“It’s been difficult. I never realized…”

  “What?” she prompted.

  “I don’t know. How much I cared about him, I guess?” He gave a sad laugh. “How much I’d miss him, even as I find out day by day how very little I knew him.”

  Having lost her dad at a young age, Kate could understand that feeling of wishing she’d had a chance to know a parent. “I’m sorry, Jack. I know how it is to lose your father.”

  “I know you do. You were a kid when you lost yours, right?”

  She nodded. “Six.”

  He shook his head. “Awful. Your mom was so young to be a widow.” He lowered his voice. “And she never remarried.”

  No, Edie had never remarried. She’d instead wasted decades on a man who was married to someone else. Kate rubbed a weary hand over her brow. “No. But we’re talking about your father.”

  “Yes, we are,” Jack replied. “He left a mess behind him.”

  More than you could possibly know.

  “I told my mother I’d come help her out this summer, sell some real estate, get some paperwork taken care of.”

  “And you can’t do that on Lilac Hill?”

  “I’m a grown man, Kate. Can you picture me living in my mother’s house for a month, being scolded not to let my shoes scuff up her tile floor, and to be careful not to rumple the plastic on the sofa in the parlor?”

  She couldn’t help it. She burst into laughter. “She has plastic on the sofa?”

  A faint smile crossed his lips. “Yeah.”

  “Does it ever come off?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even if the First Lady came over?”

  “Well, maybe the current one. But definitely not a Democrat. And certainly it wouldn’t come off for me!”

  Suddenly his childhood sounded less golden than she’d always imagined. “Sounds like you were the classic poor little rich kid.”

  “I did okay. Thankfully, your mother was around a lot.”

  Kate’s smile faded. Yeah, her mother had been around the Winfields a lot more than he knew. She wondered what he’d think about that.

  In her heart she knew it would hurt him, just as it had hurt her to learn a parent she loved really hadn’t been perfect. Maybe if she were a vindictive person…or maybe if Jack weren’t already mourning his father’s death…she’d have told him. As it was, she simply couldn’t. No matter what he’d done to her, no matter how much his broken promises had hurt her, she couldn’t repay him with that kind of spite.

  His sister was much better at that, she recalled.

  “Anyway, I wanted to be on my own,” he continued. “There aren’t a lot of furnished short-term rentals around. Your mom seemed happy to let me stay here for a month. End of story.”

  Kate sensed it wasn’t really the end of the story, but she was too tired to think about it tonight. She still hadn’t quite absorbed the fact that she was here, back in Pleasantville, this time not only for an afternoon, but for weeks.

  And Mr. Gorgeous was her next-door neighbor. Oh, joy.

  “You need to leave,” she finally said, wanting him out of here before she did something terribly stupid. Such as kick him, kill him. Or even worse, kiss him. “I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”

  He looked around the empty room. “Uh, where?”

  “I brought a sleeping bag for tonight.”

  “The power’s not even on and it’s hot as blazes in here. You’ll roast.”

  “I’ll be fine. Just go, please? I’m really beat, it was a long drive from Chicago.”

  He turned to leave, then hesitated. “Look, your mom’s furniture is all still in her house. Why don’t you stay over there tonight? It’ll be more comfortable than the floor.”

  Stay there? With him? And give him another chance to use her again? Do I have I’m A Sucker stamped on my forehead? No, thanks, mister.

  Then she thought about her revenge plan, one of her main reasons for coming back here. Hadn’t she intended all along to get involved with J. J. Winfield? Seduce and destroy. Entice and evade. It appeared he was handing her the prime opportunity to do exactly that.

  But that was with J. J. Winfield. The spoiled, weak, pale and pasty-faced J. J. Winfield she’d pictured in her mind for so long. Not Jack. Definitely not golden-haired, laughing-eyed Jack with the strong hands, the perfect mouth and the big…

  “What do you say, Kate? Just for one night.” He raised a brow and gave her a wicked smile. “It could be fun.”

  One night. One more night like the one they’d shared at the Rialto? She might never survive it. Though, there was no doubt in her mind she’d love every minute of it. Every deep, sweaty, hot, pounding, orgasmic minute of it.

  Get your mind out of your pants, Kate! This man could hurt her. She was already too vulnerable to him, too attracted to him. Damn it, she already liked him too much. Or at least she had before she’d decided he was a creep and a user. Another interlude with Jack and she might find herself forgetting she wasn’t allowed to like him anymore. She could be the one with the broken heart if she followed through on her seduction idea.

  No, there had to be another way—a less dangerous way—to even the score with the Winfields. One that wouldn’t risk her own emotions. Emotions she’d become quite adept at protecting over the years. After all, with the examples set by women in her family, emotional self-preservation was a requirement. Nobody else looked after a Tremaine woman…except a Tremaine woman.

  “I’ll be fine. I can open a window.”

  “What about the vandals?”

  She shrugged. “My mother told me the sheriff caught the kids who sprayed her house. They’d apparently hit a lot of other houses in town with the paint cans, and now they’re doing five hundred hours community service each.”

  “Good. Still, you don’t need to stay here. Come on, it makes sense. Your mom’s place is furnished, and lit. Aren’t you achy from your drive? Don’t you feel like taking a long shower?”

  “I know what you do in showers,” she snapped, remembering his comment from the theater.

  He thought about it and chuckled. “I just moved in today.”

  “Doesn’t take too long for some men.”

  “Zing. Was that another comment about how quickly it was over the first time?”

  Quick? Ha! In her memory she could still feel him making love to her. Riding her, filling her, rolling orgasm after orgasm over her body. She’d felt him inside her for weeks.

  “No,” she finally replied. “And I think you mean only time. First implies there could be a second.” Or a twentieth.

  But there wouldn’t!

  He ignored her comment. “I promise the shower’s clean, Kate. As for anything happening between us…”

  She waited, wondering if he’d make some flirtatious, sexy suggestion that they pick up where they’d left off weeks before. If he did, she’d have to kick him, she really would.

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry. Strictly platonic.”

  She found herself wanting to kick him anyway.

  As if his silence in the past weeks wasn’t bad enough, now he’d basically admitted he didn’t want her even though she’d practically fallen right back into his arms? She hated to admit it, but her femininity took a definite hit.

  “Well, maybe a shower would be nice,” she mused out loud, suddenly wanting some payback, wanting to remind him what he was missing out on. She tilted her head from side to side to work out some imaginary kinks in her neck, then raised her arms above her head to stretch. Arching her back so her breasts pushed tight against the cotton tank top, she hid a look of satisfaction as Jack stared, long and hard.

  “Okay,” he finally said, his voice low and shaky. “Do you need any help with your stuff? A suitcase?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll only need my purse and my toiletry case.” Some devil made her add, “I don’t wear anything to bed, anyway.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “It’ll be funny, going back to sleeping in my old room for one night. At my place in Chicago, I have a huge California King bed.” Liar. She had a queen. “With black satin sheets.” Double liar. They were percale. And pink.

  Rather than looking even more hot and bothered, as she’d hoped, Jack gave her an amused look. Finally he said, “Sorry, Kate, your room’s taken. ’Fraid you’ll have to take the master bedroom…or the foldout.”

  “You’re staying in my room? Why?”

  He nodded. “You’re not the only one who remembers everything we talked about that night at the Rialto.”

  She didn’t follow.

  He stepped closer, invading her space again so their bodies were separated by only a bit of air and moonlight. “You might know what I do in the shower,” he whispered, reaching out to scrape the tip of one index finger along her shoulder, playing with her bra strap, which had somehow slipped out. His touch made her shake and she could barely keep herself focused on his words.

  “But I also remember what you did in your old bed.”

  By the time she understood, and felt hot blood rush into her cheeks, Jack had already turned and left the room.

  6

  OFFERING A SHOWER and a bed to a woman he couldn’t have—but wanted so much his nuts ached—had to rank up there among the stupidest things Jack had ever done in his life. Maybe not as stupid as the time he’d tried bungee jumping off a bridge in California, or when he’d scuba dived with sharks in Australia, but pretty stupid all the same.

  The house had only one bathroom. It was upstairs, between the two bedrooms, and he listened to every move Kate made in there. He could swear he heard a metallic hiss as she unfastened the zipper of her jeans, followed by a whoosh of air as she dropped her clothes to the floor. Then the rustling of the shower curtain as it opened, the water starting, her tiny gasp as she tested the temperature and found it too hot. Or too cold.

  Jack gave up trying to sleep. Sliding closer to the wall in her small, twin-size bed, he listened intently. The gurgling rush of the water from the faucet changed to a sizzling stream emerging from the showerhead. She stepped into the tub, closing the curtain behind her. Then she dropped something—the soap? As she retrieved it, her hand knocked against the tub just inches from his head. He swallowed hard.

  She began to hum. Off-key. Not Benatar now, but some other old rock tune he couldn’t place.

  Soon there was nothing but the pounding cascade of water, muted when her body was beneath it, harder as it struck the tub when she had stepped out of the stream to wash.

  That was the hardest. Imagining her rubbing a soapy washcloth, or, better yet, her bare hand, over her skin. Easing the tight muscles of her neck. Kneading the kinks out of her shoulders. He closed his eyes and pictured the slide of her hands down her body. The way her fingers would look on her throat, her breasts, her thighs. And between them.

  He shuddered. Probably the only thing he could imagine being as arousing as touching her himself would be to watch Kate’s hands on her own body. Giving herself pleasure, the way she said she had here, in this very bed, a few weeks back.

  He groaned and pulled the pillow over his face, dying for sleep…for release. Both thoroughly eluded him.

  Her long shower continued. Hurry up, would you? He had a feeling he was going to need to take a cold one of his own.

  Jack imagined sharing one with her. It would be incredible. He’d barely gotten to taste her at the theater and his mind flooded with images of sitting beneath her in the shower. Looking up at her. Holding her hips in his hands and tilting her soft thatch of dark curls toward his hungry mouth to taste her, indulge in her, positively inhale her.

  Only after he’d had his fill would he stand up, turning her to face away while he stood behind her. She’d lift one foot, resting it on the side of the tub. He could picture her hand, flat against the tile wall for support, her red-tinted nails a stark contrast to the cream-colored tiles. Her fingers would clench then widen as he stepped closer and she felt his body press against her back, his hard-on slipping between her legs.

  He’d have to touch her. He’d reach his hand around, caressing her breast, then her belly. Then lower, until he could slide his fingers into her slick crevice, testing her readiness. Pleased at how wet she was for him.

  She’d bend forward slightly, arching her back, turning to look over her shoulder at him with wide, passion-filled eyes that screamed “Take me now.” He’d tease her, not giving in to her demands yet, taking time to kiss the tiny little bones on her spine until he heard her whimper in anticipation.

  Then he’d give her what she wanted, sliding into her from behind, slowly, until he was so deep inside her they couldn’t distinguish their bodies from one another.

  They’d pause, the hot water pelting them as they savored the connection. They’d be inundated with the scent of the soap and her lemon shampoo. And the thick, heady smell of sex.

  She’d bend lower, tempting him with the curve of her hips and her perfect rear. The visual would join with all his other senses to overwhelm him and he’d have to move. Faster. Getting caught up in her tight heat, having to bend over her, holding her hips and driving them both into oblivion.

  “Stop, you idiot,” he muttered with a gasp.

  He almost came in her bed. It took all his concentration to grab his last bit of control to prevent his body’s reaction. Calling himself an asshole, he lay there for a few moments, thinking of prostate exams, Brussels sprouts and wrinkled geriatric patients. Anything unappealing.

  It wasn’t easy; it didn’t help his erection subside, but he managed to avoid having to make a sneaky, middle of the night sheet change as he had a few times during puberty.

  Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d come so close to climaxing just from thinking about a woman. Considering Kate was all he’d thought about for weeks, maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

  He still couldn’t believe she was here, not only here in this house, but in Pleasantville at all. From some of the things he’d heard, Kate and the rest of her family hadn’t been treated too nicely in the old days. He only hoped she wouldn’t hear any of the rumors about her mother while she was in town. He knew she couldn’t possibly be aware of the truth…if she were, she’d never have spoken to him once she found out who he was.

  If she ever did find out, she’d hate his guts, thinking him just another snobby Winfield out to nail a trashy Tremaine.

  Wrong. So wrong. He’d been fascinated by her, wildly attracted to her, dazzled by her, back when he didn’t even know her name. He didn’t remember another better sexual encounter in his life than the one they’d shared on the stage. Completely spontaneous, passionate, fulfilling. If her last name—or his—had been anything else, he would have spent every night since then in her bed. Guaran-damn-tee it.

  And during each one of those nights, he would have worked to remove the sadness he sometimes saw in her eyes, and the anger he’d heard in her voice. Particularly tonight, next door, when her sarcasm hadn’t been able to disguise her hurt.

  He made it his goal, then and there, to do exactly that. But not here, not in her mother’s house, in this town that sucked the soul right out of her. The only place he’d seen her truly happy, passionate and excited was at the Rialto. That was the Kate he wanted to seduce—but he had a feeling he wouldn’t find her again until they returned to Chicago.

  And until Jack wiped the slate clean regarding his father.

  In the meantime he’d control himself, keeping his libido firmly in check. “Yeah, right,” he muttered.

  Just when he wondered if she was ever going to get out of the shower, he heard the water turn off. “Thank God,” he muttered.

  The plastic rings clinked against the metal rod as she pulled back the curtain. Then silence, for one long moment, until he heard her voice. “Jack? You awake?”

  Was he awake? How could he not be awake when three-quarters of his blood supply was centered in his groin? It was a miracle he hadn’t passed out from lack of blood flow to the brain.

  “Yeah,” he said. Realizing he’d spoken in a whisper, he cleared his throat. “Yeah, Kate, did you need me?”

  “I don’t have a towel.”

  No towel. Perfect.

  Tempted to tell her to stay in there and drip dry—quietly—until he could get control over his raging libido, he sighed and sat up in the bed. Throwing back the sheet, which had felt cumbersome and heavy against his naked body anyway, he reached for his sweatpants. He couldn’t find them.

  “They’re too hot, anyway,” he muttered in disgust. Instead, he grabbed a pair of gray boxer briefs and tugged them on. It wasn’t as if the woman hadn’t seen him naked already.

  They were uncomfortably tight. Too damn bad.

  Walking out of the bedroom to the small linen closet out on the landing, he grabbed the top two towels on a stack and knocked on the bathroom door. “I’ve got two for you, just in case.”

  “Great. I don’t have a robe, so I can wrap up in one.”

  Jack gritted his teeth.

  “You can leave them on the counter,” she continued.

  Pushing the door open several inches, he reached in, intending to drop the towels and go. The shower was behind the door, no way would he see anything. He figured she was hiding in there, fully covered by the flowery plastic curtain, and certainly didn’t consider trying to sneak a peek. He was already horny enough, thanks so very much. Even a glimpse at her naked body behind the curtain could have him coming in his briefs.

  Jack hadn’t counted on the mirror. As he dropped the towels, he glanced up and met her eyes in the reflection. The cold air from the hall had seeped in when he opened the door. Where it met the glass, the misty steam rapidly began to evaporate. She was not cowering behind the curtain, probably having assumed he couldn’t see her from around the nearly closed door. But see her he did.

  Her brown eyes widened in her creamy pale face as their stares met in the mirror. Her lips were parted, droplets of moisture falling down her cheeks toward them. She slowly licked one away. He had to clutch the doorknob for balance.