Without a Hitch(67)

“The point is, lover, something happened to you. I can tell. There’s a reason you believe in love but not marriage. Why you hold yourself to standards that keep you from enjoying life, and if you’re not going to tell me, I’ll do everything in my power to make you feel alive. You’re hearing the words, but you’re not feeling them. Music is meant to be heard in a way that feeds your soul. Simply understanding the words is not the same as experiencing the music, and that makes me think you need to learn how to feel again. For the next three weeks, I’m going to overload your senses so when I’m gone, you’ll remember how to feel.”

“You’re going to spend all this time…helping me?”

She crosses her arms over her chest with the brightest smile I’ve ever seen. “Yup.”

“Instead of spending it planning out your future, you’re going to spend it getting me to feel something.”

“You’ve got it, lover.”

“Why? Why focus on me?” I’m curious, but my heart thunders in my chest with fear too.

“Because, Lochlan. Some people are meant to do great things in life, and some people are meant to help make those things happen. I’m a helper. I’ve always been a helper, and right now, my mission is to help you be the man I know you are under all that anger.”

I stare, shocked and in complete awe. Tilly is so much more than a helper, and she has no idea.

This woman is going to change me forever, whether I’m ready for it or not.





C HAPTE R 24

TILLY

“W hy aren’t we staying at one of your hotels, Mr. Moore?” I ask with a smirk after our bags are dropped off and the door closes behind us in the beach house suite of the famous Rosewood Hotel in Montecito, California.

Lochlan stalks toward me with sex in his gaze. Good lord, I have no willpower where he’s concerned. “Because, Mrs. Moore, how else am I supposed to keep an eye on the competition?”

“For clarity’s sake, you have no objection to pretending to be a married couple? But the real thing is…”

“Not an option,” he growls just before capturing my protest with his mouth. It’s not fair that he can make my body melt with just a touch of lips. His fingertips cause a riot of sensations as he skims the skin at the top of my waistband.

Pulling back, I blurt, “Trojan horse,” and slip away from his grasp.

“Trojan horse?” He chuckles. “Okay, we can talk about protection.” He pulls something from his briefcase. “Are you on the pill?”

Trojan horse. He thinks I’m talking about condoms. Freaking Eli.

“You said you were going to keep your hands to yourself.”

“Is that what you want?” His gaze travels the length of my body, and I feel it everywhere.

No!

“You laid out the rules,” I remind him instead.

“Tilly?” He moves like a panther, his actions smooth and calculated. He doesn’t stop until he’s inches away from me. I back up against the sliding glass door, and he puts a hand on either side of me.

“Yes?”

“We’re renegotiating our terms.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Lochlan. We haven’t even given our current terms the old-school try yet.”

He darts forward, forcing my head to tilt as his lips land on my neck. “Renegotiate with me, sweet Tilly.”

“What do you suggest?” I feel his smirk against my skin. His trail of kisses already has my toes curling.

“I suggest that you let me touch…” His fingers ghost up my arms. “Taste.” He sucks my earlobe between his teeth. “Experience every inch of you.”

“You want to know me sexually.”

“I want to know you in every way,” he counters. “Say I can have all of you.”

My head falls against the door with a thud. Trojan horse, Tilly! Trojan horse him!

“I’ll let you have my body if you let me have you.” It comes out on a breathy sigh. The heat from his body excites every nerve ending I possess.

“I’m right here.”

I shake my head. “All of you.”

He pulls back to scan my eyes. “What do you want, Tilly?”

“I want you to give me all of you. My workload is lightening now that things are settling for Colton. I want you to give me your time. Unless it has to do with the winery deal, I want you free to have fun. With me.”

“Are you asking me to take a vacation?” His smile is one I haven’t seen before. It’s light and unguarded. It makes my heart squeeze with the knowledge that something or someone made him so intense. So focused. So determined not to love.

“Er, I guess I am? I mean, I guess I am. Yes. I’d like you to go into vacation mode.”

“Vacation mode,” he repeats as if testing out the words. “Till, I haven’t taken a vacation since college. I’m not sure I know what vacation mode is.” He smirks, but it hides something darker.

“Not even with your family?”

He shakes his head.

“A day off?”

His brow raises. “When Nova was sick once and my parents were in the UK. I sat with her until her stomach stopped trying to escape her throat.”

I blink at him. Slowly. “You have every resource known to man at your fingertips, and you don’t ever take advantage of them?”