Her Kind of Trouble (Harlequin Superromance) (20 page)

* * *

S
ETH
WOKE
TO
find a slim arm slung over his chest and a knee nudging his thigh. The understanding that Vivian was still there, in his bed, made him smile faintly. He’d had to get up twice more for Daisy during the night, and both times he’d half expected Vivian to announce she had to go. Yet both times she’d simply curled into his side when he’d returned, asking if Daisy was okay before drifting off.

Now, he turned to look at her, relishing the chance to observe her without being observed himself. Any makeup she’d been wearing had long since worn off and he could see the dusting of freckles across her small nose. Her eyebrows were delicately arched, with subtle peaks that hinted at her mischievous sense of humor. Her mouth was a soft blush pink, the bottom lip full, the top lip deeply bowed.

Her hair was tangled, the strawberry-blond color muted in the morning light.

God, she was beautiful. And it wasn’t just about the way her features were arranged. She was beautiful because she was funny and caring, smart and sexy. A woman of substance. He wanted her closer, so he eased his arm beneath her shoulders, encouraging her head onto his chest. She made sleepy noises, then snuggled in and it occurred to him that if the feeling he was experiencing right now was anything like the way his brother felt when he woke with Jodie every morning, then he could totally understand why a man might choose to get married.

It was such an alien, out-of-left-field thought that he tensed, more than a little freaked out by his own thoughts. They’d had one night together, after all.

“What’s wrong?” Vivian lifted her head, blinking herself to wakefulness. “Is Daisy okay?”

“She’s fine. I remembered something, that’s all.”

She looked at him, her hair wonky on one side, a crease on her cheek from the pillow, and the this-is-right feeling hit him all over again. He really liked this woman. So much so that it scared him a little.

“What time is it?” she asked, leaning across him to check the bedside clock.

“Just after six.” He closed his eyes briefly as her breast brushed his arm. Man, but she turned him on.

“So, Seth...” She smoothed a palm onto his chest, down his belly. “Would you call yourself a morning person? Because I definitely am,” she purred.

Her hand closed around his rock-hard erection, and she smiled a lazy, cat-that-ate-the-cream smile. “I guess you are.”

He wasn’t about to tell her he was an anytime-of-day person when it came to her. Not yet anyway. He needed to get his head around the thoughts and feelings bombarding him right now. Like the fact that if she hadn’t wanted sex, he would have been happy to simply hold her, and the anxiety that was nagging at him as it occurred to him that once she left his bed, he had no idea when he’d see her again.

He never worried about stuff like that. In fact, he was usually the king of take-it-as-it-comes. Hell, he’d practically invented the concept.

She stroked her hand along his shaft, slipping her leg over his as she nuzzled his neck and shoulder.

“You might have to be gentle with me,” she said. “Last night was pretty full-on. But it seems like a crying shame to let this go to waste.”

She stroked him again, and he was powerless to stop himself from rolling toward her and kissing her. Their tongues met and teased, mimicking what she was doing with her hand. He eased her thighs apart and went on an exploratory expedition of his own.

She was already swollen and wet for him, and her hips lifted into his touch, encouraging him wordlessly. The thought of being inside her was urgent, essential, and he turned to grab a condom. No less than four foil packets littered his bedroom floor—a new record, he was pretty sure. If Vivian was willing to give him another hour or two, he would be happy to make it five.

She was that hot, and he was that hot for her.

He pushed inside her, and she sighed her pleasure, wrapping her legs around his hips. He ducked his head to tongue her breasts, rasping his morning bristle across them before teasing her tight, pink nipples to even greater hardness. She moaned her encouragement, her hands clenched on his backside, her hips undulating.

She felt so good, he couldn’t stop the climax speeding toward him and he didn’t try. Instead, he reached between their bodies, finding her with his fingers and making sure that she came with him when the world dropped away.

For long seconds they hung together, wordless, breathless, then they crashed to earth to the sound of a phone ringing and an almost simultaneous burst of crying from the baby monitor.

“My phone,” Vivian said, her eyes popping open.

“My baby,” he said.

They rolled away from each other, and Seth had the very gratifying experience of watching Vivian half walk, half run out his bedroom in the buff as she went in search of her phone.

He pulled on the boxer briefs he’d abandoned last night and went to Daisy, finding her grasping at the air and turning her head from side to side as she complained, a sure sign that she was hungry.

“Poor baby. It’s been at least three hours. You must be starving,” he said wryly as he checked her diaper before taking her into the kitchen to make up a bottle. Vivian was in the living room, talking quietly but urgently as she stood with one arm braced across her middle, a frown on her face.

Something was wrong, obviously. He divided his attention between Vivian, the baby and the bottle, but Vivian still caught him unawares when she appeared in the kitchen with her clothes bunched to her chest.

“I need to go.” She headed for the bedroom, and he tested the bottle to ensure it was the right temperature before following her, Daisy in his arms.

“What’s wrong?”

Vivian already had her panties on and was doing up her bra, her movements brisk. “One of my designers had a flood overnight. Some guy on the floor above is a photographer, and he forgot to turn off a tap or something. I don’t know the details, but the short story is that the rack of clothes she had picked out for me is toast. Which means half my shoot for tomorrow has disappeared.”

“Can you find replacements? Another designer?”

She gave him a tight smile as she pulled on her trousers. “That’s the plan. Except there’s a lot of Fashion Week promotion going on right now and it’ll be a stretch to find clothes that aren’t already being covered. I booked this designer
months
ago.”

She strode into the bathroom and turned on the water, quickly washing her face before running her damp hands through her hair.

“Is there anything I can do?”

He felt faintly ridiculous saying it, standing in his underwear while his newborn baby guzzled her bottle, but the urge to help was very real and very sincere.

Vivian flashed him a quick smile as she scooped up her tank top and pulled it over her head.

“Thanks, but it’s going to be one of those days.”

“Well, the offer’s there if you need it. Even if it’s just Daisy and me picking up stuff for you.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, but he could see her mind was elsewhere. She glanced around, then strode out of the room. He trailed after her, watching as she shouldered her bag and checked she had her phone and wallet before heading for the door.

“Good luck,” he said as she stepped out onto the porch.

“Thanks. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.” She palmed her car keys. “You and Daisy have a good day.”

“You, too.”

She hesitated, then turned and started down the stairs. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of her car that he realized that he hadn’t kissed her goodbye.

Better yet, he had no idea when he would see her again, or if last night had been the start of something, or a one-off, or something they were never to speak of again.

He knew what he wanted—more. More nights, more mornings, more Vivian. He was, of course, aware that his life was hardly conducive to romance right now, but that didn’t change the way he felt.

He had no idea where Vivian stood on any of the above, however. She enjoyed sex with him, obviously. But she’d also referred to him as her “disaster waiting to happen.”

It had smarted then, and it smarted now. Okay, sure, he didn’t exactly have an unimpeachable record where other women were concerned. But other women were not Vivian.

Seth automatically reinserted the bottle into Daisy’s mouth when she pushed it out as he mulled over his options. He could wait and see. Or he could take the initiative.

He’d pretty much been a wait-and-see guy all his life until he’d stumbled into the opportunity to buy the bar. Only then had he worked out that sometimes the world didn’t come to you, you had to go to it. He’d learned to be unashamed in his pursuit of what his business needed. Maybe it was time to apply some of that hard-earned knowledge to his private life.

* * *

V
IVIAN
DROPPED
BY
her apartment on the way to the studio, ran through the shower, dressed in clean clothes and was in West Melbourne by 7:30 a.m. Typically she would be geared up to go if she had a shoot the following day—outfits bagged with accessories, look sheets pinned to each garment bag detailing every item that was in the bag, all of it waiting on a rack to be transferred to the van to transport to the location. She liked to be organized and well ahead of the game.

This time, though, she’d been forced to hold fire because the hero designer for this particular shoot had had supply issues with certain fabrics and the garments Vivian had specified had only come off the production line in the past few days. Hence the clothing still being on the designer’s premises this morning instead of safely here, out of harm’s way.

The first thing she did when she arrived was to fire up her computer, then she turned to her filing cabinet and started pulling look books—a fancy term for collection catalogues—from her favorite designers. Tomorrow’s shoot was for a supplement that would be inserted in all the daily newspapers in Melbourne and Sydney to celebrate Fashion Week. Whoever she found to replace the damaged stock needed to be local, with a big enough profile and distribution to be relevant, and to have stock available in the size of her models. Last, but not least, the substitutions needed to be approved by the fashion editor at the newspaper who had subbed the job to her and Robin.

Easy peasy. Not.

It didn’t help that a part of her brain was still very firmly in the dim quiet of Seth’s bedroom, marveling at the night they’d shared and puzzling over their confusing parting. Not that she’d wanted to hash things out with him in Freudian detail or anything, but she’d expected to at least have some kind of discussion with him about where they stood with one another. They couldn’t walk away from each other the way they had ten years ago, not this time. She was too involved in Jodie’s and Jason’s life, and so was he, and she didn’t think she could simply turn off the concern and affection she felt for Daisy if Seth saw last night as a disposable, pleasurable one-off.

Then there were her feelings for Seth himself...

She gave herself a mental slap as she started leafing through the first look book. She needed to concentrate on the crisis at hand. The crisis in her personal life would have to wait.

She flicked through three books before finding a couple of designers with clothes that would slot nicely into the shoot she had planned. With some tweaking, she might even be able to utilize the same accessories. Writing down style numbers and names, she made a wish list and hit the phone. By eleven she had replaced the garments and had the client’s approval on the substitutions. By twelve she was zipping from one side of Melbourne to the other collecting the clothes. It was three o’clock before she returned to the studio, sweaty and tired, last night’s lack of sleep well and truly catching up with her.

She could remember when she could party all night and work all day, then do it again the next night. But that stage of her life had passed, along with the stage when sex was as meaningless to her as scratching an itch or satisfying a craving. Not that she had to be in love these days to want to get naked with a man, but she definitely needed to be emotionally involved. She needed to like him—the way she liked Seth.

She made a small impatient noise as she grabbed the first load of garment bags from her car. Seth had been sneaking into her mind every time her thoughts veered from work, drifting like a phantom on the periphery of her consciousness all day, waiting for any opportunity to claim center stage.

She thought about the things he’d whispered while he was inside her, and the sensual promises he’d made
and
fulfilled. She thought about the way he’d kissed her shoulder and asked her to stay.

And she thought about the out-of-step, discordant confusion of this morning—her panic and distraction, his concern for Daisy, the sense that the bubble of last night had been well and truly popped.

Most of all she thought about calling him, largely because she wanted to hear his voice, but also because she wanted to give him a chance to say something—anything—to indicate where she stood. Or where he stood. Where they both stood.

She wasn’t going to, though, she told herself for the hundredth time as she entered the freight elevator and hit the button for the top floor. The very fact that she felt as though she needed to speak to him meant what she really needed to do was to back off. She and Seth might have a relationship that was based in truth-telling and honesty, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to lay herself bare to him. Not yet. She needed a lot more than one night before she would be prepared to be so vulnerable to a man who considered a couple of weeks to be long term.

It hadn’t escaped her attention that he was dealing with the recent death of his ex-girlfriend and the arrival of his daughter. It stood to reason that while all of this—him, Daisy, last night—loomed large in her life, it probably had a smaller presence in his.

Last night had probably been a very pleasant interlude for him. He was probably mildly concerned about how to navigate the ensuing awkwardness next time they saw each other, but was otherwise unfussed. Probably—