The Personal Touch

She caressed him all over with her hands…

Taking in the smooth feel of Clint’s skin, Margot wanted to touch and taste and lick and suck every sweet morsel. The simple touch wasn’t enough. Nothing seemed like enough as she tried to absorb every sensation she could.

His fingers came around the left strap of her thong and in one quick yank he snapped it off as though it were nothing. He tossed it over his shoulder and worked his way down.

“You drive me wild,” he said, before digging his teeth into the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. Then his tongue darted from between his lips and…

Dear Reader,

After writing several books featuring deliciously dark and wounded heroes, I was aching to write a romance involving a fun and flirty playboy. Thus Clint Hilton was born. He’s rich. He’s funny. He’s gorgeous, and he’s got the world at his fingertips. Now all he needs is a nice, sensible woman to round out his good fortune. And when he hires matchmaker Margot Roth to find a date for his mother, that’s exactly what he gets.

While I enjoyed writing this fun and flirty couple, one of my favorite aspects of this book was the many secondary characters I was able to include. I have the overbearing mother, a young and irresponsible college frat boy and the lively best friend, who brings with her a culture of warm family and big hearts. Throw in a few lovelorn clients who have romance troubles of their own and you’ve got a group of people who unwittingly conspire to bring this couple together.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please drop me a note at www.LoriBorrill.com and tell me what you think of it.

Happy reading!

Lori Borrill

The Personal Touch

LORI BORRILL

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

An Oregon native, Lori Borrill moved to the Bay Area just out of high school and has been a transplanted Californian ever since. Her weekdays are spent at the insurance company where she’s been employed for more than twenty years, and she credits her writing career to the unending help and support she receives from her husband and real-life hero. When not sitting in front of a computer, she can usually be found at the Little League fields playing proud parent to their son. She’d love to hear from readers, and can be reached through her Web site at www.LoriBorrill.com.

Books by Lori Borrill

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

308—PRIVATE CONFESSIONS

344—UNDERNEATH IT ALL*

392—PUTTING IT TO THE TEST

430—UNLEASHED

To Elle Kennedy and Tracy Wolff.

Writers need friends, and you two are the best.

To Wanda, the sweetest one

in our crazy bunch.

For Al and Tommy

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

1

WHEN THE FASHION industry’s hottest cover model flashed her signature do-me smile and stepped out of her black silk dress, Clint Hilton decided this was one sultry beauty that had definitely been worth waiting for.

If you could call three weeks a wait.

In Clint’s book of sexual conquests, it was a millennium. A week more than he’d waited for any other woman and as long as he’d gone without sex in recent memory. But ever since the two had met in Vegas last month, he’d wanted a taste of this dish. And when she’d said she was leaving for Milan that night, she’d asked him for the one thing that trumped his need for fast and frequent flings.

She’d asked him to make a promise. Wait for her to get back from her trip.

Only three tiny little weeks. Her in Italy shooting perfume ads and him in Los Angeles, cooling his cock in the Pacific Ocean while he tried to remember how he let a woman put his sex life on hold.

He couldn’t recall what had made him agree. Maybe it was the barely-there dress she’d worn that night. More likely the look in her eye that said she was worth it. But nonetheless, he’d honored his word. He had to. It was one of the few things he cherished more than having a good time.

She stepped to the edge of the pool, nothing covering that caramel skin except for the lacy red thong that topped her long, slender legs. Behind her, the view over West Hollywood nearly stretched to the ocean on this exceptionally clear night. But though he loved to relax on his terrace, tonight wouldn’t be spent gazing at the city below. Tonight was payback time. Three long weeks of celibacy ending by the graces of one tall, stunning cover model named Rachelle.

No last name. “Just Rachelle,” she’d said.

Damn, if that wasn’t sexy.

With that smoky look holding promise in her eyes, she tossed the last of her clothes, flung her hands over her head and dove into the pool. Her slender form moved fluidly through the water, inching toward him like a shark coming in for the kill. And as she neared, she stroked her hands up his legs and trailed her tongue along his shaft, breaking through the surface in a series of slippery kisses that hardened his cock and weakened his knees.

Their mouths met hot and deep, like they had back in Vegas, and he sucked in the scent of chlorine and expensive perfume. Her lips still held the essence of the Cosmopolitan she’d left on the terrace, and while her tongue did a number on his senses, she coiled her legs around his thighs and began to grind against his erection. It nearly broke him in half. He was too ready for this night. And as if to torture him more, she broke the kiss to whisper all the things she planned to do with him.

Sexy things. Naughty things. Things most women didn’t care for and a gentleman never requested. But Rachelle wasn’t looking for a gentleman tonight. She was here to prove that when it came to judging people, Clint Hilton was head of the class.

It was one of the skills he’d inherited from his father, what put him on top in his game and what had him darting through a casino full of beautiful women to that one special blonde by the bar. The one with the eyes of steam.

Clint could always spot the difference between real bedroom eyes and ones only learned for the camera. And Rachelle was the genuine article. She was the stuff wet dreams were made of, the kind of sex kitten that made suave men babble and bungling boys faint.

And tonight she was all his.

She glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “I see you’ve lit the fireplace in your bedroom. It looks cozy.”

He had. Not that April in Los Angeles was especially chilly. He’d simply gone to painstaking efforts to make sure everything was perfect tonight, starting with dinner on the beach and ending with cocktails by the pool. The lighting was timed to take over when the sun finally set. Low jazz hummed throughout the house. The tables were set with flowers and fresh citrus and the bars had been fully restocked.

And, of course, he had condoms tucked around every corner, in arm’s reach of any room, bed and surface that might spark Rachelle’s fancy. Given some of the plans she just shared, Clint suspected that endeavor hadn’t been in vain.

He lifted her high around his waist and began suckling her breast. “Would you like to move inside?”

Her quiet laugh held pure sin. “It might be safer. I’d hate to see you drown before I get my fill.”

He moved his lips to the other breast. “I’m a very good swimmer.”

Droplets of water slid from her hair and trickled down her chest, and he started a game of catching them with his tongue before they hit the water’s edge.

“You know,” she said, her breath getting heavy as he lifted her higher and moved his mouth down her waist, “you could probably get me started right here.” Then with the swiftness of a cat, she pushed from his arms, lifted herself to the side of the pool and spread her thighs wide with invitation.

His heart thumped and his erection hardened. He cupped his hands around the pool’s edge and moved between her legs. Through the chlorine and the sweet scent of star jasmine, the smell of sex filled his nostrils, putting an ache in his crotch as he began kissing her tender folds. She inched closer and spread wider, tossing her wet blond hair over her shoulder to stop the pat-pat-pat of droplets on her thighs. Then as he slowly circled her clit, she threw her head back and moaned.

“That’s it, stud. Show me what you’ve got.”

He blew hot breath on her nub and began the feast, licking her sensitive spots and then slipping his tongue into her core. Her muscles clenched and his cock twitched, the idea of getting inside that tight space nearly taking him to the edge. But it was far from time. She had too many plans—plans he really, really liked. So he worked hard to focus on her pleasure and keep his own in check.

Faster, he stroked. Her toes tapped against the water as her sex slickened and swelled. And with a low cry that started deep in her chest and echoed down the canyon, she came apart.

Her climax pushed his need to the point of pain. Even the cool water of the pool did nothing to temper the throb. And when she rose to her feet and told him to come inside, he nearly stumbled over himself as he pushed out of the pool and followed.

“I need your cock now,” she casually remarked.

“At your service.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a long, greedy kiss, forcing himself to take his time and savor every moment. But just as he was about to break the kiss and lead her to his bedroom, the click of the gate and a sharp yelp from the side of the house startled them both to attention.

“Oh! I…”

Clint looked up. “Mom!”

Rachelle darted for a towel.

At the gate to the side yard, his mother stood agape dressed in tidy khaki chinos, a pale blue cardigan and pearl stud earrings. Brown leather sandals matched her purse, and she stood on the grass, her mouth silently bobbing, pointing a finger toward a hydrangea bush.

“Pom Pom,” she finally uttered, referring to the dog he’d given her for Christmas.

Clint grabbed a towel of his own and stood next to Rachelle, whose flushed cheeks had morphed from arousal to embarrassment.

“What the hell are you doing home?” he asked. “You’re supposed to be in Palm Springs.”

“I—” his mother started, but before she could finish, he heard the flattened tone of his date.

“You live with your mother?”

“Huh?” He turned and looked at Rachelle. Her embarrassment was gone. So was that smoky bedroom look in her eyes, replaced by the bland and somewhat disbelieving look of a woman unimpressed.

“No, my mother lives with me.”

She responded with an expression he didn’t like.

“It’s entirely different,” he affirmed.

“If you say so.” She headed toward her clothes.

“I’m serious. This is my house.”

“And you share it with your mother.”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked. But he already knew what was wrong with that. He’d been trying to get Jillian Hilton to move out pretty much ever since he’d offered to let her stay with him after his father died. The situation was supposed to be temporary, a month or two while she got over her grief and learned to live on her own. And yes, more than a year later she was still here. And yes, she was driving him nuts. But she was his mother. With his only brother being a news correspondent traveling through the Middle East, what was he supposed to do?

“Nothing’s wrong with that,” Rachelle said in a tone that said otherwise.

“Now, wait a minute. My mother’s leaving.” He turned a stern eye to Jillian to express that was an order, not a suggestion. She’d had plans. They’d arranged this. She was off for the weekend with her best friend, Marge, leaving him here—alone—for a night filled with lots of overdue sex.

But Rachelle simply kept walking, shaking her head as she gathered her purse and clothes.

“Yes,” his mother said. “I am leaving. I just—Pom Pom, no!” She rushed to the side of the hill but it was too late. Pom Pom, his mother’s precious Pomeranian and Clint’s royal pain in the ass, had darted down the hill. And being that the dog had a mind of its own, Clint knew it wasn’t coming back any time soon.

Tying his towel tightly around his waist, he stepped toward the edge of the hill, hoping the dog might be within reach, but the puffed-up furball had crept under a bush. “Great.” He turned back to his mother. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I am leaving,” his mother tried, but Rachelle had already pulled out her phone and was calling a cab.

He stepped back to his date. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry. This isn’t going to work at all.”

His mother attempted to call her dog.

“What isn’t going to work?” he asked, becoming slightly annoyed by the impatient look on her face. “I told you, my mother is leaving.”

Rachelle snorted, snapped her phone closed and tucked it in her purse. “I thought you were a little more…independent?” Then she began walking toward the house, holding her clothes in her hand and the towel around her chest. “Really, Clint. If I’d known you were still tied to the apron strings, I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

Okay, now he was pissed.

“Apron strings?”

His mother gasped. “My son is no such thing!”

Nice gesture, but his mom defending him right now was definitely bad timing.

“Thanks for dinner. I’ll have a car send your towel back later,” Rachelle said.

“Really, I’m sorry,” his mother tried, but Clint was one step past apologies.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he watched with amazement as Rachelle hurried to the door. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Rachelle simply looked at Jillian, then back at him. “You two enjoy your evening.”

“Wait—” Jillian attempted, but Clint shot up a hand. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier with, his mom for coming home when she knew he had a date, or Rachelle for being so quick to dash off—after he’d waited three weeks for her.

Right now it was a toss-up, though Mom would surely win the bonus round if he had to go traipsing through scrub brush chasing after the damn dog.

Jillian stood with her mouth open, watching Rachelle disappear into the house on her way to the front door.

“Well, now that you’ve ruined my evening, would you finally answer my question?” he growled. “You were supposed to have left with Marge hours ago.”

When they heard the distant slam of the front door, she snapped her mouth shut and turned her eyes to him. All signs of remorse were gone; instead, his mother looked aghast.

“Well,” she huffed. “If that’s all it takes to ruin an evening, what does she do on a bad date? Pull out an Uzi and start firing?”

“Why are you here?”

She clamped her hands to her hips. “Honestly, Clint, I don’t know where you find these women. Do you actually think you can have a relationship with someone like that?”

He hadn’t been looking for a relationship. He just wanted some really hot sex. But instead of pointing that out, he opted to skip to the obvious.

“You embarrassed the hell out of her—out of us. Do you have any idea what you walked in on?”

“The same thing that goes on here every time I leave for the weekend. And they’re all the same, shallow and self-centered. Did your father and I set such a horrible example that you can’t even consider dating a woman who might actually make a good wife?”

“You and Dad were great.” And it was true. His parents had a wonderful marriage. Which was what had devastated his mother so when his father died. They’d been perfect for each other. Like peas and carrots. And someday, Clint would love to have what they had. He just wasn’t in a hurry.

“Then why can’t you bring home someone kind and intelligent for a change?”

His eyes narrowed. “You keep avoiding my question. What happened to your weekend in Palm Springs?”

His mother let out a breath and plopped down in one of the stuffed chairs at the covered end of the terrace. “Marge and I had a difference of opinion.”

“You got in a fight.” What a shock. It had been happening since the two women had met back in grade school.

He should have known.

“She wanted to bring a date! It was supposed to be the two of us, and at the last minute, she announced she was bringing some guy named Arnie along.”

Clint stepped to the bar he kept stocked in the outdoor kitchen and poured himself two fingers of scotch. It was looking as though his entire weekend was about to be shot.

“And the worst of it all,” his mother went on. “Do you know where she found this man?”

Knowing Marge, it could have been anywhere. The woman was on her fourth divorce. Or was it five?

He shrugged.

“A dating service!”

“What’s wrong with a dating service?”

That blanched look returned to her face. “It’s the final stage of desperation, that’s what. You know those places are only for social misfits.”

“Mom, I hardly think that’s fair. Lots of people use dating services these days—” He stopped and stared. “Wait a minute. Did you tell her that?”

“Of course. She’s my friend. If I don’t look out for her, who will? She should appreciate my candor instead of swearing me out of her life.”

Oh, beautiful. Another Hilton-Dawson feud. The last one had lasted four months and that was over a sweater from Nordstrom’s. If she and Marge were headed for another big one, that meant his mother would be hanging around bored again. And if there was one thing worse than living with his mother, it was living with his bored mother.

He slugged back his drink. “No. Oh, no. You call up Marge and apologize.”

“Over my dead body.”

It just might come to that. Seriously. He hadn’t known how a five-thousand-square-foot home could end up too small for two people, but it was. It had been barely tolerable having to schedule his social life around the comings and goings of his mom. It would be worse if she stopped going entirely. After all, it wasn’t as though he could just leave her here and not come home. When she got lonely, she got depressed. When she got depressed, she started looking for things to bother herself about. And when she started looking, his life became a living hell no matter where he was.

No, he’d learned all that the hard way. The best thing for his mom had been Marge, and if she was out of the picture indefinitely, he’d need to find someone besides himself to fill the gap.

His mother rose and poured herself a glass of wine. “No. Marge is making a big mistake with this man, and when she finds that out, she’ll be the one apologizing to me.”

Clint snorted. Marge was the only woman more stubborn than his mom. He doubted she’d ever apologized for anything.

“In the meantime, my Palm Springs weekend is off.” Then she finally showed a sign of apology. “I’m sorry about your date. I had really been trying to sneak up to my room unnoticed. But you left the side gate open and Pom Pom flew through before I could catch her.”

The gentleman in him pressed him to say it was all right, but the sex-deprived bachelor wouldn’t let him. Right now, he was supposed to be working on his second orgasm, just the thought of which had him grinding his teeth so hard he nearly split a filling. He didn’t need apologies. He needed a good hard screaming climax with a beautiful blond bomb-shell to wipe away three weeks of anticipation and pent-up steam.

Instead, he had an irked and lonely mother and her puffed-up, oversized rat.

Hardly the life of a swinging single bachelor.

Setting his empty glass on the granite counter, he moved toward his bedroom to symbolically shut off the fire. “I’m going to drive down to the coast for a swim.”

“In the ocean? I don’t understand why you go all the way down there when you’ve got a perfectly good swimming pool right in your backyard.”

He slid open the glass door, flattened his lips and grumbled, “Water’s colder.”

2

“SHE’S DRIVING ME crazy.”

Clint was stretched out on the couch in the reception area of his Wilshire Boulevard office. For the last twenty minutes, he’d been spilling his problems to his office manager, Carmen Padilla, as though she were his personal shrink. After four years with his firm, it had become one of her unofficial job titles.

“Your mother’s not that bad,” she attempted.

She sat behind her large reception desk, the Bluetooth receiver a permanent fixture to her ear, while she listened to Clint’s woes.

“Do you know how I spent my weekend?”

“From what you’ve told me so far, I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“My mother and I toured health clubs for two days.”

“I thought she just joined one.”

“She did. With her ex-friend Marge. Now she insists on finding a new club so they don’t accidentally run into each other.” He pushed up from the couch and began circling the marble tiled floor. “Forget the fact that I’ve got a gym right in my own house. And the fact that she just paid a year’s membership at Rolling Hills. And the fact that in the end, she’ll go for two weeks, then find some reason to never go back again. I still spent my weekend touring every health club in Hollywood.”

He stopped and looked at Carmen. “Do you know how many health clubs there are around here?”

She shrugged and blinked her eyes innocently, though her smirk admitted evil pleasure in this. Having a large and close family, Carmen held little sympathy for Clint’s situation. “More than three?”

“You don’t care at all, do you?”

“Of course I do,” she insisted, but the grin said she was lying. Carmen’s family was tight-knit. The children stayed close to the nest and relatives were as much friends as family. And to Clint’s credit, he’d had the same relationship with his own family back when his father was his business partner and his brother wrote local stories for the L.A. Times.

But when his dad died suddenly of a heart attack, all that changed. For a while, his brother, Nate, had stayed with their mother, helping her through her grief while Clint dealt with the family’s contracting business. The arrangement got them all through the shock of their father’s death until Nate got the opportunity of a lifetime with an assignment that took him to Afghanistan. It was thrilling for Nate, but terrifying for their mother, who feared losing a son after her husband. And in the end, Clint was left holding all the bags. It was often that Clint thought of the other men in his family as if they’d abandoned him. And days like this, the taste was especially bitter.

Carmen must have seen the look on his face because her playful edge sobered.

“Okay, let’s tackle this like any other business matter,” she said. “Your mother’s bored and you’re all she’s got.” She tapped her pen on the dark cherrywood desk and thought for a while. “You need to find her someone else to play with.”

“I already bought her a dog.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a new man.”

He turned the idea over in his mind. “I’m listening.”

“Trust me. I know women. If your mom had a lover, she’d be the one complaining that you’re hanging around too much.”

He wondered if his mother was ready for it. It had been almost two years since his father died. She was past her stage of mourning. Had even mentioned on one or two occasions the thought of entering the dating world again—in a fearful kind of way, but Clint knew that meant she’d been thinking about it.