Dark brown eyes so large they only just fit into the arc of his eyebrows stared down at her and she shivered. His eyelashes were indecently long and dark for a man, and he should be made illegal for exploiting their lost little boy charm and making her insides turn to jelly. And then he kissed her, long and slow, and there was nothing she could do to resist him. Firm lips melted to soft and longing, tongue gently probing as he ran his hands up the sleek silk of her jacket, and she moaned a little with the delicious pleasure of being wanted by a man who had women falling at his feet on a minute-by-minute basis.
She broke the kiss, but didn’t pull away—she wanted to savor his minty breath feathering her mouth and the subtle spicy fragrance that clung to his skin. “You have scarlet lipstick on your face now.”
“And you think that bothers me?” He kissed her lightly on the lips again. “See? Don’t care one little bit.”
“We’ll never make it to the gallery at this rate.” She reluctantly eased out of his embrace, not wanting it to end, but knowing that every time his kissed her, another piece of her heart and soul became his to keep forever. She couldn’t let him take too much and still expect to survive when all this was over. “I’ll need a couple of minutes to freshen up and then we should go.”
Matt looked around the apartment and fiddled with the buttons on his jacket cuff. “I like it here. Can I stay here tonight?”
His bald request rendered her speechless for a second before saying, “In my apartment?”
“Yeah, why not? I get to feed Princess and I promise to clean up both our poop.”
“I really don’t think my place will cut it with you. It’s a whole lot more basic than anything you’re used to. Except for that place over the fried chicken joint in Sanibel, of course.”
“Exactly. I liked it there, too. And it was also where you lost your panties for the first time.”
“It was a complete dump.”
“So is that a no? Get lost, Matt? Your sister clearly isn’t here right now, it’s way too clean from what you’ve told me about her, so you can’t use that as an excuse.”
“Well spotted, Sherlock. My sister’s had a remarkable reunion with the baby’s father. It won’t last two minutes of course, but I don’t have to worry about her for now.”
“Yet, you’ll be here with open arms when she decides she needs to treat this place like a hotel again?”
That was harsh, even if he did have a point. “She’s my sister. What else am I supposed to do? You can’t choose your family.”
“You can’t choose your family, but you can choose how you deal with them. Sounds to me like she takes full advantage of your sweet nature.”
“Sweet nature, my eye.” She saw him looking at a pile of unopened mail and hoped he wasn’t observant enough to notice that they were mostly reminder bills that needed paying. “Anyway, my relatives are none of your business, and I don’t think you staying here would be a good idea. The neighbors gossip like crazy.”
He shrugged. “Then we can go someplace else, anywhere you like.”
“You’re not very subtle.” She glanced at him and then looked away. “Aspen is just out of surgery and I’m scared to leave her on her own right now.”
Matt strode across the room to her bookshelf, plucked a cookbook off the shelf, and began to flick through the pages. “You know Super? The lady who stayed really calm when you did the Japanese yen thing with all my money?”
“I’d bet you fifty dollars it wasn’t all of your money.” She watched him as he stared down at an open page and rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “I still find it hard to believe I made such a huge mistake. If this was a movie and I was watching it, I’d be thinking the male protagonist set me up. In fact, the more I think about it—”
He snapped the book shut and the abruptness of it made her start. “She had cats for years, Super, that is. Her husband was a breeder. Siamese seal point, I think. Anyway she misses the noise and hassle of having a vocal cat around, and let’s face it, Aspen is quite a talker when she gets going, so she said she’d cat sit anytime.” His eyebrows rose questioningly, or he was feigning an absurd amount of innocence with those big brown eyes of his. “They never had kids,” he added quietly.
“I never knew you had such a deep and caring nature,” she said suspiciously. “Super seems like a tough cookie to me and, as you said to me back at the cabin, Aspen is my cat, so therefore my problem. I find your interest unnerving, almost as if—”
He shook his head. “It’s my fault I’m taking her mommy out on the town tonight and we might be back late.”
“We’ll be back before midnight,” she said firmly. “Or somebody will be turning into a pumpkin, a pumpkin ready to be carved up. And that pumpkin will be you.”
…
“Are you okay?” Matt studied Piper’s pale face as she took his hand and stepped down from the sleek, black helicopter. “There were a few gusts up there, but we were completely safe.”
“I thought you were kidding about taking a chopper for events outside Passion Creek. You could have warned me before we turned up at the helipad.” Her fingers were cold and trembling wrapped inside his and he gripped them a little tighter when she tried to pull free. “I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”
“I didn’t picture you as a nervous flyer. You made it to and from Florida on your own.”
“Flying by the seat of your pants in a helicopter is a different experience from being squeezed into a big tin can for tourists, that’s for sure. But I’m fine now.”
He held on tight to her hand in spite of her trying to wiggle it free. “Good. It always makes a statement arriving by helicopter.”
“Hm, something along the lines of ‘Look out, I’m considerably richer than you’?”
“Yes, I like that. I’ll make sure to get that remark into the conversation every chance I get this evening.”
She giggled and, astonishingly, his heart skipped as she squeezed his hand. “I so dare you to do that.”
“Only to complete jerks, though,” he whispered as they made their way toward a beckoning meet and greet official across the building’s rooftop. “But there will be plenty of those here tonight.”
Once inside the building, Piper shook her long, glorious mane of hair free of the snowflakes that were beginning to fall again outside. She reminded him of a modern day ice queen dressed head to toe in white like that, striking, even scary if you were the kind of guy who was easily intimidated. It wasn’t very often a woman could teach him new tricks or take him by complete surprise, but Piper was the mistress of that. He had no idea what to expect from her in a social situation like this. She might be a complete liability, but he didn’t care.