The Highest Bidder Read online

  "So what happened?" There was that focus he'd admired so much in her office. But this time it was directed at him, so it was even more impressive. Or terrifying, depending on your point of view.

  "It was a mistake."

  "How so?"

  "Brooke, that was my…" God, he hated calling her his wife. He studied the condensation around his mug. "She was an acquirer of goods, my ex-wife. World class. And once I had my mug on the cover of Fortune Magazine, she decided I was the must-have accessory that season."

  "You seem too smart to get snagged by a gold digger."

  "Oh, no." He shook his head. "Brooke wasn't digging for gold. She had plenty of her own, thanks to her family. She was just looking for—I don't know. A conquest. The ultimate catch." The beer coagulated in his stomach as he thought about how he'd been used.

  "What were you looking for?"

  His throat suddenly dry, despite the ale, he managed a rough laugh. "Easy, sweetheart. You've already extracted more personal information from me than any woman in years, and now you want divorce details?"

  She just looked at him, her eyes shifting hues as quickly as the topics. Whatever the color, they were inviting. Intimate. Way, way too intimate. "Yes. I want details. What were you looking for when you got married?"

  Good God, would that waiter never come?

  He pulled off a totally casual shrug. "What any guy who hangs around an altar in a tux and makes promises wants. A lifetime of contentment and happiness. Right?"

  She nodded slowly, still regarding him with … distrust? Skepticism? Well-founded skepticism, he should tell her. Oh, what the hell. "Unfortunately," he admitted, "I married someone who didn't think those promises—you know, love, honor and cherish—included anything as mundane as monogamy."

  She sank into the seat a little and frowned in empathy.

  "But I'm sure I was as much to blame—"

  "That's not true!" She interrupted him. "It's not your fault if your wife was unfaithful."

  He held up a hand to stop her sweet defense. "I married her for the wrong reasons, too. I thought her social status gave me a credibility that my, uh, upbringing didn't afford."

  She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she looked back, all that skepticism was gone. "You know, Matt, my parents' marriage was really no different. My mother, the former secretary, married my father for social credibility. And my father—" she shook her head "—he didn't know the meaning of the word monogamy."

  "I know that," he said quietly. "That's always dismayed Walker, too. That's why I have no doubt about his commitment to Tamra. And—" he exhaled slowly and almost reached for her hand "—that's why I bet you'll make someone a loyal, loving wife." Someone? Yeah, some real lucky bastard.

  She leaned all the way back in the booth and squinted at him. "So since your marriage, you've never considered getting involved with anyone else?"

  Wasn't round two supposed to be about sex? How the hell did she drag him into this discussion? "Depends on your definition of involved," he said with a suggestive grin. "I am a healthy thirty-year-old man with a normal appetite."

  "I'm healthy, too." Her look was equally suggestive. Downright provocative, in fact. "And so is my, uh, appetite."

  His pulse accelerated, shooting a couple of gallons of blood southward. "Your appetite?" he managed to ask.

  The waiter appeared with a tray overflowing with burgers and fries.

  "Perfect timing," Matt said, hoping his relief wasn't too evident. "The lady just said she's got quite an appetite."

  "Do you have to drive all the way back to Half Moon Bay tonight?" Paige asked as he pulled into the slow Friday-night Napa traffic.

  "No, I took that suite at Auberge again." He glanced at her, everything in him wanting to ask her to come there with him. But that would only lead to a devastating loss of round two.

  After their dinner had arrived, they'd managed to stay out of dangerous territory and avoid any more personal revelations.

  Without warning she laid a light hand on his thigh. Through the fabric he could feel the warmth of her touch. "Want to take a drive?" she suggested.

  "Sure." He turned right on Trancas, out of the clogged traffic.

  "The Silverado Trail?" she asked. "Doesn't that go straight to Auberge?"

  But they were not going to his hotel, he vowed silently. Because if he had her anywhere near a bedroom, he could kiss his willpower goodbye. "We'll just go up to the river reserve. It's a pretty night."

  He glanced up at the waxing moon, the clear sky and about a hundred stars. Romance. That was okay. Some stars, moon and evening air. He had a blanket in the trunk, wrapped around some old albums he was taking into a record exchange the next day.

  They meandered through a winding road, surrounded on both sides by the recently harvested Chardonnay vineyards, then hit the crossroad that linked the trail to Route 29.

  "You know your way around Napa," she commented.

  "I like it up here," he said vaguely. "I think I'll retire in Napa."

  "Retire? You're thirty."

  He could afford to retire that minute, but he still had too much to do with Symphonies. "Eventually. When I hit the big five-oh."

  "And won't that be fun," she said with a hint of wry bitterness in her voice, "just you and … your piano?"

  He got the message. And it stung. Yep. Just him and his piano. And Paige would no doubt be raising children and doing volunteer work and making that lucky bastard the happiest guy on earth.

  "There's the entrance to the reserve," she commented as he drove past it. "Maybe you don't know your way around here all that well after all."

  No. He'd just been mentally lost for a moment.

  What was he doing? Bringing her here to make out on the grass? Tease her with promises of romance … to what end?

  "This isn't a good idea," he said, his voice tight. She didn't respond.

  With one swift movement, he turned the car and headed back down the Silverado Trail, toward her home.

  From the moment he'd shown up in her office, Paige's whole body had purred with electricity and pulsed with expectation. But it just thunked into reality with one unexpected U-turn.

  He didn't want her.

  He wanted sex; he was, after all, "a healthy thirty-year-old man." But his sudden change of heart and the way he zipped that little sports car toward the Ashton Estate told her one thing.

  He didn't want her.

  Only, that contradicted everything his eyes and hands and mouth and body language had been screaming since … well, since they'd met.

  When they reached the edge of the reflecting pool in the estate driveway, he turned off the engine and opened his door.

  An ache that had nothing to do with desire closed her throat. She put a hand on his arm before he got out of the car.

  "Matt, wait. What's going on?"

  His eyes were stormy gray and sent a clear message of frustration, but he didn't say anything.

  "We've got ourselves in quite a spot, don't we?" she asked gently. "I'd rather not end the evening on this uncomfortable note."

  He smiled wistfully. "You're a natural peacemaker, aren't you, Paige? You like everything to be … nice."

  "I don't know about that," she said. "I do like everyone to be happy."

  "Are you?"

  "Are you?" she countered.

  He leaned back into his seat and raked a hand through his hair, leaving it endearingly messy. "Hell, no."

  "What's the matter?"

  He turned to her. "You're way too smart not to know the answer to that."

  She swallowed hard and decided to stop any kind of games. She wanted him. She didn't want to fight that anymore. "I would have gone back to your hotel," she said simply. "I wanted to."

  He closed his eyes. "I know that."

  "Then what's the matter?"

  He slid a hand under her jaw, cupping her chin and easing her face toward him. "I tried to tell you this the first time I kissed you. The first time we
… almost…"

  "What, Matt? Tell me what?"

  "You deserve better than 'sex without strings.'"

  She closed her eyes. "Maybe I do, Matt. But right now, tonight, with you, I don't care about the strings. I want you."

  His mouth came over hers instantly, his lips warm and open and delicious. Like a struck match, the fire flared in her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.

  Their tongues fused and curled around each other as her heart walloped against her rib cage. Oh, how she wanted this. She wanted his hands and his mouth and his body all over her.

  She leaned into him, lifting her chest in a silent invitation for his touch. His hand stroked her sleeve, and his fingers tightened his grip as though he were forcing himself not to touch where they both wanted him to touch.

  He pulled away, his breath already tight and quick. "Let me walk you to the door." He got out of the car before she could respond.

  Why was he fighting her so damn hard?

  When he opened her door, she looked up at him, the moonlight carving shadows on his handsome face. He eased her up, then placed a gentle kiss on her head.

  "I told you what I want," she whispered. "What do you want?"

  He responded with another soul-wrenching kiss, pulling her against his hard, male body, pressing their chests and hips and legs together. She wrapped her arms around his powerful shoulders and clung to him because her knees were shaking and her whole lower half was literally melting.

  "What I want," he said gruffly, dropping his face into her hair and letting out an exasperated sigh. "I can't have what I want."

  She backed away enough to see his face. "Can't, Matt? I thought you—"

  He touched her lips to quiet her. "I won't, then. And I do know the difference between the two."

  Dropping his mouth against her hair, he slid his hands over her back and waist, then eased her away from him. "Goodnight, Paige."

  As she stood in her doorway and watched the lights of the Ferrari disappear down the driveway, she made an easy decision, unencumbered by a single second of self-doubt or debate.

  Maybe he "won't" … but she would. Oh, yes, she would. Right now.

  * * *

  Nine

  « ^ »

  Matt stood on the balcony of his suite and stared at the moonlit hills of the Napa Valley. He took a long swig of the beer he'd grabbed out of the minibar and closed his eyes as the ice-cold liquid slid down his throat.

  He'd finish this beer, take a shower—just as cold—and go to bed. Or, he might stand on this deck, gaze at stars and congratulate himself for winning round two for the next few hours. 'Cause he sure as hell wasn't going to sleep.

  What was it about that girl that got him going so much? Sure she was pretty. Not beautiful, not even as striking as her sister, Megan. But beguiling, somehow, delicate and feminine and natural. Of course, she was sexy. Not vixenlike, but her sensuality was subtle, like her woman's body. Not in your face, and even more appealing because of it.

  But there was something else about Paige. That quiet intelligence. That secret twinkle in her eye. The honesty of her smile.

  Plus she kissed like—oh. He blew out a long, slow breath as arousal tightened its familiar grip on his lower half. Might be time for that icy shower.

  The only explanation that made sense is that he wanted her because he couldn't have her. Why couldn't he have her?

  Oh, yeah. Because he'd promised Walker he wouldn't hurt her. And because she was too valuable a gem to end up on his ever-growing discard pile. And mostly because, once he had sex with her, this attraction that had taken hold of his brain and body would disappear and then he'd have to have The Conversation:

  "I know you're looking for something more serious…"

  "Look, I'm married to my job and just not interested in a commitment…"

  "You're a great girl and I know you want someone you can count on…"

  "I'm not looking for a long-term relationship."

  Hell, he'd used every line in the book and probably made up a few new ones in the process. God, he hated The Conversation. And the thought of having it with Paige…

  The beer suddenly lost its taste as the moon slid behind a cloud, leaving Matt with the sickening self-disgust of a man who really didn't want to look in the mirror the next day.

  But why should he be disgusted? He'd done it. He'd walked away and won round two. He'd conquered the body with the brain. He hadn't given in to that sweet, impossible ache she caused in him. He hadn't succumbed to that overwhelming need to have her. Hadn't surrendered to that desire to—

  He froze at the tentative knock on the door.

  He distinctly remembered placing the Do Not Disturb While I Congratulate Myself for Being a Hero sign on the door. Not like the customer-pleasing Auberge du Soleil staff to ignore that.

  He walked slowly into the living room, the first few measures of an unholy anticipation beginning a foxtrot through his veins.

  Who would knock on his suite at eleven o'clock at night?

  The second rap was far less tentative.

  Who knew he was staying at the Auberge that night?

  "Matt?"

  Oh, God. So much for heroics.

  He flipped the lock and opened the door, his throat tight and his heart fully engaged in a drum solo now. He just stared at her, literally speechless.

  "I suspected you might be a creature of habit," Paige said with that honest smile he'd just been thinking about. "I figured you'd stay in the same room. So I took a chance."

  She took a chance? That was the understatement of the century.

  Her gaze darted over his shoulder. "You are alone, aren't you?"

  He choked a quick laugh and opened the door wider, his brain cells making a futile attempt at something that might resemble the English language. He wanted to ask what she was doing there, but that would have been a rhetorical question. If he could have formed the question at all.

  Paige Ashton had followed him back to his suite. Somehow, his overworked gray matter just couldn't get past that.

  She still wore the black sweater and gray pants, but the look on her face was different. It was a look of a woman who…

  "Do you have another one of those?"

  He followed her gaze down to the beer bottle he still held.

  "Never mind," she said, strolling past by him and dropping her handbag on the chaise. The chaise where he'd half undressed her not so long ago. "I'll just have some ice water."

  He stared at her.

  "Unless you'd rather I get it myself while you figure out some easy way to close your jaw."

  That made him laugh. "I wasn't expecting you." Speaking of stupid understatements. "What are you—" And stupid questions. "Why are you here?"

  Her eyes flashed. Green, now. A nice, inviting shade of sage, he noticed. "If you have to ask, Matt, maybe I'd better turn around and go home."

  "No, don't do that," he said quickly. "I'll get you some water."

  While he did, she stepped through the sliding doors to the balcony. He opened a plastic water bottle and poured it into a hotel glass, then freed some ice from a miniature tray he found in the freezer. Did she have to have ice?

  Yes. She had to cool off.

  Because the look in those green eyes was anything but cool.

  He joined her on the balcony, the ice clanging pleasantly in the glass as he handed it to her. As though it was perfectly normal for Paige Ashton to show up in his hotel room and share a cold drink in the moonlight.

  She took a long, slow sip, her eyes closed, her throat moving with each swallow.

  "I was just thinking about you," he admitted as she finished.

  Her eyes opened slowly and locked on his. "What were you thinking?"

  He couldn't help grinning. He was so damn glad to see her. "I'm going to venture a guess that I was thinking the same thing you were thinking when you got in your car, threw caution to the wind and knocked on a door you weren't entirely
sure was mine."

  "Yeah. We're definitely on the same wavelength here."

  She put the glass on a cocktail table and leaned back, placing her hands on the railing behind her. A stance, he couldn't help noticing, that was clear in its nonverbal communication. No crossed arms. No barriers. Absolutely no second thoughts.

  Who knew Paige was such a woman of … action?

  "Would you like to know what I'm thinking now, Matt?"

  He took a step closer and put his hands on top of hers, effectively pinning her to the railing. "Let me guess."

  She tilted her face toward him, her lips parted.

  "You're thinking that this physical attraction is just too powerful to resist."

  Her eyes twinkled in agreement.

  "And you're thinking, what's the harm? He's single, I'm single, we like each other and life's short. Why not just give in to the lust?"

  Her lips tipped up as she gave him an imperceptible nod.

  "And," he continued, "you're obviously thinking you have to make the first move or—in this case—the second move since we've already been in this suite once before…" He dipped closer to that pretty mouth. "You figure I won't, because I'm a gentleman and a client and your cousin's good friend."

  Her eyes darkened at that. "You were right until that point. I guarantee you I am not thinking about Walker right now."

  Then maybe he should stop thinking about Walker, too.

  "I promised him," Matt said slowly. "That I wouldn't hurt you."

  She glided her hands up and down his arms. "For one thing, I don't answer to Walker. And for another," she locked her hands behind his neck, forcing him even closer. "This isn't going to hurt."

  She lifted herself up and kissed him. Gently at first, easily. Lips closed, eyes open.

  "See? Did that hurt?"

  He bit back a low groan. "Define hurt."

  She leaned into him, her taut breasts pressing the fabric of his shirt. The kiss that accompanied that move included a tiny taste of tongue.

  "I'm a grown woman, Matt," she whispered.

  He ran his hands over the tight muscles of her back and let them settle in the little dip just above her backside. "I definitely noticed that."