Pleasure Seekers by Rochelle Alers Page B

recovering from a beating that prison officials documented as an accident at the maximum-security penitentiary.
    “I don’t know why I keep forgetting about your brother.” Her head came up. “I’m sorry.”
    Faye saw the tears filling Alana’s eyes. “Damn, Alana,”she whispered. “You’d cry if you stepped on an ant. There’s no need to apologize. Please dry it up, Lana, before we both start bawling.”
    “Do you have anything for a headache? My head is pounding.”
    “No, but I’ll ask Bart if he has some in the house.”
    Alana closed her eyes, willing the pain to go away. When she opened them again it was to see Lowell Knight sitting in the chair Faye had vacated, his dark gaze fixed on her face.
    “What’s the matter, beautiful?”
    She closed her eyes again. “I have a mother of a headache.”
    Shifting his chair behind hers, Lowell rested his hands on her shoulders. “Relax,” he crooned as he gently massaged her shoulders and neck. “You’ve got knots everywhere.”
    Alana lost herself in the warmth and sensual smell of the body pressed inches from her own, and the strength of the fingers moving sensuously over the nape of her neck. She let down her guard, and for a few minutes she fantasized that it was Calvin’s hands on her bared flesh.
    However, reality surfaced when Faye returned with a bottle of water and a tiny paper cup containing two aspirins.

CHAPTER 26
    A lana spent the drive from Southampton to Manhattan with her eyes closed and her head in Lowell Knight’s lap. The pounding in her temples had subsided but it was the warmth of the hard thigh under her cheek, the gentle touch of fingertips messaging her temples and the gliding motion from the limo’s smooth suspension that eased her tension headache.
    “Come home with me tonight,” Lowell whispered close to her ear, even though he doubted the driver could hear him on the other side of the closed partition.
    “I can’t.”
    “It’s not as if you have someone waiting for you at home.”
    Alana opened her eyes, and sat up, scooting over on the leather seat to put some distance between herself and the handsome architect. She’d confided to Lowell that she was engaged and that her musician fiancé was currently touring with his band.
    She glared at him. “I come home with you and we do what?”
    Lowell smiled, displaying deep dimples in sable-brownsculpted cheeks. His steady midnight gaze was filled with amusement. “It’s not what you think, Alana.”
    Some of the stiffness left her body. “What is it I’m thinking, Lowell? That because my fiancé is out of the country, I’d crawl into bed with you?”
    Shaking his head, Lowell moved over and pulled her to his side. He rested his chin on the top of her head, her curly hair tickling his nose. “Are you this distrustful of every man you meet?”
    Alana trusted Calvin, yet that hadn’t been the case with the other men she’d been involved with. There was something about Calvin that told her he was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with; he was the one whose babies she wanted to have.
    “Not every man.”
    An inexplicable look of withdrawal came over Lowell’s face. He liked Alana Gardner—a lot. She was beautiful, smart and claimed a sense of humor he found refreshing. She was candid, something he’d found missing in some of the women he knew, and that included his ex-wife, and, despite her affianced status he saw a sadness in Alana she attempted to conceal behind a too bright smile and witty quips.
    “I share a brownstone in Fort Greene with my brother and his family. If you don’t feel comfortable staying with me, then you can sleep in a guest bedroom in my brother’s apartment. We’re going to have a block party tomorrow afternoon, so I’d like to invite you to come as my guest.”
    Tilting her chin, Alana stared up into the obsidian gazeof the man with sculpted features reminiscent of a carved African mask, and just for an instant regretted her