2
“EMILY.”
“Rand McConnell, you conceited jackass,” she snapped, seething with anger she hadn’t realized she was capable of feeling. It choked her, enveloped her. She wrapped the rage around herself, well aware that she’d need it to keep her defenses high.
Being angry wasn’t hard. The man’s ego was unbelievable. He really believed she was some groupie who’d been trying to seduce him by, what, wagging her butt up at him from the floor and begging him to climb on top of her and make her howl?
He could. You know he could.
That was beside the point.
She leapt to her feet, too mad to feel any mortification about him catching her with her pants down. Er, well, with her skirt up. “You assumed I was lying in wait to take advantage of you?”
“It’s you.”
“Of course it’s me.”
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Not lying in wait to take advantage of you, that’s for sure! What on earth kind of women do you meet if they wait for you on all fours in hotel rooms?”
A slow, wry grin spread across his face, that sexy grin of Randy’s that had graced magazines and cereal boxes. His amazing smile had made her dizzy with lust when she was a mere teenager and he not much more than that.
That grin still elicited a reaction. Something inside her twisted and lurched—her heart, her sex, her stomach? All of the above?
God, this was just how she’d felt the first time she’d seen him. Back when she’d been an innocent virgin, a good girl raised in a sheltered home who was looking to spread her wings and be a little bad.
Rand had been a few years older, already so handsome he had girls following him everywhere. But, as she’d learned, he’d also come from a pretty sheltered, small-town background. They’d also had another sad connection, both of them having essentially lost a parent as a teenager, though not in the same way. Rand had lost his father to cancer—a true tragedy. Em had lost both her parents to prison on embezzlement convictions, which was more infuriating than tragic, as far as she was concerned. But still a loss for a young girl yanked from the only life she’d ever known. As their friendship had developed, they’d talked a lot about the paths their lives had taken after those losses...and the paths they had not.
She shook her head hard, willing the sweeter memories of Rand away, forcing herself to focus on the bad ones.
“I never meet women as interesting as you, believe me,” he said. And she did believe it, because the rat had the ability to make any woman believe whatever words came out of that beautiful face.
Oh, God, why did he have to be so impossibly handsome? Why had his dark brown hair retained its luster, why hadn’t it started to go gray or, best of all, fallen out by the fistful? Why were his cheeks so sharply defined, and why was his jaw so rugged and his mouth so eminently sexy and kissable? Why was that body even more strong-looking, broad-shouldered and muscular than it had been when he’d been a college ballplayer just starting out? Why did those green eyes still take in so much more than she wanted to reveal?
Why are you here, Rand?
“You’re all grown up,” he said.
“Seven years will do that to a person,” she replied, her tone sugar-sweet, reminding him that it had been seven years since they’d spoken, seven years during which he’d never once tried to reach her, not even to see if she was okay after what had happened between them. “Despite appearances, I’m not the dumb girl I was.”
“You were never dumb.”
To be fair, he’d never treated her as if she was dumb, just as a sweet little innocent. Until that last night.
She’d met Rand when she was visiting her brother, Seth, who lived in L.A. Seth was a sports agent, just building a name for himself back then. Now, he counted some of the most famous, successful athletes in the country as his clients. Rand McConnell had been one of them.
He wasn’t anymore, though. Because of her.
“You were always pretty spectacular.”
Her spine went ramrod straight and she forced away the hint of pleasure his compliment created. The guy was a womanizing ballplayer who probably fed every woman that same line. “And you were always a jerk.”
He flinched, visibly affected at last.
She instantly regretted the comment. Because he hadn’t been a jerk. In fact, Rand had been anything but a jerk when they’d first met. He’d been cute and funny and charming, even if he hadn’t been later.
“Wow, that’s new. You’ve grown a sharp tongue to go along with that perfect face,” he said, sounding rueful.
“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “This was an awkward reunion at best. If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going.”
She began to walk toward the door but he stepped in front of her. She had to drop her head back to stare up at him—he’d had a good six inches in height on her when he’d been twenty-one and he seemed even taller now.
She suddenly realized why. “Wait, where are my shoes?” she asked, still not believing he’d pulled her out from under the bed—and not believing she’d been about to walk out of here barefoot and with her skirt still twisted out of place. The man had fried her brains and made her forget everything else. As always. She untangled her skirt and yanked it into position.
“I hid them.”
“You didn’t have a chance to hide them.”
“Okay, so I threw them. They’re in the corner.”
She walked over to get them and shoved her feet in the pumps. Turning to leave, though, she found he’d stepped right in front of the doorway, blocking her exit.
“I’m curious, if you weren’t, uh, lying in wait, what were you doing under my bed?”
“I was trying to unhook the...”
The words died on her lips. She did not want to talk to Rand about the fur-lined handcuffs attached to his bed, apparently left there by the hotel owner. She’d heard rumors about the wealthy owner’s revolving-door love life. Evidently it wasn’t just his money that kept the women coming to the penthouse night after night when he was in residence.
Although the room itself was probably part of the attraction. The three-bedroom suite was the final word in opulence. It included every creature comfort a person could desire, from a private pool on the rooftop patio, to a ten-headed shower in the master bath, to a bar fridge stocked with Perrier-Jouët champagne and Beluga caviar.
And, as she’d discovered when doing one last sweep after the maids had departed, a bit of a kink factor. She’d found a pair of cuffs in a drawer in the bathroom, which had prompted her to double-check the bed. Good thing. There’d been another set attached to one of the decorative wooden slats that ran vertically down the center of the thick, massive headboard.
“Let me guess—you were trying to unhook the handcuffs?” he said, a teasing note to his voice.
Heat rose in her face. “How did you...”
“I heard you mumbling to yourself.”
Yet he had still assumed she was a stranger lying in wait to, uh, seduce him. Did women regularly handcuff him to the bed to have their kinky way with him? She did a mental eye-roll at the very idea, then quickly pulled her thoughts off all things handcuffy and sexual. And Randy. Oh, yes, randy was definitely on the no-no list right now.
“Yes, well, I was just doing a sweep to make sure everything was acceptable.”
“And you found handcuffs.”
“Would