“I’m sure I’ve got something at home.”
Karen, who’d been pretending not to be eavesdropping, snorted again.
“Does she have allergies?” Linc asked.
Georgia frowned darkly at her assistant. “She’s only allergic to minding her own business.”
“You made it my business when you made me sit through season three of Dog, The Bounty Hunter last night,” Karen replied drolly, idly flipping through a bridal magazine.
Linc chuckled. “You watched that last night?”
Blushing furiously, Georgia muttered something ominous from between clenched teeth to her help before unhappily finding his gaze. She cleared her throat. “I thought it might be helpful.”
“What? You couldn’t find a book?”
“She found several,” Karen piped up once more. She licked her thumb and idly flipped another page.
This time Linc didn’t just chuckle, he laughed. He passed a hand over his face, trying to wipe his smile away.
It didn’t work.
“I don’t understand what’s so damned funny,” Georgia snapped, walking around him toward the door. “I wanted to be prepared. You should be glad.”
“Oh, I am,” Linc said, trailing along behind her, smothering more laughter.
“You don’t sound glad, you sound amused.” She went unerringly to his SUV and waited for him to unlock and open the door.
“How did you know this was mine?”
“It’s the same make and model Dog drives.”
Linc felt his eyes widen and he drew up short. “The same make and model Dog—”
“Just kidding,” she quipped, those dark eyes dancing with mischief. “I knew it was yours because I saw it when I came to your apartment. Your father had told me to look for it so I would know whether or not you were home and just hiding from me.”
Linc paused, allowing that little infuriating tidbit to sink in. “Helpful fellow, my father, wasn’t he?”
“Very accommodating,” she said, smiling sweetly. He purposely invaded her personal space as he opened her door and had the pleasure of watching the smile falter. She smelled like strawberries and hay, Linc thought, equally intrigued and turned on. She pulled in a small breath and climbed inside.
“I wouldn’t get used to that if I were you.”
A genuine chuckle bubbled up her throat, pinging something deep inside him he instinctively knew he should ignore. “Oh, I’m not likely to make that mistake. You’ve been difficult, irritating, belligerent, rude and surly. Expecting you to be accommodating would stretch the limits of even my admittedly rubberized imagination.”
He paused, unaccustomed to the company of a mouthy female. Gracie was mouthy, of course, but as his sister she didn’t qualify. The women he ordinarily spent time with were more obliging. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be smart-ass?”
“My brother, but he doesn’t count.”
She had a brother? he thought, surprised. For whatever reason, he’d gotten the impression that she was completely alone. It had never occurred to him that she’d have any other family. She seemed so…self-sufficient. An island unto herself.
A thought struck. “Does he know the ring is missing?”
She flushed guiltily and bit her lip before responding. “Do you share your screwups with your family?”
His family was usually front-and-center with a bowl of popcorn in their laps and expectant faces when he screwed up, but he completely understood what she meant. “I guess that’s a no.” Linc shut her door, then rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel. “What are you going to do if you don’t find it?”
Her jaw tightened and she fastened her seatbelt with a resolute click. “I will find it.”
Her determination was admirable, but pushed the bounds of practicality. Odd when she seemed so grounded otherwise.
“But if you don’t,” he pressed, for whatever reason, feeling the need to prepare her for the worst. Hell, he wanted her to find the ring, as well, but she needed to be realistic. And the idea of having to comfort her when she came to the sad realization that the ring might be gone forever made him distinctly…uneasy.
“I’ll just cross that bridge when I come to it, Mr. Stone,” she said with a shaky breath.
Whatever, Linc thought grimly. So long as he didn’t have to keep her from jumping off the damned thing, all would be fine.
“SO I’VE MADE A LIST,” Georgia said, trying to ignore the tantalizingly sexy length of denim-encased male leg mere inches from her own. Who would have thought a man’s jean-clad thigh could be so damned sexy? Or that the air would thin to the point she felt light-headed the minute she got into close proximity with a put-upon bounty hunter with a chivalrous bone the size of a toothpick.
Linc grunted, seemingly unsurprised. “I would have been shocked if you hadn’t.” A smile tugged at the corner of his distractingly sensual mouth. “Of course, between cramming for Bounty Hunter 101 and watching all those episodes of Dog, I don’t see how you’ve managed to find the time.”
Georgia consulted her Palm Pilot and primly cleared her throat. “I got up early.”
Not a total lie—she hadn’t gone to bed at all. Between worrying about the ring and the looming rendezvous with a certain lethally good-looking bounty hunter, going to sleep simply hadn’t been an option. Every time she’d started to doze off, she’d see her mother’s ring on his finger, of all places.
Clearly her subconscious had gone off the deep end because she suspected getting a ring of any sort—much less of the happily-ever-after variety—onto Linc Stone’s finger was not only a lost cause, but an act of sheer stupidity destined for ultimate heartbreak.
Despite making the disastrous and costly mistake with Carter, Georgia could generally read a guy pretty accurately when it came to matters of the heart. For instance, she could usually tell when they were getting married because they were afraid of losing their current love, were getting married because “the time had come” and they were being pressured by their intended and families, whether a guy was going to be a cheating bastard, or if he truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with the woman he’d proposed to.
Sadly, those were getting fewer and far between.
While Linc Stone didn’t necessarily fall into any of those categories, it didn’t take a look from behind the Hubble Telescope to see that he had “commitment-phobic” written all over him.
The eternal question, of course, was…why? Previous heartbreak? she wondered speculatively, darting him a look from the corner of her eye. Or was it something else? For whatever reason, she got the impression it was something else. Intuition told her he’d never been close enough to another person to have ever allowed the initial heartbreak to start with.
Surely he realized that his reticence to settle down with one particular woman put a big, fat bull’s-eye on his forehead, Georgia thought, smiling wryly. Particularly to those of the competitive variety. Typically she lumped herself into that category, but she knew a lost cause when she saw one. She imagined Linc was good for a fun date and a night of sheet-scorching sex, but only an idiot would expect anything more out of him.
And, despite recent evidence to the contrary, she was no idiot.
Furthermore, she didn’t have time for fun and, while a night of sheet-scorching sex would be nice, something told her she’d get burned in more ways than one. All of this was assuming, of course, that he’d be interested in her to start with. Georgia gave a mental eye-roll.
When pigs flew.
Guys like Linc Stone didn’t give her the time of day. They never had.
Part of what made Georgia a good wedding planner was the sad fact that she wasn’t competition for the potential bride. She was passably attractive, but not gorgeous. She owned a mirror and had no illusions about her body. She’d always carried around an extra fifteen pounds on her petite frame which, while it hadn’t made her pleasantly plump, had made her curvier than what was presently considered fashionable.
To be perfectly honest, until her second year of college she’d never really noticed a lack of interest from the “sexy boys.” She’d always been too busy studying for the next exam or working at her father’s business. She’d refused to allow her parents to simply pay for her school and had worked off at least part of the difference at Hart Industries.
Her dad had always joked that she’d been too much like him, had told her that he’d worked hard for his family’s benefit, but having seen one too many spoiled rich kids pitch a tantrum over their new BMW being the wrong color, Georgia just couldn’t let her father foot the entire bill. Just because he’d worked hard didn’t mean that she didn’t have to. It was a work ethic she and her brother shared, much to their parents’ pride, she knew.
At any rate, though she hadn’t done it purposely, she’d managed to avoid the whole find-a-boyfriend frenzy that her other counterparts were rabidly participating in at the time.
Then it had happened.
She’d been seated in the Student Union Building, cramming a French fry into her mouth and Advanced Business Principles into her brain, when she’d caught sight of him from across the room.
Mitch Mullins, a blond Adonis track star with a killer smile and abs that would make a girl’s knees weak. One look at this gorgeous specimen of man had awakened every dormant sexual cell in her body. She’d gone from bud to full bloom in an instant, had become a stranger in her own body. She’d wandered around in lust for weeks, finally mustered the courage to walk across an off-campus restaurant to talk to him, only to have the clueless ass mistake her for the waitress.
She’d been mortified.
Furthermore, it had only taken one disinterested look from him to make her realize that she simply didn’t register on his radar as a woman. She might as well have been genderless.
Because Georgia liked to take the scientific and thorough approach to most everything, she tested her theory with other gorgeous guys around school. She could be their friend, she could be their tutor, she could proof their papers and help locate books in the library—the one thing she could not do was pique their interest.
Initially this conclusion had been quite heartbreaking, but once she’d gotten past the preliminary sting her legendary practicality had surfaced. Just because the gorgeous guys didn’t notice her didn’t mean that she didn’t have anything to offer or to bring to a relationship. It simply meant that they were superficial and shallow and who’d want to date a guy like that anyway?
In other words, she was not the problem.
Once that revelation had set in it had really freed her up to other possibilities. She’d stopped looking at traditionally good-looking men and had opted for compelling and smart instead. Though she could honestly say she’d never been head over heels in love, she’d developed a strong attachment to a guy in grad school and, ultimately, he’d been her first.
Considering the fact that her ripening hormones had been wreaking havoc for almost a year, Georgia had expected more from her initial experience. While it hadn’t been completely lacking, she’d always sensed—and still did despite having a couple of other lovers—that there was…more. More of what she wasn’t exactly certain, but she suspected it all the same.
Her gaze slid to the man seated next to her and she felt the tops of her thighs burn.
No doubt he could give a girl more, Georgia thought, her mouth instantly parching. Everything about Linc Stone exuded confidence and sexual superiority. It wasn’t just nice bone structure and a wicked smile, the heavy-lidded, I’ve-got-a-perpetual-secret, sleepy-looking gaze or even the distractingly sexy curls brushing his collar, though admittedly, that was enough.
Linc Stone had that indefinable something, that rare “it” quality that made a girl squirm for no reason, sigh with longing and yearn for the merest touch from his talented hands. Georgia instinctively knew that a single stroke of his knuckles across her cheek would elicit enough heat in her blood to set her panties on fire.
That was the more she was missing.
And that was the more she’d just as soon forget about, particularly with him.
Linc chose that moment to look at her and those compelling green orbs sucked the air right out of her lungs, leaving her momentarily breathless. And brainless apparently, she thought, feeling her lips slide into an embarrassed smile. Hell, it wasn’t like he could read her mind.
The corner of his mouth hitched into an almost smile. Odd how potent that half grin could be. “Okay, Ms. List Maker. Where to first?”
Hell, Georgia thought miserably. I’m going to hell. Because if he so much as crooked his finger, she knew she’d be a goner.
With effort, she managed to focus. “I met him at Marcello’s over in English Village. He seemed to be a regular there. I thought we should try there first.”
Linc snorted and slipped the gearshift into reverse. “Figures.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a man goes into that chick haunt, then he’s not there to get a chocolate-swirl-raisin-currant-date-nut-gluten-free bagel, sweetheart. He’s trolling.”
Come to think of it, she rarely saw any men in Marcello’s and if they were, they were generally accompanied by a woman. Strictly speaking, it did cater to more of a female clientele. Annoyed with herself for not realizing this to start with, Georgia gritted her teeth and opted to argue. Why? Who knew? But she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Are you saying men don’t eat bagels?”
He flashed her a smile. “Only at home. Behind a locked door. In the dark.”
“Marcello’s sells a wonderful prune Danish. You should try one,” she suggested.
He grimaced, almost comically. “Why would I want to do that?”
Georgia grinned pointedly at him. “Because you are obviously full of shit.”
Rather than being offended, he chuckled, the sound deep and curiously soothing. “Nicely done,” he told her. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Probably a carrot muffin would do you some good, as well.”
He pulled out onto Union Avenue and hung a right. “Too bad they don’t have anything to cure your problem.” A dark chuckle broke up in his throat. “We’d need a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, a pair of needle-nosed pliers and a Shop-Vac for that.”
Needle-nosed pliers and a Shop-Vac? Georgia thought, equally startled and intrigued. What the—“I’m not even going to ask,” she said, pretending to be unconcerned.
Linc chuckled again. “I figured as much.” He slid her another one of those sly looks. “But you want to.”
Perfect, Georgia thought. He wasn’t just gorgeous, he was a gorgeous know-it-all. “You’re right,” she admitted, hating herself. “I do. So tell me.”
He laughed, the gorgeous wretch. “The Jack would loosen you up. I’d need the Shop-Vac to suck the stick outta your ass and the needle-nose pliers to remove the splinters.”
“Clever,” Georgia said, smirking. She decided a subject change was in order. “How much time are you devoting to this today?”
“All of it,” Linc told her. His jaw flexed with grim determination. “You’re getting every minute of my time until we find Carter Watkins.”
“E-every minute?” she asked, curiously intimidated by Linc’s revelation.
He sighed and pulled the truck into the English Village parking lot. “Every last one.”
She should have been thrilled—the sooner they found Carter the sooner she could get the ring back—and having Linc’s unwavering attent
ion and time on this case was definitely to her advantage. Logical, rational, reasonable.
She should have been thrilled…and yet she wasn’t.
More like unnerved. Being around Linc Stone, given this unfortunate sex-tingling, nipple-hardening attraction for small periods of time, was going to be difficult enough, but at least she’d thought she’d get a break. She’d retreat, regroup, possibly masturbate to take the edge off, then she’d be ready to deal with him. Prolonged exposure to his sex appeal, on the other hand, would be damned dangerous.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go kick some ass.”
5
“KICK SOME ASS?” Georgia parroted, seemingly alarmed. Linc smothered a smile as she scrambled out the truck and fell in step beside him. “You’re kidding, right? We can’t kick ass at Marcello’s. I’m a regular.”
“Good. That’ll work to our advantage.” He drew up short right as he neared the door. “A few ground rules. I’m in charge, follow my lead—that one’s important—and don’t tell anyone why we’re really looking for Carter. Understood?”
Though he could tell she wanted to argue, she nodded. Good, he thought. Better that she learn now that he was boss. “You said you met Carter here. Did you come here together often beyond that?”
“A few times.”
“Would the staff recognize him? Know who he was?”
“They should.”
“Good. You’re trying to reach him because he’s left some things at your place and you’ve only just now found them.”
“But—”
“Do you have any business cards?”
“Yes, but—”
“Give them one. Ask them to call you if he comes in. Got it? Okay, we’re good. Let’s roll.” Before she could toss another “but” at him, he opened the door and gently nudged her inside.
She shot him a glare over her shoulder. She was too damned cute to carry the look off, but he instinctively knew he’d pay for her displeasure at some point. She might look sweet, but given the sheer determination and mouthiness he’d endured since meeting her, he knew better than to expect anything different.
Feeling The Heat Page 5