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suckling her breasts, trailing his lips over her stomach… He pressed the length of his body against hers and she felt the
thickness of his hard cock, straining against the material of his jeans. She
felt as if she were being swept away, as if she’d drown…
    The clock on the wall chimed, and she pulled away abruptly.

Chapter Eight
    “I’m sorry,” she gasped, struggling to clear her head. “I just
realized how late it is! Visiting hours at the hospital are already over. I won’t
make it there in time to see my sister tonight.”
    “Your sister?”
    “Penelope’s my sister. Half-sister. Wait just a minute, let me try
to call her.” She saw an odd look cross his face when she said that, but it
wasn’t the usual look of interest men got when she mentioned Penelope. It was
more like disappointment. Puzzled, she went in to the kitchen to retrieve her cell phone,
called her sister, and again the phone went straight to voicemail.  Frustration
and worry swirled inside her, tying her stomach in knots.
    Then she dialed the nurse’s station, and was reassured that her
sister was all right. But when she asked the nurse to tell her sister to call
her, the nurse returned a minute later, and said “She says that she’s in too
much pain to talk, right now.” Poppy firmly tamped down on the instinctive swell of sympathy that
surged inside her; this was Penelope, after all. “Was she in pain all day, or
did it just suddenly start when I asked to talk to her?” “Oh, no, ma’am, she had a couple of visitors, and she was just
fine when they were here. It just started when I asked her if she wanted to
talk to you. Sorry,” the nurse said, in a tone which said she knew all about
complicated family dynamics. “No problem. Please give her a message for me. I will be there
tomorrow night at 7 p.m., and if she wants me to keep running the bakery for
her, she better be available to talk to me. Or I’m leaving town.” She clicked the disconnect button and turned back to see Rafe
standing in the kitchen doorway, watching her with an expression she couldn’t
read.
    “So, uh…that was…nice, earlier,” she attempted a smile. Nice? Hah!
She’d almost had an orgasm right there against the living room wall.
    He grinned at her. “Nice?  I was thinking more…incredible.
Hot. Delicious.”
    But he leaned in the doorway and didn’t make a move towards her.
She was baffled. What was he waiting for?
    “And?” she said faintly, after an awkward pause.
    “And, I want to take you out to dinner after I come back from my
business trip. I’m supposed to leave towards the end of the week.  I shouldn’t
have jumped on you like that. I want to take you out and get to know you.”
    “Oh.” Poppy tried not to feel deflated and hurt. Was this a brush
off? Why the abrupt turnaround?
    “Okay…dinner would be nice,” she said with what she hoped looked
like a casual shrug.
    “I promise you, what I have in mind for you is far from nice.” He
flashed her a devilish grin and she felt herself warming up again. He didn’t
seem like the kind of man who’d lead a woman on for no reason. He’d come back
to talk to her twice already, even with Viola trying to chase him off. And now
that she thought about it, she did believe he’d been looking for her at
O’Malley’s.
    So he was pursuing her. Maybe he really was a decent guy who
wanted to take his time and not rush things.
    Rafe walked past her and began examining the kitchen window. “This
needs a new lock and you need an alarm system. So, what was that all about with
your sister, anyway?” Poppy sighed, heavily. “She didn’t tell me what kind of bakery
this was when she asked me to run it for the summer. It’s kind of a big deal.
 I go to a very conservative law school, on full scholarship. I live on
campus.  I don’t think they’d be thrilled that I’m working here. And I’m
sure she knows that. Then again, I guess she didn’t know anyone else that she
trusted enough