Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (37 page)

"You were just faking all that flirting?" I asked him, feeling stupid. I must have drank more than I realized, and the wine had dulled my perception.

"Weren't you?" he replied, which really wasn't an answer at all.

Before I could say anything more, however, a pair of headlights came around the corner. Sanford stepped away from me (I immediately felt colder without him standing beside me) and out into the street, holding up his hand. The car slowed down and came to a stop beside him, and he tugged the handle of the rear door.

"Come on," he called to me, holding the door open for me before he got in.

Well, fine. But I wasn't considering this as repayment. I just didn't want to seem inhospitable. I calmly informed him of this fact as I slipped into the backseat of Sanford's car.

"Of course," he replied without any surprise, sliding in smoothly beside me and closing the door.

Without prompting, Winston pulled away from the curb, heading back towards the Winterhearst mansion, as I tried to convince myself that all of Sanford's flirting with me during the evening had just been fake, that the whole warmth act was only a performance put on for the sake of the other women in the bar.

Chapter Fifteen

*

INTERLUDE: SANFORD

Dammit.

Sanford very carefully did not look at the woman sitting in the backseat beside him. For a moment, however, he felt like a teenager out on a date with a girl, his head filled with thoughts of nervous potential and annoyance at his inexperience.

Which was ridiculous, of course. He had plenty of experience with women - more than enough to last him a lifetime, and to teach him never to risk opening myself up to one again - and he hadn't been on dates as a teenager. He'd been out with girls, sure, but none of them had involved rides in the backseat of a car. He wouldn't have trusted his mother behind the wheel most days, much less with a potential date along for the ride.

But now, feeling the residual warmth of the wine in his belly and carefully not looking over at Elaine, sitting quietly beside him, he couldn't shake that feeling that this was a date, that he might have to walk her to her front door, that he might even kiss her-

Ridiculous, all of it. He'd only been flirting with her at the bar because he'd rather take the devil that he knew. All of those other women at the bar gave him the predatory looks that he'd come to expect from anyone who found out about his money, his social situation. They looked at him like a prize, something to capture and charm and wear on their arm when they sauntered into some overpriced boutique or country club.

He glanced over at Elaine. She wouldn't do that, though. He couldn't see Elaine sauntering into anywhere, except maybe an animal shelter, intent on adopting every single animal and giving them all a loving home. If she married someone with millions of dollars in his bank account, she'd probably just want a second cat.

Not that he was thinking about marriage at all, or doing anything else with her.

Still, it had been different, getting to flirt with her and watch her as they tried different wines and talked with the other regulars at the bar. Since he'd been pretending to be close with her, no one minded if he watched her body move in that dress she wore, if he noticed how, when she reached up to lift her wine glass to her lips, the fabric pulled tight across very interesting places. When he'd slid his hand around her, she'd felt soft and warm, luscious and ripe, the kind of woman that someone could cuddle up with at night and feel content about everything...

Sanford shook his head. He needed to get his mind off of this. He tried looking out the window, but the darkness and passing street lamps didn't do anything to distract him from the soft, curvy woman sitting in the backseat beside him.

"Here we are, sir," Winston called from the front seat, as the car came to a smooth stop in my front driveway.

Oh, thank goodness. He quickly pulled the door open, holding it for Elaine. Had to play the gentleman, keeping up a wall of honorable contact between us. Don't think of this as a date, Sanford reminded himself.

"Thank you again," she said as she emerged. "Oh, we really were out late. It's quite dark, isn't it? You ought to get some more lights for your property."

What an... Elaine thing to say, Sanford couldn't help thinking to himself. Some women would ask about property values, about how much the car cost, about whether they could come in for a nightcap. Elaine, meanwhile, didn't want anyone to fall as they left his property.

"Let me walk you back to your house, then." What? The words slipped out of his mouth without thinking. Apparently, some part of his brain still remained in flirting mode, as if the two of them really were an item.

In the dim light, Elaine looked as surprised as he felt, but she cautiously accepted. "Thank you," she said, her hand sliding through his arm as she looped her elbow around him.

Well, he'd committed to it. Sanford led her down to the sidewalk and over to her little house. He saw a single lamp shining from the upper window, and a large, familiar, fuzzy shape sat on the windowsill and peered out at them.

"Your guardian looks annoyed at me for keeping you out," he remarked, pointing up at where Whiskers looked down at them.

Elaine laughed. It was a very nice laugh, part of Sanford's brain treacherously pointed out. Most women, when they laughed at something he said, were just exaggerating so that they could seem more interested in him. Elaine, however, laughed because she found something genuinely funny.

"He's probably thrilled that he's gotten some peace and quiet," she answered him after that tinkling laugh. "If he's annoyed, it's because now I'm going to kick him off his favorite spot on my pillow, so that I can go to bed."

Unbidden, images of Elaine's bed swam into Sanford's mind. A big, soft bed, soft like her, where she curled up and went to sleep, just waiting for someone to snuggle against her-

She was saying something else. He dragged his thoughts away from this dangerous mental picture.

"So, was tonight really so bad for you?" she asked him, looking up at him in the light from her upstairs window. Bedroom window, Sanford carefully did not think to himself.

"No, not at all." They were the right words to say, of course, but he was surprised to find that they were also the truth. He hadn't minded going out, despite all the predatory eyes of those women at the bar. With Elaine beside him, deflecting all their hunger and acting as his shield, he'd quite enjoyed getting to talk with others. The wine had been good, too, and the owner, Della Ruthers, worked hard to keep a happy atmosphere. "I had fun."

"Really? Even despite all the flirting and teasing? I'm sure that was so awful for Mister Hard and Stony."

What? Sanford looked down at her, confused. "Mister Hard and Stony?" he repeated. "That's what you're calling me?"

To his amazement, she blushed! It wasn't even a flirty little blush, either; her cheeks bloomed with red, and she looked away, as if embarrassed! "Not like that," she said quickly. "I just meant that you're usually so cold and withdrawn, but I kept on forcing you to open up-"

"You weren't forcing anything," he said, frowning a little. Was that how she saw him? He didn't babble about all his thoughts, but hard and stony?

"Ah, and the old Sanford starts to come out!" Elaine said.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can't help but interrupt, can you?" Sanford started to say something, but realized that he'd be interrupting, and closed his mouth. Elaine moved in a little closer, the blush fading from her cheeks as she taunted him. "Even when we were out, you kept on interrupting everyone to say your own things. Of course, no one cares, because they were all hanging off of your every word, but I notice, and it's so annoying-"

Standing there on her front step, listening to her talk and feeling her body just barely brushing against mine as she leaned up on her tiptoes to try and get closer to his height, that first date feeling washed over Sanford again, even stronger than before. Most of his high school dates ended with him and his date in some bushes, as he learned his way around the female body, but he just couldn't imagine Elaine ever climbing behind some shrubbery with him and letting him take off her panties. She'd demand a proper bed, real romance, the kind with lots of kissing and touching and petting of those curves of hers, driving him crazy before he ever got a chance to get to what he really wanted, to feel that soft body yield and swallow him up-

Maybe he was more drunk than he'd realized, a little part of Sanford wondered belatedly. Elaine was back home - he'd fulfilled his obligation to walk her home. He'd have to see her tomorrow, when she came back over, when she got back to work on cataloguing the contents of his house. He ought to go, right now.

But she was leaning in against him, warm and yielding, and he'd had his arm around her for most of the night, feeling her comforting presence next to him. Sanford could easily just slide an arm around her again, one more time, just for one last little taste of her pressed against him.

There. Just like that. It feels nice, her weight against him like this.

She wasn't talking any more, which was nice. Not that he disliked hearing her voice, but she'd just been teasing him. She wanted to see how far she could push him before he gave in and did something stupid.

He shouldn't have thought about how she stopped teasing. "Sanford," she whispered up to him now, her eyes huge and luminous in the light streaming out from her upstairs window and painting the lawn around them as they stood on her front stoop. "There's no one else watching us here."

"I know," he said. He didn't release his hand from around her. If he dropped it down a couple more inches, he could feel that round bottom, where his eyes had been drawn to all night, whenever she turned away from him...

"You don't have to pretend out here," she said.

"I'm not."

"But then why-"

Oh, the hell with it. No one else was watching, just as she said. She felt so warm, so soft as she leaned in against him, and he could feel that she was up on her tiptoes. She was still so short that the top of her head barely came up to Sanford's eyes, but he just had to lean down a little. It wasn't an uncomfortable stretch.

As he leaned in, he realized that he was doing it again - interrupting her, mid-sentence. She probably would be angry at him for cutting her off before she could finish her inane question.

But he'd deal with that afterwards.

Sanford leaned down, and just before their lips met, he noted that she'd stopped talking. There - he hadn't cut her off. He'd leaned in, and she stopped talking.

Totally not the same thing.

Mmm. She tasted a little like cherries. He wondered in the back of his mind, as fireworks exploded in his frontal lobe, whether that was from the wine, or if she always tasted that way. This was just a one time thing, just because he'd been idly thinking about it for most of the night, so he wouldn't have a chance in the future to try again and confirm that it was how she always tasted.

Sanford's hand tightened, tugging her warm softness in against him, and their lips tightened together. The moment felt frozen in time, a perfect little snowflake, preserved and unique and impossible to repeat.

Chapter Sixteen

*

Oh my god. Ohmigod. Oh. My. Gawd.

He's kissing me. He's really kissing me, pulling me in against him, holding me up with his arms around me, and he's kissing me! Sanford Welles, high school bad boy, reclusive millionaire, Mister Hard and Stony himself, is KISSING ME.

I'd pinch myself to make sure that this is real, but if it isn't, I don't want to know.

Heck, it's probably not real. I probably took a tumble when we left the wine bar, too drunk, and whacked my head on the sidewalk when I landed. This was all a hallucination, and the two of us would fall in love and get married and have two and a half kids and adopt ten cats and then after we'd retired and were sitting on the front porch of our home together, I'd close my eyes for a moment and then wake up and find that I was in a hospital bed and I'd been in a coma for ten years and it had all been just a dream.

Surreptitiously, I reached down and pinched at a bit of flesh.

"Ow. What was that for?"

Oh, crap. I'd pinched Sanford, not myself. Admittedly, with him holding me closely like this, it was tough for me to tell if I was touching him or myself. He pulled his lips back from mine, but didn't let go of me, which made a little spark shoot up and down my spine when I realized that he didn't want to let go.

"I just wanted to see if I was dreaming," I said lamely.

"And?"

"I don't think that I am." Something occurred to me, and I narrowed my eyes up at this tall, strong, sexy man. "Hey, you interrupted me! You did it again! I was in the middle of saying something, and then you just leaned in-"

"I didn't interrupt," he interrupted. "I leaned in, and you stopped talking. And then I kissed you. Separate events."

I opened my mouth to argue, but he might have a point. I couldn't remember exactly what happened before he kissed me. The kiss kind of scrambled everything else that wasn't related to the feel of his strong lips on mine, the way he tasted so good, just slightly spicy, in a way that made me want more-