Into the Fire. Leslie Kelly

to tempt her.

      “Help yourself,” she said. “I promise not to peek at your underwear.”

      He contemplated telling her he wasn’t wearing any, but didn’t think it wise.

      “So, why do you dislike J.T.?” she asked as she walked over and sat on the bench of a weight-lifting machine.

      Since there was nowhere else to sit unless they moved to the pool area, Nate went ahead and hopped onto the edge of the trampoline, sitting on the padded springs. “I don’t dislike him. He’s a heck of a businessman. But I see him for what he is.”

      “That being?”

      “I don’t know. What do you call a man in his sixties whose new fourth wife is less than half his age? Plus he still manages to hit on any attractive single woman he meets.” Nate sighed in disgust. “My sister came in to the office to visit last month. She was holding her one-year-old baby, and J.T. still flirted with her nonstop.”

      “Some women find him charming.”

      He snorted. “Maybe his bank account. Believe me, if I had his money, there are plenty of things I’d do with it other than invest it in future alimony payments.”

      “Like?”

      “I dunno. Feed the hungry? Help inner-city moms pay for day care?”

      “How politically correct,” she said, her dry tone displaying her skepticism.

      He took no offense. She didn’t know him, after all. Why should she believe he had any interest in social issues? “Okay, then I guess I’d buy a private island.”

      She grinned, stood and walked over to stand beside the trampoline. “Can I join you?”

      “On my island?” He gave her a playful smile and gestured to the black fabric surface. “Please do.”

      He held out a hand to help her climb up. Forcing himself to look away, he deliberately tried not to notice when her robe gapped open again, displaying several long inches of pale, smooth thigh.

      “And what would you do on this island?” she asked.

      He slid back, pulling her with him until they both sat on the surface of the trampoline. Stretching out to lie on his back, he put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. “I’d ban cocktail parties.”

      “Good start,” she conceded as she stretched out to lie beside him. “What else would you ban in your kingdom?”

      “Bow ties. Tuxedos.”

      “I think tuxedos are very sexy,” she murmured.

      Nate glanced over to find her staring innocently at the ceiling, as if she hadn’t just said something blatantly flirtatious. Or perhaps she hadn’t. Maybe he’d misread her.

      He hoped not.

      “Can you ban control-top panty hose, too? And size-one cover models who make the rest of us look fat?”

      “You got it. And self-help books. No Mars and Venus crap allowed in the libraries on my island.”

      “You don’t care for relationship books?”

      He turned to look at her, waiting until she met his eye to answer. “The right couple involved in the right relationship has no need for books. When it’s there, when it’s real, you know it. And if it isn’t, no book is going to make it work.”

      She held his stare, her eyes wide, glittering in the low lighting of the room. “Is it there for you? Have you found your perfect partner?”

      Nate was unable to resist the slow smile that curled across his lips. He reached over, tucking a nearly dry blond curl behind her ear. “Ask me tomorrow,” he whispered.

      Her eyes widened as she caught his meaning.

      He knew it was crazy, given their brief relationship, but something was happening between them. They were in sync. They spoke with the same rhythm, laughed with the same sense of natural joy…looked at each other with the same sense of intrigue.

      It was more than physical, more than titillating or exciting, more than a delightful interlude.

      “Something’s happening here, isn’t it? Something amazing.” He didn’t move toward her, letting his words and his voice be the only indicators of the depth of his interest in her. The next move was hers.

      She made it. When her eyes narrowed slightly, zoning in on his mouth, he knew she wanted to kiss him. She leaned closer, tentatively, and he didn’t move, knowing somehow that she had to do this, had to be the initiator.

      Then, with a soft sigh, she brushed her lips against his. Focusing all his thoughts on the sensation, he remained still, letting himself be kissed by this woman whose name he didn’t yet know. Letting her move closer, move over him, cup one side of his face with her soft, cool palm.

      She tilted her head, parted her lips slightly. When her tongue slid out tentatively to taste him, Nate’s restraint began to skid away. He groaned and finally moved his arms to pull her on top of him.

      The kiss deepened. Emboldened by his response, she increased the tempo, driving him crazy with each caress, each stroke of her sweet, wet tongue. He met her every move, anticipated and joined her when she turned her head for deeper access. Somehow, some way, she slid off him, falling to her back on the bouncy surface of the trampoline, pulling him over her. Or perhaps he pushed her. He didn’t know. Thought was gone, replaced entirely by sensation.

      Nate waited for the voice in his head to tell him to stop, to insist it was insane to be making out with a woman he’d known an hour. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on anything but the way she tasted—like sweet, intoxicating wine. The way she smelled—of roses and springtime. The way she made him feel—on fire and nearly out of control.

      The gentle give-and-take of their bodies moving together on the springy surface filled his mind with images of making love to her. Right here. Right now. While a party continued in another part of the house, while his boss looked for him and his tuxedo lay wet on the bathroom floor. All he wanted was to toss away their robes and roll over her, onto her, into her, on this little fabric island. To see if this sense of rightness between them extended to the physical as well as the emotional.

      It would. He knew it would. Knew it the way he knew the roads leading to his family home, the way he knew the right words to use in a story, the way he knew his own nature.

      This beautiful blond stranger with the laughing eyes and the smiling lips could be the person he’d waited for all his life. He knew.

      “Can something like this really happen?” she asked when he moved his mouth from hers to press kiss after kiss on her jaw, her earlobe, the long column of her throat. Her voice held longing. Desire. Wonder.

      “It can,” he whispered as he moved lower to kiss her shoulder. “It is.”

      Then he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on anything except the feel of her body, smooth, pale and ripe beneath the terry-cloth robe. He inhaled her sweet flowery scent, knowing it had imprinted itself on his brain and he’d never be able to sit in a rose garden without thinking of her for as long as he lived.

      A little hitch of a moan emerged from the back of her throat when he slipped his hand under the robe to find the curve of her breast. She arched into him, offering herself, crying out her pleasure as he teased her pebbled flesh with his fingers.

      Somehow their robes slipped open until they hung from their shoulders. Not shrugged off, but covering nothing. Skin met skin. The hair on his chest rubbed her pert nipples, seducing him further. Unable to resist, he bent over to nibble gently on the curve of her flesh before taking the taut tip into his mouth. She cried out, buried her hands in his hair and leaned toward him.

      Her thighs parted slightly, and Nate groaned as he became aware of a deeper scent, an earthier essence of their combined arousal. His body responded, instinctively driving toward