Slow Burn: Seducing Mr. Right / Take Me

“Virgin? Unmarried woman? Untouched? Pure?”

“Jesus.” His breath gusted out, and it took several moments to get his heartbeat back to comfortable. He scraped his fingers through his hair, feeling ridiculously as if he’d stood perilously close to the edge of an abyss and survived. “Sorry, I tend to get a little carried away,” he admitted gruffly.

“I’ve noticed.” Cat’s voice was dry. Her mouth wore a small, tentative smile, but her eyes still looked as if she were about to tell him something he didn’t want to hear. He’d anticipated the worst and rallied. Relaxing, he leaned back in his chair.

“What do you need help with? Want to come and work out of our office? No problem, I told you we’ll find a spot for you—”

She watched him with big, serious eyes. “I don’t want you to find me office space, Luke. I want you to find me a husband.”

CHAPTER TWO

“WELL, SAY SOMETHING.” Catherine tried not to let her nerves show as he sat there gaping.

Even while she’d agonized over doing this, she’d hoped she’d have to go no further than to ask Luke for his help. It would have made life a whole bunch easier if he’d just cut to the chase and declared his undying love for her at the onset.

The Plan hadn’t gotten much beyond that. She wanted more, but with Luke’s attitude toward permanence, she was realistic enough to know she wasn’t going to get it.

Her biggest leap of faith had been to burn her bridges, and take the chance that he wouldn’t reject her outright. Again.

Ten years was a long time, she kept reminding herself. They’d both grown up since. She wasn’t that naive, impulsive kid anymore. She knew Luke better now. For her plan to work, this seduction was going to have to be his idea. Unfortunately, he was still staring at her, slack-jawed.

“Well?” she said with a shaky breath. “Say something.”

“I’m speechless.”

“Could you hurry up and get over it?” Catherine pulled a yellow scratch pad and a pen out of the canvas bag she’d slung over the finial of her chair earlier. She concentrated on writing “Prospective Husbands” at the top of the page in neat block letters, more to give Luke time to assimilate what she’d said than the need to make a list. She glanced up. His eyes were squinty.

“What?” she asked innocently.

“What do you mean, you want me to find you a husband? You have a phobic aversion to marriage!”

“No. That’s you.” Keep it casual, Catherine. “I have a phobic aversion to my mother’s marriages. What if poor marital judgment is hereditary? My apple might have fallen closer to my mother’s tree than I’d like. I just don’t trust my own judgment.”

“And you’d trust mine? I don’t believe in marriage, remember?”

How could she forget? “You’ll meet someone someday.”

“No,” he said unequivocally. “I won’t. And frankly, Cat, considering we’ve both seen your mother in action, I’m surprised that you’d want to make the same mistakes.”

“With your help, I won’t.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“Because I need someone to take care of, Luke. After Dad died I realized I liked taking care of someone. I love being a homemaker. I know it’s politically incorrect not to want a career, but I don’t. I enjoy trading stocks on the market, and as long as I have my computer and a phone line, I can do that anywhere. But if I had to stop that tomorrow, I wouldn’t care. I guess I’m a throwback, what can I say? I want a husband to love, and to be loved by. Eventually kids. I want a couple of dogs, and a house with a big yard. Is that too much to ask—where are you going?”

“To make more hot chocolate.”

“There’s still some. Here.” She handed him her mug and waited while he poured hot chocolate haphazardly from the pan. Catherine observed the motion of muscles flexing beneath his green sweater. She drew in a deep breath, then held it until her stomach behaved itself. Luke had never made any bones about his intention to remain a bachelor. She remembered him telling her just that, right after his own mother remarried for the third time. Luke didn’t believe in promises any more than Catherine did. The difference was she was willing to take the chance. Luke wasn’t.

He yanked open a cabinet and grabbed a bottle of something hideously expensive, using more force than necessary. She perked up. Wrenching the cap off, he sloshed liquor into his mug, then slammed the bottle onto the black granite countertop. Even better.

“Are we celebrating?” she asked as he placed both mugs on the table. She plucked napkins out of the holder to mop up the chocolate milk he’d sloshed onto the tabletop.

“What do you think, Catherine?” He strode back to retrieve the liquor bottle, which he slam-dunked onto the table between them. Then, scowling, he threw himself into his chair and raked his fingers through his hair until it stood up like a shark fin.

“Well, I think a celebration is a little premature right now...but sure.” She reached out to take the bottle. Luke removed it gently from her grasp. Which was fine with her. If it tasted anything like it smelled, she’d gag. Come on, Luke, she silently urged, let’s hear it.

“Are you out of your mind, Cat?” A vein throbbed in his temple. His eyes had turned a smoky green. “If you have this burning need to take care of something, get a poodle.”

“Not quite the same thing, Luke.”

Even with that look of total exasperation on his face he was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on. Too sexy for plain Catherine Harris. But she wanted him anyway. Her and about a billion other women. Luke Van Buren was Mr. Confirmed Bachelor Playboy himself. He’d never had to look for female companionship. Anything female would spot him from a hundred feet away and be charmed. He loved women. He treated his girlfriends with care and consideration, and adored them.

As long as he was with them.

Lucas Van Buren epitomized the expression “out of sight, out of mind.” Over the years she’d witnessed the ebb and flow of Luke’s lady friends. None of the relationships lasted very long. Which didn’t bode well for her own future. But if she didn’t try, how would she ever know?

Luke was a freewheeling playboy. She valued security and stability above all else. He was a daredevil who considered variety the spice of life. She wanted marriage. He wanted affairs.

She wanted him. He didn’t want her.

When she’d first decided to come to San Francisco she’d considered asking Luke to find her a lover, not a husband. Since he wasn’t husband material, that would have been closer to the truth. But she’d immediately dismissed that idea. Luke would have choked out a resounding and unequivocal “N.O.”

“Did being stuck in that house with just Dad for company turn your gray matter into oatmeal?”

“Not that I know of. Look, this is quite simple, Luke. You must know a gazillion single guys. Lots of cultures have marriage brokers. Which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense. Look at the divorce rate when people find mates by random selection. It’s up to sixty percent. Our mothers probably had a lot to do with that figure rising.”

He splashed more amber liquid into his mug. His knuckles glowed white where he gripped the bottle. He hadn’t said a word in minutes.

“You’re intelligent. You know me, you care about me. You’ll make a perfect marriage broker. Pick a few friends you think would make good husband material and I’ll do the rest.”

Catherine grabbed the pen, ignored the thud of her heartbeat right under her breastbone, and gave him a perky smile. She set the tip of the pen in the left margin and wrote a large number one. “Any interesting prospects in your address book under A?”

* * *

HE’D DONE SOMETHING really bad in another life and God was punishing him, Luke thought as he silently opened the bedroom door several sleepless hours later. To get to the bathroom and a cold shower, he had to traverse the bedroom where Cat slept. He’d spent a miserable night on the sofa thinking about her—and her harebrained scheme.

The world was her oyster. She should be enjoying the bliss of singlehood. Besides, how could a woman whose mother had been married, at last count, eight times even consider marriage?

Variety was the spice of life. Why would anyone put all their emotional eggs in one basket? How could one person be everything to another person? It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t smart. And Cat was usually so sensible, so predictable, so...sane.

Last night she’d been too tired to listen to reason. He’d talk some sense into her today, he decided, as he sneaked into his own sun-washed bedroom on Sunday morning, averting his gaze from the bed—for half a heartbeat.

Sleeping the sleep of the innocent and still wearing his sweatshirt, Cat sprawled diagonally across his California King mattress, sunlight streaming across her smooth bare legs. His fingers itched to slide up the satiny expanse. He wanted to follow his hands with his mouth and taste those freckles.

He sped into the bathroom, closed the door and wilted against it in his relief to have made it this far unscathed.

An icy shower went a long way to making him feel halfway human. When he opened the bathroom door again the first thing he saw was Cat’s smiling face. His heart did a ridiculous and wholly inappropriate double axel as she sat up in bed, his bed, to smile at him.

“Good morning.” She yawned, stretching like a cat.

“Get your lazy butt out of bed, woman,” he told her sternly, digging through the chaos of his drawers for clean underwear while he held on to the towel around his waist with the other hand. “We have things to do and places to go.” He’d have to knuckle down and do laundry soon. He looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you awake in there?”

Cat shook her head as if to clear it, then scrambled over the edge of the bed. “You betcha, Bubba. Give me ten minutes and I’m all yours.” She shuffled into the bathroom. The door snicked behind her. He dropped the towel, dragged on underwear over damp skin and waited for the click of the lock.

He waited in vain.

The shower turned on.

He struggled to zip his jeans.

The bedroom smelled like Cat. Soft. Flowery. Permanent. He searched the upper shelves for a sweatshirt. Finding one he’d stuffed in there months ago, he held it up. Not too wrinkled. So he put it on.

“Hey, Luke?” she shouted over the noise of pounding water.

He closed his eyes. “What?”

“Did you come up with some names for me?” The shower turned off. “Hey. What happened to the towe—never mind, found them.”

People showered naked every day of the week. He wished to hell Cat wasn’t one of them. “We’ll talk about it.”

“What? I can’t hear... That’s better.” A billow of Cat-scented steam preceded her as she opened the door. “Well, did you?”

“I said...” He clenched his teeth, bending down to tie the laces on his boots. They were on the wrong feet. He removed, then switched them, before tackling the laces. “...we’ll talk about it.”

She came out of the bathroom wearing one towel around her body, another wrapped turban style about her head. Her face was scrubbed shiny, her skin like fresh cream sprinkled with cinnamon. Her legs went on forever. In his fantasies he joined the dots.

If she was any other woman... But she was Cat. He’d bite off his own foot before he’d hurt her. This was not a woman a man played with. Cat was a keeper.

There wasn’t a drop of blood in common between them. Their relationship was a state of mind. One he’d better keep remembering. She thought of him as her brother, he reminded himself grimly. Therefore Cat was off-limits. A no-no. Absolutely forbidden fruit.

“I hope it’ll be soon, Luke.” She pulled the towel from her head. “I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

“Who is?” He’d tied the laces too tight, but he walked to the door anyway. When he turned back he managed to look just at her hair. Wet and wild, it tangled around her face and bare shoulders, and lovingly clung, like wet flames, to the upper swell of her—

“Hurry up and dress, will you? It’s past ten and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

He closed the door gently behind him, feeling as though he’d just escaped something too terrifying to contemplate.

* * *

“OH, MY GOD, Luke, don’t take the corners so fast!” Catherine screamed as the Hideous Harley did a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet skim around another corner. Clinging to his waist, she gripped his belt buckle with both hands. The seat felt obscenely wide between her thighs.

“Lean, Cat. Lean.”

She leaned, sure her helmet must have brushed the gray asphalt as they cornered at an impossible angle.

Luke hadn’t given her time to dry her hair. The moment she’d dressed in jeans and another of his oversize sweatshirts, he’d hustled her down to the parking garage, ignored his well-preserved 1977 Jag, climbed onto his enormous black demon motorcycle, handed her the spare helmet, revved the engine and instructed her to hold on.

If she’d been holding him any tighter, she would have been in front. The speed scared her speechless, no easy feat. Nevertheless, she’d better learn to love the wind tugging her hair from the helmet, biting into her face and making her nose and eyes run. Luke loved his bike.

His house was an hour south of San Francisco, down narrow, windy, stomach-churning coastal roads. Catherine squeezed her eyes shut and buried her icy nose against his leather-clad back, remembering the first time he’d taken her up behind him. She’d been ten. He was seventeen.

He’d only taken her because Dad had insisted she get the first ride on his new bike. She’d been terrified. Luke had been furious at her for being such a baby and had screamed blue murder at her for three blocks. The wind had caused her eyes to tear. And Luke and Dad had had a huge, yelling, door-slamming fight when they got back.

“Loosen up a bit, Catwoman. I can’t breathe.”

Since Catherine hadn’t drawn a proper breath in more than an hour, she ignored his request. He felt warm and solid in her arms. “Are we there yet?” she whined like a five-year-old.

She felt Luke’s laugh vibrate through her body like dark, sinfully rich chocolate. Oh, yes. She’d made the right decision coming to San Francisco. Yes, indeedy.

* * *

“STOP HERE FOR a sec,” Catherine demanded an hour later as the bike turned from the tarred road parallel to the ocean onto the as-yet-unpaved gravel of Luke’s new driveway. The fog had burned off, leaving sparkling spring sunshine glinting off the Pacific in the distance. Catherine inhaled the fresh briny air deep into her lungs as she let go of him and flung her leg over the bike the moment he brought it to a stop.

She stood, took off her helmet, then shaded her eyes with one hand against the sun, waiting for her heart to take up its normal rhythm after being glued to Luke for miles.

While the soft whoosh of the ocean sounded behind her, she forced herself to check out his house, as opposed to analyzing which body part felt what from the close encounter of the third kind with Luke’s body.

Constructed of weathered redwood, tucked into the surrounding trees on a bluff overlooking a sliver of beach and the vastness of the ocean, the single-story house already had a look of permanence. Wonderfully gnarled, windblown cypress trees dotted the front yard.

“It’s going to be magnificent, Luke.”

Unaccountably, she felt the sting of tears, and rubbed the end of her nose with her palm. The house had been a goal of his for as long as she could remember. From the second he’d decided he wanted to be an architect, Luke had vowed to build his house from the ground up with his own two hands. A strangely permanent idea for a temporary kind of guy. Catherine wondered if Luke realized how at odds owning a house was with his playboy lifestyle.

While Luke loved the intricate curlicues and elaborate bits and pieces of Victorian houses, he’d explained to her once that he needed the clean, uncluttered lines of more modern architecture to cleanse his palate when he came home.

She noticed the enormous bay window in the living room. A window she’d suggested one rainy winter’s night as they’d pored over the first version of his blueprints years ago. She doubted if he suspected how many of her own dreams had been woven into his house plans.

Gravel crunched under his workboots as Luke came up behind her and rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. They stood silently for several moments looking up the slight incline to the house. Catherine was excruciatingly conscious of him behind her. She felt each finger on her shoulders, the warmth of his tall body shielding her back from the hair-ruffling breeze. The air smelled of salt spray and fresh lumber. But most of all it smelled of sun-warmed Luke in leather.

His proximity had already caused her stomach to coil into knots. After an hour of straddling his rangy body she needed to put some distance between them. She stepped out of reach and smiled over her shoulder. “Let’s walk the rest of the way so we can get the full ambiance.”

Luke grimaced and Catherine grinned. If Luke could ride instead of walk, sit instead of stand or call instead of write, he was a happy man.

“Exercise is good for you. It can’t be more than half a mile.”

“These are workboots,” he told her, “not walking boots. I have to save my energy for bossing you and Nick around.”

She shrugged. “Fine. I’ll walk. You ride. You should be an interesting-looking specimen once you hit forty. Flabby. Weak. Pasty. Probably sickly. That’s okay,” she said cheerfully, “you won’t be the first man to wear a waist cincher.”

Luke sighed, then knocked back the kickstand with his toe and rolled the bike beside her. “I go to the gym four times a week.”

Catherine laughed. “You go there to pick up women.” Luke’s indolence had been a family joke. Yet there’d been nothing soft about the stomach muscles she’d felt when she’d clung to him on the bike, or the hard, tight muscles in his behind pressed between her thighs. There wasn’t a flabby muscle on Luke’s six-three frame.

“I pay the dues. I can do whatever I want.”

He probably bench-pressed two blond gym bunnies. He might give the impression of being lazy, but Luke was no slouch in the flirtation department. Catherine had seen him in action. How many women, despite knowing Luke’s views on marriage, wanted him anyway? But she wasn’t going to dwell on that today. She was the woman he was with on this beautiful spring day. And she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

On either side of the slightly rolling topography, weeds, shrubs and vines tangled with thick trunks of oak, pine and cypress. There wasn’t another house for half a mile. The only sounds were ocean breezes and insects in the long grasses.

“Nick’s late,” Luke commented as he detoured to angle the monster bike through a patch of sand, parking it against a prefab shed off to one side of the half-finished front porch.

“You work the poor guy like a slave. We barely got here ourselves.”

“He’s cheap, but he’s good.” Luke squinted in the wind that ruffled his dark hair. He sent her a grin. “And he’s bringing lunch. Now, if I could just get him to give up some of his active social life, I might have this house finished next month as planned.”

“It’s a long commute,” she said casually. A month? My God, there was no way she could pull this off in a month. Could she?

“Well, the office won’t be practically across the street as it is now, but an hour’s commute these days is nothing. Come on, I want to show off everything before Nick gets here.”

Catherine followed Luke slowly as he walked up the wide, shallow redwood steps onto a deep porch. He bounced lightly, testing each tread. His fingers lingered as he trailed them up the simple banister beside the front steps. He took pride in his craftsmanship and it showed. Luke had a hedonistic pleasure in textures. He always had. She was jealous of the attention the wood was getting.

Catherine swallowed hard, remembering the night of her dateless junior prom. Luke had come to spend that weekend with his father. Exuberant as always, he’d burst into her room and found her crying. He hadn’t known what to do with a weepy female, and had plucked the hairbrush out of her hand. More, she’d been sure, for something to do with his hands than to console her, he’d ended up brushing her hair for hours as they talked. Luke looking at the back of her head, Catherine watching his face, unobserved, in her vanity mirror across the room. She never did remember what they’d talked about, only that it was the first time she’d experienced sexual awareness. For her, it was the night their relationship had changed forever.

That was the night she’d realized she loved him.

Her ponytail brushed between her shoulder blades and she shivered, remembering the sensual pleasure of Luke’s fingers in her hair, against her nape.... Get a grip here, she warned herself sternly, as she waited for him to unlock the massive oak door. Before she followed him inside, she bent to pull a weed that had managed to grow through the wood slats.

“Gonna plant that in a pot?” Luke turned, indicating the two-foot weed clutched in her hand, soil trailing from its roots.

His smile tangled up in Catherine’s heart. Sunlight stroked his dark hair and magnified his strong, unshaved jaw. His long, lean body looked breathtaking in washed-almost-white jeans and a short leather jacket. He looked handsome, disreputable and too sexy for a small-town girl from Oregon. Yet she wanted him more than her next breath. She held out the droopy weed. “Got a pot?”

“And a window,” he said dryly. “Here, give me that. I’ll take you on the twenty-dollar tour.” He took the plant, tossed it outside, then brushed off his hands.

“Twenty bucks, huh?”

“And worth every penny. Careful where you walk. Not all the nails are countersunk in the subflooring.”

The square entry echoed their footsteps as she followed him into a large room filled with sawhorses, paint cans, lumber scraps and other paraphernalia of construction. Sunlight streamed through the plastic-covered windows. The room smelled of fresh wood, mudding compound and dust. She sidestepped boxes of nails and a mountain of Sheetrock to cross the room.

“Wow. This fireplace looks great.” Catherine ran her hand lightly over the enormous natural stones, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “Did you carry even one of these monstrous rocks?”

He gave her a horrified look as he removed his jacket, tossing it onto a stepladder. “Are you kidding? What do you think Nick is for? Poor spindly fellow, he needed the exercise.”

Catherine shook her head. “You’re terrible. What was the bet?”

“Who could eat the most soft pretzels.” He puffed out his chest, stretching his black T-shirt over hard muscle. Catherine’s mouth went dry. “I ate twenty-three.”

“Gross. You must have been sick as a dog.”

“Well, yeah. But it was worth it.” His grin was infectious and her heart leaped ridiculously as he laid his arm across her shoulders and stood beside her, looking at the wall of stone with pride. “There are over two hundred fieldstones embedded in that thar li’l ol’ fireplace.”

Reaching to the cathedral ceiling, and about fifteen feet wide, it hardly qualified as little. She shook her head, used to Luke’s and Nick’s ridiculous but harmless bets.

“When are you two going to stop that nonsense? You’ve been betting on anything and everything since fifth grade.”

“We did a sealed bet when we’d stop.”

Catherine shook her head again and slipped casually from under his arm. The back of her neck tingled and her knees felt wobbly as she strolled over to the plastic-covered bay window.

“Oh, Luke, this is absolutely glorious. Look at this view. Are there any deer out there, do you think?”

“Several. I saw a doe and her fawn last weekend.”

He walked over and leaned against an exposed stud, his arms folded as he watched her from hooded eyes. A stud leaning against a stud. How appropriate. Uncomfortable under his scrutiny, she shifted without looking at him.