“Of course, you’re going to tell me about a kiss that fried all of your circuits,” Dee said now. “I’m the best friend. Who else are you going to tell?”
“Nobody,” she said and gratefully poured a fresh cup of coffee. “Honestly, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Right. That’s why you were still babbling a day later. Why you said that you’d never experienced anything like that and it’s why you said Lucas King kisses like a man who was just giving a woman a preview of the big event.”
Rose closed her eyes on a sigh. “Did you take notes or something?”
“Are you kidding? I’m so jealous that description is seared into my mind.” She gave a wistful, dramatic sigh. “So, what’s the second chapter? Fondling in the kitchen? Playing touchy-feely while chopping parsley?”
“No to all of the above,” Rose told her firmly, though her body did a quick hop and skip at the thought.
“You mean to tell me you’re sticking to the rules you laid down? Strictly business?”
“I am,” she said with a sharp nod that Dee couldn’t even see. “I have to. I need the money he’s paying me.”
Dee snorted. “Oh, please.”
Rose took the phone away from her ear, frowned at it, then slapped it back into place. “That’s the reason I took the job in the first place, remember?”
“That’s what you told yourself, anyway,” Dee said. “Come on, Rose. We both know that Lucas King makes you shiver in all the right places.”
True, she thought, rolling her eyes heavenward as she took a sip of hot coffee. Rose had been shivering for a solid week. And working in the man’s house every night, in very close quarters, wasn’t helping anything. Although, ever since that one, blistering kiss, Lucas had been absolutely, rigidly, polite. He hadn’t made another move. Hadn’t even so much as given her a look that would lead her to think that he’d spent nearly as much time daydreaming about that kiss as she had.
So why was she making herself crazy over this?
“Okay, yes, he does,” she admitted, when Dee’s silence began to scream at her. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it.”
“Pity.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Rose, you know I love you…”
“I hear a but coming,” Rose said.
“But,” Dee continued, “you don’t know a good thing when you trip over it.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she countered, wandering across her small kitchen to stare out the window at the winterized backyard. The trees were looking a little sad, their browning leaves clinging to the branches, refusing to drop. The grass was brown, too. In fact, the only splotches of color out there were her chrysanthemums—yellow, purple, white—in the flowerbeds that needed weeding.
She’d lived in this house since her divorce, and she’d been happy here. Her own space, just a tiny bungalow in one of the older sections of Long Beach, the house was nothing like the palatial mansion where she’d grown up and, frankly, that was Rose’s favorite part. Big houses felt cold. Empty.
Well, she amended silently, that wasn’t entirely true. Lucas’s house was gigantic, but there was an easy warmth to it, too. She had felt at home the moment she walked inside. Which probably wasn’t a good thing.
“If you did,” Dee was saying, “you’d kiss Lucas King senseless, tip him into bed and have your wicked way with him.”
“You’re writing your romance novel again, aren’t you?”
Dee laughed. “Guilty. But my point is, why are you backing away? He’s single. You’re single. Finally.”
“You know why,” Rose said and opened the back door. It was cold outside, but right now, that sharp, ocean air felt good. As if it was going to blow right through her mind, chasing away thoughts she had no business indulging in.
Stepping out onto the back porch, Rose cradled the phone in one hand, her coffee cup in the other, and slowly sank down onto one of the weathered Adirondack chairs. Easing back, she stared into the yard, but wasn’t really seeing it. Instead, she looked into her own past and didn’t like the view.
“He’s too much like Dave. And my father. And Henry,” Rose said quietly.
“Rich men aren’t all alike, sweetie,” Dee said, her voice just as quiet, letting Rose know that she understood completely.
“No, but there are enough similarities between the Clancy men and the King men to make me wary.”
“Okay, I get that,” her friend said. “But you’re not the same person you were in the past, Rose. There’s not a man alive who could walk over you now. You’re stronger than that. Not afraid to speak up for yourself.”
She was, Rose thought with not a little pride. She’d worked hard to develop her own confidence. Her own strengths. For as long as she could remember, her father and her older brother had looked at her as if she were some plaster saint. She was always the good, compliant, pretty daughter and sister.
Part of that, of course, was her own fault. Her mother died when Rose was ten, and after that, she was in a constant state of fear that she would lose the rest of her family. That somehow, something would go wrong and she would be alone. She’d even convinced herself that if she wasn’t perfect, they might not want her around at all.
So she had been better than perfect. She never made waves. Never questioned. Never argued. Never stood up for herself, not once. Even after college, she had maintained that air of perfection for her family and when her father had asked her to marry Henry Porter, she had agreed.
“Maybe Lucas King is just what you need,” Dee was saying. “You’ve been celibate way too long. That creep of an ex-husband of yours really messed with your head and I’m thinking a little attention from the right person could just give you a whole new outlook.”
Rose shook her head, took a sip of coffee and watched the neighbor’s cat walk with balletic precision along the top of the block wall fence that separated the yards. She smiled to herself as the rotund calico paused long enough to bat one paw at a trembling leaf.
“What is whirling around in your devious mind?” Rose asked, though she knew she probably shouldn’t. “Seduction.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying…if Lucas isn’t a long-term guy, why can’t he be a short-term one?”