A Match for Celia

Celia changed into her nightgown and carefully hung up her dress and her sister’s jacket. It had been a very pleasant evening. She should have been thinking of Damien, and his insistence that they would become lovers before she left his resort.

Instead, she found herself thinking of Reed. Again.

She hadn’t caught a glimpse of him all day. Had he left? Gone back to Cleveland and his predictable, comfortable accounting practice?

The thought filled her with a quick flood of panic.

Never to see him again…. Never to see his slow smile or hear his deep, reassuring voice….

Her eyes filled with tears.

She blinked them away angrily. She would not cry over Reed Hollander again. He was the one who’d left so curtly last night, after they’d spent such a special evening together. He was the one who’d practically thrown her tentative overtures back in her teeth.

All because he was jealous of Damien.

Jealous? She mulled the word over for a moment, wondering if it was accurate. Reed had certainly acted jealous, but were his reactions only those of a piqued ego? Or had the few days they’d spent together meant as much to him as they had meant to her? Had he, too, been aware of something growing between them?

She groaned. Why was it that the very man who should have been everything she didn’t want was keeping her restlessly pacing her room tonight? Damien was right across the hall, perfectly willing to indulge her with the sort of passionate, exciting, adventurous and carefree affair she’d fantasized about during her long, generally boring workdays. All she’d have to do was cross that hall right now, and he would welcome her with open arms and no strings. Anything she wanted, for however long they both wanted it.

Reed, on the other hand, was a man who probably had a whole pocketful of strings. She remembered their tentative conversation about children. Had he been telling her something then? Testing her, feeling her out about his own hopes for the future?

He was a one-man, one-woman guy if she’d ever met one. Four-bedroom house in the suburbs, two-point-three kids. Dog. And if his reactions to Damien’s flowers were any indication, he was the possessive sort. The kind who would treat his mate very well, but keep a rather close eye on her, too.

Was that really what she wanted? An average sort of life with an average sort of guy? The kind of life her mother lived? It was all her sister had ever really wanted, first with Ray, and now with Seth—but Celia had always thought it would take more to satisfy her.

Because she was afraid to analyze the answers to those searching questions, Celia pushed them firmly out of her head and climbed into bed.

Her dreams were vivid, eerily realistic. In them, she walked slowly through a tropical paradise of palm trees and waterfalls, heavily scented flowers and exotically feathered birds. It wasn’t commercial Padre Island; the place in her dream was a romantic, secluded island retreat.

There was a man at her side. She didn’t look at him, but she held his hand. He drew her into the shadows of a spectacularly flowered tree and cupped her face between his hands. Her eyes closed. He kissed her with a hunger and a passion that made her moan in her sleep and clutch the sheets in feverish fingers.

In her dream, she felt his hands on her skin. On her back, her breasts, her thighs. She felt his muscles beneath her palms, rippling and iron-hard. And she was vaguely aware of her own surprise that an accountant would have a body like that.

Accountant…

The face in the dream suddenly became clear. Reed Hollander lifted his head and gave her a smile that sent a shiver all the way down her spine. He kissed her again, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, clinging as though she’d shatter if he released her.

Locked together, they lowered themselves to the thick, plush grass beneath them. Reed reached for the elastic neckline of the colorful peasant top she wore in her dream, and she arched into his touch. “Reed,” she moaned. “Oh, Reed.”

She woke with Reed’s name still echoing in her mind. Had she said it aloud? Probably.

Her cheeks were wet again. She swiped at them impatiently, calling herself an idiot. She’d never dreamed about Damien that way—what was it about Reed that made her act like an infatuated adolescent?

She really should have stayed in Arkansas, she thought, flopping angrily onto her back.

She should have stayed where she belonged.

Chapter Eight

Celia’s erotic dream contributed strongly to her flustered discomposure when she came face-to-face with Reed the next morning. She had just left her building, having decided to take a walk around the resort while Damien finished his paperwork. Reed was leaving the restaurant, probably having just finished his breakfast.

Celia came to a dead stop on the sidewalk. She felt a blush begin somewhere around her waist and surge upward to the roots of her hair. She hated herself for reacting that way, but she kept remembering the dream. And those kisses outside her door—and the hesitant invitation she’d extended to him afterward. The one he’d rejected so coldly when he’d seen Damien’s flowers.

If Reed shared her inner turmoil, his feelings did not show on his face. The sun glinted off the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses, hiding his eyes almost as effectively as dark glasses would have done.

“Good morning.” He could have been exchanging greetings with a total stranger.

She struggled to keep her own voice as cool. “Good morning.”