Kitabı oxu: «Once Upon a Valentine»

Chapter One

December

She blamed the entire thing on the shirt.

His shirt, to be precise.

Everything would have been fine, if he’d just kept it on.

But no. He had to go be the gentleman. He’d known she was soaked through. And with no electricity thanks to the ice storm that had blanketed Seattle with hardly any warning, she also had been freezing.

So he’d given her a towel, threadbare as it was, to dry off as best she could.

And then he’d given her his shirt.

Really, that’s when all the trouble started.

That’s when she’d obviously lost every bit of common sense that she’d ever possessed.

What else could possibly explain the fact that she was now lying on a pile of cushions on the floor of Merrick & Sullivan Yachting with Paxton Merrick’s sinewy arm over her waist, his big palm cupping her breast as if he had every right to do so?

Shea Weatherby chewed the inside of her lip as she lay motionless in hopes that he wouldn’t wake up.

It was morning. Sunlight was filling the room. The wind that had howled and screamed and driven her into his office in the first place in search of shelter when her car wouldn’t start was now silent. She couldn’t see out the windows without turning over, though, and that was something she didn’t want to do.

Because it would mean turning toward Pax too.

Bad enough she could feel the heat of his body burning down every inch of her backside. Because she’d obviously lost her head after the whole shirt-offering incident, she clearly couldn’t be trusted to look at his infernally attractive face or other...body parts.

She closed her eyes against the sunshine, wondering how on earth she’d be able to salvage some dignity here.

She’d known Pax for well over two years. Had been regularly turning down his flirtatious overtures for just as long. But all it took was one night, stuck together because her bank account couldn’t extend itself yet to replace her old junker of a car once and for all, and she’d tumbled like a house of cards.

He’d loaned her his shirt to wear when she’d been soaked. He’d wrapped his arms around her and kept her warm when the electricity had gone out because of the storm. And when, heaven help her, she’d tasted the brush of his lips...

She wasn’t even sure who’d kissed who first, and Shea was more than a little afraid it had been her.

She curled her fingers into the cushion and blocked off the thoughts. Tried to, at least. It was hard, when her body still felt sated and warm and—might as well just admit it—more relaxed than it had been in years.

And more satisfied than ever, period.

Again, she shushed the voice inside her head.

She knew she should be grateful that Pax had been here at the leasing office at all. He spent a lot more time at the company’s actual boat works location farther up the shore near the bridge than he did here, at the office that overlooked the marina where the sailboats they leased out were moored. If he hadn’t been here, she’d have been stuck sitting inside her car that refused to start and riding out the ice storm because she’d had no way of getting back inside Cornelia’s building next door once she’d let herself out. Shea had just started working for the woman a week ago and hadn’t wanted the responsibility of an office key when she’d been offered one. By the time the storm had struck yesterday afternoon, everyone else in the office had already left before the roads became impassable, leaving Shea to fend for herself.

She squelched a sigh and opened her eyes again.

Pax had dragged the cushions they were lying on from the boxy, wooden chairs that were scattered around the airy office interior. They were thick and square and covered with a nautical stripe, and though they didn’t make an ideal bed, they were better than sleeping on the hardwood floor. It had been either the cushions, or curl up on a desktop. He’d also found a canvas tarp for them to use as a blanket and a few stubby candles that he’d stuck in mismatched coffee mugs to give them a little light.

Her gaze went from one of the de-cushioned chairs to the round table that sat in the center of the room. A showroom, she supposed it could be called, because—aside from the chairs—the only other piece of furniture was that round table, with a massive, wooden model of a sailing sloop displayed on top of it.

Pax and his partner, Erik Sullivan, built boats. Big, beautiful custom sailing yachts that looked like poetry in the water. Both men were single. Both numbingly good-looking. They were part of the yachting world and all that that entailed—money and the “beautiful people.” But they both had an interest in the welfare of their community, which was how Shea had come to meet Pax in the first place while covering a story for her newspaper, The Seattle Washtub.

It’d just been a human interest thing. Local boys made good—very good—by sharing their wealth with a group of kids. Didn’t hurt that those local boys were single, extremely attractive and millionaires.

She grimaced and shifted restlessly, and the second that she did, Pax’s thumb moved, brushing slowly over her nipple, which traitorously tightened and ached for more. She froze. Waited for another movement from him and wished that she could say that she dreaded one.

But that would be a monumental lie after what they’d already done. What her tightening nerves suggested would be a smashingly good thing to do again.

Shea prided herself on being practical. On being honest with herself. She knew perfectly well that nothing good ever came out of lying to herself.

Or out of weaving dreams from a slanted, sexy smile.

Been there. Done that. And had earned nothing but heartache as a result.

Pax’s thumb stroked her again. “You’re thinking too much.” His voice was deep and rumbling and ridiculously appealing as his fingers slid over her, moving with the delicate precision of a musician.

She slammed a lid over her romantic notions and focused hard on the base of the table a few feet away from her nose. “I’m not thinking anything at all.”

He shifted, bending his knee into the crook of hers. Every inch of her skin from knee to neck felt singed by him, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was well and truly awake. “I can feel you thinking,” he murmured. “And it’d be much more fun if we just settled on the feeling.”

If she really were thinking, she would have found some way to resist him. She wouldn’t be yearning, even now, to feel him moving possessively over her. Again.

She steeled herself against the seductive warmth sliding through her veins and rolled onto her back, looking up at him.

At the best of times, Pax was impossibly handsome.

At the worst of times, like now, he was even more so.

It was just something about that whole unshaven look, whiskers blurring the hewn angle of his long jaw and wavy brown hair tumbling down over his dark brown eyes.

She fought the urge to drool a little and ruthlessly slapped her palm against his chest, shoving him away as she scrambled from beneath the canvas. “This was a mistake.”

He propped his rumpled head on his hand, managing to look amused and sexier than ever in one fell swoop. As if he knew good and well that she was just as hot for him as he apparently was for her. Or maybe that was simply his usual state whenever he wakened on a cold office floor covered in nautical canvas.

“You weren’t saying that earlier.” His lips stretched into his familiar, lazy smile. “I definitely remember things like...more.” His voice dropped. “More.”

The problem was that she did want more.

Which was a bad thing. Capital B. Capital T.

“I’m not saying it now.” Goose bumps crawled over her skin as she moved around the model. She snatched her sweater off the boat’s bow where he’d hung it to dry and wondered if it had ever been draped with female items of clothing before.

Knowing Pax, it probably had. The man seemed to have his own set of groupies. Every time she’d done a story—and there had been eight of them now, featuring him or his partner, Erik—he’d been surrounded by beautiful women.

She dragged the damp knit over her head and was glad that it reached her thighs. She’d left her wet bra in the bathroom when she’d changed into Pax’s dry shirt, and she was pretty certain that her panties were bunched somewhere under that canvas with him and that darned shirt of his.

She was also pretty sure that now was not the time to go hunting for them.

Instead, she yanked her corduroy pants up her legs, wincing at their cold dampness, and headed to the windows that overlooked the deserted street fronting the ancient brick building.

Her traitorous little economy car was still parked in front. She could see the icicles dripping from the bumper like Christmas decorations. She hoped it wasn’t going to cost a fortune to fix whatever had gone wrong this time. Her bank account had just now stopped gasping for air thanks to starting her part-time gig next door for Cornelia.

“How does it look out there?”

“Frozen.” She didn’t let her gaze linger on him any longer than necessary when she turned away from the icy sight. She already knew he was the exact opposite of icy.

The room was cold. Her clothes uncomfortably damp. But warming herself with him again was absolutely out of the question.

She didn’t have one-night stands. She didn’t have stands, period. Repeating that mistake was not going to happen.

She picked up the three coffee mugs and set them on the table next to the sloop. “I’d kill for a cup of hot coffee.” Better to focus on a craving for caffeine than a craving for him.

“The swill here is stone cold and gonna stay that way until the power is restored.” He was sitting up with the canvas wrapped around his shoulders. He ought to have looked silly. He didn’t. “We’ve got the rest of those saltines Ruth kept around, and that’s about it.”

Her mouth was watering. Unfortunately, it was not for the package of stale crackers that his secretary had left behind before going out on maternity leave.

She shoved her hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. It felt like a rat’s nest to her, but that hadn’t stopped him from twining his fingers through it earlier.

Her stomach gave an excited swoop and she swallowed hard, escaping to the restroom. Flipping the light switch in the small room yielded no results, but there was at least enough light from the high, narrow window to see by. The tiled room was clean and neat, and Shea wanted to hide out there as long as possible, but it was too cold. Her bra was just as damp as the rest of her clothes and she balled it up as best she could and shoved it in her pants pocket, unable to face adding yet another damp layer against her skin. She used the toilet, washed her hands in cold water, cringed at her bedraggled reflection in the mirror and reluctantly returned to the reception area.

Pax had shed the canvas blanket and pulled on his jeans. He’d left the top button unfastened.

Her gaze lollygagged over the hard ridges of his abdomen, and she felt her cheeks flushing when her eyes finally reached his.

Definitely, she blamed it all on his shirt.

He was grinning slightly, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, and then he leaned over to pick up the white button-down offender from the floor.

“I need to get home,” she announced, her voice abrupt and too loud. “My cat is sick.”

He straightened, smiling outright. “That’s an excuse I haven’t heard before.”

“Marsha-Marsha,” she prattled, hating the nervousness bubbling up inside her as much as she hated that weird feeling in her stomach whenever she looked at him. “She’s sixteen years old. I, um, I have to give her antibiotics right now.”

The amusement in his dark brown eyes turned to something else. Something softer. Something unexpected. He pulled on his shirt. “How long have you had her?”

She managed to look away from him and focused on the wooden model ship sitting on the table. She didn’t know much about boats, but the gleaming structure looked like it belonged in an art museum. “Since she was a kitten. My, um, my stepfather Ken gave her to me.” Ken had been number three in the line of her mother’s seven marriages. He was long gone now, but Marsha-Marsha was still here.

“Well then,” Pax said, as if the decision were easy. “You need to get home.”

Her car hadn’t started the day before. She doubted sitting in a storm gathering ice would have cured its ills. “You think the buses are running again?” Everything had ground to a halt the afternoon before.

His smile was immediate. “Doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t. As long as the roads are passable, I’ll get you home.”

Again with the swoop inside her.

She shook it off. “I live on the far side of Fremont,” she warned. Her apartment wasn’t exactly right around the corner.

“I know.”

She studied him for a moment. “I don’t remember telling you where I lived.” Their conversations, outside of any interviews he’d given her, were light-hearted in the extreme, usually ending with him suggesting that her life wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t go out with him. He’d invited her out for everything from coffee to a sail around the world.

She’d never once taken him seriously. It was simply part of his genetic makeup to flirt with women.

“Just because you get paid to ask questions doesn’t mean you’re the only person who ever does.” His voice was dry.

“Who’d you ask about me? Mrs. Hunt?” She couldn’t imagine the very elegant, über-wealthy Cornelia Hunt gossiping about anyone, even with the ridiculously charming Paxton Merrick. But then again, Shea could hardly imagine Cornelia’s unusual business venture either, despite having been a witness to its very birth. The woman had no need to ever work because she was married to one of the richest men in the country, yet she’d set up shop to help women succeed in business even when many of them didn’t realize they needed help. And now Shea was a minor contributor because Cornelia had hired her part-time to conduct background checks on her prospective clients. At least she took Shea’s investigative abilities seriously, whereas her boss at the Washtub didn’t.

“You’ve got an editor at the Tub,” Pax said, as if he’d been reading her mind.

“Harvey Hightower is an ornery old coot who doesn’t do anything for anyone unless he’s getting something out of it.” He called Shea “cupcake” and wouldn’t assign her to anything but puff pieces and gossip, no matter how hard or loudly she begged. Didn’t even matter that the twice-weekly independent operated on a shoestring budget. He’d rather pay a “serious” journalist for the “harder” stuff than let Shea stretch her wings. He’d decided she was good at human interest stories and that’s where she’d been stuck ever since she’d started working there after college. But Harvey did love anything to do with Pax and his boat-building partner because the readers loved anything to do with Pax and his boat-building partner. Who was to say that he wouldn’t have answered any question Pax asked?

She huffed. “You’re an irritating man.”

He laughed softly. “Glad to know I’m finally having some effect.”

She grimaced. “Last night wasn’t the response you’ve been going for these past few years?”

Amusement lit his dark eyes. “I figured it was an early Christmas present.”

“I don’t give Christmas presents like that.” Truth was, she didn’t give Christmas presents at all, except to her mother. And that was only a gift certificate to her favorite store because Shea knew there was no point in picking out something personal. Her mother thought Shea had abysmal taste.

“Well, then. Lucky me.” His dimple flashed again as he grabbed up the canvas and loosely folded it.

It was better to busy her hands than to keep watching him, so she picked up one of the cushions to return it to its rightful position on one of the square, wooden chairs. As soon as she moved it, she spotted her panties beneath, and she snatched them up and shoved them in her other pants pocket.

She was pretty sure she’d never carried around all of her undergarments in the front pockets of her pants. She was glad her sweater was long enough to cover it all up, and she pretended that Pax hadn’t observed the whole embarrassing thing while she put the cushion back in place. The mugs clanked together when he carried them to the break room. With nothing else to do, she sat down and pulled on her leather boots, zipping them over the legs of her damp pants, not because she wanted to, but because the legs were too narrow to fit over the boots. Then she headed to the windows again, peering out.

“Phone lines are still down.”

She glanced back to see Pax tucking his cell phone into his back pocket.

“I checked the landline too,” he added. “It’s as dead as my cell.”

“I’m not surprised.” She turned to the window again and pointed to the building across the street. A power pole, laden with ice, was leaning against the three-story warehouse. “There’s ice hanging on everything.” She chewed the inside of her lip. Neither the fact that Marsha-Marsha was waiting nor Shea’s desperation to escape would excuse another act of utter foolishness. “The roads are probably still iced over, too.”

He closed his hand over her shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll get out there and see,” he said calmly. “If it’s not safe to drive, we won’t.”

She didn’t look at him. It took too much effort trying to ignore the warmth spreading from his hand through her shoulder. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re not.” His tone was desert-dry.

Her lips tightened and she shifted. His hand fell away and it frustrated her no end that she missed his comforting touch. He would forget her the second his gaze fell on another female above the age of consent. It would do her well to remember that.

“I can probably get a weather report on the car radio. Which is more than we can get staying cooped up in here.” He headed toward the back of the office again, and she quickly followed, stopping long enough to grab her purse and her fake-suede blazer from where she’d dumped them. They both were still damp, too.

She joined him at the door on the side of the building that opened onto a covered area between his building and Cornelia’s. His red sports car was parked there, protected somewhat from the elements. Beyond the car, she spotted the boats harbored in the marina, swaying in the water. No Merrick & Sullivan boats, though. He’d told her they’d pulled their rental fleet out of the water for maintenance.

“Stay inside while I get it started.”

She was glad to. One hint of the cold air outside was enough to make goose bumps sprout on her eyelashes. So she pulled the door closed and waited until she heard the engine running and he gave a quick honk. Then, even though it was his engine, it was still the sound of escape, so she pulled the door closed behind her and ran out to the car. “What about the door? Does it lock automatically?”

“Yeah.” Air was blowing from the heater vents with a promising hint of warmth and he was fiddling with the high-tech-looking radio. His profile was sharp and clear and more mesmerizing than she wanted to admit. “Seat belt.”

She jumped a little when he glanced at her, then felt her face flush. She fastened the belt. “Cornelia’s door locks automatically, too,” she blathered. “That’s, uh, that’s why I couldn’t get back in her building yesterday.”

His gaze slid over her again. “You mentioned.”

She flushed even harder. Right. She’d been full of excuses when he’d pulled her inside his office the evening before. Including the mistakes she’d made in not taking her car to the mechanic when it had started making a new symphony of noises and not really believing the weather reports when they warned everyone to take immediate shelter.

She’d just made one mistake after another.

Her gaze strayed to the way his thigh bulged against his faded jeans.

Followed by the biggest mistake of all.

He put the car into gear and slowly nudged out from beneath the overhang, turning onto the street lined with red brick buildings similar to his and Cornelia’s.

They drove for three blocks heading inland from the Ballard waterfront before they spotted another occupied vehicle. The heater was doing its job very well now; she imagined her clothes were starting to put off steam. It was a better excuse than thinking she was overheating just from sitting inches away from him inside his hot rod of a car, watching his long fingers, deft and easy on the gear shaft.

She dragged her eyes away and looked out at the icy city, trying to empty her mind.

“You’re thinking too much again.”

How did he do that? “I’m thinking about how I’m going to get to work tomorrow,” she lied.

He snorted softly. “I’ll bet you Honey Girl that you’re not.”

She knew that Honey Girl was his 65-foot sailboat. That he’d built her by hand. That he’d received offers from around the world to buy her, and that women all over the city jumped at the opportunity to be invited aboard.

“Even if you were thinking about work—which you’re not—” he shot her a grin “—I’m pretty certain there won’t be anyone working at the Tub tomorrow. Listen.” He tapped the car radio. “They’re still advising everyone to stay off the roads unless it’s an emergency.”

“Driving me home to my apartment probably doesn’t qualify.”

“Sure it does.” His dimple appeared. “Medical emergency.”

“A feline one.”

“Doesn’t make it unimportant.” He stopped at an intersection where the traffic lights were all flashing red and, even as slowly as he was going, the car eased sideways a little. But there were no other cars present. “If my dog Hooch needed medicine every day, you can take it to the bank that I’d find a way to get it to him.”

She’d written eight articles about Pax. She knew he’d grown up in the little town of Port Orchard across the sound, where he and his business partner had first started out building boats, that he now lived on the top floor of a luxury building in trendy Belltown, and that he had a well-known weakness for anything chocolate. “You never said you had a dog.”

“Would you have said yes the first time I asked you out if I had? Or the second time or the third?”

Her ex-fiancé, Bruce, had had a dog. He’d dumped her two days before their wedding.

“No.”

Pax watched her for a moment, then continued through the empty intersection. “And what about now?”

“I told you. This was a—”

“—mistake. Yeah. I remember. Why?”

She stifled a sigh. “Because!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Figured a journalist like you would be better in a war of words than that, sweetheart.”

“Even if I believed in relationships—which I do not—I wouldn’t be foolish enough to expect anything from you. And I don’t have time in my life to play around.” She was busy enough trying to keep her head above water between the Washtub and her gig with Cornelia.

His lips twisted. “You always have been hard on my ego.”

“Please.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Flirting is as second nature to you as breathing. Nothing I could say or do would dent your ego.”

“Why don’t you believe in relationships?”

She exhaled and looked out the side window again. Thankfully, her apartment was only a block away now. “Who in their right mind does? Just drop me at the top of the hill. If my street is icy, you won’t make it back up again because I’m pretty sure this little toy of yours isn’t sporting four-wheel drive.”

“I’ll have to let my parents know they’re not in their right minds.” His voice was mild. “Believing in relationships as they tend to do.”

“They’re the exception rather than the rule.”

“You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-eight.” And he was ten years her senior. His birthday had been in August, and Harvey’d had her camping outside the nightclub across from his apartment building with her camera to get photos of any gossip-worthy patrons coming in and out. He’d been practically gleeful when she’d shown him the ones of Pax and his dates. As in plural. He’d had three women clinging to him when he’d finally left the club in the wee hours of the morning. It’d been obvious they weren’t done celebrating when they’d crossed the street and headed inside his apartment building dragging a bobbing trio of “Happy Birthday” balloons behind them.

“That’s still too young to be so jaded,” he was saying.

She lifted her shoulder. “I learned early. Wait—” He’d turned onto her street and was creeping down the steep hill. “I said just let me off at the top!”

“And I ignored you.” The wheels crunched over the road, finally coming to a stop in front of her aging apartment building. He rested his wrist on top of the steering wheel and looked at her. “I do that whenever I hear nonsense.”

“Whenever you hear something you don’t want to hear, you mean.”

His lips twitched. “That, too.”

Her stomach swayed when his gaze dropped to her lips. She pressed them together and tried not to squirm in her seat. “Whether you want to hear it or not, we shouldn’t have, um, you know. Last night. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“Slept together? Got busy? Had sex?” His brown eyes were filled with devilish mirth. “Made love?”

She barely kept from clapping her hands over her ears. “We shouldn’t have had sex,” she managed sternly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

He reached out and twined a tangled lock of her hair around his finger. “Don’t be so sure about that, sweetheart.”

“I am sure.” She pulled her hair free, unsnapped her seat belt and shoved open the car door. Icy air swept in, overriding the car heater’s efforts, though it didn’t do diddly to douse the heat inside her. “Thanks for the ride home, Pax, but save yourself some time and look elsewhere for your next conquest. Lord knows there are plenty of women waiting to jump at the chance.” She grabbed her purse and leaped out of the car, shoving the door closed again before he could say anything else.

She hadn’t even begun picking her way across the icy sidewalk to the building entrance when she heard the whirr of the electric window going down behind her. “My parents are having a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. You should come with me. We can start off at my place with a drink.”

Exasperated, she looked back at him. “Pax—”

“I told you I ignored nonsense when I hear it. I’ll call you.” Then he gave her that trademark half-smile of his, rolled up the window with another whirr and drove back up the street that, by all rights, a car like that should have never been able to climb.

She blew out a shaky breath. “Darned shirt.”