hard chiseled planes of his body, just to reassure herself he was okay. "Cecilia. You haven't answered me." His voice acted like truth serum. When he started talking in that way, gruff and bossy, her defenses disintegrated. Slowly, she lifted her eyes, breath catching in her throat as she held his intense gaze. He stroked her face with the back of a finger, and like a kitten she leaned into it, using the touch to muster all her courage to speak the truth she could no longer avoid.
"I... I could fall in love with you Trace Walker," she admitted, cheeks burning. It made no sense at all. It was too soon, he was too dangerous, it was too risky. She knew too little about him. Yet every fiber in her body knew her statement to be true. She was falling for him.
His mouth twitched, forming a ghost of a smile. "Have you ever been in love before?"
"Not like... not like-" She shook her head. "No." The admission came out barely a whisper. This was sure to put the skids on everything, and maybe that was for the best. She wasn't one of those rodeo widows that could follow a man from town to town while he took his life in his hands for another eight seconds.
He pulled a finger down her nose, tapping the tip. "So you're saying I'm irresistible?"
Cecilia had to hand it to him - the man's sense of timing was something else. "Does your ego ever quit?" she said making a noise of pure astonishment.
He tipped his forehead into hers. "Not where you're concerned, sweetheart. And I think you like it that way," he added, mouth brushing against hers.
He wasn't wrong. Her stomach fluttered as he teased little kisses across her cheeks, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. She fisted his shirt. "Trace."
"Cecilia?"
"Kiss me like you mean it."
He took her mouth with a possessiveness that surprised her, tongue tangling with hers as he grabbed her hip, pressing her into his hot, hard erection. "See what you do to me?" he muttered before kissing her even more deeply.
She moaned, tilting her hips, needing more friction.
He edged back, breathing roughly. "We can't. Not here." He looked at her with a wild gaze. "God, Cecilia. I can't get enough of you. I want nothing more than to strip you bare and take you against this wall, but we've been in here too long."
She nodded, lips tingling from the scratch of his beard and drew in a ragged breath. "You're right."
"Tonight," he promised.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"You want me to do what?" Portia shouted through the phone. "Are you out of your mind? No, wait. I'll answer that. Yes. You are."
"Look, it's too big for me anyways," Trace answered defensively. "And you said I should make some changes."
"Since when is that house too big for you? Six months ago it was too small."
"That was six months ago." Before he'd spent months in a cabin the size of his master bath, and more importantly, before he'd told Cecilia that he'd sold it. "Look, are you going to help me sell it, or not?"
"Does this have anything to do with the reporter I've been hearing about?" she accused.
"She's a journalist, not a reporter," he said hotly. "You of all people should know that." How had she heard? Of course... Jason Case. Or had her sister spilled the beans? His neck heated as he paced the length of his tiny cabin. He wasn't any freer here than in Malibu.
"Listen to yourself, Trace. You of all people need to stay away from media types - whatever you want to call them. This could go badly for you. Very badly."
Trace could hear the concern in her voice. "I get it, I do, but this is-"
"Different?" Portia filled in. "I told you to make friends, not hop in the sack with the first pretty girl who turned your eye."
"It's not like that. I swear. I didn't mean to... mean to-" he stuttered, throat closing. Holy shit. Holy. Holy. Shit. He'd been about to say fall in love. Cecilia's confession this afternoon combined with his hard fall must have rattled his brain. He didn't fall in love. He wasn't capable of it. He didn't know the first thing about falling in love except for the lines that he'd said in a handful of movies. In fact, the last time he'd felt anything remotely close to falling in love was when he was seventeen, and it had been Portia. Three years