He took in the haphazard, scraggly topknot of hair and her squeaky-clean face. She wore a shapeless T-shirt and plaid flannel pajama bottoms that pooled over her bare feet, one of which she folded over the other in a parody of modesty.
He snuffled a laugh. “That’s how you go to bed?”
“That’s your question?”
He grinned. “Not that it isn’t sexy.”
“I wasn’t going for sexy. I was going for comfort.”
He’d made himself comfortable, too. He stood in stocking feet, bringing her eye level with his chin rather than his clavicle. Several of the pearl snaps on his shirt had been undone. She tried to keep from looking at his chest in the open wedge.
“Your question?”
Reaching behind him, he pulled a toothbrush from the back pocket of his jeans. “Can I borrow some toothpaste?”
“Why didn’t you buy toothpaste when you bought the brush?”
“Have you got some, or not?”
She turned away, went into the bathroom long enough to get the tube from her toiletry bag, and returned with it, noticing that he’d stepped across the threshold into her room. Staying at arm’s length, she extended the toothpaste to him. He took it from her, but instead of uncapping it, squeezing some paste onto his brush, and leaving, he pocketed both and stayed.
“I do need the toothpaste, but that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”
She folded her arms across her middle and waited for him to continue.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Oh.” For a moment the simplicity of the question took her aback. She hadn’t expected a practical one. “Maxey’s is a ten-minute drive from here. It opens for lunch at eleven-thirty. I thought we should arrive about then.”
“Giving Steven no time to become too busy to see us or to duck out the back door.”
“Something like that.”
He bobbed his chin. “Good plan. Want to meet for breakfast first?”
“I’ll just have coffee here in my room.”
“You don’t eat breakfast?”
“Sometimes.”
“But not tomorrow.”
“Dent.”
“Okay. Fine. No breakfast for you. So… we’ll meet around, what? Eleven-fifteen?”
“Perfect.”
“Up here or in the lobby?”
“Are you always this detail oriented?”
“Absolutely. Pilots usually don’t get do-overs. The airplane can be on autopilot, but you don’t want the pilot to be, do you?”
She knew he was baiting her, but she went along. “Lobby.”
“Roger that.”
“Is that all? If so, it’s late.” She gestured toward the open door behind him, but he didn’t take the hint.
“Did you talk to Olivia?”
“No change.”
“That’s good.”
“I suppose. Did you speak to Gall about your airplane?”
“He tacked at least another two weeks on to how long the repairs will take.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Then for the next several moments, neither of them spoke or moved. She swallowed, hearing the gulp herself and knowing that he probably had, too. “I’m going to say good night now, Dent.” Again she gestured toward the gaping doorway.
“I haven’t asked my question yet.”
“You’ve asked several.”
“But not the main one.”
“I’m exhausted. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“Was your heart broken?”
Of course she knew what he was referring to, and she figured he wasn’t going to give up and go away until she answered him. “Over losing the baby, yes. Very much so. Over losing him, no. The breakup was an inevitability. Long before the documents were filed, he and I were already separated emotionally.
“His plans to remarry were announced even before our divorce became final. He and his intended relocated to Dallas. I moved to New York and started outlining my book. There were no blowups, no fireworks. It was all very civilized.” As an afterthought, she added, “Just like the marriage had been.”
At some point during the telling, he’d shortened the distance between them. She had retreated from the intensity of his eyes by lowering hers, and now found herself talking to that enticing triangle that provided a view of soft brown chest hair.
His voice low, he said, “A shame about your kid.”
She only nodded.
In her peripheral vision she saw him raise his arm, and a second later the clip holding up her hair was released. He caught the tumbling strands and combed his fingers through them.
“Dent? What are you doing?”
“Getting out of line.”
Then his arm curved around her waist and he lowered his head. His lips caught the startled breath that escaped hers, and the shock of the contact brought back the vivid memory of the first time she’d ever seen him.
She and Susan were at a Sonic drive-in. He’d pulled up beside their car on his motorcycle and had looked past Bellamy in the passenger seat to Susan, who was behind the wheel.
The lazy smile he’d sent her sister caused curls of sensation deep inside Bellamy’s twelve-year-old body. It was an awakening that, even from her inexperienced point of view, she had understood was sexual. The stirrings had intrigued and thrilled her, but the mind-stealing strength of them had frightened her.
It still did.
She put her hands against his chest and tried to push away.
“You didn’t scream,” he whispered against her lips as his brushed back and forth across them, barely glancing them on each pass. At first. But when she still didn’t scream, or even murmur a protest, he cradled the back of her head in his palm, his mouth claimed hers, and the kiss became deep.
As a virginal preteen, and as a woman who’d taken lovers, she had daydreamed about kissing Denton Carter. While writing her book, specifically the sex scenes between him and Susan, it hadn’t been her sister he was kissing, caressing, and taking with adolescent fervor. It had been her. The fantasies had left her aroused, but irritated with herself. Surely her imagination embellished how good lovemaking with him would be.
But now she realized that her daydreams had actually been tepid. His kiss was delicious and darkly erotic. It delivered. It promised more. And the substance of what it promised made her wet, feverish, and needy.
His hand moved over her hip and into the loose waistband of her pajamas, where it applied pressure to her ass, drawing her forward, lifting and securing her against him.
“Damn,” he groaned. “I knew you’d feel good.”
His mouth scaled down her throat, then lower, leaving her T-shirt damp where he planted kisses as he moved toward her breasts, which were so tight and tender she realized she had to stop this now.
“Dent, no.”
She gave his chest a forceful push. His hand snapped free of her pajama bottoms and he fell back, cursing when his spine came up hard against the edge of the open door. “What the hell?”
