“Thanks for your opinion. I’ll take it under consideration.”
“I know this hot-looking spray-paint artist who specializes in nudes. I think you two would really hit it off.”
“I can find my own dates, thank you.”
“Hmm. I’ve been working here almost ten months and as far as I know you haven’t hooked up with a guy even once. You spend all your time building fantasies and no time living them. Under those conditions anyone would burn out.”
“I appreciate your concern, but my love life is my private business. Could we talk about something else, please?”
Ashley shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
At that moment the wind chimes over the door whispered a resonant woodsy sound and a shapely older woman dressed in the latest designer fall fashions stepped over the threshold.
The woman was Jayne Lockerbee. Her favorite customer. Eden smiled.
Jayne was one red-hot granny who believed sex should be discussed freely and enjoyed often. She loved shocking her conservative friends and relatives by gifting them with Eden’s baskets.
“Yo, J. Lo!” Ashley greeted Jayne in the hip, breezy style Eden so often envied.
“Hey, Ash, what’s happenin’?” Mrs. Lockerbee grinned.
“Not much. How’s Mr. Lo?”
“Sexy as ever.” The woman winked. “In fact, that’s why I’m here. I need a very special gift basket for our thirtieth wedding anniversary.”
“No kidding? That’s so awesome. Married thirty years and you’re still having wild sex,” Ashley blurted.
“Better than ever. There’s nothing sexier than experience.” Mrs. Lockerbee turned her attention to Eden. “Now about that basket. I was thinking maybe a little Tarzan and Jane action. What can you create for me along those lines?”
“I’ll help her, if you wanna finish that.” Ashley nodded.
Normally Eden handled all gift consultations, but Ashley knew Jayne well and she was trying to help out in the face of Eden’s creative crash and burn.
“Sure. That’ll be fine.”
“Really?” Ashley’s eyes lit up at the honor Eden had bestowed upon her.
“Really. You don’t mind if Ashley waits on you this time, do you, Jayne?”
“Of course not. Maybe Ashley will even share some of her sexual escapades with me.” Jayne winked. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be young.”
Have I? Eden thought. The notion was an unsettling one. Old before her time. Washed-up before she’d ever really started living.
“We just got in these great new leopard-print loincloths,” Ashley said to Jayne.
“Hmm, sounds promising.”
“Here, let me show you.” Ashley escorted Jayne to the rear of the store.
Shaking the doubt from her head, Eden returned to the task at hand. What would it be like to have Jayne’s life? Married thirty years and still enjoying terrific sex. Would she ever have that?
With those scars? Not likely.
Eden sighed. Some people were lucky in love. Apparently, she was not. On that score, she was her mother’s daughter.
But it doesn’t mean you can’t be lucky in lust, nudged a naughty voice at the back of her mind. Come on, Eden, you know you want to have sex.
And expanding her sexual horizons would be good for both business and her creativity. It was the missing piece of the puzzle and in her heart she knew it.
Her cautious nature had held her back for too long. Lack of experience was what had her feeling like a fraud, and feeling like a fraud was responsible for her artistic block.
And just because Josh was a jerk didn’t mean all men would run away at the sight of her scars. She just had to take her time and find a kind, sensitive lover who intimately knew his way around a woman’s body. Simply entertaining thoughts of that mystery lover had her tingling with longing.
Okay, all right. She needed to get laid. But even if she was willing to take a huge risk, strip off her clothes in front of a stranger and reveal her secret vulnerability, she had absolutely no prospects in mind—Ashley’s hottie spray-paint artist aside.
She tied the big red bow around the basket and then stepped over to place it in the orders-waiting-to-be-picked-up glass display case. She set the basket down, and then slowly raised her head and peered out the front window that was open just a crack.
The air hung heavy with the rich scent of impending rain. Humidity-laden wind gusted, sending a swirl of fallen leaves gathering along the curb.
It was the sort of enigmatic, electrically charged afternoon that lingered between dwindling summer and impending autumn that stirred a woman’s blood and made her believe in the endless possibilities of titillating encounters with dark fantasy men.
That’s when she saw him. Standing rooted to the sidewalk, looking as if he owned the entire street while everyone else scurried around him.
Inexplicably, she sucked in her breath and a shiver of anticipation scampered down her spine.
God, he was gorgeous. Skyscraper tall and daredevil muscular, his lush dark hair curled to his collar giving him a wild, roguish appearance in spite of his tailored pinstriped business suit. His face was lean and chiseled, his mouth full and tempting. His eyes were the smoky-gray of a grass fire and fringed with black lashes dense as paintbrushes.
He was the sort of man who made even a reticent woman itch to get naked. Ambushed by this totally unexpected and intense attraction, Eden’s knees weakened as a dozen forbidden pImages** tumbled through her brain.
What was happening here? Just minutes ago she’d been unable to dredge up a single sexual fantasy and now she couldn’t stop them.
She pictured herself rolling around on a heart-shaped bed in a woodsy cabin in the Catskills with the guy. She imagined their sweaty bodies pressed together as they made love on the floor of a grass hut in Bora Bora. She envisioned them grinding against each other on a bearskin rug before a roaring fireplace in Iceland.
He was a plundering pirate and she was his captive. She was a streetwalker plying her trade and he was her randy john. He was a virile gunslinger and she was the timid schoolmarm come to teach in his untamed town.
She tasted the briny flavor of his skin as she bit his bare shoulder. She inhaled the smell of coconut, bananas and lusty man. She heard his deep-throated groan as he called out her name in the ecstasy of climax.
Omigod, omigod, omigod.
Stunned and excited, Eden raised a hand to her throat. The magic was back.
And then he leveled his gaze, stared straight through the window at her and started into the store.
2
ALEC RAMSEY DOUBLE-CHECKED the Soho address on the slip of paper in his pocket. Yep, Wickedly Wonderful, this was the place his oldest sister Sarah had recommended.
He raised his head and started to move toward the door, but then his eyes landed on the woman in the storefront window and he froze.
Spellbound, he simply stared. She was leaning over, placing something in the window and oh, so slightly exposing just a hint of cleavage. The sight was enough to cause instant sweat to bead on the back of his neck despite the recent drop in temperature.
A burst of wind snatched a red banner from the awning of a nearby building. It sailed down, fluttering in