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She slid away from him and seized a dress she’d spied earlier, a long gown of sage green, a color Caroline considered unexpected in an evening dress. The silk flowed against her legs as she carried it away. Although by far the most expensive thing she’d seen, she couldn’t resist trying it on.
Seven outfits later, Caroline stepped out of the dressing room in the gown. The halter-top bodice bared her back almost to the waist. A floor-length silk skirt cascaded from the snug waistline, clinging to and then ballooning away from her legs, providing provocative glimpses of her form. She’d never worn anything this revealing before and had hesitated before leaving the dressing room.
Caroline wondered if Simon would approve, but when she glanced in his direction, she noticed he no longer occupied the chair by the front windows. She drifted over to the three-way mirror to admire herself from several angles.
“That’s very nice.”
Caroline looked past her reflection and spied Simon over her shoulder. The cool reserve of the past hour had melted. His gaze flowed over her like a hot spring, bathing her skin in warmth and tingling bubbles. She looked pretty, felt desirable, and it was magic.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, running her fingers along the skirt.
“You’re beautiful.”
* * *
Simon heard the husky timbre of his voice and silently cursed. After discovering her in his bed, he’d spent all day yesterday dismissing his abrupt sexual attraction as exhaustion and surprise. What guy wouldn’t be delighted to find a beautiful woman waiting for him after a long business trip?
But Caroline was way too serious for his taste. He’d reasoned that her dissimilarity to the women he usually dated—as well as her obvious disapproval about the way he was handling the situation with Francine—made her a safe bet to take home to Savannah. It was a business arrangement between them, nothing more.
Now feeling desire ignite, once again, he considered that perhaps he’d miscalculated.
The boutique’s compact size and lack of other clientele lent an intimacy to the shopping excursion they would not have found at a major department store. He moved forward until the warmth of her bare back seeped through the cotton button-down shirt he wore. The three-way mirror captured the color that flooded her cheeks and the way her pupils widened in reaction to his nearness.
“I like the way the dress fits you through here.”
He slid his palms around her rib cage, fingers spread to
sample as much of her body as he dared in public. She pulled in a shaky breath. He felt the disturbed vibration. Watching himself touch her and observing her reaction at the same time turned him on to such a degree he couldn’t walk away just yet.
“And it emphasizes your small waist.” He slid his hands down to span the narrowest part of her torso, his thumbs whisking along her bare spine. “Do you like it?”
He meant the dress, not the way he’d stepped across the line and caressed her. Her hands covered his, not just passively accepting his touch but maintaining the contact. Confusion spread through his mind, cooling the heat raging through his body.
She watched him in turn, her rosy flush the only thing that betrayed her. “Yes.”
Did she mean the dress, or had she just agreed to an unspoken question? Had he asked a question? He hadn’t meant to. Or had he?
He surveyed her expression, but found no answers. He’d never been indecisive when it came to a woman before. Either he pursued them, or had a damned good reason for walking away. He never dated anyone where it would complicate a business relationship, and he avoided the ones like Francine that set off his “crazy” alarm.
Caroline fell into the first category. That made her off-limits. Even if he hadn’t struck a deal with her, he sensed she would prefer a practical, reliable guy. Someone like his brother, Dane.
He recalled her encounter with that loser at the restaurant and her words came back to him. She claimed she wasn’t good at handling aggressive men, but how experienced was she with men in general? His flirting had flustered her. She was in her mid-twenties; could she be as ingenuous as she appeared?
Simon reined in his runaway libido and stepped back. The amount of concentration required for him to do so gave him pause.
“Then it’s yours.” He glanced at his watch and told his body to simmer down. “And we’ll take the black one. Get changed, we have lots more shopping to do.”
As Simon dragged her from store to store and made purchase after purchase, he watched Caroline grow more and more overwhelmed. He closed his ears to her protests as she became the owner of four pantsuits, three dresses for luncheons, and a variety of slacks, skirts, blazers, blouses and silken camisoles she could mix and match to her heart’s content.
“I fail to see when I’m going to have the opportunity to wear half this,” she complained as they passed the lingerie department.
“You’ll wear it.” If not on the visit with his family, then in her new career as a lawyer. Simon stepped among the racks of colorful bras and underwear, as intent on lending his opinion here as he had been everywhere else. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”
Caroline halted as if she’d stepped in a puddle of glue. “No. I’ve let you bully me into buying everything you wanted me to have, but here I draw the line.”
“I haven’t bullied you,” he argued, startled that she’d perceived his opinions as bullying. “I know my mother’s expectations. I’m simply trying to cover all the bases.”
“Understood. But your mother isn’t going to see my underwear.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave a great imitation of a million-year-old boulder. “And neither are you. Make yourself scarce for an hour.”
