Interior Designs Read Online Free PDF Page B

caress.
    His touch was reverent and respectful. Drew Sedgwick was no plunderer of womanhood. But he wanted her tonight, desiring her as he had no woman but his wife. Cathryn was a gorgeous woman who seemed to have no idea how sensuous she was. The way she responded told him that she felt the chemistry between them, and that was no surprise. He'd felt it from the first moment he set eyes on her from behind the pillar in Sedgwick's.
    He stopped kissing her and drew her head against his shoulder, cradling it as he tried to think. He stroked the back of her neck gently, wondering if he should make a move now. He longed to let his fingers stray to her breast, now straining against his shirtfront. But if she really didn't want it, he would offend her. He couldn't risk that, not now. He wanted something long-term and real, not a shallow and superficial hook-up. He'd had that, too much of it, since his divorce. With Cathryn Mulqueen he wanted much more.
    And then he felt her begin to pull away.
    "Not yet, dear Cat," he whispered, holding her close. "Just a few more moments like this. It feels so good to hold you."
    "Please," she said, and her voice trembled. Where had the wind gone, and the moon? No seabird dared the silence that encompassed them, and the mist was not real.
    "I don't want you to be uncomfortable about this," he said. He kissed her temple, and her eyes drifted closed at the touch of his lips. "I don't want to rush things." His voice was gentle against her hair.
    "That's good," she said evenly, tilting her body away and imposing inches between them. "Because I don't either." She'd grasped control once more and firmed her resolve into action.
    He didn't like it, the way she knew how to freeze at will. His hands fell into emptiness, but not touching her was better than feeling the frost beneath his fingers.
    "When can I see you again?" He wanted to sound tender, but instead the words were desperate. What he wanted was a meeting of two like minds before they proceeded, and her rejection stung.
    "I don't think that would be a good idea," she replied primly, drawing the armor of aloofness around her. Avoiding his eyes, she slipped into the crowded beach club, leaving Drew stricken as he stared after her. For a moment he wished she'd been a figment of his imagination rather than a vital, breathing woman whose flesh had come to life against his, and who, for no reason that he could think of, had quickly turned and run away.
    Damn, he thought, watching the fragment of a moon disappear beneath an enveloping cloud. He could have sworn he'd touched a chord in Cathryn and that they'd shared something special, even if it had only been for a few moments. He sensed a potential in her and a depth that he'd found in no other woman since his divorce. Having found it, he wanted more than anything in the world to explore it. Why was Cathryn Mulqueen so hard to reach? What did she have against him, anyway?
    Inside, alone in the ladies' lounge, staring at her windblown reflection in the mirror and wondering if the wild-eyed and voluptuous creature gazing back at her was her prim and proper well-behaved self, Cathryn fairly gasped with the effort of pulling herself away from Drew. The attraction—she'd never felt such a magnetic pull with anyone, anywhere.
    She'd known her share of shallow men, and she wanted no more of them. But, oh, the complexities, the structure of this man's mind, the shifting colors she sensed inside him. Now, in the aftermath, she thought perhaps she should have let him take her home—to talk with him until the pearl-gray of the sky heralded sunrise, to inhabit the space of him for a few hours or even more. He would stop his pursuit of her now. She was sure that she had lost her chance.
    She had also lost her ride. The unreliable Susannah was nowhere to be found. She'd probably decamped with Burl Cosworth, her steady boyfriend in eleventh grade. He'd been following her around the room before Cathryn left to go