LITMIR.BIZ

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Morris held her stomach and breathed out over a relieved smile. ‘Well, that was quick!’

      ‘Happens like that sometimes,’ Roxy said, slipping Nate a ‘you owe me’ look.

      A call from the dressing room. ‘Can someone help with this?’

      Picking up her skirts, Roxy went to hurry off but Mrs Morris put up a hand.

      ‘I’ll help Violet. You see to your other matter.’

      Mrs Morris rushed away while, sheepish, Nate tugged his ear. ‘Sorry about the Emma thing.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have lied. I in no way condone it.’ Roxy’s expression lightened a smidge. ‘But I do appreciate you trying to help. I didn’t need to embarrass you.’

      As he’d embarrassed her that night?

      But she didn’t look half as ticked off as she had a moment ago. In fact, her eyes were almost smiling, somehow reaching out. And he liked the positive change. Liked it way too much.

      Nate cleared his throat and hauled himself back. ‘We’ll need to see each other again. To discuss the Marla-Greg plan,’ he clarified quickly.

      ‘I’ll give you my email address.’ She cut across the counter and slipped a business card from a holder. ‘Why don’t you send over your ideas for Greg and Marla? I’ll be with Violet for a while yet hopefully.’

      ‘I’d rather toss around ideas face to face.’

      ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be free.’

      ‘I could hang around. Help out some more. Maybe do some zip repairs.’ His weak smile faded and he tucked in his chin. ‘I really am sorry about that.’

      She tried to hold her scowl. ‘Guess you can’t help if you’re too strong for your own good.’

      ‘I should have taken more time.’ Thought ahead.

      Hell, maybe he shouldn’t have come at all. But he believed in Greg and couldn’t abandon him. He believed in their business too, and he definitely wouldn’t abandon that. There seemed no other way around this bind, and to pull this make-up plan off he needed help. He needed Roxy.

      Looking radiant beneath the lights, she offered over the card, but Nate found his attention drawn instead to the side of her throat where a tiny pulse popped. Strange, but at this moment he seemed to feel that heartbeat as well as he felt his own. Steady. Deep.

      Hot.

      When she tipped closer, still offering the card, Nate extended a hand and accepted. He hadn’t meant for his fingers to linger, to stretch that bit further and brush over hers. And in that instant he saw the pulse in her throat beat faster and her gaze grow heavy while his dropped to her glossy parted lips.

      Time and again, he’d wondered what would’ve happened if he’d stayed that night six months ago. What principle of physics decreed that he would share his father’s fate, as well as his grandfather’s, and back on down the line? But as he continued to drink in Roxy’s curious gaze the world fell away and a series of snapshots flashed through his mind…

      His parents on their wedding day, two months after they’d met. His grandfather and grandmother in tails and lacy veil six weeks on the heels of a first date. If ever he mentioned the myth, his father would simply shrug. When a Sparks man found the right woman—the one who left his senses reeling and blood crashing like giant rollers on a shore—nothing else mattered. He might as well surrender. The toll of wedding bells was imminent. Marriage and domesticity a foregone. So, it would seem, was lack of personal growth and motivation for building security for one’s future.

      After marrying, his father had given up his dream of finishing medical school and becoming a surgeon. Instead he’d taken a job as a hospital wardsman, which meant less income to support the five kids that came along but more time to spend with his beloved wife, the only thing in his life that seemed to matter. Not always as romantic as it might sound.

      Nate couldn’t forget the weeks his mother had spent convalescing after a car accident when he was twelve. The children had needed leadership, strength, hope. Instead, their father had stopped eating, stopped communicating. He’d all but pined away for love. Or the time his father had had the chance to return to his education but had decided to support his wife’s dream of becoming a renowned painter when, hell, they could barely afford to feed themselves, let alone buy art materials and exhibition space.

      Similar stories of Sparks men and their women had survived … hasty marriages followed by a lifetime of Byronic devotion. Was it genetics or a curse? Of course it could all be coincidence.

      It was only when Nate realized his other palm had curled around the satin cinching her waist—when Roxy trembled and his head dropped deliberately over hers—that he knew the truth.

      Coincidence had nothing to do with it.

      He should have run while he could.

      CHAPTER TWO

      WHEN his throat made a gravelled wanting sound that resonated like beautiful bass chords through Roxy’s bones, memories of the dreams that had tormented her these past months wrapped around her like a run of steamy veils. A heartbeat later, his mouth captured hers and inhibitions concerning Nate Sparks and his dubious affections spread their powerful wings and flew far away.

      In the smoky recesses of her mind she understood she’d submitted without a whimper of protest. More so, she was aware of her breasts, suddenly so full and sensitive, rubbing against the front of his business shirt … against the hard broad plateau of his chest. After all her talk, after the way he’d escaped that night, she ought to be ashamed by her surrender now. She should be horrified.

      She was anything but.

      The magic of his kiss was still as strong. In fact, the pleasure he stirred up within her had only grown. The verdict was back, approved, stamped and sealed. Their lips were a perfect fit, and the desire pulsing through her veins was a better than fair indicator that their bodies would join just as well.

      She focused on individual sensations but absorbed them all at once … the graze of his jaw, the drugging pull of his scent, the mesmerizing way he seemed to consume her. The sensations were so pure, it was nothing short of sweet torture. Then his palms ironed up and over the curve of her back, pressing her that much closer, and Roxy dissolved even more.

      No man could compete with the depth of longing Nate Sparks had brought out in her. Ridiculous as it might seem, she was helpless to deny it. She wanted him to make love to her—take her. After one craze-filled moment, she wanted that so completely, she couldn’t remember a time when anything had mattered more.

      Of course, something did.

      His kiss shifted then lightened so that rather than covering, his mouth was now brushing hers. On a dreamy smile, she held his bristled jaw and murmured, soft and sexy against the bow of his lower lip, ‘Gotcha.’

      Nate stiffened. His eyes flew open, enlarged pupils shrank, then he jumped back as if someone had rammed his stomach with a stick. His lips pressed together while he drove a hand over his scalp, leaving usually neatly groomed hair nicely dishevelled.

      Roxy’s smile widened.

      Damn, it felt good to be right.

      ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he rasped.

      Satisfied, she slapped her hands as if removing grit. ‘Proving something.’

      ‘Proving what?’

      ‘That the world didn’t end.’

      Nate’s face thundered and his jaw clenched doubly tight.

      But then the fury and shock cleared, the tension locking his stance visibly eased and his eyes took on the gleam of a wry smile. All in all, he looked rather pleased with himself.

      ‘You are right,’

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