Take Me (Take Me 1)

From the outside, in, and back again.”

Not bothering to mask his surprise, Travis said, “I was thinking along those exact lines when I designed the house.”

Lily bit her lip, and the worried look came back. “There’s no way that I can get your clients what they need at Barker’s. Whoever furnishes this house should be combing through trunks of furniture shipped straight from Italy. The designer should probably even fly to Italy on a buying trip for textiles. The truth is, Travis, you’re wasting your time with me.”

Travis stared at her as the fading sunlight through the huge windows covered her in a soft, warm glow.

He had a hallucination of the two of them lingering over a bottle of Chianti in a sidewalk restaurant on cobblestone streets before he took her back to a villa and made love to her all night long.

Before he was wise enough to stop himself he said, “Quit your job. I’m hiring you to furnish this house.

It’ll be your first big commission.”

Lily spun around. “No,” she said, stepping backward toward the door. “I don’t think I could…”

“You can.”

“The entire house? Every room?”

Travis took another step toward her and spoke quietly, suddenly sure that she was the only person right for the job. Even though he’d pretty much gone out his way to avoid her for the past two decades, and certainly never thought that he’d become her champion, Travis found himself saying, “Go for it, Lily.”

Somewhere in the back of his brain Travis realized that working together on a long-term basis was completely at odds with his plan to take her just one more time and be done with her. Clearly, the hot sex they’d had after the fashion show had messed with his usual clear thinking in a serious way.

Squaring her shoulders, her look of doubt transformed into an excited smile. “Oh what the heck. I’ll do it!”

She held out her hand. Travis wrapped her long slim fingers in his own, and yet again he was surprised by how soft her skin was.

He couldn’t let her leave, not yet. Somehow he had to figure out a way to seduce her before leaving and make her think that it was her idea.

Still holding her hand, he said, “Do you want to see the rest of the house?”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “Oh God, yes.”

Travis smiled and headed into the kitchen, vowing that the next time she said, “Oh God, yes,” it was going to be from the spasms racking through her as he pumped hot and hard into her.

Lily could hardly believe the gift Travis had given her. She followed his trim, buff form from room to room, nearly salivating at being so close to him for so long. Now that she had accepted this job she would get to see more of him, wouldn’t she? At the same time she was a bundle of nerves, sure that at any second, the other shoe was going to drop. She wasn’t naive enough to believe that Travis asked her to come see this house because of her interior-decorating skill. Something else was going on; she just hadn’t figured out what it was yet. It likely had something to do with him punishing her for daring to think she was worthy of sleeping with him. If she had had any concern for self-preservation, Lily would have refused his offer to decorate the house and kept herself as far away from him as she could. But she couldn’t resist being so near to him.

Things were no different in high school when she had followed Travis around the halls, hiding behind her books. He always had his arm around at least one of the cute little cheerleaders, and Lily knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had been completely invisible to him. Utterly unimportant.

But still, she couldn’t keep from wanting him. As crazy, as irrational as her lust for Travis was, she had never been able to let go of it. And now that she had been given a taste, she wanted him for every meal.

She was as pathetic as she had always been.

As a teenager, stolen glances were all she could get. Why did she think it would be any different now?

Sure, she had come apart in his arms. Yes, his body over hers had felt so right. But that didn’t mean that things were any different than they had been in high school.

Luke’s plan from their Sunday brunch popped back into her head. She tried to accept her role in all of it, but she was having no better luck now than she had during brunch.

“Travis is lucky to have even gotten to be with you once, especially after the way he’s treated you.

You are an incredible woman, and it’s up to you to show him that he’s going to need to treat you really well if he wants you to be with him ever again. And this is how you are going to do it: You are going to rip him apart, then put him back together. But only after he earns it”

It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the truth in what Luke was saying. Playing hard to get was likely the best plan of attack with a womanizer like Travis. But it was hard for her to think about ways to make Travis chase her when she didn’t feel worthy of him.

Travis was beautiful, brilliant, confident.

She would never call herself beautiful. Or brilliant. And certainly not confident. Thank God she had splurged on the new red suit at the mall after brunch with Luke. If she had been wearing one of her regular shapeless pantsuits she would have felt even more inferior.

It was crazy for Luke to tell her that she needed to break down Travis’s confidence. She had treated him like a sex god on Saturday night—after all, he had been a sex god, an orgasm-generating machine—and she was supposed to recant all that? She sincerely doubted that Travis would buy her act.

They entered the most lavish master bathroom that Lily had ever seen outside of a glossy magazine spread for Architectural Digest and she sighed.

“Is something wrong, Lily?” Travis asked, his voice as smooth as butter.

She forced a bright smile and tried to tamp down on the voice in her heart that was telling her she was lucky to have stolen so much as a kiss from this man. Don’t forget, she coached herself, he dropped you from his life for no reason and has looked right through you for twenty years. You should he demanding an apology for how unworthy he tries to make you feel, not mooning over him.

“Everything’s great. Wonderful in fact.” Running her fingers over the cool blue tiles that lined the enormous Jacuzzi tub, she said, “You did an amazing job with this house, Travis.”

Travis grinned, and Lily had a moment’s surprise at the fact that her words of praise obviously pleased him. She hadn’t thought that her opinion would matter to him.

Was Luke right about his twin brother? Was Travis’s ego more fragile than it seemed? Was his heart not a bulletproof, steel-lined fortress?