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‘Aunt Ada,’ he said, sweeping her up in his arms for a hearty hug. ‘Still as pretty as a picture, I see.’
Cassie felt herself sag a little as Tuck and his overwhelming masculinity gave her some breathing space.
‘Don’t sweet-talk me, young man. What are you doing all the way over here?’
Tuck gestured to the table. ‘I’m keeping Reese’s friends company.’
‘Reese…’ Ada tutted. ‘Running off after that Marine… That girl hasn’t got the sense she was born with…lucky she’s my favourite.’
‘Now, come on, Aunt Ada,’ Tuck teased. ‘I thought I was your favourite.’ Ada gave him a playful pat on the shoulder, then lifted one gnarled old hand and squeezed his cheek.
Gina’s mobile rang and she almost ignored it. She couldn’t decide what was more fascinating—the big blond quarterback sweet-talking an old lady or Cassie’s deer-in-the-headlights face. But it rang insistently, and Ada turned to her, looking imperiously down her nose.
‘Well, girl, are you going to answer that or not?’
Gina, recognising authority when she saw it, picked it up immediately. The screen display flashed a familiar number. ‘It’s Reese,’ she announced.
‘Reese.’ Ada tutted again. ‘Tell her to get back here. This non-wedding party was her hare-brained idea.’
Gina laughed, but as she answered the phone Ada’s interest had already wandered.
Cassie felt her shrewd gaze next.
‘This your girl?’ she said, turning to Tuck.
‘Absolutely not,’ Cassie said indignantly.
Then Tuck undid his jacket button and it fell open, wafting a heady dose of pheromones her way. She shut her eyes briefly as her pulse spiked in primal response.
‘She’s not your usual type,’ Ada said, ignoring Cassie’s denial.
‘I am not his girl,’ Cassie repeated, even though she could practically hear every cell calling his name.
‘It’s okay,’ Ada assured her. ‘I hate his usual type. Too…fussy.’
Tuck looked down at Cassie. She was frowning at him, her eyebrows weren’t plucked, and she wasn’t wearing a single scrap of jewellery. No one in the world would have described her as fussy. And yet there was something rather intriguing about her…
‘We are not together,’ Cassie reiterated. The thought was utterly preposterous.
‘Reese says she and Mason aren’t coming back tonight,’ Gina announced as she terminated the phone call, interrupting the conversation.
‘Right, then,’ Ada said. ‘Looks like we have a show to be getting on with. Samuel, go and tell that dreadful DJ to announce dinner. I’ll get the wait staff to start serving.’
The three of them watched her sweep away. ‘Wow,’ Gina said. ‘She’s scary.’
Tuck grinned. ‘Hell, yeah. Excuse me, Gina, Cassiopeia.’ He dropped his voice an octave, then bowed at her slightly, finding and holding her gaze. ‘Keep my seat warm, darlin’, I won’t be long.’
Cassie gaped as his cosmic blue eyes pierced her to the spot and his voice washed over her in tidal wave of heat.
Gina’s low throaty laughter barely registered.
Two hours later Cassie was strung so tight every muscle was screaming at her. Tuck was holding court at the table, charming all and sundry.
Big, warm-blooded, male and there.
A giant sex gland, emitting a chemical compound her body was, apparently, biologically programmed to crave.
Him. A jock. Why him?
Every time their arms brushed or his thigh pressed briefly along hers her pulse spiked, her hands shook a little. And when he laughed in that whole body way of his, which he did frequently, throwing his head back, baring the heavy thud of his jugular to her gaze, her nostrils flared and filled with the thick, luscious scent of him.
An insistent voice whispered through her head, pounded through her blood. Smell him. Lick him. Touch him. With every tick of the clock, every beat of her heart, it grew louder.
It was insane. Madness.
This sort of thing didn’t happen to her. Hormones. Primal imperatives. She was above bodily urges. Her head always—always—ruled her body.
But here she was, just like the rest of the human race, at the mercy of biology.
It just didn’t compute.
The man was as dumb as a rock. He’d thought they were talking about food when she’d mentioned Pi. He’d called a truly amazing piece of equipment unlocking the secrets of the universe the Hobble telescope. He didn’t even know the Vice-President of his own country.
He was a Neanderthal.
But still every nerve in her body twitched in a state of complete excitement.
Cassie desperately tried to recall the aurora research waiting in her room—the research she’d been looking forward to getting back to at the end of the night. When was the last time she’d gone two hours without thinking about it? She’d been working on the project for five years. She ate, slept, breathed it.
And for two whole hours it had been the furthest thing from her mind.
Marnie laughed at something Tuck said, dragging Cassie’s attention back to the big blond caveman by her side. She checked her watch—was it too early to leave? She wasn’t used to feeling this out of her depth. Sure, social situations weren’t her forte but this was plain torture. If she could get back to her room and the comfort of the familiar Tuck and the awful persistent thrum in her blood would surely fade to black.
She glanced up at Gina, who shook her head and mouthed, ‘Don’t even think of it.’
Cassie sighed, resigned to her fate, as the raunchy strains of Sweet Home Alabama blasted around them. Marnie whooped and leapt up to dance along with a few others from the table.
Tuck looked across at Gina and winked. He stood and looked down at the woman who had sat beside him for two hours as if she was afraid his particular brand of stupid was contagious. Didn’t she know he was God’s gift to women?
He grinned as he held out his hand towards her. ‘What do you say, Cassiopeia? Fancy a dance?’
Cassie stared at his hand. It was big, and she swore she could see waves of whatever the hell he was emitting undulating seductively from his palm. ‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t dance.’
Tuck hadn’t got to where he was today by giving up at the first hurdle. He kept his hand where it was. ‘It’s not hard, darlin’,’ he murmured. ‘Just hang on and follow my lead.’
Cassie swallowed. That was what she was afraid of. She had a very bad feeling she’d follow that intoxicating scent anywhere. She shook her head again and looked at him. A bad move as his cosmic gaze sucked her in closer to his orbit.
‘I’m a terrible dancer,’ she said. She dragged her gaze from him. ‘Isn’t that right, Gina?’
Gina nodded. Cassie had no rhythm at all. ‘She speaks the truth. But…’ She looked at Tuck, then at Cassie. Her Antipodean friend looked as if she’d rather face a firing squad then dance with Tuck. Interesting. She’d never seen Cassie so ruffled and, bet or no bet, she wanted to see where this went.
‘I think every woman should dance with a star quarterback once in her life,’ Gina said.
Tuck raised an eyebrow at her as Gina conceded the bet to him.
‘Ex,’ Cassie said. And when Gina looked at her enquiringly she clarified, ‘He’s an ex…quarterback.’
Gina drummed her fingers on the table. ‘You know, it is customary at weddings for the bridesmaids to dance with the groomsmen,’ she pointed out.
Gina had taken it upon herself to be Cassie’s social guru during the year they’d roomed together, and Cassie had learned a lot about social mores that no textbook could ever have taught her. But she was big on survival instincts, and Cassie was pretty sure staying away from Tuck was the smart thing to do.
And she was very smart.
Even if she was rapidly dropping IQ points every time she looked at him.
‘But this is the wedding-that-wasn’t,’ she pointed out, striving for the brisk logic she was known for. ‘We are the bridal-party-that-wasn’t. Surely that cancels out societal expectations?’
Tuck waggled the fingers of his still outstretched hand at her. ‘I think it’s important to keep up appearances, though,’ he said. ‘These Park Avenue types are big on that.’
Cassie looked away from the lure of those fingers at Gina, who nodded at her and said, ‘He’s right. You wouldn’t want to embarrass Reese, would you? It’s okay,’ she assured her. ‘Tuck looks like he knows what he’s doing.’
Tuck grinned, but he didn’t take his eyes off Cassie. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
Cassie glanced back at him, towering over her in all his intoxicating temptation. Maybe a dance would help. Maybe if she got the chance to sniff him a little this unnatural craving taking over her body, infecting her brain like a plague of boils, would be satisfied. That seemed logical.
Cassie slipped her hand into his.
And her cells roared to life.
TWO
By the time they got to the dance floor the last notes of Sweet Home Alabama had died out and the music had changed to a slow Righteous Brothers’ melody. All the couples that had been boogying energetically melted into each other and the singles left the floor. Cassie turned to go as well, but Tuck grabbed her hand and pulled her in close, grinning at her.
‘Where are you going, darlin’?’
Cassie’s breath felt like thick fog in her throat. ‘I…can’t waltz.’
She found it hard enough co-ordinating her hands and feet with some space between her and her dancing partners. She was going to do some damage to his feet for sure.
And she did not trust herself too close to him.
‘Sure you can. Just hold on,’ he said, taking her resisting hands and placing them on his pecs, ‘and shuffle your feet a little. There ain’t no dance police here tonight.’
Cassie didn’t hear his crack about dance police. Her palms were filled with hard firm muscle as the fabric seemed to melt away. The music melted away too—as did the people crowding around them.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the sight of her hands on his chest.
Tuck smiled to himself. ‘There you go—see.’ He took a step closer, his chin brushing the top of her head. He slipped his hands lightly onto her waist. There was definite curve there and he snuggled his palm into it. ‘I don’t bite.’
Cassie fought through the fog, dragging her eyes away from how small her hands looked in comparison to his broadness. She looked up. Way up. He was tall. And close. A hand-width away, she guessed.
Before tonight she would have been able to assess the distance accurately, but she simply couldn’t think straight at the moment. He was radiating heat and energy and those damn pheromones, totally scrambling her usual focus. His hands at her waist were burning a tract right down to her middle.
He smiled at her, his starburst eyes showering their effervescence all over her. She looked down, but that was a mistake also as his chest filled her vision, the knot of his tie swaying hypnotically in front of her with every movement of his body. And all the time an insistent whisper played in her head, swarmed through her blood in time with the swing of him.
Smell him, lick him, touch him.
She dragged her gaze upwards, desperate to stop the pull of the hypnotic rhythm. It snagged on the slow, steady bound of his carotid, his growth of whiskers not able to conceal the thick thud of it. She wondered what he’d smell like there. What he’d taste like.
Her nostrils flared. Her breath grew thick. She dug her fingers into the flat of his chest as she battled the urge to take a step closer.
Dear God, she was growing dumber by the second.
Shocked and dazed, she dragged her gaze down. Way down. Down to their feet. Down to the hole she wished would open up.
Tuck also looked down, frowning at how rigid she felt in his arms. As if she was going to shatter at any moment. Or going to bolt at any second. No woman had ever been so reluctant to be in his company. Or so keen to be away from it.
She could give a man a complex.
One thing was for sure. She needed to relax or she was going to have a seizure. ‘So…Cassiopeia? That’s not a name you hear every day. Is that a family tradition?’
Cassie looked up. His eyes flashed at her and she lost her breath for a moment. Were they closer? He seemed nearer. More potent. His chest was closer.
‘Cassie?’
She blinked. What? Oh, yes. Talking. That was good. She was good at talking. Usually…
‘My mum…she named me. After the constellation.’ She paused. Did he even know what that was? ‘That’s a group of stars,’ she clarified.
Tuck chuckled. This woman was going to give him a complex. Who’d have thought he’d be interested in such a little snob? The endearing thing was she seemed oblivious to it all. ‘Like the Zodiac?’ he enquired, purposefully broadening his accent again.
Cassie gaped at him. How could she possibly want to lick the neck of a man with a pea-sized intellect?
There was just no accounting for biology.
‘No, not like the Zodiac.’
He feigned a frown. ‘Ain’t you into astrology?’
‘Astronomy,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘A-stron-omy.’
‘So, that’s not like…Sagittarius and stuff?’
‘No,’ she said primly. ‘It’s the study of celestial objects. It’s science. Not voodoo.’
Tuck laughed again. He liked it when she got all passionate and fired up. There was a spark in those blue-grey eyes, a glitter. Would they get like that when she was all passionate and fired up in bed?
Suddenly it seemed like something he wouldn’t mind knowing.
