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While she was sorely tempted to call him on the arrogant assumption, unfortunately she couldn’t, quite. Because he was right. She did want to stay—and not just because of the potent arousal pulsing through every pore. She wanted to know why and how he’d changed so much—because the relaxed, charming, sexually confident hottie in front of her was nothing like the earnest and extremely uptight hottie she remembered.
‘Okay, you’ve got me,’ she said, conceding. ‘One more club soda for the road.’ She hopped back onto the stool beside him.
‘Only a soda? It’s Friday night? You didn’t become a good girl when I wasn’t looking, did you?’
‘Hardly.’ She snorted out another laugh at the wry comment. ‘I’ve simply discovered that alcohol adds pounds where it’s exceptionally hard to take them off again. And half an hour in the gym every morning is mind-numbingly boring enough.’ And she had a feeling that keeping her wits about her in the next twenty minutes or so while they had their one drink for old times’ sake was going to be fairly important.
His lips curved, shooting her blood pressure up a notch. Make that very important.
His gaze drifted down her figure, making her nipples tighten and her thigh muscles loosen. ‘It sure appears to be time well spent.’
Make that completely imperative.
‘I’ll let my personal trainer know,’ she quipped, fidgeting with the straw of her dead soda—and ruthlessly stifling the wave of warmth. ‘I’m sure she’ll appreciate the compliment.’
‘You do that,’ he murmured before turning to signal the barman.
r /> The sleeve of his shirt stretched across his biceps as he did so, drawing her gaze, and the wave of warmth crested. She tore her eyes away from the bulge of muscle flexing under the white linen and cleared her throat.
You can survive one more drink with the guy, surely.
She’d turned over a new leaf in the years since she’d jumped Carter Price at Hillbrook College and kick-started a chain of events that had changed both their lives irrevocably... But one drink was all she planned to risk.
* * *
If only she could have kept that resolve front and centre. And she probably would have, if he’d carried on flirting with her so openly—because she happened to be an expert at verbal foreplay. But it turned out the new Carter was a whole lot craftier than she’d given him credit for.
One drink turned into two and then three, until she stopped counting, as the man captivated her—not so much with those damn biceps, or the openly hungry looks, but with his knowledge and enthusiasm, when she steered the conversation to what she had thought would be the neutral topic of their working lives.
He talked with an infectious pride and dispassionate insight into the challenges he’d faced and overcome to drag the paper mill he’d inherited from his father when he was only seventeen into a thriving business. Then he’d listened with interest—and a surprising lack of criticism—to the string of careers she’d tried out before starting her web-design business last year.
They’d touched on a few personal topics—such as the hellish heat in Savannah in August, and her move from London to New York five years ago—but had neatly sidestepped anything too personal such as his marriage or his sister, or the apology that she’d originally come to deliver. Until, after two solid hours of non-stop conversation, Carter Price had managed to lull her into a sense of security.
Unfortunately, during their very grown-up, surprisingly comfortable conversation, she’d found herself becoming more and more aware of him on a purely physical level: the low appreciative rumble of his laughter that made the skin on her spine tingle; the flash of interest in his eyes that made her voice slip instinctively into the smoky purr of her youth; the intense expression when he was outlining the different funding options she might want to explore for her business, which reminded her of the expression he’d once worn when exploring her.
The hotel bar was emptying out, as New York’s Friday night party people headed out to pastures new, and the subdued lighting, the intimate silences only made her more and more aware of the desire to make the conversation just a teensy weensy bit less comfortable. Now that he was an urbane, successful and well-travelled businessman instead of the sheltered boy he’d once been, what would be the harm in spicing things up a little?
After all, given the recent pressures of work, and the emotional stress of trying to repair the damage she’d done to the Awesome Foursome, she’d had a rather difficult summer so far. Flirting in particular had been off the agenda—especially flirting with someone as delicious as Carter Price.
‘So, Carter, there is one thing I’d really love to know...’ She stabbed her straw into the Cosmopolitan he’d insisted on ordering her after too many club sodas. ‘For a man who’s so dedicated to his business,’ she continued, not quite able to resist a small purr when she took a sip of the Cosmo and his gaze dipped to her mouth, ‘and has clearly spent a great deal of time and effort making it successful, I’d really love to know how you find enough spare time to date and dump so many different women.’
His brows winged up and then he chuckled—the easy sound triggering a new wave of tingles up her spine. ‘Why, Gina, have you been checking up on me?’
She savoured another sip of the heady citrus-flavoured cocktail—not caring in the slightest that she’d been busted. ‘I’ll admit, I indulged in a quick Google this afternoon purely out of curiosity, you understand.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said, his voice lowering deliciously. ‘I understand entirely.’
‘And frankly I was quite staggered by the profligacy of your dating habits.’
‘The profligacy, huh?’ His lips curved, making her heart rate spike deliciously. ‘I love when you use those longs words—they match that snooty English accent so well.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere. Answer the question.’
‘There was a question in there?’ he asked, the mock innocence making her grin back at him.
‘You know very well there was—about your profligacy and your time-management skills,’ she prompted. ‘Which appear to be phenomenal if the evidence I found on the Internet is anything to go by. I did a little survey actually. And counted four different dates on your arm since you took Anjelique Montclair to the Georgia Governor’s Ball on New Year’s Eve.’ She huffed to illustrate the point. ‘I have major frock envy over that fabulous dress she had on, by the way. Very classy.’ Not to mention a tiny bit of envy over how delicious Anjelique’s date had looked in his tuxedo.
‘She did look good, if I recall correctly,’ he mused, still not answering the question, and not looking abashed in the slightest by her observation. Then again, she hadn’t really expected him to.
