When he opened the door and ran his eyes over her, she crossed her arms defiantly.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she mumbled to the hall carpet.
“Come on in.” He stepped back to let her in, amused out of his nervousness. CJ looked like she’d turn and run home with the slightest provocation.
It leveled the playing field.
She hadn’t let him down with her choice of clothing. He had been expecting her to arrive in something about as feminine as a Glock gun, and the oversized brown corduroys and beige cable-knit sweater certainly fit that description. She either shopped in the men’s department, or she had borrowed the outfit from Bill Cosby.
As usual, her hair was pulled back, and he thought to wonder exactly why CJ wanted to make herself as unattractive as possible. Maybe once he had her wearing what he wanted, she would tell him. Wearing what he’d spent the other half of the day shopping for when he wasn’t wrestling with Christmas decorations.
Knowing CJ, though, she was just as likely to pull her gun on him, or give him a shove, than to spill her secrets. And hell, maybe she just liked to be comfortable.
Reaching out, he took her hand and tugged her to him. She dug her heels in, making a sound of annoyance and rolling her eyes.
“First things first,” he said, bending over her to fill his nostrils with her scent.
Her lips parted, giving her away despite her stubborn expression. She expected a kiss, wanted one. Wyatt brought his mouth close to hers, his shoulders tense as he watched the way her chest rose and fell, her lips shiny and damp, dewy with anticipation.
“First, this has got to go,” he murmured without touching her, then straightened up, enjoying her little rush of impatient breath.
Digging into her hair, he found the rubber band holding the ponytail in place and with both hands, he pulled until it snapped.
“Oww, Wyatt, that hurts.” She reached up to grip her hair at the temples and he realized too late he was pulling her hair.
“Dammit,” she complained, pulling away from him.
“Sorry, but babe, you need a new look. Bad.” Extracting the broken band, he waited for her hair to fall around her shoulders, to soften into exotic waves and enlarge the way her brown eyes looked.
It didn’t happen. Her hair just fanned out slightly, the back still tucked into ponytail position, the sides drooping a little. “Christ, CJ, you look like a lion.”
She stuck her hands into her hair and rubbed and shook. It didn’t help.
“My hair was wet when I put it up—it probably dried that way. Which is why you should have left it alone.”
She didn’t add dumb-ass, but it was definitely implied.
And he was having trouble not laughing. She looked like she’d waged a war with static and lost.
“Do you have a brush or a comb or something?” She tucked some strands behind her ears, but they immediately bounced back out. Holding her hair flat against her head, she glared at him.
“In the bathroom.” Why in the hell he still had a hard-on was anybody’s guess, but not only did he, his cock throbbed as he was reminded of the outfit he had waiting for her. “And you might as well change while you’re in there. Everything you need is on the bathroom counter.”
Anticipation hummed through his veins.
“Change into what?” She eyed him with suspicion.
Like he’d tell her. He didn’t exactly trust her reaction. In fact, he might just have to key-lock the front door to ensure she stayed.
“You’ll see. Go on in there like a good girl and get changed. It’s all part of our agreement, remember? I can be gone by March at the latest... .”
Wyatt planned to take a hell of a memory with him when he transferred.
Three
Somebody in the apartment was on crack, and it wasn’t her. CJ stood in the bathroom and gaped in horror at what Wyatt wanted her to wear.
It was a dress.
With flowers on it.
Pink and peach flowers on a black background, and little sleeves that landed just below the shoulder in a ruffle. Who wore a sleeveless dress in December?
Not her.
Of course, she didn’t wear dresses. Ever.
“Maddock!” Grabbing the offending garment, she stormed out of the bathroom.
“What?” Wyatt called from behind the closed door of his bedroom. “I’ll be out in a minute, I’m changing.”
Why, CJ couldn’t imagine. He had answered the door in jeans and a T-shirt and it had gotten her pretty hot.
“I’m not wearing this ... thing!”
He laughed. “It’s just a dress, CJ. If you remember, you agreed to wear anything I wanted.”
Crinkling the dress into a soft, silken bunch of crumpled flowers, CJ stared at his bedroom door. “I thought you meant slutty underwear, not a dress!”
Okay, that didn’t come out right. She bit her lip and turned toward Wyatt’s Christmas tree. The tree surprised her. The dress surprised her. The table set with real dishes and candles, ready for a romantic meal for two, stunned her. It seemed she had made some snap judgments about Wyatt, not all of which were correct.
His head poked out of his door, and he was smirking. “I know how much you want to wear the slutty underwear, since you’ve brought it up twice now. Don’t worry, I got that, too. It just goes on under the dress.”
The door closed again, which was a good thing or she would have hit him in the face with the floral foo-foo dress from hell.
CJ stood there in indecision. She liked her own clothes. Granted, she had really gone the slob route lately, wearing a size too big and occasionally veering into the men’s department, but they were always clean, and matched. She didn’t like clothes that drew attention to her, and in her early days with the Bureau she had fostered an image of tough girl in tough clothes so no one would be tempted to delegate her to undercover prostitute roles.
She wasn’t a girly-girl and dresses made her feel vulnerable.
He could forget the dress. She wasn’t wearing it.
“Wyatt!”
His door opened all the way and he strode out, adjusting his jacket. Her protest died in her mouth. Oh, hell, he was wearing his tux. Shit, shit, shit.
How could she stay strong, true to herself, when he was standing in front of her looking like every woman’s fantasy? Or at least her fantasy. No, every woman’s fantasy.
His short, light brown hair was carelessly tousled, green eyes were dark with desire. He filled that tux from one end to the other with hard muscle, broad shoulders, and long legs, and when he stopped and stuck his hand in his pocket, it felt like lightning had struck her right smack between the thighs. She felt fried like bacon.
She wanted him. Every classy, sexy, hard, masculine inch of him and the only way to do that was to put on a dress. Her life was full of cruel ironies.
There was only one option available. She flung the dress at him, ticked off beyond belief. “Eat the damn dress, Maddock. I’m not dressing up like a ... like a ...”
He caught the dress one-handed. “Like what? A woman? It’s not that big of a deal.”
His eyes rolled over her and she tried not to shuffle. She pushed the sleeves up on her bulky sweater, suddenly aware that it really was an ugly sweater. And then there was her hair. She hadn’t taken the time to look for the brush, sideswiped by the dress the minute she’d entered the bathroom, and it occurred to her that she wasn’t exactly a sexual prize.
It was a wonder the man didn’t look at her and laugh hysterically.
“I have this crazy idea that you’ve got an incredible body under those sacks you wear, and I wanted to see it. I also want to have dinner with you, and if you sat down at the table in a black lace bra, neither one of us would even touch the food, so I thought it might be nice if you wore a dress over the slutty underwear. Nothing sinister about that.”
No, there wasn’t and CJ felt like a big, baggy idiot.
“Fine. Give it to me,” she
snapped, holding out her hand.
Wyatt narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to pump bullets into it, are you?”
“No!” Fire would destroy it more thoroughly, and that would have to wait until tomorrow. “I didn’t even bring my gun.”
He started to hold the dress out, then pulled back. “Are you going to put it on?”
“Yes. I, CJ White, do solemnly swear to wear the ugly-ass, shower curtain–looking dress for a period of at least one hour. After that, I’m not responsible for my actions. Happy?”
“Thrilled,” he said, looking anything but.
She ripped the dress out of his hands and headed for the bathroom. This was why she never dated. It was a pain in the ass.
Someone had stolen her breasts and replaced them with the bottom half of two watermelons.
Yikes. CJ stared into Wyatt’s bathroom mirror at her flesh spilling up and out of the top of the black lace bra he had provided. What had looked so tasteful and simple lying in the lingerie-store box on the counter looked outrageous actually on her body.
Yet the thing appeared to fit. Everything was where it should be, it’s just she was used to bras acting as support, worn for function. This thing was designed solely to produce eye-popping cleavage, and that it had. CJ wondered if she should worry that Wyatt had managed to guess her bra size correctly. What that said about a man she couldn’t even imagine.
The panties fit, too, even if they were about as comfortable as a Pap smear. She kept reaching down to pull them up, only to realize they were up as far as they were going to go. But if she had to assess herself, she didn’t look half bad. As far as sexy went, it had her white, waist-high panties and industrial-strength athletic bra beat.
Next the dress. CJ slipped it on over her head, struggling to get it to shimmy down over her body. After several false starts, she had the thing in place and was reaching behind her back to zip it. The dress fit as well, which made Wyatt really scary, in her opinion. The contortionist position only allowed her to zip it up to her shoulder blades, but that would have to be good enough. There was no way she was waltzing out there unzipped and asking Wyatt for help.
Digging around in Wyatt’s drawers, she found a hairbrush, but nothing else of interest. No sign of a woman, or women, hanging out in his bathroom on a regular basis. Though he did have a bottle of kids’ Flintstones vitamins.
Wetting the brush, she managed to tame her hair. Sort of.
Then there was nothing left to do but put on the strappy little shoe-sandal things and head out there.
If she didn’t trip and fall on her behind first.
Wyatt was getting impatient. How long did it take to put on a dress? Not this long.
She wasn’t going to do it. He should have known not to push quite so hard. He should have kept it to the bra and panties, and let her put her own clothes over top. That would have been a big enough thrill, sitting through dinner, knowing she was wearing sheer lace under her guy clothes.
But he had wanted to see the whole package, selfish SOB that he was. He just hoped this didn’t make her bolt.
Convinced that she wasn’t wearing the dress, he almost swallowed his tongue when she opened the door and stood there, looking sexy as sin and all woman, the black dress nipping in at the waist, hugging her thighs, and trailing down to mid-calf. Her bare legs looked smooth and toned, and even though she wobbled a little as she ground to a halt in the sandals, she still made him go hard.
And that was just the bottom half. The top half had him clamping down on his lips so he wouldn’t groan out loud, and hoping like hell he wouldn’t come in his pants. Damn. CJ had been hiding a killer rack under those baggy sweaters.
The dress did a little crisscross thing, cupping each breast, and her whole upper chest was exposed to him, creamy flesh descending down into cleavage so healthy he could rest a coffee mug on it. Yet despite her concerns that he would go for slutty, it was a very tasteful and feminine dress. It wasn’t anything other women didn’t run around in all the time, but the combination of never having seen CJ wearing anything even remotely close to that, and those curvaceous mounds of pale skin popping out and waving hello at him, had him wanting to sit down and take a deep breath.
“You look ...”
“Stupid,” she said and crossed her arms over her breasts, ruining the view.
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Put your breast in my mouth instead.
“You look amazing.”
“The amazing CJ White, that’s me.”
He didn’t care how sarcastic she was being, she was amazing. He was absolutely floored at how gorgeous she was, but that she still managed to look natural. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, didn’t need to with those wide brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her lips were shiny without benefit of lip gloss, and now that she’d pulled a brush through her hair, it fell right to her shoulders where he had anticipated, framing her face softly.
“Thank you for wearing the dress.” He appreciated it more than she could imagine.
She looked ready to be flippant, but then a mere, “You’re welcome,” came out of her mouth. Turning to the table, she added, “What are we having for dinner?”
“Beef tenderloin. Is that okay?”
Squeezing her lips together, she nodded. “Is it ready?”
“Yes. Have a seat.” As he headed toward his small kitchen, he hit the PLAY button on the remote for his stereo. Frank Sinatra filled the room, crooning softly.
CJ snorted. When he looked at her in question, she said, “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”
He frowned, not liking her implication. “What do you mean?”
But she just shook her head. “Nothing.”
That was a lie, and he knew it. CJ thought he was some kind of male slut, which wasn’t even close to the truth. Just because he dated different women, and hadn’t had a serious relationship in a while, didn’t make him some kind of serial dater.
Pissed off, he said, “If you don’t like the music, I can turn it off.”
As he plunked a bowl of dinner rolls down on the table, she sat with her hands folded in her lap.
“Touchy, Wyatt. Geez. I take it I’m the first woman who didn’t appreciate Ol’ Blue Eyes playing while you seduce me.”
So that was it. She was feeling like a bedpost notch. Little did she know that she was unlike any woman he’d ever dated, and that he had gone to more trouble in twenty-four hours than some women saw from him in two months. “Actually, you’re the first woman I’ve ever invited to my apartment for dinner.”
He was surprised to realize it was true. He usually took a woman out, then went to her place if either of them was inclined to take it to the next step. It was better that way, less personal, and easier to disentangle himself in the morning.
CJ looked like she thought he was full of shit, but she stood up and said, “Let me help you.”
This was more awkward than he had ever imagined. But awkward pretty much summed up his relationship with CJ to date. That and aggravating. Except for the night before, when they had kissed in the lobby. Nothing awkward or aggravating about that.
So when they sat down at the table, ready to eat, the wine uncorked, Wyatt thought it might be easier to talk about work.
“I heard the Delco case will be going to trial in February.” Delco was the previous case they had been assigned to, a major pharmaceutical corporation involved in price-fixing.
“That’s fast. Where did you hear that?” CJ smoothed her napkin out in her lap, studying her fingernails.
“Knight told me. I talked to him today.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Wedding crap. Reese is planning a bigger wedding than Knight expected.”
CJ looked up at him with a cynical smile. “Tell her to save her money. You spend twenty grand on a wedding and then half the happy couples get divorced.”
“Why so cynical? You been divorced?” Wyatt had never even come close to getting married, though he had
nothing against it. If he were ever dumb enough to fall in love, he imagined he’d want to get married, too.
“Yes.”
That startled him. He’d been kidding, not really thinking that CJ was speaking from personal experience. “Oh, hey, foot in mouth. Sorry.” Then because he was a nosy guy and he wanted to know CJ, understand her, he asked, “What happened?”
She shrugged. “It didn’t work out. He moved out. We got a divorce.”
Not that he had expected her to break down and confess her deepest, darkest secrets, but getting CJ to open up was like pulling teeth. He had worked with her for almost a year, and he knew what he had observed about her. She was hardworking, reliable, quick with her wit, and damn smart, but he knew nothing about her life, how she lived, what mattered to her.
Ignoring his dinner, he sipped the wine and said, “Talk to me. Tell me something personal about you. I want to get to know you, CJ.”
CJ didn’t want Wyatt to know her. She was already sorry she’d blurted out that revealing remark about divorce statistics. It was important to her to stay private, because if she started opening up, telling Wyatt about herself, then she was going to wind up involved with him emotionally.
Which would make her vulnerable. Out of control. Able to be hurt.
Sex was one thing. She’d give him that gladly. But if he thought they were going to be friends, well, she’d rather talk orgasms with her mother.
“It’s a boring story. What about you, Wyatt? Tell me about you.” Then she stuffed half a roll in her mouth so he couldn’t expect her to say anything for at least a minute and a half.
Leaning back in his chair, he held his arms out, which stretched his jacket and showed off his chest, though she didn’t think he was aware of it. Her fingers itched to get beneath his tie and rip it off, thigh wrapped around him, FBI femme fatale on the loose.
“I’m an open book, babe. What you see is what you get. I work, I hit the gym, I hang out with some old friends from college from time to time, and I watch TV.”
He made it all sound so innocent. “And you date, don’t forget that.”
Bad Boys In Black Tie Page 11