Total Package. Cait London

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СКАЧАТЬ but Danya intended to be very patient and he intended to have her as his own….

      Sidney awoke to the scent of coffee and the sight of Danya, holding a cup and staring off into the morning rain battering the cabin’s window. He wore only his jeans, his back broad and tanned in the dim light. The pose, the blend of shadow and light would have been wonderful for a photograph, that waving hair softening his hard profile, that jaw darkened by stubble. He looked thoughtful, grim and fierce.

      “So how’s it going, buddy?” Sidney asked after yawning and stretching. “Feeling better?”

      Apparently still deep in thought, he nodded. Sidney rose to her feet, shuffled to the kitchenette to pour herself a cup of coffee. She took a sweet roll from the plastic container, and walked to stand beside him. “Thanks for last night…letting me crash here, I mean.”

      “Sure.”

      Rain pounded the windows, the dim light outside casting shadows on Danya’s hard face; his mood seemed to match the elements outside. “Are you going to be okay today?”

      “Yes. Alexi and I are remodeling, adding a family room onto a house. You can stay here, if you want, Sid. I mean, you can move in with me, if you want, to escape those models. It’s up to you. But there could be gossip. People might think that we were lovers.”

      She studied the shadows beneath his eyes, the look of a man who had been through hell, who had been on some invisible edge, fighting the tethers that bound him. “I’ve bunked with men before.”

      Danya inhaled suddenly, then released his breath slowly. He looked at her and his eyes were the color of blue ice. “This is different. I don’t want you to have problems.”

      She’d heard that the Stepanov males were very gallant, but manners and female-male role playing weren’t for her; they just cluttered up life and took time she didn’t have. “The only problem I am going to have is that darned windup dance and social thingie at the end of this shoot. Marvelous Calendars insists on it. All the bigwigs are going to come down and I’ve got orders to look like a woman—put on a dress and makeup and everything. I’m supposed to bring a date.”

      “That is rough.”

      “Real rough. You’d think if I do a good job—and I do—that would be all that was required, but oh, no. I have to mix with the brass and schmooze with the models and be one of the girls. I am going to have to dance with the execs—in dress shoes, not boots.”

      “Torture,” he agreed softly.

      “You know it. If the weather clears, we’ve got about two, three days fast shooting and then I’m doomed.” Sidney yawned and stretched and settled into enjoy her momentary reprieve from the models. She ate the sweet roll and sipped her coffee, then she licked her fingers. Danya had been studying her intensely and his body was tense next to hers; his breathing seemed to be controlled, rather than natural. She’d been remiss not to offer him a bite; she was used to sharing whatever was at hand. “Want some?” she asked, holding up her sweet roll to him.

      His hand wrapped around her wrist as he bent to take a bite, but his eyes never left hers. They were vividly blue and shadowed with heavy lashes. He straightened, still studying her, his thumb caressing her inner wrist. “About Ben. You loved him?”

      Sidney was uncomfortable with that slow caress, but if the guy needed contact, she could give him that. “I still do, the rat. I’m going back to bed, if it’s okay with you.”

      “My bed,” he said quietly, watching her. “I’ll be gone. You might as well use it. You’ve got sugar on your fingers—shame to waste it.”

      Sidney watched, riveted as Danya’s dark head bent and his warm mouth closed over each fingertip, sucking it.

      The quivery sensations shot up her arm and down her body to lodge low in her belly; her mouth dried and her throat tightened as she stared at him. When Danya’s head lifted, he smiled at her and her heart did some flip-flop thing. “No finger licking,” she said unevenly.

      “But it would be a shame to waste, would it not?” His voice was deep and intimate, his phrasing formal.

      “I guess it’s okay this time.”

      Danya had kept her hand, holding it as they turned to watch the dim morning, rain slashing the windows.

      Sidney held very still. She was very aware of him, of how large his body was to hers, of his body heat, of his hand, rough against hers. “So, chum. Are you going to be okay today? I mean, if I go to sleep, will you be okay?”

      “Of course. I have work to do. Work is good. You are welcome here.”

      “Thanks. Maybe I will sleep in. A good morning for that.”

      He seemed to tense, and those blue eyes flashed down at her. “Yes,” Danya said unevenly, “A very good morning for staying in bed.”

      Danya tried to focus on the cabinets his brother and he were installing into the family room addition, but his mind was on Sidney—lying in his bed.

      At three o’clock in the afternoon, the day was clearing, and he’d already had several calls on his cell phone from his obviously amused family—Sidney had seemed concerned for him and was hunting him. She’d been to the Stepanov Furniture factory, talked with Fadey and Viktor, Danya’s father, who had found her to be fresh and delightful. She’d taken pictures of Fadey and Viktor in a spirited folk dance, and she’d joined them in it. Danya’s father said he had hugged her—a traditional big bear hug, kissing both sides of her cheeks, and “she felt like a sweet little bird in his arms, before she squirmed away.”

      According to Mikhail’s report, she’d worked in her suite at the Amoteh Resort, requesting a sandwich from room service. Alexi’s cell phone had rung several times, and from his brother’s expression, Danya knew that the entire family was watching the “Sidney situation.” She had been careful to ask that someone was with him and to pinpoint his quitting time. She’d murmured something obscure, “He’s a lonely kind of guy. I really don’t think he should be left alone.”

      Mikhail and Jarek, Danya’s cousins, were sitting on sawhorses now, using the excuse of a coffee break to come to the remodeling project. Apparently their wives were seeking information about the woman Danya had brought back to his cabin, and needed their husbands to scout for information. Danya didn’t want the whole Stepanov clan to descend upon Sidney, frightening her away. “She is…unusual…sweet…and completely unaware that she is so—feminine and fascinating. She considers us to be buddies. I prefer to keep it that way.”

      “Of course,” Mikhail agreed firmly. “I’ve met her. She’s fast moving, thorough, and completely professional. She doesn’t want a man opening a door for her, but she will open them for a man—quite unusual woman, eats on the run and seems in perpetual motion. The models like her, but she doesn’t want any ‘hugging, sloppy stuff,’ as she says. She strikes me as a person who is more of an observer of life, rather than one who actually lives with day-to-day relationships.”

      “Not a clue that you want her, hmm?” Jarek asked.

      “She’s just been hurt by man who married someone else. I met her up on Strawberry Hill last night and she needed a place to stay away from the resort. I intend to give her time to adjust to a comfortable relationship.”

      Alexi СКАЧАТЬ