his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. But the sight of the woman stretched out on the long seat across from him was firmly burned into his brain.
Hope’s toffee-colored hair had fallen loose at some point on the drive to the airport. When he’d carried her onto the private jet, the long, thick waves had clung to his shirt, flowed over his arm and streamed behind them in the night breeze. Now, they lay tangled and gleaming over her shoulders, off the couch, nearly touching the carpeted floor.
He’d slipped off her narrow-heeled shoes and set them on the floor beside her. Her dress—so obviously an antique that he knew women who’d have given their eyeteeth for the ankle-length garment—had worked its way up her shapely calves. With one knee drawn upward, the fabric pulled in a taut stretch of beige-tinted lace over the back of her thighs and her derriere.
She was a total innocent, and lying there, so soundly asleep, she was temptation personified.
Temptation. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Tris should have known better than to flirt with temptation. God knows she didn’t have enough experience to fight the blistering sparks between them.
But he was experienced. And older. And he should have known better. His heart might not be programmed for love and happily-ever-after, but he was on a first-name basis with the desires of the flesh.
Tris could feel the plane banking. There was no point in looking out the little oval windows. It was pitch-dark out there. Dark above, dark below, dark all around.
Even this luxurious main cabin of the plane was dark, except for one small lamp burning near him. It cast enough glow to highlight the lace dress and glossy hair of the woman across from him.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, legs sprawled out before him, his chin resting on his steepled fingers. It could have been one hour or three. But finally, Hope sighed deeply and shifted. Her hand tumbled off the cushion and grazed the carpet. The light glinted on the platinum rings—one plain and one studded with a trio of excruciatingly perfect diamonds—circling her ring finger.
The rings he had put there.
She turned her head and pushed her thick hair out of her eyes. She blinked drowsily and he figured her vision was probably blurry, because her eyeglasses were sitting on the round side table beside his seat.
Comprehension slowly dawned in her eyes. He waited, knowing just when that memory clicked into place, because she breathed in sharply and yanked her feet off the cushion to sit up.
“Where are we?” Hope pressed a trembling hand to her head.
“More than halfway to Paris.”
Her shoulders seemed to sag. “I drank too much,” she murmured. “I’ve never—Oh, God. What have we done?”
Tris would have been amused at the panic rounding her violet eyes if he hadn’t been wondering the same thing. He rarely acted impulsively. And even his actions over the last few days had been fairly deliberate. He trusted his instincts, listened to his gut because it rarely failed him.
But now, sitting here in this private jet equipped with every comfort known to man, from a whirlpool tub and a down-covered bed, to a fully equipped kitchen, to an array of computerized equipment that could run a small country if need be, his instincts had fully deserted him.
All because of this violet-eyed temptress.
“What have we done?” he repeated. He’d taken the easiest path of solving her problem. “We’ve stopped the gossip about us, effectively removing any reason for you to lose your teaching job.”
That’s all they’d done.
The irony burned. He’d started out thinking he’d like to taste her soft-looking lips. That was all.
He still hadn’t kissed her. Not really. That quick, off-centered glancing of lips earlier that day didn’t count.
He hadn’t gotten a kiss. He hadn’t “gotten” anything that everybody in town and beyond seemed to think he’d been “getting.” It was almost laughable.
Tris picked up her eyeglasses and leaned forward, handing them to her. But in the end, nothing about this situation was laughable.
Particularly the fact that the young woman slipping the gold-rimmed glasses on her nose had—less than twelve hours ago, stood where he’d long ago vowed never to stand—in front of a minister, promising to “love, honor and cherish.”
He hadn’t gotten a kiss.
He’d gotten a wife.
Chapter One
Eight days earlier.
“I think that’s plenty, darlin’. If you don’t mind.” Hope Leoni blinked, dragged her eyes from the deep blue gaze of the man sitting at the counter across from her. And realized she was pouring coffee all across the counter.
Well, not precisely across the counter. But it was overflowing the thick white coffee cup, the utilitarian saucer beneath it, quickly pooling around the base. Worse, it flowed into a rich brown river that ran straight to the edge of the counter and into the smoky gray sweater the man wore, creating a large spot where he’d been leaning against the counter edge. Now he sat back with a muffled comment.
Her cheeks burned and she hastily set down the glass coffee carafe and grabbed a cloth from behind the counter, mopping up her mess. “I’m so sorry.” She mopped, sopped, wiped and tried not to stare when, with a spare movement, he yanked the sweater over his head and tossed it onto the stool beside him. She dragged her attention from the plain white T-shirt that remained, hugging his broad shoulders, only to realize she was equally distracted by the thick gold hair that tumbled over his forehead. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”
He, the man…the blond god with a face that could make angels weep…put one hand over hers, stopping her motions. “No sweat, darlin’.”
She didn’t know which made her blood flow faster until it zipped along her veins with a fevered frenzy—the touch of his hand atop hers, or the casual endearment murmured in his low voice. The schoolgirl fantasies in which he’d been the star seemed as recent as yesterday. “I, uh, I’m not usually so clumsy. I can’t believe I—”
“Hey.” His long, long fingers encircled hers. Slid around her hand, beneath it; square, warm palm meeting hers. Warm. Dry. Hard.
Every sound faded—the dog that had been barking half the morning from where it was tied up outside the sheriff’s office a few doors down, the tractor mower that somebody was running over at the high school, the music from the radio on the shelf in the corner.
All of that faded. She could hear her pulse, thundering in her ears. Could hear her breath, slowly easing past her lips. She could hear the soft chink of his gold wristwatch as it bumped the counter beneath their hands.
“Relax,” he said in that voice that hypnotized. “Nobody’s going to fire you over a little spilled coffee. Certainly not Ruby, who’s got a heart bigger than Wyoming.”
At the mention of Ruby, owner of Ruby’s Café and, more importantly, Hope’s grandmother, some of Hope’s scattered senses returned. She tugged her hand, relieved and disappointed all at once when their hands separated. She picked up the damp cloth, rubbing her palm against the wet, rough, terry cloth. “I’m well aware of Gram’s generosity.”
“Gram?”
Hope pulled her gaze from his mouth. From the way it tilted at the corner when he spoke as if he were perpetually amused. “Ah…Ruby. You know…she’s my grandmother. I’m Hope. Hope…Leoni.”
He nodded, giving her the impression that he was absorbing every nonsensical syllable she uttered. Which was, of course, ridiculous.
Men who looked like this man didn’t hang on every syllable of the very ordinary Hope Leoni.