by Penny Jordan
She again reached for her wine. ‘Unless you never gamble more than you can afford to lose.’
‘Never?’
She shook her head.
‘Then that’s not really a gamble at all, is it?’
She shook her head again, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth as though she knew some great secret he and the rest of the world had yet to catch onto.
‘That said,’ she added, ‘I had a meeting with the bank today and they have approved a loan for me to expand out to three salons.’
‘Good for you. It seems this is a celebratory dinner as well.’ He topped her up wine.
She watched as the dark liquid poured into her deep glass, then said, ‘But I’m not sure if I want to sign.’ She added a little shrug, then sank further away from him again as though she’d said more than she’d meant to.
‘Why not?’ he asked, adding a dash to his own mostly full glass. ‘If they think you warrant such an investment, they have faith in your product.’
‘I guess. But I’m not sure that I’m willing to put all my faith in someone else’s judgment.’
For the first time Damien saw the genuine vulnerability he’d sensed all along in the lift of her cheek, the blush across her neck, the shy tilt of her head.
He shifted in his seat, mighty glad he hadn’t zoomed over to her place as she’d begged him to do. Right about now he’d be dealing with the fallout. With those great golden eyes boring holes in his back as he walked out of her life as he was wont to do. He thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t gone so far he didn’t still have time to pull out graciously without hurting her feelings.
‘Am I being ridiculous?’ she asked.
It took him a moment to remember what they were talking about. He gulped down half his wine before saying, ‘If your bank works anything like my team do, they keep their ears to the ground. We watch the news, read the papers, I even have a team on gossip magazines, as you never know where new market patterns will emerge.’
‘But once you see something worth your attention you know it? It’s that simple for you?’
‘It really is. And then I gamble everything at my disposal on that instinct.’
‘What if your instincts are wrong?’
‘What if they’re not?’
She looked up at him from beneath the shadow of her long lashes. Her lower lip disappeared between her teeth. And he knew there was far more going on behind the golden depths of her eyes than the conversation at hand. It seemed he wasn’t the only one ignoring the elephant in the room—an attraction so intense he wasn’t sure just how long he and his chivalry could hold out.
‘So now that I’ve given you some free financial advice,’ he said, ‘you owe me.’ He turned over his palm and pulled a pretend pen from behind his ear. ‘Give me the address of your business. It’s time I had a haircut.’
At that she laughed, as he’d hoped she might; only the footloose sound stirred all sorts of shackled feelings deep inside him, enough for him to keep on pouring until his wineglass was full all the way to the top.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHELSEA kicked off her shoes beneath the table and rubbed life back into the balls of her feet.
She wanted nothing more than to run her bare foot up the inside of Damien’s trousers. To scrape her toenails along a length of manly leg hair and just forget all about dinner. He was so utterly and totally beyond the realms of gorgeous that her nerve endings felt as if they were on constant red alert.
Added to that she was beginning to like him. To really, actually like the guy. Beneath the suit and tie he was nice. Funny. Sharp. Thoughtful. And he kept looking at her as if he wanted nothing more than to continue the kiss he’d started outside.
But, and it was a huge but, it seemed he was that mythical creature that she had spent her whole life both desperately wishing to know really existed, while at the same time despising to the depths of her soul.
He was a gambler. Who won. And again and again by the looks of him. By the loose way he sat in the chair. The ease with which he wore his immaculate clothes. The way he rattled off the name of some no doubt ridiculously expensive bottle of wine.
And for him to always win meant guys like her dad had to always lose.
She grabbed the leftover cork from the wine bottle and spun it over her knuckles, from one end of her hand to the other with ever increasing speed.
There was only one way to settle this. The clincher that she had always known since she was a little girl must determine the worthwhile men from the jerks.
‘Do you have a dog?’ she asked.
He looked up from his perusal of the dinner menu. ‘Ah, no.’
There is no point in liking him. Unless, perhaps, the question merely needs one more qualifier. ‘Do you like dogs?’
‘I love dogs. I had a golden lab when I was a kid. Buster. He had an inner-ear problem and ran into walls all the time.’
‘He did no such thing.’
‘You have no idea. He was the best sounding-board a boy could have. Helped me get over my father’s wrath when I got a C in history. He helped me get over being dumped by Casey Campanalli in the eight grade. Helped me survive my parents’ trigger-happy divorce. To this day he’s still the best hug I’ve ever had.’
Chelsea bit her cheek to stop from sighing. He was born to wear a suit. He was born to eat in expensive restaurants day in and day out. He had a natural reserve about him that had her instincts screaming at her to back away fast. But Damien Halliburton was a true dog lover.
The plumber had wanted a dog for company. The single dad had been landed with his in the divorce. The consultant had treated his dogs as if they were his children. But this guy…he had understood the importance of having love in your life that was not for sale.
She liked the guy. She wanted him. And now he’d accidentally made contact with the deepest personal touchstone she had in her arsenal. She was in trouble.
She flicked the cork into her palm, then onto the back of her hand, then continued twirling it over her knuckles. ‘So yours wasn’t an idyllic childhood, then?’
‘I have no complaints. Both parents are still well and truly around and I do believe, on their diet of matching dirty martinis and tennis three times a week, they will live for ever. They divorced when I was eleven, which is likely why they are on such good terms and are now the poster children for contented singledom.’
He smiled, as much as spelling out to her that he was happy being single too. Which was great. So was she. Single and in charge of her own destiny. So why did it feel as if her stomach had sunk like a stone?
Damien took a sip of wine and watched her over the top of the glass, his deep blue eyes smiling, seeing. His mouth stretched into a smile that was built to make a woman just want to give in and surrender. ‘You like me more now, don’t you?’
She leant her chin on her upturned palm, stared right on back and called his bluff. ‘Infinitely.’
His eyes narrowed as he watched her for several more seconds before shifting in his chair, stretching out his legs. The air around her knees wafted and her skirt blew up before settling back against her suddenly sensitive skin.
‘So do you have a dog?’ he asked.
‘I live in an apartment. I’m out a lot. It wouldn’t be fair.’
He nodded. And she restlessly spun the rounded end of the cork on the end of her pointer finger before it landed on the back of her hand again.
‘Okay, I bite,’ Damien said, his dark gaze dropping to her hands. ‘Either you were once a croupier in some dive in Vegas or…nope, that’s the only thing I can come up with for a girl with that kind of hand-eye coordination. Give me a go.’
She tossed it in the air so it spun, and by the time he’d caught it she sat back swirling his wineglass in her left hand and hers in her right.
His eyes grew wide. And impressed. They slid up her chest, past her neck, warming every inch of exposed skin along the way until they landed with a heated thud on her
eyes. ‘You’re some kind of witch, aren’t you?’
Laughter tickled her throat. ‘And I’d gone to so much trouble to hide my broomstick out of sight in an alley down the street.’
Only after taking a decided sip from his glass did she give him back his wine.
‘Thank you,’ he said with a new kind of smile in his eyes that did violent things to her heart rate.
‘My pleasure.’
He threw the cork in the air, then spent a good thirty seconds trying to flip it across his knuckles but he only succeeded in dropping it again and again. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’
She grabbed the linen napkin and began folding it into smaller and smaller triangles, using it as an excuse to break eye contact. She thought about lying. She’d certainly done it before: hidden her own inadequacies while frenetically determining those of any otherwise likeable man in her midst.
She sat back in her chair and pretended to be on the lookout for a waiter. ‘Why is it always the posh places that give such slow service?’
‘Chelsea, spill. Or I’ll find a way to make you.’
She blinked back at him. This guy…Something made her want to tell the truth. Hoping it would bring them closer, or push him further away?
‘My father was a grifter.’
‘Like a conman?’
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Every once in a while. But more consistently a gambler, always following the next big dream, looking for the next sure thing which would make us rich. And when that failed, as it inevitably did, he would turn to stealing wallets, identities, candy from babies as he moved us from pillar to post and back again.’
She glanced at Damien and away again to give herself enough time to see if he was looking for the nearest exit. If she were in his shoes that was what she would have been doing. But if anything he was sitting further forward, intrigue adding a further glint to his eyes. No matter which way she thought he’d spin he continued to surprise her.
She took a much needed deep breath and crossed her feet at the ankles, accidentally brushing the side of her bare foot against his calf. She stilled, wondering if he’d even noticed. When his eyes grew a shade darker and he took his own deep breath she knew he’d noticed all right. Noticed and reacted instantly.
He lounged a tad more, shifting until his knees came so close to hers she could feel his warmth against her bare skin. And that time she just knew it wasn’t in the least bit accidental.
‘So could you steal my wallet?’ he asked.
Chelsea glanced at the region of his heart where by habit she’d felt the consistency of a flat leather wallet that first day. ‘What makes you think I haven’t already?’
His eyes grew wide as his hand flew to the spot. He slid his long black leather wallet from its home and let out a long slow breath. Then his eyes shot to hers. Flickered left to right. Dark, searching, mesmerised.
He slid his wallet back into place, his eyes not leaving hers. Their depths glinted as though reflecting the last gasp of sunlight of the day.
Her teeth scraped against the edge of her glass. The zing she felt through her jaw at the clash of hard substances was nothing compared with the zing singing through her stomach, ricocheting from surface to surface until she felt as if a truckload of fireworks had gone off inside her belly.
‘I’m not sure whether to find you a complete delight or to fear what each encounter with you will bring, Miss London.’
He reached for his own glass of wine, but merely swirled it beneath his chin as his gaze roamed lazily over her face, her hair, and her breasts, which strained against the tight fabric of her dress as though he’d actually reached out and grazed them with his touch.
Finally he looked back into her eyes. A smile warming them. Warming her. Challenging her.
He said, ‘Right now I’m leaning heavily towards delight.’
Chelsea pressed her knees together. She was the one who ought to be feeling fearful of what each meeting with this man might bring. She who was usually so untouchable was becoming very very touched. And the need to touch and be touched as long as she could handle it was overwhelming. She fought to find a way to relieve the pressure inside her before it exploded into something terribly messy like genuine affection.
‘Your turn,’ she said.
‘For?’
‘A party trick. It’s another family tradition of mine. On the rare occasions we ate out anywhere fancy Kensey and I would always end up trying to outdo one another by performing the strangest acts we could while not drawing attention to ourselves. For example…’ She crossed her eyes and curled her tongue into a tube.
Sabotage, her sister would have called it. Chelsea liked to think it was better to know the measure of a man as soon as possible. When she uncrossed them Damien was still watching her with such a look of honest fascination she had to scrape her tongue back through her teeth to stop the tingling.
‘I have something you might like.’ His voice had dropped low and deep. Enough for the sound to create skitters of awareness across her arms. ‘We have to go uncaught? That’s the rule?’
Chelsea’s feet and hands cooled as all the blood inside her seemed to rush to her cheeks. To the vertical dip between her breasts. And lower.
She nodded.
‘Right. Then I’m going to need a drink.’ He turned his wineglass so that the exact spot from which she had earlier drunk was facing him. He brought it to his lips and took a sip, letting his mouth rest around the lip of the glass a mite longer than entirely necessary.
Her lips tingled as though his were pressed just as surely and closely against her own. His breath tickling her tongue rather than creating minuscule waves in his glass.
The upholstered booth seat beneath her suddenly felt as though it were tipping. And when he unbuttoned his jacket, and loosened his tie, then dropped his hands beneath the table and leant forward so that she could see the splash of navy surrounding each of his ocean-blue eyes she clung onto the edge of the table to stop herself from swaying under his gaze.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Am I meant to be involved in this somehow?’
‘Mmm, that’s the general plan.’
‘What do I need to do?’
‘Keep very very still. And if you give us away then you lose, and I win, right?’
She nodded.
And in the next instant the back of his knuckles grazed gently across her knees.
Chelsea’s bare toes dug into the carpeted floor. Her fingers gripped the table so hard her knuckles were turning white. ‘What is it exactly that you are thinking of doing?’
‘Believe me when I say this game will be that much more fun if we left that a surprise.’
When she didn’t flinch, or protest, the knuckles made a return journey, this time brushing across her knees and around the outside until his thumbs ran over the top of her kneecaps and just beneath the hem of her skirt. And she kept her mouth shut tight.
When he touched her for a third time Chelsea glanced quickly around the restaurant, but it was dark, and the table positioned just so. Unless someone came leaping out from behind the Ficus…
Damien’s thumb ran back and forth beneath her skirt and she drew in a shuddering breath. And when his hands wrapped around the outside of her thighs and began sliding up her legs, she wasn’t sure when she ever might find the chance to breathe again.
He smiled. Though it was more of a tilt of the lips, a deepening of the creases below his cheeks, and a change in the colour of his eyes. But in that smile she saw arrogance, confidence, and purpose. Damien Halliburton knew just what kind of power he had over her.
Her head protested. But it was too late. Nothing could have prepared her for the mass of sensation that spread like wildfire through her whole body when his hands slid over the tops of her thighs, his thumbs delved into the gap between and gently, but insistently, pressed her legs apart.
She let her eyes flutter closed. He was so supremely sure of his effe
ct on her, while the only times in recent history she’d had a male get this close was when she’d had to straddle the Kellets’ Great Dane to hold it in place while Phyllis clipped its nails.
She squeezed her eyes tighter. That’s it, you idiot, she said to herself. You are in the middle of the sexiest moment of your entire life and you are doing your best to diminish it. To distance yourself. Well, not this time.
This time it felt too good. This time it had been building and building and unless she let it come to its natural conclusion she knew she would never forgive herself. This time she slowly uncrossed her ankles, released her death grip on the table and let the pressure of his thumbs guide her knees inches apart.
Her pulse pounded beneath her skin, which felt so hot it almost hurt to move. Her head suddenly felt loose upon her neck. And a trickle of perspiration made a slow, hot trail down her spine.
Ambient sounds of the restaurant served as a cushion to her senses: the soft murmur of voices, the whisper of footsteps on expensive carpet, the chime of cutlery against dinner plates. And above it all, like a pulse throbbing across her skin, were Damien’s deep intakes and slow releases of breath, evidence that beneath his self-assurance he was as affected as she was.
He twisted his hands until his fingers were splayed atop her thighs. He tightened his grip, digging into the tense muscle for a brief second before his left hand disappeared. She almost cried out for the sudden erasure of half her pleasure.
Until his right hand continued its journey, circling her thigh until it dived between the two. Her legs spasmed. Clutching at his hand. But it wasn’t to be deterred. The backs of his knuckles grazed one inner thigh, while the pads of his fingers dug into the soft flesh of the other. Then slowed imperceptibly until he came to a stop at the edge of her cotton briefs.
‘Chelsea,’ he said, his deep voice seeming to come to her from a mile away.