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He scraped his palm over her lovely long hair, pushing a sweaty tendril back, his voice surprising him in its tenderness. “At what time can you be ready for me to send a car tonight?”
She straightened herself with a noise that told him she wasn’t precisely happy about moving yet, and when he had no choice but to withdraw from inside her, she scrambled to retrieve her panties from the floor. “I can’t tonight. I have a dinner I’ll be speaking at.”
Cade unrolled the condom with care, then grabbed some Kleenex from his desk to clean himself. “I’ll go with you.”
She shot him a wary glance, then slipped on her panties and wrapped her belt around herself. “It’s about cancer, Cade.”
He clamped a jaw at that, cursing himself over and over again.
Dammit.
Silently, he walked over to his desk to pull out the cashier’s check.
“What time does it end?”
* * *
Ivy hurried home to change before the Lincoln Heights Breast Cancer Foundation gala dinner. She touched her lips, and they tingled for him. Her entire body, from the tip of her toes to the roots of her hair, felt warm and fluttery for him.
Quickly shaking off her fantasizing, she headed to her kitchen, jammed a fresh head of broccoli into her Vitamix blender, added a cup of spinach, a bit of flaxseeds, some cauliflower, salt, a lemon including the peel, lots of water, and then she covered it all and sent it spinning.
Ivy necessarily screened herself for cancer every six months, because apparently when your mother had it, your risk of getting it was higher. But in the natural circles, cruciferous vegetables were touted as being huge cancer preventers, especially if you ate them raw and had several servings of them a day. Ivy had been practically breathing them ever since she heard of their healing properties.
Pulling off the top of the blender, she poured the shake and added several drops of graviola, another powerful anticancer plant which destroyed malignant cells. She’d ordered it from a company in the Amazonian forest and had decided to test it several months before recommending it around the foundation. Just to make sure it didn’t have strange side effects.
This shake tasted like shit, not like those she added fruits to. But she was in a hurry today, and she had to get it down.
She swallowed it gulp by gulp as she headed for her bedroom and opened up the shower.
And there, in the shower, his pale silver eyes and sable black hair and dirty mouth were once again in her head. God.
How long had it been since she’d felt a man’s hands on her body?
How long had it been since she’d wanted to be kissed?
It felt like the girl who’d wanted that was a whole other person, not the woman who’d awakened in Cade West’s brutally tender arms.
She squeezed her eyes shut and touched her breasts as the shower water rained down on her, wishing to feel his mouth on them …
She became so aroused fantasizing about him, she had to turn the water temperature to cold. She gasped from the shock and then shook herself, because, really? This wasn’t the time to be daydreaming. Focus was key at this point in her life, and she had to keep her involvement with him to the only thing it could be.
A temporary fling—not even an affair.
Which, thankfully, was about the only thing a powerful billionaire like Cade West would desire from her.
In fact, the man would probably be tired of her by tomorrow morning.
Which only made her more determined to enjoy him while she could.
* * *
Cade instantly regretted coming to the gala dinner when he saw all those bald heads scattered throughout the tables. Bald little heads that made him want to turn ta
il and run. Instead, he fought the chicken-shit impulse, locked his jaw, braced his legs, and stood like a sentry by the entrance, suddenly realizing he could hear Ivy’s lively voice through the microphone.
He lifted his gaze, and his heart did some strange maneuvers when he spotted her center stage. There she was. Ivy, glowing and healthy, standing at the podium, her voice clear and convincing.
She looked so damned lovely in that white skirt and a white form-fitting blouse with silver sparkles at the collar that he curled his fingers into his palms from the sheer way they ached to make a grab for her.
