* * * *
Paul Monroe was everything Bette could ask for in a date. Funny, attentive, entertaining. He was also elusive, unattainable and distant. He was driving her crazy.
They joked and laughed and talked. They had long conversations on the phone when she should have been working. He called to say nothing more complex than good-morning. He brought Chinese food to her office for lunch. They met Grady and Michael twice more that week for dinner. They pored over real estate listings she had compiled, with Paul volunteering plenty of opinions, most of which involved the idea that she shouldn’t live so far away—whether from him or her work, he never quite specified. They saw a movie.
He never touched her.
Well, that wasn’t quite true, she admitted to herself. He touched her just enough to drive her mad. Just enough to make her consider raking her fingernails along a brick wall to get rid of the frustration of envisioning circumstances when she would press them into his back, but never having the satisfaction of doing it.
He looped an arm around her shoulders at the movies, then never drew her closer. He brushed his fingers across her collarbone while helping her with her coat, then never ventured lower. He touched his lips to hers each night when he drove her home, then never pressed the kiss deeper.
Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.
Now it was Friday. In frustration she’d told him she needed to work late to catch up, hoping to escape his tormenting presence for one night, just long enough to regain some control. He’d appeared at the office shortly after five and sat patiently waiting for her, until she wanted to scream. Instead, she’d given up and gone for a sandwich with him, and they’d come out of the tiny deli to find the sky streaming a combination of rain and snow.
“I don’t think it’s safe to drive tonight.”
“Paul, it’s not even really snowing. Look at the roads. It’s more like slush.” Spending dinner trying not to fantasize every time she looked across at his mouth had left her more than a little irritable.
“Slush,” he repeated, shaking his head as if verifying his worst suspicions. “Slush can be very dangerous. You know, they don’t even make slush tires. That’s because no tire in the world can help you in slush.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, abruptly changing tacks. Maybe she could at least cut the evening short. Go home now, spend a few hours alone, try to regain some sanity. “You’ve been driving way too much. I’ve tried to tell you it wasn’t necessary to take me home every night, and I’m glad you’re finally being sensible about this.”
He grinned, but she saw that his eyes were heating in a most dangerous way. She needed to get away from him. She needed a respite from this constant arousing of her desire with never any satisfaction.
“I’ll take the train.”
“The train!” He looked thwarted for a moment, but quickly gathered himself. He gave her a long, considering look. “The train’s the very worst thing you can do. Do you know what slush can do to train tracks? Make them a veritable death slide.”
“I’ve never heard that before.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Of course not. You think the railroads would let you know a thing like that? They’d lose all their commuters for the whole winter.” He perked up, as if seeing the possibilities in the vision he’d created, and she wondered again at his ability to make her see humor even while he was making her lose her mind. “In fact, commuters by the droves would stay home all winter. No more driving, no more taking the train, just settling in for the winter at home in front of the fireplace and next to a good woman.”
“Or man.”
He tilted an eyebrow at her. “I’m not making judgments, but that’s not my style.”
“I meant,” she explained severely, “that a lot of the commuters are women.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. I was speaking from a personal point of view.”
“Uh-huh,” she said with disapproval. But it hadn’t been such a bad point of view. With a little imagination, she could visualize herself snuggled next to Paul Monroe in front of a fire, maybe with soft music in the background, a glass of wine, and without too many clothes. Settling in for the winter.
Tipping her chin up, she looked at him more closely in the eerie glow of streetlights diffused by sleet.
Four days ago, she’d reopened the door she’d earlier tried to close. But it hadn’t led into a new stage in their relationship the way she’d expected it to. On Monday, the day she’d crossed that emotional threshold, she’d been braced for the consequences. She wouldn’t have been particularly surprised if he actually had taken her right then and there in his office. When he invited her to dinner with his friends instead, and left her at her front door with a near-chaste kiss, she’d thought he was showing an unsuspected tenderness, almost a delicacy.
But after Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, she was inclined to say the hell with delicacy.
She’d made her decision. Why wait for winter? Waiting wouldn’t change who he was, and it wouldn’t give her any guarantee of safety for her heart. Nor would it change how much she wanted him. It was time to fly. Now.
“So where shall we stay?”
“What?” His eyes met hers. Confusion showed for half a second, then only a blaze of instant fire. Like being struck by a bolt of lightning, one moment there was nothing, the next unadulterated sizzle.
She’d never been so happy to be singed. As much as she’d tried not to, she’d wondered about the reluctance she’d detected in him. But that look, that one flash in his eyes, vaporized her doubts.
“Since you’re not going to drive me home tonight, and taking the train would be such a reckless thing to do, what are we going to do for accommodations tonight?”
“I know just the place,” he said. She figured that now he’d explain how his apartment in Evanston would be a safe choice, since it wouldn’t mean as long a drive in the “treacherous” slush. “There’s a great little hotel not far from here. You hardly notice it from the street, but inside, the lobby’s all polished wood and plush furniture. The rooms look like a spread from some magazine on English country homes. The perfect place to wait out a slush storm.”
Surprise opened her mouth to the first thing in her mind.
“How do you know about this place?” she asked
The glint in his eyes looked positively devilish in the eerie light.
“Not how you’re thinking, you suspicious woman, you. I can tell you with a totally clear conscience that I have never waited out a storm, slush or otherwise, with a woman at that hotel. In fact, the only times I’ve been there have been with a man—Michael. It's where he stays when he’s got business downtown.”
“I wasn’t asking for explanations. I didn’t think—”
He cut off her protest with a kiss on her nose. “No, of course you didn’t.” He looped his arm more securely around her shoulders and guided her footsteps. “It’s not far,” he said, mentioning an address off Michigan Avenue.
“What if they don’t have a vacancy?” she offered halfheartedly.
“Michael said they cater mostly to businessmen, so weekends should be pretty quiet.”
“Oh.”
They’d gone almost two blocks—in a direct route this time, she noticed with some satisfaction—when she stopped short. “Wait a minute. We can’t go to a hotel, Paul. We don’t have any luggage. It’ll look like...like . . .”
Her voice wound down. It would look like exactly what it was—two adults deciding to spend an impromptu night together at a downtown hotel. He would surely tell her it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. And deep down, she really didn’t care what anyone else thought; being with Paul was right for her. Still...she cringed at the idea of going into a hotel without luggage. It seemed such a blatant announcement of something that should be private.
“All right.”
“All right?” Just that easily, he was willing to let the opportunity to spend the night together go—willing to let her go?
/>
“Yep. We’ll go to Water Tower Place first.”
“Water Tower Place? Why?”
“We have some shopping to do.”
Chapter Eight
Prelude to a Wedding (The Wedding Series Book 1) Page 31
