The Dating Dare (Gambling Men Book 2)

by Barbara Dunlop

  “You’ve built up a serious down payment,” he said. “You should start setting up some equity now.”

  It was probably good advice. But my brain didn’t want to delve into equity and interest rates at the moment. I’d think about it later, when I was alone, when a half-naked Jamie wasn’t crowding out all the logic inside my head.

  “I’ll think about it,” I managed between processing the images of his rugged face, his sexy body and his clinging boxers.

  “Good.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it in his.

  I loved the strength of his grip. His energy flowed up my arm and into my chest, and nothing else in the world mattered, not one little bit.

  He nodded to the pond. “On three?”

  I was thinking on ten, or maybe twenty, or maybe thirty. Or maybe we could just stand here in the sunshine forever holding hands on this perfect wild and wonderful Saturday afternoon. I didn’t think life could get any better.

  “On three,” I said.

  Jamie counted. “One...”

  I joined him, and together we said. “Two...three.”

  We jumped.

  I squeezed his hand tight as we flew through the air.

  It felt like a long time, but it was only seconds before my feet hit the water, then my hips, my hands, and my head went under.

  Cold engulfed my senses, and I lost hold of Jamie’s hand.

  I bobbed down a few feet, and then buoyancy took over, pushing me back up.

  I broke the surface and blinked the water from my eyes to see Jamie grinning beside me.

  “I like you, Tasha,” he said, his warm gaze holding mine.

  “I like you too, Jamie.” I meant it in ways he couldn’t possibly understand.

  I bicycled my feet to stay afloat in the deep water, veering toward the shore.

  He kicked toward me.

  His expression sobered.

  He touched my shoulder, and my whole body lit with desire.

  “You are beautiful,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  The way he was looking at me made me feel beautiful.

  He feathered his hand from my shoulder to the middle of my back.

  His other arm went around my waist, anchoring me, and I realized he was standing on the bottom.

  I stopped moving my legs.

  “Tasha,” he said.

  “Jamie,” I answered.

  He tipped his head and slowly leaned in.

  His lips touched mine, cool from the water. But they heated quickly.

  His kiss sent waves of wanting through my arms, my legs, to my belly and breasts. My body tightened and quickened. Passion amped up as our kiss deepened.

  I wrapped my arms around him, sliding them from his firm shoulders across his back, up to his neck. My fingers tangled in the base of his hairline as I held him to me.

  My lips parted farther and his tongue touched mine.

  Fireworks flashed behind my eyes. Under the water, my legs wrapped around him.

  Somewhere deep in my brain stem, I understood what I was doing, the intimacy of the move, what I was signaling. But my conscious mind didn’t care about that.

  I wanted to get closer to Jamie. I needed to get closer to Jamie. Every inch of space between us should be erased and eradicated.

  His hand closed over my breast, the wet fabric making no barrier at all. I moaned with the pleasure of his touch.

  I tipped my head back to give him access.

  His kissed his way along my neck.

  I knew where this was going. I loved where this was going. I couldn’t wait to get there.

  He cupped my behind, holding me to him, pressing against me, spreading pulses of heat and power in all directions.

  Then he quit the kiss and gave a chopped exclamation. “We can’t.”

  He pulled back from me. “Tasha.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “I don’t—”

  “It’s fine,” I managed. I was as mortified as I’d ever been in my life. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not—”

  “You said it yourself.” I disentangled my arms and legs and put some space between us. “I’m completely refreshed.”

  “Tasha, wait.”

  “Let’s get back to the car.” My feet found the bottom of the pond, so I was able to propel myself even faster toward the pebble shore.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he called from behind me. “Tasha, stop.”

  I wasn’t stopping. The last thing I was doing was stopping.

  I’d made a colossal mistake. We’d both made a colossal mistake. There was still time to correct it, and that was good.

  We’d gotten over the kiss. We’d get over this.

  I felt his hand on my arm.

  I tried to shake it off, but he refused to let go.

  He turned me, and I nearly stumbled over in the waist-high water.

  “I only meant—”

  “Will you let me go?” I demanded.

  Maybe his precious Tasha didn’t care about dignity, but Nat still did. There was still enough Nat in me to want to get the heck out of this situation.

  “I don’t have anything.” He stared meaningfully at me, moving close up. “I don’t have a condom, Tasha. I wasn’t saying we shouldn’t, I was saying we couldn’t, not here, not now, not without protection.”

  His words dropped to silence.

  It was a very uncomfortable silence.

  “Oh.” My voice was tiny. I swallowed.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “What is with you?”

  I didn’t have a ready answer for that.

  He kept talking. “Do you think I behave like that when I don’t want to make love?”

  I found my voice again. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”

  “Well, tell already. That’s what raw, unbridled lust and passion look like. You’re hot, Tasha. Any guy within fifty yards of you probably wants you. And none of them, definitely not me, is going to shut it down without a damn good reason.”

  “Oh,” I said again, struggling to shift the emotional gears inside my head.

  “We should go,” he said.

  “Okay.” I had no idea where this left us.

  He moved closer. His expression changed. And my uncertainty dropped a notch.

  “To your place,” he said with meaning. “As fast as we can get there.”

  * * *

  I opened my apartment door to find Sophie inside.

  We both stared at each other in shock, me on finding her in my apartment—which was not unheard of, but pretty unusual—and her likely wondering why my hair was wet and why Jamie was with me.

  What on earth was I going to say about that?

  “Oh, good,” she said before I could form any kind of a coherent sentence. “You brought Jamie. I guess you heard?” Her eyes were alight with joy.

  “Uh...”

  “Aaron called. Bryce and Ethan are on their way over. I can’t believe it.” She started to pace. “I just can’t believe it. How long have you two known?”

  I looked at Jamie.

  We must have had identical expressions of bafflement.

  “I wish you’d told me yourself,” Sophie said to me. She closed the space and wrapped me in a tight hug.

  Then she seemed to notice my wet hair.

  She looked at Jamie, then back at me. I could see it all unraveling right here in front of us.

  “Were you at the club?” she asked us.

  “Yes,” Jamie said.

  Sophie took a step back and put her hand on her forehead. She grinned and turned away. “We need champagne.”

  I gave Jamie a panicked look and mouthed the word what?

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  �
�When Aaron told me it was five hundred thousand, I made him say it again. I couldn’t believe it.”

  Five hundred thousand? Dollars? Did she mean dollars?

  She turned back. “We need champagne.”

  “Aaron talked to you about five hundred thousand dollars?” Jamie asked.

  His tone was tense, his expression worried.

  “Did I get the number wrong? Oh, I hope I didn’t get it wrong because I told Bryce and Ethan. Did you talk to Horatio Simms?” Her question was directed at Jamie. “Did he say that was his investment? Oh, I sure hope I didn’t mess up.”

  “Horatio Simms is investing five hundred thousand dollars in Sweet Tech?” Jamie asked.

  “I know I have you to thank for that. I don’t know what you did, but—”

  “I didn’t talk to Horatio,” Jamie said.

  Sophie looked confused.

  “But Aaron told me...”

  “I did talk to Aaron,” Jamie said. I could hear the annoyance in his voice. “Aaron must have talked to Horatio.”

  Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, then that makes sense.”

  Jamie went to his phone.

  I didn’t know what was happening, but I could tell we had a big problem. There was a knock on the door.

  “That’ll be Bryce and Ethan.” Sophie brushed past me.

  “Simms?” Jamie said into the phone. “I’m at Tasha’s with Sophie and her crew.”

  I glanced to Sophie to see if she’d noticed Jamie calling me Tasha.

  She hadn’t.

  “When you get this,” Jamie said. “Call me. Or better still, get your butt over here and tell me what is going on.”

  Jamie disconnected.

  “What?” I whispered to him.

  Jamie came close to my ear. “I specifically told Aaron that Sweet Tech wasn’t ready for investment. It’s way too high risk and we don’t have a proper prospectus. I waved him off, and he pulled in his uncle instead? This is going to go so bad.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was awash with both guilt and worry. I hated the thought that I’d caused problems at work for Jamie.

  “Bryce brought champagne!” Sophie said. “Get some glasses, Nat.”

  I forced a smile on my face. “Sure.” I didn’t know what else to do, so I started for the kitchen. “Can you tell me more about the deal?”

  Maybe, at the very least, I could arm Jamie with some information before he talked to Aaron.

  I found my champagne flutes in a high cupboard, and I passed them around.

  Jamie tried to refuse, but I gave him a glare that told him to play along. There was no point in getting angry right now.

  Sophie and her friends were oblivious to any problems. To them, Jamie was the hero who’d saved their fledgling business. All she could see was a bright and beautiful future of success and riches.

  If it had to come crashing down, it had to come crashing down. But we should figure out exactly why before we gave her the bad news.

  “To success,” Sophie said, raising her glass. “And to James for all of his help.”

  For a second I thought Jamie might blurt something out. But he didn’t, just took a drink of his champagne.

  Sophie, Bryce and Ethan all started talking, fast and with plenty of emotion and excitement. I heard them say scale up and distribution and markets.

  Before I could take Jamie aside again, there was another knock on the door.

  I opened it to find Aaron.

  He was grinning. “Hi, Natasha.”

  I could feel Jamie’s presence right behind me. “Start talking, Simms.”

  “You heard.”

  “Of course I heard. Why, why would you tell Horatio about Sweet Tech?”

  “Because I knew you were holding out on us, keeping it all to yourself.”

  Jamie shook his head. “That wasn’t it. You knew that wasn’t what was going on.”

  Aaron shot back, “No. I know that you told me it wasn’t ready for investment.”

  “It wasn’t. It isn’t. And Horatio should know that. This isn’t his kind of deal. How did you convince him to invest so much money?”

  Aaron didn’t answer.

  “How?” Jamie repeated.

  “I told him it was your recommendation.”

  “You what?” Jamie bellowed.

  “I’m not an idiot, Gillen. You were going to invest. You might have wanted to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, but you know you were going to invest.”

  “I was not going to invest.”

  “Then why spend all that time, effort and energy on it?”

  “I was doing a favor for a friend.”

  Aaron looked at me. “A friend.”

  His inference was clear.

  “You’ve set your uncle up to lose money. And he’s going to think I suggested it. You overconfident, cavalier little jerk.”

  “Nat?” Sophie’s voice sounded shaky behind us.

  My heart sank.

  “What’s going on?” Sophie asked.

  There was a brittle silence. Finally, Jamie turned.

  “Aaron made a mistake,” Jamie said to Sophie.

  “There’s no mistake,” Ethan said. “We have a handshake deal for five hundred thousand dollars.”

  Jamie shot Aaron a brief glare. “I need to talk to Horatio. He didn’t have all the facts when he made that deal.”

  “You don’t have faith in us?” Sophie asked Jamie.

  Jamie didn’t answer.

  “It’s not that,” I said, trying to help.

  “Tasha, don’t,” Jamie said.

  Sophie gave him a puzzled look at the name Tasha.

  “You’re right,” Jamie said to Sophie in a clipped, professional voice. “I don’t have faith in you. The reason I don’t have faith is that I’m a realist. You’re at a very early stage. You need patient capital. Horatio is looking for a faster return on his investment. You’re not going to be able to give it to him.”

  Ethan took a step forward. “Who says?”

  “I say... Ethan, is it?”

  “Ethan Tumble. I’m the technical brains behind this, and I know a good idea when I see one. This thing’s got legs.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not a good idea.”

  “We should close the door,” I said.

  I didn’t have a lot of neighbors, but I didn’t think this was a conversation we wanted people to overhear.

  Jamie looked frustrated, but he stepped aside and Aaron came in.

  I closed the door.

  Jamie spoke again. “You may have the best idea in the world. Over the long term, you might all be headed for stellar success. And I hope you are. I really do. But it was presented to Horatio in a ridiculously irresponsible way. Aaron has to answer for that. And I have to answer for Aaron. And I will. We will. We’ll tell Horatio the truth and take it from there.”

  “We’re not getting the money,” Sophie said, sounding completely dejected.

  I didn’t blame her, and I hated that I’d had a hand in setting up this debacle.

  “Simms,” Jamie said as he reopened the door. He gestured for Aaron to leave.

  Aaron left, and Jamie followed him out.

  Sophie looked like she might cry, and I realized Jamie had left me alone.

  I mean, Sophie, Bryce and Ethan were still there. But Jamie was gone.

  I’d come home from the hike with such high expectations for Jamie and me. This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go.

  The day was supposed to end with the two of us alone, together, in my bed with a condom and our pent-up passion for each other.

  Ten

  I wished I could have done a better job consoling Sophie. But I was fumbling in the dark. I had no idea what was going to happen next.

&nbs
p; We speculated on the potential for Horatio’s investment, and we talked about other investments that might replace it. I reminded her that she still had a good job. I told her she was young, just starting out. Things were going to go up, and things were going to go down. And I truly believed that.

  Trouble was, she’d gotten her hopes way up. I knew it was hard to go from the top of the world to the depth of disappointment. It really sucked.

  Privately, I wondered what Jamie and Aaron were going to say to Horatio—Aaron in favor of the investment and Jamie opposed was the best I could guess. And I really couldn’t see how Horatio would be willing to invest in Sweet Tech by the end of that conversation.

  A handshake deal was all well and good, but I doubted it would stand up in court. I honestly couldn’t imagine Sophie suing anyone anyway.

  She left at about ten thirty, after a couple of glasses of wine. We didn’t have the heart to finish the champagne.

  I showered the dried pond water out of my hair, using extra conditioner to get the softness back into it. Then I changed into the worn cotton shorts and T-shirt I usually wore to bed.

  But I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t feel like watching a movie or reading a book. I wasn’t even thirsty.

  I prowled the apartment for a few minutes before I decided to surf around online.

  I thought back on what Jamie had said about me buying a condo. I was feeling like I should get my life in order. This windfall from our investments might or might not last. I should put it to good use while I had the chance.

  I’d be thirty in a couple of years. I should own my own real estate by then. That’s what people did when they became full-fledged adults. They invested. They settled down. They started to build their lives.

  I looked around my apartment and thought about moving. I really liked the work we’d done, the colors and the style. But it wasn’t mine. It was a temporary stop for me. I considered how I could duplicate the colors and style if I bought my own condo.

  Maybe I could get something on a ground floor. It would be nice not to have to lug groceries up the stairs every week. Not that it wasn’t good exercise. It was very good exercise. But if I could find a place near the park, I could keep my bike handy and get exercise that way. Riding through the park would be more fun than lugging groceries up the stairs.