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“Camera Girl!” Barry called loudly; this time he sounded much closer than before.
Gnashing her teeth, she laced her fingers with Mitch’s. “Please, damn it.”
The next minute, Mitch had taken her hand, and lifting their clutched hands, he spun her away from him before pulling her back into his arms. They were dancing.
“I wanted to dance with you!” Barry wailed from the sides.
Ignoring him, Mitch danced her to the middle of the floor. The first few lines of an old song penetrated her befuddled mind.Something stupid—one of her mother’s favorites.
To her surprise, Mitch was a good dancer. He was barely touching her, but she instinctively knew what his next move was going to be. From the very first step, her body was in perfect sync with his. In silence, they glided over the floor as one.
Dropping his hand from her shoulder, he spun her out. With the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly, he pulled her back toward him. As she stepped back into his arms, his hand touched her shoulder before it slipped down her back until warm fingers were touching her bare skin.
Rattled, she inhaled slowly. A mistake. His male scent of… what was it? Vanilla? Suede? Whatever it was found its way into her bloodstream, heating her blood within minutes. What was happening?
Swallowing a groan, she tried to focus on the music, but the words of the lyrics weren’t helping. Seriously, she didn’t have time for this.
Up until now, she’d had a lovely day. If it hadn’t been for the old guy bothering her, she wouldn’t be dancing with Mitch, wouldn’t have become so aware of his scent, his broad shoulders, his muscled body.
Mitch’s hand slid a little farther down her back, and her heartbeat kicked into the next gear as her dopamine levels went ballistic.
And she’d thought dancing with Mitch would be an escape—what had she been thinking?
*
The subtle scentof orange blossoms floated around Mitch, threatening to overwhelm his already overstimulated senses.Talk. Say something, anything,before he did something really stupid. Dancing with the enigmatic Riley was turning out to be more than he’d bargained for.
“So, why don’t you want to dance with Barry?” was the first thing that came to mind.
Riley lifted those long lashes, and clear blue eyes looked at him, really looked at him for the first time.
The next lines of the song sank in. Could it be he’d nearly been in the brink of saying something totally stupid? Since the first day he’d laid eyes on the redhead in his arms, she’d literally taken his breath away. She was usually dressed in soft, flowing clothes, big hoops dangling from her ears. With eyes the color reminiscent of fields of lavender, long, red tresses falling down her back, legs that seemed to go on forever, she was breathtakingly beautiful.
However, she’d been such a thorn in his hide during the times she’d been visiting her brother and cousin, he’d tried his best to ignore her. Granted, he’d behaved badly, but he’d been looking out for his sisters, damn it; she didn’t have to make fun of his concern and call him theyelling brother.
Over the last few days, he’d been busy moving into his new home and hadn’t seen Riley before yesterday at the rehearsal dinner. She’d sat at the opposite side of the long table, though, and they hadn’t spoken a word.
Tonight, she looked incredible. The bodice of the blush-pink dress she was wearing fitted like a glove and dipped low at the back. His first glimpse of her naked back nearly had him falling over his feet. The wide skirt of the dress ended just about her knee, leaving those tantalizing perfectly formed calves bare. What had nearly brought him to his knees, though, were the pair of impossibly high, nude heels she was wearing. Her legs looked even longer, making it difficult to look anywhere else.
For so long, his only concern had been the happiness of his two sisters. It had been his idea to cross borders and relocate. Sacramento hadn’t been home any longer. Their parents’ untimely death, Vivian’s problems with her boss at the hospital where she’d worked, and the fact that Annie’s fiancé called off their wedding weeks before the big day, had all just been too much. It was also around the same time he’d realized the cut-throat world of finance wasn’t for him.
Since they’d arrived in Marietta, he hadn’t even looked at a woman, let alone dated anyone. Then this redhead walked into his sister’s B and B in February, irritating him, infuriating him, but as he’d just realized, also intriguing him.
Up until now, he’d managed to ignore the tightening of his body whenever he saw her, blaming it on his nonexistent love life. Now though, listening to this particular song while he was so close to her that he could count the few freckles over her nose, was making it very difficult to ignore his reaction to her.
“I…” She frowned. “You have one brown eye and one blue one. I’ve never noticed that before.”
Nodding, he swung her around. “You’ve never looked at me before. It’s called heterochromia.”
“So that’s what’s been bothering me…” she murmured. “You see heaven and earth at the same time.”
The last words were so soft he had to bend down to hear what she was saying. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a myth—if you’re born with one blue and one brown eye, you can see heaven and earth at the same time. Ghost eyes, they’re called. Eyes say a lot about a person, you know. They’re not called mirrors of the soul for nothing.”
“That so?”
“The study of physiognomy, an old science that originated in China, claims it’s possible to read information about a person’s character and temperament by merely looking at his or her outward appearance. The Western world sometimes calls it junk science, but even though many scientists doubt the validity of the research on the topic, studies have found a correlation between a person’s character or personality and his or her outer appearance. I find it an interesting idea. We do form instantaneous impressions of others from their facial appearance.”
