“Melynda,” she said, her voice entirely too breathy for simple introductions.
As he followed her into the theater, he reminded himself to temper his expectations. Accepting an extra ticket didn’t mean he’d ever see her again. It certainly didn’t mean he’d get to find out what this curvy goddess looked like with her gown rucked up.
Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was someone important, someone he was meant to know, to touch, to taste. If his father had taught him anything, it was that it was foolish to imagine that physical attraction – even an intense one – meant anything. Even more foolish to imagine that attraction could lead to something substantial. After a lifetime of watching his father, he’d learned the lesson in brutal detail – love was a liability.
Still. You don’t spend a career telling the greatest love stories ever set to music without becoming something of a romantic.
Yes, if Liam Jacobs was sure of anything, he was sure of this: he was meant to meet the woman in the purple dress.
Chapter Two
Mel slid into the empty seat next to the handsome stranger. She’d never sat so close to the stage before. As if she needed yet another confirmation that this man was out of her league.These tickets probably cost more than a semester’s worth of textbooks.So why had he invited her to join him?Maybe he’s just that nice of a guy.Who was she kidding? In her experience, men who looked like him, who smiled like they knew a hundred ways to break your heart, were rarely that nice of a guy.
She smoothed the fabric of her skirt over her lap, focusing her attention on the minor adjustments to the deep side slit to better conceal her thigh. Liam dropped into the seat next to her. His shoulder knocked against hers and he murmured an apology but nothing about the look he gave her was apologetic.
His eyes raked over her and her cheeks grew warm as if it were his hands tracing her every curve and not his eyes. She pulled the corner of her lip between her teeth. What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if he was smirking because he knew he was so far out of her league? His eyes found hers again, that curve of his lips making her want all kinds of things she shouldn’t want from a stranger, especially one who was clearly older than she was, more sophisticated, more experienced - justmore.That same smirk said he was amused by the way she looked at him.
She was tired of being a passing amusement for the men in her life.
He leaned closer so she could hear him over the orchestra, his stubbled chin grazing her shoulder. “What’s a beautiful woman like you doing at the opera alone?”
Mel couldn’t help but bark out a laugh, clapping her hand to her mouth to cover it. “Does that line usually work?”
He chuckled, his eyes sparkling. “Sometimes.”
Before she could respond, the house lights dimmed and the opera began. She struggled to keep her eyes trained on the stage, especially when Liam’s shoulder kept rubbing against her arm with his every move, almost as if his arm was ticking along with each downbeat from the conductor. His scent – lush and bright, lemongrass and cedar – teased at her senses. Heat radiated off his body. What would it be like to lie next to him at night, to wrap herself in that heat as she drifted off to sleep?
When his legs widened as he sank deeper into his seat and his thigh pressed against hers, she didn’t move away. Instead she pressed back, even though her dress slipped, the slit falling back so that her bare skin brushed against the thin fabric of his black dress pants. And did she imagine it, or did he flex his fist where his hand lay on his knee mere inches from her exposed flesh? Almost as if he was restraining the impulse to touch her? Surely that couldn’t be it. More likely he was fighting the urge to push her away.
The house lights came up for intermission, and still Mel didn’t move. But neither did he. She chanced a glance in his direction, blinking against the sudden brightness in the theater, to find him studying her, as if she were an anagram he was trying to unscramble. He stood and held out his hand to her. She took it, her own hand dwarfed by the size and strength of his.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, his thumb sweeping seductively across the pulse point on her wrist, his voice gravel and silk all at once.
She nodded, allowing Liam to help her to her feet. He pulled her hand through the crook of his arm, keeping his hand on top of hers as he led her from the theater to the bar in the crowded lobby. The casual intimacy in a room full of other people – as if it were no big deal, as if he didn’t care if anyone else saw them together – it was a heady thing for a woman who had never had a man hold her hand in public. She was so focused on the feel of his bicep beneath her hand, the way their position forced her to lean against him ever so slightly, how no one around them seemed to notice that this man was flipping her world upside down, that she didn’t even realize they had come to the front of the bar line. Liam inclined his head, urging her to order first.
She had never ordered a drink at a bar before. After all, before today, she couldn’t legally do so. “Champagne,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel.
“Make it two,” he said. “Are we celebrating something?”
“Yes,” she answered, taking the glass from the bartender. “My birthday.”
Liam smiled broadly, highlighting those crinkles at the edges of his eyes. She was struck with the sudden desire to press her lips to those fine lines, but she settled for clinking her glass against his.
“Happy birthday, Min,” he said before taking a sip.
The blush rose in her cheeks again as she took a sip of her drink.Min.
When she was in first grade there were four other Mels in her class. She’d gone home and declared that she was no longer going to be called Mel – she wanted to be called Min. Her father had scoffed and told her to stop being silly. That was the end of it. No one had called her Min since. Yet here was this man she’d just met calling her by the name she only ever called herself, like he could see to the very heart of her.
When she met his eyes over the top of her champagne flute, his gaze was smoldering, his irises shot through with the darkest blue, his jaw set and lips slightly pursed. It was the kind of look that could make her forget she’d ever had a name other than the one he’d given her.Min.She couldn’t imagine ever calling herself Mel again.
∞∞∞
Liam watched her sip her champagne, watched that pretty blush spread over her cheeks and down her neck, creeping its way across her chest. Lifting his eyes back to hers, he found her lips parted, still wet with champagne, breathing heavier than before. She drained her glass in a long gulp and he couldn’t help but smile.
He drained his own drink, placing the empty glasses on the bar and wrapping her hand in his again. A hand so much smaller than his own, her fingernails filed into short, rounded tips – nothing like the finely manicured hands he’d been holding lately.
“Dance with me,” he said, his voice gruffer than he’d meant it to be, a command rather than a question.
