Nighttime Sweethearts

“That’s a little much to read into one kiss,” she told herself, but even as she said it, she knew her world was already altered. When was the last time she had felt the simple joy of bare feet on warm pavement, felt night air tingle against her skin like a lover’s touch? Not just noticed it, but felt it, as if her eyes and her pores and her heart were suddenly wide open?

Cynthia felt alive.

“Like a sleeping princess awakened by a kiss,” she whispered to the night and then snorted at her fancifulness. Goddesses. Princesses. Pirates. Wild creatures.

Obviously her life had become just a little too dull and predictable. She slid in the door of her suite, noting, thankfully, that her mother had not returned to the room next door. Her mother had a gift for knowing things she had no business knowing.

Her back against the door, Cynthia closed her eyes. Her senses were filled with the taste of him and the smell of him once more. She yearned.

“Stop it,” she ordered herself, appalled. She pushed off from the door and then noticed the book she had left open on the couch.

Hot Desert Kisses, it was called. Jasmine and the sheik. Did Cynthia have to look any further than her reading material for the reason she was feeling this way? All hot and bothered and unfulfilled? Her mother was right. This type of book was trashy. And it led to all kinds of ridiculous fantasies. Reading this could lead to nothing but restlessness and discontent. No wonder that kiss had affected her so terribly! With stony determination, she plopped the book into the garbage can.

Then Cynthia went into her bedroom, peeled off the damp swimsuit and stared at the shapeless pants and jacket of the pajamas she had taken off just a short while ago. The design had rabbits in it! Had she ever noticed that before? She studied the pajamas with distaste. Cute bunnies with mischievous eyes and pink bows and ridiculously large feet cavorted all over her sleepwear!

In the last hour she had made three rather startling discoveries about herself: She liked walking barefoot in warm sand; she liked swimming naked in the night; and she would die to be kissed like that again! She was not the kind of woman who wore bunny pajamas to bed!

In bed, moments later, clad in a T-shirt and underwear, Cynthia talked sense to herself. “So, you need a new pair of pajamas,” she scolded herself, “and maybe a new hobby. Something you can feel excited about. Photography. Bird-watching.”

Not quite, a voice inside her insisted, something exciting.

“Okay, then, skateboarding. Downhill skiing.”

Nope.

“Skydiving. Bungee-jumping.”

But the voice inside her said hot tropical kisses.

“Shut up,” she told the voice firmly.

But just before she slept, she thought she heard a voice, rough as a gravel road, scraping along her spine and making her skin feel hot and tender.

Good night, sweet lady.

“Good night,” she murmured.

The next thing she knew she was awake, and it was morning. She was drenched in the peach-colored light of post dawn. Cynthia lay very still, contemplating the deep sense of delight within her. When was the last time she had awoken feeling like this? With this kind of tingling anticipation for what the day might hold? With a strange desire to embrace the unexpected?

She was probably never going to see that man again, Cynthia reminded herself sharply. Or encounter him. “Seeing” him was stretching the experience a bit.

She was becoming an old maid—desperate and pathetic—building dream castles out of a ridiculous and demeaning encounter that any woman with an ounce of good sense would have found insulting!

If she ever encountered that man again, what was she going to do? Swoon? Of course not! She would never give him the satisfaction of knowing the chaos and confusion he had stirred up inside her. She would be cool. Composed. Icy, even. Daring him to steal another kiss…

A knock came on her door, and she pulled a pillow over her head, not willing to encounter the real world.

But then the possibility entered her head that, now that her life had expanded to include the potential for unpredictable moments, it might actually be him!

What if he had tracked her down, as enthralled and intrigued by that kiss as she had been? What if he stood outside her door, with a bouquet of red roses and an apologetic smile on his face? She’d let him have a piece of her mind…before she forgave him.

Cynthia flew from the bed, tugged a hand through the tangle of her hair, tossed a housecoat over her T-shirt and panties and stormed to the door.

She threw it open, and no one was there.

Fantasy collided abruptly and painfully with reality when she realized the knock was coming from the door that adjoined her suite to her mother’s.

Trying to bite back her disappointment, resigned, she opened that door. Her mother stood there, perfectly coiffed, not looking the least as if she had danced the night away.

“Darling, time for breakfast.”

“You don’t eat breakfast,” Cynthia reminded her mother, shocked. “Mother, you are never up before the crack of noon.”

“Baron Gunterburger—Wilhelm—talked me into joining him. He was so disappointed that you couldn’t join us last night. He left early, but made me promise to drag you along to breakfast.”

Her mother stopped abruptly and studied her daughter. One eyebrow shot up and her lips pursed thoughtfully.

“What on earth have you been up to?”

“Excuse me? I just got out of bed.” Why did she feel guilty? As if she had been up to something? Was there a law against fantasizing about the man who had kissed you showing up at your door to ply you with roses, apologies and promises? Well, probably in her mother’s world. There were rules about everything in her mother’s world!

“That’s just it. It’s not like you to sleep late, and,” her mother’s eyes narrowed, “you have a look about you.”

“A look?” Cynthia asked with feigned innocence.

“You don’t have pajamas on. You aren’t naked under that housecoat, are you?”

“Mother!”

“Well, you look as if you’ve just been, er, tumbled.”

“Tumbled?” Cynthia repeated, nonplused. “Tumbled?”

Her mother looked her up and down and then asked softly, shocked, “Is there someone in there with you?”

She was twenty-six years old. Her mother knew as well as anyone else that there was never anyone with her. But instead of reassuring her mother, she wished she had the nerve to tell her it was none of her business. She wished she was the woman who had swum naked last night, because that woman would have men in her bedroom at dawn if she damn well pleased!

Instead, Cynthia found herself stepping back from the door, so her mother could see through the suite to the open bedroom door and her rumpled—and very empty—bed.

“Well, then, you look as if you wish you’d been, er, tumbled.” This was said as if wishing for it was just as great a crime as having done it.

“Tumbled,” Cynthia muttered. “What is that? Some seventeenth-century term you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to use?”

Still, she turned away before her mother could see the blush she could feel burning in her own cheeks. She looked at the clock and gave a theatrical little squeak.

“I have overslept, haven’t I?” she said, forcing a breezy note into her voice. “I’ll meet you for breakfast in fifteen. Save me a place beside the baron.”

If there was one way to distract her mother, it was to play her game.