this, no matter how much she wished they would pretend nothing had gone on that day. And now that he’d brought up the topic, she could barely think straight. The look in his eyes was beyond intimate. It was downright proprietary, and she almost drowned in the darkness of those eyes that haunted her dreams. With an inhuman effort, she made her way around the kitchen island, putting some distance between them.
His voice stopped her as he followed her around.
“Kate. Answer me. What if it wasn’t a mistake?”
Her breath caught in disbelief, and suddenly, she did a one-eighty to face him. “You just want to keep me here, Garrett. You’d do anything to win—that’s how you are. And you want to keep me from going to Florida.”
“You know me better than that, Freckles.”
“I know you’re the most stubborn man I know.”
He lifted one lone eyebrow. “And you aren’t stubborn? You’re stubborn and proud, Katie. The combo makes for a very difficult lady.”
She shook her head but couldn’t help smiling. Then she signaled at his damp shirt; it was still driving her crazy how it stuck damply to his beautiful brown nipples. It was about as sexy as him being naked or, strangely, even more so. “Are you taking that shirt off? I can still dry it for you.”
He whipped it off, and it gave her something to do as she hooked it on a high kitchen cabinet close to the oven heat. “So that’s how you get men naked,” he roughly teased.
“Of course. I make it rain, then I strip them.” She smoothed her hands down the sleeves to unwrinkle them.
“What do you do after you strip them?”
She stopped fussing over his shirt and realized he was coming closer. His smile was overtly sexual, his dark eyes glimmering in liquid mischief. “Do you kiss them?”
“Maybe,” she said and slid past him to go back around the kitchen island. There was something very predatory in his eyes, and she began backing away more quickly as her heart kicked wildly in her rib cage.
“Do you caress them with those hands of yours? Look up at them with those pretty eyes?”
She blinked for a moment, then burst out laughing. “What do you mean? These are the only eyes I have. Which others should I use?”
“It’s the look in those eyes I refer to. Do you use that doe look on them, too? The one that makes me want to chase you?”
When she laughingly shook her head and backed away farther, he charged and she squealed and sped around the kitchen island, managing two rounds until he caught her and spun her around, both their smiles a mile long. His grin faded before she could even bask in the beauty of it, and his expression fell deathly somber. “I want to kiss you very badly,” he whispered, bending his head, his chest heaving.
“Garrett, no,” she murmured, struggling to pull free. She spun around and went to check on the pizza, her pulse throbbing in her temples as she pretended to be busy watching the cheese melt.
He came up behind her again and stroked a hand down her hair. “What if I asked you for what you wanted, and you told me exactly what it is that you want?”
“Florida.”
His stare almost bored holes into her profile, and through the corner of her eye, she noticed his jaw clamped, hard as granite. “Be real with me, Kate. For once in our lives, let’s stop playing games.”
She shook her head, feeling panicked and afraid of opening up to him. “Whatever it is, you can’t give it to me.”
“Just try me.”
Gnawing on her lower lip, she studied his face, his features carved fiercely in determination, as if he truly did care for her. Well...did he? Had he seen her like a woman all along and had she not noticed because she’d been too busy pretending she didn’t love him? She wanted him. All of him. A family of her own. She knew it was too much to want of him, to ask from him. Especially after what she’d heard.
“Everyone knows about you and...that heiress you’re planning a wedding with.”
His eyebrows lifted in mock interest. “Like it’s a fact now?”
Ignoring the dangerous purr in his voice, Kate put on an oven mitt, pulled the pizza out and set it on the stove top. “I can’t believe you’d marry for business.” She couldn’t look at him while saying that, so she occupied herself with preparing the food.
He was silent as she used her cutter to slice the pizza into perfect pieces.
Then he murmured, “I wasn’t going to marry at all. So why would it matter if I just used it as means to an end, if it’s what Cassandra’s asking for and it will all be over in six months anyway?”
“You’re better than that, Garrett,” she whispered.
“But not good enough for you,” he mumbled, watching her closely.
Her throat tightened on a reply that she just refused to give as she put a slice on a plate for him, and another on one for herself, staying quiet. What was the point? Flirting with him? Playing with fire? He never wanted to marry, he’d just said, and if he did, it was purely for business. She had to believe she deserved a family of her own. Especially since she’d had her own family torn apart when she was so young.
Quietly, she carried both plates to the kitchen island. He sat down on the stool beside her, then took a large bite, munching.
“Freckles, this is so good.” He shook his head and took another bite, making a groaning noise that made her remember...sex. With him.
“It is, isn’t it?” The sweet vegetable flavors combined with the toasted-almond flour and goat cheese melted in her mouth, but her insides melted more at the sounds he made. She squirmed on her stool and watched him get up to pour two glasses of water from the pitcher in the fridge.
He set hers down next to her plate, then continued eating. When he licked up a crumb from the corner of his lips, her heart raced in a strange mix of fear and anticipation. He’d asked if she wanted him to give chase...and suddenly she couldn’t imagine anything more exhilarating than being hunted, chased and claimed by him.
Shaking her head, she washed down her pizza with the water. She was surprised when he spoke again; he’d already finished his slice. Now his attention seemed fixed solely on her again.
He stroked a finger down her jaw.
“What about me?” he asked.
She frowned and set her half-eaten pizza down. “What do you mean, what about you?”
“You say you’d only marry for love. Do you feel nothing for me? If I go through with this marriage to Cassandra, how would you feel about it?”
The meal suddenly wasn’t sitting too well in her stomach. “If she’s what you want...”
“I’m very interested in something that she has, but I want to make it clear that I don’t want her.” There was no mistaking the steel in his voice as he set a hand on her thigh as if it belonged there. “What I want to know is if there’s even a chance that I can have what I most want on this earth.”
Her pulse skyrocketed when she saw the stark hunger in his gaze, a gaze that ping-ponged from her eyes to her mouth and made her pulse race erratically. But when he began to get close, she stood up for some reason. Garrett laughed darkly, quietly, as if to himself. Then he followed her up and began to back her into a corner with purpose, his eyes blazing.
“Where are you going, Kate?”
She quickened her steps, but he followed closely until she stopped when the back of her knees hit a wall.
He smiled delightedly. “You do want me to catch you, don’t you?”
With painstaking slowness, as though to torture her, he raised his hand and set it on her hair, and it was as if she could feel his fingers tangling inside her, tangling around her heart. “Do you want to be with me again?” he rasped, using his fist in her hair to tip her head back.
Every instinct of self-preservation warned her against reaching out to him, giving him this power over her again, but there was no pulling away from him as his hand wound deeper into the fall of hair at her nape, his piercing onyx eyes drowning her in their depths.
“I’ve been inside you once—and it wasn’t enough. I wanted to wake up and look into your eyes and see you smile at me. I didn’t want you to leave. Not like that. Not like it was a mistake.”
Her breasts rose and fell with each strained breath. “It wasn’t a mistake to me. I loved every moment of it.”
“Then why don’t you put your arms around me now? Why don’t you touch me? Was I too rough?” His voice dropped even lower as he tightened his fist, his eyes holding a sexy, primal shine as he drank in her face. “Katie, I promise you that next time I’ll take it so much slower. I’ll kiss you from the tip of your toes to the top of your lovely head. I’ll move slowly inside you...”
He bent his head, tipped up her face with a crooked finger and kissed her parted lips. The gasps stealing out of her were impossible to hold back. He opened his mouth as though to breathe them into his body, drag them into his lungs.
“I’ll prepare you for me again. Prepare you for hours, Kate. Hours. I don’t regret it happened, Kate, only that I didn’t do it right.”