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“How come?”
She didn’t want to embarrass Fran and Steve. Otherwise she would have reminded this glib, blue-eyed blond man with the to-die-for body and the crocodile grin that she owed him absolutely no explanation for not wanting to dance with him.
Instead she settled for, “I’ve danced too much already and my feet are hurting. Now, excuse me, please.”
She moved away, keeping her back to him. She stepped around the buffet and headed toward the round table in the center of the room, the one with the champagne fountain on it. She held a tulip glass under one of the spouts and filled it.
“I was taught in Sunday school that it’s a sin to lie.”
Champagne splashed over her hand as she spun around, making eye contact with that broad chest again. She seriously doubted that he’d ever been to Sunday school. And she was positive that the only thought he ever gave to sin was which one to commit next. “I was taught that it’s rude to make a pest of oneself.”
“You didn’t have to lie, you know.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
He made a tsking sound. “Now, Miss Chandler, I’ve been watching you for more than an hour, and you haven’t danced a single dance, though you’ve been invited to several times.”
Her cheeks went pink, but she was more annoyed than embarrassed. “Then that should have been your first clue. I don’t want to dance.”
“Why not just say so?”
“I just did.”
He laughed again. “I like your sense of humor.”
“I wasn’t trying to be amusing and couldn’t care less whether you like me, my sense of humor, the way I eat strawberries, or anything else.”
“You’ve made that clear enough, but, you see, that creates a bit of a problem for us.”
“How?” She was quickly losing patience and tiring of his game. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Morris’s avaricious stare, she would have set down her champagne glass and stalked from the room, making her apologies to Fran and Steve later. “What problem could you and I possibly have in common?”
“See that man standing over there by that basket of roses?”
“Who? George Henderson?”
“You remember him?”
“Of course.” Sunny smiled and waved. Blushing to the roots of his thinning hair, George waved back.
“Well,” the stranger continued, “George and I just made a wager.”
“Oh?”
“He bet a new fly-casting rod against a case of Wild Turkey that I couldn’t get you into bed with me by the end of next week. Now, unless you care just a little bit whether I like you or not, it’s going to be damned hard for me to win my case of whiskey.”
He carefully removed the tilting champagne glass from her bloodless, nerveless fingers before it spilled. Setting it on the table first, he then pulled her into his arms and said, “Dance?”
The band was into the second verse of the song before Sunny could speak. “You are kidding, aren’t you?”
Butter would have melted beneath his smile. “Now, what do you think?”
She didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know a man with enough guts to admit making such a wager, if he’d had enough gall to make that kind of bet in the first place. Surely he was teasing her! Still, his smile wasn’t very reassuring.
She didn’t smile back. “What do I think? I think you don’t take no for an answer.”
“Not when I want something badly enough.”
“And you badly wanted to dance with me?”
