Touch Me (7 page)

“You have a nice business going too,” Rose continued. Her lashes lifted and her gaze met his. “I…didn’t expect that. Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Christ! He didn’t want her to think
too
highly of him.

“Yeah, maybe I do.” Rubbing her hands on the legs of her jeans, she looked down again. “I shouldn’t have doubted you could create a success.”

Payne wanted to groan. Her admiration could take him down hazardous paths, he already knew that. “Rose…”

She hopped to her feet, then crossed to a pot that held a dwarf lemon tree. “This looks thirsty.”

“The gardener will—”

“I can water a pot.”

It wasn’t so easy, though, because the hose wouldn’t reach. With a grimace, she bent to reposition the heavy clay container.

Payne gave himself three seconds to admire her ass, then he began to get to his feet just as she started tugging on the pot in earnest. “Be careful,” he cautioned, seeing the hose stretched right behind her.

The warning came too late. Rose tripped, her legs going out from under her so she landed, hard, on her behind.

“Oh, crap,” he muttered, and hurried over. “Are you all right?”

She looked up, and he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes.

His heart seized. It was the same way they’d looked when she was fifteen and he’d peeled her off of him and shoved her away. Shaking off the recollection, he reached down to haul her up by the elbows.

Then memory swamped him again, with her this close, their bodies aligned.

Her shampoo, he thought. It had to be the same from before with that light, flowery scent. It had been swirling around his house the past three days, which probably explained why his thinking was muddled. The fragrance messed him up.

Made him remember things that had gone bad.

Reminded him of things that he’d wanted so very, very bad.

“I’m okay,” she said, trying to move out of his hold. He sensed the tension in her body and her pulse was ticking fast against the thin skin of her throat.

“Maybe I’m not,” he whispered, and bent his head.

His tongue touched the spot on her neck. She flinched, but was held, as enthralled as he, he supposed, by the thrum of her heartbeat against the hot, wet muscle of his tongue. Breathing deep, he took Rose into his lungs, her scent and her heat.

He licked upward and felt her shiver. Wrapping his arms around her, he drew her light weight against his body and pressed a kiss to the hollow behind her ear.

Her nipples tightened, he could feel the hard bead of them pressing against his chest through their shirts. His cock pulsed, trapped in the denim of his jeans. Groaning, he wanted to reach down and adjust himself, but no way was he letting go of her now.

His lips traced the delicate line of her jaw and her small hand found its way beneath the hem of his T-shirt to the bare skin at the small of his back. He shuddered at the brush of flesh to flesh. Her fingers slid beneath the waistband of his jeans, lighting him up. His hands flexed into the skin on either side of her spine and he bit her chin.

At the nip, she froze. Then, frantic, she backed out of his hold.

“Rose—”

“Guests,” she hissed, throwing her arm in the direction of the side gate.

Crap. She was right. Two friends of his waltzed through, each bearing a six-pack of beer and a bag of chips.

“I’ve got to get a lock on that thing,” he muttered, then forced himself out to swim out of the sexual fog. “Hey, Randa, Patrice.”

Their enthusiastic greetings gave him time to get his shit together. He even managed to make the introductions with a cool that didn’t reflect the turmoil inside him. Why had he touched Rose? Stupid, stupid. Rose wasn’t cut out for his kind of indulgences. She was exactly the kind of woman he avoided.

The kind who wanted rings. Kids. A decent kind of man who could keep his promises.

When she made noises about bringing out some snacks to go with the beverages, he volunteered for the duty himself. “Sit down, Rose. Chat it up with Randa and Patrice.”

He needed a breather.

Bustling about the kitchen, putting a tray of olives and cheese together, he realized the women’s voices carried over the water in the pool and directly into his ears. Rose explained she knew him from their Laurel Canyon days.

Randa told her about meeting Payne years ago in a class designed for small business owners.

For a moment he wondered how surprised Rose might be to hear that he’d actually put some effort into educating himself.
I shouldn’t have doubted that you could create a success.

Ridiculous how those simple words had struck him with an almost-pain directly above the high point of his scar. What a sap.

And then he’d kissed her…

Randa was talking sweet about him now, and he shook his head when she spilled about the seed money he’d provided for her and Patrice to open their hair salon. But maybe it wasn’t so terrible for Rose to know, he decided. She’d dismiss their embrace or perhaps be insulted by it if she imagined the visiting pair were two more of his sexual partners.

Except big mouth Randa was insisting on showing off her and Patrice’s matching wedding bands and extolling the benefits of monogamous matrimony.

Oh, hell. No way did he want Rose to have her mind wandering in that direction in regards to him.

Neither did Patrice, he found out.

“Uh, we couldn’t miss that, um, hug you were exchanging with Payne,” she said, in her husky voice.

“Oh, that?” Rose responded with nonchalance. “It was nothing.”

An impulse. A minor itch. A fancy, passed.

“That’s good to know,” Patrice responded. “You seem like a nice woman.”

Much too nice for Payne.

“He’s a commitment-phobe,” Randa offered.

Exactly right.

“Doesn’t ever kiss a woman on the lips, can you imagine?” She chuckled. “Not that I know from experience, mind you, but that’s the word.”

A true one, though it wasn’t something he was aware before now that his bed partners had spilled. What the hell, he thought, shrugging. Just something else that would prevent Rose from getting the wrong idea about him.

“And here’s why.” Patrice had lowered her voice, but the rest of the world went so quiet that he could hear each syllable perfectly.

It was as if even the insects were stalled, wings frozen mid-flight.

So was Payne, because he knew what was coming and couldn’t think of any way to stop it. After all, it was a lie he’d cultivated for years. A convenient fib. The easy excuse he’d used to deflect attachment and emotion.

Now the sham was coming home to roost.

“He’s still hung up on his ex,” Patrice continued.

“She broke him. Made him unable to feel deeply for any woman after their break-up.”

“Who?” Rose asked.

Payne closed his eyes, imagining the polite inquiry on her face. The shock that would overtake it next.

“Her name is Lily,” Randa said. “And he’s never gotten over her.”

He hung his head. Fuck. He might not have wanted Rose to think too highly of him…but he’d never wanted her to think that he was hung up on anyone—especially her older sister.

Rose perched on a stool drawn up to her sister’s kitchen island and watched Lily stir spaghetti sauce. Marcus half-dozed on a bouncy chair at her elbow and Rose toyed with his tiny fingers while replaying the conversation she’d had that afternoon with Payne’s friends.

She’d practically fallen again—this time in surprise—when they told her he continued to hold feelings for her sister. The ensuing dismay still felt like a lead balloon in her belly.

Could it be true? And if it was, in all the ensuing years since their break-up, why hadn’t the man pursued Lily?

Maybe because he’d been that desperate to avoid the little sister who’d thrown herself at him once upon a time.

That seemed crazy, along with the very notion that Payne himself had any kind of emotional staying power. Still… What if her ridiculous attempt to get his attention had somehow wrecked an epic romance in the making?

“You’re happy, right?” she demanded of Lily.

Her sister glanced over, her face flushed from the stove’s warmth. “About what?”

Rose made a gesture to indicate the garlic-scented kitchen, the refrigerator covered in couple photos of Gavin and Lily, the snoozing baby.

“Ecstatic,” Lily said, with a puzzled smile. “What’s this about? You? Because I’m so glad you’re here too. Away from Dad and that cold fish of an ex-boyfriend of yours.”

Blowing out a breath, Rose tried releasing her disquiet. Her sister was more than content, she’d said so. Twelve years ago Rose’s actions hadn’t wrought some great tragedy…right?

She rubbed at her forehead and contemplated the benefits of confession. “Lil…”

Her sister set the wooden spoon across the top of the pot and turned down the heat. “All right,” she said, pinning Rose with that big sister-stare. “What’s the matter?”

“Would you…” In their younger years, they’d never swapped stories of their romantic adventures and pitfalls. Then Lily had gone off to college and Rose had moved to Seattle. It was only after the twin blows brought on by their dad and Blake that she’d opened up to her older sibling about her dented heart.

Not once had she ever pried about Lily’s high school boyfriend.

The sound of glass against granite caught Rose’s attention. Lily slid a tumbler filled with iced tea nearer and then sipped from her own. “Would I…?”

Rose pulled in a quick breath. “Would you tell me about your relationship with Payne? I mean, what happened?”

On another sip of tea, Lily looked off into the distance. “I remember the first time I saw him. The fallen angel looks…so blond, and with those devilish blue eyes.” Her sidelong glance met Rose’s gaze. “Irresistible, huh?”

She looked away, unsure if she should admit she’d wanted him then too.

“Every girl had a crush on him,” Lily added.

“But you got him,” Rose pointed out. Raising her glass, she breathed in the leafy aroma of the liquid. Goose bumps broke out as she remembered that same scent on Payne’s breath earlier that day as his mouth neared.

To kiss her neck.

Her jaw.

But not her mouth.

Doesn’t ever kiss a woman on the lips, can you imagine?

Yes, he’d avoided hers, but the heat of him had riveted her anyway. His heavy body, the bulge of his sex, the clutch of his hands. Her fingers had wandered to the burning skin of his back and dared to slide beneath the waistband of his jeans.

Discovering he’d gone commando, her own skin had flashed with fire.

More proof he was uncivilized, uncontainable…unreachable for a woman like Rose who’d never been with a man who went naked beneath denim. Who’d only been with Blake and a couple of other men like him, who wore silky boxers instead of scars. Whose mouth-to-mouth kisses hadn’t been nearly as arousing as the wet touch of Payne’s tongue on her pulse.

She set the tea on the island, pushed it away, and tried returning to her point. “You had him…but then you broke up.”

Lily looked away. “That’s a little complicated. Bottom line, we weren’t suited. I think I just wanted a little walk on the wild side.”

“He was your first?” Embarrassed by her own audacity, Rose’s face went hot.

Lily’s eyes widened, then she laughed. “This conversation needs fashion magazines, mud packs, and lots of junk food.”

“Sorry,” Rose mumbled. “It’s none of my business.”

Swooping her baby out of his seat, Lily laughed again. “I’m not shy. I thought you were.”

“Maybe I’m repressed,” she said glumly.

Lily shook her head. “This from the woman who left here the other day in a risqué French maid’s costume.”

“That was different. That was…” For Payne, who had always managed to draw the unexpected from Rose.

At first, it was just a smile he coaxed out of her, by showing up at the house one afternoon, while she and Lily were alone, their mom and dad at work. In one hand he’d held a tall cup, filled with a healthy smoothie for Lily, full of protein acids, soy oils, and other nasty ingredients hidden in peach and mango slush. In the other, was the ice cream sundae he’d bought for Rose, complete with fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry. For a moment she’d felt five years old, until he’d handed over a long-handled spoon and she realized it had been made with two scoops of rocky road and one of mocha almond fudge—the very same order she’d requested at the ice cream counter a couple of weeks before.

He’d remembered.

More than a handful of times that year he’d come across her walking home from the Canyon Country Store. There were no sidewalks on that stretch of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but she’d had a short distance to go. Still, he’d pulled over and insisted she get into his vehicle. Riding shotgun in his low-slung sport scar—its lines incredibly sexy even to her untrained eye, despite being painted in nothing more than a matte-silver undercoat—she’d wished for the darkest of dark sunglasses and bee-stung lips and that she’d grow five inches in the blink of an eye to have supermodel legs that would draw Payne Colson’s bright, heaven-blue gaze.

Finally, one day after school a boy her age was teasing her in the way boys of that maturity level were wont to do. He’d gotten hold of her backpack and was tossing it over her head to one of his buddies who would then lob it back. The keep-away game had started playful but began to feel mean. Frustrated tears were heating the back of her eyes when Payne arrived on the scene and snatched the pack out of mid-air. Without a word to her tormentors, he’d slung his arm around her shoulder and led her to his car. Riding shotgun again on the way to the ice cream place where he bought her favorite sundae once again, she’d lost her heart. There and then, she’d vowed to be everything to him.

That she’d give him anything he’d take from her.

As he’d braked in front of her house, she’d clung to her adoration and the cardboard cup of ice cream, thinking how to communicate all that was running through her head.

Maybe he’d let her wash his car.

Copy over his Calculus homework in her neat hand.

Mend his favorite shirt.