The waiter returned just then, preventing any immediate, further exchange. “Have you made up your minds yet?” he asked politely.
“Yes,” Cindy replied. Her eyes met Dylan’s fleetingly, then she lowered them to look down at the menu. “I have.”
Dylan felt an unexpected surge go through him. For reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, he suddenly felt as excited, as nervous as a teenager.
More, actually, he reflected, since he’d never really gone through these kinds of feelings when he was that age. Pursued by girls for most of his life, he’d entered the world of manhood and sex fairly confidently, with an assurance that kept him in good stead.
This was something completely different.
He felt the urge to tell the waiter that they were going to get their dinners to go, but he forced himself to refrain, to behave as if there was nothing different about this dinner than any of the others he’d had over the years. That there was nothing different about this particular dining partner that set her apart from any of the others.
But in his gut, he sensed that there was.
This one is going to count, he told himself.
The next moment, Dylan cautioned himself to proceed slowly, for his own sake, not just for hers.
Because Dylan wanted to maintain an absolutely clear head, he skipped his customary glass of wine with dinner. It ordinarily took a great many more than one glass for him to feel the effects of alcohol, but he was taking no chances. He also didn’t want Cindy thinking, if something did take place tonight, that it was happening in part because of the alcohol.
Besides, just looking at her right now was intoxicating enough. He didn’t need any wine.
Dinner seemed to take forever, but oddly enough, Dylan didn’t really mind. He’d expected impatience to tug demandingly on his nerve endings. Instead, he caught himself enjoying the whole experience, enjoying just talking to Cindy.
It was a little like watching a rare flower opening up, tilting its head toward the sun, its petals being ruffled by an early-morning spring breeze.
Damn, he was waxing poetic. This was a different experience from those he normally had. She definitely brought out a different side to him, he mused.
“Will there be anything else?” the waiter asked as a swiftly moving busboy cleared away their empty dinner plates. “Dessert, perhaps?” The young man looked from Dylan to Cindy, looking for a taker. “We have an excellent selection.”
Dylan raised a quizzical eyebrow in her direction. Why that struck her as incredibly sexy she wasn’t sure, but it did, and she was amazed that she could actually still form words. Inside, she was vibrating like a tuning fork. A tuning fork with an incredibly dry mouth.
“No, nothing else, thank you,” she told the waiter. “If I eat another bite, I’m going to have to be rolled out to the car.”
Dylan grinned as the image she suggested flashed through his mind. “I can think of worse things,” he told her.
The remark caused the pragmatic waiter to look back at her, giving her the option to change her mind. But she shook her head. She’d meant what she’d said. She was full almost to the point of bursting. Dinner for her normally involved something light and small. What she’d just consumed was way more than she was used to eating at this time of the evening.
“We could get a dessert to go,” Dylan suggested. “You might want to have it later.”
“No, really. I’ll explode,” she told him. “Maybe next time.”
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop to think them through. Cindy flushed, embarrassed. Now he was going to think that she assumed he was going to do this again.
She bit her lower lip, raised her eyes to his and said, “I didn’t mean—”
Dylan cut her off. He didn’t want to hear an apology, especially since he wasn’t ruling out the possibility of what she’d inadvertently said. The idea of taking her out again appealed to him, no matter how tonight ultimately turned out.
“Next time it is,” he told her, then nodded at the waiter. “I think we’re finished here. Bring me the bill, please.”
The waiter didn’t have to be told twice. Disappearing, he was back in less than five minutes with the bill. As he placed it in front of Dylan, Cindy took out her wallet.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he reached into his inside pocket for his own wallet.
“Paying my share.”
Dylan frowned. This time, he did reach across the table and put his hand on hers. But the intent was to stop her, not to offer comfort. “No, you’re not. I distinctly remember asking you out to dinner.”
“No, you didn’t. You asked me if I was hungry,” she recalled.
“Same thing.”
She tried to take out several bills. “Not really.”
He pulled the small silver tray with its bill closer to his side of the table. “You are the stubbornest woman I’ve ever dealt with. Let me pay this if for no other reason than I have more money than you do.”
“That shouldn’t matter,” she pointed out.
“Humor me,” he told her.
With a sigh, she withdrew her hand and the money. “Okay, consider yourself humored.”
Amusement played on his lips. She was definitely a one-of-a-kind woman. “Thank you.”
Leaving far more than the amount on the bill, Dylan rose from the table intending to help her with her chair. But she had already risen to her feet. “Anyone ever tell you that you make it damn hard to play the gentleman?”
“You can blame that on my upbringing. Where I grew up, if you weren’t first in line, you did without. It’s a hard habit to break,” she admitted.
“We’ll practice,” he told her. This time, when he placed his hand to her back, she only stiffened marginally. And then relaxed.
Progress, he thought.
They walked out of Gallagher’s and discovered that the heat had all but disappeared into the velvet darkness that wrapped itself around them like a familiar soft black stole.
“Do you eat like that all the time?” she wanted to know.
He thought for a moment. “Not all the time, but pretty much,” he had to admit.
She did a quick survey of his physique, as if to assure herself that she wasn’t mistaken. Nope, she wasn’t. The man had an exceedingly trim body, not to mention that it looked athletic. “It’s a wonder you’re not twice your size.”
He grinned. “It’d be too expensive, not to mention time-consuming, to get all brand-new suits.” He winked at her as he stopped to unlock his car doors. “It’s a matter of exercising a little willpower versus a lot of inconvenience.”
She got in on her side and gave him her address in case it had slipped his mind. It hadn’t.
They drove in silence for a few minutes until the silence grew too large to contain in the car.
At the next red light he stopped and looked at her. “Tired?” he asked.
She was too wired at the moment to know the answer to that. She supposed once that component was taken away, she more than likely would just collapse. But for now, she was far too wired to be tired.
“Just thinking,” she replied.
“About what?” Dylan asked, then thought better of it. He didn’t want to risk getting into a heated discussion about boundaries, so he set the record straight right at the outset. “If it’s private, you don’t have to answer me.”
“It’s not private,” she assured him. “I was just thinking about how good the dinner was…”
It was only partially the truth. Her thoughts had only fleetingly touched upon the simple excellence of the meal she’d had tonight. For the most part, her thoughts were revolving around what had yet to happen.
If it was going to happen, she amended.
She was taking a great deal for granted here. And she honestly didn’t know whether she’d be happier if it did happen or if he just took her to her door and left her there.
You do too know, an annoying little voice in her head whi
spered. You want him to come in. You want him to stay the night. You want him.
Cindy did what she could to block the voice and look as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on in her head.
“Yeah, me too,” he replied.
It took her a second to realize what he was commenting on. She was going to have to get her head under control, she told herself. With that, she looked at Dylan doubtfully. He was thinking about the food at dinner? “Really?”
The smile on his lips were infectious. “I am if you are,” he replied.
She laughed and some of the tension that insisted on dancing through her body began to abate. “You make it sound like a two-for-one sale.”
Why, if he’d had no wine at all, did she look prettier to him now than she had earlier? Not just prettier but more sensual as well. He could feel desire spreading out within him like a panther stretching after a nap.
“Something like that,” he murmured.
Her cell phone rang, intruding into the moment. “Maybe it’s the senator,” Cindy said as she dug into her purse. Finding the phone, she opened it and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?” There was an indistinguishable noise on the other end and the sound of someone breathing. “Hello? Is someone there?”
“Who is it?” Dylan asked.
She shook her head in response. “Hello?” she said, raising her voice despite the fact that she didn’t hear any static on the other end. Why weren’t they saying anything? And then there was the sound of someone hanging up. Dead air met her ear. Cindy looked at her cell phone’s screen. The caller ID was no help. The number was blocked. “They hung up,” she murmured
“Bad connection or wrong number,” he guessed.
“Yeah.” The way she said it, Dylan had a feeling she didn’t think so.
Was someone playing mind games with them?
“You know, sometimes a wrong number is just that,” he reminded her.
She flashed him a smile that was a little uneasy around the edges. “You’re right,” she agreed. She was being silly, she told herself. And jumpy.
But then, maybe Dylan had something to do with that, she thought, slanting a glance in his direction as a ribbon of anticipation wove through her.
They were approaching the underground parking structure beneath her high-rise apartment building. Rather than briefly park at the building’s entrance and let her get out, Dylan, without hesitation, drove straight into the structure. Once inside, he followed the labyrinthine path. Above it, like bright Christmas decorations out of season, neon-red arrows all pointed in the direction of more parking.
Heat began pricking at Cindy’s skin, increasing further as Dylan drove his car in to the structure.
“What are you doing?” she asked, the words all but sticking to the roof of her dry mouth.
“Looking for parking so that I can take you up to your apartment.” He would have thought that was pretty self-evident. “It’s the only decent thing to do,” he added.
“And you’re a great believer in doing the decent thing?” Was that her being coy? Flirting? Or what she felt passed for flirting, she amended silently. What was going on here?
She was both nervous and excited, even as she warned herself not to be.
“Whenever possible,” he replied to her mocking question. He stole a glance at her now that they were relatively alone and unthreatened by traffic. “Whenever possible,” he repeated.
Instead of feeling a sense of relief at his profession of honorability, her nerves instantly spiked even higher than before, fed by an anticipation the magnitude of which she had never encountered before.
Just what did she think she was anticipating here, Cindy asked herself. Women were a dime a dozen for this man. Why would he bother singling her out?
And why did she so desperately want him to?
Chapter 12
Intellectually, Cindy knew perfectly well that the air-conditioning system in her apartment building was working just fine. The maintenance department prided itself on keeping things not simply running, but running well.
In addition, the air-conditioning system in the elevator presently taking them up to her floor was alive and well.
By all rights, she should have felt cool if not utterly comfortable. But she was neither. She felt hot, as if the air around her had suddenly stopped moving and had taken on the properties of the inside of an oven that had been on for a while.
Her quickening pulse might have had something to do with the shift in temperature she could swear she detected.
She was being an idiot, Cindy told herself impatiently. There was no reason to feel like this, no reason to be acutely aware of every molecule of air around her, every step she took.
But she was.
She left the elevator and walked in what felt like slow motion to her apartment door. Dylan was beside her, step for achingly slow step, apparently unaware of the fact that she had her own personal sauna wrapped tightly around her.
Stopping before her door, Cindy squared her shoulders and turned around, an empty smile she didn’t feel fixed on her face.
“Thank you,” she said to Dylan. “Thank you for dinner and for, well, everything,” she concluded with a quick, careless shrug of her slim shoulders.
Dylan inclined his head, an escorting knight taking his leave of the queen. “My pleasure entirely,” he assured her.
That was when she realized that if she didn’t say anything to stop him, to invite him into her apartment, he was going to leave.
Just as he’d said he would.
Did she want him to? Did she want this to end right here, at her door, or did she want the evening to go further? To have him go further?
And if he did, just how far was further? What kind of boundaries was she going to set?
Was she going to set boundaries?
How was she going to feel, waiting for that other shoe to drop? Waiting for Dylan to turn from the man she wanted him to remain, into—
Her train of thought abruptly stopped moving forward, its journey into darkness halted because Dylan was taking her face between his hands.
The next moment, his lips were on hers. Lightly. Softly. Causing explosions inside her that were in diametric contrast to the gentleness he was displaying.
The sigh she heard escaping was her own.
Afraid that Dylan might still leave despite what he’d just initiated, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back with more feeling than she’d thought she was capable of demonstrating after everything Dean had put her through.
The hallway, always well-lit, suddenly began to darken around her until, finally, the light just seemed to completely disappear.
Everything disappeared except for the heat that was being generated in this small piece of space that they were sharing.
Excitement pulsed wildly through her, growing ever bigger, as Cindy surrendered herself to the feeling that was stealing not just her breath but her very mind as well.
The kiss grew until it was far too deep, far too wide for her to find her way back by herself.
Not that she wanted to.
When the all-consuming kiss did finally end, it was Dylan who ended it, Dylan who stepped back, not she. Slowly, the lights seemed to reenter the scene, and a little of the cloud that had encompassed her brain began to lift.
But her pulse continued hammering wildly.
Her eyes never left his as she held her breath, waiting to see what came next. Praying it was what she wanted.
“I’d like to come in,” he told her, amazed that he could feel so very much so soon. What was happening inside him almost defied description and was actually beyond his scope of experience, at least, until now. “But only if you want me to.”
He was actually leaving it up to her, she thought. Just as he’d said.
Cindy didn’t answer him. Instead, she turned away from Dylan. The next moment, she’d unlocked the door to her apartment and opened it. Wide. The invitation was unspoken but nonetheless c
lear.
But even as she stepped into her apartment, dropping her purse on the floor, an obstacle to be gotten out of the way, Dylan caught her by the arm and turned her around to face him.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he told her, his expression so sincere it almost hurt her to look at him. “I’m never going to do anything you don’t want me to.”
Never rather than not.
It had the sound of the future about it, she thought. Was it just a slip on his part, or was she reading too much into the word?
Or—?
Don’t get ahead of yourself, she warned sternly. You don’t even know if this is the real him yet, or just an act to lull you into complacency.
If it was the latter, he was in for a hell of a surprise because she’d learned her lesson. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s rug or anyone’s punching bag no matter how bone-melting their kisses were. Somewhere amid filing for divorce, discovering she was pregnant and taking on the senator’s fight, she thought proudly, she’d forged a backbone. No one was ever going to crush her self-esteem again.
Cindy searched for some kind of flippant comeback to his words, but when she raised her eyes to his, her mind went completely, numbingly blank. And when her soul stepped forward to take over, she could only murmur, “I know.”
The scary part was that she believed it. Believed him. And even as she silently upbraided herself for being so simple, so gullible, a part of her prayed that he wasn’t just feeding her a line. That Dylan truly meant what he’d just said.
And then, there was no more time for thought, for weighing things pro and con, not even a second left for hesitation.
Because he was kissing her again.
Kissing her as if the end of the world was waiting for them both just outside her door and this was their very last chance to snatch up a tiny shred of warm happiness.
The light gray carpeted floor from her door to her bedroom became littered with clothing haphazardly cast off by eager fingers, tossed away without regard in the wake of a vast, bottomless hunger that was eating away at both of them.
Private Justice Page 13
