Hot & Bothered

JOHN CLIMBED THE EXTERIOR staircase of the six-car garage behind the mansion. Reaching the top, he glanced back over his shoulder toward the kitchen door, which he could just see from his vantage point. Then he turned back and gave the antique brass door knocker several authoritative, decisive raps. Mary, the housekeeper, had told him he’d find Victoria there, and he had no legitimate reason to doubt her. But what would Tori be doing in an apartment over the garage—having a hot and heavy affair with the chauffeur?

Jesus, Ace. Okay, so it didn’t strike him as particularly funny. It should have—considering how much she’d changed over the years, the very notion should have been ironic, or at least marginally amusing. Instead, the mere idea of her getting down and dirty with some faceless man irritated the hell out of him. Which made no sense at all. It wasn’t as if he expected she’d been celibate for the past six years.

All right, that was exactly what he expected. So sue him.

It didn’t help the nascent case of jealousy swirling in his gut that the woman who yanked the door open hardly looked as if getting down and dirty were outside the realm of possibility. Gone was the sheath-and-pearls-attired socialite. In her place stood a familiar barefoot woman clad in a threadbare pair of cutoffs and an oversize white shirt, the tails of which had been knotted at her waist over a lipstick-red sports bra. The shirt looked as if it might have belonged to her father, so long were its tails and so bulky its rolled-back cuffs that ended just below her elbows. And her hair was a wild, sun-streaked, flyaway nimbus floating out from beneath the little red triangular bandana she’d tied behind her head. But it was the ragged threads straggling against her firm, freckled thighs that riveted his attention.

“Can I do something for you, Miglionni, or did you just come up here to stare at my legs?”

He tore his gaze away from the long, smooth, bare expanse. “You gotta admit, they’re ogle-worthy,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Believe it or not, though, I actually did have something to tell you—those beauties just drove whatever it was clean out of my head.” He didn’t plan the grin he flashed her; as with damn near every other time he’d ever been in her company, she drew a reaction from him that was purely spontaneous. “Man, Tori. I’d forgotten how pretty your legs are. You oughtta wear short shorts more often.” He couldn’t stop himself from giving them a final once-over before he made a conscious effort to look elsewhere. No sense giving her any more opportunities to accuse him of sexual harassment.

He glanced past her into the depths of the big open room. A huge worktable, littered with mechanical pencils and blueprints, wood scraps and piles of fabric, stood down near the end of the room. In the midst of the chaos stood two little houses about three feet tall. One was made of balsa wood and was fairly plain, but the other looked very elaborate. Deep shelves behind the table held several other balsa models and one stone one, each in a different style. “Whoa. Are those yours?”

“Yes.”

She relinquished her position blocking the door when he stepped forward and he strode past her, crossing to the table. He saw that the models on the table had an open back and, bending down, he checked out the interior of the ornate one before glancing up at her. “What is this, a dollhouse?”

“Yes.”

He indicated the other. “And this one?”

“It’s the prototype.”

“And you made both of them?” He tipped his chin to include the other prototypes on the shelves. “You made all of these?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” He gave the one still in progress a more thorough inspection. “I can’t believe the attention to detail. It’s perfect.” It had gingerbread shingles on the roof, a wraparound porch with spindle railings, two balconies and a bay window. Each room was fully realized, from window seats and the tiny oak paneling forming the wainscoting in the parlor, to the old-fashioned wallpaper and white porcelain pedestal sink in the upstairs bathroom. He flipped a switch on a little metal box he saw sitting on the table next to the dollhouse, and minuscule lights within the model came on. Laughter rolled out of his chest. “This is so cool.”

Victoria blinked as she watched Rocket circle the table to investigate the other models on the shelves. He possessed such bedrock masculinity that she would have thought he’d find her dollhouses too sissy for his consideration—or at least dismiss them with no more than a cursory glance. Instead he seemed fascinated. When he came to the stone castle and glanced over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes all but shot sparks of pure, engaged interest.

“This one’s different. It’s more like a guy’s dollhouse.”

A laugh escaped her. “Good call. I made it for a boy with an extensive collection of metal toy soldiers, most of which are knights, kings, horses and other assorted medieval warriors. It was my first experience with masonry and I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out.” Coming around the worktable to stand next to him, she hauled the castle off the shelf and placed it on the table. “Look.” She reached across his arm and past the turrets into the castle’s open top. “It has a working drawbridge and portcullis and if you move this stone just so—” she demonstrated with a fingertip “—and then the one next to it like this—shazam!” The interior wall swivelled to expose a secret room that had walls bristling with sketches of medieval weaponry.

John laughed. “Excellent! I would have beefed up the back wall here for a better defense, but it looks as if you’ve got the firepower and that’s half the battle. A couple vats of boiling oil, enough supplies to hold off a siege and you’ve got yourself a good chance of holding the fort.” He turned his head to look at her. “Do you make these for a living?”

“Yes.” Finding his face suddenly much too close, his enthusiastic curiosity much too compelling, Victoria eased back a step, trying to ignore the smooth, hot-skinned drag of his inner forearm against her own. “I sort of fell into it by default. I made one for Es and a couple of her friends fell in love with it and wanted one for themselves. Their respective parents commissioned me to make them and from there word of mouth just started to build. It was confined mostly to the Mayfair area of London until last year, when I set up a Web page on the net. Now I’ve got all the work I can handle. More, really. I’ve had to turn commissions away.”

“Have you ever considered mass producing?”

“For about five minutes.” She met his gaze. “But then I rejected the idea. Not only would mass production put me right back in the very situation I was trying to avoid when I left Kimball and Jones—devoting more time to my business than to Esme—it would strip all the individuality out of the process…and probably most of the fun, as well. I need to keep it small. That way I can build each house to suit the little girl—or in the castle’s case, boy—for whom it’s meant. Each child gets a quality, almost-one-of-a-kind dollhouse and I get a creative outlet…not to mention steady employment that’s fairly lucrative for being so selective.” Much too aware of his shoulder bumping up against hers as he leaned down to test the castle’s various working parts, she moved away, going to the shelves and finding make-work straightening the remaining models. “Which reminds me, I should get back to it. You said you had a reason for coming up here?”

When she turned back, she found him checking out her legs once again, but he immediately pulled his gaze up to meet hers. “Yeah. The probability that Jared left town just got a lot stronger. I tracked down the cab driver who picked him up the night your father was murdered.”

“Oh, God.” Feeling her legs go weak, Victoria reached for the stool she used when working at the table and pulled it beneath her hips. “What did he say? Where did he take him?”

“He said the kid was extremely quiet and seemed stunned. Maybe in shock. That when he asked if he was all right, Jared laughed hysterically, but calmed down enough to insist on being taken to the bus station.”

“Did you find out where he went from there?”

“No. I couldn’t find anyone at the station who remembers selling him a ticket. But most teens on the run head for a city and since Denver’s the nearest one to Colorado Springs, odds are better than even that’s where your brother went.”

She pushed to her feet. “I can be ready to leave in ten minutes.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there. Slow down.” He grabbed hold of her shoulders and leveled a no-nonsense, let’s not-get-ahead-of-ourselves look on her. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“But if that’s where you think he is…”

“Think being the operative word here. Running around like a couple of chickens with their heads cut off won’t gain us anything. We do this the smart way, which means I tap into my resources. First and foremost among those is Stand Up For Kids in Denver.”

“What’s that?”

“An organization that gives aid to runaways and street kids. I’ll give them a call and fax them Jared’s photograph so they can be on the lookout for him when they do their outreach in Skyline Park Sundays and Tuesdays. Kids learn quickly where they can score a free meal and some toiletries, so if Jared’s in Denver, he’ll likely show up at Skyline sooner or later. I’ve worked with this organization before and they know they can trust me not to return a kid to an abusive situation. And in return, I can trust the Stand Up counselors to give me a call as soon as they spot him.”

“Then we go to Denver?”

“Then I do, anyway.”

“If you think I’m sending you off to collect him all by yourself, John, think again. Jared’s bound to be scared to death, and he doesn’t know you from Adam.”

He gave her shoulders a tiny squeeze. “What do you say we wait until we actually have a useable lead before we argue this to a standstill?”

The commonsense suggestion made her realize the silliness of standing here arguing about it now and she couldn’t help but smile. She gave him a poke. “Deal.”

Surprisingly, instead of treating her overture as the tension breaker she’d intended and returning a smile of his own, John frowned. “Dammit, Tori, I wish you hadn’t done that,” he growled. “Now I’ve got no choice but to get an answer to the question that’s been driving me nuts ever since I landed on your doorstep.”

“What question is tha—?” The query hadn’t fully left her mouth before she was caught against his long, hard body. One strong arm slipped down to wrap around her waist and his free hand tunneled beneath her hair to grasp the back of her neck.

She stared up at him in surprised disbelief as his body heat began to permeate every inch of her he touched. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Miglio—?”

John’s mouth, firm, hot and confident, covered hers, cutting off her demand.

For a moment, sheer astonishment held her immobile. Then she absorbed the taste of him, felt the slide of his tongue and with her heart thundering in the outraged fear that she’d never be able to hold herself aloof from this man, she slapped her hands against the solid wall of his chest and gave it a firm shove.

He didn’t even budge and she suddenly recalled his strength, remembered the way it used to intrigue her, titillate her. She remembered, too, the way it had once fulfilled the until-then-unacknowledged little girl inside of her who’d always longed for someone to stand between her and the world. Somebody to keep her safe.

Well, she’d buried that child the day she’d learned to accept once and for all that the only person she could depend on protecting her was herself. And assembling all the resistance at her disposal, she once again flattened her hands, which within seconds of her reintroduction to the warm, wet silk of Rocket’s persuasive kisses, had softened from a shove to a caress against the rigid muscles of his chest.

Even with steady pushing on her part, though, he held her with ease. He displayed not the slightest hint of roughness, yet his determination to hold on to her was unmistakable. And he kissed her with an expertise that sent her resistance down the drain. His mouth was talented and his kisses were sultry. Forceful.

Familiar. God, so familiar. She knew these lips. She’d kissed them before, studied them as they’d shaped words, slipped bites of food between them with her fingers. It had been six years, but some things a woman never forgot.

Every last defense disappeared and she felt herself start to melt at the knees. For one wild, reckless minute, suffused with a blistering pleasure she’d only known once before in her life, she kissed him back fiercely. She reveled in his hot, rich taste, in the slick inner lining of his mouth that she lapped with her tongue, in the tensile strength that supported her weight so effectively as she plastered herself against him in a futile bid to climb right inside his body.

Then before it even occurred to her to muster the will to pull away, John jerked up his head, released her, and took a giant step back.

“Damn.” He brushed the back of his hand against his bottom lip. Then, dropping his hand to his side, he dabbed his tongue against the lip he’d just touched and eyed her sourly. “It’s still there, isn’t it? I’d hoped it was gone, or at least one of those memories I’d blown all out of proportion over the years. But you’re still every bit as addictive as you used to be.” His hot-eyed regard slid over her from the top of her head to her crimson-polished toes. “Christ. You’re like cocaine in a red bra.”