All Grown Up

Annalise folded her arms beneath her breasts. The soft red sweater she wore delineated her modest curves and her narrow waist. Sam had big hands, and it was not a far stretch to imagine himself lifting her and spreading her legs and—

Oh, hell.

She tilted her chin upward, nose in the air. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But sorry, Sam Ely, I guess you’re stuck with me. If your grandmother wants me to do this project, I’m in.”

The jolt of joy that stabbed through his chest was a surprise. Did he really want an excuse to spend time with the prickly, stubborn Annalise Wolff? Apparently, according to his unreasonable but insistent erection, he did.

Sam cleared his throat, making a show of turning the calendar around and jotting a note. “I’ll get my attorney to draw up a contract. Do you have any questions?”

Ten days later, Annalise steered her Miata along a narrow paved road that led up to the entrance of Sycamore Farm. In the dead of winter, the property was not all that impressive. Fallow fields crusted with frost flanked both sides of the road. Excessive freezing and thawing had played havoc with the asphalt, leaving the occasional pothole.

Sam’s grandparents had been gone for several weeks, searching out warmer climes. But Annalise had been assured that the fridge and pantry were stocked and at least one bedroom outfitted for a long-term guest.

Remembering her last encounter with Sam, she muttered an expletive. Growing up in an all-male household had done unfortunate damage to a ladylike vocabulary. On New Year’s Eve she’d made a resolution to give up cursing, but so far, her progress hadn’t been stellar.

Sam’s last words still rang in her ears. Do you have any questions?

Hell, yes, she had questions, one in particular. Was I so repulsive seven years ago that you couldn’t bring yourself to have sex with me when I threw myself at you and acted like a fool?

The remembered humiliation churned bile in her stomach. Steering with one hand, she rummaged in her purse for an antacid. The intervening days and months had done nothing to blunt the sharpness of the memory….

“Hi, Sam.” She was breathless from running downstairs to intercept him before he got in his car. She’d kept a vigil at her bedroom window for the last half hour. Sam and his father had driven separately, because the older man was lingering to play poker with her father and Uncle Victor.

Sam paused, one hand on the top of the car, the other holding a set of keys. “What’s up? I thought you weren’t feeling well.” His slow drawl and lazy hazel-eyed smile took her breath away.

She bit her lip, legs trembling. She’d feigned a headache to get out of dinner. Sitting across the table from Sam would have been torture, because she dared not let her daddy see how much in love she was. Vincent Wolff was very protective of his baby daughter. She lifted her chin, reaching for calm. “Actually, I had some work to do. I’m graduating from college in a few weeks. And I’ll start my master’s program. Interior design,” she added, hoping he would be impressed. She felt like an adult for the first time in her life, with a level playing field, and the resultant adrenaline gave her confidence.

Sam jingled his keys. “Oh.” The look on his face wasn’t encouraging. If anything he was eager to get on his way. At almost thirty, Sam Ely was in his prime, and just about the hottest thing Annalise had ever seen.

She moved three steps closer. “I thought you might like to take me out to dinner sometime,” she said.

The look on his face—as if he’d been poleaxed—was not flattering.

Desperation lent wings to her feet. She moved forward with determination, went up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck and kissed him square on the mouth. His arms went around her reflexively, but his entire body stiffened. “Um, Annalise…”

She scattered kisses from his nose to his chin to his tanned neck revealed by an open-collared dress shirt. “I know you’ve been waiting for me to grow up,” she whispered. “Please tell me you want me. I know you do.”

His burgeoning erection gave truth to her words. But at twenty-one, more naive than most, she didn’t fully grasp the difference between male reflex and a more romantic motive.

After one heartfelt moment when it seemed as if Sam might return her kiss, he set her away firmly, holding out a hand when she would have embraced him again. “No, Annalise. I think of you as a sister.”

Confusion brought her up short. His body had responded…unmistakably. “I think I’m in love with you, Sam,” she cried.

He winced. He actually winced. And her heart turned to ashes.

The kindness in his gaze scorched her with humiliation. “You’re barely an adult, honey. And I’m years too old for you. I’m flattered. You’re an amazing young woman. But both of our dads would string me up if I tried anything with you…And besides…”

He had said enough. Annalise didn’t want to hear any more. She was mute with misery.

“Besides,” he said slowly, “most guys like to do the chasing. You might want to think about that. I know you’ve grown up without a mother to teach you these things, but men like gentle, feminine women. Soft, self-effacing. I guess it’s the whole caveman thing.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re beautiful, Annalise. You don’t need to try so hard….”

The front of the car hit a larger-than-normal pothole, and Annalise was jerked back to the present, clutching the steering wheel as she slowed to a crawl. Please, God, let Sam Ely’s visit be short. She would listen politely, take notes and bid him a civil goodbye. Then she could get to work.

If she ignored the debacle from the past, surely he would have the decency to do so as well.

As she rounded one last bend in the road and came in sight of the cluster of buildings that comprised Sycamore Farm, she saw a lone, immediately recognizable figure standing on the front porch despite the frigid temperatures. Her heart beat a sluggish rhythm as she put the car in Park and got out.

She was a grown woman, well-traveled. Sophisticated. Sexually experienced to some degree. She had done everything in her power to forget her first love, to deny how much Sam’s rejection had wounded her tender heart. Sam Ely was just a man like any other. For thirty-six hours, forty-eight at the most, she would impress him with her calm competence and her utter lack of interest in his sexy smile and masculine charms. By the time he left, all he would remember about Annalise Wolff was that she was damned good at her job.

He lifted a hand in greeting, the habitual smile nowhere in evidence.

Annalise opened her mouth to say hello. But in an instant that felt like the most dreadful slow-motion replay, disaster struck. Her heel hit a patch of ice in the driveway, her feet flew out from under her and she fell flat on her back. Hard.

When she opened her eyes with a groan, Sam Ely’s big body crouched over hers as his hands ran lightly over her limbs checking for damage. Gently he lifted her head and felt for a knot.

Annalise shivered inside her warm down coat, but it had nothing to do with the snow flurries swirling around them. All he had to do was touch her and she was that young, desperate woman again.

He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Are you hurt?”

Sam winnowed his fingers through silky black hair that clung to his fingers with static from the cold air. “Say something, damn it. Are you okay?”

Annalise’s glare could have melted a snowman at ten paces. She struggled to sit up. “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Quit pawing me.”

Though her words were clipped and showed her annoyance, beneath his touch she was warm and soft and womanly. Resisting the urge to touch the curve of her breast, Sam scooped her into his arms and stood, mentally counting to ten. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let her push his buttons. But she was so aggravating, his blood pressure went up immediately whenever they got within sight of each other. Not that such a reaction was anything new. As a friend of the Wolff family, he inevitably ran into her from time to time. Neither of them ever managed more than bare civility.

The animosity was his fault, no doubt. But it wouldn’t hurt her to let go of something that happened over half a dozen years ago. Thankfully, she didn’t squirm too much. She was a tall woman, and if he slipped on the ice, they’d both go down.

On the porch, he reached with one hand to open the door and stepped inside, ruefully aware that the house held a distinct chill. He sighed. “The heat and air guys will be here in a couple of days to overhaul the vents and put in new units. In the meantime, I hope you’ve got plenty of warm clothes. The old system is cantankerous.”

“Probably learned it from you,” Annalise muttered beneath her breath.

He knew she meant for him to hear.

In the kitchen, he lowered her into a chair. A cheery fire crackled in the fireplace, and his grandmother’s collection of Fiestaware in the china cabinet brightened the room.

He knelt in front of her. “Tell me the truth. Are you hurt?”

Big eyes stared back at him. And for an instant, he thought her bottom lip might have quivered. But if there had been even a moment of vulnerability, it was gone.

“No,” she said bluntly. “I’m fine.” She stripped out of her coat, revealing a thin silky blouse in a shade of blue that matched her eyes, and black linen trousers with a knife pleat. “But I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”

For a long second, Sam stayed at her feet. She could have stepped off the runway and come straight to him. Vincent Wolff had kept his baby girl locked up like a nun for much of her life, but probably out of guilt, he had indulged her passion for pretty clothes.

Sam sighed. “Don’t try to stand up yet. I’ll brew a pot.” In moments, the aroma of coffee permeated the air. Annalise hadn’t moved from the chair where he put her. But she was pointedly ignoring him, smart phone in hand as she scrolled through messages.

He found a china cup, filled it with hot, fragrant liquid and set it on a saucer at her elbow, along with a tiny pitcher of cream and the sugar bowl. He smothered a grin as she frowned at the add-ons and instead put the cup to her berry-colored lips and drained half of it, black and straight, the same way Sam liked it.

He turned a chair around and straddled it, facing her across the table. “How’s your dad?”