Can't Buy Me Love Read online

  “Cold?” he murmured. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t know me,” she said, her voice as frozen as her body was hot.

  No, he didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

  Right now, all that mattered was getting his mouth on her. Her body against his.

  His fingers grazed her shoulder, his thumb sliding under the thick, creamy seam of the leather vest. Goose bumps rippled over her skin and her breath escaped in a long, slow sigh.

  “You feel that?”

  She didn’t say anything, her eyes over his shoulder as though this was something she had to endure.

  Endure, he thought, shame creeping up alongside his lust. She wasn’t something to punish. The skin, soft and damp between her arm and the leather, was the most perfect skin he’d ever touched.

  And he might have bullied his way into this kiss, but he wasn’t going to punish her.

  Her eyes flicked to his, big and round, blue as the sky outside the arena doors. It was, for a moment, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Her beauty punched him in the gut, left him reeling. He couldn’t do this; he wasn’t this man. He lifted his hand from her shoulder, stepped back. “You really are beautiful—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she muttered and leaned into him, pressing her lips to his with all the finesse of his first girlfriend in eighth grade.

  His finger hooked into the leather of the vest and his other hand cupped her face, the silk of her hair tangling in his fingers. The bones of her chin, the curve of her ear, were like glass under his fingers.

  She waited, every muscle tensed, like a bird in the palm of his hand. He pressed soft kisses against the corner of her lips, the velvet skin of her cheek. He breathed a kiss against her ear and felt her curl against herself, like ribbon on a present. Her heartbeat began to pound against his palm.

  But she didn’t step away.

  He tasted the strong feminine tendons of her neck and found them delicious. She even tasted like candy.

  “If you don’t want this, step away,” he breathed across her skin and heard her swallowed moan.

  “Walk away, Tara,” he said. “Right now, or—”

  “Or what?” Her challenge was heady, the heat in her eyes—all of it called to the wicked and base parts of himself.

  She wasn’t walking away, so he kissed her. Really kissed her. Her lips, soft and pouty, were firmer than he’d thought, and he carefully licked the corner seam. When she didn’t jerk away, he ran his tongue along the closed crease, a beggar at her door.

  Her full bottom lip was too much to resist and he used his teeth, sucking it into his mouth, and she gasped and flinched against him, pressing her breasts against the bare skin of his chest.

  Oh, dear God, yes, he thought. Between the sweat and the leather, the hard points of her nipples and the sweet curse of that cross between her breasts, he was a goner.

  His hands clenched in her hair and her head tipped back, her mouth opening, and any resistance he’d felt in her body was gone. So he took what was offered. His tongue slid inside the delicious wet heat of Tara Jean’s mouth.

  She moaned, soft and deep in her throat, and her tongue pressed back and soon there was no distance between them. His erection found a home against the taut, flat belly beneath her white linen pants, and her arms curled around his neck, her nails a sweet pain against his skin.

  A man could die like this, he realized, sucking on Tara Jean’s lips, her tongue. His hips arched hard against her and she pressed back, making him see stars. Her teeth bit into his tongue, and whatever control he might have had snapped. Rough now, his hands slid down her back, cupping the sweet curves of her hips. She was perfect, and he was momentarily distracted by the apparent absence of underwear.

  His arms lifted her slightly, balancing her weight like she was nothing, to set her up on one of the bales of hay.

  Her fingers dipped under the edge of his shorts, the T-shirt he’d tucked there falling down his legs to the floor. From the top of his ass, her fingers slid up his back, over the thick ridges of muscle along his spine. His teeth closed down on her tongue and her nails bit deep into his skin.

  “Yes,” he muttered, leaving her lips, finding that sweet candy skin of her neck. Her breath hitched and burned against his cheek. The siren song of the leather vest reached a crescendo and he dropped his hand between them, cupping her breast, finding the hard bead of her nipple beneath the leather. She jumped, electrocuted, and it was so real, so pure and hot, he brought his other hand down to cup her other breast, the leather slick under his fingers, her nipple a hard point.

  He didn’t realize she was pushing him away until he heard her say, “Stop.”

  He might be an asshole, but he wasn’t that kind of asshole, so he immediately stepped away. She wobbled slightly and he put an arm on her elbow, the shock of the electricity between them running from her skin to his.

  What the hell just happened, he wondered, staring at her down-turned face as she climbed off the stack of hay.

  Perhaps it was all the blood in his crotch instead of his brain, but he honestly had no context for the power of that kiss. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. No kiss in his life had ever been like that.

  Cold? he thought. An icicle? Was she insane?

  She tilted her face up, perfect and collected. The shock of her composure made him feel like a boy who’d come in his underwear.

  “Get cleaned up,” she said in a voice a shade too rough. A shade too deep. Those lips of hers told the tale—they were swollen, the pink lip gloss kissed right off, revealing the pinker shade of her lips. “We’ll leave in a half-hour.”

  He dropped her elbow, balking at being a dog on a leash for her. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I want to finish this.”

  She looked at the hay and then up at him. “Randy Jenkins’s son plays hockey, a lot of it if Randy’s incessant talking about it is any indication,” she said. “I bet Randy could get you access to a rink without anyone knowing.”

  He blinked at her, stunned.

  Watching her walk away, mesmerized by the swing of her hair and ass, he realized that of all the people in his life right now, she was the only one interested in helping him.

  chapter

  12

  Tara Jean’s mom, Rayanne, loved big men. When Tara Jean was growing up, the river of men that flowed through their trailers and crappy apartments all had necks the size of Rayanne’s waist.

  She’d said once that they made her feel small and safe.

  Until, of course, they got mad at her. And then all that brute strength came to bear on Rayanne and spilled over onto Tara Jean.

  Which was why, as a rule, Tara Jean stuck to thin guys. Some of her boyfriends might have even weighed even less than she did. And she was okay with that, because the theory was that she could hold her own in a fight with a skinny guy.

  Of course, that proved to be just as much bullshit as the rest of her theories.

  But the point was, back when she was attracted to men and felt anything other than numb, she didn’t like big guys. Men like Luc, with their big arms, strong chests and all those sweat-slicked muscles, did nothing for her.

  She stood in front of the window unit in her studio, the cold air blowing right down the front of her vest, turning her nipples to ice but doing nothing to calm the fire under her skin, and wondered when that had changed.

  Because she liked Luc’s body. She really, really liked it.

  The second she’d walked into that arena, her body had started humming in pleasure, a motor tuned just right. And she was having a very hard time turning the damn motor off.

  Why hadn’t she walked away when he gave her the chance?

  That kiss was powerful. And sweet. Better than every piece of candy she’d thrown away.

  Through the wavy glass beside the wall unit she saw Luc step out of the house and down the porch. He wore another one of those suits, black this time, with a red tie. His hair was dark and slicked back off his hi
gh forehead, making his nose and chin sharp. Sunglasses hid his eyes and he looked menacing. Dangerous.

  But her body cooed with sweet delight at the memory of his tenderness at the beginning of that kiss—so at odds with the asshole he was trying hard to be. He’d looked into her eyes and the façade had just crumbled.

  You’re so beautiful, you really are.

  She’d been called beautiful plenty of times, but not quite like that. Like she was something new. Something he’d never seen before. And his restraint, when she’d told him to stop. The way he’d stepped back without any hesitation, even with his erection making a mess of his shorts, had been about the most chivalrous thing she’d ever seen.

  Which was a sad statement on the men she usually slept with.

  Imagine that control, the demon whispered. Imagine all that power and restraint under your hands. Beneath your lips. Imagine the places he could take you.

  She cranked off the air and grabbed her glasses and purse off her desk. A hundred miles to Dallas.

  A hundred miles.

  That would be a good lesson in control.

  She stepped out into the sunshine and jangled the keys to her Honda.

  “You’re kidding,” he drawled, his face smooth and shiny from a recent shave. He’d cut himself just above the collar of his white shirt: it was so human and real against the canvas of all that perfection.

  Her fingers twitched, flush with an evil desire to touch him, to dig through his clothes and ruffle his hair to find the other signs of his messy humanity.

  “We’ll take my car,” he said.

  She shrugged, relieved. Her tank was barely half full and she didn’t have any cash. Her salary from Baker Leather was laughable. Truly a joke. And she put almost all of it into savings. A contingency plan, or an escape route, depending on if her past came back to haunt her or, in the end, she wasn’t as good at this job as the demon led her to believe.

  Getting herself up into the black SUV almost required a pulley system and a harness, but she climbed in and Luc started the mighty engine, which purred against her feet and reverberated through her body, hitting extra notes low in her belly.

  He backed out of the parking area, his hand braced on her seat.

  So close. Too close. She tried not to stare at the fine hair on his hands, the size of his palms. Tried not to remember the way he’d lifted her as though she weighed nothing.

  The skinny boyfriends couldn’t ever do that.

  Needing a distraction, she pulled a pack of strawberry gum out of her bag and held out a piece to him. He took it without comment, sliding it into his mouth, and then he grimaced, spitting it back on the wrapper and wadding it up.

  She chewed on her own and grinned. “You don’t like it?”

  “Tastes like strawberry plastic.”

  “My favorite kind.”

  “All I ever see you eat is candy.”

  “You a dentist?”

  His laugh was a little huff out of his nose and then he was quiet, tucking the gum and wrapper into the ashtray. She looked out the window at the bluebells in bloom, a sea of them on the low hills, nodding their heads in the wind as if in approval. As if to say, it’s okay. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.

  “Why’d you change your name?”

  “Do I look like the Jane type?”

  His eyes ran over her and her body responded with a deep purr.

  “Frankly, Tara,” he said, looking her right in the eye for a moment, sounding baffled, “I don’t know what type you are.”

  “Why’d you change your name?” she shot back, and his eyebrow lifted.

  “I never much cared for the name Wayne.” His voice was as dry as the desert.

  “I never much cared for the name Jane.” It wasn’t the truth, of course. But she didn’t need to tell him that she was running from her past. The past he’d threatened to expose.

  He glanced over at her and she braced herself for a stripper comment, but in the end he just nodded. “Fair enough.

  “How’d you meet my dad?” He shifted his hands around on the wheel, pretending to be nonchalant, and she wondered what was agitating him. Talking about his father? Or talking about his father with her?

  “Your private investigator already told you, remember? The hospital.”

  “He didn’t tell me why you were there.”

  “I was a candy stripper.”

  His laugh surprised both of them.

  “I didn’t expect you to be funny.”

  “It’s one of my lesser charms.” She pretended to puff up her hair, and his half-grin sliced right through her stomach.

  “Tara, you were right the other day. I saw that picture of you and I heard your name and I had you pegged. And now that I’m here—”

  “Stuck here.”

  “Right. Stuck here. I realize I don’t have you pegged at all. I keep thinking I have you figured out and then you do something to change everything and … I’ve misjudged you a thousand times and I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  A pinprick of panic punctured her heart. Despite her efforts he was seeing through the Bimbo Barbie act, and she didn’t know, couldn’t even begin to guess, what he saw beneath the show.

  “And you don’t have to answer my questions. We can just sit here for an hour—”

  “I had been in a car accident.”

  “A bad one?” His glance was concerned and she was touched, truly, but she was lying to him and his concern made her queasy.

  “Bad enough. Lyle and I were on the same floor. I used to go into his room and read to him.”

  “Read? To Lyle?”

  “The Sports page,” she said, wondering why she was telling him this; blurring the lines between fiction and reality was a surefire way to get caught up in some lie. Some half-truth. And this man was too perceptive already. “He had a son, you know, a big-shot hockey player.”

  That shut him up, and in the silence she plucked an emery board from the front pocket of her bag and went to work on her right thumbnail.

  “Is that something you do a lot? Read to old guys in hospitals?” She had to give him points for trying so hard not to sound disbelieving.

  “I did.” She took care of the ragged edge on her pinky. “Hospitals and nursing homes.”

  “Only the rich men?” He was trying to joke, but it was far too close to the truth to be funny.

  “The good-looking ones.” She winked at him, but he was wound tight and he sat there emanating the kind of pained stress that spoke right to her heart. She lived with that stress, stretched taut between wishing she felt nothing and feeling all too much.

  “Only the lonely ones,” she revealed, because in the end that was the truth. “The ones who had no visitors. No family. No one to read the Sports page to them. They were grateful to have someone do something nice for them.”

  Very grateful. She pressed the rough edge of the emery board hard against her cuticle until blood welled up. Payment—late, and not nearly enough—for all that gratitude.

  “It was like giving them back a little piece of themselves. A cup of tea in their favorite mug. Warm socks. A blanket their wife made. Their favorite book, outside with the sun shining on their faces. But mostly they wanted someone to read them the crossword puzzle and the obituaries. One man,” she laughed suddenly at the memory that sprang out of nowhere, “Mr. Beanfang, he liked me to read the newspaper to him while he was in the bathroom. I used to shout it through the closed door.”

  She didn’t have to look at him to see his shock—she could feel it, cold and hard against her face, which burned with embarrassment.

  What was the point of telling him that, Tara? she wondered.

  But when the silence stretched on she glanced up at him, saw him staring at the road. The bluebells were gone, replaced by hardscrabble sage and dirt.

  “And Dad just took a liking to how you read the Sports page? Offered to bring you to his home so you could do it full time?”

  She gaped at
him slightly, realizing he was angry with his father on her behalf. Amazing! That was a first for her and she didn’t quite know how to respond.

  “There was nothing sordid about it, Luc. He was lonely. And dying. He was worried about what would happen to Baker Leather once he was gone. I didn’t have any other job prospects, so when he offered me a chance to come out and learn the business, I took it.”

  “You have a lot of experience designing leather skirts?”

  “I told him I did.” He shot her a wicked look and she rolled her eyes. Honestly, he was years too late with the sarcasm. “He knew I was lying. Believe what you want, he was kind to me.”

  “Kind.” Luc shook his head as if the word didn’t make any sense. She waited for some other vicious comment or look from him, ready to defend Lyle against his son’s hate, but he stared out the window as if the scrub brush were a threat that needed to be watched.

  From the bag at her feet, she pulled out a tissue and pressed it to the bead of blood on her pinky, the red seeping across the white like a poison. She watched and wondered if she was the poison or the thing being poisoned, which was a ridiculous thing to wonder, so she crumpled up the tissue and threw it into her bag.

  “Hey Luc,” she said. “If … if you have questions about me, just ask. No need for private investigators.”

  She stared at him, as earnest and naked as she’d been in years. She already had Dennis to worry about. She didn’t want to worry about some P.I. digging through her secrets and carrying them back to Luc.

  “I don’t intend to have him do any more digging.”

  “Thank you.”

  The silence stretched, cracks formed, the past lurked, and Tara had no desire to slip into those horrible places.

  “So, Luc, what do you do besides hockey?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No, surely you’ve got some kind of charity. Isn’t that what you rich people do? Give your money away so you don’t feel so guilty?”

  He laughed a little as if they were sharing some inside joke. The sun came out from behind a cloud and he put his shades back on, and she felt as if he were hiding. “My mother takes care of my karma.”