IN WHAT WAS becoming at least a weekly habit, Adam sat in the dark in his backyard, sipping a beer. The kids had long since gone to sleep and his brain had not long ago shut down while working on his laptop, so he’d grabbed a beer and come outside for some fresh air, peace and quiet.
Next door, the patio door to Marin’s house slid open and closed, and a woman in a flirty little dress with extremely short blond hair and a cigarette in her mouth walked outside. Apparently, Marin and her mother had a visitor. As the woman stepped out of the periphery of light and into the dark night, something about the way she moved seemed familiar to Adam.
That wasn’t a guest. That was Marin. Since when did she smoke? Curious now, he walked into the other yard. “Wow. I almost didn’t recognize you. What happened to your hair?”
“My roots were showing.”
He chuckled. “Pretty drastic solution. Don’t women usually dye their hair again to get rid of the roots?”
He’d never been very partial to short hair on women, but he liked the new style on Marin. Somehow it was softer, more feminine than her previous cut, and it suited the more relaxed personality that seemed to be emerging the longer she stayed on Mirabelle. The new haircut also bared her beautifully long and graceful—and very kissable—neck. A chunk of clipped hair clung to her skin just beneath her ear, and it was all he could do not to brush it away.
She flicked her thumb at a lighter, causing it to only spark.
“You don’t want to smoke that,” he said softly.
“Sure I do.” She pursed her lips around the butt of the cigarette. “If I could just get this lighter going.” She flicked it ineffectually a few more times.
“Want some help?”
“Adam to the rescue, is that it?”
“Do you want to smoke it or not?”
“You like to fix things, don’t you?” she murmured around the filter in her mouth. “Too bad you can’t fix yourself.”
“Marin, what—”
“You never get mad, though, do you?” She snatched the cigarette out of her mouth and glared at him. “The always calm, always unflappable Adam Harding would never think of raising his voice. Do you even swear?”
“Marin—”
“I’m serious. Do you ever swear?”
“What’s the point? Does swearing change anything? Does getting angry make one bit of difference?”
“No. But it sure as hell makes me feel better. To…feel…something…anything. See that’s the problem with shutting yourself off. Shutting down. You’re not only not feeling the lows, you’re not feeling the highs, either. You end up with no passion in your life.”
As she tossed the cigarette and lighter away, she moved toward him and he felt himself wanting to step back. Her unpredictable mood tonight set him even more on edge than he usually felt around her.
“But then maybe that’s the way you like it? Maybe you like not feeling,” she whispered, now only a foot away and closing. “You like being numb. Then you don’t have to face anything. You can pretend everything is fine.”
“Just because I don’t show my emotions like you, like an open book for anyone to read, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” He felt himself getting riled up, his insides spinning and turning and getting tied up in knots. If she touched him, if she pushed this, she just might get more than she bargained for from him tonight. “Marin—”
“Adam?” She cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned.
God help him, but all he wanted was to bury his fingers in that flirty short hair and kiss that smirk right off her lips. “So I’m not passionate, is that it? Are you entirely sure about that?”
“Prove me wrong.”
He hadn’t even touched her and already a painful hard-on pressed against his jeans. For a man who’d been practically dead to the world for years, his libido sure was coming out swinging around this woman. He stepped toward her, bringing his chest to within inches of her breasts, his mouth within kissing distance of her lips. Then he wrapped his arms around her, leaning into her, his knee between her legs, his erection pressing against her hip. “Does that feel like I’m numb to you?”
“No,” she breathed. “You feel so alive when you touch me.”
She couldn’t be more right about that, and at the moment he couldn’t remember a single reason why he was supposed to walk away. All he wanted was to feel even more alive.
“You won’t date me,” she whispered. “But you’ll kiss me again, won’t you?”
“Yes.” Slanting his head, he pressed his lips against hers, urged her mouth wider, thrust his tongue inside her mouth and tasted…alcohol. Tequila, if he wasn’t mistaken. Swell. He drew back. “Marin, what have you been doing tonight?”
“What do you mean?” She looked dazed and her disorientation might’ve been from more than his kiss.
Curious, he glanced at her house. Light spilled from the kitchen and family room out through the open windows and into the backyard, and he could just make out the murmur of laughter and loud voices. It sounded like a party.
“That explains it.” He laughed. “You’re drunk.”
“No, just a little tipsy.” She grinned. “That a problem?”
“Let’s just say that I’d prefer you remember tonight.” He dropped her hands and backed up, but even as he retreated, she advanced.
“Oh, I’ll remember it, all right. I remember every look, every touch from you. How could I forget?”
He backed into a tree and was forced to stop.
She kept coming, though, until they were touching again at the hips. Reaching out, she flattened her hands on his chest and massaged her fingertips into his muscle. “How could I ever forget…anything about you?”
No, she wasn’t drunk. Her gaze was clear, her hands steady. Still…. “You’re going to be sorry for this in the morning.”
“So far I haven’t done anything warranting apology. Give me something to regret, Adam. I dare you.”
“You dare me,” he breathed.
As if she sensed the change in him, as if she understood that what was happening to him was much stronger and more volatile than what she could see, she stepped back.
He wasn’t feeling all that magnanimous at the moment and wasn’t about to let her retreat, at least not that easily. He took her by the shoulders and turned them both around, backed her up against the tree and into the shadows, and drew her hands up and over her head. Then he kissed her soft neck. When he dragged his hand down the underside of her arm all the way to her breast, she groaned and her head fell to the side.
He cupped her breast and felt her nipple pebbling beneath the thin fabric of her bra. He groaned as their lips met again in a frantic, needy kiss. It’d been so long for him, so long since he’d felt anything close to what was happening now under his skin. Before he knew it, her hot hands were under his shirt, on his sides and back, and then working at the zipper of his jeans. Then he was free and her fingers gripped his erection.
“Marin, don’t… Oh, God.” His knees buckled and he slid to the ground behind the tree.
No one in the houses could see them, there in the dark as she slid to the ground with him, straddling him, mercilessly pulsing against him.
This wasn’t going to go any further. It couldn’t. But he wanted—needed—to feel her. Reaching between them, he slipped his fingers beneath her skimpy bikini panties and touched her swollen, slick center, and that was all she wrote. Any remaining resistance he might’ve been able to muster drowned in the wet, luscious feel of her.
His control completely gone, he moved her panties aside and she lifted her hips, poising herself over him. He slid into her quickly and easily, and she shuddered. Then she looked down at him, the moon highlighting her eyes, her hair, her smile and she pulsed against him, driving him wild.
“Marin,” he whispered, and she covered his mouth with a kiss so full of passion that he thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
The feeling of her moving over him, so curvy and full, so erotic, was so different from Beth, startled him into awareness. What were they doing? This was wrong for both of them in so many ways. But it was too late. Even if he’d wanted to stop, he couldn’t. He was too close, and she was too damned hot. Holding her hips steady and thrusting into her again and again, he came inside her with a violence he’d never felt.
“Marin,” he groaned. “This is crazy.”
The ripples of her own release shuddered through her as she pulsed against him and then, finally, stilled, collapsing against his chest like a rag doll. It was over within minutes.
Had that really just happened? Yeah, that had really happened. “Well, there you go,” he whispered. “Now we both have something to regret.”
GLARING, PAINFUL SUNLIGHT flooded Marin’s bedroom. As if in a fog as thick as pea soup, she awoke with a hangover the likes of which she hadn’t felt since her college days. Dry mouth. Queasy stomach. Head that felt clamped in a vise grip and repeatedly pounded upon by some monster with a rubber mallet.
Slowly, she sat up. What in the world had gotten into her last night? She ran her hands through her hair—very short hair—pulled out a chunk of tree bark, and the events of the previous night returned to her in one fell swoop.
“Oh, damn,” she murmured, lying back down and closing her eyes. The haircut she could deal with, but Adam? How was she ever going to face him again? The things she’d said and done to him, the way she’d acted. Sensual. Brazen. Apparently, she could kiss a fervent goodbye to all the sexual insecurities that had gone along with her relationship with Colin. Marin had outright seduced Adam.
Colin had never, in all the years they’d been dating, turned her on the way Adam did. She’d wanted mind-blowing, blazing hot sex? She’d gotten it. Just thinking about him turned her thoughts to sex. Touching him, his erection, had lit her fuse. And she couldn’t use the excuse of being drunk at the time, that’s for sure. The aftersex shots were, without a doubt, the reason for this hangover.
“Marin?” her mother’s voice sounded softly from the doorway. “Are you alive?”
“Barely.”
“Adam called a little bit ago to tell me none of the nannies he interviewed panned out and he’s starting from scratch.”
Figures.
“And he asked how you were feeling.”
Oh, God.
“Did you see him last night?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Mother.” Marin buried her head under the pillow. She’d wanted regrets? She got ’em.
ADAM WAS SITTING AT HIS DESK when the office trailer door opened. Now what? The last thing he needed today was one more problem.
“Oh, hi,” Phyllis said lightly. Maybe it wasn’t a problem after all. “He’s in his office. Go on back.”
Adam glanced up from his computer screen just as Marin appeared at the threshold. What the— Immediately, he stood, but stayed where he was. A desk between him and Marin was probably a good idea, given the fact that the mere sight of her had just caused a semierection.
They both stood silently for a long and awkward moment. He would’ve thought that sex might’ve soothed any need that had built inside him through the years. Instead, having Marin once only made him want her again. And again.
Finally, unable to stand it another minute, he crossed the room, reached behind her and closed the door. “Spit it out, Marin.”
“Um, I need to…I need to apologize for last night…the tequila…” She stopped.
Her gaze flew over every place she’d touched him last night and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and pick up where they’d left off. He had to admit it was amazing what good sex could do for a man’s outlook. Feeling right as rain for a change, he felt a slight smile tug on his lips.
“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?” she whispered.
“You think I should?”
“That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“I think last night proved I’m not much of a gentleman.” He sobered. “For which I should apologize.”
“What happened was my fault.”
“We both share the blame for what happened, Marin.”
“Well, just so you know, I got tested for STDs right after I found out about Colin. I’m clean. And I’m still on birth control, so…”
“Well, I haven’t been tested, but Beth was the only woman. Ever.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” Shaking her head, she turned away. “I’m sorry, Adam, but I think I really did take advantage of you last night. I used you, in a way, to prove something to myself and that wasn’t fair.”
“I’m not following. You’re going to have to explain that.”
“My relationship with Colin wasn’t very…satisfying.” As if she was feeling vulnerable, she crossed her arms. “I thought it was me. That I wasn’t sexy or sensual enough. I used you, in a way, to prove to myself that I could turn on a man.”
“That you could—” He stopped, things suddenly making sense. “Let me guess. Colin is either dead or he’s gay.”
Her silence was all the confirmation he needed. But she hadn’t taken advantage of him any more than he had of her. It was kind of sweet, though, that she thought she’d used him.
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Did you kiss me last night with the intention of having sex?”
“No.”
“Would you have seduced any man out there last night ready to light your cigarette for you?”
“No.”
“Well, there you have it then.” He smiled. “You didn’t use me, Marin. We’re both responsible for what happened, and I think it’s safe to say you have nothing to worry about from a sexuality standpoint. Colin was the problem. Not you. Not by any stretch of the imagination.” Just the thought of her worrying that she wasn’t sexy enough had him shaking his head. “Marin, that was the best sex I’ve ever had, so you don’t need to be too sorry.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Me, too. Actually.”
“I think we’re both in agreement, though. What happened last night? Never going to happen again, right?”
For a moment, she seemed to be debating. “Explain to me again why just sex is a problem.”
He sobered. “There is no such thing as ‘just sex,’ Marin. Not with me, anyway.”
“Okay then.” She opened his office door. “It’ll never happen again.”