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  “That selfish sonofabitch.” Just for a second, before he could mask it, he looked utterly menacing. Then to her complete surprise, he gathered her close once again. Despite the gentleness of his embrace, she could feel the tension thrumming through him. “If I’d had the slightest clue—” He broke off, but the grimness of his voice said it all.

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Because it wasn’t just his fault. Up until he took off, I was just phoning my life in, not paying attention. And then, when I realized what he’d done, what I’d allowed him to do by being so careless with my own affairs, I felt so incredibly stupid. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so for a while I didn’t do anything and that just made everything worse.”

  He gently stroked his hand over her hair. “You were in shock.”

  “Maybe.” She blew out a breath. “Mostly I was just clueless. It took getting evicted from the house, then having the hotel where I’d gone to stay throw me out, for me to realize that if I wanted to survive, I was going to have to take care of myself. And because I wanted to do it right, start off with a clean slate, I promptly sold off the only thing of real value I had left, my grandmother’s jewelry, and paid off all my debts, thinking it was the honorable thing to do. Of course, in hindsight I can see that not leaving myself a cushion—on the off chance that I couldn’t find a job that paid enough to live on—was a mistake, too.

  “I guess what matters—” she tipped back her head, looked at him “—is that I don’t ever want to feel that way again, Gabe. As if I’m not smart enough or competent enough to run my own life.”

  Inexplicably, something dark and unsettled flashed through his gloriously green eyes. “Mallory, you’re none of those things.”

  “Maybe not now, but I was. Which is why I can’t tell you how much your backing off, not pressing me all the time to do things your way, means to me.”

  “Mallory—”

  “No. Don’t.” She pressed a finger to his mouth. “You don’t have to say anything. Just…I need you, Gabriel. Make love with me.”

  She felt him jerk at her words. Moved—and amazed—that she could affect him so, she shifted in his arms, brushing her lips over the silky strip of skin behind his ear, the outer edge of his eye and down along the elegant line of his cheekbone until she finally reached his mouth.

  His hard, beautiful, indisputably male mouth.

  Sliding her hands into his cool, slippery hair, she tipped her head and softly, softly molded her lips to his.

  The kiss was exquisite. A sweet meeting of need, an exchange of comfort, an acknowledgment of barriers tumbling down. Nestled together, time slowed as they savored each other, exploring the bow of an upper lip, touching tongue to tongue, feasting on a plump bottom curve, teeth gently shaping moist, tender flesh.

  It was like mainlining champagne, and with every sip, every nip, every caress of tongues Mallory felt her distress over the break-in, her uncertainty about the future, her sorrow over her father, fading away.

  The only thing that mattered was Gabriel. His taste on her lips, his scent filling her head, his elegant hands trailing fire over her skin.

  Shoes hit the floor, clothing was peeled off, underthings stripped away and discarded. Murmuring his name as they knelt, facing each other in the middle of the big bed, Mallory was bombarded by sensations as they continued to kiss.

  There was the slippery coolness of the comforter against her knees and the tops of her feet. The satiny tickle of her hair trailing over her back and shoulders. And Gabe, all warm, powerful muscle and lean angles, his hands cradling the small of her back, his chest abrading her tender nipples as they swayed together, mouths still fused.

  The were like two perfectly matched puzzle pieces, she thought hazily.

  Moved by a need larger than herself, she opened her eyes, driven to consider Gabriel’s strong, compelling face, to admire the slash of his eyebrows and to-die-for cheekbones, his straight nose and tough but sensitive mouth. And as she looked, she felt something fundamental inside her change.

  As if sensing her scrutiny, Gabe raised his dense black eyelashes to lock his glittering gaze on her own. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m great.”

  A faint smile curved his mouth. Lowering his head, he kissed the underside of her jaw, the tops of her shoulders, the notch of her collarbone.

  “Before, I didn’t know—” her voice wobbled as his head dipped lower and he closed his mouth over one straining nipple “—I could feel this way. That it was possible to want…the way I want you.”

  For a bare instant, he went still. And then, as if he’d been holding it in, he said fiercely, “Good. Because you’re mine, Mal. Mine.” He raked his teeth over her, a low proprietary growl issuing from his throat. Then he sealed his lips around and sucked. Hard.

  The breath exploded from her lungs and she arched, only the support of his hands keeping her upright as she shuddered from the pleasure of his touch—and from his unexpected words, which fulfilled some primitive, unexpected need to be claimed she hadn’t known she possessed.

  But she did need—she needed him. That became crystal clear as he lowered her onto her back and knelt between her parted thighs. Sliding his hands beneath her bottom, he bent down and trailed his lips over her midriff, pausing to dip his tongue into her navel.

  He nuzzled the satiny skin of her abdomen and she felt a shivering excitement. It was matched by growing anticipation as his mouth began to trail lower and lower. “Gabe—”

  Her mind seemed to blank and her entire focus to zero in on his slightest movement as he slid the pad of his fingertip along the aching cleft of her sex, and into the silky heat inside. “You’re beautiful. So soft, so ready…So wet. You make me crazy, Mal…”

  Settling his mouth against her there, he kissed her, deep and intimately, the flick of his tongue startling a cry from her and sending her heels digging into the mattress.

  Caught between the upward thrust of the arm braced beneath her, the slow advance and retreat of his broad, marauding finger, the steadily increasing suction of his mouth, Mallory gave herself over to his power. Pleasure built, slow and steady, at first dancing along every sensitized nerve ending, then slowly coalescing into the single, throbbing point between her legs. Robbed of speech, forgetting to breath, she strained against him, wanting, wanting….

  Him. Just him.

  Forever him.

  The realization, along with the rapid, repeated stab of his tongue, sent her spinning and she came apart like a house of cards in a high wind. “Oh. Oh. Oh. Gabriel!”

  The last syllable of his name was still hanging in the air as he came rocketing up and caught her close. His hands biting into her hips, he thrust himself inside her, big, hard and hot, his sudden, unexpected possession detonating another, even stronger ripple of pleasure. She wrapped her arms around him, meeting him thrust for heavy thrust while that second orgasm began to roll through her. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t, don’t, don’t—”

  His mouth found hers, caressing, demanding, giving. Feeling as if she were riding the crest of an unstoppable wave, Mallory held on tight as he drove her higher and higher, until suddenly something inside her gave way. Caught by a profound punch of pleasure, she cried out, then cried out again as Gabe’s big body began to quake and she heard him call out her name as he came.

  Breath sawing harshly in and out of oxygen-starved lungs, they sank bonelessly into the mattress, holding tight to each other. It was a good while later when they finally managed to wrestle back the covers and slide between the sheets. Bunching a pillow under his head, Gabe settled her against him, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple as she nestled close, her cheek against his chest.

  “Mal?” Yawning, he smoothed a hand over her shoulder.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m sorry about the circumstances, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  There seemed no way to respond to that with anything less than honesty. “Me, to
o.”

  “As for the rest of it, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

  We. She told herself his automatic assumption that he’d be part of some future discussion should have alarmed her. Yet as she felt him settle a little farther into the bed, heard his breathing deepen as twenty-four hours without sleep and his trip across numerous time zones finally caught up with him, she decided that just for tonight, she could let it go.

  There’d be plenty of time tomorrow to reestablish some boundaries. Right now, however, there was no place she’d rather be than lying here with Gabe in the dark, safe in the warm circle of his sheltering arms.

  Because oh, dear Lord. Somewhere along the line she’d foolishly gone and fallen in love with him.

  Nine

  “C orrect me if I’m wrong,” Mallory said, making no attempt to hide her glee as the basketball Gabe had just launched at the hoop in his driveway hit the rim, teetered for an instant, then bounced back to the ground without going in, “but I believe you just added an E to H-O-R-S-E. Which means I win.” She smiled triumphantly. “Again.”

  Propping his hands on his hips, Gabe shook his head and did his best to look disgruntled. It was damn hard to pull off, however, while she was standing there looking so pleased with herself.

  With her face glowing, her hair drawn up in a ponytail and her slim, leggy figure displayed by a pale pink velour jogging suit almost as soft to the touch as her skin, she looked quintessentially female—soft, silky, seemingly too delicate to lift more than a pompom. Yet she’d just taken him two times out of three at the old match-me-if-you-can hoops game, a feat he’d never hear the end of if his brothers got wind of it.

  And he didn’t give a damn.

  He’d never spent this kind of concentrated time with a woman before. Hell, prior to Mallory, he’d never even invited one to stay overnight at his house. After growing up in a big family, his time spent in the military, and then the past few years riding herd on his rowdy younger brothers, he’d become fiercely protective of his privacy.

  Yet with Mallory it was different. Granted, she’d been there hardly more than a week. And it wasn’t as if she was exactly intrusive. She’d been careful to maintain her boundaries, paying him up front for room and board, continuing to ride the bus, spending long hours at work, asking for nothing from him she couldn’t repay—both to his admiration and his annoyance.

  But for all of that, she still managed to bring to his life a softness, a feminine perspective and even the occasional, much-needed touch of levity that he hadn’t known he was missing. She also continually surprised him, whether it was with a perceptive comment about an item in the news, a previously unsuspected devotion to M&M’s—not for their chocolate content but because they shared her initials—or his current discovery that she might look like Society Princess Barbie but had a jump shot like LeBron James.

  “I believe this means you’re on deck to cook tonight,” she said, effortlessly bouncing the ball from one slender hand to the other.

  “Considering I already put dinner in the oven before we came out here, I think I’ll survive,” he said drily.

  “For which I’m eternally grateful.” Taking one quick spin, she launched the ball right through the net—again—before turning gracefully toward him. “For your continuing survival, of course.” She grinned. “But also that you’re in charge of the food. If we had to depend on me, we’d starve.”

  “No need to worry about that.” He caught the ball on the rebound. “I like to cook.”

  “I know. And there’s just something so wrong about that.” She leaned contentedly against him as he looped an arm around her shoulders. “No one so brazenly male—” she pressed a kiss to his jaw as they walked back toward the house “—should be so adept in the kitchen.”

  He lobbed the ball toward its allotted bin in the garage, then followed her into the house. “It’s not like I had a lot of choice. Growing up, it was either learn to cook or starve.”

  She widened her eyes in mock horror. “No takeout?”

  “Not a big option with a limited budget and a lot of mouths to feed.”

  “No, I guess not.” She was silent a moment, then said soberly, “Lilah told me you lost your mother in your teens. It must’ve been hard.”

  “No worse than yours taking off,” he said easily. Seeing the faint flicker of surprise in her eyes, he found himself reaching for her. Pushing a curl that had come loose behind her ear, he let his fingers linger a moment on her soft cheek. “You’ve got to know that’s common knowledge, Mal. It’s one of the first things I ever heard about you.”

  “Oh, I do. It’s not that. It’s just…KiKi Morgan Manthauser’s idea of good parenting was giving the nanny a raise. But given the way you turned out—” heading into the kitchen, she pushed back her sleeves to wash her hands, her nose crinkling appreciatively at the smell of roasting chicken “—your mom was clearly in a whole different league.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably true. God knows, we were her whole focus. And she was good at being a parent—smart, strict, organized, but fun, with a knack for saying what you needed to hear, even though you might not think so at the time. She had a gentle, sensitive side, but she could be tough as a drill sergeant, too, the way you have to be to run a household that size. For the first fourteen years of my life, she was pretty much the sun we all revolved around.”

  Taking Mallory’s place at the sink, he scrubbed his hands, then took the towel she handed him and dried off. “But it’s been twenty years, Mal. It was tough, for a lot of different reasons, but I don’t think it was as bad for me as it was for Taggart, who was closest to her, and lost without her, or even Dom, who was just old enough to decide he couldn’t be hurt if he didn’t let himself care about anybody again. The fact that he found Lilah, and that Taggart has Gen, is nothing short of miraculous.”

  “But what about you? Don’t tell me that losing your mom didn’t have an effect on you, too.”

  “Sure it did. But I was so busy looking after the younger kids, there wasn’t a lot of time to dwell on it. I couldn’t go my own way like Dom, or act out the way Taggart did and risk getting sent off to some tough-love military school. I had responsibilities.”

  “That you chose to take on,” she pointed out. Having finished setting two places at the island counter, she poured them both something to drink, then seated herself as he carried their plates over and joined her.

  “Yeah, but it’s part of my nature.” He’d come to grips with who he was a long time ago. “And it gave me the incentive to do something with my life, so I can’t complain about that.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “What about him?”

  “Didn’t it ever bother you that he let you take so much on your shoulders at such a young age?”

  He shrugged, dismissing the old man’s behavior the way he had since the day he’d turned sixteen. Flush with the success of getting his driver’s license, it had been a definite downer that the first thing he’d had to do was use it to retrieve the elder Steele from a brawl at an off-base bar. But it hadn’t been until later that night, as his father had gone from belligerent to maudlin to prostrate with his never-ending grief, that Gabe had decided he’d seen enough, that for him to survive he was simply going to have to get on with the business of life.

  “You do what you can,” he said now. “He made his choices. I made mine. Besides, I prefer to think I’m in charge of my own destiny.”

  She mulled it over for a moment. “I guess, given my own less-than-sterling antecedents, I’d like to think that, too. Heaven knows, I’ll never have children of my own if I don’t think I can do better than my parents did. Of course, that’s setting the bar really, really low.” A rueful smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “Or maybe, in their case, not setting it at all.”

  “You’ll do fine.” And she would, he thought, as he glanced sideways at her sitting there with her chin propped in her hand. Out of the blue, he had a sudden vision of her,
that striking face alight as she fussed over some sturdy little dark-haired boy.

  Jesus. Where did that come from?

  Telling himself firmly it was simply a reaction to all this talk of the past, he deliberately steered the conversation to a lighter subject. “Where’d you learn to play ball like that, anyway?”

  Looking faintly relieved herself, she answered easily. “I spent every summer of my misspent youth going to camp. It was my dad’s solution to not knowing what to do with me. I’m also an excellent shot with a bow and arrow and play a killer game of softball.”

  “Pretty impressive for the current queen of the social scene.”

  “Please.” She flicked her fingers dismissively. “One successful fashion show hardly qualifies me as that.”

  It had been more than that, and they both knew it. Even without the enthusiastic write-up in that morning’s paper, the verdict from participants and attendees of yesterday’s exceedingly successful event had been overwhelmingly positive.

  The setting, the tents, the food, the clothes and her choice of a popular radio personality to emcee the event had all gotten raves. Even Abigail Sommers, whom he’d known for years and who handed out praise as if she were being forced at gunpoint to part with a precious family jewel, had paid Mallory a number of heartfelt compliments for how impressively the show itself, and the party afterward, had gone.

  “Just cross your fingers that the ball next weekend goes as smoothly,” she said. “And that I’ll still be able to get into my dress after the way you’ve been feeding me.”

  As far as he was concerned, she could wear what she had on and still be the most beautiful woman there. But he was always willing to do what he could to help. “If you’re really worried, even though you shouldn’t be, we could always burn off some calories with a little postdinner exercise.”

  “But the dishes—”

  “Will wait.” He leaned sideways, gently nipped her ear, then slid his mouth south to the crook of her neck and nuzzled her there. “I, on the other hand, am not so sure I can.”