Stripped

by Edie Harris

  No. They were coworkers. More than that, there was what they weren’t, and what they weren’t was together, because almost-kisses didn’t count. What he ought to have done before now was ask her out for a drink, or coffee, something casual and nonthreatening that people who worked together might conceivably do after hours. Seeing Fiona smile like this, however, put his desires in harsh perspective.

  He wanted her. He wanted her like crazy, with her stern face and her caramel candies and her whatever-it-was with Wes and the craving. The craving in her eyes, as if she longed for what that almost-kiss might have led to, had they not been interrupted.

  Had they not been interrupted, Declan had a feeling his whole world could have burned to ash. As it stood, every moment after that had simply added another layer, heat over heat, want on top of want. He knew what her breath felt like, puffing against his ear, just as he knew the softness of her fingers, lightly stroking beneath his chin. He knew the feel of her hands clenched in his hair, her thumb dragging along his bottom lip…but he didn’t know the taste of her mouth.

  The intimacy building between them staggered him, and yet there was no end or relief in sight. Except…

  You’re loud to me.

  Loud, and he’d told her he wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to do far more than kiss her, but they could start there and begin stripping away those layers of heat and want. No more hiding behind the mask she helped him don each morning in order to avoid the swift deathblow a direct rejection would deliver his unwise crush.

  Several other couples spun and swayed on the dance floor, bathed in the glow of the red and yellow lights framing the stage, on which sat a nine-piece salsa band complete with horns, guitars, and a drum set that made his fingers twitch for want of a set of sticks. Off to the left of the stage was a darkened hallway, presumably leading to the restrooms, and swinging doors from which bled the fluorescent kitchen lighting every time a server pushed through. To the right of the main entrance, where Declan still stood, was a well-stocked bar manned by two tee-shirted staff. Every other square foot was covered with four-top tables, some pushed together to accommodate larger parties.

  It was at one of those sets of tables, situated relatively close to the dance floor and band, that Declan spotted the familiar faces he was looking for: Rick, Wes, Ryan, Marta, Joanne, and five or six other crew members. Nodding politely to the hostess, he ambled through the sea of tables until he reached his destination, noting several clear plastic pitchers filled with pale green liquid.

  “Did you see Jones go down last night in the seventh?” Rick asked the group at large as Declan dropped into the empty seat across from the costume designer.

  “Yeah.” Wes fiddled with the black metal case of his electronic cigarettes. A brooding expression was fixed firmly in place as his director’s gaze darted around the room, halting momentarily on a wall-mounted television in the corner before coming back around to the table. “Looked like he was hurting.”

  “Read in the Times today that the first baseman said he heard a snap.”

  Sadie’s Ryan winced sympathetically as he tapped out a quick text message on his phone before setting it on the table in front of him. “Jeez. But he didn’t go into surgery, right?”

  It was Rick who answered. “Nah. Sounds like the docs are assessing damage, but he’s definitely out for a while.”

  Wes sighed. “And that game was shaping up to be a no-hitter.”

  “Jones was having a good season out in Chicago,” Rick dipped a tortilla chip into the earthenware bowl filled with salsa as he shook his head, “but man, I wish he were still here. Don’t know what the club was thinking, letting his contract run out.” Raising his eyebrow, he used his salsa-laden chip to gesture at Declan. “Know anything about baseball?”

  Declan helped himself to a chip. “Not a damn thing.”

  “What a shame.” The gray-haired man lifted one of the half-full pitchers of green stuff. “Margarita?” When Declan nodded, Rick grabbed one of the short, salt-rimmed tumblers from a serving tray at the center of the tables, filling it nearly to the brim. “Drink up.”

  “Thanks.” For several minutes, Declan sat in silence, listening to the chatter around him—his coworkers in English, several of the nearby tables in Spanish. His attention drifted to the dance floor, where Fiona was doing the merengue with a new partner. She was easy to watch—necessary, even. Every step she made spoke of confidence, every turn and twirl controlled both by her and by the man who guided her through the moves.

  Eventually, he glanced around the pushed-together tables, noting the faces. “Am I the only cast here?”

  Rick drained his margarita. “You are.”

  “Because?”

  “You like my daughter.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I like your daughter,” Declan confirmed solemnly, lifting the pitcher to refill his glass.

  “Guys always like Fi, but she doesn’t seem to like them back.” Rick moved his own empty glass toward Declan for a refill, choosing a chip from the basket between them. “Can’t say I mind her approach to dating.”

  “And that approach is?”

  “That she doesn’t date.”

  “Ah.” He found Fiona on the dance floor again, spinning gracefully away from a man’s outstretched hand, her limbs loose, her turns liquid smooth. “What about Wes?” he murmured, dropping his voice so the man in question wouldn’t hear.

  “What about him?”

  “He and Fiona seem…close.”

  There was a sharpness to Rick’s amusement as the older man studied Declan. “He’s been coming around to our place since Fi was a kid. Wes is family.”

  Declan shifted in his chair, fighting against the desire to squirm. It was a gentle set-down, but a set-down nonetheless, and he was both embarrassed and relieved. Mostly relieved. He couldn’t help glancing in the direction of the dance floor, and Fiona. “She doesn’t lack for partners.”

  “And she never will.” Tipping back in his chair, the older man laced his fingers behind his head, gaze focused on the battered tabletop. “All she ever wanted to do was dance. We put her in classes starting at age three. By the time Fi graduated high school, I was driving her across the western United States for competitions almost every weekend. College came, and she still had her ballerina dreams. And then…” Rick shook his head, his expression momentarily distraught. Then furious. Then pensive once more. “Someone said something. Someone important to her, about how she looked and how she danced, like she was wrong. Next thing we hear, she’s in Vegas, and we don’t see her for two years.”

  Wrong? On the dance floor, Fiona threw her head back and laughed as her partner caught her, one of his hands at the small of her back, the other lightly gripping her fingers. Her ponytail bounced playfully, her smile wide and open, and a hot finger of need poked Declan in the sternum.

  No, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that woman—not how she looked, not how she laughed, not how she tied his chest in knots. He absently rubbed the heel of one palm over the abused spot. “She wanted to dance as a career?”

  “Ballet. She was good enough to make it, too.”

  Good enough to dance professionally, and yet Fiona had given up on that dream because of something someone said, if Rick was to be believed. There had to be more to the story than that, though he’d rather hear that story from Fiona herself.

  Convincing her to share that story with him was another matter entirely. Conversations between the two of them could become commonplace, in the makeup chair and outside of it, depending on how tonight turned out.

  Declan knew how he wanted tonight to turn out, and it involved shouldering Latin Dude to the side. He watched her move, sleek and strong and sexier than he’d ever expected, given her tendency to blanch the vibrant colors he was seeing now—the vibrant colors he knew must be the real Fiona. “Are you worried about her gettin’ involved with me?” No use in tiptoeing around the understatement of a fact that Fiona’s father knew of Declan’s
interest in her.

  Rick appraised him with a keen eye, not unlike when Declan had first been measured for his costume. “I figure,” he murmured, “she’ll let me know when I should be worried. And if she doesn’t, you certainly will.”

  “I will?”

  “You will, because this is your first Hollywood film. I know you don’t want to be blacklisted right out of the gate.”

  A chuckle burst out of Declan before he noted that nothing about Rick indicated he was joking. Sobering quickly, Declan leaned his elbows on the table, hands clasped loosely around his margarita tumbler. “And you’d do that?”

  Rick’s smile was no less intimidating for all that it remained congenial. “You bet your Irish ass I would.” He clinked his glass against Declan’s before raising it to his lips. “You’re both adults, and you’ll do what you’ll do. But Fiona’s my kid. It’s my job to worry about her.”

  Throat dry, Declan nodded. “I meant what I said, Rick. I like her.”

  The older man ran a hand through his hair. “And I like you. So try not to screw this up, okay? My girl could use a little fun.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shut up.”

  The tension dissipated as Declan laughed, and he wondered how he’d managed to get to nearly thirty years of age without having experienced this—being threatened in a friendly manner by a potential girlfriend’s father. That the father in question was Declan’s coworker, not to mention a man Declan respected, added an interesting twist to what could be a scene from any sitcom on air in the past decade.

  Another song ended, and applause broke out across the cantina as Rick excused himself to the restroom. Declan watched as Fiona laid a hand on her partner’s shoulder to thank him for the dance, watched while she turned to make her way to their table. Watched, and waited for her to notice him.

  He knew the moment she saw him. Not because her eyes met his, but because her spine straightened and her shoulders went back. Each footstep carrying her toward him held a whisper of the attitude she so often dealt his way, whether in the trailer or on the set. Attitude and bite—and that tantalizing hint of softness. Earlier today, she’d offered him a confession by admitting to the awareness he’d been unable to ignore since their first, jet-lagged morning together.

  Then she was at the table, skin gleaming with a sheen of sweat from her exertions on the dance floor. The thin straps of her ivory top contrasted deeply against her bare, sun-warmed shoulders. Appropriating Declan’s margarita, she drained it, then set the glass back on the table in front of him with a decisive clink. Her tongue darted out, catching the salt that had collected at the corner of her mouth.

  Heat climbed his neck, and he swallowed, hard. Crush be damned—this was so much more. So much better.

  She turned her gaze on Declan, silver and brilliant without the usual shield of her glasses. “Mr. Murphy.”

  He couldn’t resist. “Miss O’Brien.”

  A beat of silence passed between them, even with the brassy blare of the band blistering their eardrums. Her lips twitched. Her eyebrow arched, a perfect, feminine mimic of her father’s. “Wanna dance?” She held out her hand.

  He’d be a fool not to take it, and Declan wasn’t a fool. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  FIVE

  It felt good to be dancing, but it felt even better to be dancing with him.

  Her hips swayed as they wove through the tables, her hand gripped firmly in his as she led him onto the dance floor. His fingers were strong, his palm warm, and his thumb kept rubbing across her knuckles.

  She wondered if Declan even realized he was doing it.

  Her heels clicked onto the battered parquet floor in front of the stage, the band just starting a mambo-driven number. Music blasted them, quick and bright and loud, and Fiona turned immediately, laying her palms flat on Declan’s chest. Firm muscles instantly flexed beneath his tee shirt. “I should’ve asked before,” she said, pitching her voice over the noise. “Can you salsa?”

  Leaning down, he placed his lips next to her ear. Heat. Pure heat, hurtling through her veins like a rollercoaster on acid. “I can, but not as well as you.” He paused, and his lower lip brushed her earlobe.

  She shivered. “You’ve been watching me?”

  He nodded, the tip of his nose grazing the sensitive shell of her ear.

  More heat, consuming her bared skin in waves. Her fingers curled, digging into him before she could tell herself that no, she didn’t like being near him, or breathing in his scent. She didn’t like touching him every day, morning and night, just as she didn’t like the soft silk of his curly hair or the rough stubble she shaved away.

  Fiona certainly didn’t like how his hand had just found the small of her back, or how his other picked up one of hers from his chest. Her hand felt weightless cupped in his palm, at odds with the heaviness of her body as he drew her closer. When her breasts brushed against him, she had to swallow a gasp. It had been so long since she’d held her body against the body of a man she desired, not only for the lustful thoughts he inspired, but for how he looked at her all of those mornings and nights. He looked at her the same way she’d looked at another tall, handsome man, once upon a time, and she knew how well that had ended.

  Not well at all, that’s how.

  There was nothing good about this situation, nothing at all, but she’d had just enough to drink that recklessness felt so freakin’ right at that moment. Which meant the dance floor and Declan Murphy were hers until common sense came crawling back. “All right, then. Let’s dance.”

  Ready to guide him into the first steps—she had been the one to ask him to dance, which made it her responsibility to see if he really could dance in the first place—she was surprised when he unerringly moved forward. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. The hand on her spine lifted as they caught the rhythm together, falling easily into the fast-paced fluidity of the mambo.

  Quick, quick, slow.

  She spun on the axis of his fingers, holding their joined hands overhead.

  Quick, quick, slow.

  Light pressure on her shoulder blade, and they switched places, so that she now faced the band.

  Quick, quick, slow.

  He turned on the third beat, hand finding her hip for purchase, rising again to spin her.

  Quick, quick, slow.

  Her short skirt shifted over her thighs, floating scandalously high with every twist.

  Quick, quick, slow.

  He gripped her wrist, fingers so strong, so sure. He held her body apart from his for one beat, then two, but it was too long to stand in place awaiting his direction, so her hips moved. Her hips moved, and moved, and moved, forward and back, until he turned her, putting her back to his front but still apart. No touching, just his fingers around her wrist, lifting her arm away from her body. The scant touch shot pure adrenaline into her veins. I want to misbehave, he’d told her, right before he’d nearly kissed her. Well, tonight, she wanted to misbehave.

  Her hips writhed.

  His hold on her wrist tightened.

  Sensuality was a key component of the mambo, an introduction of lower bodies that never touched, only teased. With every passing second, the exaggeration of the steps grew. Spins were faster, arms longer, hips wilder. The band ran away with the music, and it was up to the dancers to keep up or give up.

  Declan and Fiona kept up. Spin and touch and twist and spin again. Each caress of his hand on her back, her hip, her shoulder electrified her, a jolt to her heart that couldn’t be denied.

  Attraction. That goddamn attraction that had nearly strangled her the first day she’d met him. It put her on edge. It made her scowl and stiffen and generally behave like a frozen bitch at work, because she didn’t know how to handle it. Fiona wasn’t merely out of practice—she was out of her depth.

  There’d been no men since Vegas, and the men in Vegas hadn’t been men at all, only bodies with faces indistinct and names unmemorable, and the man before that was…too memor
able. Even then, Declan was different from all of them—better, too. He wouldn’t see her as merely a willing body or sex on display.

  The song ended as abruptly as it had begun, and, without thought, Fiona fell into his arms—open arms ready to catch her, as if he already knew this was how she ended every song she danced. A hug for her partner, in thanks, in happiness.

  Being held by Declan was…new. Terrifying. Thrilling.

  The singer announced a slow number in cheerful Spanglish as Fiona stood in the circle of Declan’s arms, happiness warming all the places tequila-fueled hormones couldn’t reach, deep inside. He smiled at her, a sideways quirk of mobile lips, linking his fingers at the small of her back.

  She leaned against his hold, hands drifting from where they’d landed on his shoulders to the hot, naked skin of his perfect biceps. His pale blue tee, bearing the faded screen print of a propeller plane over the words Fly With Me, stretched oh, so nicely across the planes of his chest, highlighting the firm musculature she’d had the earlier pleasure of testing with her fingertips. The shirt fabric was loose around his waist, highlighting the innate leanness that his costuming tended to hide and that his height and breadth often belied. He wore the same faded jeans he’d had on that first morning in the makeup trailer, the ones that reminded a woman that, yes, that’s exactly how jeans are supposed to be worn.

  Because damn.

  Then there was that face. He had such a face, with his black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. He’d never pass for Prince Charming, but Fiona had a suspicion that he could give Lucifer a run for his money. Lips she wanted to kiss, stubble she wanted to rub against her cheek, a jaw she wanted to cup in both hands as she pulled him in for that kiss…but there wasn’t going to be a kiss. Only a dance.

  A dance, with a side of conversation, it seemed. “Are you seein’ anyone?”

  She shook her head as they moved effortlessly into the next dance together, a jazzy number reminiscent of the big-band standards of the fifties. Seeing anyone? Ha. As if she had the time to date.