Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
They’d been good together, at least most of the time. Yes, there’d been little arguments, like how much time they didn’t have together, things that had probably been pushing them apart long before that huge fight.
But there’d been so many good things as well. And it was those things that were tearing her apart now.
Watching him lick syrup off his fork, she was hot and edgy, remembering exactly how those Sundays went down. Gorge on yummy pancakes, then gorge on hot, crazy-amazing lovemaking. They were sexy, seductive, hot-as-hell pancake Sundays.
Her thoughts made her feel hot and sexy now. Maybe it was the long night of knowing that he was in the next room. Wanting to knock on that door and beg him to touch her. Even if it was a terrible idea.
Ransom waggled a finger at her, just as he had yesterday when she’d worn secret sauce on her face. “You’ve got syrup and chocolate all over your mouth. Just like a kid.”
She put her finger to her lips, then to the side of her mouth, wiping up the last streaks of syrup and chocolate.
Then she let herself go crazy, let all these hot, sexy feelings take over. With her eyes on him, even though she knew better, she very deliberately licked the remnants off her finger. He was getting under her skin, and she wanted to get under his. She wasn’t about to go through this alone. She wanted him to feel the same sexiness she did, to have the same memories.
For an endless moment, he seemed paralyzed, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide.
All her thoughts and feelings ganged up on her. She was driven by his admission last night that he’d been a total jerk, by knowing he was on the other side of that thin door, by sharing the pancakes this morning. Maybe it was even the young man at the reception desk asking if they’d been playing some sort of sex game.
And Ransom was dumbstruck.
Mildly, she said, “Catching flies?”
When he closed his mouth, when he looked at her, when his dark eyes turned the color of the maple syrup, she owned her terrible mistake. Now he’d think she wanted to rekindle things. Which she didn’t. It was just those memories. She’d deliberately opened Pandora’s box and let them all fly out.
Even as she tried to back away from what she’d done, Ransom didn’t let her. “Do you think I don’t remember what our ten-stack of pancakes always led to?”
She steeled herself. “No.” Then she added primly, “But it’s just business between us now.”
God’s honest truth, however, was that she’d been thinking about sex since the moment Ransom stepped back into her life. And not just sex with anyone. Sex with him. She’d never wanted anyone more.
You could want something badly even though you knew how bad it would be for you.
And now, after she’d done that deliberately provocative thing, she’d be stuck in a car with him for ninety minutes. It would sit between them all the way back to San Francisco.
She had to get things back on track. Straightening her pretty Hawaiian dress—and mentally straightening her spine—she became the consummate businesswoman again. “I’ll pay. Like the motel bill, it’s a business expense.”
Ransom sat back, arms folded over his chest, letting her grab the ticket and march up to the front counter. Even with her back to him, she felt him stewing in the knowledge that she wanted him.
Damn, the man didn’t have to say or do anything to get under her skin.
In fact, the less he said, the deeper he seemed to burrow inside her.
Chapter Ten
On the way back to San Francisco, Ransom used the same fallback she had when they’d driven down here yesterday. Christ, was it only yesterday? “Now that I’ve seen one of your care homes,” he said, “I’d like to know how you got started. I know you went to college, got your degree. That you wanted to get into healthcare management for seniors so you could make their last years better. But after that, how did you make it happen?”
Eyes on the road, she shrugged. “I did the same kind of thing as Dane. He worked at a resort, and when the owners wanted out, he bought it. I managed a nursing home after graduation. It wasn’t owned by a corporation, just a single facility, but still, there was always someone who said no, I couldn’t do this or that. But then they wanted to sell, so I bought the place. It was out in Tracy.” Which was a bedroom community half an hour outside the East Bay. “I expanded from there.”
He listened, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was that staggering moment when she’d licked the syrup off her finger. He replayed it over and over as she drove and told him her story.