Star and, if he was honest, a little smugly self-satisfied that he was too well balanced to share her warped outlook on life—and he could have done, given his own family history.
His mother had regularly dumped him on whoever she could find to take charge of him whilst she went off with her latest lover. His father had finally and unwillingly taken him under his own roof whilst making it clear how little he wanted him. But happily the bitterness which could have tainted the whole of his life had never been allowed to take root, had in fact been washed away, flooded out by the outpouring of love he had received from his stepmother’s older sister, the woman who had become a surrogate mother to him and whom he still gently mourned.
But now... now he had met Star, had witnessed at first hand the powerful, turbulent, magnetic pull of her sexuality, had felt his body respond to it and to her! And it had responded to her... Was still responding to her, if he was honest.
Intellectually he might be aware of all the pitfalls involved in following through on what was running through his head right now, but physically...
He had seen the look she had given him when he had stopped Clay from making his play for her, and the even more contemptuous one she had sent him when he had informed her of his views on sex without emotion. He suspected he knew exactly why she had been so determined to get him to have dinner with her—and it didn’t have anything to do with any desire to get him into bed. He only wished that he could say the same about his own motives in accepting.
Right now the thought of all the ways he would like to pleasure her if he had her spread out on a bed underneath him was driving him wild, with the kind of ache that was rapidly becoming a sharp urgency.
For starters he certainly wanted to see that smooth hairstyle all mussed and soft and those challenging sea-green eyes hazy and dazed with the joy of what they were both experiencing, and he surely wanted to feel those full, firm lips quivering eagerly beneath his, clinging to his, whilst he slowly stroked her silky skin. Oh, yes, he surely wanted that.
He wanted to peel her clothes from her body and share with her that spiralling, giddying, breathtaking climb through the delicately, deliberately erotic foothills of shared foreplay, across the plateau of escalating desire and then on to the heights where they could look down on the rest of the universe and momentarily believe that they were superhuman, immortal; but for that it was necessary to reach out and share yourself mentally and emotionally as well as physically and Star had made it more than plain that that kind of intimacy was not on her agenda.
And he had spoken the truth when he had told her that, to him, sex without emotion was like a flower without perfume, and he felt as sad and compassionately sorry for someone who had been denied the ability to experience that emotion as he did for someone who had been denied the gift of sight.
Of course, there had been occasions when he had been growing up when he had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the experience of exploring his sexuality, but since then there had been only two serious relationships in his life—one with a fellow student whilst he’d been at college, which had ended shortly after their graduation by mutual consent, and another which had been over for several years now and which had ended when he had moved from New York City to set up in business here in this quiet, sturdily American small town.
He remained on friendly terms with both his ex-lovers and was godfather to both their eldest children.
It had been the death of Grace, his ‘surrogate’ mother, that had prompted the heart-searching which had led to the ending of his New York relationship, bringing about as it had the admission that the emotion which he felt for Andrea had become that of a close friend rather than a lover. She had begun to feel the same way, she had confessed when he had finally brought himself to broach the subject with her.
He had promised himself when he’d left New York that the next time, the next love, would be his last, his for all time and beyond time, and, perhaps because of that, or perhaps simply because he was older and wiser and maybe tired too, he had found himself reluctant to embark on any new relationship, sensing that ultimately it would not fulfil his need to form a lifetime bond with that one special woman who would accept him and love him as he was and for what he was, as he would her.
He knew that many of his friends considered him to be something of an idealist. Well, why not? He wasn’t ashamed of his feelings, his needs. Why should he be?
And it was only very, very rarely now that his body reminded him that sometimes physical desire and emotional need did not run comfortably in harness with one another—so rarely, in fact, that he couldn’t actually remember the last time. So rarely...that it had been tricky getting himself to admit that his determined restoration of Abbie and her two little girls to her roving husband’s side had had less to do with supporting her than with satisfying his own need to see if the luscious, long-legged redhead whom Clay was making such determined eye contact with looked as good from the front as she did from the back.
She had...unfortunately for him.
He glanced at his watch. It was time he left. He had some paperwork he wanted to get through. He had just about made his way to his car when Brad suddenly materialised at his side.
‘Kyle!’ he exclaimed, smiling at him. ‘Did you get to meet Star? I meant to introduce you to one another since you’ll be working closely together once you take over from Tim Burbridge in Britain... I still haven’t formalised the details of her contract with her yet, but from what I’ve seen of her work there’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll do a good job for us.
‘Tim Burbridge is taking a month’s leave from the end of next week, as you know, and I’d like the two of you to meet beforehand so that he can hand over things to you; of course, you’ll be staying on to work alongside him once he’s back at work... I think you’ll find him very co-operative and open. He understands how important it is for us to bring our British distribution network up to the same high standards we have over here in the States...
‘It won’t be easy, though,’ Brad warned him. ‘One of our biggest problems is recruiting the right calibre of technician. Not so much on the technical side—they all have the necessary skills for the job; no, the problem is more on the motivation side of things, from what I can see...’
‘Mmm...I’ve been thinking about that,’ Kyle responded. ‘I think some kind of in-house training scheme coupled with incentive awards might be one way around the problem... But, of course, first I’ll have to discuss things with Tim,’ he added diplomatically.
‘Well, that’s something you and Tim and Star can work on together,’ Brad told him. ‘Did you get to meet her?’
‘Not exactly... Not officially.’ Kyle was deliberately vague.
‘Well, I’ll make sure that the two of you do get a chance to get together before you fly out to Britain,’ Brad promised him.
‘You know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for us, don’t you, Kyle?’ Brad asked his friend. ‘So far as I am concerned, the distribution network you’ve set up for us is one of the prime forces underpinning our success. It doesn’t matter how good a product is; if you can’t get it to the customer when and where he wants it and install it and keep it in good working order, it doesn’t matter a damn how good it is.’
Kyle gave a small shrug. ‘It works both ways,’ he reminded Brad. ‘No matter how good a distribution and servicing network is, it can’t operate efficiently without a reliable product.’
‘We make a good team,’ Brad told him, ‘and I can’t pretend that I’m not hoping you’ll
