“His loss.”
The man said it with such sincerity she found herself believing him, even though there was no way he could have meant that. After all, they were strangers to one another. For all he knew, she was a shrew.
Jane picked up her purse, holding it to her chest. “Well, I doubt if he thinks so. He’s already found someone else.”
What made her say that? a little voice in her head demanded. Why was she always so hell-bent on the truth, on making herself seem like she wasn’t worthy of a committed relationship? The kids she worked with at the foundation loved her. Their parents were all grateful to her, praising her for making such a difference in the children’s lives. And she got along rather well with the people she worked with at ReadingWorks, as long as the parameters remained in place—she was a colleague. A professional. Her personal life—such as it was—stayed private.
“Then he’s a fool,” Jorge told her quietly. “And you’re better off without him.”
As he spoke, Jorge studied the woman before him. It was one of his favorite pastimes. Every woman, he’d come to discover at a very early age, had something that was attractive about her. Something special, no matter how small.
This one, he thought, was actually pretty, in a plain sort of way. And by that, he meant that she was pretty without having to resort to artfully applied makeup, like so many of the other women who were here tonight. She was slender, petite—he doubted if she could have been more than about five two—and she had beautiful hair held in place with two ornamental hairclips. They allowed her golden brown curls to cascade down her back like a waterfall.
But what really captivated him was her innocence. There was a certain sweetness to her, a vulnerability that he now detected in her eyes. He sincerely doubted that she was aware of it.
But he was.
Jane stood up. It was almost midnight and she really didn’t want to feel like the odd woman out, not tonight. It would hurt too much.
But as she rose to her feet, the tall, beautiful young man with the sexy, velvet voice didn’t retreat, didn’t even take a step back. He remained exactly where he was, leaving less than a ribbon’s worth of space between them.
So little space that she could actually feel the heat of his body radiating out to hers. Or was that just her body getting ready to burst into flame?
She swallowed. Why was he standing in her way? Was he laughing at her?
But he didn’t seem as if he was laughing. His smile was too gentle, too kind.
Jane took a breath. “I really need to leave,” she told him.
He slowly ran the back of his hand along her bare arm. “Would you stay if there was someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight?”
Goose bumps were forming on her arm at a fantastic rate. Her throat felt suddenly very, very dry.
Idiot, he’s not saying what you think he’s saying. He’s just asking a question. Don’t set yourself up to be a pathetic loser. Again.
But despite her stern, silent warning, Jane heard herself answering, “Yes.” And then, to save face, she tried to make light of the situation. “Are you planning on dragging someone over here to kiss me?”
Eyes the color of warm chocolate on a cold winter morning held hers prisoner.
“No,” he told her quietly.
Okay, now she really did feel like an idiot. Served her right for trying to flirt, or whatever she’d just done that might have passed for flirting. She wasn’t any good at that—never had been.
Doing her best to salvage what was left of her badly damaged ego, Jane forced a smile to her lips. But all she could manage was barely half of one.
“Well, then,” she murmured, attempting to get past him. “I’d better get going.”
“No,” Jorge repeated. “I’m not going to drag anyone over here—I’d like to be the one to kiss you at midnight.” And then he looked at her with just the right touch of shyness. “If that’s all right with you.”
He was actually asking if it was all right to kiss her on New Year’s Eve?
Was this some kind of a joke? Men like—what was his name, anyway? Men like him didn’t ask permission to kiss a woman, they spent half their time fighting off women who were trying to kiss them.
Jane took another deep breath and held it for a moment, wondering whether she was dreaming. What other explanation could there be? How in heaven’s name didn’t he already have a girlfriend in tow on this occasion? She would have been willing to bet, until this man with the magnetic smile had approached her, that she was quite probably the only unattached adult here.
“What’s your name?” Jane finally asked him.
“Jorge,” he replied. “Jorge Mendoza.”
Mendoza.
It was certainly a common enough name. Even so, Jane couldn’t help wondering if Jorge was somehow related to Isabella and if her friend had sent him here on an errand of mercy.
A mercy kissing.
Out of the corner of her eye, she took note of the TV screen. The glittering Times Square ball was definitely beginning to move downward now. Someone in the crowd raised his voice and began the traditional countdown, ticking off the seconds that were still left in this year.
“Ten, nine, eight—”
When the woman made no effort to identify herself, Jorge coaxed her a little. “And you are?”
Several voices joined in, more swelling their numbers with each passing second. “Seven, six, five—”
She wasn’t a bold person by nature, but if this was a dream, then there was no reason to worry about consequences. Nothing to be embarrassed about in the future.
“Jane. Jane Gilliam,” she told him. “Are you related to Isabella?”
“Four, three—”
“Cousin,” he told her. Was it his imagination, or was there a new spark in her eyes? He found his interest being piqued and discovered that she was definitely arousing him. “Distant,” he added for good measure.
“Two—”
Without any further discussion, his eyes on hers, Jorge drew Jane into his arms. He could feel her breathing become audible and found something very sweet about the almost hesitant anticipation he saw in her eyes.
“You’re not really going to kiss me, are you?” Dream or not, it was still hard for her to believe. And yet, she so wanted to believe.
“One!”
His lips covered hers as cries of “Happy New Year!” echoed throughout the crowded room, shouted from the announcer on the TV program as well as by the various people scattered about whose lips were not otherwise occupied.
But Jane didn’t hear a single sound, other than the pounding of her heart.
Chapter Three
She’d died.
There was no other explanation for the way she felt, Jane thought. She must have died and zoomed straight up to heaven. And not even the regular heaven, but some higher plane reserved for the incredibly saintly, incredibly fortunate. Because there was nothing remotely earthly about the feelings she was experiencing right at this moment.
To the casual observer, Jane was certain that it looked as if like nothing more than a traditional New Year’s Eve kiss was being shared by two people at the stroke of midnight.
A lot the casual observer knew.
There were fireworks exploding in her veins, not to mention that her head was spinning wildly, threatening to throw her completely off balance and utterly out of control. Granted, her experience when it came to men and kissing was rather sadly limited, but even she knew that this was something unusual, something really and deliciously different. She’d never been on the verge of a complete meltdown before.
Jorge tasted incredibly sweet and he smelled even better. Everything about him aroused her.
Bold was a word that had nothing to do with her personality, outside of those times when she attempted to secure more funding for her nonprofit organization. But she felt bold now. Bold enough to press her enflamed body against Jorge’s in an attempt to absorb every nuance, every fragment of t
his incredible experience that had taken her completely by surprise and swept her not just off her feet but off to another dimension.
Another universe.
Like a woman trapped in a mind-boggling, sensuous trance, Jane wove her arms around Jorge’s neck, praying the dream she was having would never end. Praying that the moment she was in would stretch out until eternity. She’d never felt so alive, so wonderful before. And probably never would again.
He was rattled.
Few things ever rattled Jorge Mendoza. He was thirty-eight and eons away from being a boy, even though he still possessed not only a boyish grin, but boyish charm. Even in his teens, he’d been more man than boy, with a man’s take on things. And heaven knew he’d kissed and been with more than twice his share of women.
Life had been good to him that way, he’d often thought, blessing him not just with exceptional looks but, more importantly, with a magnetic charm. Charm that now aided him in his professional endeavors—currently he was gathering financial backing for a trainer who raised the finest quarter horses in Texas—as well as in the seduction of willing women.
But none of that was on his mind right now. Instead, he felt complete and total, unabashed surprise. He hadn’t thought that he could ever feel like this. Like there were rockets going off in his veins.
That kind of feeling hadn’t happened to him since the first time he’d slept with a woman.
But this pretty, intelligent but obviously inexperienced young woman had just managed to do what no other woman had in the last twenty-four years. She’d jarred him down to his very foundations and made him feel like a boy on the brink of manhood again.
It was with incredible effort that Jorge managed to finally, albeit reluctantly, draw his lips away from Jane’s.
Taking in a deep, steadying breath, he looked down at the young woman the way one might look at a soul-shaking revelation, attempting to analyze it. Very slowly, surprise gave way to abject pleasure.
“Happy New Year,” he whispered softly against her hair.
“Right.” She was rather stunned that she could actually talk rather than simply gasp. “Happy New Year,” she repeated, each syllable accompanied by the mad beating of her heart. Hands down, this certainly was the best New Year’s Eve moment she’d ever experienced.
His dark eyes danced, smiling directly into her soul. “So,” he asked her, “what are you doing for the rest of the year?”
“Recovering.”
The honest admission had just slipped out before Jane could think to stop it. But being coy was not something she had any practice at, or, truthfully, any desire to become proficient in. There’d always been something off-putting to her about women who felt the need to play games with the men in their lives.
By the same token, though, she’d discovered that since she didn’t play games, it wasn’t very long before she had no one to even contemplate playing games with. The few men who had passed through her life would come on strong and when they didn’t get what they were after, they would just phase her out.
She refused to believe that all men were only after one thing—but so far, she had very little proof to the contrary. None, actually.
Jorge laughed at her response, amused that she was so honest. He was used to women who liked to be mysterious, to exercise their feminine wiles on him. In reality, a great many of them were about as shallow as saucers—not that he required much depth in his partner of the moment. It made things far less complicated that way.
But this one was different.
This one didn’t seem at all versed in the flirtatious give-and-take that went on between the male and female of the species. Rather than being as devious as a cat, she came across more like Bambi, with all of the famous fawn’s innocence.
A trace of guilt began to nibble away at him. Jorge was beginning to regret his bet with Ricky. He hadn’t counted on the fact that there might very well be feelings involved. And there were. He could see it in Jane’s luminous eyes.
He also hadn’t counted on the fact that he would be attracted to his target. Not just physically, but in a way that he couldn’t even quite put into words.
Jorge certainly couldn’t pin this feeling on alcohol consumption because he hadn’t really consumed any. Just one quick toast of white wine with his parents, sisters and their spouses before the Fortune Foundation party had officially gotten under way. But since then, he hadn’t had anything stronger to drink than a ginger ale.
No, Jorge couldn’t blame his reaction to Jane on anything other than the petite woman herself.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, so, for the time being, he decided not to think about it.
“You’re laughing at me,” Jane protested self-consciously, the aura of her out-of-body experience beginning to fade just a little.
The faint pink color he witnessed creeping up her rather seductive high cheekbones was oddly arousing, Jorge mused. With the rest of the evening stretching out before him, he decided he definitely wanted to get to know this woman better and discover what made her so different from the legions of other women he’d known—other than her obvious lack of sophistication and her innocent manner.
“I’m not laughing at you,” Jorge told her gently. “I’m laughing with you.”
Now even she knew that was a line. Or was he just poking fun at her? “You might not have noticed,” she pointed out quietly, “but I’m not laughing.”
Jorge didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he slipped his hand behind her head, cupping it.
For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her again and she could have sworn that the wattage at Red went down several notches as the very room grew dark. She struggled to hang on to her consciousness.
“Sure you are,” Jorge told her. “I can see it in your eyes.”
The very remark coaxed a smile to her lips, whether out of nervousness or just because being so near to this dynamic, gorgeous man made her want to smile all over, she really didn’t know. For the moment, she didn’t care, either. What mattered was the proximity. She wanted to remain this close to Jorge for as long as humanly possible without having to resort to handcuffs.
God, she was babbling and her lips weren’t even moving.
Things like this didn’t happen to people like her, she thought again. And while it was happening, she was just going to go with it and enjoy it.
Because she knew it was never, ever going to happen again.
“If you say so,” Jane answered, her voice deliberately low to keep it from cracking.
Did she have any idea how sexy she sounded, Jorge wondered.
He had a feeling that she didn’t, that Jane Gilliam had probably gone through her whole life seriously underestimating herself. It didn’t take a student of women to pick up on that. He could tell by her body language and by the very way she wore her clothes. She dressed nicely, but there was no sign that there had been any extra fussing, any extra care taken. The same applied to her makeup.
He caught himself wondering about her. Really wondering about her as a person, not a conquest.
Leaning his head against Jane’s, he looked into her eyes, then he shifted so that his lips were near her ear. “Who are you, Jane Gilliam?” he asked her quietly.
His breath sent warm shivers up and down her spine, and she was afraid he’d see how very inexperienced she was—he’d probably already guessed that anyway.
Why had he kissed her, she wondered again. A man like this wouldn’t have been alone any night of the year, especially not one that was considered to be the most important. She curbed the urge to ask, sensing that the answer might send her plummeting to the ground.
Jane felt as if she were trapped inside some kind of bubble—and bubbles always burst. There was no getting away from that. But not just yet.
Not just now.
Jane ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. What was he asking her?
“Do you mean what do I do for a living?”
“
That’s as good a start as any,” he acknowledged, aware that any one of a number of women he knew would have taken the question and given him some sort of existential, philosophical answer. Jane, apparently, was grounded.
His mother, he realized, would love her.
Jorge quickly glanced around, hoping that Maria Mendoza wasn’t standing somewhere close by, taking all this in. She’d misunderstand immediately, especially since Jane was not like any of the other women he kept company with.
“I work for Red Rock ReadingWorks,” Jane told him, tripping over the alliteration for the first time since she’d joined the organization. If she wasn’t careful, any second she was going to start sounding like a chatty fool. “That’s a nonprofit organization that—”
Jorge held up his hand to stop her before she launched into a lengthy description of ReadingWorks and all the services that it offered.
“I’m familiar with ReadingWorks,” he told her.
She clamped her jaw shut to keep it from dropping in surprise. “You are?” The next moment, Jane realized her oversight. “Of course you are. You said that Isabella was your cousin.” And the pretty thirty-year-old dropped by the storefront building where ReadingWorks was housed often enough. Isabella probably had mentioned the place to him once or twice.
Jane felt self-conscious. She always did when attention was focused on her. She made an attempt to deflect it back to him. Besides, she really did want to find out a few things about this man who had set her on fire.
“What do you do?”
He glanced at the glass on the table, the one he’d initially offered to fill. “Well, tonight, I’m a bartender.”
She sincerely doubted that bartending was Jorge’s sole occupation. He looked far too vital, far too intelligent to be satisfied with mixing drinks and wiping down a counter.
“And other nights?” she prompted. “And days?” Jane added quickly when she realized what her initially innocent question had to sound like to him.
Plain Jane and the Playboy Page 3
