Good God.
That was as far as her brain got, because she tried to drag her eyes away from his chest—and made it exactly as far as his biceps.
Sweet mother of pearl was the last coherent thought she had as she tried to take in the magnitude of those biceps.
And when thinking stopped, she was left with nothing but her physical response. Her nipples tightened and her skin flushed—flushed, dammit, like she was an innocent schoolgirl confronted with a man’s body for the first time. All that flushing left her shaken and sweaty and completely unable to look away. It took all of her self-control not to lean over and put a hand to that chest and feel what she was looking at. Because she’d be willing to bet a lot of money that he felt even better than he looked.
“...Casey?” he said with what she hoped like hell was humor in his voice. “Hello?”
“What?” Crap, she’d been caught gaping at him. “Right. Hi.” Dumbly, she held up the tickets.
“Is there something wrong with my shirt?” He asked, looking down. Then he grasped the hem of the shirt and pulled it out so he could see the front, which had a graphic of the Braves’ tomahawk on it. But when he did that, the neck of the shirt came down and Casey caught a glimpse of his collarbones.
She had no idea collarbones could be sexy. This was turning out to be quite an educational evening and it had only just begun. How on earth was she going to get through the rest of it without doing something humiliating, like drooling on the man?
Because drooling was off-limits. Everything about him was off-limits.
This was not a date. Nope. He was her boss, for crying out loud.
“Um, no. I mean, I didn’t actually figure you would show up in the opposing team’s shirt.” Finally—and way too late for decency’s sake—she managed to look up into his face. He was smiling at her, as if he knew exactly what kind of effect he had on her. Dammit. This was the other reason she didn’t go for men like him. They were too cocky for their own good.
“That’s all,” she went on. “You don’t exactly blend.” She was pretty sure she was babbling.
“I’m from Atlanta, you know.” He smirked at her and suddenly there it was—a luscious Southern accent that threatened to melt her. “Who did you think I was going to root for?” His gaze swept over her and Casey felt each and every hair on her body stand at attention. “I don’t have anything purple,” he went on when his gaze made it back to her face with something that looked a heck of a lot like approval.
She fought the urge to stand up straighter. She would not pose for him. This was not a date. She didn’t care what he thought of her appearance. “We could fix that,” she told him, waving at the T-shirt sellers hawking all sorts of Rockies gear. He scrunched his nose at her. “Or not,” she said with a melodramatic sigh, trying to get her wits about her. “It’s still better than a suit. Come on. We need to get in if we want to grab a beer before the game starts.”
He looked around. People in purple hats and T-shirts were making their way inside and he was already getting a few funny looks. “This is literally your home turf. Lead on.”
She headed toward the turnstiles. Zeb made a move toward one with a shorter line, but Casey put her hand on his arm. “This one,” she told him, guiding him toward Joel’s line.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.” At this cryptic statement, Zeb gave her a hard look. Oddly enough, it didn’t carry as much weight as it might have if he’d been in a tie, surrounded by all the brewery history in his office. Instead, he looked almost...adorable.
Crap, this was bad. She absolutely couldn’t be thinking of Zebadiah Richards as adorable. Or hot. Or...anything.
There might have been some grumbling following that statement, but Casey decided that she probably shouldn’t get into a shouting match with him before they’d even gotten inside the stadium.
The line moved quickly and then Joel said, “Casey! There’s my girl.”
“Hey, Joel,” she said, leaning over to give the old man a quick hug.
“Where’s Carl?” Joel asked, eyeing Zeb behind her.
“Union meeting. Who do you think’s going to win today?” She and Joel had the same conversation at nearly every game.
“You have to ask? The Braves are weak this season.” Then he noticed Richards’s shirt behind her and his easy smile twisted into a grimace of disapproval. He leaned over and grabbed two of the special promotion items—bobblehead dolls of the team. “Take one to your dad. I know he collects them.”
“Aw, thanks, Joel. And give my best to Martha, okay?”
Joel gave a bobblehead to Richards, as well. “Good luck, fella,” he muttered.
When they were several feet away, Richards said, “I see what you mean about blending. Do you want this?” He held out the bobblehead.
“I’m good. Two is my personal limit on these things. Give it to Jamal or something.” She led him over to her favorite beer vendor. “Speaking of, where is Jamal? I thought you might bring him.”
Honestly, she couldn’t decide if she’d wanted Jamal to be here or not. If he had been, then maybe she’d have been able to focus on not focusing on Zeb a little better. Three was a crowd, after all.
But still...she was glad Zeb had come alone.
This time, he held back and waited until she picked the beer line. “He’s still unpacking.”
“Oh?” There were about six people in front of them. This game was going to be nowhere near a sellout. “So you really did move out here?”
“Of course.” He slid her a side glance. “I said that at the press conference, you know.”
They moved up a step in line. Casey decided that it was probably best not to admit that she hadn’t been paying attention during the press conference. “So where are you guys at?”
“I bought a house over on Cedar Avenue. Jamal picked it out because he liked the kitchen.”
Her eyes bugged out of her head. “You bought the mansion by the country club?”
“You know it?” He said it in such a casual way, as if buying the most expensive house in the Denver area were no biggie.
Well, maybe for him, it wasn’t. Why was she surprised? She shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t. Someone like Zeb Richards would definitely plunk down nearly $10 million for a house and not think anything of it. “Yeah. My dad was hired to do some work there a couple years ago. He said it was an amazing house.”
“I suppose it is.” He didn’t sound very convinced about this. But before Casey could ask him what he didn’t like about the house, he went on, “What does your dad do? And I’m going to pay you back for his ticket. I’m sorry that I’m using it in his place.”
She waved this away. “Don’t worry about it. He really did have a union meeting tonight. He’s an electrician. He does a lot of work in older homes—renovations and upgrading antique wiring. There’s still a lot of knob-and-tube wiring in Denver, you know.”
One corner of his mouth—not that she was staring at his mouth—curved up into a smile that was positively dangerous.
“What?” she said defensively—because if she didn’t defend herself from that sly smile... Well, she didn’t know what would happen. But it wouldn’t be good.
In fact, it would be bad. The very best kind of bad.
“Nothing. I’ve just got to stop being surprised by you, that’s all.” They advanced another place in line. “What are we ordering?”
“Well, seeing as this is Coors Field, we really don’t have too many options when it comes to beer. It’s—shockingly—Coors.”
“No!” he said in surprise. “Do they make beer?”
She stared at him. “Wait—was that a joke? Were you trying to be funny?”
That grin—oh, hell. “Depends. Did it work?”
No—well, yes, but no. No, she could
n’t allow him to be a regular guy. If this “company outing” was going to stay strictly aboveboard, he could not suddenly develop a set of pecs and a sense of humor at the same time. She couldn’t take it. “Mr. Richards—”
“Really, Casey,” he said, cutting her off, “we’re about to drink a competitor’s beer outside of normal business hours at a game. Call me Zeb.”
She was a strong woman. She was. She’d worked at the Beaumont Brewery for twelve years and during that time, she’d never once gotten involved with a coworker. She’d had to negotiate the fine line between “innocent flirting” and “sexual harassment” on too many occasions, but once she’d earned her place at the table, that had fallen away.
But this? Calling Richards by his first name? Buying beer with him at a ball game? Pointedly not staring at the way he filled out an officially licensed T-shirt? Listening to him crack jokes?
She simply wasn’t that strong. This wasn’t a company outing. It was starting to feel like a date.
They reached the cashier. “Casey!” Marco gave her a high five over the counter.
She could feel Zeb behind her. He wasn’t touching her, but he was close enough that her skin was prickling. “Marco—what’s the latest?”
“It happened, girl.” Marco pointed to a neon sign over his head—one that proudly proclaimed they served Percheron Drafts.
Casey whistled. “You were right.”
“I told you,” he went on. “They cut a deal. You wanna try something? Their pale ale is good. Or is that not allowed? I heard you had a new boss there—another crazy Beaumont. Two of them, even!” He chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. “You think the Beaumonts knew their brother or half brother or whatever he is took over? I heard it might have been planned...”
It took everything Casey had not to look back over her shoulder at Zeb. Maybe she was reading too much into the situation, but she would put money on the fact that he wasn’t grinning anymore. “I bet it was a hell of a surprise,” she said, desperate to change the subject. “Give me the pale ale and—”
“Nachos, extra jalapeños?” He winked at her. “I’m on it.”
“A hell of a surprise,” Zeb whispered in her ear. The closeness of his voice was so unexpected that she jumped. But just then Marco came back with her order.
“Gotta say,” Marco went on, ringing up her total, “it was good to see a brother up there, though. I mean...he was black, right?”
Behind her, Zeb made a noise that sounded like it was somewhere between a laugh and a choke. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said honestly as she handed over the cash, “as long as we get the beer right.”
“Ah, that’s what I like about you, Casey—a woman who knows her beer.” He gave her a moony look, as if he were dazzled by beauty they both knew she didn’t have. “It’s not too late to marry me, you know that?”
Hand to God, Casey thought she heard Zeb growl behind her.
Okay, that was not the kind of noise a boss made when an employee engaged in chitchat with a— Well, Marco sold beer. So with a colleague of sorts. However, it was the sort of noise a man on a date made.
Not a date. Not a date.
For the first time, Marco seemed to notice the looming Braves fan behind her. “Come back and see me at the fifth?” Marco pleaded, keeping a cautious eye on Zeb.
“You know I will. And have Kenny bring me a stout in the third, okay?” She and Dad didn’t have the super-expensive seats where people took her order and delivered it to her. But Kenny the beer vendor would bring them another beer in the third and again in the seventh—and not the beer he hawked to everyone else.
She got her nachos and her beer and moved off to the side. It was then she noticed that Zeb’s eyes hadn’t left her.
A shiver of heat went through her because Zeb’s gaze was intense. He looked at her like...like she didn’t even know what. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out, because what if he could see right through her?
What if he could see how much she was attracted to him?
This was a bad idea. She was on a date with her brand-new CEO and he was hot and funny and brooding all at once and they were drinking their chief competitor’s product and...
Zeb glanced over at her as he paid for his food and shot another warm grin at her.
And she was in trouble. Big, big trouble.
Seven
Zeb followed Casey to the seats. He tried his best to keep his gaze locked on the swinging ponytail that hung out the back of her Rockies hat—and not on her backside.
That was proving to be quite a challenge, though, because her backside was a sight to behold. Her jeans clung to her curves in all the right ways. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?
Oh, yeah—the lab coat.
Which hadn’t shown him the real woman. But this? A bright young woman with hips and curves who was friends with everyone and completely at home in the male bastion of a baseball stadium?
Who’d said—out loud—that it didn’t matter if Zeb was black or not?
She turned suddenly and he snapped his gaze back up to her face. “Here,” she said, notching an eyebrow at him and gesturing toward a nearly empty row. “Seats nine and ten.”
They were eight rows off the first baseline, right behind the dugout. “Great seats,” he told her. “I didn’t bring my glove.”
She snorted as she worked her way down the row. “Definitely keep your eyes on the ball here. You never know.”
He made his way to seat nine. There weren’t many people around, but he had a feeling that if there had been, they’d all have known Casey.
“What did you get?” she asked once they were seated.
“The Percheron lager.”
“Oh, that’s such a nice beer,” she said with a wistful sigh.
“Yeah?” He held out his plastic collector’s cup to her. “Have a drink.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then leaned over and pressed her lips against the rim of his cup. Fascinated, he watched as her mouth opened and she took a sip.
Heat shot through his body, driving his pulse to a sudden pounding in his veins. It only got worse when she leaned back just enough that she could sweep her tongue over her lips, getting every last drop of beer.
Damn. Watching Casey Johnson drink beer was almost a holy experience.
Greedy was not a word he embraced. Greedy implied a lack of control—stupid mistakes and rash consequences. He was not a greedy person. He was methodical and detailed and careful. Always.
But right now he wanted. He wanted her lips to drink him in like she’d drunk the beer. He wanted her tongue to sweep over his lips with that slow intensity. God help him, he wanted her to savor him. And if that made him greedy, then so be it.
So, carefully, he turned the cup around and put his lips where hers had been. Her eyes darkened as he drank. “You’re right,” he said, the taste of the beer and of Casey mixing on his tongue. “It’s a beautiful beer.”
Her breath caught and her cheeks colored, throwing the spiderweb scar on her cheek into high relief. And then, heaven help him, she leaned toward him. She could have leaned away, turned away—done something to put distance between them. She could have made it clear that she didn’t want him at all.
But she didn’t. She felt it, too, this connection between them. Her lips parted ever so slightly and she leaned forward, close enough for him to touch. Close enough for him to take a sip.
The crack of a bat and the crowd cheering snapped his attention away. His head was buzzing as if he’d chugged a six-pack.
“Did they score?” Casey asked, shaking off her confusion. Then she did lean away, settling back into her chair.
Zeb immediately tamped down that rush of lust. They were in public, for God’s sake. This wasn’t like him. He didn’t
go for women like Casey—she was the walking embodiment of a tomboy. Women he favored were cultured and refined, elegant and beautiful. They were everything he’d spent his life trying to become.
Accepted. Welcomed. They belonged in the finest social circles.
Women he liked would never sit on the first-base side and hope to catch a fly ball. They wouldn’t appreciate the finer points of an IPA or a lager. They wouldn’t be proud of a father who was an electrician and they wouldn’t be caught dead in a baseball hat—but Casey?
She was rough-and-tumble and there was a decent chance she could best him in an arm-wrestling contest. There shouldn’t have been a single thing about her that he found attractive.
So why couldn’t he stop staring at her?
Because he couldn’t. “Did you want to try mine? I helped develop it.”
He leaned close to her and waited until she held the cup up to his lips. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from hers, though. He saw when she sucked in a gasp when he ran his tongue over the rim before he reached up and placed his palm on the bottom of the cup, slowly tilting it back. The bitterness of the brew washed over him.
It wasn’t like he’d never had an IPA before. But this was different. He could taste the beer, sure. But there was something about the brightness of the hops, the way it danced on his tongue—it tasted like...
Like her.
“It’s really good,” he told her. “You developed it?”
“I did. Percheron was, um...”
“It’s all right,” he said, leaning back. “I don’t think if you say Chadwick’s name three times, he magically appears. I understand the company’s history.”
“Oh. Okay.” Damn, that blush only made her look prettier. “Well, Percheron was Chadwick’s pet project and I’d been there for almost ten years by that point and he let me help. I was the assistant brewmaster for Percheron when he...” Her voice trailed off and she turned to face the field. “When he left.”
His Illegitimate Heir Page 7
