it quick. If there’s a show here or not, we
should know by the end of the week.”
“Please, get me out
of here,” Sam agreed. He left for his adjoining condo where he had
a bottle or two he’d taken from last night’s hotel minibar.
I slipped into bed and
tried to fall asleep. Nine a.m. tomorrow would feel brutally early if
my body clock was still set on L.A. time. But even a fast-paced,
steamy romance novel on my Kindle didn’t do the trick. My own mind
raced even faster, taking me to even hotter scenes than those
described on my eReader.
The way Heath had held
me, so possessive with a hint of rough. His lips on my neck, licking,
tasting, sucking almost to the point of it hurting but it hadn’t
hurt, not in a bad way that you wanted to stop. It had felt
electrifying, like he wanted to devour me and could barely hold
himself back.
I guess I’d grown
accustomed to the L.A. version of the male/female mating ritual. The
man would flash his Rolex to demonstrate his wealth. The woman would
thrust out her breasts as she laughed to let him view her assets. The
man would wonder aloud if she was an actress and offer to send her a
script. And it would all go on from there down an all-too-predictable
path.
Nothing had been
predictable with Heath, least of all my body’s reaction to him.
Without even consciously deciding, my Kindle fell to the side and my
fingers found their way down to where I still ached and throbbed for
Heath. I slipped my fingers in under my panties, right where I was
already wet just thinking about him.
I let myself moan,
softly, as I started stroking, remembering how his fingers had felt
last night. He’d known exactly how to touch me, right where to
press, exactly how to work me into a frenzy. The smell of him, the
feel of his hand on the small of my back, clutching my hip. The way
he’d plunged his two broad fingers up inside of me, making me arch
back and come, hard, for him. He drank it in, watching me as I
screamed and shuddered and came on his fingers just how he told me
to.
I came again, moaning
into my pillow, shaking and dazed in the bed in my condo. Once again,
I marveled over how that man had made me come so quickly, so hard.
And this time it was just the thought of him affecting me more
strongly than any other man I’d known.
I hoped I didn’t see
him again. It would make things too complicated. Even though I really
wanted to see him again.
CHAPTER 6
Heath
I knew there was a
table inside all that metal. I just needed to get it out. I’d found
the old hood of a car in a junkyard nearby. A 1969 Chevy Camero.
Whoever had scrapped that beauty should be charged with a federal
crime. Good thing I’d come along to give it new life.
It still had the fins
in tact, but the headlights were long gone. I’d had to search to
find something authentic I could use in their place. I wasn’t sure
exactly how it was all going to come together, but that was always
how it was when I started on a piece. Something about the reclaimed
wood or the scrap metal suggested something more, something else. I
couldn’t always put it into words or even envision what the end
result would be, but I could see the potential.
The great thing about
Vermont—or one of the many great things about it—was the space.
You could collect up here and not run out of space to put it all.
Growing up, I’d always had the tendency to find bits and pieces
along the sidewalks of Manhattan. Junk my mother had declared it, and
our housekeeper had waged a daily battle on her behalf, trying to
weed out and dispose of my treasured oddities.
Now, I owned a big old
warehouse with the sole purpose of storing junk. My dream come true.
I loved the scraps others dismissed, the pieces rejected by the
lumberyard, the hulking relics sacrificed to the local dump. I didn’t
like thinking in glorified terms about what I did for a living.
Basically, I made furniture.
But just between you
and me, the process felt like a lot more than