Unexpected Legacy. Jacqueline Diamond

know me better than that, Freckles.”

      “I know you’re the most stubborn man I know.”

      He lifted one lone eyebrow. “And you aren’t stubborn? You’re stubborn and proud, Katie. The combo makes for a very difficult lady.”

      She shook her head but couldn’t help smiling. Then she signaled at his damp shirt; it was still driving her crazy how it stuck damply to his beautiful brown nipples. It was about as sexy as him being naked or, strangely, even more so. “Are you taking that shirt off? I can still dry it for you.”

      He whipped it off, and it gave her something to do as she hooked it on a high kitchen cabinet close to the oven heat. “So that’s how you get men naked,” he roughly teased.

      “Of course. I make it rain, then I strip them.” She smoothed her hands down the sleeves to unwrinkle them.

      “What do you do after you strip them?”

      She stopped fussing over his shirt and realized he was coming closer. His smile was overtly sexual, his dark eyes glimmering in liquid mischief. “Do you kiss them?”

      “Maybe,” she said and slid past him to go back around the kitchen island. There was something very predatory in his eyes, and she began backing away more quickly as her heart kicked wildly in her rib cage.

      “Do you caress them with those hands of yours? Look up at them with those pretty eyes?”

      She blinked for a moment, then burst out laughing. “What do you mean? These are the only eyes I have. Which others should I use?”

      “It’s the look in those eyes I refer to. Do you use that doe look on them, too? The one that makes me want to chase you?”

      When she laughingly shook her head and backed away farther, he charged and she squealed and sped around the kitchen island, managing two rounds until he caught her and spun her around, both their smiles a mile long. His grin faded before she could even bask in the beauty of it, and his expression fell deathly somber. “I want to kiss you very badly,” he whispered, bending his head, his chest heaving.

      “Garrett, no,” she murmured, struggling to pull free. She spun around and went to check on the pizza, her pulse throbbing in her temples as she pretended to be busy watching the cheese melt.

      He came up behind her again and stroked a hand down her hair. “What if I asked you for what you wanted, and you told me exactly what it is that you want?”

      “Florida.”

      His stare almost bored holes into her profile, and through the corner of her eye, she noticed his jaw clamped, hard as granite. “Be real with me, Kate. For once in our lives, let’s stop playing games.”

      She shook her head, feeling panicked and afraid of opening up to him. “Whatever it is, you can’t give it to me.”

      “Just try me.”

      Gnawing on her lower lip, she studied his face, his features carved fiercely in determination, as if he truly did care for her. Well...did he? Had he seen her like a woman all along and had she not noticed because she’d been too busy pretending she didn’t love him? She wanted him. All of him. A family of her own. She knew it was too much to want of him, to ask from him. Especially after what she’d heard.

      “Everyone knows about you and...that heiress you’re planning a wedding with.”

      His eyebrows lifted in mock interest. “Like it’s a fact now?”

      Ignoring the dangerous purr in his voice, Kate put on an oven mitt, pulled the pizza out and set it on the stove top. “I can’t believe you’d marry for business.” She couldn’t look at him while saying that, so she occupied herself with preparing the food.

      He was silent as she used her cutter to slice the pizza into perfect pieces.

      Then he murmured, “I wasn’t going to marry at all. So why would it matter if I just used it as means to an end, if it’s what Cassandra’s asking for and it will all be over in six months anyway?”

      “You’re better than that, Garrett,” she whispered.

      “But not good enough for you,” he mumbled, watching her closely.

      Her throat tightened on a reply that she just refused to give as she put a slice on a plate for him, and another on one for herself, staying quiet. What was the point? Flirting with him? Playing with fire? He never wanted to marry, he’d just said, and if he did, it was purely for business. She had to believe she deserved a family of her own. Especially since she’d had her own family torn apart when she was so young.

      Quietly, she carried both plates to the kitchen island. He sat down on the stool beside her, then took a large bite, munching.

      “Freckles, this is so good.” He shook his head and took another bite, making a groaning noise that made her remember...sex. With him.

      “It is, isn’t it?” The sweet vegetable flavors combined with the toasted-almond flour and goat cheese melted in her mouth, but her insides melted more at the sounds he made. She squirmed on her stool and watched him get up to pour two glasses of water from the pitcher in the fridge.

      He set hers down next to her plate, then continued eating. When he licked up a crumb from the corner of his lips, her heart raced in a strange mix of fear and anticipation. He’d asked if she wanted him to give chase...and suddenly she couldn’t imagine anything more exhilarating than being hunted, chased and claimed by him.

      Shaking her head, she washed down her pizza with the water. She was surprised when he spoke again; he’d already finished his slice. Now his attention seemed fixed solely on her again.

      He stroked a finger down her jaw.

      “What about me?” he asked.

      She frowned and set her half-eaten pizza down. “What do you mean, what about you?”

      “You say you’d only marry for love. Do you feel nothing for me? If I go through with this marriage to Cassandra, how would you feel about it?”

      The meal suddenly wasn’t sitting too well in her stomach. “If she’s what you want...”

      “I’m very interested in something that she has, but I want to make it clear that I don’t want her.” There was no mistaking the steel in his voice as he set a hand on her thigh as if it belonged there. “What I want to know is if there’s even a chance that I can have what I most want on this earth.”

      Her pulse skyrocketed when she saw the stark hunger in his gaze, a gaze that ping-ponged from her eyes to her mouth and made her pulse race erratically. But when he began to get close, she stood up for some reason. Garrett laughed darkly, quietly, as if to himself. Then he followed her up and began to back her into a corner with purpose, his eyes blazing.

      “Where are you going, Kate?”

      She quickened her steps, but he followed closely until she stopped when the back of her knees hit a wall.

      He smiled delightedly. “You do want me to catch you, don’t you?”

      With painstaking slowness, as though to torture her, he raised his hand and set it on her hair, and it was as if she could feel his fingers tangling inside her, tangling around her heart. “Do you want to be with me again?” he rasped, using his fist in her hair to tip her head back.

      Every instinct of self-preservation warned her against reaching out to him, giving him this power over her again, but there was no pulling away from him as his hand wound deeper into the fall of hair at her nape, his piercing onyx eyes drowning her in their depths.

      “I’ve been inside you once—and it wasn’t enough. I wanted to wake up and look into your eyes and see you smile at me. I didn’t want you to leave. Not like that. Not like it was a mistake.”

      Her breasts rose and fell with each strained breath. “It wasn’t a mistake to me. I loved every