“Yes, this is Kayla Mackenzie. Kayla, Mrs Lindsay-Jones.” Jessica smiled from one to the other as she made the brief introduction.
“Well I hope she won’t mind, but I am going to steal you away for a short time. There is someone I want you to meet.”
“Kayla?” Jessica inquired.
“You go, Jessica. I’ll have a look at the silent auction while you’re gone and see if anything takes my fancy.”
While Jessica was dragged into the milling throng by the older woman, Kayla made her way to the silent auction. There were some impressive items, and this was just a sideline to the main fundraising auction to be held between the main course and dessert.
Keen to make a contribution she picked up the pen and bent over the bidding sheet for a couple of bottles of good Barossa wine. She sensed someone close behind her.
“A nice drop.” The male voice was deep and well-modulated.
With her name signed she straightened and his tangy aftershave wafted tantalizingly around her. She felt the heat radiating from his body as she turned and looked up into a pair of golden hazel eyes that were attractively emphasized by fine lines crinkling the corners.
She held out the pen. “It’s for a good cause. Are you going to place a bid?” she asked.
He reached out and took the pen, his fingers brushing delicately over hers as they closed around the writing instrument. Kayla stared up at him, her light-hearted animation shimmering into a liquid shower of awareness under the mischievous spark in his eyes. He slowly let his gaze slide from her face, over her breasts, and down the length of her body, right to the strappy slides on her feet.
“Of course,” he replied. His grin blossomed into a genuine smile that tugged his wide, shapely mouth into a generous curve that accentuated the fullness of his bottom lip and molded the slightest of dimples on his cheeks.
The deepening lines on both sides of his mouth added strength to his angular jaw that was lightly dusted with designer stubble. He stepped around her, sliding past in a sinuous dance step, not touching her, but so close the force of his movement ruffled the chiffon of her skirt. Involuntarily, she stepped back as he bent over in front of her to reach the bidding sheet and scrawl a bid. The masculine aura that emanated from him held her entranced as she openly studied the muscular curves of his back and shoulders and his neat derriere, stretching the seat of his trousers before they hung lightly over long muscular legs. There was something familiar about this man, as if she should recognize him or had met him before, but she couldn’t put a name to the face.
Frustrated by her inability to recall where she knew him from, she dragged her blatant ogle away from his derriere just in time to meet his when he straightened and stepped to the side of the table.
“Now that I have completed my obligations to the cause, perhaps you would indulge me in a circuit of the dance floor,” he asked.
“I’m not much of a dancer…” she murmured.
In response to her trailing silence, he held out his hand. “Wade Faxton—a client of Douglas, Moore, and Associates.”
She flinched and almost snatched her hand from his. Of course…Wade Faxton, the gambler and loan shark’s son—the one she had the hots for in university, but stayed away—not because he was the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but because she had still been smarting from her bitter break up with her childhood sweetheart.
She took a deep breath and slipped her hand into his warm, encompassing palm. “Kayla Mackenzie,” she announced.
His clasp was firm and the shake controlled, but there was no overly masculine posturing that had in the past left her with numb fingers. As he shook her hand, she studied him—the impressive height, his unruly, collar length hair, the designer stubble that accentuated the square chin indented with the slightest of clefts, and the gold earring in his left earlobe. He was an assured, confident man most women would sneak a second glance at. As she looked back up into his eyes, she realized he had not released her hand.
“Ah, the Kayla Mackenzie, the one who wouldn’t date me in uni because my pedigree wasn’t prestigious enough…”
Her face seared hot. “That’s not true, Wade. It had nothing to do with who you were…”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really, but that’s what all the society girls said,” he murmured. A sardonic grin distorted the line of his mouth ever so slightly.
“Well, in my case, it’s true,” she said. “I was nursing a bitterly broken heart. It was a bad time in my life. I didn’t have any room for romance in my heart when I finally snapped out of it, you’d graduated.”
He gave a genuine beam of pleasure now and a little bow. “Well, seeing it is bad manners to argue with a lady I will accept your explanation but in exchange, will you indulge me in a dance or two? Just to show there are no hard feelings,” he asked.
In an effort to break the spell he seemed to have cast over her brain, she laughed lightly, glanced at his shoes, then back to his face. “If you do not value your toes, Mr Faxton, the answer is yes. I will join you on the dance floor.”
“Never mind my toes, and please, call me Wade. I think we go back far enough to dispense with formalities.”
She smiled and nodded as she allowed him to lead her toward the dancers.
His palm rested with deceptive lightness on the bare skin of her back as she reached up to his shoulder. With practiced ease, he clasped her hand in his as he swept her onto the crowded floor. With ease they glided between the other dancers in perfect rhythm, he drew her closer until their bodies touched with the lightest of contact. A glowing spark of uncertain sexual awareness slipped uninvited through her body and she found herself nestling into his embrace as they moved as one.
The band transitioned seamlessly from one tune to the next. They floated across the floor under the mesmerizing blur of the swirling lights. Kayla was drawn inexorably under the spell of his masculine sensuousness, the smooth lithe movement of his hard body in time with the rise and fall of the music. Held so close to him, she magically found it easy to follow his movement, like floating on air as her feet moved of their own volition, somehow smoothly following his expert lead.
The warmth of his breath ruffled her hair, his fingers curled around hers, tightening ever so slightly each time their hips slid, with whisper gentleness, against each other. She wanted this man, badly. She had always wanted this man.
The silence was deafening as the last note echoed hauntingly around the room. Their gliding halt seemed abrupt and brutal when they stopped moving and applauded the band. Her knees threatened to sag and her back still sizzled with the imprint of his hand, and her fingers spontaneously reached to be entrapped in his clasp again. She peeked up at him and offered her arm so he could escort her back to her seat, just in time for soup.
“Thank you, Kayla. I will be back shortly and would be very happy if you would grant me another dance…as you can see, my toes are perfectly intact.”
She smiled up at him as she sank into her chair, knowing full well she could not refuse his request—didn’t want to refuse his request. “Of course, Wade…that would be lovely,” she said.
Then he was gone across the room and through the doors that led outside. She watched him go until he disappeared from sight.
Jessica slid in beside her. “Sorry I was gone so long, but at least you seemed to be getting taken care of. Who was that hunk you were cuddling up to on the dance floor?”
“I wasn’t cuddling up, Jessica. You know me.” Kayla laughingly replied.
“Well, some would believe you, Kayla. Anyway, who was he?” Jessica asked.
“His name is Wade Faxton.”
Jessica shrugged screwing her face up into a perplexed expression. “Nobody I know. Did you give him your number?”
Kayla shook her head.
“Silly girl. Anyway, let’s eat. I’m starving.”
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About the Author
Cassandra was a closet writer for several years
before she got brave enough to share her work with anyone until she joined Eyre Writers Inc, a creative writing group in the seaside town of Port Lincoln and really began to improve.
Her first book was a 100,000 words family saga novel, but after a workshop on ‘How to write a Mills and Boon’, she embarked on a new direction—writing the romance novel.
After being made redundant from the job she loved in 2011 she became a carer for her frail, vision-impaired mother and turned to fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer.
When I am not writing I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, especially my mother, and my three wonderful adult children and my two adorable grandchildren.
I also enjoy egg decorating and carving, reading of course, painting and cooking.
Email: [email protected]
Cassandra loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
Also by Cassandra Hawke
Demolition of the Heart
Totally Bound Publishing
Blood Ties a Broken Heart Page 17
