Thanks to her occasional surf-stalking, she could easily imagine the bunch and pull of every muscle underneath his faded T-shirt. He was six-five, and she had no idea how many pounds it required to create such a broad and rippled physique. As usual, she couldn't tear her gaze away—and she didn't want to. Instead she let it run over him, warm and liquidy like she was starting to feel inside, moving from his shaved head to his feet and then back up again, absorbing each detail from the heels of his work boots, to his long calves, to his tight butt, to his wide shoulders.
Without warning, he turned, catching her, and she gave a little start, ashamed of her stare.
But why should she be? It was only nature, she told herself, swallowing hard. Nature's insidious yet undeniable influence.
It was pure biology and not her fault that she'd been wired at the cellular level to feel a physical attraction to a man who looked prepared to protect her and her offspring. As a matter of fact, it was no different from the gimme-gimme desire she felt looking at a particularly scrumptious pair of stilettos. Nature had set up that hankering too. Obviously, if you were ready to slide your feet into a pair of five-inch patent leather high heels, you weren't worrying about the tribe from down the valley sending out their warriors to rape and pillage you and yours.
As she walked toward him, her pulse beating like a wild thing at her throat, she told herself it was exactly the same way she felt walking into the Neiman Marcus shoe department.
He had dark gold eyebrows and blue eyes, so she figured he was a blond like his brother, but his hairstyle—or lack thereof, rather—suited him. Here I am, his shaved head announced. This is what I am. Nothing soft. Hard to the bone.
A couple feet away from him, she stopped. "Reporting for duty, sir," she said, lifting her hand in a crisp salute.
He grunted.
Desirée's arm dropped. See, that just went to prove she didn't have any kind of dangerous attachment to him beyond the biology thing. How could she fall for a man who grunted?
All that over-the-top, tough-guy stuff was not for her. Plenty of her boarding schoolmates had harbored sheikh fantasies, but she knew secondhand—as a child her mother had refused to allow her to set foot in her father's country, and apparently he didn't care enough about his daughter meeting his family to insist—what a culture-clash and soul-smother a macho man would be in real life.
From the beginning she'd decided she didn't want some swashbuckling warrior who would die before acknowledging a softer side. So her ideal mate had always been cut from different cloth. A poet, an artist, a teacher.
Someone tender and sensitive who could be counted upon to hold her heart in the soft cage of his gentle hands forever.
Troy pulled a pair of squishy pieces of neon foam out of his ears and frowned up at the speakers before turning that same expression on Desirée. "What did you say?"
Her hand snapped up again. "Reporting for duty, sir."
"Your salute sucks." He shoved the earplugs in the front pocket of his jeans and then reached over with his callused hand to adjust the cant of her fingers, his touch hard and impersonal.
Yet she felt it in some very personal places. She dropped her arm again and rubbed her palm on her thigh, ignoring the fluttering in her belly.
Troy's gaze followed the movement, lingering on her jeans for a moment before trailing upward again. Her knit camisole had ridden high on her belly, but her skin was still covered by her gauzy overblouse. Still, when he stared at the large amber drop that was hanging from a long gold chain and bumping against her belly button, the jewel seemed to heat up, almost burning her skin.
Just when she thought she'd have to grab it to put out the fire, he turned away. "Get the rest of the chairs to the floor," he ground out, then marched off.
He left her alone for the first couple of hours as she tried making herself useful, unsure what her exact job description might be. But he must have been keeping a pretty close watch on her, because when this one skinny yucktard in saggy jeans and a beanie caught her bending over and thought it was an invitation for him to slide his hand over her rear cheek and then down along the inside of her thigh—well, she'd never seen a big man move so fast. The skinny yucktard moved pretty quick too. One moment he was standing there grinning like a twelve-year-old, the next he was sailing through the front door like a grown man getting his ass kicked.
Desirée fluttered her eyelashes at Troy and clasped her hands together over her heart. "My hero," she cooed.
He shook his head, eyeing her with something that bordered on distaste. "My mistake." After that incident, Troy took to barking orders at her.
"Bus that four-top in the corner." She figured out that "bus" meant clear and wipe a table.
"Four-top" referred to how many people said table could seat.
"Tell the bartender to pull another couple of drafts for the pair playing Stripes and Solids." Two beers on tap for the man and woman at one of the pool tables.
"Check on the state of the alpha whiskey in the women's head." Neither the twenty-something dude behind the bar or the two thirtyish cocktail servers wandering the floor could decipher "alpha whiskey," though they all knew the women's head was the women's restroom.
Stymied, she decided that rather than giving Troy cause to criticize her by missing the point of the command, she should return to the source. And she found him in the narrow hallway that led to the office.
His back to her, he was in a comfortable pose, one shoulder propped against the wall. She thought perhaps he was half napping.
"Troy?"
He turned, and she saw he wore a warm, lazy smile on his face. Then he shifted and she saw who he'd been smiling at: a little dainty ballerina of a woman, with feathery blond hair and her own kittenish smile.
She looked kind of familiar, but that didn't stop Desirée from wanting to drop a scorpion in the ballerina's tiny shoe. Both her tiny shoes.
The urge shocked her. She was supposed to be cooling this thing she had for Troy. She was not supposed to let it reduce her to these primitive impulses.
Still, in the old days in her father's country, enemies were covered with sweet syrup and staked out near ant hills. Narrowing her eyes, she imagined Dainty Chick drenched in Mrs. Butterworth's.
Troy started forward. "What's got your ire up, Dez? Is someone bothering you again?"
"I could handle it if they were," she said, still thinking evil ant thoughts. "I didn't need your help then." She flicked her gaze toward the other woman. "But I need it now, that is, unless you're too busy to answer a question."
He frowned. "What is it?"
She thought he sounded impatient, so she walked past him to stick out her hand toward Little Miss. Okay, so the other woman made her feel about ten feet tall and as graceful as a giraffe, but she needed to know her name so she'd know who and where to send that candy box filled with tarantulas if she didn't get over this annoying jealousy. "I'm Desirée. And if I were you I wouldn't get too chummy with Neanderthal Marine here. I let him into my bed because he looks like a macho stud, but he's just a big dumb dud."
Dainty Ballerina stared up at her, an—amused?—light in her eyes. "I believe we've met once before. I'm Bailey Sullivan," she said. "And always glad to be kept up-to-date on which men are lacking in, uh, prowess."
Desirée glanced over her shoulder to see how Troy was taking all this, when the woman's name— and familiarity—finally sank in. "Oh." Her head whipped back. "Bailey. Finn's Bailey. We met in the parking lot one night a few weeks ago?"
She smiled. "That's right."
Embarrassment flushed over Desirée's body. Between her shoulder blades, she could feel Troy's stare. She supposed he might be a little mad about the dud thing.
Damn, what was wrong with her?
She backed up so she wouldn't have to face him. "Nice to meet you again. Sorry to interrupt. I was just needing to know—" Her backside bumped a pair of iron thighs and she froze, still not turning. "—what alpha whiskey refers to?"
>
Bailey's eyebrows rose. She shrugged. "Haven't a clue."
Two massive hands landed on her shoulders. They gave a not quite gentle squeeze. "Toilet paper, princess."
"Right. Groovy. Okay." She twisted away from his touch and scurried back down the hall, though she wasn't moving quick enough to miss this final exchange.
Bailey, with laughter in her voice: "I think she likes you, dud."
Though of course she didn't care, Desirée held her breath so she wouldn't miss his response. Troy, with no expression whatsoever: grunted. Natch.
Her shift was scheduled to end at midnight. Though the bar was open until one A.M., the crowd had thinned considerably by the time both hands of the clock pointed straight up. The cocktail servers had gone home a few minutes before, leaving Troy and the bartender to handle the customers' orders for the next hour.
Her feet hurt, her hair felt gummy with perspiration around the edges, her hands were cramping from gripping the round plastic trays and wiping with the red bar rags. As predicted, her manicure was demolished.
Gathering up her purse from the break room, she looked around for the boss. Heaven forbid he get the wrong idea and think that she'd left a minute too early.
He wasn't behind the bar, around the tables, or in the side room that hadn't been opened that night. She finally found him in the office, behind the desk, his attention focused on a laptop computer placed on top.
Loud rock music was drifting in from the bar, so he could be excused for having missed her approach. Desirée leaned against the doorjamb and just looked at him again. Golden grit sanded the edges of his jaw, and his stubby lashes shielded the blue of his eyes. At this time of night he looked harder, tougher, than ever, and for the hundredth time she told herself it was simple biology that made her so susceptible to him.
He, on the other hand, would never be susceptible to anyone or anything. "Troy?" she said. When he didn't answer, she raised her voice. "Troy?"
Still absorbed in what ever was on the screen, the man didn't move one hard, well-developed muscle. Desirée raised her fist. In the bar, someone turned the music up even louder, and she pounded on the door to get his attention. Once.
In a blink he fell to the ground behind his desk.
She gasped. Had she somehow killed him? Did heart attacks go that fast? Breathless, she leaped into the room to see him poke his head over the desk.
He was scowling at her as he rose to his feet and removed his earplugs again. "Christ Almighty. I thought a bomb had gone off in here."
She swallowed. The truth was, she hadn't banged on the door that hard. "I'm sorry." She didn't know what else to say. "I came in to tell you I'm leaving."
The expression on his face responded Good riddance, but then he sighed. "Wait a minute." He turned to a shelf, took down a jar and handed it across the desk to her. "Your tips."
"My tips?" She stared at the bills curled in the glass. Her job description had remained hazy and she'd never actually served any drinks.
"The waitresses share with those who bus the tables and pour the booze. That's your take." Desirée dumped the money out into her hand. She fingered the bills, now hardly aware of her ruined manicure, and appreciated the crisp texture of paper money for the first time in her life. Folded in half, they made a thick bundle. Rolled, an even more gratifying wad.
Money. Money that she'd made. Gazing down at it, she decided that short of soaking in a hot bathtub, right now nothing could make her feel better.
"You did a good job to night." Except that.
She managed to look up at him and hoped he didn't see the stars in her eyes. "I've never actually earned any money before."
"I doubt you'll develop a taste for it," Troy said, coming around from behind his desk. "Let's go. I 'll walk you to your car."
She might too develop a taste for it, Desirée thought, glaring at his back, stars extinguished by his rough tone.
But as they walked out into the night, she wasn't so sure he wasn't right. Exhaustion seemed to swamp her all at once: the accumulation of an evening's worth of noise, activity, and the ever-present tension she felt around Troy. When they reached her car, she leaned back against it as she fished her keys out of her fist-sized purse.
"So what's that degree of yours in?" he asked.
Startled by the sudden question, she bobbled her purse. They both tried to save it from hitting the ground, and ended up gripping it together, their fingers entwined around the soft leather and around each other.
Desirée looked up at him. "Art history."
The rain was gone and the sky was scudded with moving clouds, just like the one in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Moonlight washed over his wide shoulders and limned the strong shape of his skull. Her jittery insides felt like they used to on Disney trips too. As if something wonderful and magical was about to happen.
"Meaning you're educated to do what, exactly?"
She couldn't tear her gaze away from him. It's Nature, she consoled herself.
"Well?"
She licked her lips. "I was taught how to recognize beautiful things." The next words flowed out of her mouth without a second of forethought. "Beautiful things like you."
His eyes widened. Then his hands squeezed hers and yanked her close. His head bent, blocking her view of the moon and the sky.
Letting her only see him. And then he was gone as her eyes drifted closed and his mouth found hers.
They both grunted, maybe in protest at the instant spark when lips met lips. She gulped air to cool the heat, but instead he filled her with a smooth thrust of his tongue.
Her body swayed toward his as he deepened the kiss, and he wrapped one arm around her waist to draw her closer. The buckle of her purse pressed hard against her chest. The fingers of his hand, still entwined with hers, tightened.
She was losing circulation. She was losing air.
She didn't care, not with Troy's mouth on hers, not with his tongue sliding along hers. Her breasts swelled, aching and hot, her tight jeans didn't press tight enough in the right places.
She shuffled closer to him. His grip on her firmed.
A car honked loudly.
Troy jolted back.
"Hey, get a room!" a voice yelled out of the darkness.
Troy half turned, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. "Assholes," he muttered.
"Yucktards." She didn't move. She liked her lips still damp from his. She wanted to keep his kiss right where it was.
Forever.
"I've got to get back inside," he said. "Get your keys out and get going."
Desirée almost saluted again. She almost cried at the tone of unfeeling command in his voice. Of course she did neither, even as she realized the kiss meant nothing to him. It was probably punishment for that "dud" crack she'd made earlier.
In seconds she was inside her car. Another couple and she had it started and was driving away. In her rearview mirror she saw that Troy was watching her go. Probably thanking his lucky stars that she was finally gone.
What a difference a few hours could make, she thought. When she'd arrived, she'd been pleased with the sense of purpose her new job had given her.
But now...now it was clear she had a whole new task ahead—to make sure Troy didn't break her heart.
Chapter Fourteen
Tanner knew the world wasn't fair. There was that damn stupid Desirée kiss. Ayesha's death. The past year of twiddling his thumbs instead of doing the job he'd been trained for. Still, he hadn't foreseen Hannah's request.
His life had turned into a Roadrunner episode, that's what had happened, and the Acme bird trap that he, as Coyote, arranged on the railroad tracks had just collapsed on his back. Yeah, collapsed on him, leaving him stomach down and staring at the glaring headlight of an oncoming train.
But this wasn't a cartoon, and the headlight of the oncoming train was the warm light in Hannah's velvety brown eyes. He'd told her the sex between them was explosive as petty payback, an
d now it was paying him back.
He managed to signal for the check without giving her a direct answer. He managed to bundle her into his car and then drive away from the restaurant.
He hadn't yet managed to control the reckless direction of his thoughts.
She already thinks you've done it with her, so where's the harm?
You haven't had sex in eleven months and Hannah hasn't had a man in four years. Pow. Boom. Bang.
It really could be explosive.
Then she put her hand on his thigh and he stopped thinking altogether. Instead he whipped into a beachside parking lot, turned off the car, and stared out the wet windshield into the black night. It was raining again, the water drumming on the roof like his heart inside his chest.
And Hannah's hand was two inches above his knee and ten inches from his other inches, which were growing longer and harder by the second. "Look…" He turned toward her.
His mouth dried, as it had when she'd first opened the door of the hotel suite. Patriotic, he'd said like an idiot, but it was true. In that flame-red dress she woke up everything inside him like a John Philip Sousa march. His cock had risen like a trumpet toward the sky and his imagination had gone wacko again. This time he'd seen her in his mind's eye in a flaming hot majorette costume, cut high on her ass to reveal black fishnet stockings and with white tasseled boots on her feet.
He'd wanted to push her inside, throw her down on the nearest bed, and introduce her to his ready, randy baton.
Jesus. The Secret Service psych team could have a dandy day figuring out just what that all meant, if he shared it with them.
If he still was an agent with the Ser vice. Which he wasn't. The thought should chill him.
"Just forget I brought it up," Hannah was saying now, the hand on his knee patting the muscle that was tight with lust.
He wasn't in the least bit cold.
She took her hand back and placed it with the other in her lap, folded together like an honor student hoping for an extra credit mark. Her face was directed toward the window, so he could trace her profile with his gaze and think of all the ways men had screwed her:
Not Another New Year's (Holiday Duet Book 2) Page 10
