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“My only point is, you’re much prettier. You should be an actress. Or a model.”
The compliment distracted her, and earned him a surprisingly sincere smile, but then she tossed her hair over her shoulders and sighed. “I’m too short to model, and, at the moment”—she grimaced and finished her drink—“I’m also out of shape.” A busboy interrupted the unguarded moment to clear her empty glass.
“There’s nothing wrong with your shape.” He said it because it was the kind of response a man hitting on a woman should offer, but also because it was a fact. Anywhere except Hollywood, she’d be considered perfect, which provided yet another example of what a screwed up place Hollywood was and why he’d opted out.
The sincere smile made an encore appearance. “That’s nice of you to say, but my mirror says different. I’m a dancer, but I got a little derailed a couple months ago and had to take a break. Now, I need to get back to work. So”—she fiddled with the stem of her glass— “I’m banished to Paradise for some austerity measures.”
“Lucky me.” He glanced pointedly at the tequila-sunset sky blazing above the horizon, and added, “And lucky you. There are worse places to be banished.”
“Maybe, but tonight is probably my only chance to enjoy it.” Her gaze landed meaningfully on him, full of invitation, but her fingers moved from the wineglass to her cocktail napkin, and picked at a corner. “Starting tomorrow, I’m stuck spending the next six weeks with some overpriced personal trainer my agent insisted on.”
Oh yeah. They’d be adjusting her attitude. “A good trainer delivers results quickly and safely. A lot of people would say that’s worth every penny.”
She waved a hand as if swatting a fly. “I don’t need some arrogant fitness nazi barking at me to drop and give him twenty. I’ll bet this guy builds freakishly large muscles to compensate for the fact that he has a single-digit IQ, and the world’s smallest dick.”
The bartender chose that moment to deliver their drinks. Luke made the “check please” sign as his unsuspecting client leaned in so her breasts nearly touched his chest. The heat of her body penetrated his shirt. “Thank you for the drink. Enough about me. What brings you to Paradise Bay?”
He leaned in, too, bringing their faces close. “Work.”
“What kind of work?” Her attention drifted to his mouth, then back up to look him in the eye. The blue of her irises deepened
to violet around the pupils, making them seem even wider. Genetics had smiled on Quinn Sheridan, right down to the fine details. She scraped her teeth over her lower lip. His teeth itched to do the same. Itched to rough up that plush velvety flesh before he soothed it with his tongue.
The cocktail of frustration and desire she stirred in him left a bittersweet taste in his mouth. Seems they were both due for a reality check. He took her chin, absently appreciating how the faint dimple accommodated his thumb, and dropped the drawl as he answered, “I’m surprised you can’t guess by my arrogance and freakishly large muscles.”
Confusion clouded her eyes for a split second before realization seeped in. She tried to pull away, but he held onto her chin and kept her close. Her tongue darted out again, quickly this time, like a criminal making a prison break—and then she offered him an imperious smile. “Well played, Mr. McLean, but I knew it was you the whole time.”
“Sorry, Miss Sheridan, but you’re not that good an actress.”
Her eyes chilled to glaciers. “Is this your version of an audition? One I failed? Am I in trouble now?”
“You are trouble.” He released her chin. “And we’re not here to play games. I’ll let tonight slide, since we’re not on the clock yet, but lie to me again and our deal is off.” With that warning hanging in the air, he clinked his glass to hers, took a sip, and placed it on the bar. “We start tomorrow morning at nine sharp in the gym at your villa. Don’t keep me waiting.”
He turned and took a step away before tossing over his shoulder, “And for the record, both my IQ and my dick are well above average.”
Chapter Three
Quinn pulled her hair into a ponytail as she lurched down the stairs of her villa and tried to ignore the pounding at the back of her skull. Retina-scorching sunbeams poured through tall patio doors and bounced off the white walls. Squinting, she fumbled her way into the open kitchen with its gleaming granite countertops and grabbed her sunglasses from where she’d tossed them yesterday evening after returning from the debacle of her first meeting with Luke McLean.
Oh God, the fourth glass of champagne had been a mistake. Truth. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she’d given in to a rare bout of loneliness and self-pity yesterday evening, and alcohol had been her only sympathetic friend. Later, it had helped ease the sting of getting setup and knocked down like a bowling pin by the one man on this entire island with whom she’d intended to establish the upper hand.
She shoved the sunglasses on and faced the reality she’d used her buddy Dom to hide from last night. McLean won round one. You lost. Shake it off.
Good advice. Too bad she couldn’t get her ego to play along. The judgmental bastard had insulted her before he’d even clapped eyes on her, with his superior attitude and knee-jerk disdain for her profession, her situation, and, well, basically everything about her. Worse than the self-defensive anger he’d pulled out of her was the hurt. He’d hurt her feelings, dammit, and few people had the power to do that—certainly not strangers.
She was no special snowflake. Growing up in the business had toughened her soul. During her early years, she’d dealt with the frustration of sitting in Callum’s shadow, all but invisible, watching him garner praise and attention as his career soared and hers stalled on the runway. Even now, as an established actress in her own right, she handled skepticism, criticism, and plain old rejection on a regular basis, and she did it without crying on anyone’s shoulder. But Luke? For whatever reason, she couldn’t handle him. His low opinion hit some vulnerable crevice inside her where insecurity rooted, despite all her attempts to pave it over.
Why?
Answering that question forced her to face the most uncomfortable fact of all. She took a bottle of water from the fridge, and then paused there to let the cool air—and the sad truth—flow over her hot face. She was attracted to the man. From the second she’d heard his disembodied voice over Eddie’s phone, some purely feminine and neglected parts had roused and taken notice. But Luke McLean embodied, absolutely captivated them. They responded to more than sun-burnished brown hair her fingers wanted to comb through, or the tall, masculine frame reinforced with honed muscle as naturally breathtaking and imposing as a sequoia. In her business, she routinely encountered sculpted jaws and zero percent body fat. It took more than that to turn her head. But damn him, he had more.
Even in something as innocuous as a T-shirt and shorts, strength and confidence flowed from every pore, and yes, she would have loved to crash up against that athletic body, feel it jar hers as lean hips and hard thighs pumped pleasure into her with every thrust.
You’re going to have to climb into the freezer if you keep this up.
Right. She shut the fridge and then turned to search for Advil in the basket of goodies hospitality had left on the kitchen island. This is where inadvertently banishing herself to a sexual desert for half a year got her—so pent-up, a well-packaged set of XY chromosomes could throw her off her game.
Not entirely, she acknowledged as she tore open a small packet and swallowed the blue gelcaps. She couldn’t blame her response to him solely on the physical promise inherent in such an awe-inspiring example of the male species, because the part of him that really got under her skin was his…intensity. When his steady hazel gaze inspected her, it took measure on every level, as if he saw past the normal distractions most people got caught up in—blond hair, nice rack, a quick, sardonic smile—and looked straight into her. They judged. Hell yes, they did, but not strictly on appearance in the way she’d grown accustomed to encountering. And maybe because she wasn’t accustomed to anyone looking deeper, his assessment stripped her of her standard defenses. She found herself searching those inscrutable depths for…it killed her to admit it…some sign of approval. Like a freaking kindergartner standing before her teacher, reciting the alphabet.
