Cherish Hard Read online

  Sailor liked to think of himself as a good guy--but he was still a guy. And she was the most erotically gorgeous woman he'd ever held in his arms. It wasn't as if he were going to turn her down when she made the offer.

  Big gray-green eyes held his, the pupils dilated. "Do you have a girlfriend, wife--"

  "No." Sailor wanted to put his hands all over her, wanted to trail his lips across her skin until it flushed a delicious pink. "I'm married to my business. She's also my very demanding mistress. Doesn't tolerate other women for long periods."

  The redhead looked toward the redbrick of the school building. "It's light. Someone will see."

  Breath catching in his throat, Sailor said, "Back seat of my truck?" He hadn't made out in a car since he was seventeen. However, for this sexy redhead who kissed like an innocent but had a body made for sin, he was game.

  "What?" Her eyes went huge. "No."

  He kissed her again, her kiss-swollen lips too tempting to resist and her taste making him want to lick his tongue into other, more secret places. Only when he had her gasping for breath, her nails digging into his chest, did he say, "Windows are tinted, windscreen looks out toward the empty grounds. No one will see."

  Her chest heaved up and down even as the confusion and shock in her eyes tugged at his memories.

  Then she said, "Okay."

  Hot damn!

  Sailor pushed off her. "Let me just move some stuff from the back seat to the bed of the truck." He didn't want to give the redhead time to change her mind, but he hadn't exactly been expecting a back seat make-out session. He had parts for a sprinkler system stacked back there.

  He was halfway through his task and moving as quickly as possible when he heard the slam of a car door. Two seconds after that, the blue compact next to his truck backed out with a screech. The car raced down the drive the next second, taking his former partner-in-kissing with it.

  Sailor just stood there, not sure just what had happened. His head was ringing, his cock was painfully hard, and he had the feeling he'd just been used and discarded by the cute redhead with the equally cute accent and curves made for his hands to plunder.

  His brain went click.

  Firelight hair. Moonlight skin. Gray-green eyes.

  He'd thought she was cute seven years ago too, when Cody had brought her along to that party in the warehouse. Sailor had only had a short while to admire her before Cody turned into the asshole of the year and dumped her in front of the entire party. Sailor couldn't remember the other male's exact words, but he vividly remembered the pain and shock in the redhead's eyes.

  That night she'd disappeared without a trace into the night.

  As she'd now disappeared down the drive.

  Hands on his hips, Sailor narrowed his eyes at the long length of that drive. "I'm not sixteen anymore, Ms. Redhead. And I know where you work." His lips curved into a deeply satisfied smile.

  This wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.

  4

  In Which Devil Isa Makes Her Debut

  "OH MY GOD! OH MY God!" Isa couldn't believe what she'd done--and what she'd almost done.

  She'd made out in the parking lot of her school. A stately and prestigious school known for its high standards and pristine reputation. Teachers attached to it did not go around accosting innocent gardeners and agreeing to crawl into the back seat of their trucks!

  If anyone had seen her...

  "Breathe, breathe, breathe," she told herself. "It was only a kiss." A hotly sexual kiss that had made her nerve endings sizzle and her thighs clench together in delicious, greedy want.

  Clearly there was nothing wrong with her hormones.

  If not for that piercing instant of blinding sense when she'd realized she was about to put her entire career in jeopardy because of a combination of Slimeball Schumer, Suzanne, Jacqueline, and a hot gardener whose name she didn't even know, she'd be in the back seat of his truck right now.

  Probably with her panties off and her mouth fused to the gardener's.

  Her thighs twinged, her core feeling hot and swollen. Ready.

  Devil Isa sulked. And whispered, Go back. Get into that back seat.

  "Stop it," she told herself, horrified. "That was a moment of madness, never to be repeated." Isalind Magdalena Rain-Stefansdottir did not accost random hot men on school grounds. While it was still light out!

  And she definitely did not dig her nails into his sculptured chest and have thoughts that involved licking him up like her favorite ice cream.

  "Argh!"

  No way could she turn up to the board meeting in the state she was in. She had to calm down. Maybe have a few stiff drinks--and her head examined. Followed by a cold shower--because her body was not getting with the program. It wanted more of the hot gardener's hard body, more of his ravenous kisses, more of his appreciative hands roaming all over her.

  No man had ever touched her that way, as if she were a porn fantasy come to life.

  Turn around and go back, Devil Isa whispered again, her horns shiny and red. Live a little. Or a lot. I'm easy. Be easy. I'm sure he'd forgive you for running away if you turned up and began to unzip your dress, all slow and sexy.

  "Shut up," Isa muttered to that lunatic part of her psyche.

  Devil Isa shrugged and crossed her legs. At least then you'd have a wild and fun story to tell your grandchildren. Unlike the current scintillating tale of your life. A huge yawn. It's like you're a ninety-year-old trapped in a twenty-eight-year-old's body. Booooooooring.

  Isa's eye caught on the street name she was about to pass. She made the decision without even thinking about it, turning left instead of going right. Heading down the main strip used by countless commuters through the day, she reached the busy section of boutique restaurants and trendy cafes where traffic was clogged up from dawn to midnight.

  Who were these people who always had time to sit around sipping lattes?

  Devil Isa had the answer. People who have a life of their own. Harlow's seventeen. Catie's thirteen. Not long before they don't need you. What're you going to do then, grandma?

  "I have a plan!"

  Woof, woof.

  Isa wondered if this was what it felt like to go insane. Having an argument with yourself was surely not a sign of sanity. But she'd heard more than one author talking about the voices in their head, so at least she wasn't the only one. It's a creative thing, she told herself. It means my poems don't totally suck.

  Sure, granny.

  The light changed.

  Changed back before her car made it to the top of the queue.

  The fruit and vegetable shop on the corner was doing a brisk business, and across from it, a number of people sat at the outdoor tables of a cafe that had been there forever. Usually when she came this way and had to stop at the red light, Isa liked to people watch, especially when the all-sides crosswalk signal came on and people streamed left and right and diagonally across the intersection.

  It felt as if a microcosm of Auckland passed through Mount Eden on any given day while the mountain itself rose behind them like a silent guardian.

  Today wasn't a normal day.

  Skin about to split from the force of the emotions inside her, she had to sit through another light change before she could slip through to the other side of the intersection. Less than ten seconds down the road and she was out of the Mount Eden gridlock and heading toward the upper end of the long road.

  Her destination, however, lay well before the end--in a quiet section sandwiched between the cafe district she'd just passed and the bigger businesses close to the city proper. She was nearly there when she lucked into a parking spot on the street.

  Getting out, she barely remembered to lock the car before she looked both ways, then ran across the street to the white villa that functioned as the offices of Hillier & Co. Chartered Accountants.

  Nayna's green MINI Cooper was the only car in the staff parking lot.

  Dammit, she was an idiot. She could've parked next to
her best friend's car--but well, she wasn't exactly thinking straight, was she?

  Not with the gardener's scent still in her lungs and Devil Isa along for commentary.

  Telling herself to breathe, just breathe, she ran up the villa steps and turned the knob on the front door. When it swung open, she wanted to slap the person who'd forgotten to lock it. The firm had a policy that if only one person was to be at the office after closing time, the second-to-last person had to lock up behind themselves for safety.

  Isa did that before walking quickly down the thickly carpeted hallway. It wasn't as if this well-heeled area was a hotbed of crime, but the villa was on a main street with countless people passing it day and night. No use taking chances, especially with a lone woman within.

  As she'd expected after spotting only Nayna's car in the parking lot, the front offices were empty, as was the receptionist desk usually occupied by the two admin staffers shared between the four accountants in Hillier & Co.

  Going all the way to the back of the villa--and passing the firm's little kitchen and social area along the way--she turned left into Nayna's office. As the most junior member of the firm, Nayna had had no choice in her office space, but the back room got plenty of light, and Nayna actually preferred it to the larger offices up front.

  Her best friend looked up with a start from behind a pile of papers, her face a lovely oval and her silky black hair pulled back into a sensible bun, her skin tone dark mahogany.

  Taking off the little glasses she wore for reading, Nayna pressed a long-fingered hand to her heart. "Isa! You gave me a fright!"

  A huge smile followed, the other woman getting up from behind her desk to reveal the black skirt she wore with a silky blue shell. The matching black jacket was hanging on the back of her chair. "You've got great timing though. I'm starving--missed lunch and just ordered a giant pizza. We can--"

  Pausing mid-monologue, Nayna took a good look up and down Isa's motionless body... then did it again. "You look like you've been doing the wild thing in a messy bed with a hot, hot man."

  Isa knew her friend was joking, but she groaned and collapsed into the small leather sofa on this side of the office. It was where Nayna met with clients, preferring the less formal approach. "You won't believe what I did." She hid her face in her hands.

  "No." Work forgotten and eyes huge, Nayna kicked off her low-heeled pumps and sat down on the sofa beside Isa. "Start from the beginning. And I mean the beginning."

  A tinkling sound rang through the room just as Isa parted her lips to confess her sins.

  Nayna glanced at her watch. "Oh, that'll be the pizza. Don't move."

  As her friend ran barefoot out of the office, Isa pressed her head against the back of the sofa and tried the meditation technique again. Devil Isa was having none of that, insisting on tormenting her with the remembered feel of the gardener's silky hot flesh, the raw scent of his body, the voracious delight in his kiss, in his touch.

  Her toes curled.

  "Good thing you came along," Nayna said as she entered the room, pizza box and two cold bottles of water in hand. "Or I swear I'd have inhaled this entire pizza by myself. Here." She gave Isa one of the bottles. "Grabbed this from the fridge. You look like you could do with some cooling down."

  After placing the pizza box on the small table in front of the sofa while Isa guzzled some water, Nayna found a couple of paper napkins in her secret drawer of candy bars and foil-wrapped chocolates--hidden under piles of the most boring tax forms she could find.

  Napkins down beside the pizza, Isa's best friend and partner in crime sat again, her legs folded under her. "Okay." Dark eyes locked with Isa's. "Confess already!"

  Isa scrunched up the fabric of her full skirt with her free hand, released it, her hand sweaty. "There was no sex," she said straight out. "Nothing even close."

  "Then why do you look like you were busted by the cops with your bra off and a smokin' man between your thighs? Obviously it was one who knew what he was doing to get you into that state."

  "This isn't funny." Isa's glare had no effect on her friend.

  "Spill!"

  "You know I went in to school to work on my night-class lessons?"

  Nayna, who by now had a generous bite of pizza in her mouth, nodded; she'd had a firsthand hearing of the upstairs neighbor's vigorous hammering habits when she'd dropped by for lunch one day last week, on her way back from an external meeting.

  "Well," Isa began, "there was this dangerously hot gardener outside."

  Nayna squeaked. "Oh please, Isa," she said after quickly swallowing her bite of pizza, "please, please, please, please, please tell me that you made out with him at least."

  Isa stared miserably at her friend. "I attacked him like a wild animal."

  A blink. Two. At last Nayna whispered, "Really?" When Isa just nodded dumbly, her best friend gave a shout, then, slice still in hand, rose and did a little dance, complete with a booty shake and a one-woman stadium wave. "My hero!"

  Isa scrubbed at her face with her hands. "No," she said, "no, no, no. What if someone saw? I'm a teacher, Nayna. Not only did I throw myself at him, I did it on school grounds."

  Sitting back down on the sofa, Nayna stuffed the rest of the slice into her mouth and managed to swallow it before saying, "School's out for the summer right? Was anyone else there when you left?"

  Isa shook her head.

  "In that case, I think we can chalk this one up to experience and, well, an attack of gardener hotness. Consider it compensation for all those teenage years when neither one of us got any action at school."

  Isa laughed, the sound coming out this side of hysterical. "I need ice." She pressed the cold water bottle to one cheek, then the other.

  It had no discernible effect.

  "Lots and lots of ice," she added. "I can't stop thinking about his eyes." Such a distinctive lightning blue, a color her mind kept insisting she'd seen before--but Isa wouldn't have forgotten eyes that striking. Or a man that primal. "In fact, I think I'll go home and have an ice bath."

  "I don't care how mortified you are right now"--Nayna's grin cracked her face--"you'll look back on it one day and cheer your badass self."

  Huffing out a breath and seriously doubting her friend's prediction, Isa said, "Enough about my temporary bout of insanity. How's the suitor situation?" Isa was still struggling to accept that her savvy and highly educated friend was happy to go along with her family's desire for a traditional arranged marriage, but if Nayna was at peace with it, then Isa would support her all the way.

  "All my eager 'suitors' so far," Nayna said in a tone as dry as the desert, "are more interested in my being a newly minted chartered accountant than anything else. Most of them are accountants too--they want to acquire a future business partner via marriage." She made a face. "It's all very dynasty building. Your mother would approve."

  The words "your mother" had Isa glancing at her watch with a scowl. "Damn it," she muttered. "I have to go home and have a shower to wash off my stress-sweat... and the dirt from his body that transferred to me." She'd just noticed the specks on the deep aquamarine of her dress.

  Devil Isa whispered, Since you're dirty anyway, how about you track him down and crawl into the back seat of his truck?

  "Don't forget the party on Saturday!" Nayna called out after her as she reached the front door. "Wear your shortest dress! You might get lucky and spot another hot gardener!"

  5

  Banging and Hammering (Unfortunately, Not of the Ecstatic Kind)

  SAILOR BANGED IN A NAIL with unnecessary force.

  Beside him, his brother raised an eyebrow, Gabriel's gray eyes a reflection of their mother's. "What's that poor plank done to you?"

  Nail pounded in--so hard it wasn't going to dare come out ever again--Sailor stepped back to look at his and Gabriel's handiwork. He'd come to his parents' place straight after the fiasco at the school, he and Gabe having agreed to drop by this evening to have dinner with their parents and younger brot
hers--and to fix this part of the fence. It had suddenly fallen down after a piece rotted way without anyone noticing.

  "How old is this fence?"

  "How long have Mom and Dad been married? Take that and subtract two years."

  Sailor's mind spun back to the day they'd moved into this villa. The paint had been peeling and chipped back then, the yard an overgrown mess. But it had been a place Alison and Joseph Esera could afford. They'd all done plenty of grunt work to whip it into shape--and its value now was enough to cause a heart attack in a healthy man.

  This area was one of the hottest on the Auckland property market.

  But to Sailor, this home was memory and warmth and love and safety. "We got lucky with Dad, didn't we?" He only ever used that word to refer to Joseph Esera, never when he was speaking about the man who'd fathered two children, then abandoned them and his wife without a backward look.

  His brother glanced up from where he'd crouched down to collect the bent nails they'd put on the ground while they finished up, his shoulders broad and his body built for the hard physicality of rugby. "Yeah," he said simply, his eyes holding memories shared only by him and Sailor and their mother.

  Their younger brothers, Jake and Danny, had never--and would never--experience the icy fear of being thrown out of their home, their clothes thrust into trash bags. Sailor was the youngest of their original family, remembered the least, but he didn't have to remember all the details to remember the emotions.

  The bone-numbing fear and raw confusion.

  His five-year-old hand clenched tight around Gabe's as their mother battled the repo men to make sure they wouldn't take her boys' things.

  Sailor was so fucking glad that Jake and Danny would never be in the same position. Nor would their mother. Unlike the man who was biologically Sailor and Gabriel's father, Joseph Esera would cut off his own arm before turning his back on his family.

  "We also got lucky with Mom," Gabe pointed out as he rose to his feet, the bent nails in hand. "She never once gave up. Even after that bastard stole all the money she'd worked so hard to save. Even after he forced her to go to welfare when that was her worst fucking nightmare."