by Nancy Warren
Okay, she was going to assume the head shake was to indicate that he was admonishing her for bringing up work, not that he couldn’t surf. Please, let him know how to surf well enough to fake it. No way she could find a pro to teach him in the short time available. There was another pause. If they didn’t talk about business, there was only one topic left that could possibly interest this man.
Giving in to the inevitable, she said, “Tell me about yourself,” and turned the sound down, ready to watch his lips—those wonderful, half smiling, excellent kisser lips—while he prepared to indulge in his favorite subject. She had the sound properly adjusted and her first dubbed statement ready. In her fantasy, he’d say, “There’s really not much to tell. I’m modeling to put myself through medical college. Of course, I’ll spend a couple of years with Doctors Without Borders before settling down to my own practice. All that’s missing is the right woman to share my life with.”
His lips started to move and the first couple of words shocked her so much she forgot to turn down the sound and listened to every word the man across from her said.
“Not much to tell, really,” he said with an uncomfortable shrug. “I go to work, come home, mess about with me mates.” He paused to think deeply. “Watch a lot of footie.”
She blinked. “You watch people playing footsie?” She thought her own hobbies were on the sad side, but that was pathetic.
He laughed, not in a loud way, but enough to get his chest moving and his eyes dancing. “Not footsie, footie. Football to you, love.”
“Oh.” She’d heard vaguely about some barbaric sport where they banged heads a lot and bloodletting was normal. “Is that Aussie Rules?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I hear it’s brutal and that there are no rules.”
“We-ell.” He appeared to give the matter some thought. “It’s not as formal as your American football, but there are rules.”
And he could explain every game and every rule within that game if he looked at her with those amazing eyes and called her “love.” Sure, she knew it was a casual endearment, but she didn’t care.
“Do you like modeling?” He looked at her and stopped mid-chew as though something he’d eaten didn’t agree with him.
“I’m not a model!”
Right. Of course not. They all called themselves actors these days. He had three lines in a commercial, and he was an actor. She helped herself to more of the hot pot, surprised at how her stomach was behaving itself.
“How did you get into the business?”
“What? You mean Crane?” She nodded. She meant modeling/acting, but at this point she wasn’t going to argue definitions.
“Didn’t Jennifer Talbot tell you about me?”
“Tell me what?”
Jen had been beside herself with excitement over her find and sent him over. That was about all she knew. Oh, great. He’d probably won some Australian version of the Academy Awards and she’d just brutally insulted him by never having ‘seen his work.’ Damn it, when she’d found nothing about him on the Internet, she should have looked harder. Made Jen send her a bio to go along with his pictures.
“I was after a job in the shipping department at Crane. Jennifer spotted me standing at the reception desk and talked me into doing this.”
Lise swallowed too fast and an entire fiery pepper went down the wrong way. She grabbed her water glass and gulped, blinking tears out of her eyes. She coughed and spluttered, feeling an unfamiliar burn, but even having her whole esophagus on fire couldn’t prevent her squeaking,
“You’re a shipper?”
“Naah. I’m a steelworker, but there’s not much work about at the moment. I’m on a temporary layoff.”
“A steelworker?” she echoed faintly, her voice emerging kind of breathy and raspy. Her windpipe felt like a fire-breathing dragon that’s breathed its last.
He seemed to be enjoying her shock. “That’s right.”
“Do you model on the side?”
He shook his head.
“Done any acting at all?”
Even before he shook his head his face twisted in a grimace, and she had her answer. “I don’t think I can act,” he said. “That’s why I needed you there today. I could say those words and pretend they were about me wanting to kiss you, and then it was all right.”
“I wonder what you’ll have to fantasize about before you can pretend to surf for the camera,” she snapped, reverting to her suspicion that Jen had completely lost it. His eyes darkened and her insides went hot in a way that had nothing to do with the misdirected pepper.
“That’s easy,” he said in a tone that made her wish for silk lingerie and a queen-sized bed.
“So you’re a steelworker,” she said primly, not sure how to answer his obvious innuendo.
“That’s right.”
“What do you build?”
“Lots of things. Buildings, ships. I worked on a bridge for the better part of a year.” He grimaced. “Hot work. Outside all the time, but I like being part of something permanent. You know? People will drive or walk or bicycle over that bridge for generations, and I helped build it.”
She nodded, but really she couldn’t relate. Her business was the opposite, style not substance, the advertisement not the product. Wait a minute. If he’d worked outside—
“Did the sun do that to your hair?”
He stuck a hand through his hair as though he’d forgotten he had any on his head. “Made it a bit lighter, I suppose.”
“You’d pay a few hundred to get that look in a top salon.”
He snorted. “You might.”
And she didn’t even have to ask about the tanning bed. She bet he had tan lines at mid-thigh, if he wore shorts to work, and at the sock mark because he’d wear work boots on the job. Her heart began to pound so hard she felt dizzy. It was real. It was all real. The muscles weren’t gym-designed but literally forged by steel. The hair, the tan—they were natural. He was real. She was so used to dealing with people who, while they may have been given a very nice package in which to hold their bones and blood, liked to help nature along a little. But this guy was the real thing, in a world where even the phrase the real thing was an advertising slogan.
“That’s me. Nothing very exciting. What about you then?”
“Me?”
She almost fell off her chair as she received her second powerful shock of the evening. When was the last time a man she was out with had asked about her? When had she been out with a man on a real honest-to-goodness date, come to think of it? It had to have been six months ago at least, and so forgettable she hadn’t repeated the experience until now. She’d been so immersed in work she’d forgotten—or maybe, a small voice whispered, she’d been using work to avoid the whole messy man/woman thing.
“I work too much,” she admitted.
And the pitiful truth was that work was becoming her life. Since she didn’t seem to have anything more pressing to take its place, her job was growing like some science fiction blob, oozing into more and more of her waking hours and taking over.
“So you’re a workaholic?”
She grimaced, hating the sound of that word and everything it implied, but feeling the need to be honest. “Yes.”
He nodded and seemed to ponder something. How he was going to get out of here gracefully—and fast, perhaps. Then she saw his lips curve ever so slightly as though he were enjoying a private joke. Great. Just great. No wonder she rarely dated. Provoking barely contained laughter in an attractive man wasn’t a big inducement to get back out there.
“Tell me something,” he said, his mouth serious again but amusement lurking deep in his eyes. “Have you got stomach trouble?”
She rubbed her middle, which was surprisingly calm considering she was out on a date and eating spicy food. “I get stress stomach now and again.”
He nodded and the single dimple creased. It would be devastatingly attractive if she didn’t suspect it was caused by him
laughing at how pathetic she was.
“Headaches?”
She blinked so hard it hurt. “What, are you a steelworker by day and a doctor by night?”
“There were headache tablets and some sort of antacid hanging out of your bag the first time I saw you.”
“That’s not all that was hanging out,” she replied as the whole humiliating incident rose before her like Marley’s ghost clinking and clanging, an endless round of mortification.
“Right.” He didn’t laugh. The dimple didn’t even deepen, but she could tell it was an effort. “I thought you were a bit of a party girl.”
Well, obviously now he knew her better he’d figured out that wasn’t the case. She shook her head, letting go of the brief fantasy. “That wasn’t even my dress. Or my shoes.”
“I like the shoes you’ve got on better.”
“You do?”
“Sure. You can get about in those without tottering along like you’ve got bunions.”
“Well . . .” She was so delighted she was almost speechless.
He leaned a little closer. “I did like that dress, though.”
The atmosphere between them seemed suddenly too warm and she recalled that moment just before he’d kissed her back at the office, when she’d wanted him to, felt him think about it, hesitate, and then quietly move in. She wanted him to kiss her again, so much she could hardly stop herself from making the first move.
“So,” he said, suddenly seeming to reconsider and draw back out of imminent kissing range, “are you disappointed?”
“Disappointed?” She was disappointed he hadn’t taken her up on her obvious invitation and kissed her. At the moment her mind couldn’t hold a lot more.
“I’m a working man. I’m not sure what you were expecting, but—”
“A surfer boy. That’s what I was expecting. A party-hard, life’s-a-beach, model-on-the-side-for-some-extra-cash surfer boy.”
“That’s not me.”
She started to smile. It began somewhere down in the region of her normally tortured belly and worked its way up. By the time it got to her face, it was a full-blown sunflower of a smile.
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
He reached across the table for her hand. “Is that a good thing?”
She felt as though something in her love life might be about to go right.
“Oh, yes,” she said, the smile still stuck on her face. “That’s a good thing.”
For another moment they stayed like that. She felt the warm current running back and forth between their hands, felt the calluses she should have noticed before, felt his eyes on her face, and a quick glance up told her what was going on behind them was as hot as what was going on in her mind. He pulled out his wallet and yanked out some of the cash she’d given him, threw it to the table.
“Let’s get out of here.”
His urgency fed hers, but still she hesitated. “We should get a receipt. This is a deductible expense.” He raised their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. “Oh, the hell with it,” she said cheerfully, confident that they’d grossly overpaid for dinner, would deduct not a cent, and that she didn’t care in the slightest.
Chapter 7
It had seemed as though they’d walked quickly to get to the wharf, but that pace was a snail with a limp compared to the way they sprinted to get back to the hotel. Sprinted uphill. She gasped along, knowing the exercise was good for her, thinking maybe all her cellulite would turn to hard, trim muscle in the time it took to get back to his place, before her lungs gave out. As happy as she was that he was in such a hurry to be alone with her, she really needed to breathe. But not to slow the pace. There was only one solution.
“Taxi,” she managed to gasp. Luckily it was Friday and the place crawled with cabs. Soon they were bundled in one and sliding smoothly uphill.
Still she felt the tension in the man beside her, was certain she heard him mumble, “Come on, come on,” under his breath.
She knew exactly how he felt. She half-expected him to grab her in the taxi, but whether from shyness or manners or maybe men just didn’t do that sort of thing in Australia, she was unmauled and anxiously wanting when they got to the hotel. This time she was ready with her company credit card, which meant an instant receipt and no wasted time or money. She started to pass the card forward, caught the urgent expression in Steve’s eyes, and thought, What am I doing? It was her turn to grab a twenty dollar bill for a seven dollar cab ride and toss it into the front, with a hurried thanks.
“Evening, Mr. Jackson.”
“Hi, Ralph.”
The doorman nodded to Lise.
“There’s a good crowd up on top tonight,” he said. Steve stopped and stared at the doorman.
“He means in the bar on top of your hotel,” she explained. “It’s usually busy on Fridays.”
“That’s right, miss. Wonderful view of the city from up there.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”
“There’s only one view I want tonight,” Steve said in an urgent undertone.
“Shh,” she said as they broke Olympic speed records racing to the elevator. Once the silver doors shut them in and they were fortunately alone, she wondered if he’d lunge for her the way she’d half-suspected he might in the cab. He didn’t. But the way he looked at her had the clothes damn near melting off her body. Maybe his hands didn’t touch her, or his lips, but his gaze touched her everywhere, igniting tiny flames across her skin. Anticipation, she decided, was the most potent aphrodisiac of all. He was staring at her body blatantly, and she felt all her womanly bits do their best to flirt with him. Her nipples fluttered to coy attention, her pulse thrummed to some ancient jungle beat, and her belly was growing heavy and warm with excitement.
“I’ve wanted you since the minute I saw your breast pop out of your dress,” he said softly.
And darned if both of her breasts didn’t do their level best to toss themselves out for him a second time. She heard a soft sigh and realized that it was hers.
“It’s been driving me crazy that I saw only one. I want to see them both.” He stopped to drag in a hungry breath. “I want to touch them.”
“Mmm.”
“And taste them.” Oh, this was more foreplay than she’d had in her entire last relationship. She was so hot it was all going to be over before they hit his suite. She should have booked him on a lower floor.
“I wanted you before we even met, when I first saw your picture,” she admitted, finally recognizing that had been the source of her dissatisfaction at first seeing the eight-by-tens.
She’d felt not so much like Cinderella looking into the face of Prince Charming, but like one of the ugly stepsisters knowing that her foot would never fit the dainty glass slipper and that there could never be a chance for her. But even as she’d wanted him so much, she’d felt twitchy and restless.
“Then I saw you in person.”
“And?”
“And I only wanted you more.”
“That’s good.”
“I guess.”
“I’ve never had sex with anyone who wasn’t Australian before,” he said, looking momentarily shocked.
“I’ve never had sex with anyone who wasn’t American,” she realized.
“Christ, I hope I get it right.”
They’d hit his floor, but the ding of the arriving elevator didn’t come close to blocking out her snort of laughter. She’d been petrified of disappointing him, and even his half-joking admission of his own fears had her relaxing. Maybe it was the way he’d kissed her earlier. Maybe it was the way he’d talked so sensibly at dinner, but somehow, she knew this was going to be okay. They left the elevator together but the hurry had dispersed. It was as though something momentous were about to happen and they wanted to savor every minute. Or the anticipation was so strong they wanted to draw it out. Or they were so scared they’d mess it up that they were in no hurry to dive between the sheets.
He pulled
out his key card and they entered the room. He flipped on a lamp and in the pool of golden light he appeared mysterious, his eyes dark and serious but oh, how they pulled her to him.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“No. I just want to get the first time over with.” She gasped when she realized she’d said those words aloud, feeling herself blush scarlet. “I mean—” Oh, he might as well know the truth. He was going to find out soon enough. “I’m just so awkward at this.”
“What, sex? Of course you’re not.”
“Excuse me, but I think I’d know better than you.”
Steve shook his head at her. “It’s all those flipping magazines you women read. I went through a load of them on the flight over, and I’ve never seen so much rubbish.”
“What are you talking about?” She did a lot of advertising in those magazines.
“Those articles,” he rolled his gaze. “How to look better naked, what men really mean when they say I love you, thirty-seven-and-a-half tricks to drive him wild in bed.” He dropped his voice back to its normal register. “No wonder everyone in America thinks they need an analyst. How can a magazine article tell them how to have better sex or more orgasms?”
Oh, she wished he hadn’t mentioned orgasms. Her stomach gave its first twinge of the evening. What if she didn’t have one? She was so nervous she wasn’t sure she had it in her. In fact, this whole thing was a terrible idea.
“I think maybe—”
“I’ll tell you what I think; if people spent less time worrying about what they look like naked and keeping scorecards on how many tricks they pulled in bed, they might actually enjoy sex more.”
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
Never mind the antacid, she was heading into Valium territory. And frankly, she wished she could have a time-out and read up on how to look slimmer when naked, have more orgasms, and hell, if there were thirty-seven-and-a-half sex tricks, she was short about thirty-five. But he was grinning at her in a totally appealing way, and despite the fact that she was feeling insecure, she was also feeling that if she walked away from this now, she’d always regret it.