Excerpt of Seducing Sullivan by Julie Elizabeth Leto

ANGELA HARRIS placed one manicured nail between her teeth, aching to bite the scarlet enamel. She thought she'd cured herself of the habit years ago. But old ways died hard, especially when she stood outside her ten-year reunion staring at an eighteen-by-twenty-seven enlargement of a picture Jack Sullivan had taken of her at their first high school dance.

"It's like staring in a mirror, isn't it?"

Jack's deep, resonant voice drifted past the soft background music and chatter coming from the ballroom behind him. On a current of wine-sweetened breath, his words swept over her bare shoulder and caressed the sensitive shell of her ear. Her jaw slackened, releasing her captive nail from her teeth.

Show time. "I can't remember being that person," she lied, not ready to turn and face the man who'd snapped the shot when he was a yearbook staffer and not a well-known professional photographer. Not that she hadn't spent the majority of the reunion's kick-off cocktail party staring at him. While she had given the impression of listening attentively to former classmates, she'd watched Jack do the same across the room. She studied his square-jawed face, which had hardened well with age, his emerald eyes, which still glinted with an edge of mischievous daring, and his athletic physique, which fit impressively into his expensive Italian suit. Oh, she'd seen him, all right — enough to know it wouldn't be easy to go through with her plan. Enjoyable, maybe, but definitely not easy.

But she had to get Jack Sullivan out from under her skin. There had been long stretches of time when she hadn't thought of him, hadn't romanticized the short, sweet relationship they'd enjoyed. But those times were over. For the past year, he'd been increasingly a part of her life, even though he didn't know it. She had to prove to herself, once and for all, that a long-term association with the man would be bad news.

Her plan was simple — sleep with him, prove to herself how meaningless sex would be, then move on to someone who could give her the commitment she demanded.

After all, she had a daughter to protect — the child of her best friend, Chryssie, whom Angela had adopted when Chryssie died five years ago. She tried not to think about Dani now, but how could she not, with Jack standing right behind her, his ocean-green eyes, so like Dani's, staring at her?

She gathered her resolve. Jack didn't know about Dani. Maybe he never would. But she definitely wouldn't tell him until she squelched her lasting attraction to him. "That girl in the picture and I are no longer acquainted."

"Oh, come on," he contested. "You can't have changed that much since graduation, my prairie angel."

He took a step closer when he voiced the secret pet name, and his breath singed the back of her neck. Her lids fluttered. She could feel his hands just behind her — not touching her, but wanting to. Did she really want his touch again?

Then she gazed at that damned photograph. There she stood, dressed in the prairie style she'd favored then, along with every other diligent reader of Seventeen magazine. She looked so tellingly like a prim and proper schoolmarm from the Old West. Frills and ruffles covered her from her neck to the opaque hose tucked into calf-high boots. She'd covered up more than just skin in those days. But that was a long time ago.

Do it, Angela. You have to. Your future can't begin until you close this door to the past.

"Do I look like a prairie angel now, Jack?" With deliberate slowness, she glanced at him over her tanned shoulder. She'd practiced the look in the mirror a hundred times. Seductive, but with a hint of coyness. Would it work?

He took a deep breath. "I've spent all evening looking for her."

"Do you really want to find her?" She kept her voice low and husky. "Or would you rather discover who I am now?"

Jack's stare met hers and matched the challenge that was ten years in the making.

"Oh, I don't know. I always liked you as a brunette," he teased, twining one of the tendrils of her dramatically upswept and newly colored auburn tresses around his finger. "And your fashion sense has changed." He glanced to where the halter top of her black crepe outfit ended, leaving her midriff bare until the material resumed at her hips and ended well above her knees. "But I wonder if you're still hiding behind your clothes."

She turned away, but only for an instant. He hadn't lost his perceptiveness, that was for sure. Now, however, she knew how to distract him. "There's not much to hide behind anymore," she quipped, smiling as his gaze dipped to her revealing neckline.

His face was inches from hers. "A woman like you doesn't need much to hide behind."

If he'd been wrong, it wouldn't have been so difficult for her to laugh.

His proximity unnerved her, but she squared her shoulders, determined. She had to grab this opportunity before she lost her courage, before the enticing scent of his cologne and the audacious look in his eyes sent her running for safety.

Since graduation, she'd tortured herself with the question, "What if?" So he hadn't known she wore a skimpy teddy underneath her prom dress, or that she'd started on the Pill two weeks before. She'd decided to give him her virginity, but he ended up giving her grief because she'd danced with a friend instead of with him.

They'd had a shouting match, which ended with Jack stomping off and Chryssie's boyfriend agreeing to drive her home. Except for graduation and a brief encounter at a college party, she hadn't seen Jack since. She had every right to ask herself, "What if," to wonder how good it would have been.

Especially after she'd discovered the secret that propelled Jack from the back burner of her heart to the fore-front of her life. Her only chance to control her future and Dani's centered on permanently destroying the indomitable bond tying Jack to her.

She stood firm and feigned indifference to his insight. "I take it, then, that your opinion of me hasn't changed. I don't know if I remember the exact words you said on prom night —""

"I said," he interrupted, "that you were cold, frigid and repressed. I said," he emphasized, his eyes piercing her like flame-tipped arrows, "that you'd never allow yourself to fall so completely in love with someone that you'd surrender every inch of your soul."

As she heard the words again, so clearly, from a voice so familiarly throaty and cocksure, her confidence nearly faltered. "Those were awfully big words coming from a high school senior whose greatest sexual experience probably happened in the back seat of his Mus-tang convertible," she said, urging herself back into the character she'd assumed for the night.

The corner of his mouth flickered upward to form an arrogant grin. "Don't knock it till you've tried it."

She managed an impertinent smile as she took a step away from him. "Maybe I will."

He grabbed her hand. She willed it not to tremble. "After all these years, you intend to try it?" She lifted one eyebrow. "Too bad you don't still have that Mustang, or you might find out."

From behind them, the reunion chairperson's disem-bodied voice thanked the alumni for a great evening and ran down the list of Saturday activities at the beach resort. Some of the crowd trickled into the hotel atrium, laughing and talking, making plans for the rest of the night.

Angela and Jack stood motionless. He let her hand drop, though they were still so caught up in each other, they barely acknowledged the group of friends who stopped to invite them for a poolside catch-up session.

"Are you up for it?" she finally asked. They'd only been alone for a few moments, but she still felt overwhelmed. She needed a diversion to give her time to recoup.

"For you, I'm always up."

So much for down time. But she didn't flinch at his alltoo- clear meaning, and that seemed to shock him.

"I meant the beach," she said, stepping closer, "but if you took me literally, why don't we see what we can do?"

She turned away. Jack held his breath, fighting the urge to kiss her right then and there. All night, he'd been amazed at the changes in his prairie angel, and he'd wondered how much was real and how much was an act meant to punish him for breaking her heart in high school.

When she started down the winding stairway toward the beach, he hoped for punishment — long, unending torture like what he felt as she glided down the stairs with a wanton yet nearly imperceptible swing to her hips.

He followed Angela across the poolside deck, where she stopped to wait for him at the three-foot stone wall separating the resort from the beach. Moonlight glinted off foamy waves breaking gently on the shore about fifty yards away. A touch of the silver shine caught a diamond on Angela's earring and beckoned Jack to her like a light called to a lost mariner.

Sure, Jack had let memories of Angela drift back now and then over the past decade. He hadn't had much choice. Her willful eyes and her stubborn pout flashed into his mind at the strangest times. And with growing frequency. He'd received the reunion announcement only weeks after Lily's betrayal. What better way to cleanse himself of her treachery than a trip down memory lane with his prairie angel?

He'd have written his renewed obsession off to the consequences of first love syndrome, had there been any real love involved all those years ago. But hadn't it been only lust — fire-hot, cold-sweat, prepubescent lust? It had to be. Who knew what love was back then? Who knew now? Unfortunately, the passion they'd shared had remained unfulfilled. Sweet, prudish, obstinate Angela had refused him. Though from the look of things, very little of the Angela he once knew remained. He dared to hope that somewhere, the woman he needed still existed, despite the new, sensuous packaging.

"Do you remember taking me to the beach during high school?" Leaning against the wall, she lifted her ankle to unbuckle the thin strap of one of her spiky black heels. Her slim calves flexed and shimmered. All thoughts of his needs — except a physical one — vanished.

He knelt beside her and stared intently upward, aching to touch her. "We live in Florida. We went to the beach a lot."

She slid her foot closer to him, accepting his invitation to help remove her shoes.

"Do you remember the time after the homecoming dance? We'd only been dating a few months then."

For a moment, Jack couldn't remember anything. His mind focused solely on her slim ankle and shapely calf. Before he worked the tiny buckle of the strap, he smoothed his hands over the soft silk of her hose, imagining the feel of her skin. When she nearly pulled away, but didn't, he looked up and caught her biting her bottom lip.

He undid her shoes.

She cleared her throat. "You brought me to the beach on the night after homecoming our senior year. I didn't know what you had planned, but when we left, you were furious with me."

She leaned back on her hands and smiled. The moment of hesitation was gone.

"You wouldn't get out of the car," he reminded her.

"I didn't want sand in my hose."

"What about now?"

She slid her hands down, then under her skirt and closed her fingers around shiny black garter snaps.

"I can still think of better things to have in my hose." Jack's mouth went dry. "So can I." In the uncertain light, he thought he saw her hands shaking. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? As much as he'd always wanted her? He'd suspected so since he first spied her staring at him from across the room. She'd dressed as provocatively as the fashion models he photographed. She'd watched him with a bold curiosity that questioned and promised at the same time. Every signal, right down to her naughty lingerie, conveyed seductive intentions. It crossed his mind that she'd come to the reunion specifically to have him, though he tried to muster enough humility to keep his desire at bay.