Please Say I Do

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “Hallie?” Rik’s knock on the door settled the question in her mind. If possible, she’d kiss him both places. In the hallway and in the hotel room. What was the worst possible thing that could happen? He’d think she wanted to sleep with him? And if that was the worst…well, this could be a night to remember. He knocked again. “It’s seven-fifteen and I still have to shower and shave.”

  After one last inspection in the mirror, Hallie took off her glasses and set them on the counter. She wouldn’t be needing them tonight. If…when…Rik got close enough for her to require near vision, she planned to shut her eyes, anyway. Turning, she opened the door and stepped out

  Rik took a step back…only because he wanted to be sure he didn’t need glasses. But Hallie was actually standing there, draped like a Grecian goddess in the poppy red sarong. One shoulder gleamed bare and creamy and seductive in the glare of the bathroom light behind her. And was it possible she really had a flower in her hair?

  He swallowed hard, knowing he was in big trouble here. There she stood, smiling that soft, expectant little smile, looking at him with anticipation and pleasure in her eyes, waiting for him to say something about the way she looked. If he’d still harbored a doubt about her plans to seduce him, it died a quick and painless death. He may have spent the last thirteen years in the jungle, but he knew the look of the huntress and Hallie was wearing it

  “I’ll, uh…” He tried clearing his throat “I’ll, uh, just be a few minutes.”

  Then he escaped into the bathroom and shut the door.

  HALLIE WAS WEARING his sweater when he came out She was sitting on the edge of the bed, remote in hand and aimed at the television like a pistol at a target. The red light on the remote flashed every two seconds like clockwork and the television clicked from one channel to the next with precision. Rik hoped it wasn’t a James Bond remote…the kind that changed the channels at the touch of one button and doubled as an automatic weapon at the touch of another. “Anything good on?” he asked, testing the waters.

  “A documentary,” she answered with complete disinterest. “Something about apes.”

  Okay. So he had a little fence-mending to do. Women were so difficult. If you complimented them, they took it the wrong way. If you didn’t, they thought it must mean you found them totally undesirable. Rik frowned at his own generalization. He really didn’t know if all women acted like that. He only knew Hallie did. “Ready?” he asked, moving toward the door and, he hoped, more neutral territory. “I’m starving.”

  She rose and followed him without comment, stepping past him and into the hallway, not even waiting for him to close the door before she headed toward the bank of elevators.

  Rik caught up with her and just managed to beat her finger to the call button. He pressed it with sincere frustration and tried to figure out how he was going to get back into her good graces without flat-out rejecting her or unwittingly giving her the idea that he could be hers for the asking. “Did I mention how nice you look?”

  Her glance told him he’d not only not mentioned it before but he needn’t have bothered to do so now.

  “I like the flower in your hair.”

  It was jerked from behind her ear and crushed in her hand before the last word faded. “Now, look, Hallie,” he began, determined to set her straight about the rules of seduction. “You’re not being fair. I admit I told you up front that I didn’t think much of rules, and I know I kissed you, not once, but twice.”

  He had her attention now. That was certain. She was staring at him with the same distasteful expression he’d seen on her face when he pulled out that bottle of grenadine and started to add it to her tequila sunrise.

  “I thought you only kissed me once,” she said.

  “Once when you were a little the worse for tequila and once when I saved you from taking a dive off the balcony.”

  She sniffed. “Oh. That’s right I forgot for a minute about the chocolate kisses.”

  Now he knew where he rated…below Hershey’s on the list of preferred smacks. “But kissing isn’t the point,” he said, beginning to wonder himself what point he was trying to make. “It’s the other thing.”

  “The other thing?”

  With a start, he realized what she might be thinking, and his ego had him blurting out a definite “No, not that! That works just fine.”

  “I believe you,” she said hastily. “I never doubted for a second that everything you have works beautifully and that you don’t have any problems with that…or any other thing.” She paused, then hurriedly continued, “I mean, I didn’t think you would. Really, I never even thought about it at all. Not until you brought it up.” Her eyes got wide and looked green above the blush that stained her cheeks as she realized the double entendre.

  If they’d been talking about anything less personal, Rik would have cut his losses then and there and kissed her until she couldn’t pronounce the word chocolate. Which brought him smack into the reason he’d begun this disjointed conversation in the first place. How was he going to handle this? Hallie, he could say, whatever you’re thinking might happen between us isn’t going to. While I might be willing to be seduced if you weren’t married the fact that you are married puts my participation out of the question Rik realized that he really hated explanations and wondered why he’d decided that living back in civilization again would be so great.

  “Could we start this evening again?” he asked.

  She frowned. “How far back would we have to go?”

  “How about the moment you opened the bathroom door and my heart fell at your feet?”

  That did it The color of her eyes switched from disconcerting green to a dreamy green gray and golden hazel, and her lips parted in that little O he found so appealing. “Oh,” she said.

  “Oh,” he repeated, knowing he had just landed himself back in trouble. Big trouble. The temptation to gather her close and kiss her senseless was very strong and so tempting he was reaching for her before he caught himself and brought his hands back where they belonged—at his sides. “Now, if that elevator will ever get here, we can go downstairs and have a nice dinner.” In the open, public surroundings of the dining room, he added for his own benefit as he checked the arrows. “Why do people always look at the indicator lights?” he asked in a purposefully cheerful tone designed to keep her thoughts, and his own, off the palpable silence that had settled between them like an uninvited guest. “As if that will give them some advantage on getting into an elevator. I mean, there’s not exactly a stampede at the moment. There’s no one here but you and me and it really doesn’t matter when the elevator gets here, does it?”

  She shook her head in agreement, and then, with some degree of fatalism, he watched her lift her chin and gather her courage with a deep breath. “We could stay in the room,” she suggested on the exhale. “We could order from room service.”

  It was as near to an invitation as he was likely to get while waiting for an elevator, Rik thought, and wished the damn thing would arrive and get him out of this danger zone. “We could,” he agreed slowly. “But I can’t. I’d like to. I really would, but in the room we’d be…alone. And in the dining room we…wouldn’t”

  She looked down and her fingers uncurled around the crushed flower. A petal drifted to the floor, followed by another, but Rik saved them both with a sweep of his hand. “You don’t want to lose your petals,” he said as he dropped them back into her palm. “The fragrance will last even if the flower didn’t”.

  The chime of arrival caught him by surprise, and when the elevator doors slid open, he motioned for Hallie to proceed him. Still holding the flower and petals, she stepped inside and, oblivious to the fact that there were other people present, turned to him with a troubled look. “Are you in love with somebody else?” she asked.

  Rik shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortably aware of how that must sound to the other occupants of the elevator. Couples, right down to the young man and woman who had watched Hallie do th
e bossa nova in the lobby last night. “I’m not sure,” he answered in an aside. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.” She did lower her voice, but she didn’t stop talking. “You’re only the second man I’ve even thought about…about…well, about sleeping with since…Well, for a very long time, and I’d just really like to know if your reluctance has something to do with me or if it’s because of your feelings for somebody else.”

  ‘’Believe me, I’m not that noble,” he said tightly, and then had to slip his arm around Hallie and step close against her as the elevator stopped on the next floor and a couple in the back moved past on their way out

  She leaned away from him, planting a firm hand on his chest to keep him back. And then she lifted her chin and looked at him with a gaze that was thoroughly confused and uncertain, but definitely brave. “I understand,” she said so softly he had to lean closer to hear. “I’m embarrassed I asked such a stupid question. I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I usually don’t indulge in this kind of fantasy and I hardly ever—”

  “Excuse me.” The elevator stopped at the next floor and someone pushed forward, squeezing past on Hallie’s other side and pushing her even more tightly against him. Rik did the only thing he could. He pulled her into his arms and held her. And it felt good. And right. And he couldn’t let her think for another second that he wasn’t attracted and tempted by her uncertain proposition.

  “High maintenance,” Rik murmured to himself as he stroked her cheek with his finger and nudged up her chin with his thumb. “I’m not noble, Hallie, and I am flattered beyond belief that you’re interested, but the truth is, you’re married, and therefore out of bounds, even for a rules-are-made-to-be-broken guy like me.”

  “Married? You think I’m married?”

  He blinked. “You mean you’re not?”

  “No.” She sounded pretty sure about it and the floor started to drop out from under him. The elevator had started to move again, but that wasn’t the only reason. “I haven’t been married for years. I don’t feel like I was ever really married at all.”

  “But you told me all about the wedding, the cut on your cheek.” He was losing ground but holding on to her. “And you said flat out that you weren’t wearing your wedding ring because it only got in the way. What was I supposed to think?”

  “That I don’t wear any kind of ring because I’ve found they snag my clothes and are always either too tight or too loose and generally just get in the way?” The uncertainty in her eyes was giving way to a rekindled confidence, which he was in no shape to combat. “What did you think I meant, Rik?”

  This conversation was taking an embarrassing turn, but he tried manfully to hold his own by keeping his mouth shut and not admitting to anything.

  “You thought I was a married woman and I had set my sights on seducing you and making you the ‘other man.

  The amused glint in her eye should not have been appealing, but damn if it wasn’t

  “So you’ve been struggling with, well, you know…” She lifted her shoulders in a sexy shrug. “That other thing.”

  Two could play at this game, Rik decided. “No,” he whispered. “If I’ve been struggling, it’s with the idea of your being unfaithful. There aren’t many institutions I consider sacred, but marriage is one of them. Please believe me, I would never even have kissed you if I’d known you were married.”

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t have taken off my champagnesoaked clothes and hung them out to dry, either, would you?”

  His body was beginning to ache in all the wrong places. They were in the elevator, for Pete’s sake. “No, I’m sure I’d have dumped you downstairs in the lobby and let Kimo wheel you up on the luggage cart.”

  “You’re so gallant, Rik. Will it hurt your feelings if I tell you I’m a little surprised?”

  “Because I thought you were married?”

  “No, because it mattered to you when you thought I was.”

  A shifting, unsettling and very exciting feeling stirred within him.

  “Excuse me,” someone said. “This is the ground floor.”

  They’d landed, Rik acknowledged with a glance. Safely.

  But he didn’t make a move to exit the elevator. Neither did Hallie. Neither did anyone else. Rik looked expectantly at the only other couple still in the elevator with them.

  The young man from last night spoke up. “We’re sort of anxious to find out how this turns out.”

  “To tell the truth,” Rik said with a smile, “so am L”

  The young man’s significant other caught Hallie’s eye and shrugged. “So, he has principles. It could be worse, you know. I say order room service and be done with it” She pushed the button for the fourteenth floor, grabbed her young man’s hand and pulled him through the closing elevator doors, leaving Hallie and Rik alone and going up.

  Chapter Nine

  Caught in the snare of Rik’s arms and the speed of the ascending elevator, Hallie began to entertain some serious second thoughts. How had she gone from wondering where she would kiss Rik good-night to agreeing to have sex with him? In front of witnesses, no less.

  She risked an upward glance but got only a blurry smile for her trouble. At least, she thought he was smiling. Without her glasses, she couldn’t tell the difference between a considerate, patient, mature expression and a full-fledged, yippee-I’m-going-to-get-laid leer. How did a man look when a woman announced she wanted to sleep with him? Impassive? Gleeful? Would he display any sign of being surprised, or was surprise completely out of the question?

  Her experience was extremely limited in these matters. And she couldn’t exactly ask Rik. She’d already opened her mouth once too often in the past ten minutes, given away in an unguarded instant the reserve she cultivated like a reticent garden. In return, Rik had revealed next to nothing. Why didn’t he say something? Tell her he really had no interest in her at all, admit he’d only pretended to accept her offer because rejecting her in front of those people wouldn’t have been polite.

  “You weren’t just being polite, were you?” She couldn’t believe she’d said that aloud. “Never mind,” she said quickly. “Don’t answer that”

  But he tipped up her chin and forced her to look at him, anyway. “I’ve been living in the jungle, remember? I don’t know how to be polite.”

  “Yes, you do. I understand perfectly that I forced the issue and that sleeping with me was probably the furthest thing from your mind, and I know that isn’t the kind of thing a man would want to announce to an entire elevator full of people, so why don’t we just go back downstairs and have dinner?”

  “We’ll order room service,” he said calmly. “We’ll start with dessert.”

  Hallie gulped. This was all Brad’s fault. If he’d been half the man she’d thought he was, she wouldn’t be in this situation right now. But if she wasn’t in this situation right now—pressed so close to Rik there wasn’t room for so much as a sliver of reluctance—she knew she’d be desperately trying to think of a way to get herself into a situation exactly like this. Rik was warm and solid and tantalizing. He was funny and handsome and desirable. And right now, she wanted him more than she wanted to keep breathing. “Rik?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Go back to our room and order dinner? Yes.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Let’s take this a step at a time, Hallie, and see how things develop.”

  “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

  “Hallie, there are a couple of things you should know about me.” He leaned against the elevator wall and she leaned with him. “I almost never say or do anything just because I think it would make someone else feel better. I’m not that thoughtful. And while I do hold to my own set of principles, I’m no saint.”

  The elevator stopped at their floor, but he didn’t move to get out, and the doors slid quietly shut again. “A few minutes ago, you
asked me if there was somebody else. I’m going to be honest and tell you I think there might be, but the relationship is sort of on hold at the moment. I’m telling you this because I want you to know I’ve made no promises or commitments to any woman and no woman has any claim on me.”

  That was unsettling, Hallie thought. What was she? Roommate of the hour? And if she hadn’t just staked a fairly large claim on his commitment for the evening, she didn’t know what he thought was going on here. Pushing back from his embrace, she jabbed the button for the ground floor and the elevator began a slow descent. “Are you always this romantic before a seduction, Rik, or do I just bring out the ape in you?”

  He straightened. “You did ask, Hallie. Would you rather I lie and make believe I fell in love with you somewhere between the fourteenth floor and the lobby?”

  “Thirteenth floor,” she corrected. “Hotels only pretend it’s the fourteenth floor. And for the record, I didn’t ask you to lie, but I don’t believe I requested the whole, unvarnished truth, either.”

  He stared. “You have to be the most confusing female I have ever encountered. One minute you’re hot to get into bed with me and the next you’re giving me the cold shoulder because I told you what you said you wanted to know.”

  “You weren’t listening, Rik. I asked if you were in love with someone, but what I really wanted to know was whether or not I hold any sexual appeal for you at all…other involvements notwithstanding. And I don’t believe I gave any indication I was hot to get you into bed.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I may have been out of the dating scene for the past several years, but I haven’t been isolated or celibate. I know the difference between casual flirtation and serious invitation, regardless of the subtle way it may be couched.”