See Jane Score

by Rachel Gibson

  His touch seemed to warm her up from the inside out, and startled laughter escaped her lips. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Too bad. I wouldn’t mind seeing it on backward.”

  The music flowed around Jane as everything within her stilled. Luc Martineau, with his wicked grin and horseshoe tattoo, wanted to see her naked. Impossible. Just beneath the surface, her skin tingled, hot and alive with sensation. Want and need pooled low in her abdomen and she wondered if he’d notice if she leaned into him. Just enough to smell the side of his neck. Right above the black band of his tie and starched collar.

  “Jane?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Marie is back. We have an early flight and better get going.”

  Jane looked up into the shadows caressing his face. While impure thoughts sullied her mind, he appeared unaffected. I wouldn’t mind seeing it on backward, he’d said. No doubt he was pulling her chain again. “I’ll get my coat.”

  He removed his hand from her back, and cool air replaced his warm touch. He took her arm, and as they walked from the dance floor, he handed her Caroline’s little bag. “Give me your ticket. I’ll get your coat when I get Marie’s.”

  Jane fished around in the purse and pulled out the piece of paper. While he retrieved the coats, she talked to Marie, but her mind was on Luc, and there was no denying it. She lusted after him. Bad. She wondered if he’d noticed. She sincerely hoped not. She hoped he would never find out. She could happily live her entire life without anyone knowing that Jane Alcott wanted to jump bad boy hockey player Luc Martineau. If he suspected, he’d no doubt run long and hard in the opposite direction.

  When he returned, he helped her on with her black raincoat. His fingers brushed the back of her neck as he fixed the collar for her, and she wondered what it would be like to feel his arms slide around her as she leaned back into him. But even if she’d had the nerve to act on her impulse, she was too late; he stepped away and held his sister’s coat open for her.

  While they waited at the bottom of the Space Needle for the valet to bring around Luc’s white Land Cruiser, he fastened the four buttons on his jacket and stuck his hands in the pockets, his broad shoulders hunched against the cold. They talked about the weather and about the early flight in the morning. Nothing important. Marie told them about the view from the observation deck, and Jane cast glances at Luc’s dark profile. Light from the Needle lit up one side of his face and wide shoulders and cast a long shadow across the concrete.

  When the valet returned, Luc opened the front passenger door for Jane and the back for his sister. He climbed into the driver’s side and they headed for Bellevue. Within a few blocks, Luc broke the silence.

  “Mrs. Jackson knows she’s to come over tomorrow before you get home from school,” he told his sister. “Do you need money for anything?”

  Jane looked over at him through the corner of her eye. His profile was just a black outline within the dark interior. Golden light from the dash shone on his wristwatch and sent slivers of gold on to the front of his jacket. Jane turned and gazed out her window.

  “I need lunch money and I haven’t paid for ceramics class.”

  “How much do you need?”

  Jane listened to their conversation, feeling like an intruder, sitting within the rich leather interior of Luc’s SUV while he talked to his sister about their everyday life. A life that did not include her. This was his life. Not hers. She had her own life. One she’d made for herself, and she did not belong in his.

  When the vehicle pulled up to the curb in front of her apartment, Jane reached for the door. “Thanks so much for bringing me home,” she said.

  Luc reached across the distance and grabbed her arm through her thin coat. “Don’t move.” He glanced in the backseat. “I’ll be right back, Marie,” he said as he got out of the vehicle.

  The headlamps briefly spotlighted him as he walked in front of the Land Cruiser, then he opened her door. He helped her out and moved beside her up the short walkway. Beneath her illuminated porch, she opened her little bag and pulled out her keys, but just as he had the night he’d walked her to her hotel room in San Jose, he took the key from her and shoved it in the lock.

  Inside, she’d left on a floor lamp, and the light spilled across the carpet and lit up the front door. “Thanks again,” she said as she stepped into the apartment. She held her hand out for her keys and he grasped her wrist and placed the keys in her palm. Instead of letting go, he followed her inside.

  “This is not a good idea,” he said and brushed his thumb across her pulse.

  “What? Bringing me home?”

  “No.” He pulled her against him and lowered his face to hers. “You’ve been driving me crazy. With your hair that makes me wonder what it’d feel like tangled around my fingers.” His hand grasped the back of her raincoat, twisting the material in his fist and pulling it tight. “Your red lips and your little red dress give me all kinds of crazy ideas. Stuff I shouldn’t think about you, but I am. Questions that are better left alone.” His blue eyes stared into hers, hot and intense. “But I can’t leave them alone,” he whispered against her mouth. “So tell me, Jane, are you cold?” His lips brushed hers and he said through a hot breath, “Or turned on?” Then he kissed her, and the shock stunned her for several seconds. She could do nothing more that just stand there as he placed tender kisses on her lips.

  What did he mean, was she cold or turned on? She definitely was not cold.

  He pressed his warm mouth to hers and brought his free hand to the side of her face, cupping her cheek and running his fingers through the hair at her temples. A little moan stuck in her throat, the keys dropped from her hand, and she no longer cared what he meant about her being cold. She ran her palm up the front of his jacket to the side of his neck. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not with him.

  His lips teased and pressed harder until she opened her mouth. His tongue slipped inside and touched her, wet and oh so welcome.

  For a man who spent his time hitting people and pucks with a hockey stick, his touch was surprisingly gentle. The little moan worked free, escaped into his mouth, and she let herself go. She let herself slide into the hot passion spreading across her skin, pounding in her chest, and aching between her thighs. She let herself fall face first into the lust she’d been trying to hold at bay. His big hand cupped her breast through the layers of her dress and coat, and she leaned into him. His thumb brushed her nipple and she raised onto her toes. There was no more thought of letting, just doing. Just kissing him as if she wanted to eat him up in one sitting. Her tongue sliding across his as if she wanted to binge on Luc Martineau.

  He pulled back and looked into her face, his eyes dazed, his voice a bemused rasp. “You make me want to suck a bruise on you just to kiss it better.”

  Jane licked her moist lips and nodded. She wanted that too.

  “Damn,” he said through a harsh breath. Then he turned on his heels and was gone. Leaving Jane stunned and bewildered. Shocked for the fourth time that night.

  Chapter 10

  Blindsided: Hit from Behind

  Jane closed her laptop on Honey Pie and her latest victim, a hockey player Honey had met on the observation deck of the Space Needle. A hockey player who looked a lot like Luc Martineau.

  She rose from the chair, pushed aside the heavy drapes, and looked out the hotel window at downtown Denver, Colorado. She’d definitely developed an infatuation for Luc. Probably an unhealthy one too. In the past, she’d sometimes based Honey’s victims on real people. She’d changed their names, but readers could still figure it out. A few months ago, she’d put Brendan Fraser into a coma for subjecting moviegoers to Monkeybone, Dudley Do-Right, and Blast from the Past. But this was the first time Jane had written someone she knew personally into the column.

  People might recognize Luc when the magazine hit the shelves in March. Definitely the readers in Seattle would. He’d probably hear about it too. She wondered if he’d mind. Most me
n wouldn’t, but Luc wasn’t most men. He didn’t like to read about himself in books, newspapers, or magazines. No matter how flattering. And the Honey article was extremely flattering to him. Hotter and more passionate than she’d ever written. In fact, it was the best thing she’d ever written. She hadn’t decided if she was actually going to send it in. She had a few days before her deadline to decide.

  The drapes fell from her hands and she turned back to the room. It had been about sixteen hours since Luc had kissed the breath out of her. Sixteen hours of reliving and analyzing every word and action. Sixteen hours later, she still didn’t know what to think. He’d kissed her and changed everything. Well, actually, he’d done more than just kiss her. He’d touched her breast and told her she drove him crazy, and if his sister hadn’t been sitting out in the car, Jane might have thrown him down and checked out that lucky tattoo, which was driving her crazy every time she saw it in the locker room. And that would have been bad. Very bad. For a lot of reasons.

  Jane kicked off her shoes and pulled her sweater over her head. She tossed it on the bed as she moved to the bathroom. Her eyes were scratchy and her brain fuzzy, and instead of locking herself in her room working on her Honey Pie article, she should be at the Pepsi Center, talking to the coaches and players before tomorrow night’s game. Darby had mentioned that the best time to talk to the coaches or front-office management was during practice. And Jane wanted to ask them about their new acquisition, Pierre Dion.

  She jumped into the shower and let the warm water pour over her head. That morning when Luc boarded the jet, wearing his dark glasses, blue suit, and striped tie, her stomach had fluttered like she was thirteen again with her first junior high school crush. It was horrible, and she was old enough to know that having a crush on the most popular boy in school would only bring her heartache.

  After fifteen minutes, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed two towels. If she was honest with herself, something she tried to avoid if possible, she could no longer fool herself into thinking that what she felt for him was nothing more than a crush. It was more. So much more, it scared her. She was thirty. Not a girl. She’d been in love and she’d been in lust and she’d been somewhere in between. But she’d never allowed herself to fall for a guy like Luc. Never. Not when she had so much to lose. Not when there was more at stake than just her contrary heart. Something more important: her job.

  A broken heart would mend; she could get over that. But she didn’t think she could get over blowing the best opportunity she’d been given in a long time. Because of a man. That was plain stupid, and she wasn’t stupid.

  A knock interrupted her thoughts, and she moved to the door. She looked out the peephole, and Luc stood on the other side, all windblown and perfect. He glanced down at the ground and she took a moment to study him. He wore his leather coat and a gray wool sweater, and he must have just come from outside because his cheeks were pink. He looked back up and his blue eyes stared at her through the peephole as if he could see her. “Open up, Jane.”

  “Just a sec,” she called out, feeling foolish. She moved to the closet and pulled out a terrycloth bathrobe. She tied the belt around her waist, then opened the door.

  His gaze rose to the towel wrapped around her head, lowered to her mouth, then, in no great hurry, slipped to the tips of her bare toes. “Looks like I caught you just out of the shower again.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  He slid his gaze back up her legs and robe and looked at her without expression. He either was uninterested or doing a really good job of appearing uninterested. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure.” She stepped aside and let him in. “What do you need?”

  His long strides took him to the center of the room and he turned to face her. “When I saw you this morning, you seemed uncomfortable. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me, Jane.” He took a long deep breath and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “So I think maybe I should apologize.”

  “Apologize for…?” But she knew and she wished he wouldn’t.

  “For kissing you last night. I’m still not sure how it happened.” He looked over her head as if the answer were written on the wall. “If you hadn’t cut your hair and been looking so good, I don’t think it would have happened.”

  “Wait.” She held up one hand like a traffic cop. “Are you blaming my hair?” she asked, just to make sure she was hearing him right. Hoping she wasn’t.

  “Probably had more to do with that dress. That dress was designed with ulterior motives.”

  He’d kissed her, and she’d fallen so deep into infatuation that she wasn’t sure it even was infatuation anymore. Now here he was, blaming her hair and her dress as if she’d purposely tricked him. As if he wouldn’t have kissed her if he hadn’t been tricked. Knowing how he felt hurt more than it should have. He was a jerk, no doubt about it, but she was a fool. The latter was the hardest to take.

  Pain and anger tangled into a knot around her heart, but she was determined not to let it show. “It just was an ordinary red dress.”

  “It didn’t have a back and had only two strips of material up the front.” Luc rocked back on his heels and lowered his gaze from the towel wrapped around Jane’s head, down the front of her robe to her bare toes again. Since last night, he’d been thinking about that kiss in her apartment, and he wasn’t certain what had driven him to kiss her. The dress. The lips. Curiosity. All of those. “And the little gold chain hanging down your back was there for only one reason.”

  “What? To hypnotize you?”

  She was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t that far off. “Maybe not hypnotize, but it’s there so any man seeing it will think about unhooking it.”

  She raised one brow and looked at him as if he were an idiot. He sort of felt like an idiot. “I’m telling you the truth. All the guys last night were thinking of unhooking your dress.” None of the guys had mentioned it to Luc, but he figured that if he’d been thinking it, they had too.

  “Is this your idea of an apology or your way of rationalizing what happened?” She grabbed the towel from her head and tossed it on her bed.

  “It’s a fact.”

  She combed her fingers through her hair. “It’s delusional.”

  If she were a guy, she’d see the logic in it.

  “And it’s stupid.” Her wet curls tangled about her fingers as she pushed them back from her face. “It puts the blame on me, and I didn’t walk into your apartment last night and kiss you. You kissed me.”

  “You didn’t protest.” He didn’t know what had shocked him more. Him kissing her, or her response. He never would have guessed that so much passion could be contained in so little a package.

  She let out a long sigh as if she were bored. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  He laughed even as he wanted to cross the room and press his mouth to hers. To slip his hand inside that robe and cup her breast, even as he knew it was a hell of a bad idea. Luc leaned a hip into the desk as he lowered his gaze from her mouth and thought about how her mouth had tasted last night. He glanced somewhere safe, down at Jane’s laptop. “The way you kissed, I thought you were trying to climb inside me.” An open day planner sat beside the laptop. Several Post-Its were stuck on the inside. A couple of the notes had to do with hockey trivia and questions she wanted to ask for her sports columns.

  “There you go, being delusional again.”

  On one pink note the words, Feb. 16/Single Girl deadline, were printed. While another read, Honey Pie/make decision by Wednesday at the latest. Honey Pie? Did Jane read Honey Pie? The nympho who humped men into comas? He just couldn’t picture her reading porn. “You were so hot for it,” he said in a slow and deliberate drawl as he looked back up at her, “I could have had you naked in no time.”

  “You’re not only conceited beyond belief, and delusional, you’re… you’re deranged!” she sputtered.

  “Probably,” he admitted as he walked past her on his way t
o the door. He felt deranged.

  “Wait a minute. When do I get the interview you promised me?”

  With his hand on the doorknob, he turned and looked at her. “Not now,” he said.

  “When?” she pushed.

  “Sometime.”

  “Sometime tomorrow?” She raised her arms and brushed her hair behind her ears.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “You can’t back out on me now.”

  He didn’t plan to. He just wasn’t going to do it now. Here. In a hotel room with a king-sized bed and a woman wearing a bathrobe begging him to prove just how deranged he was. “Yeah, says who?”

  Her brows lowered and she pinned him with her gaze. “Me.”

  He laughed again. He couldn’t help it. She looked like she was gearing up to kick his ass.

  “You gave me your word.”

  For a split second he thought about shutting her up with his mouth. Kissing her until she turned soft and melted into him again. Until she fed him that little moan of hers that had urged him on last night, to take it further. To touch her where his mind had been taking him since that first morning on the team jet when he’d looked back and seen her.

  “When, Luc?”

  Instead of giving in to the urge, he opened the door and said over his shoulder, “When you get a bra, Jane.”

  Luc unzipped his jacket the rest of the way as he walked down the hall. A repeat of last night couldn’t happen again. The instant he’d kissed her, he’d gone from zero to hard in under a second, and that hadn’t happened to him in a very long time. If Marie hadn’t been waiting in the car, he didn’t know if he would have stopped. He liked to think he would have. He liked to think he was mature and experienced enough to stop before he did anything he’d regret, anything colossally stupid, but he wasn’t sure. He’d kissed a lot of women in his thirty-two years. A lot of women had kissed him too, but never like Jane. He didn’t know what it was about her, and he really didn’t want to take the time to figure it out. She already spent too much time in his head.