by Trish Wylie
‘Not that much.’
‘Good.’ He leaned closer, angling his face above hers. ‘Because I want to discuss your rule again.’
‘Now?’ Her brows lifted.
‘Mmm-hmm—’ he nodded firmly ‘—now.’
She peeked over his shoulder. ‘Not here.’
‘You’re saying no one kisses at these things?’ Blake took that as confirmation of his appraisal of the ‘party’.
‘Not if it’s someone they work with.’
‘Work for.’
Setting her palms flat against his chest, she pushed, frowning when he didn’t move. ‘I can’t kiss you here.’
‘So when you say “not here”, it’s not that you’re denying you want to kiss me—’ which would have been a step in the right direction ‘—it’s that you don’t want to kiss me where someone might see you kissing me.’
‘I wouldn’t have put it that way,’ she said a little too defensively for his liking. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Don’t I?’ He forced a smile onto his face. ‘You want to sneak around for a little midday fun, I’m open to that. You want to act like strangers in public while we get it on behind closed doors, you can forget it.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ She scowled.
‘It was implied.’ Setting his bottle on a nearby planter, Blake grabbed her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You’re going to dance with me.’ He tightened his grip and led them to the dance floor where he turned, hauled her against his chest and wrapped an arm around her waist. ‘If you think I’m going to watch you dance with a string of guys under my nose while I pretend there’s nothing going on between us, think again.’
Incredulity filled her eyes as he began swaying them to the music. ‘You think I did that to make you jealous? Oh, you do, don’t you? And you’re telling me…’
When realisation entered her eyes and she caught her lower lip between her teeth to control a smile, Blake shook his head. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t get to look happy about it. Not after labelling me a guilty secret.’
‘That’s not what I said!’ She glanced around them. ‘Would you stop putting words in my mouth?’
The fact she’d lowered her voice so no one could hear didn’t help.
‘Prove me wrong,’ he challenged.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
The look she gave him said he couldn’t be serious. ‘You want an audience the first time I kiss you? Maybe they should make an announcement so nobody misses it. I know what we could do—we could auction it. Someone pays enough money, we could put on quite a show for them. That should make it a party to remember.’
Her eyes sparked with a hint of impending danger. Having waited so long for her to lose her cool, it was a shame he was too pissed at her to appreciate the moment. When she pulled back, he held on, his jaw locked with determination. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Without giving him enough time to read her intentions, she relaxed in his arms, angled her head, smiled sweetly and kicked him sharply in the shin.
Lurching forward, he looked up as she told him, ‘You can be a real jerk when you want to be.’
His burst of deep laughter caught them both off guard.
After a few moments of gentle swaying—allowing time for the storm to pass—she quietly slipped her hand up his chest and around his neck; her fingertips brushed against the short strands of hair touching his collar.
‘You don’t get it.’
‘Then walk me through it.’
‘After the stunt you just pulled?’ She raised a brow. ‘I don’t think so.’
Leaning back, his gaze scanned the crowd. It had been an overreaction—not that he’d never had one of those before—but she deserved better.
‘I won’t hide,’ he heard his voice say. ‘Not again.’
The confession made him frown. She was going to be all over that like a rash. Maybe they should find a nice couch for him to lie on while she took notes. But she didn’t say anything, her fingertips moving against his neck in a soothing caress until his shoulders relaxed and he looked into her eyes again. ‘If I wanted our first kiss to have an audience, I wouldn’t have dragged you over here to dance with me, would I?’
The same understanding he’d seen at the taxi landing entered her eyes. ‘You wanted us to be seen together, so everyone knew I was here with you.’
It was uncharacteristically possessive of him—and he didn’t know where that had come from either—but he sure as hell wasn’t telling her. He’d said enough already.
‘We arrived together,’ she pointed out with a small smile. ‘Wouldn’t that kind of make it look like a date?’
They’d met in the foyer, but he got her point.
‘It might,’ he allowed, ‘if you hadn’t spent the rest of the night avoiding me and dancing with everyone but me.’
‘You could have asked me to dance.’
‘Sweetheart, I don’t stand in line.’
‘And I wasn’t avoiding you. I was…’ She clamped her mouth shut.
‘Go on.’
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she grimaced as it slid free. ‘Once I’d introduced you to a few people, I stepped back to let you mingle…and find your feet…’
‘Woman, don’t baby me.’
She arched a brow. ‘Wouldn’t sticking to you like glue the entire night be babying you? Kinda like holding your hand while you go play with the big boys?’
Okay. She had him on that one.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she said.
A possessive, jealous idiot, apparently—that was new. Not a particularly nice feeling, either.
The hand on his neck slid forward when his gaze scanned the crowd again, and her thumb moved against his cheek. Lifting his arm from her waist, he captured her fingers and lowered them to his chest, his voice low.
‘Someone will see you.’
Long, darkened lashes flickered as she lowered her gaze to her hand, her fingers flexing as she took a breath, frowned, damped her lips with the tip of her tongue and looked into his eyes again.
Her hand slid back up. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Yes, you do.’
Capturing her hand, he held it over his heart. ‘Forget about it. It’s my hang-up, not yours.’
She smiled through another grimace. ‘Kinda is mine. I’ve been so hung up on what people might think if they knew I was sleeping with a client that—’
‘Jumping the gun a little bit, don’t you think?’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to skip any of the steps. I’m all about the foreplay.’
This earned a burst of soft feminine laughter, and he lowered their hands from his chest, took a step back and threaded their fingers. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘Consider it working on your lack of adventure…’
CHAPTER SIX
‘THIS is a party.’
‘Anders!’ yelled a chorus of voices over the music.
Olivia was mid-smile when a large palm flattened against the small of her back to guide her through the crowded bar. The heated brand of his touch seared into her skin and scrambled her thoughts. She inhaled sharply.
Those hands should come with a warning.
‘Aren’t we a little overdressed?’ she asked to cover up the effect it had on her.
‘One of us is.’ He tucked the dark ribbon of his bow tie into the pocket of his jacket, loosened the buttons at the collar of his dress shirt and leaned closer. ‘Not that I’m complaining, but I’d have to lose a couple of layers to get to where you are.’
Olivia smiled. The dress was worth every impulsive cent she’d spent on her overextended credit card after she’d left him at the taxi landing.
‘Nice monkey suit, Anders.’
‘You remember Marty,’ Blake said when they got to the table. ‘He used to work for me.’
‘Still does,’ Marty corrected.
&n
bsp; ‘Not if you don’t start using my name, you don’t.’
‘I’m using one of ’em.’ He winked at Olivia as he gave up his seat and Blake made the introductions.
‘Marty’s wife, Chrissy, Sam, Duke, Duke’s wife, Kate.’ He grinned. ‘Happy birthday, beautiful.’ She blew him a kiss before he looked at the last person at the table. ‘And that’s Mitch, but you’re better not knowing him—what do you want to drink?’
‘We got a pitcher of beer,’ Marty offered as he appeared with extra chairs. ‘Figure we owe you a drink for the Anders. We’re getting a lot of mileage out of that.’
Olivia laughed. ‘A beer would be great. Thank you.’
‘I’ll get another pitcher. Everyone, this is Liv.’ Blake’s lethal hand moved from her back to her shoulder as she sat down, his thumb rubbing across her collarbone to get her attention. ‘Don’t believe anything they tell you but feel free to cross-examine them till I get back.’
‘What makes you think I’ll wait till you’re gone?’ Before his hand left her shoulder, she turned towards Chrissy. ‘So how long did you say you’ve known him?’
‘Since high school.’ Chrissy smiled as Blake left. ‘It’s nice to meet you; we’ve heard a lot about you.’
They had?
‘Marty says you’re one heck of a pool player.’
That made more sense. Somehow Blake didn’t strike her as the kind of man who discussed the women in his life. Not that she was the woman in his life, but—
Moving on, ‘Blake went to high school here?’
‘Where didn’t he go to high school?’ Marty asked as he sat down between them and reached past Olivia for a glass and the pitcher. ‘He was here for two semesters when we were seventeen.’
‘Made quite an impression on the cheerleading squad,’ Chrissy added before smiling affectionately at her husband. ‘Well, the majority of them, anyway…’
‘She already had her eye on a bad boy,’ Marty explained with an equally affectionate smile. ‘Been keeping me on the straight and narrow ever since.’
Olivia smiled as she took the glass from him. They were cute together. There weren’t many married couples within her social or family circles, but it was easy to tell they were still in love. She wondered how much time Blake spent with them, doubting he would look at them and think of their relationship the same way she did—as something she would like one day, with the right guy, at the right time, given the opportunity.
For a second it made her long for something she could never have with Blake. Someone like him, with a grin that knocked her on her ear, a touch that still tingled on her skin even when he wasn’t there, who could make her smile every time she thought of seeing him and who would get jealous when she danced with other men…
She could see herself falling for a guy like that.
‘Apart from that time in Canada…’
Olivia perked up. ‘Canada?’
‘What did I miss?’ Blake set another pitcher on the table before removing his jacket and dropping it over the back of the chair beside her.
‘We were just getting to the good stuff.’
‘They’re not going to tell you about Canada,’ he said as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
‘Canada!’ The call came from across the table, glasses raised in salute as the toast was repeated and the men took a drink while the women shook their heads.
Blake chuckled as he sat down. ‘Nice try, sweetheart.’
She’d. Been. That. Close.
‘You know all of them from high school?’ she asked when she’d relaxed into a couple of laughter-filled hours.
Leaning closer to hear her over the music, Blake shook his head. ‘No.’
The fingertips at the end of the long arm that had been casually resting on the back of her chair traced lazily over the skin of her upper arm. He’d been touching her since he sat down. Apart from the fingertips that hadn’t been still for more than a few seconds at a time, she had to deal with his leg brushing against hers, the warmth of his breath close to her ear when he spoke in his rough, rumbling voice and a million other little things that tested the final shred of her resistance.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t known he had sensational eyes but the thought had never entered her head that the light sparkling in them was probably similar to stars in a night sky away from city lights. It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed how thick his eyelashes were or been mesmerized by how sensual each of the sixteen blinks per minute every human being took could be. She just hadn’t realised they could hypnotize her to the extent where she felt like staring at him long enough to count the beats in case she missed one…two…three, four…
When his gaze locked on hers, a weird shifting sensation happened inside her chest. Almost immediately, it was replaced with something she recognised: fear.
Oh, no. She couldn’t allow herself to be sucked in—just because he’d introduced her to his friends and spent the evening treating her like a guy treated a girlfriend didn’t mean—she knew what she’d been fighting and it had nothing to do with—
‘Dance with me.’
‘What?’ Thankful for the invitation to tear her gaze from his, she glanced at the small dance floor on the other end of the room. ‘I don’t think—’
‘You should do more of that.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘You overthink things.’
Things like the fact she was the only woman in the room in a floor-length evening dress and he was asking her to dance to music that leaned more towards hip-hop than tango?
‘Don’t wimp out on me now, sweetheart.’
Olivia shook her head as she stood up. Glancing at his face, the hint of smugness she detected at how easily he’d played her brought a smile to her face as she stepped past him. He was in so much trouble and he didn’t even know it.
Head held high, she ignored the number of people staring at what she was wearing as she made her way through the crowd. Thanks to several strategically placed mirrors in a changing room, she knew what Blake was looking at behind her. The knowledge encouraged her to exaggerate the sway created by walking on sinfully high heels. Judging by the fact a woman at a nearby table slapped her man on the head, she must have been working it to the desired level. A fact she had confirmed when she got to the middle of the dance floor and turned in time to see Blake frown before he lifted his gaze.
Hand on hip, she angled her head and beckoned him to her with a crooked finger. He froze for a second, then closed the gap between them, reached out a hand and raised his voice to be heard over the music.
‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
Ignoring the implied suggestion of an introductory handshake, Olivia placed them palm to palm, threaded her fingers through his and lifted their arms as she angled her head a little more and stepped into him.
‘We talking or dancing?’
As his head lowered, an arm snaked around her waist. ‘We’ve been dancing since we met.’
Smooth. For a moment she was tempted to smile. But she was the one doing the seducing this time, not him. Recklessly, she decided he was about to see an Olivia Brannigan few people ever laid eyes on. Gaze lowering to his mouth, she ran her hand up his arm and across a broad shoulder until she could dip her fingers beneath the collar of his shirt and curl them around the column of his neck.
If everyone at the table had been given the impression she was his, in a few moments there wouldn’t be a single soul in the entire bar who didn’t think every gorgeous inch of him was hers. Fighting her attraction to him was exhausting. Giving in to it—even if it was just for a little while—suddenly seemed much easier.
Leaning forward, she dipped down a little, brushed the tips of her breasts against the wall of his chest and slid upwards, rolling her shoulders and smiling when his body tensed. As they began to sway, she moved her face closer to his, her gaze whispering lazily upwards until she was looking into his eyes. Checking to make sure she had his full and undivided attention, she ran her tongue over her lips,
then moved her head so she could speak directly into his ear. ‘Did you know dancing is the closest thing to having sex in public?’
‘Like living dangerously, do we?’
Pressing tighter to his chest, she allowed her lips to brush his ear. ‘I still have the handcuffs…’
‘Okay—’ he reached for the hand on his neck and took a step back ‘—now we’re dancing.’
Tightening long fingers around hers, he took another step back, dropping the hand he’d removed from his neck and swinging her out to arm’s length before hauling her back to his chest with a sharp tug. Olivia drew a sharp gasp through her lips as his leg stepped between her thighs; the contact was totally unexpected and at the same time thrilling. The hand on her back tightened, steering her around his body as he changed direction. The leg between her thighs moved back a step, he took another sidestep and, before she knew it, she was being moved around the dance floor.
Did he seriously think she was letting him lead?
When his leg insinuated itself between her thighs again, she stepped higher and back, initiating a back and forth stepping motion that slithered the silky smooth material of her skirt between her thighs with each forward thrust of his leg. But just when she thought she was in control again, he stilled. Clasped hands lifted in the air beside them as he bent her backward, his gaze sliding down her throat to her breasts and back up to linger on her parted lips while he drew her upright and moved his face closer to hers. Heaven help her, it felt as if they were having sex in public.
But the woman inside her didn’t care, particularly when the pressure of his hand on her lower back brought her abdomen into contact with his groin and she made a discovery. He was as turned on by what they were doing as she was; the evidence pressed against her, heat pooling between her thighs in response. Running her tongue over her teeth, she fixed a heavy-lidded gaze on his mouth as she crushed her breasts against his chest and felt a buzz of anticipation hum through her body.
She was so far over the line she couldn’t see it any more but, instead of fear, she felt more alive than she had in years. She’d never cut loose with a man the way she wanted to cut loose with him. Every fantasy she’d ever had, every one of the dreams that left her bathed in sweat and tangled up in her sheets since she met him, she could play out with him. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Call it temporary insanity, a vacation from reality, a reward for all the years she’d spent rebuilding her life and buried in work—she didn’t care what her conscience labelled it. She needed this, she wanted him and what was even better, she knew he wanted her.