Breaking off with Winter was the last thing he wanted to do. She was bright and articulate and attractive. It had surprised him how much he had liked walking around the mall with her, talking with her and teasing her. He enjoyed her body. Her response to him left him with no doubts that she found the pleasure to be mutual. His discovery that she had a little bit of a kinky side was a definite plus. Just thinking about her made his body ache.
Michael shifted, trying to ease the uncomfortable swelling in his groin. Their last time together—the way her hot, wet sheath had clenched around him, her unexpected excitement and arousal at doing it in the open—
Michael’s heated reflections skidded to a halt. Son of a bitch. That was it. He had pushed her too far, too fast.
Michael swore. He was sure that he was right. She had been skittish from the beginning. He should have known better. But when she became so turned on by the way he was teasing her after the ballet premier, he had acted on his impulse to spin the fantasy into reality. The resulting sex had been good. Damn it. It had been more than good. He remembered what he had said afterward and how Winter had shut down. Michael shook his head in disgust at his stupidity. Knowing the little about her that he did, he should have anticipated that she might react badly.
React badly? Winter had been frightened right down to her vanilla core.
When they had first met over coffee, there had been something about her that drew him and would not let him forget her. It was the reason why he had renewed contact in hopes of meeting with her again. From his perspective, the night they spent at his house had been a spectacular success. He had never felt such a fever of lust in his life. He hadn’t been able to get enough of her. He still felt that way. Winter was an anomaly, a mystery, a puzzle. He had glimpsed the depths of passion hidden inside of her. He wanted to ignite it and burn in it.
Michael swore again, this time more softly. He had planned to woo her and gain her trust and perhaps in the process teach her to trust herself and her own passions. She was his, but she didn’t know it yet. He wasn’t going to give her up without a fight. And for damn sure he wasn’t going to accept a “Dear John” e-mail.
Michael carefully composed an e-mail that was an auto-responder clone, informing the recipients that he was absent out of the country on business but would be back in touch when he returned. He sent the generic-looking response in reply to Winter’s e-mail address. When she received it, she would not know if he had actually seen her own e-mail and that was exactly the way he wanted it. He wanted to keep her off-balance. He wanted her to think that he knew nothing about her effort to break off with him.
When he got back from Singapore, he would do some major damage control.
Cathy fretted over the e-mail she had sent to Michael, wondering how he would react. Badly, she suspected. She didn’t think he would let her e-mail go without comment. She hoped that he would respond without recriminations, but if he did get ugly, then she would simply drop out of sight. She would close both the secondary e-mail account and the bank account. Since he didn’t know where she lived or worked, she could be assured that he would not appear on her doorstep.
Two days passed without a call or e-mail from him. She began to think that was the end of it, and she breathed a little easier.
When the response finally came, it caught her by surprise.