Someone Irresistible (15 page)

practicality from your father?”

She laughed at his playful manner—a soft, throaty sound—and it utterly charmed him.

“I know you don’t believe me, Nathan, but I’m really much less vivacious and fanciful than he would have others believe.” She peeked up at him through her lashes. “He’s taught me well.”

Nathan paused, regarding her closely as an unexpected wariness pulsed through him. “You love him very much, don’t you?”

“Very much,” she admitted at once. Looking him straight in the eye, she maintained, “He is a great man, Nathan, and not to be underestimated.”

He sat up a little, growing agitated at the implied warning, if indeed that’s what it was. “Believe it or not, in many ways I agree with you.”

Her lips parted, as if she were about to comment or argue with him.

Then she clamped them shut and shifted her attention to her work once more.

Nathan breathed in deeply, smelling dust and clay and her. The combination, to his complete surprise, was altogether inviting. She belonged in this room, and everything about it fit her style—a style, he mused, that he very much admired.

He dropped his gaze to her delicate hands, watching them as she expertly rolled the clay into an oblong shape. Then she pulled half of it away and pushed it toward him.

“You’ll want to take off small pieces—like so—and gently sculpt them into teeth,” she directed. “I’m going to begin the upper jaw while you’re doing this, and you can use that visualization to choose the size as you think they would look to scale. When we get to the life size model, of course, we’ll have to be a good deal more careful about accurate measurements.”

Instead of reaching for the clay she offered, he sat back, folding his arms across his chest, regarding her with increasing interest as another thought of considerable importance occurred to him.

Lowering his voice, he got to the heart of his concern. “There’s one thing you’ve yet to mention, Mimi.”

“And what is that?” She left his portion of clay in front of him and picked up her own.

“Who do
you
think stole my jawbone?”

She fumbled it, and the entire mass fell out of her hands and dropped to the floor.

He stared at her, amused at her sudden discomposure.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, leaning over to pick it up.

She didn’t look at him, but wiped her wrist across her forehead before sitting up straight and digging into her project again.

He chose his words guardedly, repeating the question that filled his mind. “If you’re so certain your father didn’t take it, you must have some thoughts on who did.”

She stayed silent for several lengthy moments, concentrating on her creation, her hands moving with vigor. Then she shook her head

negligibly and murmured, “I’m not sure I can answer that, Nathan.”

She glanced briefly at his face again but added nothing more.

“You’re just certain it wasn’t Sir Harold,” he stated for her, closely observing her reaction.

A trace of a smile touched her lips. “I would not be helping you now if I thought he was in any way to blame.”

True, which was something Nathan had decided already. He readjusted his large form in the small wooden chair and stretched a leg out. “But you do trust that the fossil existed.”

He couldn’t keep the apprehension that he might hear a negative response from tainting his assertive tone. But although her denial would hurt, it suddenly mattered tremendously that she believed him.

“Yes, I do,” she answered forthrightly as she began to roll her clay out with her left palm while reaching over to grasp more water to sprinkle on it with the right. “I’ve never doubted its existence, and I still wonder why so many of your peers did. Your experience and reputation should have been enough for anyone to believe you’d discovered something scientifically remarkable.”

Her reply left him highly gratified for the moment and he had trouble concealing a grin. “Have you ever wondered what happened that evening at the Crystal Palace?”

She eased up on her work, her shoulders slumping forward, brows knitting. “I’ve often thought about it. I cannot imagine how the jawbone was confiscated without anyone being the wiser.” In a gentle voice, she looked into his eyes to add, “I’m just so very sorry that everything you’d worked for, everything you’d envisioned for your future, was so shamelessly stolen from you that night, Nathan. I really am.”

Her candor struck a chord in him and for seconds the knowledge of all that he asked of her made him uncomfortable. Sighing inwardly, he reached out and stroked the back of her hand with his index finger.

The contact jolted her a little, but she didn’t pull back from his caress, which encouraged him.

“Thank you, Mimi.”

“For what?” she murmured, boldly holding his gaze.

His eyelids narrowed with the depth of his sincerity. “For helping me when there are still so many doubts.”

She couldn’t look away, or didn’t want to, hesitating in answer as the gravity of his meaning sank in. Then slowly she straightened, her lips curving up mischievously. “You’re stalling.”

“I’m what?”

“The dinosaur teeth. Get to work.”

She pulled away from him and stood up to lean over the table, concentrating on her clay once more, though Nathan sensed that she remained acutely aware of him at her side. The air positively sizzled around them now, and he knew she had to feel it as he did. The urge to touch her again grew overwhelming.

“You were made a widow too young,” he said softly.

She lifted her lashes and her round, brown eyes probed his momentarily before turning back to the table. “I think so, too,” she agreed, “but then, that’s something I cannot change so I try not to dwell on it. I’ve often wondered what my life would be like today if Carter hadn’t been taken so suddenly. I suppose I’d be a mother by now. I do long for that experience.”

She was chattering on, nervous, and he liked the idea that his presence affected her that much. He dropped his arm so that it lay flat on the table surface, his fingertips brushing back and forth on the faded oak. “Do you miss the love?”

Lightly, she shrugged. “Sometimes, I suppose. I would have liked to have had several children.”

“I mean the love from Carter.”

She refused to glance his way, but he noticed her cheeks flushing with color again. So telling. She had the most beautiful skin of any woman he’d ever known, Nathan concluded in that moment. So creamy and smooth, and not a blemish or scar to be seen save for the tiny birthmark beneath her ear that somehow drew attention and begged to be tickled. Or kissed.

“I miss the intimacy, yes,” she mumbled without looking at him.

He wanted to applaud her bravery. This was not a topic for gentle ladies, and yet she answered him truthfully, without pretense or hesitation.

“Were you in love with Carter, Mimi?”

His question was just above a breath, but she heard it.

“I loved Carter, Nathan,” she replied in a low, heavy voice, her forehead gently creased in frown. “He was my husband.”

That didn’t answer at all what he’d asked and Nathan was fairly certain she knew it. She purposely kept this truth from him, but if there was a reason to do so beyond the personal, he didn’t understand it.

Either she loved Carter for the man he was and didn’t want to reveal that to Nathan for reasons of propriety, or she loved him simply because he was her husband and it had been her place to care for him.

Nathan suspected the latter and it made him heady with a certain pleasure that he hoped to God he wouldn’t accidently convey to her.

Nathan glanced down at last to the piece of material she played with in her hands, paying fast attention as she began to slowly stroke a seven-inch rolled length of clay with water-lubricated palms. He followed the movement for a moment, the warmth within of seconds ago turning to a burning fire.

“Were you… satisfied by him?” he managed to ask, his tone husky, daring.

He knew she understood that he’d asked something far more intimate than if she had been satisfied
with
Carter, because she immediately stilled her hand movements on the clay image at her fingertips. For seconds she just stared at it, and then she swiftly raised her lashes and gazed at him again.

She didn’t misinterpret anything. Her eyes had grown to large, brown pools of shock mixed with complete embarrassment. She just stared at him, made speechless, and radiantly beautiful, he decided, with pink cheeks and tendrils of blond hair loosely framing her face and throat.

In a brave move, she whispered breathlessly, “Satisfaction is relative, Nathan.”

She licked her lips, very slowly and on purpose, he supposed, because he was drawn to the movement.

“Relative to what?” he quietly urged.

In a voice as smooth and rich as fine wine, she replied, “Relative to the moment. To the person one is with. To the circumstances that bring a couple together and to their mutual feelings for each other.”

Such a formal response, and yet the air around them crackled with a tension he’d never felt in the presence of a woman. The sensuality she exuded without attempt so impressed him that Nathan felt slightly affronted. And nearly out of control.

Carefully, he raised himself to stand beside her, never breaking eye contact as he nodded toward the clay resting so conspicuously next to her delicate hands.

“Are you satisfied with what you’re making here?” he asked intently, probing her recklessly for all the reaction he could get.

She understood the candid questions. If she didn’t before, she now realized how much he’d enjoyed watching her stroke, for the last five minutes, what for any imagination looked like a rather large phallus nestled in her palms.

But she didn’t back down as he expected her to do. She stilled in breath and motion, and with moist, parted lips, whispered his name on a purely feminine sigh. He couldn’t resist it.

From sheer instinct he didn’t even know he possessed, Nathan reached out with his free hand and placed his thumb against her bottom lip, just barely, feeling the smooth, tender skin beneath it.

She lowered her lashes in expectation, and he smiled with a marked contentment. Moving his roughened palm around her smooth jaw to clasp her neck, he drew her in slowly, feeling only a fleeting hesitation from her before she accepted his offer without question.

Her mouth felt warm and inviting against the coolness of his, and for a moment he didn’t move, just held her motionless, their bodies separated by only the corner of the table. Then she sighed and leaned forward, into him, relaxing against him, and Nathan’s last remaining coherent thought was that she didn’t have to ask him for a kiss this time.

Gently he stroked her nape with his fingertips, beginning a subtle caress of her mouth with his, opening a little wider, smelling her, tasting her. The tip of her tongue brushed against his upper lip and the sensation brought chills to his arms. He hadn’t been kissed so sweetly in ages, and he marveled in it.

In one step he moved around the table’s edge so that they were standing with nothing between them. He lifted his free hand and placed it on her lower back, gently urging her forward until he felt her lovely, enticing breasts against his chest.

She reached up and laid her palms flat on his shirtfront, her fingertips, still smothered with wet clay, teasing his muscles beneath the heavy linen. She swayed against him then, her breath quickening to match the speed of his, and suddenly he could hold back no more as the rush of mutual longing became fierce.

He moaned very softly when her kiss became desperate and her tongue searched for his, when she squeezed his chest muscles and leaned intimately against his thick erection, which he fervently hoped she could feel.

He drew his hand from around her back to grasp her upper arm, only to place it, seconds later, to the side of her breast.

She whimpered when she felt that, when she felt him draw his hard thumb across the sloping top. He couldn’t feel her nipple but he imagined that it stood straight out, puckered from desire, pearly pink and waiting to be sucked.

“Nathan—” she gasped, breaking free of his mouth.

He drew his lips down her cheek to her throat, pausing to kiss the birthmark beneath her ear.

“Mimi…” he whispered at her lobe, flicking it with his tongue, inhaling the scent of her hair. “That was far, far more satisfying than the first time.”

Then before he allowed passion to overtake them completely, he withdrew himself, and on weighted, shaky legs, strode from the workshop.

Mimi stood rigidly, eyes closed tightly, encompassed in searing heat, realizing at last that she could no longer hear his retreating footsteps.

Then she allowed her knees to give way and she drifted to the floor, her skirts surrounding her in a messy, indelicate heap.

She inhaled as deeply as she could, her palm to her thumping chest, thinking absurdly enough that for the third day in a row, she’d managed to make him leave before luncheon.

« ^ »

T
he morning sunlight shone brightly through her long bedroom windows and onto her lacy peach coverlet, proving that the day would be lovely. Mimi hardly noticed.

Her night had been a fitful one, and she’d slept little, or at least she thought so. Her dreams, when she’d had them, had been mixed with luscious kisses and bones of a faceless monster, both in a fog, both drawing her in, both haunting her. Now, as the clock on her bedside table said ten minutes to nine, she couldn’t seem to drag herself out of bed. She hadn’t slept so long in ages, and yet this morning, for a world of reasons, she didn’t want to leave the comfort of her covers.

It had been two long, uncomfortable weeks since she’d kissed Nathan—a totally numbing and marvelously perfect experience that she relived every single moment in his presence. She’d wanted it more than he knew, and had accepted it with an enthusiasm completely unbecoming of a widow still in mourning. But then Nathan was a

difficult man to deny. She doubted that she ever could. It had also brought back a whirlwind of memory—of that wonderful-turned-awful night long ago when she’d decided, after being cradled in his embrace in the cool night, that she would do nearly anything to be with him. She’d wanted him then, and to her growing dismay at the excitement she felt, she wanted him now even more.