Suspect Lover. Stephanie Doyle

down to the pool room.

      Maybe it was the pool that brought her here. His description of swimming gave him character beyond his curt e-mails. His one-syllable answers during their phone calls. It made her believe there was more to him. More of what she wasn’t sure. It was too intangible to name.

      “I asked you a question.” This time he left a few feet between them but he still had followed her.

      “Why did you pick me?” she asked instead. “Of all the profiles what was it about mine?”

      He looked away and she wasn’t sure if he was searching for the truth or the answer she wanted to hear.

      “I picked you because of your career,” he finally said. “I thought you would be used to a quiet life. Being on your own for so long, I didn’t think you would make unnecessary demands on my time. Time I don’t have to give.”

      The truth. It was certainly brutal enough. She supposed she had to respect him for that.

      “I’m sorry if that upsets you,” he said.

      The truth couldn’t upset her. It helped to ground her in a reality that was quickly slipping away.

      “Answer me. Why did you come?” he repeated.

      He took a step closer, his eyes fixed on hers forcing her to meet his gaze.

      Why had she come?

      Why hadn’t she stayed home? With her work and her small circle of friends. Her fuzzy slippers and flannel pajamas. Why hadn’t she just gotten a damn kitten?

      Because you were tired of being afraid. Because you decided you could want again. A family. A chance at having a family.

      That seemed too personal to share with him. Because it meant so much more to her than a simple word. She struggled to find an answer that would appease him. “I wanted to find…”

      “Love?” he interrupted. “Surely you’re not so naive, Caroline. Love is an aberration. At best a fleeting emotion that dies quickly once routine sets in. Two people of the same mind, with similar goals and compatible personalities can form a bond. A marriage based on that can be infinitely stronger than two people in love.”

      She didn’t agree. But she didn’t see the need to contradict him, either. “I was going to say happiness.”

      “I don’t know about happiness.” Dominic took another step closer. This time he reached out and took her hand. “But I can give you what you want.”

      “What I want?”

      “A child.”

      She jumped a bit and he must have seen her reaction because he stilled.

      “Your profile said you wanted children. You told me you even considered having a child on your own.”

      “I did,” she blurted out. “I did consider that.” But the coward had won then, too, convinced her she couldn’t do it alone.

      “You want a family don’t you?”

      The word was like a punch to her gut. It struck at the very core of who she was and what she’d lost and she realized that there was no point in holding back. Not if he was going to be her husband.

      “I have no family, either. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was sixteen. I lived with an older aunt but she passed away two years ago. I’ve been alone. Not lonely. But alone. I decided I wanted more.”

      He nodded and she thought that he understood. A man who had lost his mother would know what it meant to start again. To take a risk and try to create a new family when you had already suffered the pain of losing one.

      “Let me give you that.”

      “I’m thirty-five,” she whispered even as he was tugging her closer. “It might not be that easy.”

      A hand reached up and slipped around her neck. She felt the warmth and the weight of it in her hair tilting her neck ever so slightly to the side.

      “We can try. We can keep trying.” He bent his head then and his lips touched hers. The bolt of attraction she’d been struck with when she saw him for the first time tripled, then quadrupled as his lips played with hers. His mouth opened and took possession. His tongue thrust deep. It had been so long. It felt so sinfully good.

      Dark hair, dark eyes and the body of man who liked to push himself in exercise were easy excuses for his appeal, but Caroline knew it was the other things that coerced her into wanting him. His small barely-there smile. How his hand stroked Munch’s fur. The way he held her close to him without suffocating her.

      His head lifted and she knew he was staring down at her, but she didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want to see the man she’d just met for the first time tonight. The man she’d only exchanged e-mails and phone calls with. Instead she needed him to kiss her again so she could go back to feeling as if she was in the arms of someone she’d known most of her life.

      “Tell me you want this, Caroline. Tell me and I’ll take you upstairs.”

      She lifted her hand to his chest and felt his heart beat heavily through his shirt. It was time to say that it was happening too fast. Time to retreat and head to her own bedroom. The coward was ready to bolt. But the fighter, the one who pushed her out of the house and on the plane to come here, the one who was willing to take another chance on life, stood her ground.

      “Tell me.”

      His urgency was palpable and it fueled her need.

      Tell him. Tell him.

      But words wouldn’t form in her mouth. Since they typically fell easier from her fingers, she reached up and cupped his face and then lifted herself so that she could kiss him in return. Letting him know in the only way she was capable of that yes, she did want this.

      She wanted him.

      Chapter 3

      Caroline let Dominic lead her back up the stairs without a protest. She didn’t want to tug on his hand, fearing he might stop. A stern “stay!” kept Munch happily curled up on the couch in the living room. Then the next thing she knew, she was standing in the bedroom.

      His room.

      She reminded herself that this wasn’t like her. A woman didn’t stay single as long as she had without having some reservations when it came to men. Sex was an important thing and she took it seriously. Maybe too seriously. But all her internal defense mechanisms evaporated with his kiss.

      She should have known it would be this way.

      Hadn’t she reacted the first time she saw his picture? As if her stomach had plummeted to her feet. His serious eyes and serious mouth. When his name popped up in her e-mail, she smiled. His voice on the phone made her shiver. She wanted him before she’d agreed to his invitation.

      She told herself it was her active imagination. That it was just the hope of what he could give her that made him seem so attractive. But she knew there was nothing imaginary about it. She’d come here for him. Because something inside her said he was waiting for her. And he kissed her not like a man bent on seduction, but rather like a man already in the grip of need. As if he’d wanted her before he’d ever seen her, too.

      “Caroline,” he whispered. His mouth left hers, taking her breath with it. “I’m sorry. I should go slower.”

      “No.” She didn’t want to go slow. She didn’t want to have time to think. She wanted to act. Reaching down she pulled her sweater over her head, letting her hair fall in a muss about her shoulders.

      The simple bra wasn’t enticing and it hadn’t occurred to her to wear anything more daring, but she could feel Dominic’s eyes on her. With a gentle push, he turned her around so that she faced away from him. He bent her head forward and brushed aside her hair, his mouth falling hot and wet on the nape of her neck. His hands cupped her breasts