"It changed you." She knew that single moments, both simple and dramatic, could alter courses forever.
"It started to. A boat on the water, and people who were giving me a chance. It wasn't much more complicated than that. It doesn't have to be that much more complicated here. We'll have the kid swing the hammer, put some sweat and effort into building a boat. If it's going to be a Quinn operation, that includes him."
Her smile came quickly, fully, and to his surprise, she patted him on the cheek. "That last part said it all. It's a gamble. I'm not sure if it's the time or the place for one, but… it should be interesting to watch."
"Is that what you're going to do?" He eased forward, nudging her back against the counter. "Watch me?"
"I don't intend to take my eyes off you—on a professional level—until I'm assured that you and your brothers provide Seth with the proper home and guardianship."
"Fair enough." He moved in just a little closer, just a fraction till two well-toned bodies brushed. "And how about on a personal level?"
She weakened enough to let her gaze skim down, linger. His mouth was definitely tempting—dangerous and very close. "Keeping my eyes on you on a personal level isn't a hardship. A mistake, maybe—but not a hardship."
"I always figure if you're going to make a mistake…" He put his hands on the counter, caging her. "Make it a big one. What do you say, Anna?'' He dipped his head a little lower, hovered.
She tried to think, to consider the consequences. But there were times when needs, desire, and lust simply overpowered logic. "Hell," she muttered and, cupping her hand at the back of his neck, dragged his mouth down on hers.
It was exactly as she wanted. Hungry and fierce and mindless. His mouth was hot, and it was hard, and it was almost heathen as he crushed down to devour hers. She gave in to it, gave all to it, a moment's madness where body ruled mind and blood roared over reason.
And the thrill snapped through her like a whip, sharp, painful, and with a quick, shocking burn.
"Christ." His breath was gone, his mind was reeling. Reflexively, his hands dug into the counter before he jerked them away and filled them with her.
Whatever he'd expected, whatever he'd imagined didn't come close to the volcano that had so suddenly erupted in his arms. He dragged a hand through her hair, the wild, curling mass of it, fisted it there, then plundered as if his life depended on it.
"Can't," she managed, but her arms wound around him, banded around him until it seemed his heart wasn't merely thundering against hers but inside hers. Her moan was a rumble of desperate, delirious pleasure that sounded in her throat exactly where his teeth nipped, then scraped, then dug greedily into flesh.
The counter bit into her back, her fingers bit into his hips as she dragged him closer. Oh, God, she wanted contact, friction, more. She found his mouth with hers again, plunged blindly into the next kiss.
Just one more, she promised herself, meeting, matching his reckless demand.
Her scent seduced his senses. Her name was a murmur on his lips, a whisper in his mind. Her body was a glorious banquet melded to his. No woman had ever filled him so quickly, so completely, so utterly to the exclusion of all else.
"Let me." It was a plea, and he'd never in his life begged for a woman. "For God's sake, Anna, let me have you." His hands ran up her legs, those endless thighs. "Now."
She wanted. It would be so easy to take, and be taken. But easy, she knew, was rarely right.
"No. Not now." Regret smothered her even as she lifted her hands to frame his face. For a moment longer, her mouth stayed on his. "Not yet. Not like this."
Her eyes were dark, clouded. He knew enough of a woman's pleasures and his own skills to believe he could make them go blind. "It's perfect like this."
"The timing's wrong, the circumstances. Wait." Someone had to move, she decided. To break that contact. She sidestepped, let out a shaky breath. She closed her eyes, lifted a hand to hold him off. "Well," she managed after another moment, "that was insane."
He took the hand she'd raised, brought it to his lips and nipped his teeth into her forefinger. "Who needs sanity?"
"I do." She nearly managed a genuine smile as she tugged her hand free. "Not that I don't regret that deeply at this moment, but I do need it. Wow." She drew in another long breath, pushed her hands up through her hair. "Cameron. You're every bit as potent as I expected."
"I haven't even started."
The smile widened. "I bet. I just bet." She eased back a little more, picked up her rapidly cooling coffee. "I don't know as that episode's going to make either one of us sleep easier tonight, but it was bound to happen." She angled her head when his eyes narrowed. "What?''
"Most women, especially in your position, would make excuses."
"For what?" She lifted a shoulder and promised herself her system would level again eventually. "That was as much my doing as yours. I wondered what it might be like to get my hands on you from the first time I saw you."
Cam decided he might never be the same again. "I think I'm crazy about you."
"No, you're not." She laughed and handed him his coffee. "You're intrigued, you're attracted, you've got a good healthy case of lust, but those are entirely different matters. And you don't even know me."
"I want to." He let out a short laugh. "And that's a big surprise to me. I don't usually care one way or the other."
"I'm flattered. I'm not sure if that's a tribute to your charm or my own stupidity, but I'm flattered. But—"
"Damn, I knew that was coming."
"But," she repeated and set her cup in the sink. "Seth is my priority. He has to be." The warmth that was both compassion and understanding came into her eyes, and it touched something in him that was buried under that healthy lust. "And he should be yours. I hope I'm around if and when that happens."
"I'm doing everything I can think of."
"I know you are. And you're doing more than most would." She touched his arm briefly, then moved away. "I have a feeling you've got more inside you yet. But…"
"There it is again."
"You'd better go now."
He wanted to stay, even if it was just to stand there and talk to her, to be. "I haven't finished my coffee."
"It's cold. And it's getting late." She glanced toward the window where raindrops ran like tears. "And the rain makes me wonder about things I shouldn't be wondering about."
He winced. "I don't suppose you said that to make me suffer."
"Sure I did." She laughed again and moved to the door, opened it wide to make her point. "If I'm going to, why shouldn't you?"
"Oh, I like you, Anna Spinelli. You're a woman after my own heart."
"You're not interested in a woman going for your heart," she said as he crossed the room. "You want one who's after your body."
"See, we're getting to know each other already."
"Good night." She didn't evade when he pulled her in for another kiss as he walked out the door. Evading would have been a pretense, and she wasn't one to delude herself.
So she met the kiss with teasing heat and honest enthusiasm. Then she shut the door in his face.
And then she leaned back against it weakly.
Potent? That wasn't the half of it. Her pulse was likely to stay on overdrive for hours. Maybe days.
She wished she didn't feel so damn happy about it.
Chapter Seven
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cam was scowling at a basket full of pink socks and Jockey shorts when the phone rang. He knew damn well the socks and underwear had been white—or close to it—when he'd dumped them in the machine. Now they were Easter-egg pink.
Maybe they just looked that way because they were wet.
He pulled them out to stuff them in the dryer, saw the red sock hiding among the pink. And bared his teeth.
Phillip, he vowed, was a dead man.
"Fuck it." He dumped them inside, slapped the dryer on what he hoped was broil and went to answer the phon
e.
He remembered, just in time, to turn down the little portable TV tucked in the corner of the counter. It wasn't as if he was actually watching it, it certainly wasn't that he was paying any attention at all to the passion and betrayals of the late-morning soap opera.
He'd just switched it on for the noise.
"Quinn. What?"
"Hey, Cam. Took some doing to track you down, hoss. Tod Bardette here."
Cam reached into an open bag of Oreos on the counter and took out a handful. "How's it going, Tod?"
"Well, I have to tell you it's going pretty damn good. I've been spending some time anchored off the Great Barrier Reef."
"Nice spot," Cam muttered over a cookie. Then his brows shot up as an impossibly gorgeous woman tumbled into bed with a ridiculously handsome man on the tiny screen across the kitchen.
Maybe there was something to this daytime TV after all.
"It'll do. Heard you kicked ass in the Med a few weeks ago."
A few weeks? Cam thought while he munched on a second cookie. Surely it had been a few years ago that he'd flown across the finish line in his hydrofoil. Blue water, speed, cheering crowds, and money to burn.
Now he was lucky if he found enough milk in the fridge to wash down a stale Oreo.
"Yeah, that's what I heard too."
Tod gave a rich chuckle. "Well, the offer to buy that toy from you still holds. But I got another proposition coming at you."
Tod Bardette always had another proposition coming at you. He was the rich son of a rich father from East Texas who used the world as his playground. And he was boat happy. He raced them, sponsored races, bought and sold them. And collected wives, trophies, and his share of the purse with smooth regularity.
Cam had always felt Tod's luck had run hot since conception. Since it never hurt to listen—and the bedroom scene had just been displaced by a commercial featuring a giant toilet brush, he switched off the set.
"I'm always ready to hear one."
"I'm setting up a crew for La Coupe Internationale."