THE RESTAURANT was Italian, but not a spaghetti parlor. It had exquisite leaded-glass windows whose frames were painted a glossy forest green. The heavy carpet was woven in patterns of deep red, cream, and a dark green that matched the window frames. There were red linen tablecloths, fresh flowers, gleaming china, spotless silver, crystal glasses dividing light into rich primary colors. And over all was the hushed ambience of wealth.
Cat didn’t have to look at the menu to know the place was expensive. Really expensive.
“No,” she said, turning on Travis.
“You don’t like Italian?”
“I don’t like the cost.”
He blinked, surprised. “Sorry, but it’s too late to change now. I can hear your stomach growling. When did you eat lunch?”
“I didn’t.”
“Cat, be sensible. You have to eat.”
She took in a deep breath.
It was a mistake. The scent of food made her dizzy. Breakfast had been a long time ago. Too long.
Get more sleep, Cathy. Eat regularly and eat well. I’ll see you in a week.
Cat sighed as she remembered Dr. Stone’s words. There wasn’t much she could do about the sleep, but eating well was all around her.
“I let you cook last night when I didn’t want to,” Travis pointed out neutrally.
“Look at me. I’m wearing slacks, a blouse, and sandals. They won’t even seat me in a place like this.”
“Want to bet?”
The hostess approached with a professional smile. Though she was wearing a floor-length black dress, high heels, and pearls, she obviously had no problem with seating more casually dressed patrons.
“Two?” she asked.
Travis looked at Cat.
It was the incredible aromas that undermined her will. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten a good meal prepared by someone else.
“All right,” she said, sighing. “Just this once. Right now I’m too tired and too hungry to argue about how much the meal costs.”
Travis smiled slightly. He had seen Cat breathe in the food-scented air, rich with garlic and oregano, roasted chicken and lamb. His own mouth was watering and he had eaten a big, late lunch.
Taking her arm, he followed the hostess to the private booth he had requested. Instead of sitting across the table from Cat, he slid in beside her.
“So tell me,” Cat said as she settled into the lushly upholstered booth. “What does a ship designer do?”
“Design ships.”
She gave him a sideways look.
Travis opened a menu. “If you like scallops, I’m told there aren’t any better in Southern California.”
“I love scallops.”
“Good. Anything you can’t or don’t eat?”
“Vegemite.”
“What?”
“Australia’s answer to peanut butter. Nasty stuff.”
Travis grimaced. “Now I remember. One of my crew comes from Australia. Said he left just to get away from Vegemite.”
“How many men do you have on your ship?”
“Enough to get the job done.”
Cat looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “You’re not helping me.”
“What do you mean?” he asked without looking up from the menu.
“How can I plan my shots if you won’t tell me what you need?”
“Right now I need food. You can shoot me later.”
“Don’t tempt me. This is a business meal, remember?”
“I don’t conduct business on an empty stomach. You shouldn’t either. Leads to bad decisions.”
After the server took their orders, Cat tried to bring the conversation back to business. Travis promptly took it away again.
“You’re determined to turn this into a date, aren’t you?” she asked tightly.
“I’m determined not to talk about anything that matters until you’ve eaten.”
The silence that followed was uneasy at first, but Cat was too tired to sustain anything, even frustration. When the meal came she gave the food the attention it deserved.
By the time Cat ate her fill, she knew that Travis was right; she had been too hungry to be particularly reasonable about anything, especially food. She took a final bite of buttery scallop, sighed, and sipped her wine.
The Chardonnay tasted like sunlight. Eyes closed, she savored the intense, complex flavor. It had been years since she had tasted a wine that suited her so exactly. Long ago she had discovered that wines praised by other people often were bitter, sour, or acid to her. At first she thought it was her untrained palate. Later she realized that her body chemistry was simply different.
“Still mad?” Travis asked quietly.
Cat glanced at him. His eyes were very dark, reflecting only the graceful dance of candlelight. With a faint smile she shook her head.
He smiled in return and watched candlelight run like melted rubies through her auburn hair.
“Good,” he said. “I didn’t choose this restaurant because I thought it was a way to buy you. I didn’t even think about it. If I had . . .” He shrugged. “I’d have taken you somewhere else. The last thing I wanted tonight was a fight with you.”
Cat remembered the intense pleasure and hunger in their shared kiss and wondered if Travis was remembering it too. She suspected he was.
“I know,” she said. “And you were right, the food here is wonderful.” She smothered a yawn and looked longingly at the scallops she was too full to eat. “I just wish I could finish it all.”
“That good?” he asked, smiling lazily.
“Don’t take my word for it. Try one.”
With a skill left over from years of feeding the younger twins, she slid her fork under a plump scallop and popped it into Travis’s mouth.
Too late Cat realized the unthinking intimacy of her gesture. Frowning, she looked back at her plate and wished that Travis didn’t seem so very familiar to her. She had to keep reminding herself that she had known him only one day, and that everything she had learned about him was a clear warning not to become involved.
Rich men just didn’t know how to love.
If she knew that and was fooled by him anyway, then she was indeed a fool. As her father had always told her: Fool me once, damn you; fool me twice, damn me.
Travis’s tongue licked up a stray bit of sauce from his lower lip. “Mmm. Incredible. Again.”
He opened his mouth slightly, waiting. She hesitated, then deftly fed him another scallop.
“You’re very good at that,” he said. “Do you have children?”
Cat’s fork made a ringing sound against the china plate. Instead of answering the question, she took a sip of wine.
“Cat?”
“No.” Her voice was low, almost savage. “No children.” She looked up at him with pale eyes. “More scallops?”
Travis hesitated, curious and cautious at once. He knew his question had hurt her, but he didn’t know why.
“Yes, please,” he said finally.
He waited for Cat to feed him another scallop; the intimacy of the gesture was like a caress. And like a caress, it aroused him. Yet instead of offering to feed him from her fork, she switched plates with him. A single look at her eyes told him that he would have to feed himself.
Cat watched in silence while Travis finished her dinner. If she had hoped to cool the sensual heat by not feeding him, it wasn’t working. Seeing him eat from her plate, sip from her glass because his own wine was too assertive to drink with scallops, use her fork, lick the silver tines clean . . . all of it gave her a feeling of intimacy with him that was as hot as the flame dancing at the tip of the scented candle.
Travis poured more wine in Cat’s glass before he returned it to her. He watched her mouth as she drank, wanting to know if she tasted him as well as the wine. But she hid her eyes, so he was left with only his own memory of her taste.
“Dessert?” Travis asked when she set aside the wine.
Cat shook her head.
The server appeared as though conjured out of candlelight.
“Cognac,” Travis said. “And something chocolate.”
The server returned with a crystal brandy snifter and an elegant dark chocolate mousse. Travis tasted the cognac, nodded, and turned to the dessert. A single bite told him that the mousse was light, creamy, and just sweet enough to offset the rich natural bitterness of the chocolate.
“Very good,” he said.
The server smiled and vanished.
Travis heaped the silver spoon with mousse and held it out to Cat. “Open up.”
After a brief hesitation, she opened her mouth.
They were sitting side by side, well within reach, but he had no experience with the gentle art of spoon feeding. Part of the mousse ended up just below her lip.
“Damn,” Travis muttered.
He leaned over and neatly licked up the evidence of his bad aim. He was so quick, so casual, that Cat had no time to object. He turned her chin with his fingertip to make sure that he hadn’t missed any mousse. He hadn’t.
But he leaned down and flicked the tip of his tongue over her lower lip anyway.
“You can tell I’m not experienced at this feeding thing,” Travis said.
“That must be why you asked for a private table,” she said dryly.
He smiled, took a bite of mousse, then held out another spoonful of dessert to her.
Cat knew she should refuse it. And she knew she wasn’t going to. The expectation in his blue-green eyes was as sweet to her as the dessert itself.
“How did you know that chocolate is one of my weaknesses?” she murmured.
He tucked the mousse into her mouth. “Because it’s one of mine.”
Cat savored the dessert with the same intensity she had savored the wine. Travis watched her pleasure and wanted nothing more than to share the taste of chocolate and the memory of wine with her. He swore softly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You did it perfectly this time. Not a speck of mousse out of place.”
“I know.” He looked regretfully at her clean lower lip. No excuse to tease her with the tip of his tongue. “Maybe next time.”
He held out another bite to her.
“You really are a buccaneer, aren’t you?” Cat muttered just before her lips closed around the silver spoon.
The smile Travis gave her was as lazy as his drawl. “Because I like licking chocolate off you?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “Because you do what you damn well please when it damn well pleases you.”
“Are you saying this doesn’t please you?”
“The mousse?”
“Among other things.”
Travis took Cat’s hand and kissed her palm. With melting tenderness his teeth closed over the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb in a primitive caress. Her breath caught, then resumed, but not before he heard the ragged sound. Smiling, he rubbed her palm against his beard. He had met few women as responsive as Cat, and none who appealed to his senses the way she did.
For a moment Cat allowed herself to enjoy the warmth and silky roughness of Travis’s beard. Then she withdrew her hand. Though the motion wasn’t quick, it was final. To her relief, he didn’t make an issue out of it.
“Last bite,” Travis said, holding out a spoon heaped with mousse.
“I’ve had more than my share already.”
His expression changed, as though he understood that she was refusing more than a bite of chocolate.
Cat wished Travis was less perceptive or she was less vulnerable to him. But she was too honest—or foolish—to wish that she hadn’t met him. Even knowing that she would burn herself if she came too close to his fire, it felt wonderful to be warm again, tingling with life.
Silently Travis cradled the snifter of cognac between his big hands. When the liquid was properly warmed, he held the glass out to Cat.
She shook her head. “I’m half asleep as it is.”
“Go all the way to sleep. I’ll get you home.” He caught and held her eyes. “It’s all right to let down your guard with me. I’m not Ashcroft.”
Cat told herself that was exactly why she should be on guard against Travis. Yet it was impossible, like being on guard against her own heartbeat. There was no point in fighting the silky intimacy that wove more securely between them with every breath.
The heady scent of expensive liquor curled up to Cat’s nostrils from the snifter Travis held out to her. She inhaled deeply and sighed. Then she dipped her head to take amber liquid from crystal that was warm with his body heat.
Travis watched her sip with an intensity that would have dismayed Cat if she hadn’t been watching him in exactly the same way. A primal curiosity was consuming them, a mutual fascination that was both sensual and mental, a silent recognition of the other’s unique rightness.
It wasn’t until Travis tucked Cat into the front seat of his gunmetal Mercedes that she realized how sleepy she really was. Headlights on the opposite side of the freeway moved by in a dazzling, hypnotic silver river. Ahead, a ribbon of taillights glittered with ruby fire. The car’s throaty growl was oddly soothing, for it spoke eloquently of restraint as well as power.
The fine food, the wine, and the cognac uncurling in her body all combined to unravel Cat. She sagged against the seat and slept, silently announcing her trust in the utterly familiar stranger called Travis.
He looked over at her and smiled, understanding more than she did about her declaration of trust. A woman as fiercely independent as Cat was didn’t accept anything easily from anyone, especially a man.
Travis drove quickly, skillfully, not disturbing her sleep. The car’s powerful engine consumed the night, devouring miles of darkness and the twisting Laguna Canyon road. As he drove, he glanced often at the woman sleeping next to him.
Streetlights and moonlight made a fluid, changing mystery of her face. Now young, now old, now laughing, now sad; and always hauntingly right. In the shared darkness of the car he felt as though he was sinking into her, and she into him.
Or am I just recognizing what always has been? Travis asked himself. Cat and me and the night, peace within and possibilities all around.
Yet beneath the peace was uneasiness and a prowling hunger that had nothing to do with food. The sexual tension of his body Travis both understood and knew how to cure within the sweet violence of Cat’s body.
The uneasiness he also understood, but he didn’t know how to cure it. He wanted Cat as he had never wanted another woman, yet she would reject the no-strings, I’ll-pick-up-the-tab kind of affair that was the only relationship he had permitted himself since Tina.
Tina, the woman who had wanted his money, not his baby.
Tina, who had killed the possibility of their child before it even had a chance to live.
If Travis ever married again, he knew the kind of woman his wife would have to be. Rich. Very, very rich. The kind of woman who didn’t need his money but wanted very much to have his child.
No matter how much Travis wanted Cat, no matter how right it felt being with her, she needed money too much for him to trust her. An innocent life had been snuffed out because he had trusted the wrong woman. He simply couldn’t risk a loss like that again.
Even to have Cat.
Broodingly Travis downshifted and looked again at the sleeping woman who called to him in so many ways.
She won’t mix men and money. I won’t have women any other way. One of us will have to break our rules, Cat.
It won’t be me.
It can’t be.
Travis started to turn in to his own driveway, then decided against it. He knew Cat would resent waking up in his bed, as though he had purchased her along with the dinner that seemed so expensive to her and meant no more than a peanut butter sandwich to him.
He parked in Cat’s driveway, used a key from her purse to open the front door, turned on the lights, and went looking for her bedroom. The first door he opened was next to the kitchen. It had a view of the midnight ocean, a slightly oversized single bed, an antique oak rocking chair, and a matching dresser with a beveled mirror. The sunrise colors of the bed quilt were repeated in a thick wool throw rug.
The combination of polished wood and glowing colors pleased Travis. It was a room that a man as well as a woman could be at home in. Assuming that this was a guest bedroom, he shut the door again and resumed his tour of the house.
Only after he had opened every door on every level without finding another bed did Travis realize that the room with the single bed in it was Cat’s.
He went back to the room. For a long time he stood there, looking at the bed. Hesitant to disturb her privacy in even such a small way, yet unable to stop himself, he turned down the crisp sheets. The sunrise colors of the quilt were matched in the sheets. The delicate scent of Cat’s perfume rose from them, pervading his senses, making his head spin like fine cognac. Gently he stroked the pillow, wishing she was there, looking up at him, smiling with a woman’s timeless invitation to her lover.
Then Travis thought of Cat sleeping in his car. He wondered how long it would take her to accept what she couldn’t change.
She wanted him.
Wary, independent Cat. I should grab her before she wakes up and sail with her over the edge of the world.
He smiled, eyes narrowed, temptation plain in the piratical lines of his face.
“Someday, Cat,” he promised. “Someday soon. But not tonight. You’re not ready.”
Neither was he. They had the details of their affair to work out. He was accustomed to such delicate negotiations. He was very much afraid that she wasn’t.
Cat was still asleep when Travis returned to the car. As he lifted her out and shut the door, she shifted in his arms and murmured sleepily.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “Go back to sleep. I’ve brought you to your own home.”
She half opened her eyes, saw his familiar smile, and smiled dreamily in return. With a murmured word she let herself slide fully back into the sleep her exhausted body craved.
Smiling, Travis carried Cat into her bedroom, laid her on the narrow bed, and began undressing her. After he removed her black sandals, he stacked them to one side and gently rubbed away the small marks the straps had left on her arch. Then he took out the silver clasp that held her hair in a disciplined coil on top of her head.
Strands as soft and warm as dawn spilled into his hands. He buried his face in the untamed silk of her hair, inhaling deeply. He knew he should stop there, pull the blanket over her and leave.
He knew, but he didn’t leave.
Slowly Travis began unbuttoning the teal blue blouse that followed Cat’s curves so tantalizingly. Silky folds of cloth fell away beneath his hands. He paused for a moment, looking at her creamy body, glad that she wasn’t awake to see the fine trembling of his hands.
“Do you know what you do to me?” Travis whispered. “I’m shaking like you’re my first woman.”
There was no answer.
He hadn’t expected one.
He slipped off Cat’s slacks, careful not to hurt the foot she had scraped on the rocks yesterday. Only when he reached for her lacy bra and panties did he hesitate.
“You wouldn’t like that, would you?” he asked very softly. “Prickly, independent Cat. I know I should leave you to sleep alone. But I . . . can’t.”
With the ingrained neatness of a man who had spent a long time at sea, Travis folded Cat’s clothes and his own and set them on the antique rocking chair. Though he had stopped short of fully undressing her, he had no concerns about his own clothes. He was quite naked when he lay down beside her in the small bed, gathered her into his arms, and eased the covers over both of them.
She moved slightly, neither awake nor fully asleep, sensing his presence.
“Travis . . . ?” she murmured, her voice slurred with sleep.
“Shhh,” he said, stroking her hair soothingly. “Go back to sleep, Cat. Everything is all right. You’re home.”
She sighed and relaxed into his warmth.
A shudder of need and something more, something Travis couldn’t name, swept through him. He rested his lips on her hair, baffled by the emotions that were warring inside him.
The single bed told him that she was accustomed to sleeping alone. Yet she fell asleep in his arms with a smile, as though they had always been lovers.
Everything he had seen and sensed in her told him that they would be very good together, that she was the right woman for him in all ways but one.
And that one way was the only one that mattered.
Damn it, Cat, why didn’t I meet you before Tina taught me about women and money?
Cat burrowed into Travis’s warmth like a sleepy child. Her fingers curled into the warm mat of hair on his chest. Her long sigh was sweet and warm against his throat.
Need knotted in Travis, a need both sexual and simply human. He wanted the peace that was stealing through Cat as much as he wanted her body.
Her trust was a sweet, cruel razor slicing into the scars left by old certainties.
What am I going to do with you, Cat? You make me want to believe in . . . too much. And the cost of being wrong is too high.
It’s one of the few things on earth I can’t afford.
For a long time Travis lay in the darkness holding her and thinking. No matter how he approached the problem, nothing changed.
He was rich.
She was not.
That meant they would have to sort out the terms of their affair very quickly. If Cat refused to quantify their relationship, Travis would do what he had done before when the restraints of land and human nature imprisoned him; he would step aboard his ship and sail to the ends of the earth.
The clean, limitless beauty of the sea would renew him as it had so many times in the past.
Yet even as he assured himself of that, he breathed in her scent and knew that nothing on earth or ocean could replace it.