burst out laughing. It was a joke, of course. After all the time she’d known him, occasionally it was still difficult to tell when he was joking.
“I covet yours, too, but I’m not that kind of girl,” she reminded him primly.
“That doesn’t stop you from looking out windows at nude men at night, I notice,” he said, tongue in cheek.
She threw up her hands. “Well, if that’s the attitude you’re going to take, I’ll find some other nude man to ogle!”
“What was that?” Bobby asked from the doorway, laughing. Behind him, Bess was glaring at them both.
Elissa flushed. “Now see what you’ve done? Your brother will think I’m a voyeur.”
“Well, aren’t you?” King grinned.
She handed him the tray. “I hope you drop it on your foot,” she said sweetly.
“Vicious woman,” he muttered. “Open the door, honey,” he told Bess.
Bess flushed, and the two of them exchanged a look that made Elissa want to throw herself off a building. Fortunately, Bobby had gone ahead and didn’t see it. Elissa wished she hadn’t. King might want her body, but what she saw in his eyes when he looked at Bess was something she’d have died for. It was a sweeping kind of hunger, mingled with tenderness.
Bess curled up on the sofa to drink her coffee, pausing now and again to glance at Elissa, who knew that everything she and King had done probably showed in her lack of makeup and tangled hair.
“I hope we’re not intruding by staying here tonight,” Bess said quietly. “But the hotel was so crowded, and you’re much closer to the airport than we were, way up in Ocho Rios.”
“You’re not intruding at all,” King replied. He glanced at Elissa. “Elissa will need tonight to pack and get the cottage squared away, won’t you, baby?”
“That’s right,” she said. It was hard to talk when he called her “baby.” “And I’d better get to it if we’re leaving in the morning. What time is it?” she added, rising.
“You’ll need to be ready by eight,” he said. He got lazily to his feet. “I’ll walk you home,” he said with a meaningful smile. “Don’t wait up,” he told the other two.
“I need an early night myself,” Bess said coolly. “I expect I’ll be out like a light in no time.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Bobby muttered over his paperwork. “I won’t finish before dawn, at this rate. I guess you wouldn’t care to help?” he asked Bess.
Her eyes widened. “Me? Heavens, I can’t add one and one.”
“Too bad,” Bobby said. He seemed about to say something else, but he shrugged and bent his head again. “See you in the morning, Elissa.”
“Sleep well,” she told them, clinging to King’s hand as he led her out into the darkness.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it during the short walk to her cottage, not saying a word. It was a warm, pleasant night, even with the misting rain around them.
At the back step of her cottage, he ground out the cigarette. “I’m sorry about this trip, but I couldn’t think of another way to do it that didn’t involve you.”
“It’s all right. I’m not doing so well with the new designs, anyway. I’ll let them go for a week or two and touch base with some of my contacts back home.”
“You still live with your parents, don’t you?” he asked.
“Well, there’s been no reason not to,” she reminded him. “They’d be hurt if I wanted to live alone in Miami, and New York is pretty far away. We’ve been close all my life.”
“I wouldn’t know what that kind of closeness was,” he admitted. “I like Bobby well enough, but we’ve never been really affectionate. I’ve never felt that way about any of my family.”
“I’m sorry, because it’s a special feeling.”
“I suppose it is.” He bent and brushed his lips carelessly over hers. “I’ll go for a walk before I head back. Don’t answer the phone for the next hour, in case Bess calls to see what’s going on over here.”
She tugged at his shirtsleeve as he turned. “I could make you some hot chocolate,” she said shyly.
He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed its warm palm. “I could take you to bed, too.”
She looked up at him in the light from her kitchen. “King...”
His face went taut. “Elissa, I enjoy making love to you. I could make a banquet of your body. I even like you. But if I seduced you, what would we do?”