Antique tables sported a selection of one-of-a-kind knits, while three garment racks on either side of the wall showcased skirts, blouses, and, of all things, jeans in an array of muted colors.
The designer glanced up from her sewing machine at the back of the room and smiled. “Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”
Peter nodded his thanks and turned to Georgia. “Take off your coat.”
Feeling a little ridiculous, she did as he asked. He hung the baggy thing on a stand by the door before he returned to her. As he crossed the jewel-toned carpet, the artistically placed lighting burnished the darker strands of his hair. Georgia curled her fingers and watched his approach.
He stopped three feet from her and swept her with an assessing gaze.
“You’re petite,” he mused, obviously affirming something he already knew.
She smiled. Most men thought her tall because she wore heels in their company. Wanting to stress a height difference between herself and her alter ego, she’d only ever worn flats around Peter until last night.
He stepped forward and put his hands on her hips. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. He skimmed heated fingers over her waist, lifting the sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Sid a fraction. Heart beating a wild rhythm, she let him explore. When his gaze dipped to her breasts, she clenched her thighs together and prayed for strength.
Stepping back, she forced his hands to fall away. “I’m an eight in feel-good sizing. Probably a ten here.”
He frowned. “I could have sworn you were a six.”
“You’re being generous, and I can only dream of approaching that size, even with my, um…” She looked away, unable to bear looking at his face when she said, “Shape wear.”
She’d always worn the stuff around him until his unexpected visit this afternoon.
“Shape wear?”
A furious blush crept up her cheeks, heating her skin. Could this get any more embarrassing? She never should have agreed to this. Wearing bespoke most of her life, she hadn’t known her size for years. Sure, she’d heard the dressmakers clucking as they measured her hips and thighs, but she exercised and was healthy. She wasn’t going to starve to death to fit their twisted image of the ideal woman.
“Well, I’m a man. What do I know?” He shrugged, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, then muttered as he turned away, “Except you drive me crazy.”
Stomach going funny as her legs turned wobbly, she clutched the edge of a table and watched Peter swipe at the garment hangers along the opposite wall.
She drove him crazy? How? As in make him nuts because she was a pain in the ass? Or as in make him wild with wanting her? Given their tempestuous relationship thus far, she had to believe it was the former.
She’d mostly convinced herself he saw nothing in her but an opportunity to show his parents he wasn’t the shallow bastard her column painted him as, when he turned with two pairs of jeans, a low-cut soft pink blouse, two finely knit sweaters—one gray, the other royal blue—and a very casual jersey top in jade green. As an afterthought, he lifted a flowing white nightgown from another rack and piled it with the rest over his forearm. He’d made his selections so quickly she’d barely had time to register them.
“These should keep you warm.” He held out the clothes to her.
She took them from him with a “Thanks.”
When his fingers lingered on hers, her breaths turned shallow and the world narrowed so Peter seemed to fill her vision. He dropped his arm, and she stumbled back a step.
“Let me see them?” he called as she retreated to the dressing room.
Standing in soft lighting before gilded mirrors, Georgia stared at her reflection. Eyes wide, lips parted, she placed a hesitant palm against the glass. She was in so much trouble, she didn’t know where to begin.
Chapter Ten
Peter fingered lacy underwear in a bin on the counter and waited for Georgia to emerge. She’d modeled the jeans and sweaters as well as the blouses he’d selected. Each garment hugged her curves, emphasizing them with a subtlety that only made discovery of the woman beneath a more tantalizing prospect. He should’ve taken a better look at her last night when he’d had the chance.
The thought of sex with Georgia in the gallery’s back hallway last night sharpened his next inhale. He lifted several pairs of panties from the bin. Their pearlescent satin slid against his fingertips. He fisted the material as he imagined trailing his palm along the inside of Georgia’s thigh. Her moist heat would beckon him higher until he reached the slippery material and slid two fingers along her cleft.
Jealousy spiked as he realized these underthings would lie more intimately against her body than he ever would again. The unfamiliar emotion soured his mood and his stomach. He had to get a grip. No matter what fiction he told to get them through this weekend with his parents, Georgia could never be anything more to him than a temporary PA and a means to an end. Allowing her to get any closer to him would court disaster. Not just for him, but for her as well.
Tossing the panties on the counter, he reached for his phone to check his e-mail as Georgia emerged to model the nightgown. His hand froze as a pile driver of desire sailed into his abdomen. His already hardening cock swelled dangerously toward his waistband. Squeezed in the prison of his jeans, he could only clutch his cell and gape.
Lighting spilled from the dressing room, shadowing Georgia’s curves through the gown. The silhouette of her legs tapered to the intimate space between—a space he’d been contemplating only moments before. She might have been wearing underwear, but the backlighting gave the impression of a bare landscape of skin. If she wore this gown, he’d never keep his hands off her this weekend.
“Well? Is it okay?” Georgia folded her arms under her breasts, unintentionally hiking the gown a little higher and spilling her ample bosom over the top with her insecure gesture.
Peter popped his jaw shut and looked over his shoulder at the designer. “Excuse me? Do you have anything more…modest?”
The woman darted her gaze to Georgia before shaking her head. “Afraid not.”
He made a vague hand gesture to Georgia, willing her to put on some clothes before he succumbed to his testosterone-laden haze and jumped her in the dressing room. “It’ll have to do.”
Georgia whirled and slammed the door behind her.
He flinched.
Great. Just great.
Without a doubt, she’d taken his statement completely the wrong way. If he’d had any doubts about Georgia possessing feminine sensibilities—yeah, right—she’d just proven herself 100 percent woman in body and emotion.
“You could go in after her.” The shop owner regarded him with a secret smile. “Tell her how nice it looked.”
His cock twitched, obviously approving of the idea. Turning his back, he adjusted his jeans and told the thing to calm down. It had gotten him into enough trouble lately. “Boss with benefits” might sound good in theory, but he knew from watching other men fall that these affairs ended in courtroom battles and big sexual harassment settlements—a line he was perilously close to crossing if he hadn’t already.
Snorting, he rolled his eyes. Who was he kidding? If Georgia wanted a multimillion-dollar settlement from him, she could have it. For all intents and purposes, he’d handed her his ATM PIN when he’d had sex with her last night…and flashed her, repeatedly, this morning.
He was glaring at the dressing room door, wondering if he should call his lawyer to warn him, when Georgia flounced out with the gown on its original hanger. Putting away the nightgown, she kept the rest.
“That’s stupid,” Peter said when she brought the clothes to the counter. “What are you going to sleep in?”
Refusing to look at him, she shrugged.
Sighing inwardly, he crossed to the garment rack and pulled out the swaying gown. Georgia snatched at the thing when he approached. He held the soft cotton aloft, out of her reach behind him. Red-faced and determined, she j
umped up to grab the thing, forcing him to take a step back.
“Behave,” he stage-whispered.
An unruly strand of hair stuck to her cheek. Glaring, she swiped at her face. “I’m not wearing it.”
The designer ignored them both as she neatly folded each item in tissue paper and punched the price into a calculator. With his free hand, Peter grabbed Georgia’s arm. She attempted to jerk away, then froze as he lowered his mouth to her ear.
Knowing he was already screwed and sick to death of her making life difficult for him at every turn, he whispered, “Call girls don’t spank, but I do.”
She sagged, increasing her weight against his grip. Smug, he bit back a smile and straightened to examine her face. At her shocked expression, lust sent tingling fingers up his tailbone and into his abdomen, tightening the muscles along his groin until his cock ached with each hammer of his pulse.
If she were any other woman, he would have left the clothes on the counter and taken her over the dressing room bench without preliminaries. One yank of her jeans and his, and he’d be inside her tight heat. She would look at him in the mirror with the same expression she wore now. Lips parted, gaze wide, she appeared the picture of shocked arousal.
Her reaction to his statement reminded him of exactly what she was like in his arms. A wicked combination of barely breached innocence and curiosity, she’d be too much fun. The kind of fun he could gorge on and end up regretting with a bellyache for a week.
Yeah. No thanks.
He dropped Georgia’s arm and handed the shop owner the nightgown, which she’d apparently already rung up. Without asking the total, he handed her his Amex black card. She ran the charge, giving no indication she knew who he was, though she had to recognize his name.
He searched the counter for a business card and came up empty. “Do you have a card?”
The woman looked up, mid keypunch, and smiled. “I do.”
Georgia snorted.
One brow raised, Peter looked over his shoulder at her.
“Nothing,” she said, answering his implicit question. He’d begun to turn away when she muttered, “I guess if you can’t hire them anymore, you have to do something.”
Surprise filled the space anger might have occupied. She was jealous? Buying time to right his world, Peter pretended he hadn’t heard her and turned back to the designer. The woman held out the bags and her card. Peter looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since entering the shop.
A tall blonde goddess with her hair pulled into a tight knot, she struck him as insubstantial and unapproachable. She didn’t stand a chance side by side with Georgia’s warm curves and silky mane with its muted fire.
He took the card between two fingers and saluted the woman with it. “Thanks.”
“Come again,” she said.
Bag in hand, he turned away without regret. The woman’s smile had been pleasant enough, he mused, but vain model types with more angles than curves struck him as caricatures of human beings. What could there possibly be to relate to, much less hold on to?
Outside, he threw the bags into the backseat and let Georgia get her own door. He climbed in and pressed the ignition button. Arms crossed over her torso, face turned away, Georgia remained mute as he buckled in and pulled the car out of the tight parking spot. They were several miles down 95 before she issued a tight-lipped, “Thank you.”
Headlights cut through thickly falling snow, making them appear like stars in a warp-speed universe. He slid his gaze sideways to Georgia. She stared out the windshield.
“You’re welcome,” he said after a moment. Then, because he really was curious, “Why did you think that woman presented a threat?”
She tilted her head toward one lifted shoulder. “Don’t know that I did.”
The musical lilt of her voice as it caressed the phrase reminded him of someone he couldn’t place, but he let it go in favor of pressing his point. “You weren’t jealous?”
When she didn’t respond, he held out an incentive. “Tell you what. You answer my question, and I’ll answer one of yours. Anything you want.”
Lovely brows arched in surprise, she faced him. “Anything?”
He returned his gaze to the road, needing his focus to keep them safe in the slippery conditions. Thank goodness for snow tires. He should have driven the Volvo.
Georgia remained silent for several minutes. When he thought for sure she wouldn’t answer, she breathed a sigh that recaptured his attention.
“I don’t think I’m ugly.” She shifted in her seat. “But there are simply types of women men like. I’m not one of them. She was.”
He thought about her assessment for a moment, doing a quick mental comparison with the women he’d dated. She wasn’t exactly right, but she wasn’t wrong either. He noticed her more than he’d noticed those women. Precisely because she was different. The regal Gigi had turned him on at the gala, for sure, but she hadn’t stuck. Other than a deep-rooted need to exact his revenge on her in a game of sexual and social one-upmanship, he didn’t really care if he never saw her again.
Avoiding any mention of how either woman affected him seemed prudent, so he kept the spotlight on Georgia. “You thought I preferred the shop owner to you?”
She leaned forward, fingers hovered over the dash, and peered at him from behind the curtain of her hair. “Do you mind if I turn up the heat?”
He tried and failed to keep his eyes on the road. “Suit yourself.”
Georgia sat back without answering his question. He let it go. The quiet whoosh of the air through the vents mingled with the shoosh of the tires and the thump thump of the wipers, forming a hypnotic sound track. Rush-hour traffic clogged the road, periodically slowing them to a crawl. They’d be late for pizza. His mother was going to be pissed.
“Yes. I thought you preferred the dressmaker to me.” Her sudden admission pulled him from his thoughts, and he glanced at her in time to see her adjust her legs, kicking off her shoes so she sat with one foot under the opposite thigh. “But really it doesn’t matter. I’m just tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night, so silly things are making me emotional.”
Well, he gave her points for honesty. Or partial honesty anyway. She was attracted to him. Whether she wanted to be or not. Turning that fact over in his mind, he played with the idea of seducing her again. They were both consenting adults, and it wasn’t like she’d be his PA once Emma returned.
“And you were angry because you thought I didn’t find you attractive in the nightgown,” he mused aloud, talking more to himself than to her.
She laughed, a small, self-deprecating sound. “Sorry. That was ridiculous.”
He decided to throw in every last chip.
“You’re hotter than hell. I wanted to fuck you in that dressing room from the moment you came out with that first sweater plastered to your chest.”
Her shocked gasp filled the car, and he imagined the sound accompanied a flood of wet heat from her sex. He clenched the wheel and quashed the impulse to test his hypothesis with empirical study by delving under her jeans for the evidence. If he weren’t driving, he would’ve closed his eyes against the barrage of images the thought evoked: His broad palm against her naked stomach, fingers flicking over the button of her jeans, undoing it and her zipper to expose the downy softness of her skin beneath. The arch of her hips, a silent plea begging him to move lower. Lace against the back of his hand, her slippery seam under his exploring fingers…
A horn blared, and he swerved, barely missing a car in the next lane over. Shaken, he passed a trembling hand over his face. “Sorry.”
Hand on the door grip, Georgia nodded and swallowed audibly. “It’s okay.”
Quiet fell, murky and thick, in the car’s interior. Apparently Georgia wasn’t going to take him up on his offer and ask him a question in return. Peter flicked the controls, turning down the heat on his vents, and glanced to her. She stared at her hands, more quiet than he’d ever seen her. An alien t
hought came to him. This woman needed him emotionally in a way he didn’t need her. Women like Gigi didn’t need him at all. Ice queens were safe. By the same token, he generally despised the privileged bitches he met. So he chose to hire his girlfriends instead. With them, he could be in control of his heart and his wallet, his obligations uncomplicated and finite.
By the time he steered the car into his parents’ drive, only one thought occupied his mind. At some point this weekend, he knew he’d sleep with Georgia again. He wanted to do the right thing afterward, but he wouldn’t. He’d spent so much time being a selfish prick, he couldn’t find the other part of him—the one that would sacrifice anything and everything for family and friends. The path to the good man he’d once been had been paved over with his good intentions, setting him firmly on the road to hell.
Chapter Eleven
If she’d had any other choice, Georgia wouldn’t have gotten out of the car. Asking Peter to take her home at this point, she knew, was moot. Light spilled from a middle-class ranch house. An abundance of icicle lighting and holiday netting festooned the eaves and bushes. In front of the two-car garage were parked one Mustang, an ancient Toyota pickup that looked straight out of the early 1990s, and a gleaming Ford F150. Not what she’d expected at all.
“Did you think I grew up with the Rockefellers?” Peter asked, amusement brightening the question’s darker notes.
Georgia squared her shoulders. Hand on the door lever, she nodded. “Yes, actually.”
He’d kept her so busy she hadn’t had an opportunity to read up on his background. Something a niggling sense of journalistic integrity told her she should have done long before she wrote the column that had launched him into her life. Damn this man and the high-strung emotions he wrung from her. Before she’d met him, she’d never been so impulsive, duplicitous, or needy of attention and approval.
Or had she?
It was entirely possible he magnified her less appealing qualities, making them stand out in ways she didn’t care to contemplate. She just knew that she didn’t want to be forgettable. A shallow impression on the minds and hearts of others. Yet she’d taken what she could get from Peter last night, knowing full well what he wanted and what the outcome would be. His assessment of her character in his bathroom this morning didn’t just sting then; it still burned with the vivid clarity only truth could offer.
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