IN the war against temptation, Ryan was fighting a losing battle. They’d been back at it, buried in property assessments, earnings reports and development proposals, for an hour already and, by rights, Ryan ought to have cleared triple what he had. Instead, he’d found his gaze wandering across the spread of divorce headquarters time and again. And even when he’d ruthlessly dragged it back, his mind wouldn’t cooperate.
Claire had dressed in another one of those filmy sleeveless tops. A coral-colored fluttery silk concoction that managed to be sweet and suggestive all at once. A matching scarf hung loose and low around her neck. It was ridiculous, a scarf with a sleeveless blouse of all the damn things in the world. And why that should get under his skin he had no idea except maybe for the fact he could only think of one reason a scarf like that might come in handy and it didn’t have anything to do with fashionable accenting.
Claire stretched her arms overhead, linking her fingers in a way that only fed the depraved nature of his thoughts. Then, slipping out of her seat, she carried her empty water glass over to the wet bar. White tie waist pants sat low on her hips and his palms itched to mold over the rounded bottom they flattered. She’d been there for two days already. This frenzied need should have worn off. Hell, he’d expected it to wear off after the first night of having her back in his bed—or at least cool down to the point where he could get through a morning’s worth of work without losing his concentration to what she had on and how quickly he could get it off. Get her mind and legs wrapped around him, and that smart mouth of hers coming at him from every direction.
“We have to work on this stuff sometime,” Claire said, her elbows resting on the bar behind her, refilled glass in hand. The stance was relaxed, but the look in her eyes was alert. Aware. She knew exactly where his thoughts had traveled. A skill not many people could claim.
“We’re working now.”
“Are we? You look…distracted.”
A subtle tension slipped through his shoulders, knotting tight at his neck. He didn’t get distracted by his dates. He didn’t blow off business to spend time with them. He didn’t mercilessly plot all the ways he could get them naked and wrapped around him. He just didn’t care like this and it didn’t make any sense.
Except it did.
Because he’d been here before.
In the beginning, this was what it had been like with Claire. He’d wanted to eat, drink, sleep and screw her with his every breath. In the beginning.
And then later—hell. Later, he couldn’t wait to get away.
It was that thought that had him ignoring the flare of interest in Claire’s blue eyes and working to focus on the task at hand. “The Austin properties are up next.”
Claire’s nose wrinkled, but she didn’t try to sway him. Except, perhaps, with an extra turn to her hips as she crossed back to the table. Or maybe he was just watching more closely.
Sweeping a pencil from the open file in front of him, he walked it through the fingers of one hand to keep from reaching for her as she brushed past and humphed back into her chair with a little pout that had him wanting to shove the files off the table and lay Claire out atop it. Work his mouth over every inch of her, starting at her toes, until that pretty little pout gave up his name on a sultry moan.
Forget moan. He’d make her scream.
Only they’d lost hours making sense of the files he’d spilled across the floor on her first visit and he wasn’t about to do it again.
Except the way she kept playing with the ends of that scarf—twirling it around her fingers, letting is slip around her wrists—
The pencil snapped.
“Ryan?”
His gaze shot from Claire to the splintered shards in his hand and then back.
He needed to stop thinking about sex. He was worse than a teenager. It was like some switch had been flipped and his brain was running a 24/7 sexstravaganza. He’d become a slave to his libido, and he wasn’t even the one coming off a dry spell. It was embarrassing.
But worse than that, it wasn’t just the sex. It was everything. The talking. The laughing. The stories about her gallery and the struggles that got her to where she was with it. He couldn’t get enough of this woman Claire was now. The heady combination of who she’d been and who she’d become was intoxicating…addictive.
And he didn’t want to get hooked.
Which meant he couldn’t give in to every impulse pumping through his veins. He needed to regain control and remember that, no matter how good this felt, it wasn’t going to last. It hadn’t before, when he would have bet his life it would, and, though they were different people, he knew better than to believe it would now.
His jaw set and the shards of a broken number two threatened to embed in his palms. He pushed to his feet, tossing the pencil to the trash without a glance.
“The Austin properties?” Claire prompted again, her fingertips drifting lazily around the hollow at the base of her throat. “In case you…you know…forgot or something.”
And now she was taunting him. “Thanks for that. But, no. I didn’t forget.”
Control. That was the crux of it. Physically speaking, that was a slippery slope he was willing to navigate. If he lost his traction and went down, he wouldn’t be alone and there were a hell of a lot worse things than Claire landing on top of him. But emotionally, now, that was a susceptibility worth guarding against.
Flipping the topmost file open, Ryan rolled his shoulders and blew out a tight breath. “The Austin properties.”
A pencil tapped against the table in a rapid staccato, calling his attention back to Claire, who’d pinned him with a level stare. “Already there. Try to keep up, would you?” The corners of her mouth twitched, and then gave in to a full grin. The kind that made him want to know how far he could push it. What it would take to earn the laugh that rang like music through his memories.
And then he was leaning forward, elbows on the table. “So you want to play, huh?”
Her brow arched, challenge shining in her eyes. He didn’t have a chance. He’d been staring right at her, plotting his best defense—and already she’d gotten to him.
The following week, Ryan strode out to the terrace, offering his phone as he set their bag of takeout on the table. “Check the open news clip.”
Claire stood from where she’d been resting on a lounge chair and walked over, snickering as she read. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Nutty news feed. Keeps things light.”
Ryan rifled through the bag for the jalapeño chips and watched in anticipation as Claire scrolled through the article, the grin on her face stretching wider as the seconds passed.
Finally she shook her head and handed back the phone, grinning. “That’s funny. So this is how you convince everyone you’re so busy all the time? Keeping your nose buried in these snazzy little phone applications with weird news feeds?”
Ryan popped a chip into his mouth, chewing around his words. “And games. The work is all a ruse. I’m the Bejeweled national champion this week.”
“Being the genuine hard worker I am, slacker—” she paused for effect, batting her lashes at him “—I don’t even know what Bejeweled is.”
“Now, that’s criminal. I’ll load it on your phone for you.”
“No, thanks. You’re distracting me enough as it is.”
Ryan flashed his teeth at her, all cocky, bad-boy charm and proud of it. “Am I?”
“You don’t have to be so delighted!” She laughed, casting around for a set down and grasping at the first thing she found. “After all, you’re just a temporary distraction.”
Jaw shifting out of line, he nodded amused understanding. “Whereas what you’ve got going on with the phone…is a long-term thing.”
“Exactly. It works,” she said, waving a chip at him. “Don’t mess with it.”
Ryan leaned into the chair watching her from across the table with a subtle smile playing over his lips.
These were the dangerous moments, the ones where they were as comfortable with gull’s cries and rushing waves filling the air between them as they were with the conversation that came as easily as if they’d never let it fall away. The ones that were so quiet and unassuming, they caught her unawares. Slipping stealthily beneath her skin, expanding with a physical pressure until she wondered if it was pleasure or pain that had her at the point of bursting.
Wondering how she was going to give this up again.
The quiet strains of a moody love song cut through her thoughts, originating from the phone she loosely held in her lap.
Ryan’s brow slammed down, his lazy posture going alert. “Here, pass that over.”
Claire automatically began to hand the phone across the table, but then she caught the contact picture displaying the caller and her fingers clamped down. She knew those soft grey eyes and that nearly too wide smile, just like the rest of the country and probably the world did as well. Dahlia Dawson.
Ryan’s ex. The actress he’d been seeing on and off for the past two years. The one with whom Ryan had promised things were over. Not just off-again. But here she was calling and suddenly Claire’s heart was in her throat, her stomach twisting into anxious knots.
Only, she had no right.
Forcing herself to relax her hold, she held out the small device. “It’s for you, I think,” she offered stupidly.
Who else? It was his phone. His ex.
Ryan took the device without a word, sending the call straight to voice mail.
“You aren’t going to answer it?” She wanted to cry at the thin sound of her voice and the tremble tingeing her words.
“No. I wouldn’t do that to you. Or her,” he said, meeting her with a level stare. “I’ll call back later.”
Of course not. Ryan wasn’t the kind of man to treat someone cruelly or be casual with their feelings. It had always been that way with him and it had always been something she’d respected. Only now, she couldn’t help wondering what that courtesy meant for them and when exactly later would be?
Would he wait until she was in the shower? Excuse himself from the room after a meal. Would she be left watching the door as her husband walked through it to call his girlfriend?
The hot lick of shame scorched her cheeks, and she nearly choked as that last thought registered.
Ryan was not her husband. Not in any of the ways that mattered and certainly not because of what was happening between them now.
His stare hardened. “It’s over with Dahlia. I told you. So whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
She didn’t know what she was thinking except that everything seemed more fragile and temporary than it had a few moments ago. As if the winds had shifted, taking that balmy comfortable breeze with it, and blowing in an uncertainty Claire had no right to feel.
She’d known about the other women, both real and fabricated, for years. They hadn’t bothered her beyond the most mild irritation. Mostly anyway. But now, her gaze moved over the planes of Ryan’s face, the bulk of his shoulders and power of his arms. She studied the length and width of his fingers, the bronze of his skin and the crisp dark hairs of his forearms. She thought about the way he’d run his hands over her bare hip after they’d made love the night before. The way his gruff laugh sounded at her ear when she’d teased him.
She’d begun looking at Ryan and thinking, “Mine.”
He had been, once upon a time. But not anymore. In the years since they’d been apart, he’d belonged to other women.
And she was jealous.
Not so much that they’d had his body, though at this moment she was decidedly less than thrilled about that, but that they’d had his heart. His affection. A part of him apparently she’d still thought of as hers.
“Claire?”
She peered up at him, somewhat stunned by her revelation. “You know, as crazy as this may sound, I think a part of me was more comfortable believing all those tabloid reports about you and your exploits.”
Ryan’s frown deepened and he leaned forward in his chair. “Why’s that?”
“If you’d become some womanizing jerk who couldn’t keep his pants zipped, it would be easier for me to convince myself there hadn’t been anyone…special. That what we had was unique.”
Ryan stared at her, the dark brown of his eyes fixed and unreadable. Maybe telling him had been as selfish as the thoughts themselves. Maybe more.
She wasn’t supposed to want to keep him as her own. That wasn’t the point of what they were doing together.
Pushing back from the table, Ryan picked up his plate and turned to the house. Well, really, what could she expect him to say in response to a statement like that? It didn’t merit a defense. And yet watching him walk off without a word cut her to the core.
Ryan stopped at the door, his steps halting in a way that suggested hesitation over conviction. His head dropped a degree, angling to where she could see his features but not meet his eyes. “I didn’t marry any of them.”
Claire was gone and Ryan was back in the L.A. office working late to make up for the time he’d been taking off around her visits. It was already after nine, but he’d easily be putting in a few more hours before calling it a night. This had just been a quick break to let the delivery guy in, plow through a turkey-and-avocado on whole grain and try a callback to Dahlia.
She hadn’t answered, which wasn’t any surprise. She’d been impossible to connect with, even when they’d been together. And while it hadn’t particularly bothered him then, it did now. Because it wasn’t like her to call. It didn’t make sense.
She wouldn’t pursue a reconciliation. Not the way they’d left things.
And her PR manager had always been the one to contact him when there was a delicate media response to handle. So why, when they hadn’t been in touch in months and they’d both managed to stay relatively out of the news, had she decided to call now?