Free On Lavender Lane by Joann Ross Page B

second lover, but she wasn’t about to share that with him.
    “I never, ever, thought that.” He looked her straight in the eye. Which her father had always told her said a lot about a man’s character. “Something happened last night, Steph.”
    His low, seductive tone was the one he’d used while they’d made love. Last night it had coaxed her into doing things she’d never done before. Now it had her going weak in the knees.
    “It was something special. Something I’ve never felt before. Surely you felt it, too.”
    “I did,” she admitted.
    “I think…” He paused and raked his hands through the gilt strands of his hair that had felt like corn silk against her breasts. “I think I might have fallen in love with you.”
    “It’s too soon.” Her voice wavered. She’d thought the same thing, but hadn’t dared hope that they might be on the same wavelength.
    “Logic would say so.” Oh, God, she was drowning in his warm gaze. “But what I feel here”—he splayed his hand over his heart—“says otherwise.”
    Appearing totally at ease with being naked, he got out of bed, stood in front of her, and smoothed his palms over her bare shoulders.
    “Spend the day with me, sweetheart. If we don’t explore what’s happening, if we let this moment pass, we could end up regretting it the rest of our lives.”
    Logic warred with emotion. “I can’t think,” she moaned as his mouth moved to her throat.
    “Don’t think.” His lips burned a trail along her jawline. “Just feel.”
    He was everything Stephanie had waited for her entire life. Everything she’d dreamed of. So why was she hesitating?
    “Yes.” Her breath hitched as one of those wickedly clever hands cupped a breast. “Oh yes.”
    He responded by kissing her long and deep.
    “Good girl,” he murmured against her lips as he drew her back down to the bed.
    They stayed there for the next four days, only calling out for room service. She resigned her job, but, as he’d assured her, waitress jobs were a dime a dozen. She could get another. If she wanted one.
    Or, he suggested, they could get married.
    Although she knew it cost him a great deal of pride, her father had allowed Peter’s family to pay for the wedding, which, Stephanie’s future mother-in-law insisted, must be held in Denver to accommodate all the family’s friends and her husband’s business associates.
    Since Peter had insisted on a fall wedding, Stephanie dropped out of college—she could always transfer to UC Denver later, he’d assured her—and moved to Colorado.
    A mere two months after he’d changed her life when he’d walked into that dining room, she was walking down awhite satin runner in front of five hundred wedding guests at Denver’s exclusive Coldwater Creek Country Club, where they spent the night before flying to his family’s Maui home.
    He’d taken advantage of the first-class perks, drinking the free liquor nearly the entire flight to Hawaii. When she’d tried, discreetly, to suggest he might want to slow down, he’d responded that he was only celebrating their marriage. Which, if true, a niggling little voice inside her had suggested, he wouldn’t have been flirting with the blond, ever-so-attentive flight attendant.
    She’d been Peter Fletcher’s wife for less than forty-eight hours when she belatedly discovered that the problem with fairy tales was that they didn’t warn impressionable young girls that the prince could turn out to be a frog once he took off that gleaming suit of armor.
    And that when a man hit you, it hurt.
    A lot.
    The doorbell rang, sending a burst of adrenaline rushing through Stephanie’s blood and dragging her mind from that honeymoon three years ago when her life had begun its downhill slide into hell.
    With nerves tangled and anxiety gnawing at her gut, she crossed the massive foyer of the stone mansion that had become a prison, pausing in front of the heavy, gilt-framed mirror that had, according to the designer