In turn, she lifted her glass, took another sip and let it slide down her throat. He watched the delicate muscles in her neck shift beneath her skin as she swallowed. There was something innately erotic about watching her drink. Something about just being with her that soothed him.
Yes, she got in his face about Hannah’s Hope, but he never felt like she was desperate for a chunk of him, the way he sometimes felt with people. That only added to her appeal. Only reinforced the gut-wrenching desire he felt for her.
Since she didn’t say anything, he kept talking. “I’ve found women are a lot like tequila. When you’re a musician, there’s a lot of them around. Like cheap tequila, sometimes you indulge without lingering over them. Something you do just because it’s there and it’s available.” He rolled the tumbler between his palms. “I loved my wife and I never once cheated on her, I was never even tempted. Why would I drink a shot of cheap tequila just because someone handed it to me when I had something worth savoring back at home.”
He looked at her then, his expression darkening. He took another drink of the Patron and then asked as if it was only just now occurring to him, “Does that analogy offend you?”
She thought about it for a second, tilting her head to the side as she considered. While she could see how it might offend some people, it didn’t bother her. “My father used to say that women are like Eskimos. You’ve heard the myth about Eskimos having forty words for snow? He said women were like that. We have hundreds of words for emotions. But men don’t. They describe women like possessions because they have no other way to convey how desperately they need them.”
Funny, she hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Growing up, her parents lectured her endlessly about staying out of trouble. They were so afraid of her messing up her life and her future by doing drugs or ha**ng s*x and getting pregnant. Her mother’s lectures had been frequent, redundant and sometimes infuriating. But her father’s words had stuck with her.
Don’t sleep with a boy just because he says he loves you, he’d told her. That’s just a word boys will use to get you into bed. Wait for the boy who wants you enough that he’s willing to wait. Wait for the boy who can’t tell you how much he loves you. The boy who makes you believe it.
And she’d never met a guy like that. And so here she was, a virgin at twenty-seven. Honestly, she’d begun to doubt love like that really existed. Yes, her parents were daily proof that it did, but she knew their relationship was rare. Maybe even a throwback to a simpler time and place. Maybe her generation had lost the ability to love so completely. Maybe decades of rising divorce rates and instant gratification had bred it out of them.
But listening to Ward compare Cara to sipping tequila, for the first time she believed love like that was really possible.
This man standing before her had faced every temptation imaginable. He had to have had countless opportunities to be unfaithful, but he’d loved his wife too much. Even now, three years later, he loved her too much to live in the house they’d shared together. He couldn’t even discard her sunglasses.
How could that kind of devotion offend her, no matter what terms he couched it in?
She may not be able to understand the full depths of his grief. But she could respect it. And she certainly wasn’t going to judge him for it. She hardly knew him well enough to have an opinion on what was a healthy way for him to grieve for his wife.
Circling back to his earlier request, she said, “If you don’t want Chase to know you’re living in the carriage house, he’s certainly not going to hear it from me.”
He nodded slowly and smiled. “Thanks.”
But the smile looked sad. And a little rueful. Like he knew it was time to move on, but still wasn’t sure if he wanted to.
She buried a wistful sigh. Her reasons for coming now seemed so self-serving in the face of his obvious grief. “I’m sorry I invaded your privacy. I should have left you alone.” She set down the tumbler of tequila and headed for the door. He stopped her after only a step.
“Why did you come here?”
It sounded silly now. She had the unmistakable impression that the things he’d told her just now weren’t the sort of thing he shared with just everyone. So she’d probably been wrong. And if she hadn’t, so what? Why invade his privacy just to feed her insecurity? She’d worked with plenty of people she didn’t like in the past. She was professional enough to do it this time around.
Except, of course, that she did like Ward. Immensely. And that, of course, was part of the problem. She didn’t want there to be a likable person beneath the glamour of the megastar. But since there was, she’d have to figure out how to deal with him on her own.
Since Ward was still waiting for an answer, she smiled ruefully and said, “I thought you didn’t like me.”
However, when she looked up at Ward, she realized he’d gone completely still. He looked at her over the rim of his half raised tumbler with one eyebrow quirked. “What was that?” he asked, his voice pitched low.
That sultry tone sent a shiver down her spine, one she did her best to hide the effects of. She forced a nonchalant laugh. “It sounds silly now. But I thought maybe you’d been avoiding me.”
“Avoiding you?” he asked. There was note of humor in his words. Like she’d just unwittingly repeated some private joke.
“Yes,” she tried to keep her frustration out of her voice, but didn’t succeed. “Avoiding me. You took a different flight out to Charleston, even though there wasn’t really a board meeting. You haven’t been at CMF, even though Stacy assures me that you’re usually there every day that you’re in town.” His smile broadened, and her hands automatically went to her hips. “The other day at Hannah’s Hope, you totally got in my face about whether I had a problem working with you. So, what? I’m not allowed to do the same thing?”
Her irritation crept back into her voice. Dang it, what was it about him that got under her skin?
She blew out a sigh and gave her shoulders a little roll to relieve the kinks of tension before adding, “It’s not a big deal. I just thought I’d ask.”
He slowly lowered his tumbler and grinned. “Let me get this straight. You think I’m avoiding you? Because I don’t like you?”
She gritted her teeth for a second before answering. “Yes. And I don’t want it to affect my work at—”
But before she could finish her sentence, he rounded the island and crossed the room to where she stood. She nearly gasped in surprise as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Six
Kissing Ana was as close to heaven as a man like him could get. She smelled like snickerdoodles and tasted like his favorite tequila. Unless her skin was actually sprinkled with sugar, he just didn’t see how she could get any better.
Her mouth was hot and moist and after an instant of surprise, unbelievably pliant and responsive. The purse she’d been holding slid off her shoulder and hit the floor and then her hands crept up around his neck to weave through his hair. She deepened the kiss, opening her mouth beneath his and boldly stroking her tongue against his teeth. His hand automatically sought her bottom, lifting to press her against his growing erection.
She tilted her h*ps forward, rubbing herself against him in a way that sent fissures of pure pleasure shooting through his body.
He hadn’t meant for the kiss to get out of hand. Hell, he hadn’t meant to kiss her at all. If she’d shown even the slightest resistance, he would have instantly let her go. But she melted against him, and so he clutched her to him even tighter and felt her shudder in response. He shoved her jacket off her shoulders and down her arms. Turning them around, he backed her up a step and then another, until her back was pressed to the wall beside the door. Her h*ps were anchored against his, but he wedged his hands between their bodies to flick open the buttons of her shirt, one by one. The shirt fell open to reveal a flesh-colored lacy bra.
He slipped his hand inside her shirt to the silky skin beneath. When he cupped her breast in his hand, she broke her mouth free, gasping in obvious pleasure. She threw back her head. With her mouth parted and damp, her eyes half-closed, and her breath coming in rapid bursts, she was the very picture of eroticism. Sex personified. Arousal in pure human form.
Her tongue darted out to lick her top lip and his erection leapt in response, straining against the zipper of his jeans.
If she was this turned on by such a little harmless groping, he couldn’t imagine how she’d respond to all the things he wanted to do to her. He could almost imagine that the passion between them surprised her.
Then again, maybe it had. Just a few moments ago, she’d thought he didn’t like her. She’d thought he was avoiding her.
Instantly, two parts of him were at war. One part that wanted to strip her pants from her body, pull her panties down around her knees and plunge his fingers deep inside of her. He wanted to find her clitoris and stroke it until she was mindless with passion. He wanted to suck it into his mouth and drive her mad.
But the other part of him—the last few shreds of his logical mind—knew that this wasn’t the time. For any of that.
Ana was no cheap shot of…no, he stopped himself mid-thought. It felt wrong, somehow, to think of Ana in the same way he’d thought of Cara. They were too distinct. The comparison served neither of them well.
Ana was her own woman. Completely different from Cara. If Cara had been fine tequila, crafted, elegant and expensive, then Ana was…maybe the perfect margarita. A little salty, a whole lot of sweet and plenty of tart to balance it out. None of it hiding the drink’s powerful punch. All of the ingredients working in harmony to produce a whole that was nearly irresistible.
But still the fact that he would even think of both women in the same thought made him distinctly nervous. Cara had held his heart, his career, hell, his entire life in her hands. And look how long it had taken him to get over that. No way was he ready for that again.