support her. He trembled, and not just from supporting her weight. The kisses were potent, but he wanted more. He moved his mouth to taste her jaw, her throat and the skin just at the top of the T-shirt. He slid a hand along the back of her thigh that curled around him.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “It would be pretty good, but…” She slid off his body.
He swallowed, nodded.
She took a few steps away from him, brushing the front of her shirt and shorts. He wanted to grab her and start all over again.
“You have to go, remember?” The disbelief in her voice wasn’t bitter, but he heard it all right.
He grabbed her hand as she started back around the tree, probably to walk away from him. “I really do have to go, Ames.”
Her full mouth gleamed in the dim light, swollen and damp from their kisses. “Okay. Come see me at the Back Porch sometime if you want to talk.” She waved a hand—those fingers that had just been so busy sliding through his hair, clutching his shoulders—and picked up the blanket.
He’d been dismissed. She walked away, her sweet rear swaying. If she looked back, he’d wave, trot after her, maybe grab that hand again, but she didn’t.
Chapter Five
Ames wasn’t sure why she didn’t try harder to lure Sam home. They could have a conversation. Maybe drink wine. Perhaps get naked. She laughed out loud at that. A woman taking a man home wouldn’t exactly be labeled a skank—this wasn’t the 1950s, even if that decade took its time abandoning Arnesdale. But she’d have to field an awful lot of questions in town—especially when it was the mysterious New Yorker she dragged back to her lair.
But that wasn’t the reason she’d left him at the park. Except during the few moments he’d relaxed enough to laugh or talk or kiss her with amazing intensity, Sam wore an air of impatient danger. She wasn’t the world’s most observant woman, but she could tell he was trying to keep his face hidden when people came around. And he’d asked so many questions of his own every time someone came to the blanket. He seemed particularly interested in anything to do with Elliot. And he was from New York. Sure, it was a big city, as he kept telling people. But how often did people from New York show up in Arnesdale? And move into that house? And ask all about her brother?
Too bad he kissed like nothing she’d ever experienced before—an amazing, skillful, gentle exploration that flowed into passionate hunger. And when she moved against him, oh yeah, she could tell his interest in her wasn’t feigned.
And his breathy moan. Her insides clutched at the memory of that single, involuntary sound he’d made.
But until she understood who Sam Allen was and what he wanted here, she was going to stay as safe as possible. Her sudden unreasonable, ravenous hunger for a man she didn’t know was frightening. She didn’t like the uncontrolled roller-coaster-drop feeling his kisses had given her. She had no intention of falling for a tall, dark stranger.
She walked back to her apartment and wandered the rooms listlessly. No, she didn’t want to clean. No, she most definitely didn’t want to think about damned Sam Allen.
After an attempt to watch some reality show about brides, Ames decided the best thing to do was to put down the remote and do something that would really engage her mind. She tried to work on a couple of web pages. But her brain wouldn’t stop harping on Sam and then on her brother.
With a few clicks, she went back to the endless search for Elliot. He never talked about his social life, and her brother hadn’t mentioned a lot of names about his job as an accountant, but she recalled he’d talked about someone who’d gotten in trouble at work years earlier. Rossi.
That last name was similar to Nick Ross, the name the detective had found for her. During her last search for that name she’d uncovered hundreds of possibilities in New York alone, and none lived near her brother’s apartment.
With a sense of foreboding, she did another search on Nick Ross, this time adding an “i” to the name.
When she did a search for images, she hit pay dirt. A series of grainy, out-of-focus photos popped up. Nick Rossi stood in the background of a group at the opening of a dance club in Manhattan. He wore a jacket, and his hair