Seeing Red (3 page)

“Thank you, by the way.”

When he looked at her, she tipped the bottle in acknowledgement.

The set of her lips was tight, and he knew it was difficult for her to make even that small concession. Wouldn’t do to harp on it.

“Of course. I…” He shut his mouth. He was going to say,
I want you to be comfortable asking me for things
, but he imagined her raising one of those perfect eyebrows and crinkling her little nose in response. Instead of talking, he put his beer to his lips once more.

He hadn’t forgotten the first time she cocked an eyebrow up at him. It was her first year of college, and he was in his, oh, second year of PhD studies? No, third? Who the hell knew anymore?

He’d been sitting on the wall outside the English department where Grant taught undergraduate composition, waiting for his friend’s class to let out. Meg had walked past him and then idled against the iron stair railing. She’d been waiting for someone he now knew was Carla. He didn’t remember what he’d said to her at the time, but knowing him it was probably crass or sounded far more suave in his native tongue than in English. Whatever it was he’d said, she’d cocked up that eyebrow, leaned her head to the side, and curled up her top lip.

The expression hadn’t required translation.

The waves rolling onto the shore provided him a welcome distraction for a while, and after a few minutes, the prickly tension in the air between them—the electricity he felt every time she was close—mitigated enough he could actually breathe deeply. Did she have that effect on everyone, or just him? He wondered what the dynamics of her last marriage had been like, because he was having a hard time understanding how a woman like her could get walked over by the asshole the music media called Tight Spike. Everything Seth had heard about the man indicated he was not only cheap when it came to tipping, but was also niggardly with his affections. Well, unless the people requiring affection wore little leather miniskirts and hung out on tour buses.

“Ohh,” she moaned.

He stole a look sideways and found she’d pulled her feet up beneath her. She rolled the stem of her wineglass between her palms. She stretched her neck by laying her head left, back, and right, and then let her chin fall to her chest. Her lips flattened even more, twitching at the edges as she worked out her kinks. “Neck’s been bothering me for two days,” she said, surprisingly volunteering him information. “I think I must have pressed it at some odd angle sleeping on the plane. Afraid to take anything for it. I’m too drug sensitive to take muscle relaxants. They’d have me knocked out until lunchtime tomorrow.”

She raked her fingers up her naked neck to the apparent site of her knot and squeezed, kneaded, sighed, before rolling her shoulders and leaving it alone.

All the while, he said nothing, although his instinct had been to volunteer to add his hands to the massage. He seemed to need not only a reason to touch her, but permission. Unfortunately, he lacked the latter.

He drank the remnants of his beer and put his feet on the ottoman. For a while, he concentrated. The seagulls dipped to the waves and pulled up at the last moment, sometimes with fish, more often without. He could get used to this kind of relaxing, to being away from all his toys and gadgets, being out in the air.

“You don’t sunburn, do you?” she asked, and her voice was curious, not accusatory.

When he looked at her, she was dancing her right index finger around the rim of her wineglass and studying his profile.

“Sunburn? No. Not really. Takes some doing.”

She chuckled. “That makes you a freak among redheads.”

That probably wasn’t the only thing that made him a freak, but it was a good enough place to start itemizing. “You can blame my late grandmother for it.”

“What, the red or the skin?”

“The skin.”

“What was she?”

“Sorry?”

She gave her head a small shake and turned her attention to the viscous contents of her glass. “Bad habit we Americans have, always wanting to sort people into tidy boxes. I don’t mean to be offensive, but Erica told me sometimes people will construe it that way.”

“You asked Erica what she was?”

Her shoulders rose, almost imperceptibly, then fell. “I was curious. Hispanic heritage seems to be such an amorphous thing, and I always wonder how people label themselves. I’ve got the typical English-Scottish mix. Nothing interesting.”

Was he supposed to say something? This was probably the longest conversation they’d had in twelve years, and he feared that perhaps talking would dilute the magic somehow. But, conversations were supposed to be two-sided, weren’t they?

“Uh.” Some of the hair he hadn’t found time or energy to have cut fell into his face as he leaned forward. He brushed it out of his eyes and tucked it behind both ears. “Not that anyone would ever mistake you for a
lady
,” Grant had quipped a day ago, “but the last time I had hair that long, Emma put little pink bows in it while I slept.”

His hair grazed his collar and brushed his jaw. He’d come a long way from cue-ball head. Bald had been far less of a hassle.

“My maternal grandmother was Ruska Roma. I—”

Meg’s eyes widened a touch.

“Uh. Romani?” he clarified.

“Gypsy?”

“Most would prefer you use another term. That one is what Americans call ‘loaded.’ I lived with her, moved around with her, until I was fourteen.”

“Is that when you moved to the US?”

“No, she died.”

Meg’s mouth formed a little O shape, but she recovered quickly and brought her glass to her lips, sipping.

There weren’t many people who knew much about his past. Curt had been his roommate since that first graduate student mixer when he was twenty-three, so he knew. Grant, the third leg of their little international student triangle and a bulldog of a historian, knew. He’d guessed, just based on some of Seth’s ingrained rituals.

“Hmm.”

And that was it. She leaned back against the padded bench and rolled her wineglass stem some more.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, curiosities he yearned to have squelched, but having her volunteer to be this close to him scared him a bit. He worried if he weren’t careful, she’d fly off like a frightened bird. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been as near. Briefly at Grant and Carla’s wedding when she’d dropped her cake and he’d scraped it up. When they’d applied for their marriage license upon arriving in Bermuda. Finally, on the beach when the officiant instructed him to kiss his bride.

He hadn’t expected fireworks, but the fact she hadn’t flinched—hadn’t drawn away when their lips touched—had driven him to claim more of her mouth. Their tongues had touched briefly as he’d woven fingers through the back of her hair, and she’d made a little noise he couldn’t quite parse. Was it pleasure? Disgust?

He’d let her go at that point, and they both turned to their witnesses and smiled for the telephoto lenses.

She’d gone cold after that, and him?

Well, he wished it’d been real.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Felt like one. And yet every time he stole a glance at Meg, like he did right then, he hoped Sharon was right.

Chapter 3

Everything Meg knew about Seth from the stories her friends regaled her with suggested he was a bit of a loose cannon. He was always keen on a good time and not too picky when it came to women. He could be loud and boisterous, and his style could use some polish.

Sharon had been cleaning him up over the past year—her pet project and greatest triumph, she’d said—and he cleaned up well. As tall as he was with those wide shoulders and all that bright hair, he was amazing to look at. But, left up to his devices like right then in that cabana, he couldn’t be bothered to fix up. He looked damned good in a pair of shorts, though, no matter that they were so stained and holey they shouldn’t have been allowed into the country. Maybe customs would confiscate them on the way out.

His legs were what set her mouth a-runnin’. He was buff for a geek.

“Look, Seth,” she said, wine fortifying her courage. “Neither of us is under any pretense that this thing will last longer than it takes for the ink on the marriage license to dry, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the fringe benefits of being married.” She swallowed and pressed the remnants of the cork into the bottle.

“Fringe benefits?”

He had a deep, rumbling timbre to his voice when he spoke at low volume that made her suck in air and close her eyes. She hadn’t noticed how arousing it was before this weekend. Hadn’t cared to, but now, she couldn’t help but to compare and contrast. By the end of her marriage to Spike, she’d grown weary of everything about him, including that grating, whiny singing voice of his. Dirty hipster bastard. She hoped he choked on his own guitar pick, or even better, his new girlfriend’s studded tongue.

Asshole.

“Sex, I mean,” she explained. Might as well be clear. After all, this was just Seth. Why be embarrassed? He probably wanted the exact same thing. Hadn’t he insinuated as much in the past?

He stared at her, his hazel eyes a bit rounder than usual, and his eyebrows inched upward.

Perhaps it was a bit out of the blue, but she’d never been one to hash her words. Everyone knew that.

She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, still staring, but fortunately his expression relaxed. Now he looked less stunned at the forthright nature of her proposition and more wary.

“Yes or no, Seth?” she said as a nudge. She kept her stare trained on him and untangled her legs from beneath her to stand.

“I feel like no matter how I respond, it’ll be the wrong answer,” he said finally.

Smart man. But, for once, she wasn’t interested in laying booby traps. This was just an extension of their business agreement, really. Two consenting adults with physical needs. That was all.

“Is this a test?”

“No.” She didn’t even taste the last few drops of wine she poured onto her tongue. Her core temperature had risen all of a sudden because her gaze had landed on the hands resting on his knees. Large hands, and strong ones, judging by the feel of them on the beach earlier when he’d pulled her into an embrace that had felt oddly possessive. That embrace should have bothered her a great deal, but it hadn’t. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way he’d brushed his lips across hers in a gentle hello before he closed his eyes, as if he were savoring her essence before tasting. Or maybe because it was a different kind of possession than she’d known those years with Spike.

Spike had wanted to own her. He’d controlled her movements and dictated her appearance. And yet, eighty percent of the time, she felt as though she didn’t exist in his presence. Young rock stars weren’t supposed to have wives and small children at home. Certainly not technical-writer wives descended from Mayflower settlers.

Either way, she didn’t want to be possessed again, no matter how sweetly the possessor captured her. She’d had her heart broken beyond repair, and if it meant she’d die lonely, she’d never cause any man that same turmoil. She was a pain in the ass and knew it.

But, she wanted to be undone by this man for the night. She craved his touch. Gentle sex. Angry sex. Didn’t really matter which, as long as it was mindless.

To Seth, them coming together would probably mean more than a joining of flesh. She couldn’t give more than that and didn’t want to hint at it, but still…she couldn’t resist him. Didn’t want to anymore, and if that made her cruel, so be it.

“Yes, or no?” She turned her back to him and ducked through the fabric entryway with her glass and bottle. She didn’t turn back to await his response, but still it came, along with the clink of his beer bottles and the sound of his feet shuffling in sand.

“Of course.”

She didn’t wait for him to catch up to her side.

Now she was a woman with a purpose, and carefully trod up the small dune between the beach and bungalow, already slipping her hand into her pocket for the key. She was aware of his presence behind her on the path, even without hearing his footsteps. The fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled; her spine tingled with his proximity. Her cheeks burned and breath hitched as she walked.

Was this supposed to be easy? Six years of Spike, and two long-term boyfriends before him. That was all. Vixen, she was not, and she didn’t even have the experience to pretend.

Her hand shook as she angled the key card over the slot, and it took her three swipes to activate the little green light telling her to push. Stepping into the dark bungalow and spying Toby’s backpack on the sofa, stuffed to the gills with toys and picture books, she worried briefly about Carla, but took a steadying breath realizing that her friend would have called if there were a problem. Or dealt with it herself.

The door closed softly behind Seth, and she strode to the small kitchenette and set her glass in the sink.

He followed, and when his hand pressed at the small her back, she startled.

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?” He opened the lower cabinet he’d nudged her away from and drew out the trashcan he sought.