Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) by Carolyn McSparren Page A

you went ahead and moved without him?”
    “Yeah. I needed some distance from Long Pond. I bought this land a long time ago. It’s only twenty acres, and it’s not great crop land. I used to come out here sometimes and just sit in the trees. Made me feel almost as though I was home in North Carolina.”
    “It’s nice. Not so flat.”
    “The house is plenty big enough for me, and Jason too if he ever decides to move in.”
    He opened the broad front door and ushered Kate in. The house consisted of one large room with stairs on one end leading to what must be at least two bedrooms, if there was 94 FATHERS AND SONS space for Jason. The kitchen was open along one wall. Furniture was sparse, modern and upholstered in leather that looked as though it had been salvaged from old saddles and gentlemen’s clubs in the Edwardian era. The floor was dark red quarry tile. A stone chimney ran up the wall by the stairs leading to the loft. The whole place looked as though it could simply be hosed down. There was no evidence of a female presence—no pictures on the walls, and only an untidy stack of magazines on the scarred coffee table.
    David opened a rolltop desk in the corner to reveal a computer. He dug into one of the cubbyholes beside the mouse and came up with a set of keys dangling from a John Deere-tractor key ring. He handed them to Kate, and as she took them, he closed his fingers over hers. “Don’t go.”
    She swallowed, but left her hand in his. “I’ve got things to do, people to see.”
    “Kate, do you have any idea what it’s like to see you again? To have you here?”
    “David...”
    “Listen to me. It was all I could do yesterday not to sweep you up in my arms and drag you off to my cave.”
    “And leave Jason sitting in jail?”
    “That’s the only reason I didn’t.” He grinned ruefully, “That, and the fact that you would have fought me like a tiger.” He turned her hand over and bent his head to brush her palm with his lips.
    She felt the waves of heat welling up from her center, heat so strong that for a moment she felt as though she’d pass out. She couldn’t deny that his touch, his voice, the sight and sound of him opened her to emotions she had denied for far too long. She should turn around and run, but as his lips found their way to the pulse in her wrist, as his other arm encircled her waist and drew her to him, she resisted only for a moment before she let herself be drawn against his chest.
    Her body remembered him, fitted against him so familiarly that twenty years were wiped out in an instant. She closed her eyes and felt his lips sweep her temples, her eyelids, and finally touch her lips. She opened to his kiss as she always had, feeling tendrils of flame lick her, torment her with a need for him she’d denied for too long.
    Suddenly she stiffened. “No! I can’t do this. Not again. Not ever again!” She tried to pull away, but he held her. She felt his breath on her cheek. She couldn’t breathe without scenting him. “Please, let me go.” She twisted out of his grasp and started for the door.
    He called after her, “Kate, stop, please.”
    “My memory’s not that convenient. You obviously don’t remember our last encounter.”
    “I remember,” he said, and followed her. The urgency of his voice stopped her with one hand on the doorknob. “But what I remember most is your soft eyes when I’d look down into your face while we made love, the taste of your tongue, and the hills and valleys of the roof of your mouth.” He moved behind her and ran his hands down her shoulders and arms.
    Against her will she closed her eyes and leaned back against him.
    He whispered, his voice close to her ear so that she could feel his breath. “I remember the way your lovely long hair fell across my chest like a damask curtain when you made love to me. I remember the way your breasts fit my hands. I remember the way you opened to me and the arch of your back when you came... I remember