Lying in Your Arms

She just couldn’t put anybody else through that, especially not someone as great as Leo seemed to be. So, no. There was no room in her life for a fling with a hot fireman. None whatsoever.

Even if she desperately wished there were.

4

AS IT TURNED OUT, they’d both been wrong...and right. They were both in the correct room. Apparently, the woman who’d been at the front desk when Leo checked in was the only one who knew how to operate the hotel’s computerized system. She’d put Leo in the correct room, even though his key card hadn’t been coded properly. Then she’d gone on break, leaving a less-than-capable replacement at the desk. That man had put Madison in Leo’s room, too.

Leo couldn’t deny that it might be interesting—or, hell, fantastic—to share a bed with the beautiful brunette, but it seemed a bit soon to ask her if she wanted to become roomies.

Maybe by the end of the week...

He’d told the clerk that Madison could keep the room and he’d been assigned to another one. The woman got a twinkle in her eye and offered him a slight brow wag when she noted that Madison was traveling alone, too. Maybe she’d also heard from the bellhop that Madison was young and gorgeous.

Yeesh. He wondered if the clerk had been born a matchmaker or if it merely came with the territory when women reached a certain age. Lord knew there were a lot of them in his family. Of course, even his youngest female cousins seemed to have the gene, so he supposed aging had nothing to do with it.

Heading back to fill Madison in, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her with every step he took across the grounds.

Madison Reid. She hadn’t supplied the last name, the front desk clerk had. He liked it. Liked the woman to whom it was attached, even though he had only just met her.

Leo wasn’t a huge believer in fate, but he couldn’t deny that this afternoon’s incident—them both getting assigned the same room, her walking in on him, him being there to catch her when she fell—seemed pretty out of the ordinary. Like it was meant to happen or something.

He’d come here to enjoy himself, as well as to put the final touches on the coat of I’m-totally-over-Ashley paint he’d been wearing for six months. Truth was, ever since Madison Reid had walked in on him, he hadn’t given his former fiancée a moment’s thought. And now, as her name crossed his mind, there was only the vaguest sense of recollection, like when he ran into someone he’d gone to elementary school with and couldn’t for the life of him come up with their name. He could barely remember what Ashley looked like, or why he’d ever thought he could be happy spending his life with her in the first place.

She’d been beautiful, yes. And pretty successful. But there had been a shallowness to her, not to mention a thin vein of hardness that he’d spotted from the start but had fooled himself into thinking was an indication of strength. Maybe he’d had it all wrong. Maybe the coldness had been a symptom of her weakness, her need to constantly make sure she was the most desired, the most loved woman in the room. Perhaps that was why she’d set out to prove it by getting involved in an affair with his friend. Hell, for all Leo knew, it hadn’t been her first.

Funny how easy it was to see her—to understand her—now that the blinders had been so completely torn off his eyes.

Arriving back at his—no, Madison’s—room, he thrust all those thoughts away. He didn’t want to think about his ex now. Not when there were so many other good things to think about.

Lifting a hand, he rapped on the door. No answer. Hoping she’d gone ahead and taken a dip, he inserted her key card and pushed the door open a few inches, calling, “Madison?”

Again, nothing. So he went inside. She wasn’t on the bed, and as he crossed the room, he heard a faint splash. Stepping over to the patio slider, which stood open, he glanced outdoors and spotted a dash of red in the clear blue waters of the pool.

A red bikini. God help him.

She was floating on her back, her eyes closed, her arms out to her sides. Her face was turned to the sun and a satisfied smile tugged at those lips. He thought he heard her humming a soft melody.

Madison had been incredibly hot in a skirt and blouse. Now that she’d donned a couple of triangles of scarlet fabric, leaving much of her body bare for his perusal, he could honestly say he’d never seen a sexier female.

Her legs were long—heavenly—and she gently kicked them to keep herself afloat. As he’d noted when she wore the skirt, she had some seriously lush hips, covered only by little sling ties that held her bathing suit together. Those feminine hips were made even more noticeable by the slim waist, flat belly and taut midriff. Her bathing suit top managed to cover only the most essential parts of her full breasts, pushing up those amazing curves, leaving a deep V of cleavage that glistened with droplets of pool water.

All of her glistened. Every inch of that smooth skin, from her pink-tipped toenails on up to her cheeks, on which those long lashes rested, gleamed invitingly. Her thick hair had spread out, floating around her face like a halo, and she looked totally lost to everything but physical sensation as she soaked up the sun and the water.

A sharp, almost painful wave of lust washed over him. His heart thudded, his mouth went dry with a need for moisture only she could provide. His hands fisted at his sides as he tried to push away the images of touching her, stroking her, gliding his fingers along every ridge and valley of her body.

“Oh, you’re back!”

He flinched, not having even realized she’d opened her eyes. “Yes. Sorry.”

She quickly dropped her legs, standing up in the pool, which was only five feet deep at the most, and smiled up at him. “You were right, this was exactly what I needed. I feel tons better.”

“You look better,” he admitted through a tight throat. God, he hoped the sun was glaring in her eyes and she couldn’t see how taut his entire body was as he tried to keep himself from reacting to her. If she were a couple of feet higher, she’d be eye level with his crotch and would undoubtedly notice the ridge in his jeans. He was hard for the woman, wanting her desperately. Hell, he’d been half-hard for her from the minute he’d caught her in his arms.