Kim had to remind herself that neither of the women had grown up in Edilean surrounded by what seemed to be thousands of relatives. Joce and Gemma had come from small families where they didn’t know their aunts and uncles, much less their fourth and fifth cousins. Between this lack and their shared love of history, the two women were fiendish at finding out everything about everyone—and as far back as they could go.
“Why me?” Kim had asked when she’d been invited to Joce’s house for lunch. She lived in the big old Edilean Manor, the place Kim had so hated as a child. Joce had done a lot with it, and it was beautiful now, but Kim wouldn’t have taken the house if it were given to her. She much preferred her one-story newer house with its big windows, and floors that didn’t creak with age.
In answer to her question, Gemma had put her hand on her growing belly and Joce had glanced at all the toys around them. She had toddler twins.
Kim grimaced. “If I get pregnant in the next two weeks can I get out of this?”
“No!” Joce and Gemma said in unison.
Joce had done everything. She’d made the reservation at the B&B in Janes Creek and she’d prepared a portfolio with papers that told all that they knew about Clarissa Aldredge, the ancestor she was to search for information about.
Gemma had written a veritable treatise of where Kim should look for the information they sought. Kim glanced at it, saw “cemeteries” at the top, and closed the folder. She didn’t understand why those two women liked doing this.
Kim had been almost grateful when Dave invited himself along. He didn’t seem interested in looking for dead ancestors, but at least he’d be someone to share meals with.
When Carla started giggling and talking about the weekend and saying that she had put a ring in the safe before closing time, it didn’t take much for Kim to figure out what was going on. Just the weekend before, Dave had admired the ring and made a joke about it exactly fitting Kim. His eyes had said the rest of it.
But that had all changed. Just a few days ago Travis . . . Maxwell—she wasn’t used to the name—had shown up and turned Kim’s life upside down.
“But that’s over now,” she said as she pulled into the Sweet River B&B. It was 2:00 P.M. and the parking lot was full of cars bearing plates from the Northeast. She hadn’t seen the town but had assumed it was about the size of Edilean. Maybe they were having some local event and that’s why they were so full.
She got her bag out of the back, put the portfolio under her arm, and went inside. It was an old house that had been converted into some semblance of a hotel. She could hear voices in the back but saw no one. She thought she should get her camera out and photograph the interior for Joce and Gemma, as she figured they’d like the place. There were carvings everywhere, where the ceiling joined the walls, on the stair posts, and on an enormous cabinet against the wall. She was sure there were people who would love the house, but to her it was dark and gloomy.
“Just like me,” she said aloud, then turned at a sound.
“You must be Miss Aldredge,” a young woman said. She was blonde and thin and pretty, and was looking at Kim as though she’d been waiting for her.
“Yes, I’m Kim. I’m early, but is my room ready?”
“Of course,” she said. “I mean it is now, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
Kim got out her credit card but the girl wouldn’t take it.
“Everything has been taken care of,” she said. “Meals, extras, it’s all been paid for in advance.”
Luke, Kim thought. Her rich writer-cousin, Joce’s husband, was footing the bill. “All right,” Kim said and did her best to smile but she couldn’t quite make it.
“You’re on the top floor,” the girl said, then picked up Kim’s bag and went up the stairs.
The room was lovely. Large and airy and done in peach and green florals, with striped curtains at the tall windows. Had Kim been in a better mood, she would have been more appreciative.
Kim started to tip the girl but she refused and minutes later Kim was alone.
She flopped down in a chair. Now what? she wondered. Unpack then go look at cemeteries?
“What a fun life I lead,” she muttered.
She knew she was indulging in self-pity. Every self-help book said she needed to look at the positive, not the negative. But at the moment all she could think was that she had lost two men in one day.
Jewelry! she thought. Think about jewelry. But then she remembered the necklace she’d made for Travis so long ago. He’d said he still had it.
That thought made her realize that she’d never see him again. Why was it that when you asked a man to do something like stop driving so fast that he paid no attention to you? You could tell him a hundred times and he’d still “forget.” But tell him one time to go away and never come back and he obeyed absolutely. No second chances. No reminders needed.
Kim told herself to get a grip. The two men she’d lost weren’t worth all this angst. Dave was . . . She didn’t know how to describe him. In fact, she could hardly remember him. In less than a week, Travis had taken over her mind.
“But not my body,” she said as she heaved herself up out of the chair. What she needed to do was to “bury herself in work,” that phrase she read so often in books.
That was easy to do when you worked in an office. The other people, the noise, would distract a person. But Kim’s job was creating. She did it alone, just her and a piece of clay or wax, or paper and pen. There were no other people to help put her mind on something other than what she’d lost. No boss telling her he wanted the report done now so she was forced to think of something else.
Kim looked at the wall in front of her and saw three big white doors. She assumed one was a closet and one led to a bathroom, but what was the other one?
“Lady or the tiger?” she murmured as she reached for the middle door and turned the knob.
It was a door into an adjoining room that was just as big and beautiful as her room. Standing there, at the end of a four-poster bed, was Travis. He had on a pair of sweatpants that hung down low on his hips, his beautiful upper body nude. Muscles played under his golden skin, richly tanned and glowing with warmth.
Kim stood there, frozen in place, staring at him. In some deep recess inside her she still had a mind, could still think rationally. If Travis was here it meant he had again manipulated her and her life to suit himself.
But those thoughts were at the bottom of a very deep well. Right now all Kim could do was feel. Every molecule in her body was alive, vibrating, pulsating with her want, her need of this man.
Travis didn’t say a word, just turned toward her and opened his arms.
Kim ran to him, her arms going around his neck, her mouth on his. His kiss was hungry, as ravenous as she was for him. His lips were on hers, hard, searching, first on her mouth, then her cheeks, her neck.
Kim put her head back and let his hands and lips take what they wanted.
Her clothes came off. She didn’t know how. She didn’t feel buttons being undone, heard no fabric tearing. One minute she was dressed and the next she wasn’t.
She laughed as Travis picked her up and flung her on the end of the bed. Covers and pillows billowed out around her and she laughed again. This wasn’t polite, respectful sex but pure, raw passion.
Travis stood over her, looking down at her nude form for a moment, then he gave a grin that was so devilish, so wicked, that Kim fell back on the bed and opened her arms to him.
He picked her up with one arm around her shoulders, the other entwined in her hair, and pulled her head back to give him access to her face.
When he put his mouth on hers it was with all the passion he felt.
His sweatpants fell to the floor and she wasn’t surprised to feel that he had nothing on under them. Her hands went down his back over the hills and valleys of his muscles. She curved out over the firm set of his buttocks, then down his thighs. His mouth was on he
rs, his kiss deepening, becoming more urgent with every second.
Kim’s hands went to his thighs, then up to put them on the male center of him. He was rampant with desire for her, his maleness strong, hard, big. She felt her body melting with wanting him to take her. She felt like she’d been waiting for him for most of her life.
When Travis began kissing her neck, she leaned back, meaning to lie on the bed, to open herself to him.
But Travis didn’t let her lie back. As though she weighed nothing at all, he picked her up with one arm, his other one pulling her legs around his waist.
With perfect aim he set her down on his manhood. He slid in easily.
“A perfect fit,” she murmured.
“Did you ever doubt that we would be?” he said into her neck.
He held her to him and she loved that her full weight was on him, that she was touching only him. His hands, his big, strong hands, were clasped onto her bottom and raised and lowered her.
Kim let her head go back, let him move her slowly, deeply, the long strokes filling her as no man ever had before.
When she thought she was about to explode, he fell with her onto the bed. He pulled her up toward the headboard, never breaking the contact between them, as his strokes became more urgent, faster.
Kim wanted to scream. She’d never before felt this intensity, this sensation that her mind, her body, her very soul was being touched by this man.
When she came, she wrapped her legs around his waist so tight she thought she might cut him in half. But Travis was feeling his own climax and his shudders went through both of them.
He collapsed onto the bed beside her and pulled her close into his arms. Kim put her thigh over his, feeling the dampness of him. His body felt so strange but at the same time so familiar. He was the boy she knew so well, and the man she didn’t know at all.
“What do you want to know about me?” he asked softly, his fingers in her hair, his palm against her cheek.
“What did you—?” she began, but cut herself off. Did she really want to lie in his arms and talk about his father? Did she want to hear more about his isolated childhood? Or should she be one of those girls who demanded that a man tell her about his past sexual exploits? In other words, did she want to lie beside him and ask about the beautiful Leslie?
“Kim,” he said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ll confess how I rented out this whole place because I couldn’t bear to think of you here with another man. How I got Borman to tell me what he was up to. How I—”
Kim leaned over and kissed him, her breasts touching his chest. “Do you know anything about research?”
“I know everything about it,” he said solemnly. “When I want to know about something I call Penny and tell her to do it. She can research anything.”
“Oh!” Kim said, rolling off him and putting the back of her hand to her forehead. “How do I deal with someone so spoiled?”
Travis turned on his side toward her and ran his hands over her breasts. “Penny is a necessity. She frees me so I can spend all my time masterminding my dad’s evil operations.” Bending, he put his mouth on the pink tip of her breast. “You are as pretty as wild roses in the morning. Pink and white against the mahogany of your hair. I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than you.”
What he said, the way he said it, took her breath away. But at the same time there were images of another woman in her head. “That’s not what my brother says about you and . . . and the others.” Her tone was light but she was serious.
“Your brother? You mean the guy who stands in the middle of a racecourse holding a terrified donkey?”
The image made her laugh—and it made her brother sound too dumb to know anything.
Travis began to nuzzle her neck. She could feel his whiskers on her skin; she could smell the maleness of him. Closing her eyes, she let her senses take over.
“I love to hear you laugh,” he whispered as his lips traveled down her shoulder. “When we were children I knew I’d never seen anyone as happy as you.” His mouth went across her collarbone as his hand came up to her breasts. He lifted his head to look at her. “Your love of life, what I learned from you, has sustained me through the years.”
She started to ask him why he hadn’t contacted her when she was in college, but Travis’s mouth descended on hers and she forgot her question.
His hands explored her body, running over her legs, between them. When he touched the soft center of her, she gasped. Gently, he caressed her and she closed her eyes, giving herself over to the sensation of him, to the pleasure of his touch.
Slowly, he moved on top of her. The weight of him felt wonderful, reminding her of his maleness.
He entered her slowly, filling her, and his strokes were long and deep. He took his time as he watched her, smiling as he saw the pleasure on her face.
It was minutes before Kim’s eyes opened and she looked at him in surprise. She could feel the waves in her beginning to rise higher and higher. She’d never felt this way before, never . . . “Travis,” she whispered.
“I’m here, baby,” he said, then held her as he flipped onto his back, with her straddling him. His hands were on her hips.
Kim grabbed his shoulders, her fingertips biting into him as she rose and lowered on him, their bodies coming together with the force of a tidal wave.
When she felt herself building until she couldn’t take any more, he pushed her down to the bed, her thighs around his hips, and came into her with a force to match hers.
He fell against her, weak, sated—and loving. His arms held her to him as though he was afraid she’d disappear.
For a moment she thought he’d fallen asleep but when she moved her foot, he loosened his arm.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Far from it,” she said.
Travis moved his upper body half off her, put his head on his hand, and looked at her. “So what do you want to do?”
“Ask you questions about your past girlfriends,” she said with a straight face.
She was rewarded with a split second’s look of terror before he smiled.
“You’re going to punish me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said as she reached up to touch his hair. Since the first night he’d appeared in the moonlight at Jecca’s wedding, she’d wanted to touch him. “I’m going to make you regret lying to me.”
“I didn’t really lie.”
“Isn’t there a law about evading being as bad as flat-out lying?”
“What would I know about the law?” he said, his eyes twinkling. Turning, he put his hands behind his head and looked up at the canopy. When Kim started to move away he pulled her back. Her head exactly fit in the curve of his shoulder. Her hand ran over the light hair on his chest.
“Did you look around this place?” he asked.
She was so distracted by his skin that she didn’t at first know what he meant. She lifted on one arm and looked at his chest. “What are all these scars from?” There were three on his ribs, one across the side of his stomach.
“Stunt work,” he said and didn’t seem to be interested in saying any more. “This town.”
“What about it?”
He rolled over to look down at her. “Have you seen this little town?”
She lifted a bit for him to kiss her and he did. “No,” she said at last.
He lay back down beside her.
When he said nothing else, she looked at him. “Was that a hint about something?”
“Didn’t you come here for a reason? Other than to marry some lowlife loser, that is.”
“I wouldn’t have—” She wasn’t going to let him bait her into an argument. “Good thing you bought him out for me, isn’t it? Are you going to learn to cook so you can run your new catering company?”
“I’m going to make Russell a gift of the whole business.”
“For having only recently met, you two are certainly chummy,” Kim said.
“S
eeing me miserable seems to delight him.”
“Why were you unhappy?” she asked before she remembered.
Travis looked at her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you try to make me feel sorry for you I’ll start asking you why you came to my art shows but didn’t make yourself known.”
For a moment Travis looked affronted, but then he gave a one-sided grin. “Sounds like we’re even. You think there’s any food in this room?”
“If not, you can buy the hotel and use your own catering company. Set up a Maxwell Industries right here in Janes Creek.”
Travis shook his head. “You and my father are going to get along well. In fact, he might be a little afraid of you.”
“Funny!” Kim said, but she was pleased by his words because he was saying that he was going to introduce her to his father. Maybe even his mother. Again.
When Travis rolled off the bed and stood up, Kim put her hands behind her head and watched him. She had pulled the bedspread over her and it was nice—erotic even—to be covered but to see him in the nude.
All those sports he did had given him a truly beautiful body, with muscles rippling under his skin. There were scars here and there, but they only added to the very male beauty of him.
“Do I pass?” Travis asked, his voice husky as he looked down at her.
“Yes,” she said as she smiled up at him.
Smiling back, he pulled on his discarded sweatpants. He walked around, looking at things, then went into her room. He returned with the big portfolio Gemma had made for her.
“What’s this?”
“The real reason I’m here.”
“Mind if I . . . ?”
“Sure, look all you want. I haven’t read any of it.”
As Kim watched Travis stretch out beside her and begin to read the paper, she thought how little she knew about him. On the other hand, maybe she knew everything about him. The man who had scars from doing dangerous stunts was the same boy who learned to ride a bike and an hour later was doing wheelies. The boy who sat in a tree and read about Alice and the Mad Hatter was this man who was giving his full attention to some historical documents.