Coming Attractions by Rosie Vanyon Page A

much nicer for us then, huh?” Levi grinned.
    “Toast?” she suggested innocuously.
    “Vixen,” he teased as they hit the
isthmus and drove west toward the peninsula and the imposing facade of Flinders’
Keep where storm clouds amassed.
    “What was it like growing up there?”
he asked.
    “What? As a rich kid in a mansion?
Or in my eccentric mother’s shadow?”
    “Can you separate them?”
    She slid off her Wayfarers as the
cloudy darkness rolled in. “I guess not. My mother wasn’t an ogre, you know.
The tabloids loved her because her monied background paired with her wacky
career choice made good reading, and because she was beautiful. They liked to
photograph her treasure hunting in her Wellington boots in Zaire or some
equally remote location and run the picture alongside another of her at a gala ball
in a tiara. It made a dramatic juxtaposition, I guess. And then when my father vanished,
it was all conspiracy theories and intrigue and tragedy, which just added fuel
to the fire. The public lapped it up.”
    “Your father, Dane, disappeared
during an expedition. Is that right?” Levi asked her.
    “Yes. Mom never discussed any
details. I only know what everyone else knows from the media—basically that
he’d had a run-in with some shady characters. He was gone and was never coming
back. After that, if Mom so much as shared coffee with someone who happened to
be male, the paparazzi would leap to a sexual conclusion. If she had slept with
even half the men the papers said she did, she would have died from exhaustion.
In truth, while she was an outrageous flirt, I never recall a man staying at
the house. As far as I could tell, she was about as sexually active as mashed
potato. When I was older, I developed a sense that she flirted so shamelessly
as a ploy to keep men at a distance. The coquetry was almost like a shield. She’d
stroke their egos and play their games and send them on their way, happy but
puzzled as to how she had deflected their advances so gently but so completely.
    “She was a nice, normal woman,
Levi. She cared about other people’s feelings, she gave money to charity, and
she dug in the garden. She baked the best brownies and watched dumb movies or
played Monopoly with me and Mia on Saturday nights. She never complained when
Mia cheated or when I spilled popcorn all over the couch. She was just a
regular mom.”
    Levi pulled up in front of the
house and gestured for her to wait while he stepped around the truck and took
her elbow to help her out. He didn’t release her arm as her feet touched the
gravel. Instead, he took her other arm and gently guided her around to face
him.
    Toe to toe, inches apart, he could
see the different rays of blue in her irises, the pierced holes in her ears,
the curl of her lashes, and the faintest smattering of freckles over her nose.
He could taste the sweetness of her breath and feel the electric buzz that
hummed between them.
    “Sounds like Alessandra was a great
mom,” he said, meeting her eyes, somehow knowing it was important to her that
he acknowledged this.
    “She was.” Cara’s voice was throaty
with emotion, though whether it was thick with memories of her lost mother or
whether the cause was more immediate and more primal, he wasn’t certain.
    He hesitated, unsure.
    She blinked.
    He waited.
    She exhaled and closed the space
between them, lifting her arms and crossing them lightly behind his neck,
coaxing his face toward her own and edging her pelvis forward to nestle against
his crotch. She was bold without being vulgar, confident without being cheap.
He thrilled in the way she judged the moment so perfectly. He responded
immediately to her invitation and withheld nothing as he joined his mouth to
her own and savored the taste and tang and touch of Cara Kelly in his embrace.
    Her rejoinder to his kiss was swift
and thorough. Her lips were hot and honeyed as she claimed his mouth with her
silken tongue. Her hands were sure but searching as