Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (7 page)

But don’t forget, folks, that’s what you get, folks

For makin’ whoopee

Grace crossed her arms protectively in front of her, feeling naked in her pajamas, her breasts unfettered beneath the thin, well-washed T-shirt. “I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d know the words to a song from the 1920s.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed your hands could elicit such passion,” he said, and paused. “From a piano. Were you thinking of me while you played the Rachmaninov?”

Grace spluttered. “Not in a positive way!”

The shadow laughed. “Good or bad doesn’t matter, only the strength of your feelings.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Maybe.”

She slid off the bench and started toward the door. “I’ll leave you to sleep it off, then.”

“Coward.”

“I’m not a coward for not wanting to hang around with a drunk chauvinist pig.”

“Sure you are.”

She laughed. “You don’t object to being called a chauvinist pig?”

“Your opinion doesn’t come as a surprise. And I still think you’re a coward. Think of all the information you could pry out of me while I’m in this vulnerable state.”

“There’s nothing I want to know.”

“I’m insulted! And wounded. Severely.” She heard him pat the cushion next to him. “Come sit down and make me feel better.”

“Oh, please.”

“Aren’t you at all curious as to why I’ve spent the evening passed out in your aunt’s living room?”

She was, a little. She wavered. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

He was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

If he’d said anything else, she might have left. Instead, she moved toward an easy chair. As she passed by him, his hand shot out and grasped her wrist. He tugged and, caught by surprise, she dropped onto the couch next to him. “Hey!” she protested, scrambling away from him.

Something soft hit her and she squeaked.

“Have a pillow,” he said.

She clutched the throw pillow to her chest, but he made no further move to touch her. She could make out only the barest hint of his features, and he didn’t seem to be looking at her. Reassured, she drew her knees up and leaned against the arm of the couch, watching him. Her bare toes were only a few inches from where his hand rested on the cushion, and she was careful not to let them touch. “Do you often spend the night on Aunt Sophia’s couch?”

“No, never. It’s surprisingly comfortable, though. I probably would have slept till morning if you hadn’t woken me. Has your friend been trying to persuade you that it would be a mistake to stay here?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to listen to her?”

“No.”

“You should,” he said.

“Why?”

“You’re not too bright if you have to ask that.”

“Sophia doesn’t scare me.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

“How can you know?” Grace demanded.

“Because she scares
everyone
.”

“Even you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not very manly of you to admit it.”

He laughed. “I don’t need to prove my manhood to you.”

Grace chewed her lip. She got the feeling that Declan thought she was immature. Naive, even. “You said you were both her financial adviser and her friend. You don’t sound like a friend.”

“‘Friend’ probably wasn’t the most accurate choice of words.”

Grace drew in a breath. “You’re not her . . .”

“Her . . . ?”

“Her,
you know
,” she whispered.

A laugh burst out of him. “Her boy toy? No, Grace, I’m not a gigolo.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

She squirmed, feeling like a twelve-year-old talking to a dissipated adult. “Well, if you’re not her friend, then what are you?”

“I think ‘surrogate son’ might be closer to what I meant.”

She had trouble imagining it. Neither seemed to have enough love in them to spare any for other people. “But you’re afraid of her?”

“What son isn’t afraid of his mother?”

“Most, I should hope! My brother isn’t afraid of our mom.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“There’s nothing for him to be afraid of. She loves him with all her heart.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly
what
?” she asked, bewildered.

“Maternal love is a ferocious thing. It devours men whole and spits them out without their balls.”

“You
are
drunk. It’s nurturing and supportive, and if that’s not what you get from Sophia, then that’s about you and her, and not about maternal love. And if it’s so horrible, why would you stay with her?”

“Masochism. Addiction.”

She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t figure you for a drama queen.”

“If you stay here, you’ll get sucked in, too,” he said.

“You make Sophia sound like a mob boss.”

“It’s not a bad simile.”

The conversation flagged and they were both quiet. Grace remembered Catherine waiting for the chamomile tea, and hoped she’d fallen asleep. Surely Cat would have come looking for her by now if she was still awake. She would be shocked to find Grace sitting with Declan in the dark.

Why
was
she sitting here with him?

It was the late hour and the quiet of the house, she decided, and the concealing darkness. He was less threatening when she couldn’t see him. She was reminded, though, of her first boyfriend
and the evening they’d spent together on the couch in the basement of his parents’ house, watching movies. They’d started the evening with a foot of empty space between them, Grace achingly aware of every slight movement he made toward her, every “accidental” placement of hand or leg, every shift of body. It had taken one and a half movies for their hands to meet and then entwine, the two of them sitting with eyes glued to the screen, pretending that their hearts weren’t beating in their throats.

Declan shifted, his hand bumping her toes. She pulled her foot back, but his hand followed, his warm, rough palm sliding up over the top of her foot to grasp her ankle.

An electric thrill shot up her leg. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.

He pulled her foot into his lap. “I dated a massage therapist for a while.”

“So?” She tugged at her foot, but he wouldn’t release her. His thumb found the tender skin beneath her arch and started to rub in slow, delicious circles, sending a tingle of pleasure directly up her leg. She squirmed in embarrassment and feebly tugged again at her foot. Somehow, he’d hit upon a spot that was creating echoes of sensation in a decidedly less innocent body part than the sole of her foot. “You have a foot fetish or something?” she asked, trying to hide her embarrassing reaction.

He chuckled, the sound rumbling over her in the darkness. “The massage therapist was a big believer in reflexology. Do you know what that is?”

Grace murmured a negative sound, unable to speak further. His touch felt so very good, and if she closed her eyes she could forget who was creating such divine sensations. She sank down against the arm of the couch, glad of the darkness and determined not to let him know how very good his touch felt.

“Reflexologists believe that areas on the feet and hands correspond
to other parts of the body. So if I massage a specific spot on your foot, you can feel it elsewhere.”

She opened her eyes in alarm.

“It’s mostly nonsense, of course,” he said, stroking the spot on her foot with exquisite tenderness.

“Of course,” she echoed weakly.

“You don’t feel this anywhere else, do you?”

“Like where?” she squeaked.

“Oh . . . your spleen. Your small intestine. Maybe even . . . your pituitary gland.”

She chortled in relief. “No.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want you to think I had intentions on your pituitary gland.”

She stared at him in the dark.
Did
he know what he was doing to her?

He found her other foot and brought it to join the first in his lap, both his thumbs working on that spot in slow, short strokes. Her eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolling back in her head.
Oh God, it feels so good. . . .
It really
had
been too long since she’d been touched by a man.

She felt a moan of pleasure start in the back of her throat and swallowed it. But those strong thumbs, stroking her just there. . . .
Distraction! I need distraction!
“You never answered why you’re sleeping on the couch,” Grace said hoarsely. “Don’t you have a home to go to?”

“In San Francisco. Surely you don’t think I should drive there in my present condition?”

“How drunk are you?” She couldn’t smell anything on him.

“Enough to sit here with you.”

She couldn’t claim the same excuse. “How did you meet Sophia?”

“I have football to thank for that.”

“Did you meet at a game?” It was hard to picture Sophia in the stands, face painted in team colors, yelling whatever people yelled at football games.

“No. She was friends with one of my football coaches at USC. She used to have a house in Beverly Hills, and when she needed a couple of young, strong, good-looking guys, she called Coach Griggs.”

“Needed good-looking guys for what? Her harem?”

“Your mind sure runs easily to sex.” He slid his palm up her calf, inside the leg of her pajama bottoms, and gently played his fingertips against the delicate skin at the back of her knee. He was turned sideways toward her, his dark shadow hovering over her. “I may have to take another look at what goes on in Women’s Studies programs.”

“What are you doing?” Grace breathed, hyperaware that she wore no underpants and that there was no obstacle, however flimsy, on the path between his hand and . . . everything else.

“This is supposed to be good for your, uh, liver,” he said, fingers stroking with hypnotic regularity on the tender, soft skin behind her knee.

“You’re making that up.”

“Does it feel bad?” he asked. “For your liver, that is.”

“N-n-noo . . .”

“Waiting tables.”

“What?”

“That’s what Sophia would hire us for. She threw lots of parties and was on committees for various fund-raisers, and she liked to hire us to serve. She said she preferred our brutish self-obsession to the arty-farty self-obsession of unemployed actors.”

“How kind of her.” She felt him shove up the other leg of her pajamas and stroke her from ankle to knee. She supposed she should stop him, but it was harmless, wasn’t it?

“It
was
kind of her. It didn’t take long to figure out that Coach Griggs must have given her a list of the guys who were broke. Like the other guys she hired, I had a full-ride football scholarship, but nothing else. Sophia paid us each a couple hundred bucks for a few hours’ work, and let us take home as many leftovers as we could carry. We
loved
her for that. Do you have any idea how much a twenty-year-old football player eats? We’d carry off plastic grocery bags sagging with beef tenderloin. Shrimp. Enough cheese and cured meats to make sandwiches for a month.” His fingers slowed on her skin as he lost himself in remembrance. “I can still taste that beef, dumped straight out of the catering pans and into a plastic grocery bag, dribbling juices out of a hole in the bottom all the way home. Blue-red in the middle, rare enough to moo . . .”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

He laughed softly. “I guessed you would be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You have ‘self-righteous choices’ written all over you.”

“I am
not
self-righteous,” she said, and tried to jerk her legs away from him.

He wrapped his arm round her knees and pulled, dragging her toward him until her butt bumped up against his thigh and her head thumped flat on the cushion of the sofa. “
Shhhh
. . . ,” he said.

“I will
not
shush! What are you doing?” She felt warm, moist pressure through the thin cotton covering her knees.

“Calming you down.”

“Are you
kissing
me?”

“My dear, if you think this is kissing, you have been sadly deprived of experience.” He slid down between her and the back of the couch so that he lay on his side, propped up on one elbow, his body pressed alongside hers. His other arm was across her waist,
his heavy hand lying on top of her outside arm and the edge of one breast, gently trapping her.

Flat on her back as she was, he seemed immensely large above her. The warmth and firmness of his body, and the weight of his arm sent a delicious weakness through her. Every breath was filled with his male scent, and she wanted to drown in it. She wanted to be a nameless woman in the dark, giving in to the temptations his body offered. It would feel
so
good. Her heart thumped at the thought of impulsively giving in and doing it, but at the same time a familiar part of herself said,
Get off me, I know you don’t like me, I know you’re laughing at me
.

“I should go back to my room,” she said weakly. “Cat’s waiting for her tea.”

He stroked the hair back from her face, then traced the shape of her lips with a feather-light touch. He laid his finger against her lips, as if to quiet her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see the shape of his features, and the gleam of moonlight in his eyes. He wasn’t smiling, or laughing.

You’re drunk and horny, and will make fun of me tomorrow
, she thought. And yet his finger on her lip held her captive, and made her want to know where it would move next. No guy had ever taken the lead in such an overtly sexual way with her, and she was mesmerized by it.

One of his legs came over hers, nudging its way between them, and he leaned his weight against her, half covering her. She felt his arousal against her hip, and her body seemed to swell and soften in response.

I need to be touched—it’s been so long. Just touch me, touch me, please touch me. . . .

His hand trailed down her chin, then to the hollow at the base of her throat. He stroked his fingertips over her collarbone and sternum, stretching the neck of her T-shirt to reach her skin. He
pressed his palm flat over her chest, outside her shirt, his hand so wide that he covered part of each breast, then ran his hand down her belly. It came to rest at the gap between her shirt and pajama bottoms, his thumb stroking her bare skin. She felt a flicker of embarrassment about her too-soft belly, but he showed no sign of having noticed.