Sweet Seduction (3 page)

Crazy female. Did Lena not know that he could give Paige more than enough incentive to change every diaper their kids would ever wear? Felix shook his head as he packed his suitcase. Even though their plan for him to get Paige was worth it, this would be the
last
time he asked his sister for a favor. He always had to pay her back in some life scarring way. And
no
he was
not
being dramatic even if he’d felt the need to run all one hundred yards to the house he’d had built on his and Archer’s ranch a year ago, just to escape!

Felix zipped up the last of his suitcases. He’d have two weeks. Two weeks with his woman. Two weeks to convince her that she was in
fact
his woman and that she wouldn’t be able to fight it for too much longer. Two weeks to show Paige Matthews that she was
everything
to him.

Every move she made, every time she smiled,
every
single little thing about her made him feel complete. She was intelligent and funny. Paige could be unconsciously sexy while performing the most innocent task, and had a light about her that managed to shine brighter than anything he’d ever seen. The way she interacted with Abby and Liam always managed to make his pulse race. Seeing how much love she had for his parents and her devotion to Lena let him know exactly how beautiful, inside and out, she truly was.

Valentine’s Day was fast approaching and if he played his cards right he could get the greatest present of all. But for right now, he just needed to take a hot shower and try to get the image of what was filling his nephew’s diaper out of his head.

Paige couldn’t wait to leave surgery; this year had been doubly hard on her practice. The drought sweeping the state wasn’t just hurting the legions of farmers, but ranchers were struggling to keep their animals on the positive end of the climate scale.  She’d tended to more cattle that suffered from heat this year than she’d ever even dreamed was possible.  The wild fires that had raged had luckily missed them but she’d been called in to treat animals that had migrated hundreds of miles to safety. Unfortunately, some of them brought sickness that could easily affect the native wild life as well as livestock.

Winter in Texas wasn’t always the best season either but when the precipitation was still in the negative margins it made for a miserable winter. There had been no white Christmas, in fact she’d spent the day in shorts and flip flops. New Year’s Day had been blustery and a chill had frosted the air but the temperature hadn’t warranted much more than a light jacket.

Two weeks in Whitefish, Montana with her best friend and god-children was exactly what the doctor ordered if she did say so herself. Not that Paige planned on learning anything about anything in Whitefish, Montana. All she planned to do was kick her feet up in front of the fireplace and teach her adorable minions the art of s’mores making and enjoy copious amounts of gourmet hot cocoa. She might throw in a snow angel or two just for shits and giggles, but mostly she was just going to hide out from Cupid’s apprentice, Felix, and catch up on the latest news from the back of her eyelids.

At the thought of Felix, her very skin heated. If the man wasn’t so flipping persistent she’d maybe have given him a chance. But his utter absorption with everything ‘Paige’ had been driving her crazy since they were kids.

When everyone else was teasing her, he was winking at her. When everyone else was calling her names and picking on her in junior high, he was calling her beautiful and threatening to kick their asses. And when she blossomed into a woman and was heading out to college, he’d kissed her and spoiled her for any other man. The memory of that kiss set her thighs to trembling and caused her to miss-chew her gum, nearly severing her tongue with her incisors.

“Dammit,” she muttered as she sucked on the small muscle to ease the sting. Her mind instantly went back to that summer day when Felix had suckled her tongue...grazing the roof of her mouth with his.

Shaking the memories from her head, she leapt to her feet. Time to pack and get to the airport. Good thing she was leaving a day before everyone else... she could get to the cabin and dive butt naked into the snow, because she was sure it would take the onset of hypothermia to cool her desire and help her remember that she didn’t want any part of Felix Ramos and his devil tongue.

“What do you mean y’all missed your flight, how could you miss your flight?” Paige questioned finally making it through the doors of the cabin.

“We were taking care of Liam. He was so sick and...”

“So you mean to tell me you couldn’t call me before I got my black ass on a plane and flew to Whitefish, Montana that my godson was deathly ill and y’all weren’t going to make it?”

Lena sighed from the other end of the phone, “Girl calm down he isn’t ‘deathly ill’, just ill and don’t worry you won’t be alone.” Her best friend stopped talking like she knew she’d just let something important slip.

Paige froze, her whole body going rigid.  What do you mean, he isn’t deathly ill you just said...wait...hold up what the hell do you mean I won’t be alone...?”

Paige was almost sick to her stomach...she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what Lena meant, she just couldn’t get her head to wrap around the thought that her best friend would set her up like this.

“Dude, it was either this or listen to both of you whining about each other for the rest of my life...and remember when I told you pay back was a bitch?”

“YOU NO GOOD DIRTY ROTTEN-”

“Best sister-in-law you’ve ever had in your entire life,” Lena finished for her.

“I am
not
letting him in here. There is no way I’m letting that man share this cabin with me!” Paige declared. And she’d meant it... even when she heard the subtle clearing of a throat behind her...

Closing her eyes, she slowly brought the phone to her chest and turned.

There standing in nothing but a terry cloth towel that wasn’t big enough to hide half of one thigh let alone all of him, was what Cupid wished he could look like.

Olive skin glistening with drops of water, dark hair still streaming rivulets down past his evil little, panty-melting smile and muscles twitching in ways that suggested his entire body was being rhythmically jolted by invisible electrodes.

“Good God have mercy...” Paige muttered, her mouth suddenly feeling like it was full of cotton.

Obviously she’d been falsely educated about the cold causing shrinkage because if that bulge just below the loosely tucked cotton grew any more, there was going to be a serious case of indecent exposure going on.

“Okay, that’s my cue to hang up now... We sent you some cookies from Sweet Temptations but it sounds like you’ll be eating something else for lover’s day,” Lena’s voice was full of smugness.

“Shut. Up.”  Paige said to the air then realized she needed to lift the phone in order to speak to Lena.

“Shut. Up.”  She demanded again, but this time to the ringing laughter of her best (make that
former
best) friend and then the damning sound of the dial tone.

Felix stood leaning against the smooth pine of the door frame. He hadn’t actually heard Paige come into the cabin. He’d been too busy trying to tame his thirst for her in the shower. But he’d heard the moment she answered the phone and began shrieking her displeasure throughout the whole house. He didn’t think she’d be so upset about the thought of having the cabin all to herself for two weeks. He wrongly thought that after the busy year she’d had, she’d be looking forward to a little solitude.

To be honest, he half expected Lena to pull out on their deal. He’d convinced himself he needed to ‘get a grip’ so to speak and prepare to spend two weeks entertaining his niece and that poop factory they kept telling him was his nephew while pining for the affection of one seriously hot doctor.

He couldn’t help the smile that crept over his face as Lena was apparently filling Paige in on the fact that he’d been invited to share their vacation.

In Order

“No, no, no.” Paige shook her head as she backed far, far away from Felix. “Outta all the best friends I could’ve had as a kid, the one I chose just happened to be the devil?” She looked at the ceiling. “Shouldn’t you have intervened?”