“I’ll have to head over to the shoe department. Do you have time to wait?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Immediately after the older woman left, there were murmured voices behind the closed door, followed by a knock. “Come out here so I can see.”

  “Just a second.” Now was her opportunity to let him have it, to tell him exactly what he could do with the entire shopping trip. With a deep breath she turned to the door and yanked it open.

  He straightened, dropped his arms to the sides, and his mouth formed into an all-out grin, one that quickly changed. His gaze made a slow slide from the top of her head to her chest and the V-neck opening of her blouse, to legs she knew looked a mile long in the pants. She couldn’t wait to try on a pair of heels with them.

  But the nagging question in the back of her head pushed forward. “Why, Aidan? Why is this so important?”

  He stepped toward her, slowly shook his head from side to side, and sucked in a deep breath. “Your presentation is—” He paused, frowned, as if searching for the right word. “It’s amazing, Delaney. I want you to feel how powerful you are when you give it tomorrow.”

  He rubbed her shoulders, heat seeping through the jacket. Then he slowly turned her so she faced the trio of mirrors. “I want you to own the spotlight. Because you deserve it.”

  “Own the spotlight?”

  He trailed his hands down the front of her jacket enough to open it up and slide it from her shoulders. He tossed it aside, his gaze still locked with hers in the mirror. “Yeah. Own the spotlight.”

  Every nerve ending went on full alert, anticipation lacing through her, winding tightly so all she saw was this man, this moment. His touch on her arms burned, his mouth on the side of her neck even more so.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. Sharp, delicious arrows of pleasure shot through her from where his ultra-talented mouth brushed featherlight kisses on her neck…across her shoulder…before retracing their way back. She angled her neck, allowing him fuller access, hoping to God he’d take the hint.

  He did. All the while he held her waist, made her feel small and delicate and very, very much wanted. She pulled back slightly, turned, her mouth seeking his.

  A tangle. That’s all Delaney could think about. That their mouths and tongues were a tangle of passion burning and unfulfilled, despite the desperate lovemaking that took place last night.

  She raised her hands, loved the feel of the hard, corded muscles of his arms. And still their mouths explored, tasted, touched. Retreated in a dance she was beginning to believe was choreographed just for them.

  Wasn’t that a dangerous thought?

  Probably.

  But right here, right now, Delaney didn’t give a damn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Maybe we need to work on another project.” She fought the electric spikes rolling through her as his über-talented mouth got busy at the side of her neck again. Delicious. It felt so damned delicious she gasped.

  “What kind of project?”

  “A clothes-removal one.”

  He growled. Didn’t say a word, just growled his approval as his hands skimmed her waist, her hips, before moving across to the tab of her pants. He quickly unhooked it. The silky-smooth fabric slipped down her hips until it dropped to her ankles. She stepped out of it, and a nanosecond later he was stroking her through her panties, his touch gentle at first, then rougher, bolder. He pulled the offending garment off to one side, exposing her to the pad of his thumb.

  “Wait. I didn’t mean here,” she managed to groan out as she gripped his thighs with both hands. “Rosalind could be back any second.”

  Still, without the barrier between them, she held her breath, waited.

  “Good point.” He grinned. “We’d better make this quick. Because you do want this, don’t you, Delaney?”

  The whispered words seared her, melted her, thrilled her. She’d never done anything close to this raunchy before. And now she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t. “Yes.” She breathed the word on a sigh.

  He held the pad of his thumb just above her. She felt his heat, moved her hips to try to end the torture. But the evil man stepped back, pulled his hand farther away. She moaned. “Aidan, please.”

  Delaney turned her head so she could capture his mouth. He moved his hand now, slipping past the band of her panties and to her core, wet and ready for him. Every reason she had to stop him vanished the moment his fingers stroked her clit.

  Sensitive. She was so sensitive he fed the heat burning through her as he gently touched, teased. Her nipples tightened, and anticipation spread, grew, turned her into a mass of need.

  Her senses inched closer to overload with each pass of his other hand on her breasts, each tweak and pull of her tightened nipples. She searched for his hands, tried to guide them to where she wanted—needed—him most.

  “Not so fast.” His breath was warm on her cheek, adding to her already-heightened state.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re wound so tight, Delaney, I think it’s time you let loose and let someone take care of you for a change.”

  She froze. That’s exactly what she didn’t want to have happen. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Hey, relax,” he coaxed. “I just want you to feel good.”

  She took a deep breath, forced her shoulders to slump down. “Okay, then, why are you torturing me?”

  She reached behind her, gripped the hard, thick length of him through the workout shorts. Thank God he hadn’t bothered to change out of them.

  Aidan groaned, low and guttural. “Not fair.”

  “Then finish me,” she demanded.

  He grinned against her cheek. “This outfit seems to have given you superpowers.”

  No doubt. “Wasn’t that the plan?”

  “Yeah.” His touch turned from playful to serious, and she widened her stance as he nudged her thighs apart. “Yeah, it was.”

  He pressed her against him, one strong arm holding her in place. Thank God, because otherwise she wasn’t sure how she’d manage to stand. She gripped his arms. It was all she could do to hang on as his fingers delved deeper, the sensations uncontrollably, overwhelmingly, desperately delicious. She canted her hips, bit down on her lower lip, moaned soft and low.

  “More.” She gasped. “I want more.”

  He seemed to agree, inserting another finger, and then another still. She moved against him, meeting him thrust for thrust, the tension building, the intensity almost too much to bear.

  She watched their images in the mirror, watched his fingers moving in and out of her, the sight erotic and sensuous and totally overwhelming. His thumb stroked her clit again…and again…and again. Timed to the same rhythm as his fingers moving inside her.

  Delaney’s thrusts quickened, the tension building until finally, finally, with one last thrust and one last stroke of his thumb, she cried out her release.

  Holy hell.

  She was so in trouble with this man.

  …

  Aidan draped the garment bag with Delaney’s new clothes over a rail as she made a beeline towards the ladies’ room. His phone buzzed insistently, and he checked the screen before thumbing the call open. Marcus Collins. The young teen he’d mentored for a few years now. Although they spoke regularly, it wasn’t usually in the evenings. “Hey, buddy. How’s it going?”

  “It’s Mick. He’s in a bad spot ’cause Daddy thinks he stole money. Now he wants to run away.”

  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled at the panic in Marcus’s voice. “Calm down, now. Mick is eight. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I told him what you told me. Running away from problems wasn’t a way to solve them, but he said it was the only way.”

  Given the harsh realities of the boy’s life, it wasn’t a surprise Marcus was hypersensitive to anyone in his immediate family leaving him behind. Especially his little brother.

  “Marcus, calm down.” He placed a hand on his hip and concentrated on the details the young boy shared. “You said all the right things to him. You don’t think it might’ve helped him, but we both know bits and pieces of advice don’t always take right away. Give it time.”

  As much as Aidan had worked with him, giving him as much stability as he could, there was still so much for Marcus to overcome.

  “Are you sure?”

  At least Marcus’s voice had calmed.

  “I’m sure. Listen, I’m in Seattle right now, but how about we head over to the Butte for a hike next weekend if the weather’s still good?”

  That did the trick. For a while they discussed school and sports, things that a normal kid should be most concerned about.

  “Marcus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know everything’s going to work out, right?”

  “I know. Thanks, Aidan.”

  “You’re welcome. See you next weekend.” He thumbed the phone off and turned to find Delaney staring at him, curiosity etched on her pretty face.

  “Who’s Marcus?”

  Aidan shoved the phone in the pocket of his shorts. How much had she heard? He debated briefly what to tell her, then settled on the truth. “Marcus is a teen I’m mentoring.”

  “Seriously? You’re part of a mentoring program?” Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “Why would I make something like that up?”

  “You don’t seem like the type, that’s all. Just like yesterday. How you thought I didn’t seem like the type to like the outdoors.”

  “Point taken.”

  She swung the bag that held her new shoes. “So how long have you been doing that?”

  “Working with Marcus? Since he was eleven.”

  “And he’s a teenager now?” She whistled softly. “Do you have to make a long-term commitment or something?”

  No. Which was part of the reason he’d stuck with it. “Since it’s volunteer work, there’s no definite timeline anyone’s committed to. Initially, I committed to a year. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

  “A year, huh?”

  “A year. But since Marcus and I got along so well, I decided to continue working with him. He’s a good kid. Struggling some, but most teens do.”

  He hesitated. Experience taught him that what a kid needed most was stability. Which was why he’d decided to keep working with the teen. At least Aidan was an adult who didn’t judge the boy, but did his best to guide him instead.

  Few people knew how he spent his private time, and he liked it that way. But there was that…something about her, something he couldn’t quite understand, but found himself drawn to. And really, Harold was always after him to be more open, more approachable to people. What better place to start than with an employee?

  “Marcus is part of a special program for foster kids. The same one I was in at his age.”

  “You never mentioned how that happened. Can I ask?”

  “You just did.”

  “Right. You don’t have to tell me.”

  That was the strange thing. He knew he didn’t, yet he wanted to. He shrugged. “My parents were killed in a car crash. I went into foster care.”

  “No family?”

  “None.” At least, no one he’d known about. There were no family gatherings during the holidays, or vacations to visit any, either. As far as Aidan knew, it was only the three of them. It was all he’d needed.

  He grabbed the garment bag he’d draped over a nearby rail and walked toward the escalator that would take them to the sky bridge connected to the hotel.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly from beside him. “That must’ve been tough.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.” Not most of it, anyway. “I had great sets of foster parents. Patient. Understanding. I learned a lot from them.” But none of them had wanted him to stay. He frowned at the unexpected jolt in his chest. “And I still keep in touch with Grant.”

  She nodded, but said no more. Like she respected his need for privacy.

  He shifted the garment bag from one hand to the other, and his gaze traveled to it. He fought back the twinge of guilt. No matter how honorable his intentions were, it still kinda felt like he’d forced Delaney into the clothes makeover. But it was too late to undo it now.

  They stepped onto the escalator, and it slowly glided up toward the sky bridge. Strains of piano filled the open air, along with the scent of cooked food, and his stomach growled out a reminder of how long it’d been since lunch.

  “How about a burger for dinner?” He glanced at the large clock that hung from the center of the mall.

  “From Bear’s Grand Lodge?” Her eyes lit up. “It’s not too far from here. You ever been there?”

  “Once.”

  “They’ve got the best burgers ever.” There was that wistful tone again, the one he’d first heard on the drive over yesterday.

  “Actually, I think I was pretty lucky to get to go once.”

  “How old were you? Couldn’t have been recently, because then you’d remember how good they are.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Oh.” She frowned slightly before smiling again. “The burgers are still as big around as a salad plate. Ginormous. I used to split one with two of my brothers.” She said it with such enthusiasm, like she’d had awesome memories there. She grabbed his arm. “Let’s go. We’ll raise a root beer toast to the past.”

  Yeah, well, his memories weren’t all that great.

  “You want to. I know you do.” The words rolled off her tongue in a singsong way that should’ve made him want to smile, made him want to give in so he could hear her say it again. Instead, it shoved him back into the past.

  “I didn’t have a burger.” On that particular trip he’d come to learn one of life’s most important lessons: if he wanted something, he had to stay still. He had to quell the restless urge in him to run and talk and be like any of the other boys who took advantage of Bear’s Grand Lodge Water Park, took advantage of being a boy.

  Aidan was different from them—he was special. He didn’t belong.

  Even now he was more like an observer of the memory than an active participant. He didn’t connect, couldn’t connect.

  “Really? What’d you have then? The foot-long hot dogs? I bet that’s it, right?”

  “Nothing.”

  The shoppers barely registered. He glanced toward his companion. She walked beside him, carrying the bag with her new shoes in it like it was the most coveted item in her wardrobe. But she didn’t say a word. It was like she waited him out. And he couldn’t stand it.

  “I missed dinner that night,” he finally said.

  The memory tumbled forward, almost as fast as water gushing down a Bear’s Grand Lodge water slide. He took a deep breath. Time to face it head-on.

  They’d just finished a full afternoon at the pool, running through the maze that brought them to the topmost part of the slide. He was starving. Just like the other kids. At the park’s restaurant, it had seemed like they’d waited forever for dinner to get to the table.

  But when it finally came, his foster mom at the time had told him to sit still and wait until the other kids had been served, too. He’d seen the size of the burger set in front of them, smelled the aroma of bacon on the perfectly cooked beef patty, could taste the cheese that oozed down the side… And he couldn’t wait.

  Aidan tried his damnedest to shrug the memory off. “Not every kid gets the kind of life you had growing up.”

  He definitely hadn’t. And he’d missed dinner that night because he didn’t follow the rules. Because he couldn’t wait, because he fussed and moved and generally brought attention to himself, his foster mother had pulled the plate from in front of him.

  “I’m sorry.” The quiet words reached across the short distance between them and jolted him back to the present.

  He glanced at Delaney, and while she caught his gaze, she quickly looked away, said nothing else. It was like she understood how tough the subject was for him and was okay with not prying.

  His stomach growled a reminder he hadn’t fueled up in a while.

  “There’s also a Bobby Jo’s in the food court,” Delaney said. “You know, like they’ve got back at Milestone. And since you bought my suit, I insist on springing for dinner. Whaddya think?”

  What the hell? It’d been a long time since he’d eaten fast food. One meal at Bobby Jo’s couldn’t hurt him. “You’re on.”

  Delaney grinned as they plodded through the food court crowd. She nudged him with an elbow. “Look at those two,” she said quietly. “They’re really into each other, aren’t they?”

  He looked in the direction she’d pointed. A couple sitting at an outdoor table. The woman held a forkful of berry cheesecake toward the guy sitting next to her, an act of intimacy no one could miss. But just before she could get it into his mouth, the cheesecake fell off the fork…and onto his khaki pants.

  Aidan grimaced.

  The guy laughed.

  “Oops,” Delaney said with a giggle. “Guess he’ll have to walk around with a berry stain in the middle of his lap now.”

  He glanced at her, and a realization struck him. Delaney was that kind of woman. Not the part about sharing her cheesecake. But she was so full of life, so giving. He liked that about her. A lot. More than he should.

  The hell of it was that Aidan knew he wasn’t that guy. He couldn’t sit there and take a forkful of cheesecake on his lap, then laugh about it.

  And he didn’t want to stifle her the way he’d stifled Elizabeth.

  In the end, how long could Delaney live with that? Live with someone like him?

  Not too long. Not long at all.

  Which meant he had to make the most of their time together. He had to make these memories last.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day two, and the crowds were definitely thicker.

  Delaney stood off to one side while workers set up lights and portable speakers around the Ross and Associates booth. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The heels were taller than she was used to wearing, but surprisingly comfortable. And they definitely made her legs look a mile long.

  She eased in a deep breath and glanced out over the crowd with a smile.

 

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