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Say something, you silly cow!
‘It’s flattering of you to say so,’ she murmured, struggling to maintain cool distance and not give in to the throaty purr.
His gaze strayed to her cleavage and her breathing quickened again, keeping a natural rhythm with the pounding beat of her pulse. But then the heavily lidded gaze met hers. The deep, lazy Southern accent reverberated across her nerve-endings. ‘It’s good to see you again. Marnie told me you were living in New York now,’ he said, surprising her.
So he had asked Marnie about her. And Marnie had answered.
Then, to her utter astonishment, he took her hand in long, cool fingers and lifted it to his lips. The quick gallant buzz on her knuckles spun her back in time to the clean-cut young man he’d once been. But then his thick dark lashes caught the overhead light as he blinked slowly, and the inscrutable gaze had all thoughts of the boy disappearing—until all she could see was the man.
‘How about we catch up in the bar? And you can tell me what’s on your mind?’
‘Okay, that would work,’ she said, thinking no such thing. His hand settled on the small of her back as he directed her towards the bar.
Terrific! How the heck was she going to get her head round the perfectly simple apology she’d planned, while her mind was being fried to a crisp by all the zaps of electrical energy now radiating up her spine?
FOUR
Carter Price blinked eyes gritty from jet lag after his flight from Russia that afternoon, the fog in his brain blown off course by the pulse of heat in his gut.
After ten years of denial, the two-line message the receptionist had handed him had confused him—and shaken him a little. More than a little if he was being entirely honest. He’d thought about Gina Carrington way too much over the years. So the sight of her dashing towards the exit doors had an effect on his senses somewhere in the region of a category five hurricane.
She looked hotter than he remembered her. And he remembered a lot. The beestung lips, the wide green, slightly slanting eyes, the mass of chestnut hair that had tumbled over her shoulders in riotous curls back then, but was now piled on top of her head, making his fingers itch to send it tumbling again. Her tall, slender figure had filled out some since her college days—her high breasts were fuller, her hips more generous, and her legs looked never-ending in the ice-pick heels. The overall effect made all those lush curves even more mouth-watering.
He’d dated a lot of women since popping his cherry with Gina Carrington, and divorcing his wife, most of them a lot more conventionally beautiful—but not one of them oozed pure, unadulterated sex the way Gina did. Or sent a right hook to his senses with a single whiff of their spicy, sultry scent.
He shook off the thought as she perched on a bar stool.
Get your mind out of your pants.
Boy, did he need ten hours straight—he really had to be losing it if he was fantasising about the woman who had once blown his life to smithereens.
Not that he blamed her for that. He’d been like a firecracker, waiting to explode. All she’d done was light the fuse.
He caught the barman’s attention. ‘What’ll it be?’ he asked Gina.
‘Club soda.’
‘Make mine a Sam Adams,’ he added, propping himself on the stool beside her.
He watched her throat bob as she swallowed heavily—and felt the surge of satisfaction. She seemed a little jumpy—and she’d definitely been planning to run out on him. Which gave him the upper hand. He made a habit now of never being at a disadvantage with women—and that went double for this woman, because she’d once had him at the biggest disadvantage of all.
But there had been a whole lot of water under the bridge, not to mention ladies in his bed, since that night. And he wasn’t that lust-driven sex-deprived delusional kid any more. His pulse spiked as she pursed her full lips around the straw in her club soda and sucked.
He took a sip of the yeasty micro-beer.
Relax.
So what if he had some lingering lust issues where Gina Carrington was concerned? He had the control not to act on them now. Or at least not straight away. Not until he knew the score. His gaze skimmed over the silky dress and noticed how her magnificent rack rose and fell in staggered rhythm against the snug bodice.
Yeah, definitely edgy. A gratifying change from their first meeting, when she’d had all the moves and he’d been the one playing catch-up.
He took a long draft of his beer and waited for her to speak. She’d been the one to contact him, after all.
She glugged down a good portion of the soda, getting more jumpy by the second, but didn’t elaborate, so he decided to push it. Her note hadn’t exactly given much away. ‘So I hear you’ve got your own business—website development and social-media strategy, right?’
Her eyes darted to his, the wary look gratifying. ‘How do you know that?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been thinking of investing in a social-media strategist for the mill. Your name came up in the research we did.’
