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  Chapter Sixteen

  *

  Oh my god. Ohmigod. Oh. My. Gawd.

  He's kissing me. He's really kissing me, pulling me in against him, holding me up with his arms around me, and he's kissing me! Sanford Welles, high school bad boy, reclusive millionaire, Mister Hard and Stony himself, is KISSING ME.

  I'd pinch myself to make sure that this is real, but if it isn't, I don't want to know.

  Heck, it's probably not real. I probably took a tumble when we left the wine bar, too drunk, and whacked my head on the sidewalk when I landed. This was all a hallucination, and the two of us would fall in love and get married and have two and a half kids and adopt ten cats and then after we'd retired and were sitting on the front porch of our home together, I'd close my eyes for a moment and then wake up and find that I was in a hospital bed and I'd been in a coma for ten years and it had all been just a dream.

  Surreptitiously, I reached down and pinched at a bit of flesh.

  "Ow. What was that for?"

  Oh, crap. I'd pinched Sanford, not myself. Admittedly, with him holding me closely like this, it was tough for me to tell if I was touching him or myself. He pulled his lips back from mine, but didn't let go of me, which made a little spark shoot up and down my spine when I realized that he didn't want to let go.

  "I just wanted to see if I was dreaming," I said lamely.

  "And?"

  "I don't think that I am." Something occurred to me, and I narrowed my eyes up at this tall, strong, sexy man. "Hey, you interrupted me! You did it again! I was in the middle of saying something, and then you just leaned in-"

  "I didn't interrupt," he interrupted. "I leaned in, and you stopped talking. And then I kissed you. Separate events."

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he might have a point. I couldn't remember exactly what happened before he kissed me. The kiss kind of scrambled everything else that wasn't related to the feel of his strong lips on mine, the way he tasted so good, just slightly spicy, in a way that made me want more-

  "You interrupted me there, though," i said, aware that this wasn't nearly as good of a retort as I wanted.

  He shrugged. "You pinched me. I'd call it even."

  A moment later, I had to fight back a little sigh as his hand released me, and I dropped back down onto the balls of my feet. Of course, I shouldn't be kissing Sanford. He was the one paying me to work for him. I shouldn't have let him kiss me the first time, either. I ought to have let him walk me home, and then said "thank you" and gone right into my house.

  But I really, really wanted to kiss him again.

  Looking up at him, for just a second, I could have sworn that I saw that same desire mirrored in his eyes. But then, like a garage door dropping down, it clicked off, and he was suddenly all stiff formality once again.

  "I should go back," he said, and his voice was formal, too. That warmth that had infused his voice all ebbed away, and he was once again just Mister Hard and Stony - and not in the good way, either. "I'm sorry about this. It was a breach of our relationship, and it shouldn't have happened."

  He was sorry that he kissed me? Wow, I'd been on some bad first dates before, but never with someone who turned regretful that quickly! "You're sorry?" I echoed back. Was it really that bad to him? He hadn't seemed to be complaining when he held me close!

  "Yes." He nodded. "And I should go, before anything else happens that could cause... trouble."

  What else was he thinking of doing? For just a moment, even though it was exactly the wrong thing to consider, my mind thrilled with possibilities, pictures and flashes of the two of us together. Him sweeping me up into his arms, carrying me into my cottage, upstairs to the bedroom - or heck, maybe not even making it there, choosing the couch in my little living room instead, putting me down and then climbing on top of me as he kissed me and ran his hands down over me, peeling our clothes away...

  No, no, not what I wanted to be imagining. I shook my head to clear it, but Sanford saw the motion and must have misinterpreted it. He nodded, even more stiffly than before, and took a step back, down off of my front stoop.

  "Have a good night, Elaine," he said to me as he retreated. "You may resume work on the furniture of the second floor tomorrow, if you're ready to tackle the next part of the job."

  He didn't even wait for me to respond. Sanford just turned on his heel and headed away, down the sidewalk and into the darkness.

  For a minute, I gazed after him, but then decided that I probably shouldn't spend all night standing out on my own front stoop. Still sending a few more glances over my shoulder, just in case Sanford decided to come back for some reason, maybe because he really did want to kiss me again, I fumbled my keys out of my purse and slid them into the door.

  When I opened the front door, stepping into my little cottage, Whiskers was immediately there, weaving in between my legs and purring up at me. "Hey, buddy," I said to him, reaching down and giving him a little rub on his back as he pushed against me, nearly knocking me off balance with his weight.

  I closed the door before Whiskers could sneak out, wandered into the kitchen, and put a kettle of water on the stove to make some tea. I really ought to get to bed, I knew, but my head still buzzed with thoughts and I didn't feel tired in the slightest.

  As the water started to heat up, I went back to my living room and plopped down on my couch, staring ahead at the blank screen of my powered-off television. I replayed the events of the night, focusing on these last few minutes, when my whole life seemed to turn itself upside down.

  Sanford kissed me. He'd walked me back, but instead of leaving, he'd just stood there, looking down at me as I teased him. I assumed that he was merely growing more and more annoyed with me - but did he choose to kiss me in an act of misguided revenge? Did he think that he'd drive me crazy by kissing me?

  It had been quite a good kiss, I had to admit. I was a bit rusty on my kissing skills, but that certainly had been a hell of a good one, as far as I could remember.

  Whiskers wandered into the living room, looked up at me, blinked his eyes a couple times, and then hopped up onto the cushions at the other end of the couch. I stretched out a hand towards him, which he ignored as he settled down to lay on top of the cushions and gaze ahead at the turned-off television.

  "What do you think, Admiral?" I asked him. "You probably watched the whole thing from that window - why did my boss kiss me? Is he actually interested in me, or was he just distracted and wanted to shut me up?"

  Whiskers looked over at me, and then slowly extended one of his legs up into the air. I groaned and pulled my eyes away as he began to run his tongue over his fur, licking himself in a manner that was both horrifyingly suggestive and mildly embarrassing to watch, in part because he showed admirable flexibility.

  "Fat lot of help you are," I told him, and then got up to make my tea.

  Cup of steaming water in my hands, the tea bag floating on the surface and bobbing up and down with each step, I climbed up the stairs to my bedroom. Out through my bedroom window, I could see the dark outline of the Winterhearst mansion against the starry sky. No lights were turned on, however, so I had no idea what might be happening inside.

  Was Sanford awake over in the mansion next door to me, thinking about me? Did he want another kiss as well? Or had he already forgotten about feeling my body up against him as he pulled me close, up onto my tiptoes?

  Somehow, despite that mask of stiff formality sliding down over his eyes as soon as he let go of me, I didn't think that he'd yet managed to forget about the whole thing. After all, when he had pressed himself up against me, I'd felt something else, something hard and erect, that promised that he really did have at least some emotion stirring beneath his mask of cool, robotic logic.

  God, what was I doing? I groaned and flopped back in my bed, looking up at the ceiling. Why couldn't I stop thinking about this man? He was hot, sexy, mysterious, and he could be charming when he chose to put on that mask. But I also knew that, most of the time w
hen we weren't out in public, he was cold and withdrawn, not at all interested in flirting or any sort of romance. Hell, we'd been working together for days, and he never made a pass at me!

  Of course, I'd been wearing dirty clothes and covered in dust from his antiques, so I probably wasn't giving off the sexiest impression possible. While when we were out at the wine bar, I'd actually looked somewhat presentable, and we'd been flirting back and forth, and the glasses of wine helped keep the conversation lubricated...

  It was just a one time thing, I finally decided, closing my eyes. All of the circumstances lined up, and for just this one night, I actually had a chance with someone like Sanford, and he was open enough to take that chance. Unless I got him out of that house again, drunk on wine and flirting heavily enough to go for any woman who presented herself to him, it wouldn't happen again.

  And that was okay, I insisted. I was working for him, expecting him to give me a big, fat check at the end of my appraisal of the items in his house. Getting involved with him in anything more than a professional sense would spell potential doom and disaster for my financial lifeline. I needed the check, a lot more than I needed to get romantically entangled with someone as withdrawn and dangerous as Sanford Welles.

  I hadn't felt especially sleepy when I climbed upstairs, but the tea and the darkness was helping to calm me down, and my eyelids felt heavy whenever I blinked. Tomorrow morning, I'd tell him the truth if he asked, I thought to myself as I settled deeper into the soft bed. If he wanted to know about the kiss, I'd tell him that I enjoyed it - but if he didn't say anything, choosing to pretend that it hadn't happened, I'd go along with that lie.

  I felt the foot of my bed twitch a little, and I nearly sat upright before I realized that it was just Whiskers, hopping up to sit on the covers. I felt him curl up at the bottom of my bed beside my feet, a warm, furry lump that pushed down through the comforter, and closed my eyes again.

  At least Whiskers would stay loyal to me, as long as I kept on providing him with cans of cat food. An easy man to charm, and all that I needed.

  With that thought, the sound of my cat's gentle purring drifting into my ears, I slipped away to the land of soft unconsciousness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  *

  My headache wasn't too bad the next morning when I woke up, sunlight streaming in through my window and Whiskers meowing and pawing at my face to encourage his stupid, slow owner to get up and provide him with his morning meal.

  "Yeah, yeah," I grumbled, pushing off the covers. "I'll get you your cat food, you little greedy monster."

  I crawled out of bed, brought Whiskers his can of food (in which he immediately buried his head, making happy little chewing and slurping sounds and completely oblivious to the rest of the world), and warmed myself up a cup of coffee. I remembered all the events of the night before, but in the morning light, they all seemed even more embarrassing.

  I looked out my kitchen window at the mansion next door, but now, even more than work, it represented confronting Sanford, having to deal with this man who kissed me, made my toes curl, and then insisted immediately afterwards on walking away like nothing happened.

  I definitely wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

  So instead, I sat down at my kitchen table and turned on my computer, going through the laborious process of uploading all the digital pictures I'd taken with my camera of the various antiques that needed further research. I organized the pictures into folders for each item, created notes pages, and began searching the internet, looking for the different manufacturers, years, and trying to estimate the approximate worth of each piece.

  Some of the pieces, of course, turned out to be worthless. Even with some of the better known antique brands, there were years where they'd produced huge amounts of furniture, and although depressingly common, those pieces were worth very little. Even just a couple years' difference could mean hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars difference in value.

  Still, I also found plenty of items that were worth putting up for sale, if Sanford decided to do so. Some of the lamps would probably fetch four figures each, and several porcelain pieces appeared similar enough to highly valuable items that I decided that it would be worth my time to send the pictures on to an expert. I rattled off a quick email to an old friend of mine named Howard, who dealt in these sorts of items and knew more about them than I did, attaching some of the better quality photographs to the email.

  After an hour or two, however, I couldn't stand looking at the computer screen any longer, and closed my laptop. I'd been delaying, but I couldn't put off going over to the Winterhearst mansion any longer.

  "Time to face the music," I told Whiskers, who paused in licking his paws for a moment to blink at me.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, not even caring about how the jeans fit quite snugly across my ass, or how the tee shirt had once been white before it received several faded marinara stains. If Sanford wanted to forget about last night ever happening, well, this outfit ought to help him move on, I considered grumpily to myself.

  When I headed downstairs to the door, Whiskers was sitting right beside it, waiting for me almost like a dog. I considered trying to keep him here, but suspected that he'd get his revenge for being left behind by destroying something I cared about. So instead, I held the door for him, giving him a nudge in the ass from my foot when he couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to go outside or not.

  Once outside, his tail swelled up, and he dashed across my yard towards the mansion next door. I paused only long enough to lock my door behind me before following after him.

  Winston greeted me at the door, looking as starched and formal as always. "Good morning, Miss Dean," he greeted me. "Can I get you anything?"

  "You know that I don't say no to your muffins, Winston," I replied, glad at least to see that he wasn't acting normal. Of course, he had no idea what happened between his master and me after he drove us both back home. "And how many times do I have to tell you that you can call me Elaine?"

  "At least one more, Miss Dean," he replied, as always, heading off to fetch me my snack from the kitchen.

  At first, I didn't see any sign of Sanford, and I started to hope that maybe he'd chosen to make himself scarce, not confront me at all about the events of last night. But after heading upstairs, muffin in hand, I found him standing in one of the unused upstairs bedrooms, his arms crossed as he frowned at the dusty interior of the room.

  "Hi," I said indistinctly around a mouthful of muffin.

  He looked over his shoulder at me with a look cool enough to freeze water into ice cubes. "You're late."

  "I was doing research on the downstairs pieces." And totally not trying to put off this awkward moment, no sir. "I think some of those porcelain items might be worth quite a lot, but I sent the pictures on to an expert who knows that stuff better than I do."

  "Fine." He didn't sound interested in the slightest. He just turned back to looking around the room.

  I swallowed the bite of muffin in my mouth and cleared my throat. "You know, we probably should talk about last night-"

  "It wasn't anything that we need to dwell on," he said, interrupting me as usual. "We can just leave it in the past. It doesn't need to impact the work you're doing for me."

  I almost did drop the subject at that, nearly losing my nerve. But after another bite of muffin, I reminded myself that leaving it unresolved would just cause more tension, more awkwardness, and it was better to get it all out now, painful as it might be in the short term.

  "No, I want to know what you were thinking!" I said after I'd finished chewing. "You were having so much fun out with me, and then all of a sudden, this barrier just came down across your eyes, and you shut down. What's going on?"

  Sanford turned to look at me, and I started to retreat back a step, in case he exploded in anger at me. But his face looked conflicted, not angry, and I watched him chew on his lower lip pensively. God, he even made that expression look
sexy.

  "I have a... history with women," he finally said. "I prefer to not get involved with anyone. It tends to be cleaner, overall."

  Well, that answered none of my questions. "And I'm messy?" I asked.

  His eyes dropped down, and I remembered with a pang that I'd chosen a white shirt covered in old tomato sauce stains to wear. Maybe not the best choice, considering the question I'd just asked him. "Look, I just think that you probably don't want to have anything to do with my problems," he finally said, although he didn't sound too sure of his own words.

  My mouth dropped open. He thought that I didn't want anything to do with him? That I was the one trying to move past whatever happened last night and forget it?

  "I'm not- Hey, last night was the most fun I've had with you!" I answered, not even thinking about what I was saying.

  His eyebrows climbed. "What?"

  I took a step towards him as I tried to think about what I wanted to say, how I could express myself. "I mean, last night, you were funny, and charming, and flirty, and it was... well, it was a lot of fun!" I pointed out. "And then that kiss, right on my front step like we were teenagers coming home from prom-"

  Was he blushing at that last remark? Why did the thought of us as teenagers bother him? "Again, I said that I was sorry for that-"

  "I don't want you to be sorry!" I burst out. Oh man. This time, I was the one interrupting him, but I didn't care. "Come on, that was a great kiss, but you can't even own it-"

  "Great?"

  Oh. I'd said that. "Well, yeah," I replied, wondering if I should backtrack a little. But hell, it had been a really good kiss! And now, even with the way that Sanford was chewing his lip a little as he looked down at me, he still seemed strong and powerful and totally like he could sweep me up into his arms and make me crazy with lust if he tried.

  "So you don't want to pretend that last night ended once we got back to the mansion-"