Marking Time (18 page)

If his pained expression was any indication, his words were hurting him as much as they were hurting her.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked with his hands on his hips.

She chewed on her bottom lip and studied him. “Does this mean we aren’t going to Graceland tomorrow?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, Kate, that’s all you have to say?”

Realizing her nonchalance was getting to him, she shrugged. “You got me all excited last night to go to Memphis, and then you kissed me and freaked out. That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

“First,
you
kissed
me
. And I did
not
freak out. I’ve just had a chance today to think about it. This isn’t what I want.”

She didn’t believe him for a minute. “I guess I’ll just have to get to Graceland some other way,” Kate said, biting her thumbnail to give the impression she was in deep thought about Elvis when what she really wanted was to shriek.
He can’t end it now! Not when I’ve only just discovered that I love him
.

Reid put his jacket back on and whipped up the zipper. “Fine. If all you care about is Graceland, be at the house at seven.”

She smiled. “Seven it is.”

He shook his head, stormed down the stairs, and slammed the front door behind him.

As she heard his car start, she lamented that her fancy underwear had gone to waste. “Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow.”

When Kate arrived at Reid’s house the next morning, he came out to meet her wearing a dark blue suit and tie, carrying a briefcase and another bag. Kate had worn jeans, a pink sweater, her new cowboy boots, and a sheepskin coat.

“I feel underdressed,” she said, admiring how sexy he looked in the suit.

“I had to dress for my meeting, but I have jeans with me for later.” He held the door to the Mercedes open for her.

She noticed he went out of his way not to look at her as he closed her door. To Kate’s surprise, they drove around the house rather than down the driveway. “Where are we going?”

His knuckles tightened on the wheel in apparent irritation.

“You know what? Why don’t we just forget about this? I can tell you don’t want me here.”

“I said I’d take you, and I will.”

“Gee, don’t do me any favors.”

They drove in tense silence for several miles on a dirt road until they reached a large white metal building. He parked the car and came around to open her door. Even when he was angry, he was courteous.

“What’s this place?”

“It’s where I keep my plane.”

“We’re
flying
?”

“Of course we are. I don’t have six hours to spend driving to Memphis and back today.”

“You didn’t say anything about flying.” She looked around, noticing the runway and light towers at either end of the strip. “Where’s the pilot?” she asked with trepidation.

“You’re looking at him.”

“No way.” She folded her arms. “I’m not going.”

He snorted with disgust and pushed open the hangar doors. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, darlin’, but I’ve been flying since before you were born.”

She stood back and watched him use a small Jeep to pull a gleaming Cessna out of the building. He tossed his briefcase and bag into the airplane’s cabin and then took several minutes to walk around the plane, touching various parts and kicking others.

“Last chance.” He held up his keys. “You can take the car back to the house if you don’t want to come.”

“How long does it take to get there?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Fine. I’ll go, but I’m keeping my eyes closed the whole time.”

“Suit yourself.” He ushered her inside the plane and directed her to sit next to him. After he completed a series of preflight checks, he reached over her shoulder for the seat belt. The back of his hand brushed her breast, and her eyes flew up to meet his as he snapped the buckle into place.

Tearing his gaze off her, he focused on the control panel as the engines roared to life. He adjusted a headset and taxied to the far end of the runway.

Kate said a silent prayer as they hurtled down the runway and lifted off. Despite her best intentions, curiosity won out, and she opened her eyes. Gasping at the exquisite view of his property from the air, she saw the house, the creek where they’d watered the horses, the guesthouse, and the miles of white fence and rolling green hills.

“I thought you weren’t going to look.”

“Shut up and fly the plane.”

He laughed. “Want to give it a try?”

“No!”

True to his word, they touched down twenty minutes later at Memphis International Airport just behind a commercial flight.

“You can look now,” Reid said as they taxied to a hangar set back from the airport’s main terminal.

“I’m working on breathing. Looking is next.” She glanced over at him. “I’m impressed.”

“With what?”

“That you’re a pilot,” she said, nodding to the plane’s controls.

“It’s just like driving a car after all these years. I have business interests all over the state. It saves me a lot of time.”

They were met and driven into town by a man from Reid’s Memphis office. While he was in his meeting, Kate took a walk in a nearby park and had coffee in a restaurant on the first floor of his office building. At eleven, he called her cell phone to say he was on his way down.

He came off the elevator wearing jeans, boots, and a long brown leather coat. The suit he’d had on earlier was in a garment bag tossed over his shoulder. “Ready to go?”

She hadn’t seen that leather coat before, and he looked so dashing in it that she was robbed of speech for a moment, so she just nodded in response to his question.

Reid had the keys to the car that had delivered them from the airport, and as he held her door, he cast an anxious glance at the sky. “We need to keep an eye on the weather. There’s rain in the forecast. If the temperature drops any more, it’ll be freezing rain. I don’t like to fly in that.”

“It doesn’t feel that cold.”

He pulled the car into traffic. “I know, but the temperature can drop fast this time of year. I have to go by a couple of our construction sites before we head out to Graceland. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. You’re here for work.”

He drove to four sites in different parts of the city. When they reached the first one, he popped the trunk to retrieve a hard hat.

Kate stayed in the car at each stop and watched him be greeted like visiting royalty. The sites were in various stages of construction. One was going to be a high-rise apartment building, one was a shopping center, another a restaurant, and the last a hotel. At each site, Kate, the architect’s daughter, studied the renderings of the finished buildings posted outside the office trailers. The now-familiar RMD signs identified the jobs as a Reid Matthews Development.

She was getting a more complete picture today of the man she’d fallen in love with—the competent pilot, the successful businessman, the respected employer. These new traits, added to those she’d already experienced, served to deepen her respect and admiration for him. She watched him shake hands with the foreman at the hotel and remove his hard hat as he walked back to the car.

He tossed the hat into the back seat. “Sorry that took so long.”

“No problem.”

He cast another worried glance at the sky. “I’ve got to be honest with you. We might get tossed around a bit on the flight home. It’s no big deal to me, but I’d hate to scare you. We can cut our losses and leave now or stick to our plans and take our chances with the weather.”

Kate hid her disappointment at missing out on Graceland. “Whatever you think is best. You’re the pilot.”

He studied her and appeared to be making a decision that had nothing to do with Graceland or storm clouds. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s grab some lunch and go to Graceland. A promise is a promise. I’ll get you home in one piece.”

On the shuttle bus ride through gates adorned with musical notes at Graceland, Reid confessed he’d never been there before.

“
Never?
” Kate stared at him in amazement. “How often do you come to Memphis?”

“Almost once a week for twenty years,” he said with a sheepish grin.

“You need to learn how to live, baby,” she said, again in perfect imitation of Elvis’s accent.

They listened to Lisa Marie Presley’s voice in headphones as she showed them through the dining room, living room, Elvis’s bedroom, and that of his parents. They strolled through the music room where his grand piano was the main attraction, before they saw the King’s beloved pool table, his business office, and the famous “jungle” den. Kate loved every gaudy, over-the-top inch of the place.

The tension that had vibrated between her and Reid all day disappeared while they checked out an extensive collection of Elvis’s gold records and giggled with delight at some of his more outrageous costumes.

Kate pointed to a white jumpsuit encrusted with rhinestones. “You’d look adorable in that one,” she whispered.

“Not in this or any other lifetime.”

“Stick in the mud.” She was relieved by the return of their easy rapport, almost as if his speech the night before had never happened.

“Call me what you will, but you wouldn’t catch me dead in a getup like that.”

The tour of the house concluded in the Meditation Garden, where Elvis was buried with several of his relatives. At Elvis’s gravesite, Kate curled her hand into Reid’s.

“It’s so sad,” Reid whispered, lacing his fingers through hers. “He had everything, but look how he ended up.”

“Alone and wasted,” Kate said softly.

He glanced at her. “Don’t let that happen to you.”

“I’m hardly Elvis Presley.”

“You have the same kind of talent, and it’s going to take you to some of the same places it took him.”

His certainty astounded her. “How can you be so sure?”

He shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

The rain began to fall harder, so they ran back inside to see the car collection. By the time they toured Elvis’s airplane, the
Lisa Marie
, it was pouring and considerably colder than it had been an hour earlier.

“Shit.” Reid looked up at the sky, reached for her hand, and hustled her onto a shuttle bus for the ride back to the parking lot.

The wind whipped and icy rain pinged against the windshield while they waited for the car to warm up.

“I’m not going to fly in this. Not with you.”

“Would you go if you were alone?” His confident grin told her he’d done it many times before. “We can go. I’ll be fine.”

“No, you’d be scared. I won’t do that.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“I guess we’ll have to stay.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and scrolled through his list of phone numbers until he found what he was looking for. “Hi, this is Reid Matthews. I’d like to book two rooms for tonight, please.” He listened, sighed, and then nodded. “That’s fine. I’ll take it. Thanks.”

“What did they say?”

“They’re sold out except for a suite with two bedrooms. That’ll have to do.” A muscle in his cheek pulsed with tension. “A convention in town has all the hotels jammed.”

He looked so upset she couldn’t resist asking, “What’s wrong?”

“I feel like I’m being tested here, Kate. I want very much to do the right thing by you, but circumstances keep getting in the way. Spending a night here with you is
not
a good idea.”

“Why don’t we just make the most of it, have a good time, and try not to worry too much?”

“I guess we don’t have any choice.”

His distress was so palpable that she reached over to take his hand. He surprised her when he wrapped his fingers around hers and lifted her hand to kiss the back of it. On the way to the hotel, he called his house to tell Martha they’d be staying in Memphis. She was relieved to hear he wouldn’t be flying in the bad weather.

The hotel was small but elegant, and Reid seemed to be well known to the bellmen who greeted them. Kate walked with him to the registration desk.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Matthews,” the woman at the desk said. “Welcome back.”

Reid handed her his credit card. “Thank you.”

She returned his card along with two room key cards. “You and your daughter should be very comfortable in the Presidential Suite on the sixth floor.”

When Reid cleared his throat, Kate looked down to study her boots.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice tight with strain.

Following him to the elevator, Kate could see the tension in his shoulders through the dark leather coat.
Damn that woman!
That was the last thing he needed to hear!
His daughter! Ugh!

He said nothing in the elevator. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, he stormed out ahead of her to a room at the end of the hallway. He opened the door and held it for her. As soon as the door closed, he exploded. “
Did you hear what that woman said?
What she
assumed
?
Do you see now what I’ve been trying to tell you?
”

Kate knew she needed to act quickly or lose him forever. Shedding her own coat as she went, she walked over to him and slid the leather coat off his shoulders.

He fought her. “What are you doing?”

She pushed him down into a plush upholstered chair.

“Kate—”

Straddling him, she sat on his lap and felt him instantly harden beneath her. She resisted his efforts to remove her. “I’m not your daughter,” she said in a husky whisper. “I know it, and you know it. That’s all that matters.” She wove her fingers into his hair, drew him to her, and kissed him with all the love she felt for him. At first he resisted her, but as she moved on his lap, she felt his control slip away.

“Kate, stop,” he whispered against her lips as her tongue flirted with his. “You’re starting something I can’t finish.”

“I want you, Reid. I want you the way a grown woman wants a man.”

His hands came up to circle her bottom, pulling her closer to him. “I want you, too. God help me, but I want you.”

They kissed again, and she shivered when his hands slid under her sweater to caress her fevered skin. A bolt of heat charged through her when he unhooked the front clasp of her bra and fondled her breasts. He rolled his thumbs over her nipples, and she shuddered. “
Please
, Reid,” she panted, bringing her lips down on his.