Slow Burn: Seducing Mr. Right / Take Me

“Well, I think a celebration is a little premature right now...but sure.” She reached out to take the bottle. Luke removed it gently from her grasp. Which was fine with her. If it tasted anything like it smelled, she’d gag. Come on, Luke, she silently urged, let’s hear it.

“Are you out of your mind, Cat?” A vein throbbed in his temple. His eyes had turned a smoky green. “If you have this burning need to take care of something, get a poodle.”

“Not quite the same thing, Luke.”

Even with that look of total exasperation on his face he was the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on. Too sexy for plain Catherine Harris. But she wanted him anyway. Her and about a billion other women. Luke Van Buren was Mr. Confirmed Bachelor Playboy himself. He’d never had to look for female companionship. Anything female would spot him from a hundred feet away and be charmed. He loved women. He treated his girlfriends with care and consideration, and adored them.

As long as he was with them.

Lucas Van Buren epitomized the expression “out of sight, out of mind.” Over the years she’d witnessed the ebb and flow of Luke’s lady friends. None of the relationships lasted very long. Which didn’t bode well for her own future. But if she didn’t try, how would she ever know?

Luke was a freewheeling playboy. She valued security and stability above all else. He was a daredevil who considered variety the spice of life. She wanted marriage. He wanted affairs.

She wanted him. He didn’t want her.

When she’d first decided to come to San Francisco she’d considered asking Luke to find her a lover, not a husband. Since he wasn’t husband material, that would have been closer to the truth. But she’d immediately dismissed that idea. Luke would have choked out a resounding and unequivocal “N.O.”

“Did being stuck in that house with just Dad for company turn your gray matter into oatmeal?”

“Not that I know of. Look, this is quite simple, Luke. You must know a gazillion single guys. Lots of cultures have marriage brokers. Which, if you think about it, makes perfect sense. Look at the divorce rate when people find mates by random selection. It’s up to sixty percent. Our mothers probably had a lot to do with that figure rising.”

He splashed more amber liquid into his mug. His knuckles glowed white where he gripped the bottle. He hadn’t said a word in minutes.

“You’re intelligent. You know me, you care about me. You’ll make a perfect marriage broker. Pick a few friends you think would make good husband material and I’ll do the rest.”

Catherine grabbed the pen, ignored the thud of her heartbeat right under her breastbone, and gave him a perky smile. She set the tip of the pen in the left margin and wrote a large number one. “Any interesting prospects in your address book under A?”

* * *

HE’D DONE SOMETHING really bad in another life and God was punishing him, Luke thought as he silently opened the bedroom door several sleepless hours later. To get to the bathroom and a cold shower, he had to traverse the bedroom where Cat slept. He’d spent a miserable night on the sofa thinking about her—and her harebrained scheme.

The world was her oyster. She should be enjoying the bliss of singlehood. Besides, how could a woman whose mother had been married, at last count, eight times even consider marriage?

Variety was the spice of life. Why would anyone put all their emotional eggs in one basket? How could one person be everything to another person? It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t smart. And Cat was usually so sensible, so predictable, so...sane.

Last night she’d been too tired to listen to reason. He’d talk some sense into her today, he decided, as he sneaked into his own sun-washed bedroom on Sunday morning, averting his gaze from the bed—for half a heartbeat.

Sleeping the sleep of the innocent and still wearing his sweatshirt, Cat sprawled diagonally across his California King mattress, sunlight streaming across her smooth bare legs. His fingers itched to slide up the satiny expanse. He wanted to follow his hands with his mouth and taste those freckles.

He sped into the bathroom, closed the door and wilted against it in his relief to have made it this far unscathed.

An icy shower went a long way to making him feel halfway human. When he opened the bathroom door again the first thing he saw was Cat’s smiling face. His heart did a ridiculous and wholly inappropriate double axel as she sat up in bed, his bed, to smile at him.

“Good morning.” She yawned, stretching like a cat.

“Get your lazy butt out of bed, woman,” he told her sternly, digging through the chaos of his drawers for clean underwear while he held on to the towel around his waist with the other hand. “We have things to do and places to go.” He’d have to knuckle down and do laundry soon. He looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you awake in there?”

Cat shook her head as if to clear it, then scrambled over the edge of the bed. “You betcha, Bubba. Give me ten minutes and I’m all yours.” She shuffled into the bathroom. The door snicked behind her. He dropped the towel, dragged on underwear over damp skin and waited for the click of the lock.

He waited in vain.

The shower turned on.

He struggled to zip his jeans.

The bedroom smelled like Cat. Soft. Flowery. Permanent. He searched the upper shelves for a sweatshirt. Finding one he’d stuffed in there months ago, he held it up. Not too wrinkled. So he put it on.

“Hey, Luke?” she shouted over the noise of pounding water.

He closed his eyes. “What?”

“Did you come up with some names for me?” The shower turned off. “Hey. What happened to the towe—never mind, found them.”

People showered naked every day of the week. He wished to hell Cat wasn’t one of them. “We’ll talk about it.”

“What? I can’t hear... That’s better.” A billow of Cat-scented steam preceded her as she opened the door. “Well, did you?”

“I said...” He clenched his teeth, bending down to tie the laces on his boots. They were on the wrong feet. He removed, then switched them, before tackling the laces. “...we’ll talk about it.”

She came out of the bathroom wearing one towel around her body, another wrapped turban style about her head. Her face was scrubbed shiny, her skin like fresh cream sprinkled with cinnamon. Her legs went on forever. In his fantasies he joined the dots.

If she was any other woman... But she was Cat. He’d bite off his own foot before he’d hurt her. This was not a woman a man played with. Cat was a keeper.

There wasn’t a drop of blood in common between them. Their relationship was a state of mind. One he’d better keep remembering. She thought of him as her brother, he reminded himself grimly. Therefore Cat was off-limits. A no-no. Absolutely forbidden fruit.

“I hope it’ll be soon, Luke.” She pulled the towel from her head. “I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

“Who is?” He’d tied the laces too tight, but he walked to the door anyway. When he turned back he managed to look just at her hair. Wet and wild, it tangled around her face and bare shoulders, and lovingly clung, like wet flames, to the upper swell of her—

“Hurry up and dress, will you? It’s past ten and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”

He closed the door gently behind him, feeling as though he’d just escaped something too terrifying to contemplate.

* * *

“OH, MY GOD, Luke, don’t take the corners so fast!” Catherine screamed as the Hideous Harley did a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet skim around another corner. Clinging to his waist, she gripped his belt buckle with both hands. The seat felt obscenely wide between her thighs.

“Lean, Cat. Lean.”

She leaned, sure her helmet must have brushed the gray asphalt as they cornered at an impossible angle.

Luke hadn’t given her time to dry her hair. The moment she’d dressed in jeans and another of his oversize sweatshirts, he’d hustled her down to the parking garage, ignored his well-preserved 1977 Jag, climbed onto his enormous black demon motorcycle, handed her the spare helmet, revved the engine and instructed her to hold on.

If she’d been holding him any tighter, she would have been in front. The speed scared her speechless, no easy feat. Nevertheless, she’d better learn to love the wind tugging her hair from the helmet, biting into her face and making her nose and eyes run. Luke loved his bike.

His house was an hour south of San Francisco, down narrow, windy, stomach-churning coastal roads. Catherine squeezed her eyes shut and buried her icy nose against his leather-clad back, remembering the first time he’d taken her up behind him. She’d been ten. He was seventeen.

He’d only taken her because Dad had insisted she get the first ride on his new bike. She’d been terrified. Luke had been furious at her for being such a baby and had screamed blue murder at her for three blocks. The wind had caused her eyes to tear. And Luke and Dad had had a huge, yelling, door-slamming fight when they got back.