Ugly Ducklings Finish First

by Gail, Stacy

  Yet here he was.

  A fleet of laptops and tablets were open and standing at attention everywhere he looked. Seminar files and pamphlets were spread out like playing cards on linen-covered banquet tables. Digital recorders were lined up in front of their owners like toy soldiers, all turned in the direction of the podium.

  Recording Payton’s words.

  A quick glance at his watch told him how much time he had left before he had to be in class several blocks away. For a moment he wondered if his stalker was busy going Picasso on his house again, scrawling Rabid Coyotes Must Die like the last time. Or maybe something new would be tried out, like the latest name that had come with the harassing emails—manwhore.

  Or maybe...there would be nothing at all.

  It wouldn’t surprise him if the harassment eventually wore itself out and vanished without the culprit ever being revealed. That was a pretty crappy scenario as far as he was concerned, even if the aggravation did come to an end. He didn’t relish the possibility of looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, but now that the reunion was history it wasn’t a stretch to think his stalker was history as well. Since the Coyote nickname had been at its height during his high school years and the harassment had started when the reunion invitations went out, he’d figured his best bet in sniffing out a suspect would have been last night. The reunion had turned out to be a royal bust, at least on that score. But on a much more personal level, he wasn’t sorry he went.

  If only for the moment, Payton was back in his life.

  She was the complete package, no doubt about it. Every man and even the women seemed to hang on each word spoken from that wide, lush mouth. And while he pondered the alluring shape of her lips, he wondered if it was her presentation or the passion vibrating in her tone that held the audience so captivated.

  Maybe his memory was on the fritz, but he was sure Payton didn’t used to have a voice that reminded him of melted wax and night-blooming flowers. Standing there so coolly untouchable while speaking in intimate tones promising all sorts of earthly sins, she was every man’s fantasy. Hell, he’d bet real money the men in the room were dealing with some uncomfortable action below the belt with that voice of hers making love to every last one of their nerve endings. And those dark, mysterious eyes and that kiss-me-now mouth probably had them dreaming of unbuttoning her severe suit jacket to discover what lay beneath it.

  The wayward thought hit a jarring note somewhere deep inside, and his face tightened with a scowl. The idea of what other men were thinking made him want to punch something. They didn’t know Payton like he did, so those bastards didn’t have the right to wonder if she was wearing a camisole that was more lace than fabric. Or if she preferred something soft and silky and as wildly feminine as the veiling business suit was severely tailored. A lacy brassiere, perhaps. Or maybe she wore nothing at all.

  Wiley shifted again. Damn. Now he was the one dealing with some uncomfortable below-the-belt action.

  To keep his mind off the tightening ache in his groin, he tried to concentrate on what she was saying. The lawyer in him found particular interest in the story she recounted of a small boy who had been injured by a well-meaning EMT, who had used adult-sized forceps in an attempt to remove food from the child’s windpipe. The man in him found particular interest in the way she moistened her lips with a quick sweep of her pink tongue.

  It wasn’t until the end of the question-and-answer period that she saw him. Wiley knew the exact moment it happened. Her gaze glanced off his, but it was powerful enough to stop the rhythmic operation of his lungs dead in its tracks. Her shoulders stiffened, as if she’d just been stuck with something sharp, and her flow of words stumbled to a pause.

  In the momentary silence, with the wave of nuclear-level heat that was his awareness of Payton being aware of him, Wiley swore he could hear his own heartbeat.

  He wasn’t sure whether he was amused or irritated when she wrapped up her lecture and moved away from the podium without looking in his direction again. But he was definite about not being amused when a man emerged from a pack of admirers to take her hand, while his interested eyes embraced much more than that.

  Wiley’s jaw hardened. A predator always recognized his own kind.

  “This is one of my main priorities as well, and I’m glad the problem is being recognized,” the man was saying as Wiley pushed through the throng. “If you’re free this evening, Dr. Pruitt, I would love to have the chance to delve into this subject further.”

  “Ah. Dr. Falkener. Actually...” As if she could feel his determined approach, her dark eyes slanted his way and lingered in a way that he decided silently pleaded for help.

  When a damsel was in distress, what else was a knight in shining armor supposed to do?

  “I’m afraid Dr. Pruitt already has arrangements for this evening.” Wiley plucked her hand from the bold interloper’s and whisked Payton away.

  * * *

  Payton’s stunned silence lasted only a handful of seconds. “Wiley... Wait, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Saving you.” His smile was all dimples and charm. She could have choked him. “You’re welcome, by the way. I was happy to do it.”

  No, choking would be too good for him. He needed something far more painful. “You shouldn’t be here. I didn’t come to San Antonio for a vacation, I’m here to work.”

  “I respect that. For what it’s worth, I didn’t interrupt or in any way disturb you. Or did I?”

  “Did you what?”

  “Disturb you.” His voice had dropped to hover somewhere just beyond an intimate whisper, and the way his thumb brushed over her knuckles could, in an alternate universe, be labeled a caress. “Did my being in the same room with you, watching you, disturb you, Payton?”

  “I barely noticed you were there.” And she was going straight to hell for telling such a bald-faced lie. The moment she’d caught sight of Wiley at the back of the room, it was as though a bolt of lightning traveled from him into the very core of her. She was still jangling from the effects of it, damn it all. She tingled in all the right places just from the weight of his gaze, and it irked her to no end. Wiley Sharpe wasn’t supposed to have this effect on her grown-up self. He wasn’t supposed to make her want to smooth her hair and smile at him in flirtatious encouragement. And he certainly wasn’t supposed to be there, simply be there, and captivate her attention.

  Yet that’s exactly what he did.

  When they emerged from the hotel’s ballroom and into a wide carpeted hallway, he fell into step with her, his hand still holding hers. “You’ve gone quiet. I always get nervous when you get quiet.”

  That surprised her. “What? Why?”

  “When you’re quiet, it means you’re thinking.”

  “My thinking makes you nervous?”

  “Oh hell, yes.” His fingers tightened on a squeeze. “I liked your lecture.”

  “I still can’t figure out why you came. This kind of boring, academic scene isn’t exactly your cup of tea, you know. I would have thought you’d be bored silly just at the thought of being here.”

  Like a switch being thrown, the humor vanished from his expression. “Despite my rather dim academic past, I am capable of following a presentation that’s above a fourth-grade reading level.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” Though part of her yearned to do nothing more than to put distance between them, the last thing she had meant to do was hurt him. Coming to a halt in the middle of the hotel lobby, she rested a staying hand on his chest. “Let’s get this out of the way once and for all, okay? You’ve always been smarter than everyone thought, including yourself.”

  “And you were always a pain in the ass when you pushed me to achieve.” The darkness in his green eyes evaporated, and his hand came up to cover hers. “You may have been a kid back then, Payton,
but you would have done any drill sergeant proud.”

  “I took my responsibility toward you seriously.”

  “You took everything seriously.”

  “I wasn’t that bad.” Hurt by the offhand comment, Payton didn’t notice he kept her hand in his as they resumed their trek into the main lobby. “I’m not serious all the time, you know.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I do know how to have fun.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I do.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Damn it, I’m serious!”

  Wiley chuckled with such good humor it was hard to keep from smiling in response. “Ah, Payton. I never realized how much I’ve missed you.”

  “Like a toothache, I’m sure.”

  “No. Like a best friend I didn’t know I had.” With another laugh he raised her hand to his lips. Payton’s knees threatened to vanish out from under her. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  “Um.” It was impossible to pull a coherent thought together when her skin throbbed with the lingering brush of his lips. Wiley Sharpe, the Coyote and every young girl’s fantasy, was flirting with her. Her. Payton Pruitt, Baby Brain and Queen Geek.

  For the span of a heartbeat she teetered on the edge of throwing caution to the wind, but reality had too great a hold on her. And the reality was Wiley was a player. For him, it didn’t mean anything. But it wasn’t like that for her. As long as she remembered that, she would be safe.

  She hoped.

  “Payton?”

  She struggled in vain to remove her hand from his. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Dinner’s ridiculous?” It was his turn to come to a stop as he caught her other hand in his. “How so?”

  “I have a dinner meeting already scheduled.”

  “With who?”

  The surprisingly hard tone in his voice killed her smart remark. Why would Wiley care? “With several other pediatricians.”

  “Can’t you cancel it?”

  “At the risk of repeating myself, I’m here to work, not goof off. Wiley, people are staring.” She shot him a bewildered glance and wriggled her fingers. “We can’t just stand here holding hands.”

  “Lunch, then.”

  “It’s barely ten in the morning.”

  “I have a class to teach at UTSA until noon.” His gaze held hers captive while his thumbs glided over her knuckles in an easy, almost hypnotic rhythm. “I’ll meet you here at twelve-thirty.”

  “Wiley—”

  “Say yes, Payton. Please.”

  Please. She could have withstood him if he hadn’t said please, she was sure of it. But his seemingly genuine desire to spend time with her, coupled with the power of his touch, sucked the wind right out of her sails. “I’ll meet you here in the lobby,” she sighed in defeat, then felt like she’d won when he beamed.

  * * *

  Ensconced in a lobby chair, Wiley struggled against the desire to check his watch yet again, before he sighed and flicked his wrist over.

  Twenty-six minutes after noon.

  Payton should be there already, he decided, drumming his fingers on the armrest. She was always early; it was a habit that used to drive him crazy. Everything about her used to drive him crazy.

  Apparently some things never changed.

  He frowned at the Xavier property foreclosure file in front of him, but the words swam before his eyes. It might as well have been written in ancient Aramaic.

  She was going to stand him up.

  He wouldn’t blame her if she did, he thought on a short sigh. What an idiot she must think he was, to have gone off the deep end over an innocent remark about her presentation. What he had to do was get a frigging handle on himself. He may have accused her of being too serious but he was just as guilty, at least when it came to Payton. Everything she did or said or thought somehow became all-important to him, as though his entire world hinged on her opinion of the man he had become.

  Which was absurd.

  With a huff of self-disgust, Wiley closed the file and shoved it into a briefcase. He couldn’t remember when a woman had ever made him feel like he was on a bed of hot coals, jumping from one foot to the next. This wasn’t a life-and-death situation, for crying out loud. It was just a couple of old high school chums getting together, nothing bigger than that. It was such an inconsequential event he could even talk himself into believing he’d be doing them both a favor if he just walked away and never saw her again.

  Muscles locked, Wiley sat unmoving. Barely breathing.

  The sound of brisk, no-nonsense footsteps reached his ears, and he knew with unnerving certainty it was Payton. To test himself, he refused to look up until she had almost reached him, denying himself the pleasure of simply watching her move. When the self-denial became too agonizing to bear, he brought his gaze up to lock with hers and was almost sorry he did. There was something about falling into those dark depths that made him wonder if he could ever find his way back out

  Or if he even wanted to.

  “You look like you’ve been waiting awhile.” Payton rounded a love seat, and the natural seductive sway of her lean hips made his mouth go dry. “I’m not late, am I?”

  “Late?” Stalling for time to get his mind off how her skirt swirled around her long legs, Wiley rose while taking another peek at his watch. “You’re right on time, but for you, that’s late. I was beginning to think I’d been stood up.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She slanted him a dubious look as he guided her toward the hotel’s glass doors and the famed River Walk beyond. “I’ll bet you’ve never been stood up in your life.”

  “I’m shocked. Your memory isn’t nearly as good as I thought it was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember.” She had ditched the tailored business suit jacket somewhere along the way, revealing a gold-colored sleeveless top, and her skin was like crushed silk beneath his hand. As they navigated the tourist-choked path along the river, his mind tormented him with speculating on whether the rest of her was just as soft. “There was that one time you stood me up during our senior year in high school.”

  “Good grief, that doesn’t count.”

  “Why not?”

  “It...” She had to pause to dodge a fierce young mother using her baby’s stroller as a battering ram. “It doesn’t count because one, it wasn’t a date, it was a study session. And two, I didn’t just stand you up.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “I forgot to tell you I had to re-sit the SATs in the hope of getting a perfect score. I would have avoided it if I could have, but my mom insisted. Besides, we made up for your missed study session later that night, remember?”

  “That was the only time I ever sneaked into a girl’s room in the middle of the night to study.” When he curved an arm around her shoulders, he told himself it was only to protect her on the crowded pathway. “But thanks to you, I passed my exams that week with flying colors, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.”

  “You did it all by yourself.” Her sex-kitten voice gentled to a purr, stroking nerves already buzzing in excruciating delight wherever her body brushed his. “It’s funny, but I remember that night like it was yesterday. I nearly had a heart attack when you knocked on my window.”

  “I remember.” Despite the arousal clenching like a fist in his gut, he couldn’t help but smile as they paused at a pedestal menu display outside a restaurant. “You were almost foaming at the mouth, you were so ticked off. Ranting and raving in this furious, high-pitched whisper that sounded more like a scream, but I could barely understand you because you were wearing your retainer.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me.”

  “It was worth it.” There was no way he
could fight the impulse of catching her chin to hold her face up for his examination. “You have the most breathtaking smile I’ve ever seen, Payton.”

  “Breathtaking?” Though her tone was light, the sudden, intensely aware heat in her eyes threatened to send his pulse into the stratosphere. “You’re so good at flattery, you should give lessons.”

  “It’s not flattery. It’s truth.” On their own volition the fingers holding her chin shifted, a move dangerously close to a caress. But damn, he wanted to see that look in her eyes again. “When you smile, there’s something about it that makes it impossible for me to look away.”

  Alarm mingled with that stunning, unwanted awareness, and the conflict was so strong it didn’t surprise him when she pulled away. “Now, now, no need to unleash the Coyote on little—”

  An impatient tourist with a gaggle of whining children elbowed his way past, jostling Payton. In an instant, Wiley pulled her close before she could go into the river.

  Her arms came around his waist to balance herself. The innocent contact scorched his skin as if her touch alone could brand him with her mark. Her chin just came to his shoulder, the sensual press of her breasts flattened against the sensitized ladder of his rib cage, and her rose scent made his head swim as if he’d just taken a shot of tequila.

  She was a perfect fit.

  The faintest moaning breath escaped her before she jerked away. “We, ah...we should know better than to stop in the middle of the pathway. Maybe we should pick where we want to eat before all the restaurants fill up.”

  “Fine.” The unimaginative response came out on autopilot. His overheated body was way too busy righting itself after taking what felt like taking on a million volts of electricity. But it wasn’t electrical power that jolted him. It was Payton, for God’s sake. Payton.

  It didn’t matter. For some reason his old tutor had one hell of a powerful hold on him. Whether she liked it or not, he needed to see just how strong that hold was.

  Chapter Five