Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,69
warm where it brushed his cheek. Her mouth was even warmer when he settled his lips over hers.
He kissed her softly, sweetly, nothing but a light brush of contact when he could easily have taken more. For a moment she remained still, simply letting him have his way. Then he felt her hands move, and she settled them at his hips, beneath the loose tails of his shirt, hooking her fingers through his belt loops as if to keep him near.
Temptation slid the length of his body, fired by the tenderness of her shy movements, the hesitation of her response. He wanted to press, to push, to show her how much he wanted her, but he knew this wasn’t the time or the place. He’d known her too many years to risk making a wrong move now, now that he had her this close.
In the seconds that followed, however, she turned him inside out, stepping fully into his body as her hands left his hips, her palms sliding up his bare rib cage and on around his back where she kneaded the strap of muscle running along his spine. He groaned; he couldn’t help it, his body reacting to the sensuousness of her touch.
He deepened the kiss, moving his hand to her nape and holding her still as he urged her lips apart. She opened with no hint of indecision or uncertainty, allowing him the intimacy he sought and returning the same. The beat of his heart grew painfully hard.
The taste of her tongue, the show of her willingness, the sense that she shared his desire quickly became his undoing—or would have had their tryst not been interrupted suddenly by a sharp clearing of a throat and teasing “Ahem.”
Avery jumped back, her mouth red, her eyes wide as she met her mother’s humorously curious expression. David simply accepted the inevitable scrutiny as Suzannah’s gaze moved from one to the other, her brows arched, the corners of her mouth lifting despite her obvious battle not to smile.
CHAPTER THREE
SUZANNAH RICE WAS fifty-eight years old, yet appeared young enough to be her daughter’s contemporary.
Sitting next to her mother on the living room’s rich burgundy-and-floral chintz sofa, Avery felt as if she were looking at one of her girlfriends rather than at a woman twenty-five years her senior.
Suzannah brought her cup of coffee to her mouth to blow across the steaming surface, her lips smooth with a light mauve gloss, her expressive eyes emphasized with no more than a dusting of taupe shadow.
Her brown hair was colored and highlighted in her one and only display of vanity. She’d told Avery repeatedly that until her body gave out, she refused to give up her contact lenses or to let her hair go gray.
She’d also refused for years to butt into Avery’s life. Or so that had been the case until recently. The past few weeks Suzannah had been relentlessly insisting that Avery was stagnating, that the hours she kept at work were unhealthy, as was her lack of a personal life beyond the bakery.
But Avery didn’t want to think about her mother’s new penchant for meddling or her self-improvement issues needing to be addressed. All she wanted was an answer to her question about her mother’s whereabouts this morning instead of this grilling over the kiss with David, who was back to banging away beneath the kitchen sink.
“If you were going out, why didn’t you just let me know? It’s not like my showing up here was unexpected.”
“I know, sweetie. I’m sorry. I hardly had time to get dressed and meet Leslie, much less let you know I was going out.” Suzannah gave a quick pat to Avery’s denim-clad knee.
“I bought you a cell phone for a reason, you know.” Avery kicked off her sandals and pulled her knees to her chest. “It doesn’t do a bit of good when you leave it in the charging cradle.”
“I love the phone, Avery. I just forgot to take it. This morning was so hectic. Leslie was only in town for a few hours, and deciding to have breakfast together was a very last-minute plan.”
“Do I know Leslie?” Avery thought back to the photos and keepsakes in her mother’s albums from her pep club and sorority days.
“I’m sure you don’t. We lost touch after school and only recently became reacquainted. Suzannah smiled as if that was a sufficient explanation to get her off the hook for skipping out without a word on their longtime, mother-and-daughter routine.