California Royale Read Online Free PDF Page B

professional distance, part of her protesting that it had been too long since she’d been kissed, that she’d never been kissed like this.Who could run from the promise of his perfectly seductive mouth?
    He slid his tongue between her lips and explored her delicately, expertly. Shea knew only that she was kissing him back and that her hand was rhythmically squeezing his. When he drew his hand away and clasped her side just beneath one breast, she pulled back, groggy with confusion and burning all over. “Thank you,” she managed to say huskily. “But I think that will be enough.”
    His face was so close that she could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes. The gold was nearly the color of her hair, and she wondered if it was a sign that perhaps this instant connection between the two of them was meant to be. Shea tried to ignore such whimsy. He was her employer. He was here to wreak havoc, and suddenly it occurred to her that he needed her cooperation.
    “You’re always so proper and polite,” he whispered. “It makes me want to tempt you even more.”
    “Will it be easier this way?” she asked in a low, wounded voice. “If you seduce me, will it be easier for you to do what you want with the estate?”
    Dismay filtered into his gaze, dulling the gold, turning his eyes into black warnings. “You should have stopped with ‘Thank you, but that will be enough,’ ” he said in a low, rebuking voice. “It would have been perfect.”
    He let go of her and sat back, looking tired and disappointed. After several awkward seconds in which they eyed each other remorsefully, he said, “I can tell,
querida
, that you and I have a lot of trust to build.”
    Shea’s head drooped. She felt drained. “Life doesn’t move very fast here. I don’t move very fast either. I apologize for provoking what happened. I apologize for being so suspicious.”
    “Sssh. As you said last night, I’m one fast
hombre
.”
    The self-effacing tone of his voice made her look up at him with a tentative smile. He smiled back, though his gaze still held a rebuke. “But I’m not manipulative. If you tell me never to touch you again, I’ll honor that. And your job will be very safe.”
    Shea couldn’t bring herself to tell him that. “Can’t we just slow down?” she asked wearily. “Do you have to make everything so complicated so quickly?”
    He laughed, and the pleasure in his eyes showed how much her answer meant to him. “I’ll be a good guest, how about that? And keep an open mind. We’ll be friends.”
    “Friends,” she agreed immediately. She
had
to convince this man to leave well enough alone, at least as far as the estate was concerned.
    “Friends,” Duke repeated. He would challenge her to keep up with him and tempt her to run wild.

Three
    “Down and two and down and three and flow with the music and down and four and stretch, stretch.” Shea made her voice drop to a throaty and relaxed timbre as the gentle Chopin etude began to slow. “Now reach toward the ceiling, reach, reach, and let all that negative energy and anxiety flow out of you. You’re relaxed, you’re happy, you’ve just been good to yourself. Now
exhale
.”
    What sounded behind her in the aerobics room weren’t so much exhalations of soothed psyches but groans of relief. Shea turned and bowed to the two-dozen exercisers, male and female, who were already staggering toward a water cooler in the corner.
    “The Marines could use you!” someone called, and appreciative laughter confirmed that others felt the same way.
    Shea smiled apologetically. She tried to balance the intensity of her nature with a serene attitude, but where exercise was concerned, intensity always won out. “Your regular teacher will be back tomorrow.”
    “There
is
a God!”
    Shea took a towel from atop the stereo deck next to her and dabbed at her face as she joined the group at the cooler. Glenda Farrar, all pink and a little pudgy in a purple, one-piece leotard, sidled up