Lost and Found Groom by McLinn, Patricia (most difficult books to read .TXT) 📗

in an instant, as their mouths met and opened. She wanted to wrap herself in his scent and his taste. She felt him against her, his body solid and familiar, his arms around her bringing her a warmth she hadn’t known since he had made her forget a hurricane.

Memories.

She jolted away from him. Pushing against his chest.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t–this was a mistake.”

He backed off less than an arm’s length, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Mistake.”

“The rain. And . . . with your hair like that, you look like you did–then. Like Paulo.”

She’d said the words deliberately. A weapon to make him back away before she no longer wanted him to back away.

And she could see from the way his skin thinned over his cheekbones that her weapon had struck home. She dropped her head and saw wet marks on her dress from where their bodies had met. She brushed at them, as if that would erase what had happened.

“You were kissing Paulo?”

She heard the anger in his voice, knew she’d pushed him toward some edge. But that was all right. Because it would pull her back from her own edge. The edge of forgetting what she couldn’t feel, what she couldn’t let happen.

“If that’s what you want to call it. The rain, the smell. All those memories. It was Paulo. A memory–no, a figment.”

Anger was in his eyes, too. But there was something else. Something not as easy to define–or withstand–as anger.

With deliberate movements he placed his hands to either side of her neck, resting against the wall behind her, then slowly he bent his elbows, leaning his body toward her.

“You’re lying.”

She tensed to keep from responding to the heat and damp surrounding her, to him surrounding her.

“Memories are powerful–”

“You’re lying, Kendra. This isn’t memory. This is now. This is us. You know who I am. You know.”

“I don’t.”

“Who am I, Kendra?”

“It’s the rain, you look–”

“Who am I, Kendra? Now.”

“It’s the rain–”

“Who am I?”

“Daniel, it’s . . . You’re–”

His kiss was relentless, demanding. She met it. Equaled it, deepened it. She felt the form of his body, under her hands, pressing against her tightening breasts, and lower, where the heat grew and spread. But she wanted more, she wanted to feel the texture of his skin again, the flow of his muscles.

Their mouths still joined, she struggled with the maddening buttons and wet cloth of his shirt. He grasped either side of her dress and pulled the snaps open down the front, his hands sliding over her body in hot, welcomed strokes.

At last his shirt opened, and she spread her palms across his chest, the wet, curling hair clinging to her fingers. He’d opened her bra, freeing her breasts so they pressed against his bare skin as he drew her firmly against him, one hand spread on her back, the other across her buttocks. He stroked his tongue deep into her mouth, and she knew that rhythm immediately. Pulsed to it, strained to it. Until she thought she would explode with it.

He kissed down her throat, then lower. His tongue flicked over her hardened nipple, then his mouth covered it, as she felt his fingers tug at the waistband of her panties.

Longing and pleasure braided together so tightly that she moaned with it. As her hands stroked over his bent back, he gave a sound from deep in his throat that celebrated their heat.

And then another sound. A creaking–familiar, and yet for an instant it didn’t register in Kendra’s desire-fogged mind.

“Hey! Anybody home?” Ellyn’s voice.

Oh, God–the door! That was the sound.

“Good heavens, we had a real gully-washer for a while. I’m afraid it’s already let up, though, and they’re saying it won’t be enough to break the–” A gasp, partially smothered interrupted that flow. “Oh! I–Oh, I’m sorry.”

Daniel shifted so his shoulder rested against the wall, his back to the door, shielding Kendra from sight.

“It’s all right, Ellyn,” Kendra got out. “We’re just . . . It’s all right.” Her fingers couldn’t manage the complex motion of hooking her bra in back with her dress still partially on. She gave that up and frantically pulled the sides of the dress together to start snapping it closed, and discovered the telltale wet blotches.

“I’ll go,” Ellyn volunteered, a laugh lurking.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll . . . I’ll be right back.” And with that, she turned and fled, leaving Daniel to deal with Ellyn as best he could.

Daniel watched her go. It would take several days of fence-fixing to put a dent in this ache.

“Sorry, Ellyn,” he said, still with his back to her.

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I rushed in to get out of the rain, and now it’s already stopped. Guess the drought will continue.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t bother to button his wet shirt, but he adjusted his jeans before turning around. “No end for this drought.”

He didn’t see the other meaning for his words until he caught the glint in her eyes as she followed him out the back door.

“I might as well go, too. Somehow I don’t think Kendra’s going to be in the mood to talk about my great idea for the supplement’s layout. But remember, Daniel–” She patted his arm. “The end of any drought starts with a drop.”

*

She would have made love with him. Right there in her kitchen. She couldn’t deny to herself, didn’t even try, that in another few minutes, she would have joined with him with the same rush of rightness she’d experienced with Paulo on Santa Estella.

Only he wasn’t Paulo.

There’d been no confusion in her mind. Or her heart. The man she would have made love with was Daniel Delligatti.

Daniel Benton Delligatti.

And who the hell is he?

He’d promised after he arrived at her door using a name she’d never heard that he would answer her questions, give her a chance to know him. She’d recognized what that cost him, a man accustomed to masking his emotions and burying himself. And she hadn’t made it easy on him. Still, he’d kept his word.

Maybe more so than he’d intended. His emotions over Matthew’s birth