Authors: Susan Fox

Body Heat (7 page)

BOOK: Body Heat

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Ruthlessly, he forced her out of his mind and instead thought about how busy his schedule was going to be for the next few weeks as he juggled his regular job, this community service work, and the kids’ pickup basketball games he coached a couple of nights a week.

His body under control, he strode back down the corridor. His plan was to knock on the door before he took a look at her, but temptation got the better of him. Just one quick glance . . .

He froze with his hand fisted in the air near the door frame. She had stopped brushing and was rotating her neck.

Damn but he wanted to bury his face in that gleaming curtain of hair. Inhale the aroma, burrow through silky strands to her soft, vulnerable nape. Kiss her there, touch his tongue to her skin. She would tremble and he’d kiss his way around to her ear. He’d already seen what fine-shaped, delicate ears she had.

He must have made a sound, because she suddenly spun around.

“Oh!” she gasped, and color flooded her cheeks.

“Sorry.” Hurriedly he jammed his fists into his jeans pockets, stretching the fabric away from his body to hide his physical response.

But maybe she’d already seen. Why else would she be blushing like that?

God, but she looked fine with her hair down. Her face was softer, more approachable. Of course all that rosy color helped, too.

“You startled me.” She dropped the brush like a hot potato and gathered her hair in both hands, pulling it back firmly from her face, twisting it behind her head.

He watched, thinking she looked pretty fine that way, too. She had one of those Hepburn faces. Skinning back the hair only emphasized the strength of the face. Her fine features were more like Audrey’s than Katharine’s, but the set of her jaw reminded him of Katharine playing Rosie in
The African Queen
. And that glare she’d summoned up was pure Rosie, disapproving of crude old Charlie Allnut.

Not that Jesse and Maura Mahoney were going to end up like Rosie and Charlie, that was for sure. But man, what it would be like to take the pins out of all that hair, to have it tumble down over his hands, his face. To have her lean over his naked body, all those fiery silk strands brushing his—

Whoa! Trying to look casual, he grabbed his jacket off a chair and draped it over his arm to hide his lower body.

“You’re done?” she asked.

More like done in, by her sensuality. “For the day.” His voice rasped low in his throat. “When do you want me tomorrow?”

The hot flush had begun to recede but now came back in a wave.

Want me. Damn, he’d said “want me.” And that’s how she’d heard it. And she was blushing, not glaring.

Nope. Now she was glaring.

If the ice queen really was attracted to him, she hated herself for it. That was good, he told himself. He wasn’t about to hook up with another Sybil, who’d screw him as her dirty little secret.

Fantasies about long hair and taut nipples aside, Jesse knew his boss was out of his league, just as much as she did. Plenty of women found him attractive, liked his company, didn’t play fucked-up games. He never had a problem getting a date if he wanted one.

“Shall we say nine to five tomorrow.” She made it more of a statement than a question. “Unless you go to church on Sundays?” Her arched eyebrows told him she figured there was slight chance of that.

“Not much of a churchgoer. Don’t let me hold you up, if you want to go.”

She shook her head. “I don’t attend church.” She didn’t meet his eyes; her gaze was higher and quite intent. “You have . . .”

“What?”

“In your hair. The cherry tree . . .”

Quickly he shook his head and a pale pink flower, one perfect cherry blossom, fell to her desk. Damn, he’d been walking around with a flower in his hair. That must have given her a laugh.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said abruptly, and strode out of her office and down the hall.

“Wait!” Her heels clacked behind him. Probably wanted to make sure he didn’t make any stops along the way to the exit. She’d made it clear she didn’t trust him with her precious old folks.

He stopped and swung around, so abruptly she almost crashed into him. “What?” he demanded.

Her nostrils flared and her whole body quivered a little. “I just . . . I, uh . . .”

She was so close, if he reached out he could tug her into his arms. So close, he could see the slight tremble of her full bottom lip. A lip that begged to be kissed.

“Jesse, you’re working late.” A male voice made Jesse start, and swing around.

Fred Dykstra was walking from the elevator together with an attractive woman who had brown skin and short, very curly gray hair. Fred wore tailored khakis and a blazer, and the woman had on one of those dresses that buttoned down the front, patterned with swirly pink flowers.

“Just finished for the day,” Jesse said. Needing to get away from Maura and that irresistible urge to kiss her, he went to meet them.

Heel clacks told him Maura was following.

“I’d like you to meet Lizzie Gilmore,” Fred said. “Lizzie, this is Jesse Blue, the young man I was telling you about. I’ll show you his bike when we go out.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said, extending a hand.

It was sturdier than his gardening pal Virginia’s, so he gave it a firm squeeze. “Me, too.”

“You two are going out?” Maura asked, sounding surprised.

The older woman nodded, her brown eyes bright. “We’re going across the street to a movie. They’re showing
Eat Pray Love
and I’ve never seen it.”

Jesse knew the movie complex across the street. It was an independent, run by a billionaire who loved movies and didn’t care about making a profit. The five cinemas, each a different size, showed everything from old classics to the latest blockbusters. He guessed it came in handy for the Cherry Lane folks, and bet the owner had great rates for seniors.

“
Eat Pray Love,
huh?” Not his favorite, but he guessed it made a good date movie.

“We must be off,” Fred said, kinking his elbow toward his lady friend. She slipped her hand through it and they moved away.

Maura shook her head bemusedly. “He’s been yearning after her for months now,” she murmured. “How did he get up the courage to ask her out?”

He sensed it wasn’t a question directed to him. In fact, he figured she’d pretty much forgotten he was around. “I’ll be going.”

“Oh!” She turned toward him, and he could tell he’d been right from the way the color rose to her cheeks. She was sure a blusher, this lady, but he still hadn’t worked out whether it was sexy thoughts or annoyance that triggered her. Mostly, he figured it was annoyance.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Jesse,” she said in a polite, society-woman voice. The kind of voice that made his skin crawl. “At nine, as we agreed. Please be prompt.”

Just to be wicked, he flashed her his best lady-killer grin and put on a husky drawl. “Tomorrow,” he said with promise in his voice. Unlike everyone else in this place, she hadn’t told him to use her first name, and so he didn’t. Instead, when he said, “I’ll be looking forward to that, Ms. Mahoney,” he let his voice linger caressingly over every syllable of her name, just the way his hands longed to twine themselves in that silky hair and never come out again.

Her cheeks flamed brighter and she turned back into the building, banging her shoulder against the door frame before she strode off.

He chuckled softly, then, whistling, strolled toward his bike. It had been one hell of a day. And this was only the first one of his three-month community service gig.

When Maura heard the bike roar to life, she looked out the window by the door. Jesse, in helmet and jacket, cruised down the block under a canopy of pink blossoms. James Dean and cherry blossoms. Something was wrong with this picture. And something was wrong with her. Had turning thirty transformed her normally sensible body into a mess of raging hormones? She growled with annoyance and turned, to see Nedda, the evening receptionist, watching her curiously.

“What’s he doing here?” the older woman asked brusquely. “Why did we hire him? I asked Gracie, and she just said Louise had done it. Mostly, she was gushing like a teenager.”

Maura had never liked Nedda diFazio, who was one of those sour women who derived her greatest pleasure from tattling on others. Still, in the interests of working on her own people skills—not to mention the fact that Nedda’s sister was the chairman of the board’s wife—she tried to be pleasant. “Gracie’s right. Louise made the decision, and I’m sure she had good reasons.” Gracie, as Louise’s assistant, knew about HR matters, but they were none of Nedda’s business.

Earlier, Maura had made a spur-of-the-moment decision, when Virginia Canfield had assumed Jesse was a gardener, and hadn’t corrected her. After, Maura had thought it through. Without being able to read Jesse’s file, she couldn’t know whether the terms of his community service included confidentiality.

“I bet Louise didn’t see him,” Nedda said darkly. “He looks like trouble.”

It was exactly what Maura had first thought—and still believed—but for some reason she found herself saying, “He’s a hard worker, and we’re going to get a nice garden for the residents.”

“Huh.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t buying in.

Maura headed back to her office. On her desk lay the blossom that had been in Jesse’s hair. She picked it up gently and lifted it to her nose. The scent was amazingly powerful for such a small, delicate thing. It contrasted with the rich musk she’d smelled when she had almost bumped into Jesse. Male sweat, earthy and not at all unpleasant. A foreign smell. The men in her life hadn’t been known for sweating. Yet, in her afternoon dream, she’d got the scent amazingly right.

That was the reason she hadn’t been able to move, after almost plowing into him. She’d been analyzing the scent. Not fighting the urge to touch his dark skin, to tug his head down to hers, touch her tongue to his lips, and—

Aagh!
There she went again. Sexual fantasies? Why, she rarely even read the sex scenes in novels, just skimmed over them the way she did other scenes that she couldn’t relate to. What a bizarre day this had been.

Unable to resist, she sniffed the blossom one more time, then tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

She consulted her watch and realized she’d be late for dinner if she didn’t leave right now. Fortunately, her adoptive parents’ philosophy about clothing was to buy good quality, neutral items, and not fancy, dress-up clothes. They wouldn’t criticize her for wearing her office clothes to dinner.

Of course if today’s streak of bad luck held, they’d be grilling her about how little she’d achieved by the ripe old age of thirty. On the career front, she’d update them on her efforts to win the promotion, but on the personal, single-at-thirty front, she had nothing to offer.

Oh, drat! She’d never gotten around to calling Agnes to make sure it would be just the three of them.

Chapter 5

W
hen Maura walked into the dining room at her parents’ club and saw three heads at their table, she groaned. This was Jesse’s fault. If he hadn’t kept distracting her, she’d have remembered to phone.

The host who was leading her across the room paused. “Is something wrong, ma’am?”

Great, now she was getting “ma’am” rather than “miss.”

“Nothing you can fix,” she muttered, forcing a smile and waving to her mother, who had seen her coming.

As Maura reached the table, she was confronted by two men in gray suits, standing.

“Hello, Timothy,” she said, giving the portly bald one a quick, formal hug and ignoring the younger man. Maybe if she pretended he wasn’t there, he’d go away. She leaned down and touched her cheek to her mother’s. “Hello, Agnes.” Their family had never been much for physical demonstrations of affection. Or verbal ones, for that matter.

“Happy birthday, Maura.” Her mother smiled at her from a face that would have persuaded anyone in their right mind to never go out without sunscreen. “Your gift’s out in the car. Don’t forget to take it when you leave.”

Far be it from her parents to create a public display as Maura squealed in delight over some dry textbook or pottery shard.

“Maura,” Timothy said, “I’d like you to meet Professor Edward Mortimer. He’s a visiting lecturer and is considering joining our faculty next year.” Her father had semi-retired from teaching to do more research and article-writing, as well as keeping his longtime position on the board of the Wilton Academy where both he and Maura had attended secondary school. But he was still very much attached to his beloved history department, and rare was the day that he didn’t spend a few hours at the university.

With a sense of inevitability, Maura turned and assessed her parents’ latest offering. She was thirty. Maybe today’s awful luck would change and, for once, Agnes and Timothy would have chosen a man who actually appealed to her.

Edward Mortimer was a poster boy for the word “average.” He certainly wasn’t bad looking, but nor was he handsome. Roughly her age, he had regular features, medium brown hair, and a build that was neither lean nor heavy. She didn’t see a single distinguishing feature. He’d make a perfect spy. No one would ever remember seeing him. He’d be the George Smiley type of spy—the character created by John le Carré—not the flashy, unrealistic kind.

She thought of her favorite spies, especially the various 007s. No one had ever topped Sean Connery, in her considered opinion. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond was debonair, like Connery’s, but didn’t have that raw masculine edge, the edge that women went wild for in Daniel Craig. And, no doubt, in Jesse Blue.

She shook her head to clear it. Thank heavens her parents and, presumably, Professor Mortimer, weren’t mind readers or they’d be appalled.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand.

She put hers into it. “Likewise.” His grip was neither strong nor weak, just . . . average. His skin was neither hot nor cold, and definitely not sweaty. As they both let go, she saw that his hand was slim and pale. No calluses or blisters. Not a hand she could imagine on the handlebar of a motorcycle, or levering a garden tool into the resistant earth. Or tracing the outline of her lips . . .

As they all sat, Edward said, “May I wish you a happy birthday?”

What if I said “no,” she wondered mutinously. Instead, the soul of decorum, she murmured, “How kind of you.” In her head, she heard Eliza Doolittle dutifully repeating “How kind of you to let me come.”

Come? The double meaning resonated in her head. Not that she had any personal experience with the sexy connotation of that word. With Bill and Winston, she’d never achieved orgasm. But she’d just bet Jesse Blue’s women
came,
and thanked him for it—but by shrieking their lungs out, not mouthing platitudes.

Edward lifted his water glass and Maura closed her eyes briefly, remembering how Jesse’s muscles had flexed and shifted as he drank that glass of soda.

“. . . drink?”

Her eyes flew open as she realized her father was asking her a question. She made a guess. “I’d like a glass of red wine, please.”

“White might do better,” Timothy said, putting down the wine list. “The club has a number of excellent seafood specials tonight. Why don’t we get a bottle of the New Zealand chardonnay?”

Why could he never remember that she didn’t like chardonnay? She always hated to disagree with her adoptive parents—the only people who’d been willing to take her in when she was orphaned—and risk their disapproval, but tonight was her birthday and it had been a rough day. Despite the acid twinge of guilt tugging at her belly, she said, “White’s fine, but I’d rather not have chardonnay.”

Edward picked up the wine list and handed it to her. “It’s your birthday. You should choose, Maura.”

Pleasantly surprised, she beamed at him. Then, of course, she felt the overwhelming pressure of choosing a wine neither of her parents would criticize. Though Agnes and Timothy maintained that they lived frugally and weren’t pretentious, the fact was that he’d grown up comfortably well-off and she came from serious money. It showed in a thousand ways, from their choice of wine to their decision to send Maura to the exclusive Wilton Academy.

As the meal progressed, Maura learned that Edward was indeed considerate. He was also intelligent, articulate, and really quite boring as he chatted easily with her parents about the paper Agnes was writing on funerary pits. Her parents would consider him an excellent match for her. He was certainly a good match for them, she thought, suppressing a yawn. He’d fit into the family seamlessly.

So, really, that did make him a good match for her, too. As her parents had always said,
A good marriage is a partnership of equals, based on a solid foundation of similar values and interests.
If the woman was well-bred, well-educated, well-spoken, and not exactly exciting, then those were the qualities she must look for in a mate. Maura couldn’t fault their logic; the formula had served both of them well.

What was wrong with her, that she longed for a man who discussed movies rather than archival materials, one who tossed her suggestive winks rather than polite nods? Whose gaze made her pulse race, and sweat break out on her skin?

And why had it taken until today for her to realize this? Had the age of thirty brought this self-knowledge?

Or was it the coming of Jesse Blue?

The other three were still talking happily, and no doubt believed she was listening attentively. The subject wasn’t completely uninteresting, but right now she was in complete agreement with Eliza Doolittle, when she’d sung,
Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words.

Jesse Blue was too short on words. Edward Mortimer, like her parents, was too full of them. Somewhere, there must be a happy medium.

She forced herself to tune into the conversation, and after a few minutes had to struggle to hold back a yawn. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night; it had been a long day; it was warm in here. She should stop drinking wine. But it was her only pleasure at the moment, so she sipped again. Gazing into her glass, she noted how the pale gold of the wine reflected the glimmer of subdued lights. When she swirled the liquid, it swished in gentle curves, almost hypnotically . . .

It was her birthday and she should be having fun. If she had her choice, what would she like to be doing this very minute? She sipped, and ran her tongue over her lips to catch a stray drop as she stared into the golden liquid and held back another yawn.

An hour ago, she’d been staring, mesmerized, at something very different. When she’d almost bumped into Jesse, she had frozen in place, heat pulsing through her veins. Hypnotized . . .

She sipped again, remembering how she’d stared at his lips . . .

She’d been drawn toward him as if they were magnetic. . .

Maura’s tongue ran slowly across . . .

Jesse’s lips. They were full, sensual, swollen. Her own body felt swollen, too, ripe with feelings she’d never experienced before, a lush new territory just waiting to be explored. By his strong brown hands.

He cupped her breast through her silk blouse, and the roughness of his skin caught at the delicate fabric. Underneath, her own skin tightened, yearning for the touch of flesh against flesh.

His fingers went to the top button of her blouse, and he slipped it effortlessly through the hole. He parted the sides of the blouse and ran his finger down the flesh he had bared—the base of her neck, that little hollow between her collarbones. She knew he could feel the flutter of her pulse as her heart raced with pleasure.

He undid another button and leaned down to moisten her skin with his tongue. Her breasts strained against the confinement of her bra, longing for him to reach them. But he was drawing this out, tantalizing and torturing her. What would it feel like when his tongue finally touched—

“Maura?” her mother’s voice broke in.

She almost dropped the wineglass. What? Where was she? “Yes?” She gazed across the table, aware that color flamed in her cheeks. What was wrong with her? And, come to think of it, how was her mind coming up with sensual details she’d never personally experienced? Maybe she hadn’t been skimming those sex scenes as much as she’d thought.

“You were miles away.”

If Agnes only knew. “Sorry,” Maura said respectfully. “I’m a little tired tonight. It’s been a long day.”

Respectful. Yes, she’d learned respect in her first months at Agnes and Timothy’s house, and now it was a habit.

Not a habit of Jesse Blue’s, she’d noticed today. He wasn’t out-and-out rude or insolent, but he got his own way. There was a tone—a kind of taunting, teasing tone—she wasn’t used to. And the occasional expression in his eyes that she couldn’t read, as if maybe he was viewing her with interest. Male interest. When she’d swung around in her chair and found that he’d been watching her brush her hair, his eyes had been glittering, his mouth was slightly open, she’d almost have said his nostrils were flaring.

She shook her head and banished the image. What an idiot she was. He was a man, not a horse, and no doubt he’d been tired and anxious to get away. It was impatience she’d seen, not . . . something else she didn’t dare name. Something she wouldn’t allow herself to want, not from a man like him.

She looked at three sets of raised eyebrows. “I’m fine, honestly. Please go on with your conversation.”

“You’ve barely said a word,” Edward commented. “We’ve been talking about our work, and now it’s your turn. Timothy didn’t say what you do.”

No, he wouldn’t have, because he and Agnes weren’t happy about it. Her parents had strongly encouraged her to go into academia, but it was one of the few areas in her life where she couldn’t bring herself to respect their wishes. She loved numbers, and was intrigued by the way businesses worked. So, no doctorate for her, just a master’s in business admin.

“I’m an accountant at a seniors residential facility,” she told him.

“You enjoy it?”

“I do.” Her parents couldn’t seem to understand that the job at Cherry Lane was perfect for her, letting her indulge her passion for numbers and spend time with seniors she liked and respected. Or, rather, the job had been perfect until today.

“Her talents, and her education, are being wasted,” Agnes said. “Fortunately, she has a good chance of becoming the general manager.”

“Sounds impressive,” Edward commented.

Left to her own unambitious devices, she’d have been quite content in her current job. She only hoped that, if she won the promotion, Agnes and Timothy would finally get over being disappointed in her.

Edward started to say something else to her, but Timothy intervened with a question about some research Edward had been doing, and the three of them were off again.

Maura reflected on her chances at that promotion. If things worked out with Jesse, and a nice garden was created on a minimal budget, that would be a big point in her favor. If Jesse screwed up, though—especially if he did steal something, or drink or do drugs at Cherry Lane—she’d be in serious trouble. Tomorrow, surely she’d locate the file on him and find out exactly what kind of man she was dealing with.

What kind of man . . . She glanced across at nice, average Edward, nodding as he listened to her father. She’d just bet Jesse Blue was having a much more exciting evening than she was. And so was whichever curvy, sexy, vivacious woman he was spending it with.

In bed, Edward would probably be average, and nice. As for Jesse, with that hot body and loads and loads of experience, he’d probably be blow-your-mind good.

Did he make love the way he gardened: slowly and thoroughly, with attention to every detail? What would it feel like to have a man devote his single-minded attention to her body, the way Jesse had tended to that neglected garden?

“Dessert?” a soft voice asked.

“Oh, yes, please,” Maura murmured. Whipped cream and Jesse Blue and—

“. . . cake and a pear tart.”

BOOK: Body Heat

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