by Ann Jacobs
She’d trace the laugh lines that creased his lean, chiseled cheeks, and he’d look at her the way Buck had been salivating over Dixie the other day at the Dairy Queen.
Fat chance. She’d have to be Cinderella to change that much, that fast. And Lisa was no fairy godmother. She might as well stick to guys who weren’t way out of her league.
Casey figured she’d end up settling for a semi-hunk who could look at her and get it up. At least that way she’d be sure of shedding her damnable virginity.
But hey, a girl was entitled to put a face on her fantasies.
Chapter One
Tampa, two months later
“No, thanks, Todd. I don’t date my clients.” Anyhow, Casey wasn’t about to date a client who looked like her dad’s prize boar and whose breath reeked of liver and onions.
Casey handed the porcine banker a printout detailing the workout routine she’d developed for him. “Show this to your doctor and get his approval. You’ll need a medical release before you start working out.”
Last thing the gym needed was a lawsuit from good ol’ Todd’s survivors.
“You won’t change your mind? I know this great Italian place where the pasta’s irresistible— “
“I can’t. And you shouldn’t.”
His jowls quivered, but he managed a smile. “Okay. I’m off to have a physical and get my doctor to sign off so I can get started with the program. Maybe you’ll change your mind?”
“We’ll see.”
With any kind of luck Casey would have had a dozen lovers before Todd sweated off the excess one hundred fifty pounds he toted around. With a lot of luck, she’d have reeled in the man of her dreams before that happened.
“Did Todd try to hit on you?” Lisa asked a few minutes later when she’d finished a consultation with another potential client.
Casey laughed. “Yeah.”
“Well, now you know you do turn some guys on.”
Lisa laughed, too.
But it wasn’t funny. After six weeks working at Russ’s Gym, Casey had gotten propositioned by every out-of-shape nerd who waddled in. But she was still batting zero at attracting a guy who attracted her.
It wasn’t working. Not the new clothes, and not the downright provocative manner she’d borrowed from Lisa.
Men she ran into—except for Todd and some others with serious deficiencies in the hunk department—apparently still thought of her as the tomboy next door if they noticed her at all.
“Am I being too picky?”
Lisa glanced across the gym at Craig McDermott. “Maybe you’re not being picky enough. Why not try coming on to a guy who turns you on? A hot guy who’s used to women making the moves on him. A man can tell if you’re seriously hot for him.”
“You’re saying I should go after him?”
“Sure, if he’s the one that’s got you creaming your panties. Me, I like my guys with a bit more meat on their bones.”
Casey followed Lisa’s gaze to the free weight area, where her boyfriend-of-the-month, Mike Garcia, was pumping iron. A beefy guy with muscles on his muscles, he’d made Casey wonder—until Lisa had revealed more details than Casey needed to know about what a stud the guy was—whether he’d gotten a lot of that bulk by using steroids. Dark, swarthy, and possessed of a killer smile, Mike was a hunk for sure. But he didn’t appeal to Casey the way McDermott did.
“You’re welcome to Mike,” she said.
“Yeah. I know. And you’re welcome to Mister Tall, Dark and Preppy. Go on over there and give him some pointers on his routine.”
As if McDermott needed any tips about physical fitness. Most likely he could teach Casey a thing or two. Still…
“I dare you.”
Damn it. Casey wouldn’t back away from a dare. And Lisa knew it.
“You’re on.” Putting a gentle sway in her step, Casey licked her lips and sauntered across the gym.
Five minutes later she retraced her steps.
Lisa had been right about the chemistry. Every cell in her body tingled from the up-close-and-personal encounter. Her nipples had tightened into rigid little points that reflected back at her from the mirrors on the wall, and the crotch of her leotard was damp from the short but arousing encounter. “Turned on” was too mild an expression to describe the sensations coursing through her body.
She glanced Craig’s way again, admiring the way his powerful thigh muscles bunched as he hefted a heavy barbell to his shoulders and resumed the set of squats she’d interrupted.
Too bad all that chemical reaction seemed to be on her part.
* * * * *
Craig had never been more tempted to toss aside his well-laid life plans and follow up with personal trainer Casey Thompson. The woman had put out an invitation so blatant not even a sexual neophyte could ignore.
Looks-wise, she was pure dynamite. If he didn’t miss his guess, she’d burn up a guy’s sheets. It didn’t take a genius to read her hip-swinging walk or interpret the provocative comments she’d tossed his way at the gym last night.
He’d damn near grabbed her and dragged her to the padded mat when she raked her gaze down his body and ran her tongue across her bright red lips.
But Craig had an agenda. Success. Big-time success.
For that he needed to concentrate on his career and keep his deprived hormones on the back burner. After all, he shouldn’t be missing what he’d never sampled.
Yeah, right. Just thinking about Casey had his cock rock hard and aching.
“You take this one. Trial’s set to start next Wednesday.”
Forcing his libido to let go of his brain, Craig flipped open the case file State Attorney Harper Wells dumped onto his desk.
State of Florida v. William Ranger. The case everybody in the office had been laughing about since Dwayne came back from the arraignment a few minutes ago and announced that Ranger was pleading not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
Insanity his wife had allegedly brought on by kicking him out of their bed.
Craig skimmed the discoveries. Damn. Dwayne wasn’t kidding. Billy Ranger or his lawyer had found a psychiatrist willing to swear the man had gone temporarily bonkers because he’d been sexually deprived.
Going without had made Ranger go on a binge of road rage and ram a woman’s SUV on the beltline highway? No way could Ranger’s attorney persuade a jury to swallow that argument. Not even if Tony Landry personally tried the case, Craig told himself when he recalled that a Winston Roe associate had handled the arraignment.
After all, Craig had been ready to burst his balls after ogling Casey at the gym last night, but he’d managed to take the problem in hand after getting home. Literally.
“Ranger’s lawyer is claiming insanity because of what?” another assistant prosecutor asked when he walked in on the conversation.
Somebody filled in the late arrival, and he joined in the laughter.
“Anybody who buys that argument, I’ve got some land down in the ‘glades I’ll sell, dirt cheap. Craig will have no trouble getting a conviction.” State Attorney Wells’ booming voice reached the farthest corners of the room.
“It’ll be a piece of cake.” Craig wasn’t sure he meant that, but he wasn’t about to argue with his boss. Wells apparently thought he’d done a favor by assigning Craig to try the defendant the local press had dubbed the Road Rage Ranger.
The news of Ranger’s no-sex insanity plea had just generated a chorus of guffaws.
“The defense has to be desperate if they’re grasping a flimsy straw like that,” one of the other prosecutors choked out between bursts of laughter.
“Craig will shoot that theory down. He’s single, so he’s got to know how it feels to have to spend a night alone every once in a while. Right, Craig?”
“Right, Andi.” Craig forced a hearty chuckle. Good thing Andi Syzmanski, the very pregnant senior assistant to Wells, didn’t know how many hundreds of nights he’d spent alone.
Twenty-seven times three hundred si
xty-five of them, not counting the eight nights that had passed since his birthday. Or the however many extra days for leap years.
That came to…too damn many to count. Not to mention too damn many to own up to.
“Nobody goes nuts because their wife suddenly cuts them off,” Dwayne said. “Doing without for three months before Stephanie had the twins didn’t make me plow my car into the back of some woman’s SUV on purpose.”
“Hey, Dwayne, you don’t count. Everybody knows you’re undersexed.” Craig jumped at the opportunity to shift attention toward his colleague.
Dwayne laughed again. “Up yours.”
“Back to work. You’d think you were at Bennie’s, not doing the people’s business,” Wells barked. He motioned toward Craig with a file he clutched in his meaty fist. “McDermott, come in my office.”
Damn it, the last place Craig wanted to be was on Wells’ carpet, and the last thing he wanted to hear was how easy this damn case should be for him to win. Wells wasn’t a man to cross, though, so Craig did as he said.
“Damn detectives. Chief Delgado found out we’re set to give his boys some competition this year and penciled in a rookie cop for the triathlon. Swears the kid’s unbeatable. Sneaky bastard only hired him because he knows we have you.”
“Yeah,” Craig answered noncommittally. He didn’t mind obliging Wells and kicking ass in every one of the swimming events, but he wished his boss would forget about him doing the triathlon that was the high point of the annual competition between the state attorney’s staff and the local detectives.
Unfortunately he didn’t dare beg off, despite the lingering damage from a knee and hip injury he’d suffered in a car accident while in law school. He needed his pompous boss’s support to push him along a fast track toward his ultimate career goal.
The state attorney looked at Craig as though he were a college coach sizing up the state of his athlete’s conditioning. “You keeping yourself in shape, son?”
“Yes sir.” He’d be okay. Craig told himself the chorus of doctors who had warned him to avoid impact activities like martial arts and running had only been covering their collective asses.
After all, running was only one third of the triathlon, and one of the other thirds—the long-distance swim—was an activity the same doctors had recommended as therapy. It wasn’t as if he was going to do a ten-kilometer run every day. He was being damn careful not to disturb the surgeon’s handiwork when he trained with weights.
Craig couldn’t help appreciating the special attention he’d earned because Wells was looking at him to help secure a win in this competition.
“So what are you doing to get ready?” Wells asked.
“Working out every day at Russ Green’s fitness center. I haven’t been in such good shape since I was an undergrad.”
Wells rubbed his palms together and shot Craig an oily grin. “This year I’m finally going to kick Delgado’s ass,” he said, as though he’d be the one out there sweating for the glory of his office.
Craig half-listened while his boss went on, gloating at the prospect of besting Rocky Delgado’s detectives for the first time in the six years they’d been competing to raise money for a local children’s shelter.
“Craig?” Wells scowled at the message he’d just fished off his desk. His deep voice resonated with apparent concern.
“Yes sir?” Craig doubted anything about the upcoming games had precipitated his boss’s sudden change of mood.
“The woman Billy Ranger rear-ended is State Senator Frank Gomez’s niece. Frank told me she spent a week in the hospital and is still hobbling around with a cane because of the broken ankle she got when Ranger whacked her.”
“I noticed she’s Gomez’s niece.” Somebody had written a terse comment to that effect on a sticky note and slapped it onto the folder that held the Ranger case file.
“Then you know it’s doubly important to get a conviction. As important as it is for you to win your events at the games.”
“I understand.” If Craig hadn’t fully appreciated the political ramifications attached to the Ranger case before, he did now.
Wells set the message down and laughed, his chins quivering. “You shouldn’t have any trouble blowing Bill Ranger’s idiotic defense right out of the courtroom.” With that parting comment, he picked up the phone and waved Craig out of his office.
Damn it, why had Harper Wells gotten it in his head that he should be the one to prosecute this case? It wasn’t as if Craig had asked to try every alleged sex-related crime committed in Hillsborough County short of aggravated rape and murder. And it wasn’t his imagination, either. Everybody in the office commented on a regular basis about how he was becoming the number-one prosecutor of alleged sex criminals.
Not long ago, he’d asked why. The state attorney’s reply rang in his ears. You play well to women jurors. And defense lawyers tend to go for female juries when they’re defending cases about men hurting women. Hell, boy, you’ve got to know women like your looks.
Craig doubted he had an extraordinary talent for persuading female jurors that alleged sex offenders were guilty as sin and deserved whatever punishment they got. Besides, being the state attorney’s de facto poster boy for sex-related crimes embarrassed the hell out of him.
He had to admit his very politically savvy boss hadn’t gotten to be the most successful state attorney in Tampa’s recent history by reading people wrong. His own impressive conviction rate in the eleven months since he passed the bar attested to Wells’ good judgment in assigning cases, he admitted grudgingly.
That conviction rate was beginning to gain Craig the attention of the big law firms he was determined to impress. And all his hard work would be for nothing if he couldn’t convince a jury that Billy Ranger was guilty. That he couldn’t have been driven out of his mind, temporarily or otherwise, because his wife had cut him off from pussy.
How could he make a jury believe him when he didn’t know exactly what it was that Ranger had been missing?
He needed to find out, and he had less than a week to do it.
One thing for sure, he wasn’t about to confess his ignorance and ask any of the clowns he worked with. They’d laugh him out of town if he admitted to being the world’s last twenty-seven year old male virgin outside a monastery.
Hell, they’d laugh him clear back to Texas.
The answers he needed wouldn’t pop up between the covers of any sex manuals, either, although Craig intended to go buy some to read. He’d try a bookstore out in the suburbs somewhere, nowhere near downtown or nearby Old Hyde Park. That way he’d be less likely to run into some bigmouthed coworker.
Damn it, he didn’t need a stupid book. He needed firsthand experience. Fast.
And he needed a woman to help him get it. A girl who wouldn’t balk at fucking just for fun, one it wouldn’t take him months to sweet-talk into bed.
Once more, Casey’s image flooded his mind.
Five o’clock. It was a given he wasn’t going to get much accomplished on the case tonight.
Unless…
He packed up his briefcase and headed for the gym.
* * * * *
An hour later, Craig finished his last set of leg presses and adjusted the pins on the machine. On his way to the sauna, he wiped sweat off his brow.
Then Casey caught his eye.
How could she not? The sassy personal trainer’s outfits got more outrageous every time he saw her.
The neon green second skin she had on today covered her from neck to toe, but it showed enough to give Craig a quick refresher course in female anatomy, along with a good start on a raging hard-on.
Fuzzy hot pink socks slouched below shapely calves he itched to check out, up close and personal. He imagined they’d be firm yet giving.
Much like Casey herself seemed to be.
He tried to clamp down on his libido without success. Thank God his workout shorts fit loose and baggy.
“Hey, Craig.”
&n
bsp; He hoped to hell his tongue wasn’t hanging out. She looked good enough to eat. And she was headed his way, her dark-brown ponytail and trim hips swinging in unison.
He couldn’t drag his gaze away from breasts that swayed just enough to call attention to nipples that poked impudently against that slippery looking thing she had on.
Her smile had to pack at least a thousand watts, if his body’s reaction meant anything.
“Casey. How are you?”
“Fine. You’re looking good.”
He flexed a bicep and grinned. “Thanks to you and your boss.”
“More like, thanks to good genes and clean living.” She stepped closer.
Clean living was the last thing on Craig’s mind. When Casey laid a soft palm on his sweaty forearm, the heat she generated shot through him like a prairie wildfire.
The flowery smell of her perfume mingled in his nostrils with the earthy odors of sweat and whatever pungent stuff Russ used to lubricate the Nautilus machines.
He wanted her.
Pure temptation stared Craig in the face. Temptation with twinkling dark eyes and a flirtatious smile—and a body that screamed “Take Me” in brilliant billboard letters.
His balls tightened and his cock got even harder when he imagined himself peeling her out of that neon green invitation to sin.
Why had he decided to have his sex solo until he found the ideal woman? The woman he’d mentally defined but hadn’t found time to start looking for.
Casey destroyed his reason, made him strain his memory to recall—he paused to do another quick set of dumbbell flies—why the fuck had he decided gratuitous sex promised more trouble than satisfaction?
“You there?” Casey’s tongue snaked out and wet her bow-shaped upper lip.
“Yeah.”
Her pink tongue beckoned him to taste it, sample its hot slick promise. What delicious tortures he imagined her soft, wet mouth could wreak on his already aching balls!
What the hell had he been thinking when he’d vowed at the grand old age of sixteen not to let his cock rule his brain?