Free Steel Lust by Jayne Kingston Page A

rested her head against the tub
pillow. She whispered his name out loud, remembering the way he’d kissed her,
the feel of his hands on her, his touch alternately gentle and fiercely
demanding.
    She’d been with men older than her, men with reputations as
highly skilled Don Juans who hadn’t treated her with the kind of care or knowing Leonardo had shown her. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d given the groupies
he’d admitted to sleeping with the same kind of attention. And if he had, did
they have even the slightest understanding of how rare a lover he was?
    She knew better than to get carried away—they lived two
hundred and fifty miles apart, she had almost ten years on him and he was the
frontman for a rock band that was definitely going somewhere—but she couldn’t
help herself. So she lay in the tub and let herself indulge in the fantasy for
a while.
    An hour later she was dressed and ready when Love came to
pick her up for family dinner night. Even when her mother was on the road,
which was becoming increasingly rare, whoever was left in the city got together
on Sunday night to eat together. It didn’t matter if they met at someone’s
house or a restaurant, it was a tradition started shortly after Love was born,
and they hadn’t missed a Sunday night since.
    The house was bustling as they came in through the garage
door of Sunny’s Olympia Fields home. Her husband Greg was leaning against the
counter next to the stove holding a glass of scotch. Her father was standing
directly across from him, leaning against the kitchen sink and holding a glass
of the same.
    “Guys’ night to cook?” Love put the cake she’d brought on
the counter, threw her arms around their father’s neck and gave him a noisy
kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Pop.”
    “Hello, Lovely.” He kissed her cheek and hugged Joy when
Love released him. “Hey, Joyful.” He gave her an extra little squeeze before he
released her. “No surprise guests tonight?” he asked, looking expectantly at
the door.
    “No, just me.” She shrugged out of her coat and pretended
she wasn’t blushing. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
    “You’ll do, I suppose,” he said with a wink as he picked up
one of the bottles of wine she’d brought. “Should I open this for you now?”
    They gave each other a wide-eyed look as Sunny’s children
screeched in a wild chorus, probably because Love had joined them in the living
room.
    “The sooner the better,” she said, and turned to Greg. “Oh,
if I must,” she told him with a sigh, gesturing to the Kiss the Cook apron he
was wearing. She planted a kiss on his handsomely stubble-covered cheek.
    Her sister had definitely landed herself a good
one—gorgeous, funny, smart, happily domestic. When she thought of the
geeky-cute guy he’d been when Sunny first started dating him in high school she
had to laugh. He’d been so goofy-looking back then, his ears, eyes and teeth
too big, his head like a balloon on top of his reed-thin frame. The years had
been very good to him, filling him out in all the right places.
    “You know I wear this thing just so I can get away with
kissing the sisters, don’t you?” He fished a clean spoon out of the silverware
drawer and handed it to her when she lifted the lid off the huge pot of pasta
sauce.
    “Honey, everyone including your wife knows why you wear it.”
She dipped the spoon and blew to cool it off a little. “Your secret’s not a
secret.” She tasted. And closed her eyes. “Amazing. You get another for that.”
She kissed his cheek again, making sure she planted one on him hard enough to
leave a little lipstick behind.
    There was an earth-shaking thundering as the screeching came
closer. A moment later her legs were nearly swiped out from under her as
five-year-old twins Johanna and Angelica came running into the kitchen to
tackle her. Their eighteen-month-old brother Avery toddled in and flung himself
onto the back of the pile a moment later, not able to run