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Damn that chemistry, anyway. Maybe she should lay off Adam and reconcile herself to observing the magic instead of living it and writing a factual account of the Naughty Nuptials. Why should she care if the man chose to shrivel up inside that gorgeous body of his and ignore everything around him?
“Tyler’s been pulling together his footage of the grand opening events,” Laura said. “I want him to show you something we came across the other night.”
Tori followed her into a spacious suite that cornered the building on the third floor, a guest room comfortably furnished with living, dining and small kitchen areas sans the romance-themed grandeur of her own Wedding Knight Suite. Which just went to show that Laura had been serious about making her staff take good care of their local reporter. On the journalism food chain, Tori Ford was plankton compared to Tyler Tripp.
“So how’s it going?” she asked him.
“It’s going. I made a deal with myself to come back here every night and not sleep until I’ve transferred the day’s footage. So far I’m on top of it.”
“Good for you. My editor extended my daily deadline, but I’m still scrambling to write my article and post it on time.”
“Nice spread today.” Tyler moved into the office area that had been set up as a mini production studio, and Tori smiled. Considering the source, his words were high praise indeed. Now if she could just convince her managing editor…
“It won’t be too difficult to find, will it?” Laura asked.
Tyler slung a pool towel over the back of a recliner. “No problem. We’ll view it on my computer.”
He booted his system, and the staccato beeps and blips ensued while they waited. When the monitor screen went live, Tyler sat down, opening programs and flipping through windows.
He forwarded through footage of what Tori recognized as the Racy Rehearsal Dinner event that had taken place on the night before the wedding, and when Laura cued him, he began clicking the pImages** forward frame by frame. “Here you go.”
Tori glanced at a table and recognized the people seated there. Her family. Her parents. Her sister and brother-in-law.
As the featured couple for the upcoming Hottest Honeymoon week, Miranda and Troy had been participating in all the festivities. When Laura’s mother had been invited to the rehearsal dinner for a look at the Mireille Marceaux painting she’d helped arrange the loan of, Miranda had insisted her parents be invited as a show of force against the Grangers.
As a result, there’d been Fords and Grangers together in the same room for the first time in years. Tori had been able to slant this society bit for her feature. Successfully, too, as she’d been pleased to learn from her managing editor, even if Adam Grant had called her tactics sensationalism.
Damn man. Maybe he really was a hopeless case and she should just give up.
Tori scowled at the monitor, watching as the camera zoomed in on her mother, looking as beautiful as always. But the look on her face was one Tori hadn’t seen before, an unguarded look that would have been fleeting without Tyler to play it out frame by frame. That look arced through a lot of emotions…all painful, all captured on film in aching clarity.
Then the angle of the camera shifted and panned in on Laura’s mother.
Occasionally during her school years at Westfalls, Tori had seen Suzanne Granger in the business offices where the woman had worked as chief financial officer. Her wavy brown hair might be different than her own mother’s red, but the similarities between the sisters were striking. Not only their features, but their expressions.
Tori didn’t have to ask to know that these long-alienated sisters had been looking at each other across that crowded ballroom when this footage had been filmed.
“Why are you showing me this?” she asked.
“Because of what you said at breakfast. I think you’re right. What happened between our moms isn’t cut-and-dried.”
Tyler slid his chair back. “If you don’t need me anymore, ladies, I’ll head back to the pool. Clyde promised to ply me with some serious alcohol so I don’t notice the heat.”
“Have him whip you up a Rum Demon. You’ll forget your name.” Laura tugged his ponytail. “Go have fun. I’ll lock up.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. This man understood the importance of fun and, grabbing his towel, he took off, leaving Tori and Laura alone.
Dropping onto the arm of a recliner, Tori stared at the monitor where Suzanne Granger’s hauntingly familiar face stared back. “Okay, Laura. I agree things aren’t cut-and-dried between our mothers.”
“I want to find out what happened and see if we can fix things. Doesn’t seeing them like this make you sad?”
Sad was only part of it. Frustrated that her mother ran herself ragged being the perfect society woman was the other part. “It makes me wonder.”
“About what happened to break them up?”
“About your sanity. We already know what broke up this family. Your mother ran off to a commune with an artist.”
Laura shook her head. “That’s what happened between my mom and the senator. Not what happened between our moms.”
Tori thought about that for a moment and knew Laura was right. Their grandfather had disowned his eldest daughter, but that didn’t explain why her mother hadn’t made peace with her sister in the thirty years since. Then again, Tori knew her mother wasn’t much for going against the senator.
Another side effect of trying to lead the perfect life.
“Are you looking for some big family reunion?” she asked. “If you are, you obviously don’t know much about my family.” They didn’t have reunions, not even with family members they haven’t been disowned.
“If a reunion’s possible, why not?”
“Man, you really do deal in fantasy around here.”
“Falling Inn Bed specializes in love, Tori. Why does that have to be only the romantic kind? You said it yourself—we’ve got the Grangers and the Prescotts together for the first time since Westfalls. I’d hate to miss an opportunity to fix things.” She gave a wry smile. “For our moms. Personally, I’m content to live my life without you or your sister.”
She couldn’t help but smile. Had their circumstances been different growing up, she might have liked Laura Granger. As it was, she could only wonder if the time had come to bridge that distance, and if she would be the right person for the job.
She returned to Suzanne Granger’s face staring at her from the monitor, a striking reminder of the way the past influenced the future, and proof that people could live the lives they dreamed of.
But not without a price.
There was always a catch, but when Tori thought of the expression on her own mother’s face, she knew her mother had paid no less a price to remain home and live up to the family standards.
Tori had paid that price once, too, and had decided it was too high. Only unlike her estranged aunt, she hadn’t been disowned.
Yet.
“How do you expect to do this, Laura?” she asked. “Our mothers haven’t made an effort to do anything about this situation for thirty years, so don’t give me any sappy crap about it being easy to reunite sisters who miss each other. Unlike you, I wasn’t kidnapped from the fold and raised by wolves. I’m a Prescott-Ford, and we don’t deal in fantasies. Just cold, hard facts.”
“I’ve got a few ideas.” Laura folded her arms across her chest and eyed her with a twinkling gaze. “But since I only know half the story, I need someone from the other team to help me fill in the blanks and pull this all together.”
Was it worth a shot? Should she go out on a limb to try and wipe that expression from her mother’s face, or should she give up on her family the way she was about to give up on Adam Grant.
Tori gazed at this cousin she’d never known, a woman who was proving to be nothing at all like expected, and she realized that Laura was right about something else, too.
Tori only had one half of the story.
Not only about her family, but about Adam, too. Maybe he wasn’t so hopeless after all….
“Okay, bedding consultant. I’ll join your team. If you agree to join mine.”
Laura eyed her curiously. “What do you have in mind?”
Tori inhaled a deep breath and went for it. “I could use a little help catching a man.”
BETWEEN A HARD workout and a long visit to the Turkish steam room, Adam’s attempt to exorcise visions of Tori Ford in a sex swing had consumed most of his Sunday afternoon off. He arrived at his massage appointment sore and in need of relief.
“Sandra’s running behind,” the spa host told him. “Just go in and make yourself comfortable. She won’t be long.”
With a nod, Adam stepped inside a private room, where the sound of ocean surf piped in through overhead speakers and the tranquil lighting combined to lull his drowsy senses. He’d sat in the Turkish steam room so long he could practically feel eucalyptus seeping from his pores, but the visit did exactly what he’d hoped—slowed his racing thoughts about the woman in hot pursuit.
He’d been racking his brain to come up with a new game plan for dealing with Tori Ford. Simply stating his disinterest should have been enough. And for any rational woman, a polite rejection would have been.
Rationality didn’t seem to be part of Tori’s equation. Today, she’d revealed herself to be a woman on a mission, and he couldn’t stop wondering what had happened to commit her so firmly to her cause. Under normal circumstances, savoring life would have been an admirable goal, but these weren’t normal circumstances. They were together during a function that celebrated sex, and Tori was no ordinary woman.
And when Adam got down to it, he really didn’t want to know. She had him totally preoccupied as it was, dodging her moves by day and being too edgy to sleep by night.
He wanted to stop thinking about her.
His long workout this afternoon should have cleared his head. Long workouts and frequent massages were about the only indulgences he’d allowed himself since coming to Falling Inn Bed, and Breakfast. With friends and acquaintances back on the West Coast, Adam hadn’t done much but work since his arrival in Niagara Falls. The focus had suited his mood. Or at least it had until now.
To his relief, though, as soon as he lay down and pulled a towel over him, the effect of his recent sleepless nights began to take effect. Drowsiness edged out visions of the attractive redhead he didn’t want to think about.
He must have dozed because he had no idea how much time had passed before Sandra’s voice intruded.
“I’m so sorry I took so long. Just go back to sleep. We’re fine on time.” Her fingers, slick and warm with oil, sank into the tight muscles of his neck and shoulders.
He grunted, too sleepy to open his eyes, and Sandra must have recognized his pitiful condition because she took mercy on him. Instead of her usual deep muscle massage, she worked him over with a gentle kneading that let sleep crowd his brain.
He dropped off again to the steady glide of her hands on his skin. Long pleasant moments of unconsciousness when he was aware of nothing but her strokes easing the tension from along his spine, his lower back, his butt, his thighs. Yet pImages** of red waves spilling over creamy curves lingered in his mind, creeping in when his guard went down.
This drugged half sleep presented the perfect opportunity for Tori Ford to accomplish her objective—forcing him to give in to their potent chemistry. He was aware of her in a way he’d never been aware of any woman before. Not even his ex-fiancée. Tori had a power over him that he didn’t understand as he lay here with visions of her heightening his senses, memories of her flashing gaze and quick smiles.
He found a much-needed distraction when Sandra paused to pour more oil. She warmed it in her palms before pulling her hands down his thighs in long strokes. Her light touch affected him in a way her more aggressive massages never did, and thoughts of another woman’s hands lingered in his drowsy imagination. Forbidden thoughts about how her hands would feel on him. And all he had to do was stop resisting to find out if the reality would come close to the fantasy.
Adam guessed it would, which is why that stubborn voice reminded him to resist. Giving into that bold redhead would be playing with fire. Tori Ford was far from the solid, focused type of woman who respected what it took to successfully mix business with pleasure. And that was the kind of woman he wanted in his life, one with common goals and interests, not some fly-by-night wild child who wanted fun to be the be-all and end-all of her existence.
His ex-fiancée had already shown him that even a woman who seemed perfect might not be. Adam would be a lot more cautious the next time around.
And what was going on with his feet? He couldn’t ever remember Sandra paying such careful attention to that part of his body before. Not that he was complaining. Not when she rolled his foot in slow circles, massaged his insteps and worked each toe for so long that warmth radiated up his leg….
Adam must have dozed again because when he awoke, she’d returned to his thighs, and damned if she hadn’t awakened another part of his body, too. Those steady strokes rerouted his blood flow to a region that had no business waking up right now.
With a mild sense of disbelief, he willed away the sensation. He’d locked onto Sandra’s services not long after his arrival in town and had been directly responsible for getting her the position as head massage therapist in the Wedding Wing’s new spa. Not once in all the months she’d been providing her services had Adam ever become aroused.
But there it was, a familiar—and unwelcome—feeling rushing to his crotch, a precursor to an erection. Good thing he was lying on his stomach or he’d have been royally embarrassed.
This was Tori Ford’s fault. If not for her relentless pursuit, he wouldn’t have had sex on the brain when his defenses were down. And he didn’t stand a chance of containing his arousal when slick fingers dipped between his thighs, a light touch that somehow teased and tempted.
It had been way too long since he’d had sex.
Exhaling heavily, he gave in to the inevitable and forced open his eyes. “Let’s cut this short today, Sandra.”
When she didn’t reply or even slow down, Adam got his first clue that something wasn’t right.
“Sandra?”
Still no reply, just that constant kneading into places more intimate than she’d ever gone before. And that was when he realized something else his drugged brain hadn’t caught before.
Her hands were smaller, which explained the lightweight massage.
For someone who’d been lulled into a near coma, Adam’s reflexes were dead-on when he twisted around to grab a slender wrist…and found himself facing a redheaded troublemaker.
“Having fun back there, Ms. Ford?” he asked, sounding a lot more in control than he felt.
With an iron grip on her wrist, he forced her to stop those teasing strokes and dragged her around to face him.
Not even the dim lighting concealed the flash of challenge in her eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I was.” She gave a tug to break his grip, but he didn’t let go. “You’ve got nice biscuits. I’m in trouble now. You’re going to haunt my dreams.”
“I’m the one in trouble.”
Her smile widened. “Why don’t you just let go, Adam. You’re attracted to me and I’m attracted to you. We can have a good time together.”
“You’re a guest in my hotel.”
Impulse demanded he get off this table and out of reach, but he swung around and sat up instead. His nakedness was her problem, not his. And as she’d been the one massaging him to near arousal…she could deal with the sight of that, too.
But Tori was ready for him. Starting her gaze at his feet, she worked her way up his body. The gleam in those midnight eyes grew brighter along the way.
“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” he asked.
“The part about why you’re using the word. You seem to be enjoying yourself.” She gazed pointedly at his crotch. “I want to understand why you stopped me.”
“You mean aside from the fact that I thought you were my usual massage therapist having a very unusual effect on me?”
She nodded. “Am I moving too fast, Adam? Will it help if I slow down?”
“I don’t mix business with pleasure, Ms. Ford.”
She pursed her lips in a pouty expression that dragged his gaze from her flashing eyes to that delightful mouth. The urge to drag her into his arms and kiss those lips was so strong that only stubbornness saved him.
“What do you do for pleasure, Adam?”
He wondered what had prompted the change in tactics, but he wouldn’t buy into her game. He’d already delineated the boundaries and wouldn’t back down now just because his crotch throbbed and he wanted her to ease the ache she’d created.
She stood barely a foot away, and he noticed for the first time she wore sweatpants and a ribbed T-shirt that clung to her curves, leaving nothing to the imagination. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail, giving him a clean shot of her face.
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