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“They’re so comfortable. Mountains of pillows, cool, silk draperies. Quite the thing for this dry, desert climate.”
Not batting an eye, she offered him her arm. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“Good. Then I’ll brew us some tea.”
Max cleared his throat and shot the old man a warning glance, knowing Mortimer sometimes liked to get creative with what he put in his tea. “No weird spices.”
Sabrina shook her head. “Oh, I’m so disappointed.”
Great, just what Grandfather needed, a partner in crime. But Max knew how to scare the woman into behaving. “And none of that aphrodisiac powder, either.”
This time she kept her mouth shut.
Grandfather rolled his eyes. “My grandson can be tiresomely pedestrian at times. Too bad, he really needs to stop that. He has such promise, you know, being the most like me.”
And that truth terrified him almost as much as it excited him. To think he might really be like his grandfather…it was also another reason Max was glad he no longer drank. Because, even sober, he could probably have far too much fun with the idea if he let himself go with it.
Sabrina nodded her agreement. “He’s very…” Then her words trailed off as she looked back and forth between the two of them. “Grandson?”
Mortimer nodded. So did Max.
The color disappeared out of the blonde’s face so fast it was as if someone had doused her with a giant puff of talcum powder. Her mouth hung open, working a bit, but no sound came out. She stared at both of them, looking genuinely stunned, then began to shake her head.
“Sorry, I never did tell you how I knew this old codger, did I?” he said, figuring she was just confused. Maybe puzzled, thinking he’d been keeping his relationship with Mortimer secret for some reason. He hadn’t. Max might think his grandfather a little nutty, but he was in no way ashamed of him.
In fact, he considered Grandfather one of the finest men he’d ever known. Not every man would have taken in three rowdy young grandsons and raised them himself, dragging them around the world with him wherever he went when he could easily have written a few checks and sent them away to expensive schools. He could have washed his hands of them when his daughter and son-in-law died. But he hadn’t. He’d made them his own and he’d made them believe—truly, genuinely believe—that they were loved and safe and secure. And he’d even provided something of a mother figure, with prissy Roderick making them wash behind their ears and finish their peas while Mortimer plotted their next adventure. What more could any kid ask for?
Their upbringing may have been unconventional and eccentric, but the Taylor brothers had had both childhood and family from the moment they were orphaned. All thanks to this man.
Sabrina was still staring, silent, so Max shook off the introspection. “My name’s Taylor. Max Taylor.”
He stuck out his hand for the formal introduction, but the blonde didn’t take it. She simply stared at his fingers, slowly lifting her gaze to his face. Finally—wonderingly—she said the strangest thing.
“As in Bond. James Bond?”
Confused, he simply stared at her, waiting for the punch line. Because he was so focused, it was easy to catch her reaction. Like water bursting through a dam, the blood returned to Sabrina’s face. Her pale cheeks filled with color as rapidly as they had emptied of it. She jerked her chin up and licked her full, pouty lips.
And he saw it. The look. The suggestive, heated, take me expression he’d seen on women’s faces from the minute he’d been both mature enough to inspire it and old enough to understand what it meant.
Unfortunately, at that time, he hadn’t had the third key ingredient—being skilled enough to take advantage of it.
That had changed, though, round about age sixteen. The mother of one of his classmates at his multinational high school in Cairo had helped him develop his…skills. And he’d been utilizing them ever since, more during some periods of his life than others.
For the first time since he’d met her by the carousel, the blonde was finally looking at him the way he’d wanted her to look at him. The way he’d want any gorgeous, intelligent, witty woman to look at him. Not merely with speculation, interest and friendliness. Not even with attraction and flirtatiousness.
No. Sexy Sabrina’s blue eyes sparkled with excitement. Her breath exited her lips in choppy, audible exhalations. Though she didn’t step away, or come any closer, her whole body slowly moved. Curving sinuously, like a cat stretching in the sun, one shoulder going back, one hip tilting to the side to highlight the indentation of her waist.
Yeah. He knew this look. Her stance, her expression, the heavy-lidded stare exuded one thing: pure, sexual want. A blatant, no-questions-asked invitation to sin.
He didn’t know why he was getting it now, while his elderly grandfather watched wide-eyed with interest, but he had no doubt he was being silently propositioned by the blond stranger. He’d been propositioned by enough women to know.
It was just his damn bad luck that it was an invitation he could not, under any circumstances, accept.
MAX TAYLOR, SABRINA DECIDED late that night when lying alone in her bed at the inn, was a fiend. A sadistic, twisted, manipulative monster. He had to be. How else had he been able to fool her so completely—to make her think he was nothing but a simple small-town mechanic, when, in truth, he was more like an oversexed Dr. Evil?
Addictive. Seductive. Overpoweringly sensual. All while smiling a you-can-trust-me grin and keeping that aw-shucks-ma’am tone in his voice.
“Monster.”
Oh, the man was good. Talented. If they gave out Academy Awards to playboys in disguise, he’d be writing his acceptance speech now.
Because he must have been acting. That sweet, kind, friendly—oh, God, sexy—guy she’d met tinkering with the carousel had to have been a façade. Behind the mask lurked a polished seducer who could lure women down a dark path of eroticism with a touch of his hand, a whisper in the ear.
The promise of a five-hour, nonstop session of lovemaking.
Impossible. No man could…no matter what Grace Wellington said in her memoir.
After yesterday—and this afternoon—Sabrina had to add a few other possibilities to his repertoire. A friendly nod, a welcoming smile. A twinkle in his eye. Who could have known they’d be just as effective as a deep kiss, a tender caress or a mammoth hard-on at inspiring lustful thoughts?
“Not lust, damn it,” she whispered, rolling over and punching the lumpy pillow. She kept her voice low, knowing there were only three other guests staying at the inn. The last thing she wanted was to arouse her landlord’s curiosity and have him come investigate.
“Oh, great, it’s almost Saturday,” she muttered, wondering whether his nudey thing began at midnight or would be mercifully held at bay until dawn.
If anything could kill her hungry curiosity about Max Taylor, it was thoughts of a nude Al Fitzweather.
Actually, she should easily be able to control any sexual feelings whatsoever. After all, Sabrina didn’t lust. Well, maybe she lusted sometimes—lusted for the kind of sex she read about in racy novels or imagined in her mind’s eye after the end of a movie. Who, for instance, hadn’t pictured Buttercup and Wesley doing the deed in a meadow full of daisies after the end of The Princess Bride?
She’d said that to her mother once, when she was a teenager. For about three seconds, the older woman’s lips had twitched, as if a real laugh was about to spill out. But she’d quickly sucked it back in.
Of all the reasons Sabrina resented her grandfather, that was probably the biggest one. Because he’d stolen her mother’s smile. By making her feel like the death of her husband in a robbery had been God’s judgment for marrying outside her rigid faith, he’d used guilt and heartache to control all their lives. And she hadn’t had the education, money or career prospects to do anything about it.
“I lust, Grandfather,” Sabrina whispered, staring up at the ceiling. “Hear me? Lust, lust, lust! Naked, sweaty sex. Big, hard penises. I think about them all the time!”
Only, she needed to not talk about them out loud right now for fear Mr. Fitzweather would think she was issuing an invitation.
She definitely wasn’t. Not to him—not to anyone. Because Sabrina had never made a habit of lusting after real, live men, not even anyone she’d been dating.
She’d always been able to separate sex out from her other daily requirements. Exercise, mental stimulation, a steady influx of cash, an orgasm or two, mechanically provided, if necessary—Ooh, how wicked, a vibrator—she was surely destined for hell. She hadn’t cared, because the thing had come in handy, particularly after she’d wised up to the kind of man Peter really was and dumped him seven-and-a-half months ago.
Since then, her life had been compartmentalized, planned, normal. No men required. Not crazy—other than her involvement in Allie’s situation. Never unexpected—uh, other than that Allie thing again. But certainly never dangerous or wicked, despite what her grandfather had direly predicted when Sabrina left home at eighteen. Black sheep or not, she’d done a pretty good job of living a “good” life. Being safe, respectable and completely sensible.
At least…until she’d started working on Grace Wellington’s book and had begun to wonder what it would be like to let go of all her inhibitions. To be so caught up in a dark, passionate affair that she’d open herself up to all sorts of kinky possibilities like the ones Grace had described. Threesomes and bondage…pleasure and pain.
The idea had repulsed her. And yet it had somehow aroused her, too.
One thing was certain. She hadn’t been able to put it out of her thoughts—or her dreams. Night after night her mind had filled with sultry images. And by day she’d found herself wondering what it would be like to do something wild with someone who was totally outside polite society. An intoxicatingly wicked bad boy. The kind about whom rock songs were sung and romance novels were written. The kind she’d flirted with back in high school and had brought home once or twice in order to get some kind of action going in their very sedate house.
The Max Taylor kind of bad boy.
Or was he?
Could he really be as bad as all that if he liked to volunteer his spare time working to repair broken-down relics like the Kiddie World carousel? Or exchanging kindly barbs with a sweet, funny old man who told the most wonderful stories of deserts and pirates, harems and spies?
It was hard to dislike Max Taylor when Sabrina already adored his wonderfully vibrant grandfather. She’d never—ever—have imagined liking anyone with that title. But Mortimer Potts still made her smile, just picturing him pouring their tea as they’d sat in his colorful tent, chatting about the weather in Borneo and the dangers of the Asian trade routes.
Max had been there, too. Being friendly…and nothing else, despite her best flirting efforts.
That’s how he’d been the entire time. Nothing but helpful and nonaggressive with a woman who had practically thrown herself at him.
“I didn’t really throw myself at him,” she whispered, wishing the bed wasn’t as lumpy as a bag of rocks.
Liar. That movie invitation thing had definitely been throwing herself.
But that was the whole point, the reason she was here in the first place. Talk about stepping outside the safety zone—the one she’d erected around herself once it had become clear that she had to be the responsible adult who handled Allie’s situation. This entire trip was definitely not safe.
Sabrina had come to Trouble to entice Max Taylor into proving his wicked reputation. No, she hadn’t gotten off to the best start, but she had to hand it to herself, she’d recovered rather quickly from the shock of finding out the nice, boy-next-door mechanic was in fact her targeted sex fiend.
Once he’d confirmed his identity, Sabrina had gone into action. She’d thrown off her surprise, pasted on a sultry look and gone all come-hither.
And he’d nearly come and hithered.
The flash of interest in his sparkling green eyes had been unmistakable when she’d given him the kind of look any man would understand. Though he’d quickly squelched it, she’d seen the answering heat.
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