Suite Seduction

“Have some champagne,” she said as she sat next to him on the other stool. “There’s more where that came from.”

He glanced at the half-empty bottle, and the full one standing next to it, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Spoils from the wedding.”

He dropped his stare to her dress. “I gathered as much.”

She grimaced as she looked down at the bunched-up material on her lap. “Had to be, huh? I guess I can’t pass for a seventeen-year-old, so you’d never have figured I was a dumped prom date.”

“Dumped? Never.”

“Maybe not a prom date. But dumped.” Ruthie heard a tiny whine in her voice and hated it.

“Only if the guy’s a complete and utter moron.”

She tried to take comfort in the conviction in his voice, but, remembering her evening, could do nothing but frown. “It’s not him. It’s me. I’m just not desirable.”

A look that could only be described as incredulous crossed the man’s features. “How much champagne have you had?”

“Not enough to make me forget this stupid dress and the look on his face when I…”

“Yes?”

“Not enough to make me forget this stupid dress,” she repeated, forcing herself not to mention how Bobby had reacted when she’d asked him to spend the night with her in her suite.

Shocked wasn’t quite the word she’d use to describe his expression. More like horrified.

“I take it the bride didn’t want any competition,” the man said as he hefted the champagne and took a healthy swig straight from the bottle. Ruthie grinned, seeing a few drops trickling down his chin. Her grin faded as he lowered the bottle and caught the droplets with his tongue. Oh my, how very agile!

“I’m sorry?”

He waved a hand toward her dress. “You know. She didn’t want her bridesmaids to look too good.”

“Hence this awful dress that’s the same color as the stuff in my one-month-old godson’s diapers?”

The gorgeous stranger coughed as he choked on the piece of cake he’d just put in his mouth. Ever helpful, Ruthie leaned forward and gave him a good solid whack on the back. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Sorry…got a strange visual there.”

“Can’t be any worse than what I’ve been picturing ever since I showed up at the dress shop two weeks ago and found this, instead of the emerald-green gown I was supposed to be wearing! I think they call it ‘olive’ but it’s obviously ‘strained peas.’ Wrong color. Wrong size. Wrong style, even though I did agree to wear the stupid hoops to please Celeste’s future mother-in-law. She’s a little old-fashioned.”

“The bride?”

Ruthie shook her head. “Celeste? No, she’s wonderful. And more into Modern Bride than Southern Weddings!”

“She doesn’t seem the type to inflict hoop skirts and bows on her friends.”

“She’s not. But she married a great man with a sweet, craftsy mother, whom she really wanted to please. So Denise and I were stuck playing Suellen and Coreen to Celeste’s Scarlett.”

“Denise?”

“Another cousin, her older sister,” Ruthie explained. A loud sigh escaped her lips. “She got married, too.”

“Tonight?”

“No, two months ago. To a very successful, rich guy, who happens to be much too nice for her, but who is also about three inches shorter than Denise!” She heard a note of satisfaction in her own voice. “Sorry, I’m not usually spiteful.”

“Denise the bad seed in your clan?”

Ruthie thought about it. “I guess not. A little sneaky, sometimes mean-spirited. Not truly bad. Just very competitive, since we’re only a few months apart in age. She does tend to flash her two-carat diamond at me an awful lot.”

“And you’re the only single one left?”

Ruthie plunged her fork in and hoisted another hunk of cake into her mouth. “Even my sixty-year-old mother got married last year. She’s now touring the western part of the country in a camper with her new husband, Sid, and his four Scottie dogs,” she muttered after she swallowed. “And here I sit. Single. Undesirable. Alone.”

The man grabbed her hand as she reached for the bottle. He held it tightly, forcing her to look at him. “If some guy turned you down, it was his own stupidity. You are one amazingly attractive woman, in spite of your…”

“Butt-ugly dress?” she volunteered softly, somewhat awed by the intensity of his stare as he studied her face, her mussed hair, her chocolate-smudged lips.

He laughed, bringing her hand to his mouth to press a kiss on the tips of her fingers. They literally tingled at the warm contact. “Butt-ugly dress or not, the guy’s an idiot. He obviously didn’t know what he was turning down.”

She tugged her hand away. “Oh, yes, he knew,” she said sourly. “He knew very well. I handed him my room key and came right out and asked him to spend the night with me.”

The man coughed again, making a funny choking sound. Again, Ruthie leaned forward and whacked his back. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Fine. Uh, you handed him your key?”

She nodded. “We’ve been dating for four months, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like I’m some stranger trying to pick him up in a hotel bar! But he looked at me like he was appalled.” She shook her head, regret drawing her brows down over her eyes. “I knew he was conservative. It’s been sheer misery trying to act like I am, too.”

“Why would you have to act like anything but who you are?”

“Who I am doesn’t seem to work, judging by the completely nonexistent sex life I’ve had for the past three years.” Ruthie clapped a hand over her mouth, unable to believe she’d said something so personal to a complete stranger.

He didn’t seem the least bit fazed by her confession. “So you took action?”

“I thought I’d go for a different image,” she admitted, finally realizing what an idiot she’d been to try to fit herself into the mold Bobby seemed to want filled. She ruthlessly reached up and pulled at another bobby pin in her hair, tugging a few red strands out with it. “I even tried to tame this mess. But, I’ll tell you, if I never have to wear a bun or French twist again, it’ll be too soon!”

He reached out a hand and fingered a curl hanging next to her ear, stroking it lightly. Knowing her hair was wildly tangled, she self-consciously moved back until the strands slipped free from his fingers.

“It’d be a crime to hide this,” he murmured. “Other than the curls, what else would you want to change?”

Ruthie looked down at herself and frowned. “Maybe the ten extra pounds sitting on my hips and chest that couldn’t be blasted off with dynamite?” she muttered.

This time, he didn’t chuckle. He laughed, loud and long. “You have got to be kidding. Honey, women pay plastic surgeons buckets of money to get what you’ve got!”

“I’m not an exotic dancer,” she said sourly.

“You could be,” he shot back.

Ruthie’s breath froze in her throat at the intensity in his stare. He ran his gaze over her entire body, messy hair down to her feet. She realized that within a five-minute acquaintance this man was looking at her in a way Bobby never had the entire time they were dating.

Like he wanted to devour her.

Swallowing hard, Ruthie took another bite of cake. She was sitting alone in a darkened kitchen with a complete stranger—a gorgeous stranger, granted—but she didn’t know anything about him. This interlude went against every rule her mother had ever taught her. She wondered why she didn’t care.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said with a self-conscious smile.

“Maybe telling me your troubles is easier than admitting them to someone who knows you well? Keep talking, I have nowhere else I’d rather be, and I’m a good listener.”

Ruthie was unable to hide the tears springing up in the corners of her eyes. Here she was in the company of this breathtakingly handsome man, and he was watching her with those soulful brown eyes, gentle, interested, sexy as hell. And she was blubbering over another guy, one she couldn’t even say she was really attracted to in the first place!

She knew better than anyone the main reason she’d attempted to move her relationship with Bobby to another level: she wanted commitment, wanted happily ever after like Celeste and Denise. Even if it was with a man who was nice instead of thrilling, sweet instead of desirable, friendly instead of hot enough to melt the clothes right off her body! Sleeping with Bobby had seemed important because it was a natural progression in a long-term relationship. There’d been no fire. No passionate sparks. Ruthie had thought being with him would be comfortable, nice, sedate. Like Bobby himself.

Seduction had seemed like a good idea. He, judging by the shocked expression on his face when she’d handed him her key, didn’t agree.

Ruthie started sniffling again, not only because of her teary eyes but also because of a bad case of springtime allergies that had been plaguing her for days. She reached up and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, not even caring that another one of her mother’s rules went flying out the window. Her fingers came away with a smudge of chocolate, and she realized she must have had a mustache over her lips. “Oh, great, I look like Charlie Chaplin, don’t I?” This time she couldn’t stop the fat tears that rolled out of her eyes, down her cheeks and landed with a plop on the butcher-block table.

The beautiful man moved his hand to her face, cupped her chin with infinite gentleness and turned her head. Forcing her to look at him, he leaned closer, so close she could smell the chocolate and champagne on his breath, and wondered if her scent was half as intoxicating as his.

“You look lovely to me. And I don’t even know your name.”

For some reason, his words made the tears come faster, and suddenly the day’s events, her loneliness and the blow to her self-confidence crashed in on her with the weight of a ton of cement blocks. “It’s Ruthie. My name’s Ruthie,” she said between sniffs.

He smiled gently and reached toward his pocket. “Here, wipe your tears, Ruth. A woman with eyes as bright and green as yours has no business crying.”

Ruthie watched him reach into the pocket of his sports coat and begin to pull out a handkerchief. It occurred to her to be slightly touched by the old-fashioned gesture, since most men she knew didn’t carry handkerchiefs anymore.

Before she could say a word, however, he tugged the white cotton fabric free, and with it came a few other objects from his pocket. She heard a clink, looked down, and saw the two items that had landed on the floor between the two stools. They were unmistakable. A key and…“Oh, God,” she wailed, “Is everyone in this hotel having sex tonight except me?”

2

IF SHE HADN’T looked so adorably indignant, Robert might have laughed again. He was unable to hide a grin, though, as she threw her crossed arms down on the table in front of her and plopped her head onto them.

Ruthie. Sweet, funny, voluptuous Ruthie. How could he ever have imagined he’d stumble onto such a vibrant woman in the darkened kitchen of a hotel? Or that she’d appeal to him so instantly, so sharply, like no other woman had in years?

For whatever reason, Robert suddenly felt like a kid on Christmas morning, who’d found his favorite gift was one he hadn’t even included on his ten page wish list!

Things were definitely looking up. Maybe he would even have reason to look back on Monica’s ridiculous offer and be thankful. It had driven him here, to this room, at just the right moment to meet someone who had knocked his socks off in less than fifteen minutes.

Someone who, he realized, was still sniffling as she kept her face buried in her crossed arms.

“No, I’m definitely not having sex tonight,” he said, confirming that fact not only to her but to himself. “And I haven’t had it in a pretty long time, either. So you’re not alone. Now, will you please stop crying?”

Her head lifted and she stared at him. Hard. “Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why aren’t you having sex? You’re gorgeous. You’re nice. You smell good and you don’t have bad breath. Why isn’t there some woman waiting for you upstairs?” A sudden look of understanding crossed her face. “Oh, great, you’re gay, aren’t you? That’s it. You’re gay. Somebody, just shoot me now.”

He bordered on taking offense, but since she was so obviously miserable, not to mention tipsy, he forgave her for momentarily doubting his preferences. “Not gay.”

“Married?”

“Nope.”

“Sissy mama’s boy?”

He cringed. “My mama’s a mechanic.”

“Why celibate, then?”

That seemed a very good question right now. Particularly since all he’d been able to think about since he’d first seen her licking chocolate off her fork was how much he wanted her to be tasting him.

“It’s been a long time since I met anyone I was seriously interested in.” Not three years, of course. He shuddered at the thought that she’d been unattached for so long. Were men in Philly totally blind? “Why you? Other than the obvious things like your gorgeous red hair has too much curl, and you’ve got a figure most men with stick-thin girlfriends fantasize about?”

His flattery didn’t influence her. She obviously didn’t believe it. “I’ve been busy. Working, helping the family with the business.”

“You work with your family?”

She nodded. “It takes a lot of time and energy. Not that I’m complaining—I love my family a lot. And I do have friends I spend time with.”

“But no boyfriends other than the loser who passed up the chance to spend a night with you?”

She sighed. “It’s hard to meet eligible men when you work ten hours a day, six days a week.”

“I know how that goes. My job requires a lot of travel, not much time for home and family. Not that I mind. That’s exactly what I wanted growing up. I couldn’t wait to leave home, get away from the craziness of five younger brothers, have my own quiet place, then go out and conquer the world.”

“And have you?”

He grinned. “I’m working on it.”

They fell silent. It wasn’t a heavy, uncomfortable silence between two strangers who’d had a very intimate conversation. Instead, Robert just enjoyed breathing the same air, catching the light scent of her perfume, watching the way the glints of gold in her hair caught the light. Hearing her sniffle. “You cryin’ again?”

She shook her head. “Allergies.”

“Good. I can’t stand it when women cry.”

Ruthie sighed, her shoulders drooping. “I love to cry. I rate movies by the tissue factor.”

“How depressing.”

“No,” she insisted, “it’s not. I don’t mean I like to see horror or twisted stuff that brings you down, but there’s something so moving about a real love story, doomed and destined to end in tragedy.”

“Yeah, they move me, all right,” he muttered, “right out of the theater. I like war movies.”

“Yuck. Blood and gore. Sat through half of one last year on a blind date and threw up my popcorn and Sno-Caps right onto his shoes.” She sounded very philosophical about the experience.

“Did he ever call again?”

She rolled her eyes and let out an unladylike snort.

“Well,” he said, giving his head a rueful shake, “I’ve had my fair share of bad dates, too.”

“But I bet you never got sick on your date’s shiny new penny loafers.”

“True,” he conceded. “But if he was enough of a geek to be wearing penny loafers, he deserved it.”

She raised a sardonic brow. “Are you criticizing my taste in men? Implying I date geeks?”

He shook his head and held his hands up, palms out. “No, no, you said he was a blind date, remember? Obviously the friend who set you up doesn’t know you very well!”

She smirked. “My mother set us up.”

He paused, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, silently daring her to go on.

“Okay, okay, so she doesn’t know me very well!”

His expression was triumphant. “Nobody’s mother knows them very well. That’s why mothers love their children when any sane person would have kicked them to the curb years before.”

Ruthie nodded in agreement with his reasoning, then said, “Is yours really a mechanic?”

He nodded ruefully. “She and my father are in the auto repair business back home in North Carolina.”

“Southern boy,” she said as she stuck her fork in the last third of the cake and helped herself to another bite. “I guess that explains the good manners, the handkerchief and all. But no accent?”

“New York eventually wore it away.”

Robert reached out to help himself to more cake, and accidentally tangled his fork with the tines of hers. “Sorry.”

“If we were down to the last bite, you’d have to fork-duel me for it. But I think there’s enough left for both of us,” she said with a huge grin as she disentangled their utensils.

When she truly smiled, she did so with her whole face, not just those beautiful lips. Robert watched her, awed by the transformation genuine amusement brought to her already pretty features. Her eyes sparkled. A pair of adorable dimples turned up in her cheeks. He had forgotten how much of a sucker he’d always been for dimples—had been since his first crush on the freckled, dimpled, toothless Doreen Watson in second grade. Now he was reminded with such sudden, raw joy that he simply didn’t know what to say. He merely smiled back, memorizing her features, as though afraid this entire interlude might be a figment of his imagination brought on by one too many vodka tonics and might disappear at any moment.

From outside, Robert heard a few horns beeping. The flash of a blue strobe from a police car passing by the window spotlighted the far wall of the room. Distracted, he looked around. The kitchen was immaculate, reminding him of his original purpose. He’d completely forgotten why he’d come snooping while he’d talked with Ruthie. Amazing. A woman who could actually make him forget about his job, albeit only for twenty minutes or so.

Ruthie finally broke the comfortable silence that had once again fallen between them. “So, I suppose you like sports.” Her voice held a note of resignation.

He nodded. “You?”

She shook her head mournfully. “Nope.”

“What about music?” he asked, immediately recognizing her bid to see just what they might have in common, other than the cajones to sneak into a private hotel kitchen and raid the dessert cabinet.

Her eyes brightened. “I love country-western!”

He cringed. “My father nearly disowned me when I was nine and told him I hated country and liked New-Orleans-style jazz.”

A gentle smile and a look of tenderness crossed her face. “My father and I used to sing along to Broadway albums when I was growing up. He had a wonderful voice.”

“Had?”

She nodded. “He died when I was in high school.” Her voice broke, and she gave her head a quick shake, then reached for the bottle of champagne.

“So,” Robert said, trying to move past the awkward moment, “what else? How about books?”

He could have predicted her answer before she said it. “Romances. You?”

“Techno-thrillers.”

“I get tired thinking about picking up one of those two-ton hardbacks,” she said with a frown. “Do you think those guys get paid by the word?”

Since he’d sometimes wondered the same thing, he nodded. “Seems possible.” Instead of being depressed at their conflicting personalities and tastes, Robert found himself thoroughly enjoying their banter.

“Kids!” she exclaimed and he almost heard the “aha” she didn’t utter. “Growing up with all those younger brothers, you must love children!”

He gave a vehement shake of his head. “Growing up with all those brothers made me never want to have children.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Really? Maybe you just think you don’t want any.”

He shuddered. “Ruthie, I practically raised my younger brothers while our parents were getting their business off the ground. Snotty noses, diapers, chicken pox, bad dreams, never-ending fistfights. Believe me, I did all the child-rearing I ever want to do before my eighteenth birthday.”

She looked at him, studying his face as if testing his sincerity, then a disappointed frown marred her brow. She studied her own hands, suddenly quiet and pensive. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t dream about growing up and having lots of children.”

Lots? He couldn’t even fathom the possibility of one. It did seem critically important to her, though. What she wanted for her own future really wasn’t any of his business, he supposed. She was an absolute stranger to him; he might never see her again after this one unusual night. But he couldn’t stop a feeling of regret over their completely discordant dreams for their futures.

“I hope your dream comes true one day, Ruthie.” He hoisted the bottle and held it up for a toast. “To your future babies. May they all be female so you don’t have the nightmare of raising lots of little boys like I did.”

She nodded, grabbed the bottle, and took a liberal sip.

“So, where were we?” he mused. “Ah, yes, what could we possibly we have in common that we can talk about now?”

She squared her shoulders. “What about the weather?”

“I think we’ve moved a little beyond talking about the weather, Ruthie. After all, I already know the details of your sex life, and you saw a condom fall out of my pocket.”

“The details of my nonexistent sex life,” she retorted, “and thank you so much for reminding me!” She rolled her eyes. “For your information, I was talking about the seasons. Are you a summer man or a winter one?”

“Summer. Definitely. Sandy beaches, bright blue sky, waterskiing, deep-sea fishing. Give me ninety and sunny any day.” He had a sudden purely delightful mental image of lying on a beach, sipping a fruity rum concoction, watching Ruthie walk toward him from the water, wearing a tiny bikini that barely covered the full, lush curves of her breasts.

He glanced at her, to see if she’d caught the brainless, besotted expression he felt sure must be on his face.

She looked like she wanted to slug him. “Winter,” she practically snarled. “Nothing compares to snuggling up in your very softest angora sweater, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows in front of a roaring fireplace at a beautiful mountaintop ski resort.”

Sweater? No, no. That definitely wasn’t part of the fantasy. “Better than lying on a beach, listening to the gentle surf, feeling someone rub oil into the hot skin of your back?” he asked, his voice growing husky as he fantasized aloud.

She sighed. “Only if there’s a gorgeous young waiter dressed in a loincloth bringing me free piña coladas—and Solarcaine by the case since I would turn red as a lobster in forty-five seconds flat.”

“Ever heard of beach umbrellas?”

“Ever heard of sun poisoning?” she shot back. “I’m a dermatologist’s poster child.”

“No risk of sunburn when lying on a hammock beneath a palm tree in the early evening.”

She wasn’t teased out of her mood. “Just mosquitoes.”

Robert shook his head ruefully, admiring her stubbornness, her honesty, even if it was a bit inspired by champagne. “I give up. You’re right. We have nothing in common.”

Instead of looking pleased that he’d agreed with her, Ruthie frowned deeply. He heard her sigh and watched her shoulders slump again. “I guess not.”

They both extended their forks toward the cake at the same instant. “There’s always chocolate,” he said with a smile.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “We’ll always have chocolate.”

Between the two of them, they killed off the first bottle of champagne and did some damage to the second in the next hour. Robert didn’t remember when he’d laughed so hard, all the while shifting in his seat as he reacted physically to the gorgeous redhead fate had thrust right under his nose.

He’d never dated a redhead. He’d never dated a curvy bundle of dimpled femininity. His women, in the past, had tended to be more the corporate shark type. Not by preference, he suddenly realized, but merely by circumstance.

His brothers had been telling him for years to get the hell out of New York before he found himself married to one of the piranhas he’d been dating. Robert didn’t worry. He had no intention of marrying anyone. His job was too important to him—and too demanding—to try to find time to share his life with a family. Dating piranhas helped make sure he was never tempted.