“Why would I do that?”
She’d learned a great deal from Craig and gave one of the psychologist’s explanations. “Some people are used to being surrounded by turmoil, and whenever it’s absent, they create it themselves.”
He looked puzzled. “You’ve met men who’d rather fight than dance?”
“A few, but I didn’t know them long.”
“They disappointed you?”
“No, I didn’t give them the chance.” She looked up at the house. “This is a wonderfully strange home, isn’t it?”
He moved close. “Not everyone admires Gaudí.”
“I do. No one has ever seen the world the way he did.”
He leaned down to slide a curl off her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “How do you see the world?”
With him standing so close, her thoughts were on him rather than philosophy. “I don’t know. That’s one of the reasons I came here, to make sense of everything.”
“In a week?”
“Why not? Maybe a week is enough, or it could take me a lifetime.”
“Then you needn’t do it all tonight. Let’s go on down to the water. It’s a shame everyone can’t live on the edge of the sea.”
“Some people prefer the mountains.”
“Do you?”
His frequent questions surprised her. Most men talked only about themselves. He was too smart to do so, apparently, but she still didn’t trust him. Unused to being a celebrity’s daughter, she was beginning to sympathize with public figures’ children and how difficult their lives truly must be. They’d never know who were truly their friends or where the answer to an innocent question might appear for the world to see or read.
“I could watch the sea all day,” she confided softly. “Mountains provide lovely scenery and views, but the sea’s never static.”
“I’d rather dance.” He raised her hand to turn her in a slow twirl. “It’s difficult to dance in sand, though.”
She laughed with him. While she never wanted to see it, she bet his grace served him well in the bullring. When he pulled her close, she moved easily into his arms. His kiss was another light brush across her lips, tender and sweet, leaving her with an unfamiliar ache for more. She wondered if he were closer to being a gentle soul rather than a swaggering matador. Regardless, he was a very desirable man. She grabbed hold of his shirt and pulled him back.
“Kiss me like you mean it.” She licked his lower lip, and he tightened his grasp on her waist to lift her off the sandy patio. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on. She flicked her tongue over his and waited for him to make the kiss his own. He was still slow and sweet, but he lingered now, and his affection had the intoxicating allure of the wine they’re shared and took her breath away.
The sweep of Santos’s headlights startled them both. “I’m sorry,” he murmured and set her down.
Love is always in the last place you’d think to look.
Fugitive Heart
© 2013 Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon
Between her steady waitressing job and less-steady gigs designing websites, Ames Jensen is scraping together enough money to buy the old farmhouse that holds most of her most treasured childhood memories.
When a complete stranger buys it right out from under her nose, she stomps over for a neighborly visit, prepared to dislike him on sight. Yet even after he nearly brains her with a shovel, she finds herself more attracted than alarmed.
Falsely implicated for stealing from the Esposito crime family, Nick Ross is frantically in search of his supposed accomplice, Elliot Jensen, or at least the money and information the man took. Elliot’s hometown seems the perfect place to look—and the last place the Espositos will look for him.
Elliot’s cute, vivacious sister is an unexpected mother lode of clues—and smoking hot distraction. But when she does a little digging of her own, the truth threatens to send their love—and their lives—down in the crossfire.
Warning: Contains a secretive man with a shady past and a woman from a small town where no one can keep a secret. If they fall in love, sneak a kiss or two, and have a little hot sex in a shabby farm house, well, it’s nobody’s business but their own.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Fugitive Heart: