Notorious Read online

  Jon-Michael moved down the bar and sat across from her, silently watching her end-of-shift routine. He was still sitting with his elbow on the countertop and his head propped in his palm when she came back from depositing the evening's take in the safe in Bluey's office. She retrieved her purse off the shelf beneath the bar and glared at him.

  He attempted to neither touch her nor turn on the charm. "Will you come home with me?" he asked in a quiet voice.

  "And if I don't, Johnny? You plan to sneak into my bedroom?"

  "Don't call me—" Oh, Johnny. Please. Jon-Michael cleared his throat. "On second thought, call me whatever your little heart desires. And yes, I do."

  "Well, come on, then," she snapped, stalking to the door. "Why are we just standing here? Let's go, I wanna get this over with."

  He swallowed a smile. For all her martyred air, he knew his Hayley. If she were truly opposed to the idea of going home with him, there was no way in hell he would ever get her to his place or himself within a hundred yards of her room at the old man's house. But he wasn’t born yesterday. He kept his amusement to himself. "I'll bring the bike around to the back. Give me a minute, then come out the back door when you hear me rev it up. We'll leave the city yahoos in the dust."

  Feeling more than a little deflated by her woefully inadequate willpower, Hayley bolstered her flagging ego by assuring herself she was going to use Jon-Michael unmercifully. She was not looking for the complication of messy emotions or demands of commitment. All she wanted was straightforward, good old-fashioned sex. He had shown her what she’d been missing and then some this afternoon, but it was just sex.

  She was merely going back for more.

  Jon-Michael did not make her wait for it, either. They had barely cleared the front entry of his loft following a fast ride through the quiet town when he turned, slammed the door closed and crowded her up against it. "I have been waiting for this all day," he said hoarsely and rocked his mouth over hers.

  Like every other time he had come within kissing range, she was immediately drawn in, lost to time and place, her senses given over to the taste and textures of him. Hands fisted in his hair, she kissed him back, and before she was quite aware what was happening, he had her vest unbuttoned and had lifted her against the door at her back. She wrapped her legs around his waist.

  "God," he murmured, kissing his way down her throat to the rapidly beating pulse in the hollow at its base, "I have never known another woman with skin so soft or lips so sweet."

  "You don't have to romance me with sweet talk," she panted. His mouth encircled her nipple and drew hard, and her head thumped back against the closed portal. "Don't...need it."

  Releasing that nipple, he kissed a path to its mate. "Ah now, that is where you're wrong. I didn't exactly give you moonlight and roses when you were seventeen, and I think if ever there was someone who deserves a little romance in her life, it is you." He tugged his target into his mouth and smiled up at her. "Besides," he said around her nipple, "that isn’t sweet talk, Hayley, honey. It is the God's-honest truth."

  Crap. He got to her; she couldn’t deny it. Even so, she managed to give him a cool smile. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to talk with your mouth full, Olivet?”

  He laughed and went back to giving her breasts his full attention.

  A while later, when her pants and undies had been stripped away and he was easing high inside her, he whispered, "Is this the reason you came home with me?"

  Her arms clung tighter around his neck as he slowly withdrew and thrust, withdrew and thrust. "Yes."

  He adjusted his grip on the underside of her thighs and drove himself into her a little harder. The action elicited a corresponding sound embarrassingly close to a sob from deep in her throat and he eased out, then drove in once more—almost as if he wanted to hear it again. He repeated the action. And repeated it again. "I suppose you expect me to believe it's the only reason."

  She was lost to the sensations his body was busy eliciting from hers. But she blinked, pulled her thoughts together and focused on him. "You oughtta. It is the only reason."

  "Liar."

  She thought about that later, satiated, boneless and plastered against him skin to skin, her face in the curve of his neck. Liar, he had said. She longed to deny it categorically but...could she?

  She had been mindless with pleasure but holding herself back as if waiting for something. Then he had started that low-voiced I love you, Hayley; love you, love you, love you, and she had promptly soared off a sharp-edged precipice in a red-misted, orgasmic freefall.

  Is that what she had really come here for—not just screamingly good sex but the words as well? Had she come for the vows of love and the feeling of being wanted more than she had ever been wanted in her life?

  No, it couldn't be. She would not allow it to be.

  "Don't think about it so hard," Jon-Michael advised in a low, soothing voice as she began to tense in his arms. He held her with an arm beneath her bottom, his free hand stroking from the small of her back to where her shoulders were braced against the door. "Just accept that it's good, Hayley. It is so good between us."

  "God, yes," she agreed. She tightened her grip around his neck. "It's even better than my favorite Ranch Romance fantasy."

  "Your what?"

  "My…never mind. It's kind of hard to explain. I just never knew it could be like this."

  "Neither did I." Slipping out of her, he straightened away from the door, then scooped her up and carried her around the glass brick wall into the living area. He laid her down on the couch and joined her, reaching to pull a chenille throw from the back of the sofa and snap it out over them. Tucking her head into the hollow beneath his collarbone, he wrapped his arms tightly around her. Then he grinned up at the ceiling. "Ya know, we really ought to try this in a bed sometime."

  Jon-Michael felt her lips curl up in a smile against his chest and knew she was sliding into the sweet and mellow pliancy she got when she was sleepy. It was too soon, but even acknowledging that timing was everything and this likely wasn't even close to being the right time, he raised his head anyway and tucked his chin in to peer down into her face. "Hayley?"

  "Hmmm?"

  "I think you should move in here with me."

  "Yeah, right," she agreed with lazy good humor.

  "I'm not joking, darlin'. Now don't go getting all stiff on me," he commanded, tightening his arms around her when she did exactly that. "Just think about it for a minute. It's a good idea."

  "It's a horrible idea!"

  "It beats the hell out of going home alone every night to the old man's mansion. Does Kurstin even sleep there anymore?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Uh huh. And most nights she doesn't. You know and I know she is spending most of her nights with Holloway, and that’s fine and dandy—I'm not saying it's not. Except sooner or later the carrion eaters are bound to figure out you're alone out there on the lake, and then where will you be?"

  She pushed herself up to look at him. "Same place I have always been. On my own."

  "That's my point, though, you don't need to be. Listen, I know Kurst would be there for you in a minute if you needed her—she's just caught up right now in her new relationship. But I am right here all night, every night. I can give you whatever you need: another presence in a dark house, protection, a buffer between you and the media. Hell, we can even live like brother and sister if that's what you want, although it seems to me that pretty much dicks up my one real selling point."

  "Which is?"

  "Sex on demand, darlin’. Think about it. I am yours to command, whenever, wherever you say, anyway you want it."

  Hayley struggled to a sitting position, staring at him with such interest that her nakedness beneath the blanket slithering to pool around her hips apparently didn't register. He admired her breasts in the diffused light that came through the windows. "Any way?" she demanded.

  "Sure." Her expression was so arrested that it was all he could d
o not to laugh. "Well, within reason."

  "No, you did not say within reason. You said any way."

  "And never let it be said Jon-Michael Olivet is not a man of his word. Any way you want it," he agreed and studied her intently. "Just what did you have in mind? You planning on tying me up? Whipping me?"

  "I could do that?"

  "Sure. I guess. If you really wanted to."

  "Wow, that is so cool. Dennis was strictly a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy when it came to sex. I had a more adventurous streak but he never let me exercise it. There must be a million ways of doing it I never got to do."

  "So, do we have a deal then?"

  "Any time, any way, right?"

  "Right. You agree to move in here and I agree to become your sex toy."

  "Oh, man." She gave him a big, sleepy smile. "You so have yourself a deal."

  Seriously, Prescott? Have you finally lost what little is left of your mind? For two days now she had been asking the same question, but it did not stop her from doing so yet again as she drove out to the Olivet's mansion Tuesday afternoon to meet Patsy. Sweet Merciful Mother Mary, what had she gotten herself into?

  It was the damn sex-on-demand thing that sealed her fate. If that made her a total sucker, well, c’mon, her old sex life had been so mundane. Sex with Jon-Michael was anything but, so how was she supposed to say no to the opportunity for more? Then he had proposed putting her in the catbird seat. One offer to control the when, the where and the how of it, and she was a goner.

  That part of her life was great, too. They had made love in places and positions she had only ever fantasized about. It was the other stuff she was having a difficult time getting a handle on.

  "He’s subversive," she had complained to Kurstin just yesterday. "How am I supposed to fight all his sneaky, underhanded tactics?"

  "What does he do that's so underhanded?"

  "He makes me laugh. He tells me I'm beautiful, that I have the softest skin in the world. He tells me he loves me!"

  "The lowdown rat!"

  "No, you don't understand, Kurstie. How am I supposed to stay aloof when he is spouting stuff like that all the time? It's not fair." She gave her friend a hard stare. "And do not think I don't know exactly what he is doing."

  "Expressing himself, maybe?"

  "Yeah, right,” she scoffed and shook her head. “No, ma’am. He is setting me up for a fall…that’s what he is doing."

  "Oh, get a grip!" Kirsten stared her down. "For God’s sake, Hayley, are you even listening to yourself? He loves you. You love him. Frankly, I don't see the problem."

  "No, he says he loves me. Trust me on this, that is not what he really means."

  "But you love him, right? And that is the problem in a nutshell."

  "No! Yes! Well, maybe. Someday."

  "Okay, so perhaps you love him—we are not going out on a limb and committing ourselves here. But—and I am thinking this is the biggie—you have heard Jon-Michael say the words before and–“ She whirled her hand encouragingly.

  "And it all blew up in my face! That's what I'm waiting to happen now, for it to all blow up in my face."

  "I am going to be a good, sensitive friend and say I empathize with your concern. Only, what if this time he is all grown up and a sober, responsible man who really does know how love is supposed to behave? What if he actually, truly means it?"

  "Stop it, Kurstin. You're scaring me."

  "Think about it, chickie."

  She snorted now. Like she had been able to think about anything else. Because she wanted that. More than anything in the world, she wanted that.

  And trying to convince herself she didn't was wearing thin. She could tell herself they had not spent enough time together as adults to really know each other any more. But she did know him, and not just the good. She knew the bad and the ugly as well. Plus, what had she said to someone not that long ago, that she counseled teenagers to get in touch with their own truths, to learn to never lie to themselves no matter how many lies they felt compelled to tell others to get through their days? It was sound advice.

  But there was always a flip side, and God knew experience had kicked her in the teeth often enough to make her a realist. So how realistic was it to blindly believe Jon-Michael had changed so dramatically from the boy she had once known? Because she had been up close and personal with the bad and the ugly and, face it, he still seemed to have a problem sticking when the going got tough. And if there was an issue that needed resolving? Fuggidaboudit. Things had not gone the way he wanted in his family business, so he had turned his back on it and walked away. It was clear Olivet Manufacturing was his first love, but instead of fighting for his vision of what he believed the business could be, he was playing his sax in a blues bar.

  She swore softly and it was with relief that she turned into the drive to the Olivet estate. Just for this one afternoon it would be a relief to put the problem aside–hell, to put all her problems aside—and concentrate on something else.

  She was unlocking the kitchen door with the key Kurstin had given her when a woman with a remote mike and a man with a videocam on his shoulder rushed at her out of nowhere. Hayley nearly dropped the backpack containing the lunch she had packed as the mike was thrust in her face.

  "Mrs. Prescott!" the woman said peremptorily. "How do you feel now that the execution is only a few short weeks away?"

  Hayley gathered her wits about her. "This is private property," she said coldly, shoving the mike away. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door, then turned back to them. "Go away or I will summon the police."

  "Tell us your feelings on—"

  "I am not bluffing. If you are not gone by the time I close this door, I will call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing. I think you will find small town courts to be much less tolerant of this sort of harassment than the slap on the wrist you're accustomed to receiving in metropolitan areas." She stepped inside and slammed the door closed behind her. Leaning back against it, she fought to catch her breath as she her heartbeat thumped in her ears.

  When she looked out the window they were gone, but the small measure of relaxation she had gained was lost. Damn them. Damn them all to hell. She sat at the breakfast bar and waited for Patsy to arrive.

  She hoped it said something about her resiliency that she had managed to forget this stomach-lurching sensation of being ambushed. It was like having a cockroach unexpectedly scuttle out of the woodwork and run across your foot, and to her utter horror her first inclination was to call Jon-Michael.

  She did not, of course. But it made her realize how big a buffer Jon-Michael's presence had been between her and the Fourth Estate since the hounds from hell hit town. Journalists never crowded into her personal space or stuck their microphones in her face when she was with him. She was not sure why, really. Much as she liked his build, he hardly possessed one of those huge, pumped-up bodies that intimidated by sheer bulk alone. There was something about him, though, that gave the reporters pause. Perhaps it was his aggressiveness. Or the fact that he was heir to the town's richest man. If an Olivet broke their cameras or stomped them to a pulp, they could not be certain it wouldn't simply be swept under the carpet in good old-fashioned small-town tradition.

  Blowing out a frustrated breath, she buried her face in her hands. And here she had thought pretending she still lived on the Olivet estate would be her big excitement of the day. She didn’t have the energy to wade through a mess of explanations to Patsy when she barely understood the adventuresome-sex-is-a-good-enough-excuse for moving in with Jon-Michael herself. So she had taken the easy way out and arranged to meet her old schoolmate here.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Hearing another car pull into the drive, Hayley climbed off the stool. Patsy was early, and for once her predictability was welcome.

  Backpack in hand, she met her old schoolmate at the front door. "Hi." She stepped out onto the steps and pulled the door closed behind her. "R
eady to go?"

  "Uh, yeah, I guess." Patsy looked over her shoulder. "Hayley, there are journalists at the end of the drive."

  "I figured as much. I ran them off the property, but I cannot do a thing about public domain."

  "God, it was awful. They practically climbed on the hood of my car and yelled all sorts of personal questions."

  "They can be a pain," Hayley agreed dryly, thinking, Welcome to my world. "That is why I thought we would take the rowboat and go over to Mavis Point, rather than drive. That sound okay to you?"

  "Sure. I guess so."

  "Good. I've got lunch." Hayley hefted the backpack. "Do you need help with the bow and arrow stuff?"

  Patsy did not and soon they were arranging their gear in the bow of the rowboat and pushing off from the dock. Hayley rowed while her old high school friend sat on the aft seat and talked excitedly about her experience with the press.

  All too soon, however, Patsy turned the force of her attention on how Hayley felt about the journalists’ constant intrusion in her life. And the afternoon began to head south.

  For God’s sake. I would think Hayley might at least try to put herself out a little for an old friend. Is that truly so much to ask? After all, I am merely attempting to make her life easier.

  "It is extremely unsettling, watching all these journalists run around Gravers Bend, turning everything upside down." I watch Hayley pull on the oars with even strokes. The boat shoots across Lake Meredith's glass-like surface, rapidly approaching Mavis Point. "Don't you find it so?"

  "Yes." Hayley raises her gaze for a moment, her expression indecipherable. "I do."

  Thinking of the way the media is disturbing Graver’s Bend’s placid routines sets my stomach churning. And that is before I was personally exposed to how distressing they can be. "I wish they would leave, but I don't suppose that is going to happen." Draping my wrist over the transom of the wooden boat, I trail my fingertips in the cool water.