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Only when she was ready. Not until then.
He put out his hand and smoothed a silken tangle of honey-gold hair back from her cheek.
The amazing thing was, he’d made it through the night. A smile angled across his mouth. What he’d pretty much figured was that lying with a half-naked Jessie in his arms would kill him. The first touch of her skin against his had almost been his undoing. He’d told himself to lie still, slow his breathing, convince her he was asleep. It must have worked because, eventually, she’d sighed and relaxed against him.
Holding her, keeping her safe through the night, wasn’t much of a price to pay for having her come to him without fear or hesitation.
The funny thing was that he’d never much liked to spend the night with a woman. Not that he was a guy who was into wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. He always held a woman after sex, shared her bed for an hour or two before getting up and heading home. If a woman asked him to stay the night, and most did, he said he was a restless sleeper. It wasn’t a lie. He almost always awakened sprawled across the bed, the blankets off and the pillows on the floor.
Liam drew Jessie closer.
This time, though, he’d awakened just the way he’d gone to sleep, lying in the center of the big bed, Jessie in his embrace, her head on his shoulder. Sometime during the night, she’d put her hand on his chest. It lay just over his heart. He’d moved a little, too. He’d thrown his leg over hers in what any shrink would surely have defined as a subconscious gesture meant to keep her with him.
Strange behavior for a man who preferred to sleep alone.
Maybe the simple truth was that sleeping alone wasn’t as important as waking up alone. Maybe he just didn’t want to greet the day with a stranger beside him, even if she wasn’t actually a stranger. He’d never been into one-night stands. The thing was, no matter how hot the affair, a man and a woman were forever separate entities, and making love to a woman was less intimate than sleeping alongside her. It might sound crazy, but it had always seemed logical—until now. He’d just slept beside Jessie, they hadn’t even made love, and he’d known her for all of—Liam lifted his arm, squinted at his watch. For all of thirty-something hours.
Thirty-something hours, and in all that time he’d phoned Bill exactly once and left a message that told him nothing. But then, how did you go about telling a man who was crazy with worry that he had nothing to worry about, because you’d not just found his bride, you’d run off with her?
Liam eased his arm from beneath Jessie’s shoulders and sat up. He took one last look at her, then pulled on his jeans and made his way to a small alcove near the patio where a rattan cabinet hid a minifridge, a stocked wine rack and an electric coffeemaker, ready to go.
He turned the coffeemaker on. That was one of the first things he’d changed when he bought Flamingo Island Resort.
“We don’t provide any food or drink in the villas,” the manager had told him with an officious little smile. “Most of our guests are honeymooners. They don’t want to be bothered with such things.”
Liam knew the officious smile probably was the result of the rumor that said he’d won the place in a game of poker. So he’d smiled pleasantly and pointed out that that was precisely the reason the resort would provide champagne, wine, coffee and tea, plus a basket of fresh-baked breads to be left on each porch in the morning.
“And by the way,” he’d added with a smile that was more than a match for the manager’s, “just so we understand each other, Mr. Edding, I didn’t win this place playing cards.”
Edding had paled. “No, sir. I never said—”
“Be sure you don’t.”
They’d gotten along just fine after that.
Liam took a bright red mug from the cabinet and filled it with hot coffee.
Two years had gone by since that day. Flamingo Island, always successful, had become a world-class resort. Liam had added two more properties to the string, and hadn’t played so much as a hand of poker in all that time. It had taken a while, but he’d finally figured out that a man couldn’t go through life gambling on everything.
Until he’d stood in the departure terminal at Sea-Tac Airport and decided to bet his honor against his need for a woman he knew he couldn’t have.
The hot tropical sun was rising over the ocean, turning the water to shimmering gold as he stepped out onto the patio. He sipped at his coffee, leaned his elbows on the sea wall and tried to figure out what to do next. A man of p
rinciple would call Bill and tell him everything. Good Lord, how could he do that? What was “everything,” anyway? What would he say? “Bill, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Jessie and I are together. We’re in our own private world, and she won’t be coming back to Seattle for a while.”
“Liam?”
He turned around. Jessie was standing in the doorway. She’d pulled on his sweatshirt but not her jeans. Her hair was a confusion of honey-gold waves. Her eyes were bright as the ocean, her skin as flushed as the morning sky, and he knew, in that moment, that he was never going to let her leave him.
“I thought I smelled coffee,” she said with a hesitant smile. “Liam? About last night—”
He was beside her before she’d finished the sentence. He swung her into his arms, kissed her, and she put her arms around his neck.
“I wasn’t ready last night,” she whispered. “But I am now.”
Liam carried her inside, lay down with her in his arms. He rolled her onto her belly, drew her hair away from her neck and pressed his lips to her skin. The scent of her rose to his nostrils, a delicious blend of flowers, salt air, and woman. Gently he eased up the sweatshirt, eased down her panties. He heard her catch her breath as he kissed the long curve of her spine, the dimple at its base before turning her over.
“You’re beautiful,” he said huskily, his eyes locked to hers.
