by Karina Bliss
“Oh, another ex,” said Immy. “I’m one of those, too. Nice, isn’t it, how you stay friends with him? He’s always been good like that.”
Kate blinked and Jordan intervened. “Well, Immy, you and the girls have a great time. I’m—”
“So if it’s not a date, you won’t mind if we join you.” Giggling, Immy shoved him in the direction of the bar. “We’re drinking champagne.”
“Imogen, I’m happy to buy you all drinks, but Kate and I are—”
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Kate interrupted. She turned to Immy. “So there must be an ex-girlfriends club I can join?”
“Red…” he warned.
“I’m more interested in the future girlfriends club.” The baby-faced brunette sent him a smoldering look, but her smudged mascara reduced it to charcoal. It was Kate’s turn to blanch.
Giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, Jordan retreated to the bar and ordered champagne cocktails. While he waited, he stared ruefully at his lover. This wasn’t the evening he’d planned. Drinks, a candlelit dinner, seduction in a big bed…romance, not farce.
And in his heated fantasies of the past couple of days, Kate hadn’t been wearing a conservative navy business suit and sensible heels…though she was still the sexiest woman in the room, in control and classy.
She’d kept her curls, he noticed with satisfaction, though they looked a little regimented. The first thing he was going to do when he got her alone was tousle her hair. The second would be to strip off that corporate uniform and uncover more of her sinful underwear.
He chuckled, finally understanding why women liked men in uniforms. It was all about corruption.
As if sensing his scrutiny, Kate looked at him, and Jordan’s body hardened as he saw the same fierce hunger for contact in her. He threw a smoldering glance of his own.
Kate lost her place in the conversation.
“Your eyes have glazed over,” said Immy. “Let’s sit down.” Kate found herself shunted into a booth and trapped in a cloud of soft perfume and hard liquor fumes. The other women remained standing, watching Jordan’s butt as he reached into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet.
“Money and muscle,” murmured a petite redhead with an hourglass figure. “Yum, yum.”
“Mind if I hit on him?” said the brunette with panda eyes.
Kate opened her mouth to snap, “Yes, I bloody do,” before realizing the woman was talking to Imogen.
“Sweetie, you are so out of your league,” the bride-to-be said, “but sure, give it your best shot.”
“I wonder how he feels about redheads,” said the redhead. She looked at Kate and brightened. Kate dug her nails into her palms.
“Come on,” said one of the others. “Let’s give them some competition.”
“But we’re married.”
“We can still flirt with a good-looking man, can’t we?”
Kate watched them surround Jordan and jostle for his attention. Luckily, he was head and shoulders taller, or he’d be drowning in them.
“Is it always like this?” she asked.
Immy paused in her wobbly reapplication of lipstick. “Jeez, where did you two date…Siberia?”
“Close.”
Immy dropped her lipstick back into her evening purse. “You still love him, don’t you?”
Not so drunk, then. Kate gave a noncommittal shrug.
“What those girls don’t realize—and you and I know—is how hard it is being with a guy like that. Male or female, everyone wants a piece of him. But see how he keeps it light?”
Laughing, Jordan fended off the brunette when she tried to whisper in his ear, and adroitly repositioned himself between the married women while he handed out cocktails. “An easy grin here, a joke there,” said Immy, “never engaging too deeply.” Her pretty mouth twisted. “And that ends up being the problem—it doesn’t mean anything with you, either. Not beyond a good time. At least you managed to work that one out early. ’Course, it takes a lot longer to get over him, but, hey, I’m living proof.” Immy held out her ruby engagement ring. “Gorgeous, huh? And David loves me like he should. Anyway, I gotta pee.”
Left alone, Kate stared forlornly at the big screen. The Steelers were playing. She watched a wide receiver field a punt, trying not to feel like a kid whose party balloons had popped early.
You might have held his interest in the wilderness, but you won’t last five minutes against real competition.
This was the real world. Jordan had been calling every night he’d been away, and fool that she was, Kate had allowed herself to hope.
She started as Jordan dumped some drinks on the table, grabbed her arm and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here while Immy’s gone.”
“Isn’t that rude?”
He hauled her to her feet. “She’ll forgive me when she hears how much money I left at the bar.”
“Buying yourself out of trouble?” Kate realized she was angry the moment the words left her mouth.
Jordan simply grinned. “I’d buy her a honeymoon in Europe to get you alone right now. You can bitch at me outside.”
He slid them through Immy’s crowd of resistant friends like an eel through waterweed, and they were outside breathing cold air in less than thirty seconds. They stared at each other a minute. “Well,” Kate said lightly, “that was interesting.”
“God, I missed you.”
She felt a queer lump in her throat. “I’m starting to think that this isn’t a good—”
Jordan kissed her and Kate’s reserve crumbled. Heedless of passersby, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
When the kiss ended they were both breathing hard. “Screw dinner,” he said. “Come home with me. It’s my birthday—” he nipped the lobe of her ear “—and you’re the only present I want.”
“Now that’s definitely a line!”
Smugly, Jordan took out his driver’s license and showed her the date. A warm glow spread through Kate. “Don’t your family and friends want to celebrate with you?”
“I put them off…don’t worry, I didn’t say why. It’s your call when we come out of the closet. In the meantime…” He pulled her down the narrow alleyway adjoining the Bar.
This kiss left them panting. “Where’s your car?” Kate demanded in a voice not her own.
“In the car park across the road.” His voice was as husky as hers.
She kissed him again. “Mine’s closer.” Grabbing his hand, she started running down the street. Jordan didn’t laugh. At her Fiat she caught his hair and tugged him into another kiss, hotter, wilder, but he paid her back once they were in the car, his hands sliding under her skirt, driving her insane with so much but no more.
Kate wrenched her mouth from his, dragged her hands out of his jeans and stumbled out of the car, tossing the keys to him. “You drive, my brain’s scrambled.”
With an unsteady chuckle he took her place at the wheel; deliberately, she got in the backseat. “I know what you can do with one hand,” she said hoarsely, and Jordan laughed as he revved the engine.
Kate gripped the seat in front to stop herself from falling sideways as he swung the vehicle into traffic and sped down the road. When his cell phone rang, Jordan dragged it out of his unbuttoned shirt, glanced at the number and answered. “Hey, Christian.”
In the rearview mirror his gaze, languorous with heat, met Kate’s, and she caught her breath. “Yeah, as it happens I’m heading home now, should be there in ten. Why are those figures so urgent? Uh-huh, well, I’ll call you as soon as I get there.” He was frowning slightly as he hung up, and Kate stopped straightening her clothes.
“Please don’t tell me you have to work.”
“Ten minutes tops, then I’m all yours,” he reassured her. A wicked smile curved his mouth. “Show me your underwear.”
“Not while you’re driving,” she said primly, and instead tortured him with word pictures. By the time they stood at his front door it took both of them to steady the key.
“At last.” Lips locked in an openmouthed kiss, Kate grabbed his shirt and dragged him through the door, while Jordan fumbled for the zipper on her skirt.
The lights came on and a chorus of voices yelled, “Surprise!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I DON’T SEE WHY YOU couldn’t have held the damn party at your house.” Jordan stood on his deck with Christian and Luke and stared moodily down at the barbecue. He was nursing a beer and a sense of grievance.
Christian turned the steaks and blue flames shot through the grill. “You don’t think I was going to trash my place, did you?”
He was ruining those steaks, Jordan noticed, but figured his friends and family deserved to eat tough meat. Throwing him a surprise birthday party and not telling him…
It was too damn cold to barbecue, anyway, but as the autumn chill kept everyone else inside, he should be grateful for the respite from the ribbing he’d endured over the past hour. Scowling, he finished his beer and reached for another.
“You can’t blame us for this.” Luke’s tone was as reasonable as Christian’s. As though Jordan couldn’t sense their unholy mirth. “You told us nothing happened on the river trip.”
Jordan switched on the pool lights and the water came into sharp relief, glowing an eerie blue. With better visibility, the steaks looked even worse. “She wanted to keep it quiet for a week because of a promise she made to her ex.”
Through the French doors, Kate sat primly on the couch talking to his mother, and trying to act as if she hadn’t been caught with her tongue down his throat.
And doing a damn fine job. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but his mother had shoved a package of meat into his hands and sent him outside.
Actually, Kate had handled the whole situation much better than he had. But then, he reflected, she hadn’t been the one trying to hide a hard-on. “Give me that.”
He confiscated the tongs from Christian and tried to salvage the steak. The sausages, wizened and black, were beyond help.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw his friends exchange the look. Okay, there was another reason it suited him to keep their relationship quiet a little longer. “Don’t read too much into this,” he warned. He was coming around to love, but commitment? No way was he ready for that.
“Kiss kiss, bang bang?” Christian’s blue eyes were full of mischief.
“Will you quit with the gun thing? I’m handling it.” Irritated, Jordan returned his gaze to Kate. He wondered if she’d wait until he was ready. “Hold on a minute…is grubby Uncle Burt hitting on her?” Incredulous, he watched his geriatric relative kiss Kate’s fingers by way of introduction.
“Doesn’t he know where that hand’s been?” said Luke. For a moment there was absolute silence, then they all started to laugh, harder and harder until they had to pull up deck chairs and sit down.
“Oh, God.” Jordan wiped the last tears from his eyes and returned to the barbecue. “I needed that.”
“The two of you frozen like possums caught in the headlights, it’ll go down as one of my favorite memories.” Christian started laughing again.
“So when’s the wedding?” Luke asked innocently.
“That’s fighting talk.”
“So you don’t love her?” said Christian.
It was as if they had him in a headlock and were pummeling the crap out of him. “You’ve got to keep some space around you,” Jordan hedged, “breathing room.”
Christian shrugged. “Sounds lonely to me.”
“Not lonely,” said Luke, “safe…I can understand that.”
“So can I—in you.” Christian took a swig of his soda. “But why is our adventurer suddenly desperate to play it safe?”
Jordan narrowed his eyes. “You want to wear a bridesmaid dress to my wedding, asshole?” he said softly.
His friend paled. “Shit, I forgot about that.” He threw an arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “You take your time, mate. Don’t rush into anything.”
“Huh,” said Jordan, slightly mollified.
“He won’t hold me to it,” Christian stage-whispered to Luke. “He’ll be too happy.”
Disgusted, Jordan shoved him away and returned to barbecuing.
“If you think that, you’re even more deluded than Jordan,” said Luke dryly. “Besides, you think I’d let you welsh?”
Christian hid his face in his hands. “Does Armani do bridesmaid stuff?”
“I’ll be lobbying for pink gingham,” said Luke, “in keeping with your country origins an’ all.”
“You bastard,” Christian said appreciatively, sinking on a deck chair.
Though it killed him to miss a chance to torture Christian, Jordan maintained a dignified silence.
Luke slapped him on the back. “I’m going inside to talk to Kate.”
Jordan resisted until he heard the door open and the music grow louder. “Luke?”
Luke turned around and his friend’s expression nearly changed Jordan’s mind. Bloody know-it-all.
“Yeah, Jord?”
Sighing, he said softly, “Like her, will you?”
ONLY HALF LISTENING to Uncle Burt, Kate watched Jordan’s friend zigzag through the crowd, holding a wine bottle and a can of beer. A former athlete, apparently. But she’d seen the three men laughing together, obviously treating this whole humiliating experience as a great joke.
When she’d turned to flee, Jordan had clamped her to his side and said, “The only way out is through.” Easy for him to say; he’d probably been discovered in flagrante delicto several times in his adult life.
“Hi, I’m Luke,” said the dark-haired man. “One of Jordan’s partners. I’ve come to stop Uncle Burt from stealing a match on his great-nephew.”
The old man laughed delightedly. “Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying.” He allowed Luke to help him up from the couch, bowed, and moved on.
Luke sat, refilled her glass, then tipped his beer to it. “Cheers.” Keen gray eyes assessed her.
“Say it,” she invited. “Everyone else has. ‘You’re not his type.’”
“Do you always fish for compliments?”
Reluctantly, she smiled. “Thank you. I was starting to get a complex.” He smiled back and got even more handsome. “So,” she said politely, “what do you do in the Triton partnership?”
“At the moment? Not much. I’m trying to set up a camp for disadvantaged kids in Beacon Bay.” He watched her. “Which is proving a lot harder than we thought.”
“Not helped by my columns, I’ve been told.”
His mouth tightened. “Or Jordan’s infuriating tendency to wave red rags at bulls.”
“Ouch. Me being the bull.”
“No, that was what you wrote.”
Ouch again. Kate’s stomach swooped as she had an awful thought. “I might have just got the camp into more trouble. I fully intend to run a positive column, but if everyone knows Jordan and I are…together, it’s hardly going to be perceived as impartial.” Kate was suddenly very tired. “This goes from bad to worse.”
“That is a problem,” agreed Luke. “But there’s got to be a way around it.”
Jordan came inside carrying a plate of blackened meat, and was waylaid by a stunning brunette. He kissed her with enthusiasm.
Luke followed Kate’s gaze. “That’s Kezia, married to Christian, our other partner.”
She forced a laugh. “Is this where his best friend tells me to trust him?”
“No,” he said, surprising her, “that’s his job.”
Their eyes met. “I disliked you before you came over, you know,” Kate said gruffly. “I saw you all laughing.”
“We were laughing at Jord, not you,” said another beautiful man with a deep voice, holding an even more beautiful baby. He took the other side of the couch. “Because he’s a goner and doesn’t know it yet.” He held out a hand. “I’m Christian and this is Maddie, who won’t go to bed.”
Kate shook his hand. “Please don’t read too much int
o our relationship,” she said earnestly, then realized she was still gripping Christian’s hand, and dropped it.
To hide her embarrassment, she cooed at the baby, who stared back with wide eyes, the same penetrating blue as her father’s. “To be honest, he’s not the only one dating against type. I’m sure it will burn itself out soon…I mean it has to, right?” She took a gulp of wine, to stop the spill of words. Christian held out the baby. Gratefully, Kate took her and laid her cheek against Maddie’s downy black hair. The baby gurgled and gummed her face.
“Two people used to control out of control with each other,” murmured Christian. “I’ve been there myself.”
He glanced over at his wife, who was still talking to Jordan.
Oh, God, what I wouldn’t give for Jordan to look at me like that, Kate thought. She turned her head to see Jordan staring at her with a look of total dismay.
“DEEP BREATHS,” Kezia suggested.
Turning his back on the tableau, Jordan took a deep draft of his beer instead, but the vision of Kate, cheek to cheek with the baby, haunted him.
This was all happening too fast. He took another swig of his drink. “Beer isn’t working. I’m going to have to move on to tequila.”
“Tequila isn’t the answer in matters of the heart,” said Kez piously, and Jordan recalled the first time he and Luke had met her—drowning her sorrows after fighting with Christian.
“You’re right.” He grabbed her arm and headed for the drinks cabinet. “It was whiskey you drank, wasn’t it?”
“Wait a minute, why do I have to come?” she protested.
“Because I don’t want you sneaking off and changing sides. It’s enough that my two best friends have turned traitor.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Your sisters think she’s exactly the sort of woman to keep you in order.”
“That’s right,” he complained bitterly, “twist the knife.”
He unscrewed the cap on a bottle of Chivas Regal and splashed the amber liquid into a crystal tumbler. Kezia stopped him as he lifted the glass. “You don’t have to marry her if you don’t want to,” she reminded him gently.
“That’s the problem.” Jordan threw back the drink, relishing the burn down his throat. “I think I do want to.”
