Читать книгу Return To Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 6

The gesture tipped him off. He recognized her the instant she covered her mouth and peeked over her hand, but he had to struggle to superimpose his memories of El onto the knockout blonde in the kitchen. He remembered a skinny girl with big, startled eyes peeking up from beneath heavy bangs. A mouth too big for her bit of a face.

This woman was nothing like that awkward girl. She’d filled out, with a fine, round ass that had immediately caught his eye as she bent into the fridge. And what she had down there was nicely balanced by what she had up top. High, full tits, bouncing and soft. A tender, lavish mouthful and then some, just how he liked them.

Her hand dropped, and revealed her wide, soft mouth. Her dark eyebrows no longer met across the bridge of her nose. Spots of pink stained her delicate cheekbones. She’d grown into her eyes and mouth. Her hair was a wavy curtain of gold-streaked bronze that reached down to her ass. El Kent had turned beautiful. Mouth-falling-open, mind-going-blank beautiful. The images locked seamlessly together, and he wondered how he could’ve not recognized her, even for an instant. He wanted to hug her, but something buzzing in the air held him back.

The silence deepened. The air was heavy with it. She didn’t exclaim, or look surprised, or pleased. In fact, she looked almost scared.

“El?” He took a hesitant step forward. “Do you recognize me?”

Her soft mouth thinned. “Of course I recognize you. You haven’t changed at all. I was just, ah, surprised that you didn’t recognize me.”

“I didn’t remember you being so pretty.” The words came out before he could vet them and decide if they were stupid or rude.

Based on her reaction, he concluded that they were. She grabbed a wad of paper towels from the roll on the counter, wiped up the eggs and dropped the mess into the garbage pail. She dampened another paper towel. Her hair dangled down like a veil. She was hiding.

“What’s wrong, El?” he asked cautiously. “What did I do?”

She knelt down, sponging off the floor tiles. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“But you won’t look at me,” he said.

She flung the soggy towel into the garbage. “I’m called Ellen these days. And what do you expect? You disappear for seventeen years, no letter, no phone call, not so much as a postcard to let me know you weren’t dead, and expect me to run into your arms squealing for joy?”

So she hadn’t forgotten him. His mood shot up, in spite of her anger. “I’m, uh, sorry I didn’t write,” he offered.

She turned her back on him. “I’m sorry you didn’t, too.” She made a show of drying some teacups.

“My life was really crazy for a while. I was scrambling just to survive. Then I joined the Marines, and they sent me all over the map for a few years while I figured out what I wanted to do with myself—”

“Which was?” Her voice was sharp and challenging.

“Photojournalist,” he told her. “Freelance, at the moment. I travel all the time, mostly war zones. By the time I got things in my life more or less straightened out, I was afraid…” His voice trailed off.

“Yes?” Her head swiveled around. “You were afraid of what?”

“That you might have forgotten me,” he said. “I didn’t want to face that. I didn’t want to mess with my own equilibrium. I’m sorry, El.”

She turned away without replying, and began to hang teacups on hooks on the wall. His hand on her shoulder made her jump. She dropped one, which knocked the one underneath it off its hook as well.

They shattered loudly on the marble counter.

Simon hissed through his teeth and lifted his hand away. “Christ. I’m sorry. Were those priceless antiques? Please say they weren’t.”

“Great-grandmother Kent brought them with her from Scotland. They traveled around the Horn with her in eighteen ninety-four.”

He grimaced in agony. “Shit. I hate heirlooms.”

“They were part of her dowry.”

“I said I was sorry,” he snapped.

There was an uncomfortable silence. “Still leaving a path of chaos and destruction in your wake, I see,” El said.

Anger made his defenses snap right into place. “Of course.” He echoed her careless tone. “Just like always.”

“Some things never change,” she murmured.

“Got that right,” he agreed dourly.

El edged away. “So, ah, what brings you back to LaRue?”

The chatty, let’s-move-on tone in her voice set his teeth on edge. “I just got word about Gus,” he said.

“Just now?” She looked puzzled. “But he died five months ago.”

“It took a while for the letter to reach me,” he said. “Hank Blakely wrote to me about it. My high school art teacher. Remember him?”

“Of course. I didn’t know he knew where you were. Where were you, anyhow?” Her eyes were full of wary curiosity.

“Afghanistan.” He offered no further explanation.

There was an awkward pause. “So he left you his property, then?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t particularly care.”

“And you hadn’t seen him since you—”

“Nope.”

El tilted her head to the side and studied him thoughtfully. “Why did you come back, then?”

He made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. Gus, killing himself. I couldn’t take it in. I needed to see the place. Wrap my mind around it.”

“I see.” Her steady, penetrating gaze made him transparent. Like he was eighteen again, scruffy and needy and underfed.

He stared right back until his cool regard made her blush and look away. “I asked around for a hotel,” he said. “People told me you’d converted this place into an inn.”

Her face tightened with alarm. “You want a room here?”

“I can’t stay at Gus’s place. There’s no water, no power, and it’s a foul mess. I’ve slept in worse places, but that one I can’t take.”

She twisted her slender hands together. The downy hair on her arms was pale, glittering gilt. Her nails were pink-tinged mother of pearl. He made her nervous. She didn’t want him in her house. It was childish to get his feelings hurt. He knew damn well he should take pity on her and haul his ass to another hotel, but knowing it wasn’t enough. The contrary bastard inside him that took after Gus wanted to goad her.

“If you’re scared of me, I’ll leave,” he said. “I don’t want you to sweat nails, El. I’ll go to the hotel out on Hanson.”

“Scared of you? For heaven’s sake. Don’t be ridiculous!”

He shook his head. “Nah. If you’re uncomfortable with—”

“Why should I be uncomfortable? I’m a professional. The motel on Hanson smells! And there are cigarette burns in the furniture!”

“God forbid,” he murmured.

She glared at him. “And bugs! Do you want to share your bathtub with cockroaches? Do you want cobwebs in your window curtains?”

Bull’s-eye. He got her. He lifted his hands in surrender and struggled not to grin. “Anything but that.”

Her narrowed eyes said that she knew she’d been manipulated. “So I take it Missy hasn’t checked you in?”

“If you’re referring to the girl who was at the front desk, no,” he said. “She took one look at me and ran. She seemed pretty freaked out.”

El sighed. “Oh God. What am I going to do with that girl? So she didn’t give you our spiel, then.”

“Nope, no spiel,” he confirmed.

“Very well. Follow me.” She marched towards the dining room. “I’ll explain our policies. Payment is in advance, cash or major credit cards. I prefer to avoid out-of-town checks. Continental breakfast is served from seven-thirty to ten on week-days, and a full brunch on Saturdays and Sundays from nine to twelve. Early risers will find tea and coffee in the dining room from six-thirty A.M. Coffee, tea and light refreshment is served in the dining room at five—”

“Light refreshment?” he echoed. “Fancy.”

“Yes, scones, or biscuits, or fresh pastry,” she said, flashing a glance over her shoulder that dared him to make fun of her. “And of course, you are encouraged to join me with all the guests in the salon for a glass of sherry in the evening before retiring.”

He followed her out of the kitchen, gazing at the graceful lines of her back. “A glass of sherry. Wow. Aren’t we refined.”

“You are also free to skulk alone in your room, if you prefer. I personally could care less.” She slid behind a desk in the foyer and pulled out a credit-card machine. “The room I have available is one hundred and twenty dollars a night. Will that be cash or charge?”

“Charge, I guess,” he said, bemused.

“Very well.” She plucked a charge slip from a cubbyhole in the credenza and slapped it into place. “How long do you plan on staying?”

“Let’s start with a week, and take it from there.”

She held out her hand for his card. He fished it out of his wallet and slapped it into her palm. “Cut it out, El.”

Her eyes slid away, and her professional smile slipped a notch. She fit the card into the machine. “Cut what out?”

“The professional song and dance. This is me, Simon. Remember? Hello! Anybody home in there?”

She dragged the press over his card and dialed the authorization code, fingers stabbing at the number pad. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Seventeen years without a peep from you. No way of knowing if you were starving, or sick, or dead in a ditch somewhere—”

He held up his hands. “Hey, one thing at a time, OK?”

“And when you finally do get around to coming to see me, it’s just because you need a place to crash. Just like old times. Good old El. So useful and convenient.” The code finally appeared on the screen. She scribbled the number down and threw his card back at him. “What the hell do you want from me, Simon?”

He planted his hands on the desk, and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to use you. I never did. Not then, and not now. If you want me to leave, I will.” He bit out each word.

She made a furious huffing sound, and wrenched a drawer open. She plucked out a long, old-fashioned key and tossed it across the desk at him. “You’ll be staying in the tower room.”

“Your old bedroom, huh?” He took the key. “I remember. You let me sleep there whenever Gus was too drunk for me to deal with. You brought me cookies and cocoa and leftovers. I don’t think I’ve ever entered that room through the door, though. I always came up the tree.”

Her eyes dropped, and the pink on her cheeks deepened. She shoved the credit-card slip and a pen across the desk.

He signed it and shoved it back. “El, let me explain something.”

“No. There’s nothing to explain, and I’ve already said too much.” She scrambled out from behind the desk. “I’ll show you up to your room now, if you’d like. I hope Missy got around to cleaning it.”

“El, let me—”

“You have your own bathroom,” she said, backing towards the stairs. “I remodeled the place. All the rooms have private baths.”

“Thank God,” he said. “I need one. I can’t face Mrs. Muriel Kent without a shower and a shave.”

She cleared her throat. “My mother doesn’t live here anymore. She moved down to California some years ago. I bought the house from her. So you’re, um, safe.”

“I see.” He stared at the curve of her cheek and wondered if her skin was as soft to the touch as it looked. He tried not to look into her eyes—oh, hell. They were incredible. Hypnotic. Splashes of forest green in the midst of the sensual, liquid golden brown, and the endless black of her pupils dilated and contracted with delicate pulsations.

Sunlight slanted through the stained-glass window over the staircase, illuminating her eyes, her hair. They picked out her gilt accents: the tips of her lashes, the sun-bleached down on her arms. Her rumpled hair shimmered like an angel’s halo in an ancient fresco.

She’d been dusted with gold powder.

“Simon?” she whispered. “What are you doing?”

He was so close to her. Her breasts almost grazed his chest. If he swayed forward, he could wrap his hands around her slender waist.

The memory opened up in his mind. The smoke, the dew, the dawn. The sensual promise in El’s eyes, the tight clasp of her virginal body. She’d almost convinced him to stay, but he’d known even then that whoever he got close to would end up caught in the crossfire of his bizarre bad luck. El had been the one good thing in his screwed-up life, and the kindest thing he could do for her was to stay away.

Seventeen years later, he had no reason to think that anything had changed, and yet here he was. His nose was just inches from her fragrant hair, his hands right on the verge of sliding around her waist to press that sumptuous golden softness hard against his body.

“Um, Ellen?” A light, wispy voice spoke above them.

The two of them jerked apart as though they’d been kissing.

“Yes, Missy, I’m right here.” El’s voice was admirably steady.

“Um, there was this guy here? And I think he wanted a room but I hadn’t cleaned the tower room yet, and the bathroom was still messy, so I just cleaned it now. Maybe he went away, though.” Her voice sounded hopeful as she pattered down the stairs on light, diffident feet.

“No, he didn’t go away.” El’s voice was gentle and patient. “He’s right here. Missy, meet Mr. Simon Riley.”

Missy squeaked and retreated to the landing. El shook her head and heaved a tiny, silent sigh. “It’s OK, Missy,” she soothed. “You could’ve checked him in. I showed you how to use the credit-card machine, remember? You’re very good at it.”

Missy cowered behind the banister. She was a skinny girl in a denim jumper. Mouse-brown hair was scraped tightly back from a wan face that might have been pretty if it hadn’t been so anxious.

“Hi, Missy.” Simon tried to sound non-threatening.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“It’s excellent that you prepared the room,” El encouraged. “Why don’t you go rinse the blueberries? I’ll show Mr. Riley to his room.”

Missy nodded and scuttled past them as quickly as a mouse, eyes down. Simon gave El a questioning look.

She threw up her hands. “So? I keep hoping she’ll loosen up, but it hasn’t happened yet. Big deal. Things take time.” She sidled past him, careful not to touch his body, and started up the stairs.

“Still trying to save the universe, I see,” he said. “You always were a sucker for lost causes.”

El shot a cool glance back over her shoulder. “Not at all. I’m very practical now. Not nearly as sentimental as I used to be.” She took an audible breath, huffed it out, and launched into her hostess routine.

“The front bedrooms look out over the river, but your room is the only bedroom that also has a good view of Mount Hood…” Her voice was brisk and practiced. He let his attention drift, his gaze wandering down her heavy cascade of wavy, sun-streaked bronze hair. The curling wisps that kissed the top of her ass were bleached to silver-gilt.

“—and this is the library, as you can see. Lots of books and magazines for browsing, but we ask, as a courtesy to other guests, that this be a quiet room. If you wish to converse, there’s the sunroom, the salon, the dining room, the parlor, and the porch.”

“It’s going to feel strange to put my feet up and read a newspaper in Frank Kent’s inner sanctum,” Simon remarked.

El paused at the door that led up to the tower room. “I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge you the pleasure,” she said. “He died six years ago.”

Simon cursed himself silently. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “Up these stairs is the—”

“I’ve been here before, remember? Please, El, would you relax?”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken, her voice tightly controlled. “Here is the tower room. I’m afraid that the room wasn’t large enough for a queen-sized bed—” she unlocked the door and pushed it open, “—so I hope a full size will do.” She gestured for him to enter.

Simon looked around, disoriented. Gone was the twin bed with the ruffled pink-and-white spread, the white vanity piled high with books, the poster of the sultry-eyed maiden riding a unicorn.

Now the room was pretty, tasteful, neutral. An old-fashioned four-poster was covered by a colorful quilt. The wallpaper was a delicate, understated floral pattern. There was a washstand, a cheval mirror, a wooden bureau, a braided rag rug.

He felt bereft. “It’s not you anymore.”

“I took the master bedroom suite for myself when I remodeled.”

“I see.” He stared forlornly out the window at the oak tree. At least that was more or less the same. Just bigger.

“The bathroom is right at the foot of the stairs,” she informed him. “I’ll make sure that Missy left you fresh towels and washcloths, and—”

“Stop it!” His voice came out harsher than he’d intended, and she flinched. He stopped, and sought to put his lost, groping feeling into words. “We were friends,” he said helplessly. “Don’t freeze me out. Can’t we pick up where we left off?”

El let her hair fall forward to veil her face. “Do you remember where we were when we left off, Simon?”

Hell, yeah. Fire and smoke. Adrenaline racing through his body, screams of terrified horses echoing in his head. The slender girl twining herself around him, the bewildering flare of heat and need. Like he could ever forget. He cleared his throat carefully. “I remember.”

El backed towards the door. “Then you understand why we can’t pick up, just like that. Look, it’s almost teatime, and I have to—”

“El, please don’t,” he persisted.

“—to get things organized. Missy can’t manage alone. If you like, you can join us all for coffee, tea and scones in a half hour in the dining room.” She hesitated, her eyes brimming with emotion, and shook her head, dismissing it, and him. Her hair swirled as she spun around.

The door clicked shut. Light footsteps tapped down the stairs, pausing to make sure that his bathroom had towels and washcloths. Ever the perfect hostess. Her quick, light footsteps faded.

Simon wrenched off his boots and flung himself onto the bed. He bounced on the orthopedic mattress. Just like the Kents. Nothing but the best. He’d surprised himself as much as her by the impulse to stay here. For the first time, he realized that the harm he could do here in LaRue might not only be to himself. And he was unprepared for how outrageously pretty she was. That was unfair. A dirty, nasty trick.

El had been so good to him. He’d launched himself into the world with nothing but her pillowcase of food and money to sustain him. She’d become a symbol of home and safety in his mind, but it wasn’t fair to think of El that way. She’d just been a needy, affectionate kid.

A total sweetheart. And he’d taken advantage of that sweetness. He’d nailed her the night that he left, right in her mother’s flowerbed.

He’d had lots of sex since then, but even the very hottest of it—and some of it had been very, very hot—hadn’t come close to the emotional intensity of that fumbling explosion in the flowers with El.

Simon closed his eyes, and rolled onto his belly. He was an opportunistic prick, in the privacy of his own dirty mind. He had no business in the Kent mansion, having erotic fantasies about the golden princess. Domestic bliss looked warm and cuddly from the outside, but it was beyond his reach. He knew exactly how that script would play.

It started out small, breaking eggs and smashing teacups. It got progressively worse from there. Once El figured out that he was more trouble than he was worth, he’d be out on his ass.

He preferred to spare himself that humiliation from the get-go.

He was always up front with the women he slept with that commitment was not part of the deal. He tried to make it up to them by satisfying them sexually. That, at least, was something he could be generous with. It was an art, to please a woman in bed, and he’d dedicated himself to it with all of his considerable intensity.

But a woman like El would never be satisfied until a man was on his knees in front of her, promising her the moon.

Dealing with what had happened to Gus was going to hurt like hell. It wouldn’t be right to use El to comfort and distract himself knowing he was just going to leave again. He’d wronged her that way once already, and she was still pissed about it.

Women like her weren’t for men like him. Guaranteed disaster.

Ironic. It made him laugh, but the sound was dry and bitter. He was so out of place in this prim room. This was a room for old-fashioned, well-bred, proper sex. Not that he’d ever actually had any sex like that, but his dirty mind was up to anything. Four-poster bed, fine linen sheets, big puffy pillows, classy woman? He could see it.

He’d be on top of her, of course. Missionary position. Lights off, moonlight streaming through the window. Their bodies would be discreetly draped by the quilt as he moved inside her. Embracing her tenderly. Gazing respectfully into her eyes. Dignified, proper, decorous.

Whoops. Oh, man. The joke was on him. His dick was so hard, he had to roll onto his side to give it some space. He knew exactly how her slender body would feel naked beneath him, taking him inside her, deep and slick and yielding. He would kiss her as he fucked her, deep, hungry kisses. He would suckle her breasts while she struggled towards pleasure against his body. Giving herself to him, like she had that night years ago when he’d tasted how wild her girlish passion could be.

So much for respectful, well-bred sex. His fantasy went right off the rails, and before he knew it, the pillows got knocked off the bed, the fancy quilt flung to the floor, the sheets torn off the mattress. Lights flipped on so he could see every pink and gold detail, so he could run his tongue over her smooth skin, lick up every salty bead of sweat.

He wanted to turn her body every which way till he figured out what made her shudder and sob with pleasure. He wanted to put it to her deep and hard. Ride her all the way to the end of the line.

He was sliding his hands into his jeans to give himself some relief when something small and round rolled off the pillow, hit the top of his head and lodged itself in the crook of his neck. He fished it out and started to laugh. A chocolate, wrapped in gold foil. Trust El to bonk him over the head with a chocolate the minute he started getting ideas.

He unwrapped it. Bittersweet, dark as midnight, like the kind Gus used to love. He sat up, stuck the chocolate in his mouth and buried his face in his hands. El’s face glowed a hazy gold on the insides of his closed eyes as the taste of rich chocolate lingered in his mouth.

You know you’re just hurting yourself, Simon.

Talk about famous last words.