“He’s still here,” Lana said to Drew. Then her brow furrowed, deep lines creasing the smooth skin. “That’s not necessary, but if you insist, I’ll tell him.”
At last she clicked the disconnect button and handed back the phone. The second she faced him her expression seemed guarded, as though her defenses were once again engaged. It dawned on Brody what had been nagging him. She treated him differently than everyone else—always had. While she laughed and joked with Drew and the other guys who worked here, she’d never appeared that at ease in his presence. It was almost as if she was afraid of him. At the very least it seemed she disliked him.
So what? Brody asked himself. A lot of people didn’t like him and he’d never wasted a minute thinking about it before.
Turning away, he stalked to the cool room. Inside he found some ice and bagged it, allowing the frigid air to quell his burgeoning erection. His annoyance over Lana’s attitude mystified him. She was a nice girl, and he wasn’t a very nice guy. It shouldn’t have irked that she didn’t like him. He could only imagine her reaction if he got her in bed and started doing some of the stuff he liked to do…
He wasn’t going to get her into bed. It was bizarre that he would even have the thought.
Brody carried the makeshift cold pack out to where she sat. “What are you supposed to tell me?” His question came out sounding brusque. Was it any wonder she was wary of him?
“I’m in strife.” She watched, her eyes doing that anxious thing again, as he lifted her foot and pressed the bag to her ankle. “I’m not supposed to lock up on my own but Mick wanted to catch a soccer match at O’Ryan’s Pub and I told him to go ahead. Drew said you should stay until I finish, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to do that either.” She gestured to where he was holding her foot. “I said I was fine.”
“Preventative medicine.” Brody supposed she was hinting that she didn’t want him to stay. Apparently she’d feel safer taking her chances against potential vandals and thieves than with him. “And I’ll stay. Drew’s right, Mick shouldn’t have taken off.” Mick Jensen was a pretty good chef and a likeable enough guy but he did have a tendency toward forgetfulness and other lackadaisical behavior.
Her shoulders squared. “I told him I could handle things. Graceville’s not exactly crime-spree city.”
“The night’s takings are in the safe, aren’t they? A woman alone is asking for trouble.”
She issued a delicate snort and muttered, sounding almost annoyed about it, “I’ve never asked for trouble in my life.”
Brody caught her gaze and smiled. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Be personable, Drew had said. Try not to scare the crap out of this poor girl. Maybe, with a bit of effort, he could even make her like him a little. To grease the wheels at work, he told himself, as she was Drew’s most experienced waitress. Not because he suddenly couldn’t recall why celibacy had seemed like a realistic option for the past six months.
He wasn’t going to break his drought with Lana Green, anyway. Playing where he worked was not something he did routinely. Or ever, if you didn’t count Sidney and that whole fiasco.
Lana wriggled her toes, highlighting their proximity to his groin, and he had to stifle a groan. No way. Brody tamped down the surprising surge of desire with effort. Even he wasn’t that stupid.
Although he resembled an escapee from a Mexican prison, Brody Nash looked good enough to eat. And his continued touch on her foot was making Lana a very hungry woman.
Calling on the skills she’d acquired from years of long practice, she did her best not to let it show how his nearness affected her. Maintaining an air of indifference was tremendously difficult because he’d never touched her like this before. He’d never touched her, period, at least not deliberately. And anytime they’d accidentally brushed up against each other in the course of a night’s work, Lana had darted away as quickly as she could, lest he perceive that even unintentional contact with him set every nerve end in her body on fire.
While his gaze was concentrated on her ankle, Lana allowed herself the pleasure of studying him. He’d grown a beard that encircled his cynical lips in a way that drew attention to their sensual fullness. His hair was long, curling like black silk over his shirt collar. The T-shirt he wore was dark and rumpled, the cotton stretching over his shoulders and arms, emphasizing their broad strength.
He didn’t look like a prisoner so much as a pirate, recently returned from months at sea. Blackbeard seemed a fitting moniker. Ravish any wenches lately, Brody? If only he thought of her in that way, he would barely have to lift one of those dark sardonic brows and he could ravish her too.
If only.
“So what happened to the glasses?”
“What glasses?”
He glanced up and their gazes locked before Lana could prepare herself. Something flickered in the enigmatic depths of his eyes, turning them hot as fresh espresso. “Yours.” He cleared his throat as though he had something caught in it. His expression turned bemused, the lilt of his lips teasing. “Your glasses.”
Well duh. “I got struck by lightning and now I have perfect twenty-twenty vision.” He looked at her as though he were trying to figure out if she had all her ducks in a row. “Sorry. I got contacts.” When his focus passed over her ponytail she added, “And I dyed my hair. Did you really not recognize me before?”
“I told you.” His assessing eyes wandered over her. Intense. Thorough. Hot. “You look different.”
Whoa. Had she imagined that look? In addition to the contacts and new hairstyle, Lana had shortened her skirts and begun wearing a little makeup. She’d been told she had nice legs and she figured her eyes and mouth weren’t bad, as features went. Her nose had a small bump in the bridge and she had more freckles than she would have liked, but she wasn’t ugly. Lately, she’d been accentuating her few good points, instead of lamenting the many attractions she didn’t possess. She hadn’t thought for a minute the small changes she’d made would garner Brody’s attention.
“I could say the same to you,” she at last responded.
His rueful chuckle reverberated through her as he ran a hand over his thick beard. “Yeah, perhaps I ought to shave before I go see Sidney and Drew. Drew’s already threatened to demote me from best man, and I’m told Rufus is eager to step in.”
“You might have some competition there. Rufus can fetch sticks so wedding rings should be a piece of cake.”
“I don’t fetch. But I’ve never tried to hump anybody’s leg either.”
His droll retort renewed Lana’s awareness that her foot was still resting quite comfortably on his leg. Or more specifically, his thigh. She could feel taut muscle against her toes, which were planted mere inches away from his fly. She couldn’t prevent the way her attention snagged on that spot, or the lust that arrowed through her at the thought of any part of her body, even her pinkie toe, sharing proximity with that part of him.
It would be so easy to curve her leg around his hip and draw him toward her, until his chest was once again brushing against hers as it had when he’d lifted her from the floor. She could make some comment, some bawdy reference to humping and watch those dark eyes flare with surprise and, hopefully, interest.
It would be so easy. If she were somebody else. Someone with the courage to act on her impulses without fear of probable rejection. The kind of woman a man like Brody was attracted to and not some clumsy geek who lost all ability to coordinate her limbs around him. Tripping over that broom twice proved that whatever improvements she’d made to her appearance hadn’t given her the confidence to be cool and collected with Brody in the room.
Lifting the ice pack from her flesh, he tossed it on the counter beside her and turned away so her foot dropped, the contact between them obliterated so fast it made Lana blink. “Your ankle looks fine.”
“Told you.”
“What else do you need help with?”
The help she needed ought to come from a trai
ned psychologist. Or perhaps a hypnotist. There had to be a cure for the Brody Nash Obsession out there somewhere. A patch? Gum? Another man?
Lana had tried the last several times in the past five months since her parents had moved their dogmatic conservatism to a retirement villa on the Gold Coast and she had decided to get herself a sex life. So far, she hadn’t found a candidate worthy, which was proving endlessly frustrating. Why was the only man she could see herself sleeping with the most unattainable man of all?
“Lana?”
Levering herself off the counter, she dropped to the floor. Other than the weakness in her knees that always seemed to plague her in Brody’s presence, her legs were in full working order. “It’s all done. I should get home to bed.”
Brody’s eyebrows hiked. “In a hurry?”
Was he asking if someone was waiting for her? She wished. “I have to get up early tomorrow. I work from home too.” At his look she elucidated, “I build websites.”
“Really?”
“Don’t I look like a computer geek without my glasses?”
His gaze passed over her again, the way it had earlier. “You don’t look like any kind of geek, with or without glasses.”
Oh. My. God. Was he flirting? He was definitely staring at her like she was a woman, not some maladroit girl who wouldn’t warrant his attention. Lana’s heart accelerated, began pounding hard against her ribs. She knew his type of woman—beautiful, seductive, confident. In other words, the very antithesis of her. He must be amusing himself at her expense.
Lana felt transported back to high school, and the few times a cute boy had bothered to talk to her. Invariably, she discovered he did it on a dare, or that he was entertaining himself momentarily with the nerd so she’d help him with calculus.
“I have to go.” She headed out to the restaurant and grabbed her stuff from the cupboard behind the bar, anger fuelling her strides. She felt Brody watching as she slipped on her shoes and backpack, and then grabbed her motorbike helmet.
“You ride?”
It probably wasn’t the type of riding he thought, but Lana answered, “Yep.”
“What sort?”
“A Yamaha.”
“This I’ve gotta see. I’ll walk you out.”
Couldn’t he tell she was mad at him? Arguing the point would only delay her departure further, so Lana remained silent as they left the restaurant and she used her keys to lock up. Their shoes crunched on the gravel as they traversed the car park, her low-heeled pumps making far less of an impression than Brody’s heavy-soled shoes. At almost five ten, Lana wasn’t petite, but the whole broad-shouldered, hard-muscled six feet of man at her side made her feel that way.
Brody started laughing before they were halfway to her mode of transportation. Lana pursed her lips. He wasn’t the first to tease her about the scooter. “You never asked how many cc’s it was.”
“Do they use cc’s for that thing or amps?”
“Very funny. Men always think size matters.”
Brody’s laughter petered out but the amusement still tinged his voice. “Sometimes it does.”
The innuendo was unmistakable, and Lana felt herself flush. She supposed he was used to women well practiced in sexual banter, but she was nowhere near capable of it, not with him. “It’s not very nice of you to tease me.”
She could sense the surprise in his eyes as he slanted her a look. “Sor-ry. But it is a girlie bike.”
Hardly able to tell him that wasn’t the teasing she was referring to, Lana said, “I am a girl. Anyway, I like it. It gets me where I want to go.” It sure beat the rust heap of a Toyota sedan that had finally died on her a few months ago, she thought, giving her blue Yamaha Bee Wee an admiring glance.
Lana pulled the band from her hair and shook out her ponytail before slipping the open-face helmet on and straddling the bike. She glanced up and found Brody’s eyes trained on her, his expression hinting at a fascination she would never have thought herself capable of engendering in any man, let alone this one. Lana told herself to breathe. Breathe in, breathe out.
“I like your new look.” His gaze roamed over her face slowly, at last connecting with hers. “It’s a shame to hide eyes like that behind a pair of specs.”
Nervous excitement gave way to anger, which sharpened to a hard, flinty point of hurt inside her. “You can’t go around looking at women like that if you don’t mean it—at least not at me. I’m not good at casual flirting, and I don’t appreciate being made fun of.”
He reared back as though her words had zapped him like electricity. “You think I’m making fun of you?”
“My eyes are brown, Brody. You’re not interested in me, so please don’t act like you are. It’s cruel.”
His brows scrunched as he stared at her. Lana had time to dimly sense that he was holding his breath, to realize she was holding hers, before his head dipped. His lips settled on hers and her pulse stilled, her body remaining motionless as his mouth mobilized, began to explore.
Heart fluttering, Lana tightened her grip on the scooter’s handlebars. She wasn’t game to reach out and touch him, to move even a millimeter, lest any action on her part break the spell. The moment she’d long ago given up dreaming about was actually happening. Brody Nash was kissing her.
His lips were warm and soft, the rasp of his beard against her chin a masculine sensation that had desire breaking out of its safe box and running free through her blood like salmon swimming upstream—instinctual, single-minded, ultimately doomed. Pragmatism told her he was still teasing her.
What if he wasn’t?
A sigh escaped her mouth and pushed its way into his as Lana at last reacted. She parted her lips and invited the soft sweep of his tongue, lifted her hand and threaded it through his hair, pulling him closer. He drew in a sharp, surprised breath, his hand rising to cup her head. The contact sounded loud in Lana’s ears as he bumped the helmet she wore.
He retreated abruptly. Stepping back, he swore, staring at her as though she’d sprouted a second head. Lana brought her hand to her lips. They felt singed where Brody’s had been pressed against them a moment ago. “You kissed me.”
He pushed out a breath, sounding as stunned as she did. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been at sea for six months.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” He scratched a hand over his beard, appearing beleaguered. His gaze swept over her and once again she saw that look of astonishment flicker in his eyes. “You look really good tonight. I guess it threw me.”
This was getting better and better. “Your surprise is so flattering.”
“Hell, Lana. You’re a pretty girl, I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.” Lana resisted the urge to insist she was a woman not a girl. Debating the point would only make her look petulant. “Drew told me to be nice to you, and I was only trying to do that,” he explained in a mutter. “But I don’t think this is what he had in mind.”
“Drew told you to be nice to me?”
“You and the rest of the staff. Somehow I’ve got to try and fill his shoes for a couple of weeks.”
“And you’re planning on kissing everyone to achieve that aim? The girls might like it but I’m not so sure Mick and the apprentices would take it well.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth. “You liked it?”
Lana’s pulse picked up speed again. His body inclined toward her, as though he was considering giving a follow-up performance if she vacillated on the issue. Much as the notion appealed it also piqued her temper. She couldn’t believe he thought she would let him kiss her again after the insulting way he’d tried to explain away his actions.
Well, she probably would. Of course she would. His kiss had had a potent margarita effect—smooth and delicious, with a pleasing salty aftertaste and a mean kick that made her thirst for seconds. But he needn’t know that, the arrogant swine. She lifted her shoulders in a careless
shrug. “It was fine.”
“It was fine?”
Lana almost laughed at the look on his face. This was some turnaround, making him feel inadequate for a change. She shrugged again, letting him assume she’d had better when in reality nothing in her past had come close to the thrill of that kiss. “You don’t have to worry I’m going to tell Drew, or make things difficult at work because you kissed me. Apparently it was an accident,” she added in a drawl. “And as for being in charge—maybe you should do things your own way. You’re not Drew, so just be yourself.”
“Be myself.” His lips quirked. “You’ve known me three years, Lana. You really think that’s the answer?”
“What are you afraid of—that someone might find out who you really are?”
She saw she’d gone too far when his smile slid away and his eyes shuttered. He straightened and the cool bay breeze swept into the breach that widened between them. “You’re the one who ought to be scared, of doing yourself an injury on that thing. Ride carefully, will ya?”
Inwardly cursing herself for putting an end to the longest conversation she’d ever had with Brody, Lana turned on the ignition. Some of his amusement resurfaced at the tinny sound of the engine chortling gaily to life. She raised her voice over the noise. “I’ll have you know I’ve been riding the Bee Wee for three months, and I haven’t had a bingle yet.”
“Three months,” he grumbled. “You’re a novice.”
At more things than riding, Lana thought, relieved he didn’t know the truth. A virgin at twenty-three—it was darned embarrassing. She wondered if Brody would laugh if he found out.
She thought of the only way in which he could discover the fact and flushed hot all over. Maybe it would be worth the humiliation.
Not that she’d ever considered Brody would want to do the deflowering honors. But then, she’d never thought he’d turn around and notice she wasn’t the same awkward geek she’d been three years ago, and tonight it seemed he’d done just that. He’d talked and touched, flirted and kissed, more progress in half an hour than Lana had made in three years of secret pining. Accident or not, a kiss was still a kiss. It had to mean something. There was always a chance that Brody would have another lip-locking mishap, especially if she found the right way to encourage him.
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