This woman is as relentless as she is beautiful. And she’s,evidently, irresistible to me too, since I’m saying words I didn’t plan to utter mere moments ago. “I’ll do it.”
She throws her arms around my neck, her sexy scent invading my thoughts once again. Frying my brain. Rerouting blood south of the border as I imagine threading my hands through her hair, yanking it back, and kissing the fuck out of her.
I could get lost in her. I need to remember I’ve got a demand too. I pull back, untangling myself from the woman I can’t stop thinking of. “Under one condition,” I add.
Her shoulders slump. “You have an if?”
“You bet I fucking do.”
She gives me anI’m waitinglook. “Fine. What is it?”
I take my sweet time before I say, “If you juggle the ducks for me sometime.”
She rolls her eyes, then says, “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Esmeralda swings by with our drinks, and I thank her, then lift my glass to Chloe. “To blackmail.”
“It was soft blackmail,” she corrects.
“Still blackmail.”
“But you liked it.”
She has no idea how much. We clink glasses, and I knock back some of the drink. When I set it down, I nod to the menus on the counter. “Mango salad? I hear it’s the special.”
Imighthave scanned the menu online on my way over.
Chloe’s eyes pop. “Yes!”
“See? I’m not fighting you on it,” I say, a callback to her earlier ode to the tropical fruit.
“You need to get one too. They’re amazing. It’s only on the menu a few times a year.”
“When in Rome.”
She waves Esmeralda down again and places the order. When she’s gone, Chloe turns back to me, clears her throat, then says, “There’s one more thing. Regarding the fundraiser.”
I groan. “Chloe.”
“There’s a short thirty-second-long dance number at the end.”
“I told you—I don’t dance.”
She licks her lips and lets her gaze drift to my arm. My sleeves are still down all the way, cuffs buttoned. But Chloe reaches for a cuff and slowly, deliberately, undoes the button.
I fight off a shudder as her fingers coast lightly over my skin. She keeps going, her gaze returning to my eyes as she folds back the cuffs till she reveals the temporary tattoo. She traces the rose with her finger, reverently, like a caress.
Her touch scrambles my brain. It melts my bones. It knocks all the sense out of me. “I can dance,” she says in a sexy promise. “It’s an easy number. A little swing, a little jazz, then you dip me. And there’s a dance studio in town across from the community theater. We’ll take lessons.”
Dance lessons with the woman I’m fighting like hell to resist? Sounds like a bad idea. And since bad ideas are my stock-in-trade lately, I find myself saying yes.
Pretty sure I can’t say no to Chloe Troublemaker Rivers.
25
A BODY-CONTACT THING
SAWYER
