Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
R enic held the most amazing woman he’d ever met in his arms and waited for her body to stop shaking. He’d focused so much on her pleasure that he hadn’t reached climax yet himself, and the warmth of her most intimate parts wrapped around him was almost too much to take.
He traced a path down her back while he waited for her to catch her breath, his own coming heavy against the side of her face. She’d done exactly what he told her to do: she’d taken what she wanted. It had been incredible to experience.
She leaned back far enough to see his face. Her eyes were dark, and her hair spilled out around her like a silken cloud. Light from the distant streetlamp glinted off her face, making her look like a combination of angel and devil, sent to torment him.
“My God you’re beautiful.” His voice was rough and low and more than a little shaky. He’d fantasized about having this woman in his arms so many times he couldn’t believe it had become reality .
She stared down at him, lips curled in an amazed smile, as if she’d never heard those words before.
A car door slammed nearby, startling both of them.
Lizzie sank lower.
“Oh my God.” She tugged her shirt down and then put a hand over her face.
He grinned. “They can’t see. If they could, they’d be really jealous right now.”
Voices rang out as one group greeted another, and music spilled out into the night from the bar’s open door.
“Oh…oh, sweet Mary and Joseph.” Lizzie moaned. “That did not just happen. I can’t believe I—we—just did that.”
“It is a little surreal, but in all the right ways.” He winked at her. “Care for another round?”
She lifted her hand to glare at him. “No. We need to get going.”
“Why? Worried the inn fell into the lake while it was unsupervised?”
She hit his arm. “We’re in a parking lot.”
He looked around. “It was the logical place to park, yes.”
“We’re nearly naked.” She stared at him, exasperated.
He glanced down at where their bodies were still joined. “Not nearly naked enough, but I’ll concede the point.”
She smacked his arm a little harder than before. “We need to get dressed. We aren’t teenagers sneaking out of the house to do it behind the gym. God, I’ve been lecturing Della about her life choices and now here I did this. With you .”
“I think it was about damn time you did something like this with me. I’m sorry if the experience didn’t seem worth your time.” The ecstatic warmth they’d shared just minutes before was starting to cool.
Lizzie made a sound that he had trouble interpreting and wrinkled her nose at him. “I didn’t mean that. ”
“What did you mean?”
“I don’t know what I mean.” She screwed up her face. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”
He slowly shifted her to the side. Cold air slapped at his overheated body parts and made him shiver. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I haven’t been fighting with you, Lizzie. I’ve been having amazing sex with you.”
“I know .” Lizzie groaned. “I feel like any second my dad is going to rip open the car door and catch us, and I’ll be grounded for the next thirty years.”
“Are you trying to say you’re embarrassed?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No.” A flash of defiance lit her eyes. “It was fun, and I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. But there’s nothing beyond this. It…we…have no future.”
He blinked. He hadn’t been thinking about the future at all; he’d just been thinking about her and this moment. “Did you want a future with me?”
“Up until a couple of hours ago I didn’t even want a present with you.” Her lips quirked into a half smile. “Let’s get back to what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“Right.”
Her statement left him feeling oddly disappointed. He hadn’t even thought past the next few minutes when they’d climbed into the backseat, but now that she’d mentioned the future, he was a little irritated that she’d dismissed the possibility so easily.
He fished around in the well of the car for their clothes.
By the time they were dressed and back on the road, it was eight o’clock and the parking lot was packed.
“How many people do you think noticed us?” Lizzie glanced back at the bar .
People milled about, smoking and laughing.
“We aren’t the first ones to do it in that parking lot, I bet. If they noticed, it probably just gave them ideas of their own. Don’t worry about it, we’re in a rental. Nobody will know it was you.”
She rolled her eyes at him settled back in her seat. “That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s just with Della here, I really don’t need to bring that kind of attention back to the inn. You know how reporters get.”
He was having trouble reconciling the passionate heat they’d shared with the cold return to reality she insisted on now. He kept remembering how she’d felt against him. Already, his body yearned for another taste. It was clear, though, that she wasn’t thinking that way about him at all.
If she wanted reality, fine. He could provide that. “Do we still have a deal? Are we working together to get Della back on tour or am I going it alone?”
She flashed him an irritated look. “I don’t break my promises.”
He nodded. “Okay. How do you propose we get her back on track?”
Lizzie shifted in her seat. “I’m not exactly sure. I’ve tried talking to her, more than once. She’s not listening.”
“Were you serious when you said she’d probably listen to me?”
Lizzie made a noncommittal noise. “She might. She asked me to keep you away from her, which probably means she’s worried you’ll talk her into something.”
“Hah!” He slapped the steering wheel. “I was right. You did lure me out of the house on purpose, and it wasn’t just for hot car sex. You wanted to keep me away from Della.”
“I didn’t lure you out for sex at all. Let’s get that clear. That was…a blip in judgment. ”
“I have a bruise on my back from that blip of judgment. Those damn seatbelts are hard.” He turned onto the local highway and sped up.
“I do have a plan of sorts,” Lizzie said.
“For Della? Or the bruise?”
“Della. Your bruises are your business.”
“And here I thought we’d had a moment together.” He glanced at her. “What’s your plan?”
“I thought I’d keep her busy with manual labor until she got tired enough to open up. She hated that as a kid. Plus, Mark’s been sniping at her since she got here, which is another nice dose of reality. She’s so used to having people fawn over her every word it’s good for her to have someone ignore her fame and talent and just treat her as a regular person, you know?”
It wasn’t a bad start, but he wasn’t convinced it would get the job done without a little more prompting. “I caught a little of that tension at dinner, but I’m not sure it means what you think it means.”
“How so?”
Even though there’d been tense words between Della and Mark, he’d also noticed the expression on Mark’s face when Della wasn’t looking. It had been a mixture of irritation and interest.
He knew how that felt. He’d never be able to look at Lizzie again without feeling an intense need to find a dark corner to share with her. “Oh, let’s just say that sometimes sniping like that is code for a totally different kind of tension.”
“You think he likes her?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded. “Foreplay.”
“I don’t know about that.” Lizzie stared out the window, then chuckled and shook her head. “You could be right. I didn’t really see it, but he has been spending a lot more time around the inn the past few days than he needed to. I thought he was just trying to help me out since we’re shorthanded, but maybe not.”
““I’m not sure forcing them to spend time together is going to have the effect you think it’ll have. You Bellamy women are like drugs. You get him hooked, it might not work out so good for us.”
She laughed. “I’m not a drug. Besides, it might settle her down. Mark’s a down-to-earth guy.”
“If they fall for each other, she won’t go back on tour. She won’t want to leave the inn at all.”
“Hmmm. I doubt it’ll go that far even if they are attracted to each other. Della’s impulsive. She flits from man to man as a hobby. And Mark’s a small-town guy, you know? His world is the vines. His family has lived here for generations. No way he’ll want to join up with her in the bright lights of the city.”
The way she said it made him think she wasn’t exactly talking about Mark and Della anymore. “So what you’re saying is you can’t see a future for any two people from different walks of life, period.”
Lizzie hesitated. “Not exactly. But, yes. Pretty much.”
“Not…yes?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
Lizzie made an irritated sound. “I’m just saying they’re all wrong for each other.”
He kept his tone noncommittal.
“How would it work? She’s constantly traveling. He has to tend the vines. It’s impossible.”
“Right.”
“Stop that,” Lizzie snapped.
“Stop what?”
“ That . I can tell you don’t agree. Why don’t you just say it? ”
“I think most people would make room in their lives for the one they love. I know I would.” He shrugged.
Lizzie turned away to stare out the passenger window. “I don’t think this discussion is solving the problem.”
It was late, they were tired from a long day of sparring with each other, and he was still more than a little wired from exploring the backseat with her. “Okay. We’ll both sleep on it tonight. We can talk about our next move in the morning. Maybe over breakfast?”
“Can’t. I give everyone marching orders for the day at breakfast. Maybe we can meet up after, once everyone gets going.”
His instinct caught the mention of marching orders and ran with it. “Count me in on those orders.”
Now that he had Lizzie willing to work with him, he wanted to keep the momentum and goodwill growing. Helping her out seemed like the best way to do that.
“Really?” She glanced at him. “Don’t you have work to do? A business to run? Lives to change?”
A montage of the future Lizzie claimed she and Renic couldn’t have flashed through his mind, featuring Belhurst Castle, grapevines, and her tangled in his sheets.
Why couldn’t they have that? He could run his business from an inn in upstate New York. He could run it from anywhere if she was standing next to him.
He put a hand on hers. “Tomorrow, and whenever you need me, I’m yours.”