The Littlest Marine & The Oldest Living Married Virgin Read online

  “What was Mike saying to you at the restaurant earlier?”

  “Hmm?” He looked at her, thought for a minute, then said, “Oh.”

  “You don’t have to say,” she said with a gentle laugh. “I’ll bet I could guess.”

  “Yes, you probably could.” Chances were very good that Terry had been saying approximately the same things to her.

  “Why do you suppose they’re trying so hard to bring us together?”

  He shrugged again. “They mean well.”

  “So did the Crusaders.”

  Harding laughed aloud at her gloomy tone as much as at her words.

  She looked up at him and grinned. “I guess there really isn’t anything we can do to stop them, is there?”

  “Short of getting married?” he asked. “No.”

  “Well, as much as I love Terry,” Elizabeth said, and bent down to pick up a piece of driftwood, “I’m not willing to marry somebody just to make her happy.”

  “Amen.”

  She tossed the stick into the receding tide and stared at it for several long moments as it rocked on the rippling surface before being pulled back out to sea. “I haven’t been down here in far too long,” she said wistfully.

  Smiling, he echoed her earlier astonishment that he hadn’t owned a car. “What? You live in California and don’t go to the beach?”

  She caught on to what he was doing and said, “Touché.”

  They started strolling again in a companionable silence. An older couple, walking a tiny dog on a long leash, passed them with a muttered greeting. From far off down the beach they saw the wavering, indistinct glow of small fires burning in the cement fire rings. On the clear, still air, laughter and snatches of campfire songs drifted to them.

  But Harding paid no attention to any of it. Instead, his concentration was focused on the woman walking alongside him, carrying her high heels in one hand. He watched the soft breeze lift her dark brown curls off her neck and thought he caught the scent of her perfume. Something light and feminine and alluring, it sent daggers of need digging into his guts.

  Damn, what if he had listened to Mike a year ago when his friend had first suggested he meet Elizabeth Stone? What might his life have been like these past twelve months? Torture? Or bliss?

  Torture, most definitely.

  Because no matter how much he wanted her…no matter how powerful the attraction was between them…he wouldn’t allow anything to come of it.

  In fact, he couldn’t imagine why Mike and Terry had thought to pair the two of them up, anyway. They couldn’t be more different. He snorted a choked laugh and shook his head.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked. Reaching up, she plucked at a long strand of windblown hair that had attached itself to her eyelashes.

  “Just thinking,” he answered. “Mike and Terry must have been nuts to believe you and I—”

  “Nuts,” she agreed.

  “Me, a career Marine, and—” he stopped, cocked his head at her and wondered aloud “—what is it you’re called? The Princess of Party Cooking?”

  Now Elizabeth laughed. “Some reviewer gave me that tag a couple of years ago.” She shrugged. “My publisher loved it and ran with it. The name stuck. But all I really am is a pastry chef.”

  “Who writes bestselling cookbooks.”

  “Cowrites,” she countered, holding up one finger to admonish him. “Which means, I supply the recipes and a few humorous stories about some of my more memorable disasters and Vicki, the writer I work with, puts it all together and makes me sound brilliant.”

  Harding looked at her, surprise gleaming in his eyes. “Not many people would admit that they don’t actually write their own books.”

  She smiled at him. “No point in denying it. Vicki’s name is right there on the cover.”

  “And whose idea was that?”

  Elizabeth’s gaze shifted to the darkness of the sea. “Mine,” she admitted. “I can cook, but I can’t write, and I don’t want to take bows for something I didn’t do.”

  He knew lots of people who wouldn’t have been bothered by that in the least. There was more to Elizabeth Stone than just the way she kicked his hormones into high gear.

  Moving away from those ideas, he instead focused on what he had been thinking before. “Still, what could a Marine and a ‘princess’ possibly have in common?”

  “Not much, besides knowing two people with way too much time on their hands.”

  “True.”

  She swiveled her head to look at him, and one glance from those dark, fathomless eyes of hers and he felt as keyed up and tightly strung as he did the night before a battle.

  He sucked in a quick, deep breath and saw her do the same before she turned away abruptly.

  Elizabeth bent down, picked up another, longer stick and turned her back on the ocean.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, silently grateful that she had broken eye contact.

  “Something I haven’t done in years,” she said, and started writing her name in the water-soaked sand at the edge of the tide.

  He stood to one side and watched her.

  When she had finished with her own name, she went on, inscribing his name, using the last H in Elizabeth as the first H in Harding. Her task complete, she tossed the stick aside and stood back, admiring her handiwork. Then she looked up at him expectantly.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Until the tide shifts.” Then the ocean would run in, obliterating their names like an eraser moving over a chalkboard.

  “Nothing is forever,” she told him, and as she spoke a rogue surge of water rushed across her ankles and sluiced past her feet. The seawater rippled across their names in a haphazard pattern, and in a moment most of the script was gone.

  “See?” she said with a lightness that didn’t quite cover the note of disappointment in her voice. Then, glancing down at her soaking wet nylons, she grimaced and walked away from the ocean’s edge, closer to him. “Hold these for a minute, will you?” she asked, and handed him her heels.

  As she lifted the hem of her already short skirt, he tensed and asked, “What are you doing?”

  Bent at the waist, she looked up at him briefly. “I’m just going to take off these nylons.”

  “Out here?” Did his voice sound as strained to her as it did to him?

  “There’s nobody around but you and me.”

  That only made things worse.

  Harding took in another deep gulp of cold air and hoped it would do something to stop the flames erupting inside him. As a gentleman should, he half turned, to give her some privacy. Besides, there was no point in torturing himself.

  She saw the movement and chuckled. “Don’t worry about it, Harding. They’re not panty hose.”

  Oh, God, he thought, closing his eyes on a quiet groan. Garters?

  “They’re just thigh-highs,” she went on, when he still didn’t turn back toward her.

  Thigh-highs. Black thigh-highs. His body tightened at the mental image of lace and sheer black fabric hugging and caressing those long legs of hers.

  “For heaven’s sake, Harding,” she said. “Look at me. You would see more flesh if I was wearing shorts!”

  He turned around, then, and bit back another, deeper groan. It was worse than he had thought. Thigh-highs indeed. Apparently Elizabeth Stone was completely unaware of just how seductive she looked.

  The wide, black lace elastic band hugged the creamy white flesh of her upper thigh and gave way to sheer, black silk covering the rest of her leg. Slowly she smoothed her palms along the stocking, rolling the fragile material beneath her fingertips, exposing her pale white skin, inch by tantalizing inch.

  Mouth dry, throat tight, he watched her, unable and unwilling to look away. Her hands moved down her leg, and his palms itched to help her.

  By the time she had removed the first stocking, his breathing was strangled. When she started in on the second, bending over slowly to complete the task, his gaze shifted to the curve of
her behind beneath the short, tight black skirt.

  His fingers tightened around the shoes he held in one hand until he felt the tips of the high heels dig into his palm. He deliberately concentrated on that small discomfort in order to take his mind off the nearly overwhelming pain of his aching groin.

  Finally she straightened up and tossed her hair back out of her eyes. “That feels better,” she said, balling her wet nylons up in her hands. “Nothing worse than soggy stockings.”

  “Uh-huh.” He could think of a few things worse.

  “Harding?”

  He swallowed heavily. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he ground out. “I’m fine.” Or he would be as soon as he could get back to the base and stand under a cold shower for two or three hours. Or days.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Forget it.”

  She blinked, surprised at his gruff tone. “Okay.”

  “Look,” he said, more hotly than he had planned, “we talked about this. How whatever it was we’re feeling for each other won’t work.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’d appreciate you not making this any harder than it already is.”

  “I made it harder by taking off my stockings?”

  Rock hard, he thought.

  “Jeez, Harding, relax.” She shook her head and turned her face into the wind. “We’re both adults. We can handle this…attraction without acting on it.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to act on it. I said you were making things more difficult than they had to be.”

  “Aren’t you overreacting just a little?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe,” she said with a long look at his obviously uncomfortable expression, “you’d better take me back home, then.”

  Now that sounded like a plan. Get out from under the damn full moon, away from the soft, sea-scented breezes and the lulling, hypnotic rush of the ocean. Once distanced from this romantic setting, it would be easier to stick to the friendship they had so recently agreed upon.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” he said abruptly.

  “I’ll take those,” she muttered, and reached for her shoes.

  She moved in close, destroying his good intentions. Her scent surrounded him. Her warmth called to him, and he couldn’t withstand it. His resolve disappeared. Instead of giving her the shoes, he dropped them to the sand and grabbed her hand. Harding felt it again immediately. That sudden jolt of awareness. Of heat. Electricity. And she felt it, too. He could see it in her eyes.

  Instinctively he pulled her closer. Without a word she moved into the circle of his arms and tilted her head back for his kiss. Moonlight dusted her features, and even as he bent to claim her mouth, he knew he shouldn’t. Knew that once the line was crossed it would be impossible to go back.

  The wind picked up, and the roar of the ocean sounded all around them.

  He brushed his lips across hers gently, once. Twice. Then his mouth came down on hers with a hard, steady pressure, and a crashing wave of sensation fell on him. As if the night sky were lit up with fireworks, he felt himself come to life. He felt an intense connection with this woman, and when she suddenly broke away and took a staggering step back from him, it was as if he’d been dunked in a pool of ice water.

  Breathless and stunned at her reaction to a simple kiss, Elizabeth took a step away from the man who had just touched her so deeply. It was small consolation to see her own shocked feelings etched into the Marine’s stoic features.

  “All right,” she whispered, and started walking backward, keeping a wary eye on him. “Maybe you weren’t overreacting.” She shook her head and added, “We can’t do this, Harding. I can’t do this.” Then she turned and ran across the sand. She raced toward the pier and the street beyond where there were lights, people and a car that could carry her back to her house.

  To safety.

  She heard him running after her and knew that she would never be able to beat him. He had years of training behind him while all she had to show for exercise was a folded-up treadmill that made an excellent silent butler.

  Before she got close to the steps leading back to the street, Harding caught up with her. Grabbing her upper arm, he turned her around to face him.

  “Why did you run?”

  Why was he pretending he didn’t know the answer to that?

  “You know why.”

  He reached up and ran one hand across his severe military haircut. “You don’t have to run from me,” he growled. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “I know that,” she snapped, irritated with herself more than him. Good Lord, she was thirty-two years old. She had been kissed before. Often. Why was she reacting like a giddy teenager on her first date?

  Because, a voice in the back of her mind answered, she had never been kissed like that before.

  “Look, Harding,” she said, trying to explain something that just might prove to be unexplainable. “I wasn’t scared. Exactly. Just…surprised.” Stunned would have been a better word. “I guess I wasn’t really running away from you—it was more like running from whatever it is that happens between us whenever we get too close.”

  He nodded abruptly, his mouth thinning into a grim line. “I know the feeling.”

  “You were right when you said we shouldn’t make this more difficult than it already is.” Elizabeth forced a deep breath of cold air into her lungs. “Why start something that neither one of us has any intention of finishing?”

  He looked at her for a long, slow minute. “The only reason I can think of, is that Marines don’t run.”

  She choked out a laugh. “I’m not a Marine.”

  “No,” he said and pulled her close to him. “But I am.”

  This time, when their lips met, Elizabeth was prepared for the incredible sensations skittering inside her. At least she thought she was. She gasped as the opening ripples of excitement coursed through her, then she gave herself up to the inevitable. She had known from the moment she had first looked into his blue eyes that this kiss was coming, and instead of worrying about the repercussions, gave herself up to the wonder of it.

  He parted her lips with the tip of his tongue, and when she opened for him, he plundered her mouth like an invading army. Daggers of desire pricked at her insides, and when he held her tighter, closer, she pressed herself into him, flattening her breasts against his chest.

  He cupped the back of her head, his fingers combing through her hair and she reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as if afraid she was about to slip off the edge of the world. His right hand moved across her back, down her spine to the curve of her bottom. He followed that curve and held her against his hardness. An answering need blossomed inside her, and she moaned gently.

  Tearing his mouth from hers, Harding dipped his head to lavish damp kisses along the length of her neck. His arms tightened around her like twin bands of twisted steel. Desire screamed inside her. The feeling was more, so much more than she had expected. Elizabeth had the wild, insane desire to rip off her clothes and offer herself to him there. In the sand.

  She craved his touch more than her next breath.

  “Harding,” she whispered, “I want—”

  “Way to go, soldier boy!” A loud voice, filled with laughter, splintered the moment.

  Harding straightened abruptly, pulled her close to him protectively and shielded her while she pulled herself together.

  Laughter floated down to them from the pier above, and after a moment or two, shuffling footsteps told them that their audience had moved on.

  She buried her face against Harding’s chest.

  “Damn teenagers,” he muttered. “They’re everywhere. What I wouldn’t give to get that kid in boot camp.”

  “Good God,” Elizabeth groaned, her voice muffled. “What were we doing…thinking?”

  “Thinking didn’t have much to do with what we were doing,” he told her and stood s
tock-still for a long moment, keeping his arms firmly around her. Finally though, he said, “C’mon. I’ll take you back to your place.”

  Elizabeth drew in a long, shuddering breath as he lifted her into his arms again to carry her across the glass-littered sand. Ridiculous, but she almost enjoyed being carried around like some modern-day Jane to his Tarzan. She had never known a man strong enough to lift her not-so-small form as easily as he would have a child.

  Her arm around his shoulders, she tried not to think about the hard, corded muscles lying just beneath his uniform. Or about how much she would love to feel his naked strength beneath her fingertips.

  When she thought she could speak without her voice shaking, she tried to lighten the incredibly tension-filled moment. “I thought you said Marines don’t run?”

  He glanced at her, then shifted his gaze to a point above her head. “They don’t. But they have been known to make a strategic retreat now and again…when absolutely necessary.”

  “Like now?”

  “Princess, exactly like now.”

  Four

  “Look, Harding,” she said and stared up into those lake blue eyes of his. “I don’t think this friendship thing is going to work.”

  “Probably not,” he conceded as he set her down on the sidewalk.

  Surprised, she nodded at him thoughtfully and pushed the button for the Walk signal. “Somehow, I had the feeling you were going to prove to be one of those die-hard Marines.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” The light changed. He took her elbow and guided her across Pacific Coast Highway.

  “Meaning,” she said, forcing herself to keep up with his much-longer stride, “not knowing when to give up. Surrender.”

  He stopped alongside the car and looked down at her. One corner of his mouth quirked, and her insides jumped. Ignoring the sudden rush of adrenaline to the pit of her stomach, Elizabeth went on. “I mean, since we both know that friendship has already been blown out of the water, we can simply call Mike and Terry and tell them that the deal’s off. We can each help out…we’re just not going to be doing it together.”

  “Nope.”

  It took a moment for that one word to sink in.