Hold Me Tight: Heartbreakers (11 page)

With a rough sound, Alexi tugged free the button of her slacks, impatient with a second button, tearing it away to find her zipper.

Slowly, so slowly, while his lips teased hers, he stroked the slacks from her hips. They fell to her feet and Jessica arched up against Alexi’s body as she stepped free of her clothing.

There in the shadowy, elegant office, with the rain pattering softly at the window, Alexi looked down at her body, at the champagne lace on her boy-cut briefs. Shaking with need, fear
ing what ran deep and wild inside her, Jessica tried to cover her breasts with her arm, but Alexi eased it away. “I want to look at you,” he whispered.

Then he added gently, “You’re embarrassed.”

“We’re in my office and it’s hardly the place—”

“That’s not it. The windows have a privacy film and there is no one but you and I here…. Have you never had a man look at you?”

She shook her head, trembling now, uncertain of herself. She leaned her forehead against his chest, unable to meet his eyes, to explain. “No.”

Alexi held her away from him and tilted her face up to his. “You have been married twice.”

She tried to laugh but it came out unsteadily. “It’s been a long time.”

It had been forever….

“Tell me.” Alexi eased her against him and Jessica wrapped her arms around his body, fearing to open herself to him, to reopen her past. He smoothed her hair, kissed her cheek and caressed her back.

“There’s too much.” Where could she start? As a hungry, untended child? As a teenager who thought marriage would take her away from her family? From her first husband, who roughly fumbled through their wedding night and bragged about it to his friends? Or to Robert, who had only touched her with tenderness and pride?

Her emotions churned within her, because this one man had touched her deep inside, to that delicate softness she’d protected for a lifetime. She wanted to feel everything all at once with Alexi—every hunger, every caress—to allow herself to open fully, to demand—

Alexi’s chest moved slightly, side to side, pressing against her bare breasts. “I like this,” he said quietly against her ear, “you resting against me, soft like this.”

“Stay with me.”

“No.”

She opened her lips against his shoulder and felt the shudder of reaction go through his body. “I could make you.”

“That remains to be seen—if you could make me.”

Jessica didn’t trust the humor in Alexi’s tone and turned her face to his throat, nipping lightly. “You want me.”

When he didn’t answer, she drew back to study his expression.

He was grinning. “One of us still has most of their clothes on. That says something about who can make whom.”

Jessica pushed back from Alexi and crossed her arms in front of her breasts, concealing them. Sensitized, her nipples peaked at the touch and she frowned up at Alexi, who was buttoning his shirt. “You’re a difficult man, Stepanov.”

“So you say.”

“Tell me about Willow.”

He put on his denim jacket and reached for his hat. “Find out for yourself.”

“Damn you. You like pushing me, don’t you? Does bringing me to heel, making me come to Amoteh, working on that house, have anything to do with making your ex-fiancée pay for what she did? Am I paying her tab? Is that what you want? Revenge on a woman who walked out on you?” Jessica demanded hotly. “Do you still love her?”

Alexi’s blue gaze pinned her. “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

No one had ever gotten to her emotions as Alexi had, and Jessica struggled to squash her simmering temper. In another minute she’d drag him back to that couch and wipe another woman from his memory—That primitive instinct shocked her. She usually planned her life and Alexi was—“You’ve just walked through my life. I deserve to know about yours.”

“Then you’ll have to come after me. Let’s have this out, shall we? Or are you too afraid to take a chance?”

At eight o’clock on the evening after Alexi had driven to Seattle, he couldn’t concentrate on the figures for repairing his father’s future home—or on building enough of a down payment on the Seagull’s Perch.

He’d been unable to stay away from Jessica any longer, and the week separating them had seemed an eternity.

He needed to feel her against him…to see that pale skin against his own, the softness of her breasts against his chest, the taste of her, the sound of her breath—uneven, as if her need had trapped it within her—need for him….

The kiss was to reassure himself that Jessica hadn’t forgotten what ran between them, not only the passion, but the tenderness, too.

The excuse to see her was just that; the cookies he’d taken her were his, baked by Mary Jo, the soap had been purchased especially for the woman he wanted.

Willow was clearly framing her own danger, magnifying it only to Jessica, who had been calling nightly—and once when Alexi had been in the shop. He’d listened intently to Willow’s innuendos of danger from the back room; he’d followed her handwritten checklist tucked into a crime detective manual on dealing with stalkers. He’d compared her carefully placed, threatening notes to her computer printouts and linked the paper and fonts together—Willow was creating her own threats.

The window that had been broken recently had been hit from the inside of the building. The shoe prints in the flower bed beneath the window said that the prowler had small, narrow feet, not filling the overlarge boots.

Kapolo would wear a large-size boot—and so would the librarian, Elizabeth Price.

Alexi had seen Willow in action—emotionally defending her expertise and what she had uncovered about their faulty genealogy. She didn’t fear either opponent.

In Alexi’s appraisal of the situation, Willow clearly was framing her own danger and using it to worry Jessica. Willow’s purpose? To draw Jessica back to Amoteh.

But why?

Before he had left to see Jessica, Alexi’s quiet, intuitive question had stunned Willow. “Are you playing matchmaker, Willow? With Jessica and me?”

Willow’s wide-eyed expression was too innocent. “Um. Maybe. But for a good reason. I can’t bear for her to stay in that big empty house, that shrine to her dead husband with that worm Howard hovering around her.”

“That description fits,” Alexi had said very quietly.

“Then you’ll play along? Let Jessica think that she needs to visit me more often?”

He’d smiled at that. “Maybe I’m the one she wants to see. It’s her choice. I’ve offered her a job.”

“Really? Doing what?”

“My assistant with no pay.”

“Aha!” Willow had exclaimed. “The plot thickens. You want her. She’s been independent for her whole life. She might not like a takeover. There’s a lot going on inside Jessica that no one knows. I hope you know what you’re doing. For both your sakes.”

In his house, Alexi stared out at the rainy night and smoothed his lips with his fingertip. He still tasted Jessica, that quick fire between them, the urgent hunger that was too real to deny. Wounded once, a man’s pride was important. He needed a sign that she matched his hunger, his needs, with her own. Jessica already knew he wanted her.
Would she come to him?

He rubbed his chest, remembered the softness of her breasts against him, the satin of those lace briefs, the loose leg openings that could so easily be breached.

But the ache that rested within his heart needed more than a quick sexual fix. Alexi needed to care for Jessica, to protect her now, to enjoy the colors flashing beneath the cool, professional surface.

When questioned about her late husband, Jessica’s expression had softened. She hadn’t changed his upstairs room, or the sitting room next to it—where a man’s big chair and reading lamp could be seen through the open door, a stack of magazines and books beside it. Men’s bedroom slippers rested on a footstool.

Alexi remembered Howard’s grasp of Jessica’s arm. Howard’s furious expression said he would rape a woman to prove that he was her master and a man, if that’s what it could be called.

Alexi tried once more to make sense of his notes on the
Seagull’s Perch, the repairs needed to it, the necessary budget-type remodeling.

But his mind came back to Jessica. In her office she’d collected her dignity, walking away from him to take a black kimono from a rack. With her back to him, she’d belted it, and the red silk dragon curling on the back looked no more primitive than his need to take her.

When she had turned, her auburn hair shining against the black satin of the jacket, she’d pulled herself back into her businesswoman shields.

Jessica knew how to survive, how to protect herself.

Maybe it was time someone else helped her.

Alexi stared grimly at his empty bed and the vision of Jessica, snuggled deep inside it, tormented him.

Maybe Kamakani’s curse was true—that Alexi had lost his pride once and now his need of another woman could cause him to lose it again.

She would return to Amoteh for Willow.

But would Jessica come to him? Would she stay with him and not in an Amoteh Resort suite?

Alexi looked at his reflection in the glass window. A hard man stared back, his deeply set silvery eyes glittering, his expression a stern mask of jutting bones, more shadow than light.

Perhaps Kamakani’s curse had struck him, a proud man wanting a woman to bend just that bit—to salve his pride.

He stared toward the bluff on Strawberry Hill, that peninsula spearing out into the black Pacific waves, now separated from land by high tide. Chief Kamakani had gifted him with the curse of a woman—Jessica.

Jessica pulled her BMW off to one side of the road above Amoteh. In mid-January, the rain beat steadily down on her car, the windshield wipers click-clacking. It had only been a little over two weeks since she’d danced with Alexi, and now her desire to see him wouldn’t be ignored.

He’d just fired her need for him by appearing at her office that morning. Alexi knew exactly what he was doing.

Jessica gripped the steering wheel. She wasn’t an impulsive
woman. In fact, she kept herself on a meticulous, planned, thoughtful life schedule. Now, here she was, determined to see Alexi. He was volatile, moody, brooding over a woman who had wounded him—and most likely wanting another to pay.

But Jessica knew that Alexi wasn’t as Howard had labeled him: “a down-on-his-luck, out-of-work cowboy, living off his relatives, and tending bar and probably women for his meal ticket, if that’s what it could be called.”

After another episode in her running battle with Howard, Jessica needed Alexi’s safety—and his hunger. “If his feelings for Heather have anything to do with this…”

With a last indrawn breath to brace herself, Jessica stared into the night toward Chief Kamakani’s grave site. “You’re pretty good at this cursing business, Chief. I was safe and knew exactly what I was doing. Now I don’t. I’ve known Alexi for just over two weeks and here I am, delivering myself on a platter. I could walk away from this, but I’m not going to,” she whispered, and then slid the car into gear.

Was Alexi’s hunger, his kiss, everything that she remembered? Or was she just dreaming? Was she so wrong to want him this passionately? To feel the intensity of life that she’d never known with a man?

Alexi noted the headlights of a car spearing into his darkened room. He stood by the window as a sleek, upscale car pulled beside his work truck. Head bent, her coat gathered around her, a woman hurried toward his back porch.

Jessica!
He walked to the living quarters door, opened it and a blast of cold air from the sunroom hit his bare torso.

He jerked open the exterior door and stared at the woman smiling up at him. “Hello, Marcella. Out late, aren’t you?”

Alexi frowned at the second car that had pulled alongside the road, the headlights shooting off into the rain.

“I’ve come to play,” Marcella whispered sexily, and lifted the resort’s basket, used by guests for wine and dinners along the beach.

Her raincoat gaped open to reveal that her body was nude, except for thigh-high black panty hose. With an alluring look,
she nudged past him. On high heels, she picked her way over the heavy utility electric cord and rough board floor to the door of his living quarters.

Alexi stepped outside, slammed the door behind Marcella and ran for the car parked on the road. Through the veil of rain, he’d seen Jessica’s face, framed by the dashboard’s light. He jerked open the passenger door and slid inside just as Jessica prepared to put the car in gear.

Alexi switched off the key and pulled it from the ignition. “This isn’t what you think,” he stated unevenly, because he read Jessica’s wounded expression too easily. “I am not having an affair with her.”

“You’re in demand. I’ll say that for you. Is Heather arriving, too?” Her words were cutting and cold, and she was shaking, her arms wrapped around herself.

Alexi picked up the cell phone she’d been using and dialed Mikhail’s personal number. His cousin wouldn’t be happy, but neither was he. “You have a guest who has strayed onto my premises—yes, Marcella. Come get her. I will be waiting in another car. Thank you.”

Jessica stared out into the night as if she were disinterested, but Alexi noted the quick trembling of her lips. “I did not invite her,” he said.

Her flat “Sure” was disbelieving.

“I don’t lie. And when I say Heather never touched what is inside me, I mean it. It took an irritating, fascinating sexy redhead to do that.” He noted the packed bags in the back seat. “You came to stay with me.”

“No. With Willow. Or at the resort. Definitely not with you,” she answered loftily.

“Liar.” Alexi slid his hands beneath Jessica’s body and lifted her from the driver’s seat onto his lap. “I’m cold, you know.”

Jessica sat very straight and looked out at the rain. “That is not my problem. I’m sorry that I irritate you, but the feeling is mutual. You like to make my life difficult. You revel in—”

“But you’re so warm and soft and sweet.” He couldn’t resist
teasing Jessica as she sat so straight on his lap. Would she leave now?