Page 538 of Summer Heat
“There’s no one here.” He didn’t let go, only spread his fingers over her knuckles. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Tamara forced herself to look into his eyes. A mistake. She stood too close, and now she could read the puzzled little hurt, the passion, the yearning that burned in his irises. Irises that up close reminded her of a marble she’d once had, a blue one with floating streaks of amber. There was a whole universe contained in the bright, sharded color.
He lowered his lashes. The tips were bleached golden, and showed clearly against the slash of sunburned cheekbone. His lower lip looked a little burned, too. Vulnerable.
“You know what I mean,” he said, holding her hand in both of his, his index finger restlessly moving over her nails. “If you want to give me the brush-off you could just do it and spare me making a fool of myself like this.”
From this angle, Tamara could see the burnished crown of his head, and she ached to put her hand against the thick hair, ached to feel it on her fingers. She ached to kiss that sunburned lip. “You scare me to death,” she heard herself say. “You’re way out of my league.”
“No, sweetheart,” he said, and finally looked at her again. “You’ve got it backward. I’m the one way out of his league here.”
And then, as if it were a movie, as if there weren’t a dozen people around, he looped a hand around her neck and pulled her down to kiss her.
Caught off balance, Tamara nearly tumbled into him. She caught on his shoulders, trying to steady herself enough to pull away, to somehow extract herself—
But his lips were hot with sunburn, and he hadn’t forgotten anything about kissing in two weeks’ time, and she felt bewitched by the glorious taste of him. He claimed her possessively, hungrily, with such mastery that she forgot why it mattered that he was kissing her here, in a public place, while she was on duty.
There was only Lance, so big and so hungry, smelling of soap and a hint of after-shave and the evocative scent of the pine and sky and night that hung in his thick, clean hair. Against her palms, his shoulders were powerful and broad, and his strong thighs clasped the outside of her legs in an intimate embrace.
She didn’t want to stop kissing him. His mouth was a wildly delicious place, and she wanted to explore all of it, wanted to stay forever clasped in the sinuous dance of their tongues. The more she tasted, the more she wanted to taste, the farther she slipped into the narcotic spell he cast over her senses. He smelled right. He tasted right. He felt right—
She shoved away, ducking her head to hide the shame that flooded through her. “Stop,” she whispered, backing away. She covered her mouth, let her hair fall over her furiously hot face. “I can’t believe—”
“Can’t believe what, Tamara?” he said in a dangerously low voice. “That you want me the way I want you? Can you please tell me exactly what is so wrong about that?”
She yanked her hand away and whirled, taking refuge behind the bar. But once there, she couldn’t remember what to do. It all looked so alien. She chanced a scan around the rest of the room, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one seemed to have noticed—or maybe they just didn’t care—that the bartender was smooching with a customer.
“Tamara,” Lance said. His voice was firm and low. “Stop running away and just face me with it, whatever it is.”
For a moment she resisted. She tried to imagine there was some way out of this tangle of emotion. But there wasn’t. Setting her teeth, she took a deep breath and moved to face him across the bar.
“You want the truth, Lance? This is the truth.” She gestured to encompass the bar. “This is my life. I’m a bartender. You are one of the richest men in the county, maybe even the state. You’re footloose and fancy-free, with no intention of ever settling down, and I’m a single mother with a child to raise.” Once she got going, she couldn’t stop. “I think you’re one of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen, but that’s not enough for me.” She stopped, and rushed on. “I can’t afford you.”
He said nothing for a long space of time, only looked at her with an unreadable opaqueness on his face. Finally he pursed his lips, stood up and dug out a sheaf of bills. With strange control, he placed the bills on the bar, smoothing each one as he counted it. “I’ll leave you alone, then,” he said. “Have a nice life.”
Tamara didn’t know what she had expected. Maybe that he would argue with her, or give her one of those charming smiles and play some silly word game.
She didn’t expect him to just stand up and walk away. And she felt a deep, almost tearing kind of regret at the strange, abruptly controlled movements he made. If he were any other man in the world, she would have said he was trying to cover up hurt feelings. She would have interpreted that faint flush as one of embarrassment. She might have—
“Lance,” she said, helplessly, and stopped.
He looked at her, his beautiful mouth pulled to a tight smile. “Forget it, Tamara. It’s not that important.”
With a lump in her chest, she watched him thrust his arms into his coat as he walked, watched as he stopped to put a hand on Marissa’s back and said something in her ear. Watched Marissa pat his hand and cast a covert look over her shoulder at Tamara.
Watched him open the door and stalk out into the snowy night without a backward glance.
Chapter Thirteen
Lance roamed his faceless apartment for hours, prowling the small, sterile living room with its rented furniture, to the kitchen with its single pot and plastic utensils, into the bedroom where not a single painting or photo broke the white walls. It was a sterile, lifeless place, and tonight it seemed to mock him.
What did Tamara know about rich? Rich didn’t mean a damn thing. She was the rich one, with her warm, fragrant home, with its comfortable chairs and easy grace. With her son laughing, and the smell of dinner cooking and music playing.
And maybe that was the point. Maybe she sensed the sterility of his inner life and wanted no part of it. He stared at his bare walls and knew she’d never live anywhere for more than a week without putting her stamp on it somehow, without finding some way to make it comfortable and cozy and warm.
God, he ached for her. Her smell, her taste, her laughter. Her warmth. Even after the humiliating experience in the bar, he couldn’t stop wanting her. The yearning was vague, unfocused. It centered around having her close to him, holding her small neat body against his chest, in his arms. He just wanted to touch her. Kiss her.
After four hours of pacing, he finally grabbed his coat and headed out into the night. Anything was better than pacing those same three rooms.
