Summer Desserts

raging need to have her.
    With his hand on the knob, Blake turned around for one last look at her. There was something in the way she frowned at him, with her eyes focused and serious, her lips soft in a half pout that made him smile.
    “Monday,” he told her, and was gone.

Chapter Five
    W hy in hell couldn’t he stop thinking of her? Blake sat at his desk examining the details of a twenty-page contract in preparation for what promised to be a long, tense meeting in the boardroom. He wasn’t taking in a single word. Uncharacteristic. He knew it, resented it and could do nothing about it.
    For days Summer had been slipping into his mind and crowding out everything else. For a man who took order and self-control for granted, it was nerve-racking.
    Logically, there was no reason for his obsession with her. Blake called it obsession, for lack of a better term, but it didn’t please him. She was beautiful, he mused as his thoughts drifted further away from clauses and terms. He’d known hundreds of beautiful women. She was intelligent, but intelligent women had been in his life before. Desirable—even now in his neat,quiet office he could feel the first stirrings of need. But he was no stranger to desire.
    He enjoyed women, as friends and as lovers. Enjoyment, Blake reflected, was perhaps the key word—he’d never looked for anything deeper in a relationship with a woman. But he wasn’t certain it was the proper word to describe what was already between himself and Summer. She moved him—too strongly, too quickly—to the point where his innate control was shaken. No, he didn’t enjoy that, but it didn’t stop him from wanting more. Why?
    Utilizing his customary method of working through a problem, Blake leaned back and picking up a pen, began to list the possibilities.
    Perhaps part of the consistent attraction was the fact that he liked outmaneuvering her. It wasn’t easily done, and took quick thinking and careful planning. Up till this point, he’d countered her at every turn. Blake was realistic enough to know that that wouldn’t last, but he was human enough to want to try. Just where would they clash next? he wondered. Over business…or over something more personal? In either case he wanted to go head to head with her just as much—well, almost as much—as he wanted to make love with her.
    And perhaps another reason was that he knew the attraction was just as strong on her part—yet she continued to refuse it. He admired that strength of will in her. She mistrusted intimacy, he mused. Because of her parents’ track record? Yes, partially, he decided. But he didn’t think that was all of it. He’d just have to dig a bit deeper to get the whole picture.
    He wanted to dig, he realized. For the first time in his lifeBlake wanted to know a woman completely. Her thought process, her eccentricities, what made her laugh, what annoyed, what she really wanted for and in her life. Once he knew all there was to know… He couldn’t see past that. But he wanted to know her, understand her. And he wanted her as a lover as he’d never wanted anything else.
    When the buzzer on his desk sounded, Blake answered it automatically with his thoughts still centering on Summer Lyndon.
    “Your father’s on his way back, Mr. Cocharan.”
    Blake glanced down at the contract on his desk and mentally filed it. He still needed an hour with it before the board meeting. “Thanks.” Even as he released the intercom button, the door swung open. Blake Cocharan, II strolled into the room and took it over.
    In build and coloring, he was similar to his son. Exercise and athletics had kept him trim and hard over the years. There were threads of gray in the dark hair that was covered by a white sea captain’s hat. But his eyes were young and vibrant. He walked with the easy rolling gait of a man more accustomed to decks than floors. He wore canvas on his sockless feet, and a Swiss watch on his wrist. When he grinned, the lines etched by time and squinting at the sun fanned out from his eyes and mouth. As he stood to greet him, Blake caught the salty, sea-breezy scent he always associated with his father.
    “B.C.” Their hands clasped, one older and rougher than the other, both firm. “Just passing through?”
    “On my way to Tahiti, going to do some sailing.” B.C. grinned again, appealingly, as he ran a finger along the brim of his cap. “Want to play hookey and crew for me?”
    “Can’t. I’m booked solid for the