Fired Waitress, Hired Mistress Read online

  And terribly curious.

  They were strangers, brought together by near tragedy. She was a level-headed woman who, admittedly, hadn’t had a man in a while. A good while. And certainly never one like this. But her urge to gaze up, look into those incredible eyes and offer him her lips…

  It was wrong. Totally off beam.

  Wasn’t it?

  A moment ago his bedraggled kitten had wanted to know if this was real. Now Gabriel wondered too. He hadn’t peeled off his shirt and drawn her close for any reason other than her shaking. She needed to be kept warm.

  Sure, he was benefiting too. Lying on this cushiony spread of sandy grass and listening to the rhythmic wash of waves gave him a chance to recuperate. His system needed a break. Only…

  He didn’t feel all that relaxed.

  His body was a simmering mass of anticipation. His heartbeat was a booming bass beat in his ears. Those symptoms weren’t a consequence of exertion any more than the ambitious tightening in his groin, or the groan of awareness building like thermal movement deep in his chest.

  He was a man who lived well—the finest food and accommodation, state-of-the-art high-powered cars. But holding a beautiful woman was on a shelf all its own. She seemed to be on a shelf all her own.

  He was no stranger to sex. Slow sex, hot sex—wild sex even better. But, no matter how stimulating the company, he’d never needed to worry about maintaining a certain level of control. He never truly lost himself in the moment. And yet the desire rippling through his veins now was distinct. Unique.

  Disturbing.

  It had to be the setting, the extraordinary circumstances, but it was all he could do not to tug this woman’s supple curves closer, coax her shapely hips nearer, tilt her chin higher and kiss her.

  Hard.

  Normally he knew when a woman was interested too. A lidded look. An arched brow. A sensual smile when she caught his gaze and held it. That kind of nonverbal communication had been perfected by nature over eons to ensure the survival of the species. I’m available. Me too. No genius there.

  But, lying beneath this palm tree with Miz Crusoe nestled alongside him, he was stumped. She’d been grateful, stubborn, teasing, and finally accepting. It couldn’t be his imagination that she was enjoying this contact as much as he was.

  So where did pumped-up high-stakes drama end, and good old-fashioned foreplay with an attractive, might-as-well-be-naked woman begin? If he rolled more towards her, how would she react? With outrage, as she’d done earlier, before he’d flattened her against the ground to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself? Or would her gaze become heavy with an I-feel-it-too glow?

  When she gave a violent shiver, the choice was made for him. Before she trembled a second time Gabriel held her more firmly, grazing a warming palm up and down her chilled arm.

  After a moment she looked up, and her full lips twitched. “You must think I’m horrible.”

  He grinned. “Worse than Godzilla and the giant Powder Puff man combined.”

  Her perfect smile fanned wider before she sobered. “While I can’t condone all your tactics, I truly am grateful. For everything. You’re right. I’d have been fish food if you hadn’t come along when you did.”

  “I’m glad I was able to help.” More than she’d ever know. “How’s your foot?”

  Her leg moved and she flinched. “Hurts a little.”

  “We ought to get moving before the pain gets worse.”

  She hummed out an affirmation, but then only laid her cheek back upon his chest.

  He gauged the sun’s heavy position in the sky, the storm clouds meshing together overhead, then closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of her hand on his ribs.

  Ah, what the hell? A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.

  His palm trailed her arm again, up over the slender shoulder, down to her elbow. Seagulls wheeled and squawked above while time wrapped around them like a promise-filled cocoon. If anyone had happened along they’d have mistaken them for lovers.

  “Guess we really should get going,” she murmured. “You’ve probably got someone waiting.”

  He nailed the quality in her voice: overly blasé. People came to Diamond Shores to fulfil their island fantasy while soaking up every laid-back luxury. Make the rates exorbitant, and it was a licence to print money. It added up that kitten here was looking to be indulged too. But in what way? And to what extent?

  Time for a test line.

  “There’s nobody waiting in the way you’re implying,” he said.

  “What way is that?”

  “How many ways are there?”

  “Let’s see. You could be here on a reckless weekend with a bud.”

  “Nope.”

  “Could be showing a client a good time, hoping to tie the bow on a multi-million-dollar deal.”

  “Good guess, but no banana.”

  “You’re here with your girl?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  Two beats of silence, then her breath brushed his chest again. “Maybe you’re here to find one?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  She gave a humourless laugh, but didn’t search out his gaze. “Believe me, I’m not your type.”

  “What type are you?”

  “I should start with clumsy.”

  “So this kind of incident isn’t a one-off?”

  “Yesterday I spilled a drink in the lap of an Arab prince.”

  He cringed. “Bet he offered to buy you another one.”

  When she groaned, the vibration blew a pleasant tingling rash down one side of his body. “Hardly.”

  “International model types weren’t the Prince’s thing?”

  She lifted her head to give him a pull-the-other-one look. “Models are super tall and thin.”

  “So, not a model?” he conjectured. “More athlete, then. You compete in the European show-jump circuit?”

  “Horses make me sneeze. And I’m clumsy, remember? I’d break my neck, and the poor horse’s too.”

  “Okay. Your father’s one of the country’s leading barristers and you’re fresh out of law school, ready to fry your first bad guy’s butt,” he surmised, and she laughed.

  “I like your imagination,” she said, “but…”

  “I’m off track?”

  “Way off.”

  “A hint would be good.”

  “But not as fun as hearing what you come up with next.”

  Her eyes were dancing now, and a stream of hair had fallen down the centre of her forehead, criss-crossing her slim straight nose. He scooped the hair behind her ear and his blood heated more.

  “Got it.” He lowered his hand. “You’re a misunderstood heiress running from the press.”

  “Not this year.”

  He chuckled, so she did too, but then she winced and touched her head.

  His stomach muscles crunched and welts stung for the first time as he sat up. “How’s the lump?”

  “Only hurts when I laugh.”

  He mock-frowned. “I can be serious.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “I want to hold you closer.”

  Her hand drifted away from her bump. “You want to do what?”

  “Hold you closer.”

  Her eyes rounded to saucers.

  “That’s not a command, by the way,” he added. “More a suggestion.”

  “If I say no?”

  “We head off to the resort.”

  “If I say yes?”

  “Then I’ll add another wish to my list.”

  She blinked several times, as if she were having trouble taking it all in, but she didn’t try to wriggle away. In fact she leaned nearer. “Tell me.”

  He craned his neck to graze his lips over the satin and grit of her brow, and the contact made the skin tighten over his flesh. “I’d do this.”

  He heard her intake of air, felt her slight tremble as he grazed again.

  Her hand bunched slowly on his chest, sendi
ng positive signals to regions below.

  “And then?” she asked.

  He cupped her nape, his thumb circling the base of her neck before his hand slid around to her chin. His lips skied down the slope where a moment ago he’d brushed her hair away.

  “I’d tip your chin higher.” With a knuckle, he angled her mouth towards his. “Like this.”

  Her lips parted as she inhaled, silent but deep, and her heavy gaze sparkled into his.

  “Then what?”

  Smiling softly, he moved closer.

  “Then this.”

  Chapter Three

  THE touch of his kiss was faint, yet the intensity of sensation was all-consuming. The promise of what was to come gave Nina a heady rush and goosebumps down to her toes. Today she’d nearly lost her life, but this—dear heaven—was almost worth dying for.

  With his thumb guiding her jaw, he steered her chin higher and kissed her again, this time with his mouth slanted at a different, more exacting angle.

  Nina sighed.

  He felt like magic…omnipotent, skilled, sultry. This caress was barely there, yet somehow it lifted her to another plane, where warm hands understood how to stroke and leisurely lips knew how to thrill. If there was an advanced school of kissing, this guy had graduated top of the class.

  As his mouth reluctantly drew away, the tip of his nose brushed hers. She opened her eyes, and when he opened his, they were a dark, stormy blue-grey, and filled with a latent hunger Nina’s surging blood recognised too.

  This man was every woman’s dream. Masterful, challenging, sexy to a fault. She’d never met anyone like him. She wanted him to kiss her a second time, and then she wanted him to do it again.

  One problem.

  Did she tell him before or after she wasn’t who or what he thought? Not an heiress fleeing from the paparazzi, not the genius daughter of a world-famous barrister, but a rather average, stressed-out waitress, struggling to get through a difficult time.

  Good thing he had track shoes on. He might want to run a mile.

  “I have to say,” he murmured in a rich, drugging voice that spoke directly to her G spot, “that felt good.”

  Despite her concerns, she couldn’t help but smile back. “I second that.”

  His absorbed gaze dropped to devour her lips. “I vote we get more inventive.”

  “Which entails…?”

  “For you…simply lie back and enjoy.”

  “Oh, I have to enjoy it?” she teased.

  He nipped her bottom lip. “That’s the idea.”

  At the notion of total surrender—arms draped over her head, taking every wonderful delight he had to offer—syrupy warmth condensed at the heart of her. The idea of making love with a thoroughly gorgeous man she barely knew was not only reckless, it was irresistible. Who said she wasn’t allowed to forget her problems for an hour or two? Wrapping herself in his silver lining sounded pretty good about now.

  With a cooling breeze blowing over her skin, teasing her nipples, she wet her lips.

  “What about you? Do you get to enjoy it too?”

  He shifted up, so that one side of his impressive chest hovered over hers. His arm curled possessively above her head.

  “Ask me a hard question.”

  He kissed her in earnest then, his warmth flashing heat-lightning through her blood, his mouth irrevocably claiming hers. But not in a gulping, feverish fashion. More with the finesse of a man who knew what women liked. What this woman needed.

  His slightly roughened palm trailed down her neck. His thumb rested in the hollow of her beating throat before his touch skimmed down her decolletage, then slid to encircle her upper arm, coaxing her up and in. The suggestion of ownership in the gesture was unmistakable, as well as enthralling—all the more so given the way his mouth worked unhurriedly yet intently with hers.

  Her arms coiled around his neck and she pulled herself up, offering more, as delectable desire built and bubbled away—a steaming kettle ready to boil. She was physically, helplessly drawn to him, like a tide to the moon or a bird to blue sky. When his tongue probed deeper Nina whimpered with mind-tingling longing, and a strange sense of belonging seeped through her.

  This embrace wasn’t merely great, it was fated. In this thin slice of time she wasn’t Jill’s sister or little Codie’s aunt. She wasn’t the pampered princess who’d once had everything, or the twenty-year-old who’d slogged her guts out to ace her journalism class. She wasn’t a magazine editor who’d found herself at a crossroads.

  At this moment she was pure woman, hovering at the pinnacle of creation’s best ever kiss. She felt so fired up she could barely breathe—but, unlike during her near drowning moments ago, she didn’t want to come up for air. She’d much rather relinquish herself to her mystery man’s caress until she expired from exhaustion and sheer joy.

  When his thumb brushed the outside of her breast she groaned. The sensitive peak tightened and her leg instinctively moved in. But the scratches on her ankle rubbed and, wincing, she jerked back an inch. When he pulled back too, the set of his jaw and refocusing eyes said he’d remembered where they were.

  Oh, but this couldn’t end now. What were a couple of scratches compared to the chance to truly escape and float on cloud nine?

  Her arm still around his neck, she tugged. “I’m perfectly fine—honest.”

  His chin kicked up a notch. “You don’t know how much I’d like to believe that.”

  Her fingers filed up through the back of his hair. “Believe it.”

  He set his forehead upon hers. “I’m afraid this, my dear, is not the time.”

  She pouted. “Really?”

  “Really, really.”

  Sorry. She couldn’t accept it. Her hand snaked down and she drew a suggestive circle around his right nipple, smiling when the disc hardened beneath her touch.

  Folding her hand up in his, he pressed his warm lips to the palm. “Doctor first. Advanced introductions later.”

  “Maybe one more quick hello?”

  He laughed, a gorgeous black velvet sound she would never tire of hearing. This guy had it all. Looks, charm, Herculean strength. Sure, he was a little overconfident, but, given the circumstances, after that kiss, she could find it in her heart to forgive him.

  “Later,” he confirmed, and cocked an enquiring brow. “Maybe over dinner?”

  Nina’s expression dissolved into a walking-on-air smile.

  Fate was so unpredictable. A couple of months ago she’d had the next ten years mapped out—work her way up the magazine industry ladder and ultimately secure a spot on a top international rag overseas. By that time Jill would have met the guy of her dreams and Codie would be a real little man. One day Nina had hoped to find her soul mate—someone who truly understood and respected her.

  Then her life had landed in a dumpster.

  From heiress to editor to wayward waitress. What came next?

  When her Galahad sprang to his feet and dusted himself off, Nina sighed. The most amazing few minutes of her life were over. But there was always dinner tonight.

  Or was there?

  The clientele here seemed oblivious to everything other than their own over-inflated issues and comfort. They lived to compare carats over a leisurely back rub or two. Was this man cut from that same cloth? How would he react when he found out he’d been making love to the hired help?

  And, if that wasn’t enough to dampen those dinner plans, there was always the resort’s staunchest staff rule. No socialising with guests. Ever.

  His shadow crept over her a second before his strong arms scooped beneath her shoulders and knees. Jolted back, she pushed against his chest. “What are you doing?”

  “We’ve had this discussion.”

  “I’m not sure we came to any decision.” None that she’d been happy with.

  “If memory serves, you called me a caveman, I beat my chest, and the matter was settled. Now, we need to hurry. Rain’s on the way.”

  Folding her arms over
her waist, she tried to weigh herself down—not that she wasn’t heavy enough. Nevertheless, he swooped her effortlessly up.

  His white teeth flashed. “Light as a feather.”

  Uh-huh? Veins were already popping at his temples. She could sense the strain in his arms. Why-oh-why had she taken that slab of chocolate torte back to her room last night?

  “Put your arms around my neck,” he ordered.

  “So you’re intent on doing this?” Giving yourself a hernia.

  His response was a sexy wry smile.

  She held his gaze, then finally exhaled. He was implacable. What choice did she have? She only hoped he didn’t keel over from a coronary before he’d finished saving her.

  She was securing her arms around his hot neck when a light bulb went off in her head. “Hey, I’ve had another thought. You could make a tray out of a big banana leaf and pull me along. Like a snow sled, only on sand.”

  His eyes narrowed even as he smiled. “No bananas growing here.”

  “Well, you must have a cellphone. You could call for the helicopter to chopper me out. We could make a giant X on the beach with driftwood so they know where to land, and—”

  Her words were cut off when his mouth took hers. And just like that the magic was in full swing again, drifting over her like tingling confetti as his kiss worked its spell and he urged her against his granite-like frame.

  She dissolved into him. Melted completely. Of its own volition a hand wandered to the centre of his hard chest, fanned over the rock of a pec, then sailed higher, tracking the topography of the bulging cords in his neck, the sandpaper bristle of his firm square jaw. Only when his mouth left hers did the fog partly lift and she realised.

  It was sprinkling rain.

  Lifting her face, Nina blinked as another drop hit her cheek, then her arm. When he looked up too, as if waving a green flag, the rain came down in earnest.

  She let go a shriek. Could her poor body take another beating?

  But, while the rain fell in buckets, the water felt soft and revitalising on her skin. Perhaps it was her near brush with death, the lingering effects of that better-than-bliss kiss, or the fact that for the first time in weeks she felt truly free, but a jet of abandon surged up from her centre and a bubble of laughter escaped. Going with impulse, she shut her eyes and tilted back her head. When she opened her mouth wide, sweet rain filled her throat.