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The song ended and the pace picked up a little. A couple behind them bumped into Cassie and she stumbled and stood on his foot. ‘Oh, God, sorry,’ she gasped, pulling away as her front collided with his.
His broad, muscular front.
‘Hey, there, it’s okay,’ Tuck said, steadying her under her elbows, holding on as she tried to pull away, keeping her close. Their bodies were almost—but not quite—touching. ‘No harm done,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Why don’t you just lay your head here on my chest and stay awhile longer?’
She should tell him to go to hell. But her nostrils flared again as something primal inside her recognised him as male. And he smelled so damn good.
A whisper ran through her head. Do it.
Lay your head down. Shut your eyes. Press your nose into his chest.
Cassie fought against the powerful urge as long as she could but she was losing fast. Each sway of his body bathed her in his eau-du-male scent and before she knew it her cheek had brushed against the fabric of his jacket and was angled slightly, her nose pressed into his lapel.
She inhaled. Deep and long. Every cell was filled with him. Every tastebud went into rapture. Every brain synapse went into a frenzy.
It was so damn good she never wanted to exhale.
It was only the dizzying approach of hypoxia that forced her hand. She quickly breathed out, then took in another huge greedy gulp of him. His scent seduced her senses, stroked along her belly, unfurled through her bloodstream.
She pressed herself a little closer and her eyes rolled back in her head as his heat flooded all round her.
Tuck was surprised when Cassie’s body moved flush against his after her standoffishness. But he liked the way she fitted, her body moulding against his, her head tucked in under his chin nicely. And she let him lead, which was a novelty. Most women he danced with weren’t so passive in his arms.
They danced all flirty and dirty and sexy.
Not that Tuck had anything against flirty, dirty or sexy. He was all for them. But too often it felt like an act. As if the women he dated felt they had to gyrate and shimmy and generally carry on like a B-grade porn star to attract or keep his attention.
Okay, he’d never had a reputation for longevity—his two-year marriage was a sure sign of that—but he was, at his most basic, a guy. And just being female was enough to keep his attention.
Ever since his divorce he’d gone back to his partying ways—living the dream, a different woman every night—the ultimate male fantasy. But he’d forgotten how good this felt, how nice it was to slow-dance, to hold a woman and enjoy the feeling of her all relaxed against him.
Even if she did think he was dumb as a rock.
‘I think you’ve got this dancing thing down pat, darlin’,’ he murmured against her hair.
Cassie just heard him through the trancelike state she’d entered. Each breath she drew in fogged her head a little more, stroking along nerve-endings and leadening her bones. She was pretty sure she was drooling on his jacket.
But he had her in his thrall.
His hands felt big and male on her hips, and hot—very hot. She was aware of every part of her body. It was alive with the scent of him.
His chin rubbed the top of her head and she glanced up. Her gaze fell on the heavy thud of his carotid again, pulsing just above his collar beside the hard ridge of his trachea. Her mouth watered a little more and Cassie sucked in a breath.
‘Well, hey, y’all!’
Cassie dragged herself back from the impulse to push her nose into Tuck’s neck, grateful for Marnie’s interruption. She looked at her friend, who was dancing with a preppy-looking guy, still a little dazed.
‘It’s getting hot in here,’ Marnie said, then winked as her partner danced her away.
Cassie blinked at her retreating back and then glanced at Tuck, who was looking intently at her with his intense extra-terrestrial gaze.
What was she thinking?
She searched her brain for an answer. How great he smelled. How great he might taste. But more than that. She’d been thinking how small and feminine she felt tucked in under his chin, his hands shaping her hips.
How female.
She blinked, shocked by her thoughts. Since when had she cared about that? But her gaze was filled with his perfect symmetrical features and it all became fuzzy again. Why couldn’t he have a prominent forehead and squinty eyes and a crooked nose? He was a footballer, for crying out loud, didn’t they break noses regularly?
Why didn’t she feel like this about Len, her fellow researcher-cum-occasional-lover? She’d never once had to quell the urge to sniff him. They worked together every day, occasionally accompanied each other to university functions, and every once in a while he got antsy and irritable and they had sex, so he could concentrate on what was really important—astronomy.
She’d never slow-danced with Len. Nor did she want to.
She’d never wanted to crawl inside his skin.
It was a scary thought, and Cassie tried to pull away as another slow song started up, but Tuck held her fast and her damn body capitulated readily. Too readily. It was obvious biology was going to win out over intellect and logic tonight and that just wasn’t acceptable.
She needed to defuse the situation, to distract herself from the dizzying power of him.
‘So,’ she said, reaching for a safe, easy topic of conversation, ‘Tuck isn’t your real name?’
It was hardly Mensa level, and they weren’t about to unlock the secrets of dark matter, but at least it would give her back some control.
Mind over body.
And he looked like a guy who liked to talk about himself.
‘No.’ Tuck shook his head. ‘My Christian name is Samuel. Samuel Tucker. But no one calls me that. Except my mother.’
Even his wife had called him Tuck.
‘And Great-Aunt Ada,’ Cassie reminded him.
Tuck smiled. ‘And Great-Aunt Ada.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Why not be called by the name you were given?’
Tuck shrugged. ‘It’s a nickname.’ He looked down into her genuinely perplexed face. ‘Don’t they have nicknames in Australia? You’re called Cassie instead of Cassiopeia.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘No. Cassie is an abbreviation of my Christian name, not a nickname. If that were the case for you, you’d be known as Sam.’
Tuck waited for her to spell abbreviation for his poor addled brain. If she hadn’t felt a hundred kinds of right, all smooshed up and slow dancing against him, he’d be getting kind of ticked off by her attitude towards his mental prowess.
Instead he was prepared to humour her.
‘Except Tuck sounds cooler.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Cooler? Who says?’
Tuck liked the way her brows drew together, showcasing her grey-blue eyes to perfection. ‘Tens of thousands of football fans, screaming my name across every state in this great land for a decade.’
Not to mention quite a few more of the female variety also screaming it out loud in hotel beds across every state for just as long.
‘Oh.’ Cassie thought about it for a moment, but she’d never understood the dynamics of hero-worship regarding something as frivolous as sport. ‘Sorry, I don’t get that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a guy thing.’
Cassie suspected it was probably a jock thing, but she tucked it away anyway to ask Len about when they next spoke.
Thankfully the song ended and, feeling more in control of her recalcitrant hormones, she took the opportunity to step firmly away from him. ‘I’m done now,’ she said, and was proud of how strong her voice sounded when her body was howling to be nearer to him.
Tuck smiled and bowed slightly, ever the gentleman, as he gestured for her to precede him. It didn’t stop him from perving on her ass the whole way back to the table, though.
Almost two hours later everyone had left and Marnie, Gina and Cassie, under the direction of Great-Aunt Ada, had seen all the guests off and organised the removal of the gifts that had been left despite Reese insisting that no one bring any.
Tuck and his pheromones had also insisted on helping.
Cassie was getting twitchy. She had a paper to get back to. She didn’t have time for a big, blond ex-quarterback who’d obviously fallen out of the stupid tree. And hit every branch on the way down.
No matter how nice he smelled.
But somehow he was accompanying them back inside the grand entrance to the Bellington Estate, and then he was walking up the ornate stone staircase next to her, his arm occasionally brushing hers. When Marnie and Gina turned left at the top Cassie hoped that Tuck would do so too.
No such luck.
He smiled at her as he turned right. ‘After you,’ he said.
Cassie looked over her shoulder at Gina and Marnie, who had stopped and were looking at her with bemused expressions.
Gina waved her fingers and said, ‘Need someone to tuck you in?’
Marnie seemed to have trouble keeping a straight face and Cassie frowned at her.
‘I think she’s got that covered,’ Marnie said. ‘Night, Cassie. Night, Tuck. Sweet dreams.’
Cassie glanced at Tuck, who was also smiling.
‘Good night, ladies. See you in the morning.’
Before Cassie could make further comment her ‘friends’ had turned away and she was watching their backs retreat. She hoped that Marnie and Gina would use the time to talk, because it had been awkward between them at the table tonight. Although if the distance between them as they walked was anything to go by it didn’t look like they were ready to bury the hatchet just yet.
She looked at Tuck, and even though he was a good two metres away his aroma wafted her way and she instantly forgot about the animosity between her friends. Her belly tightened and then looped the loop.
‘What’s your room number? I’ll see you to your door.’
The last thing Cassie wanted was to have Tuck anywhere near her room. In fact she’d be perfectly happy never to be anywhere near him again. She was unsettled. Confused.
She was never unsettled. Never confused. And she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
‘I don’t need you to accompany me to my room,’ she said, taking care as she passed him to keep her distance.
Tuck watched the swing of her ass again for a moment or two, then called after her, ‘My momma would tan my hide if I didn’t see my date to her door.’
Cassie stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. ‘I am not your date.’
‘You sure danced like I was your date.’
Heat flooded her cheeks as she remembered how she’d clung and buried her nose in his clothes, as if he was her own personal scratch-and-sniff jock. Cassiopeia Barclay did not blush—ever! Curious at the strange phenomenon, she brought her palms up to cradle her face.
She cleared her throat. ‘It was…crowded,’ she said defensively, dropping her hands and folding her arms primly.
Tuck’s gaze dropped. Her folded arms had pushed her breasts up and together, exposing a nice curve of bare flesh at the criss-cross front of her dress for his viewing pleasure. Tuck had seen a lot bigger. He’d also seen smaller. Cassie’s looked just about right to him. A perky B cup, he’d hazard a guess.
Tuck grinned. ‘Come on, darlin’, it’s late. Let’s get you to bed.’
Cassie shoved her hands on her hips, determined not to let an image of him sprawled in her big hotel bed derail her thoughts. ‘Don’t call me darlin’.’ She mimicked his slow, easy Southern drawl to perfection. ‘And I’m perfectly capable of finding my way to my room. I can count.’
Tuck’s grin broadened. ‘Well, maybe you can help me find my room?’ He scratched his head in the most perplexed manner he could muster. ‘There’s a lot of wings in this place and it does get kind of confusin’ after a hundred, don’t it?’
Cassie rolled her eyes. The man was living proof that evolution could go in reverse. ‘How on earth do you count all those millions that kicking a stupid ball around earned you?’
Tuck shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Got me some bean-counters for that.’
Cassie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was going to be one of those has-been sports stars whose money was all gone in a matter of years because he had a little too much yardage between the goalposts to keep track of it himself. And he trusted too easily.
‘Follow me,’ she said huffily as she headed down the long grand hallway.
Tuck’s gaze ran over the contours of her back and settled on how her dress swung and fluttered with each movement. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he murmured under his breath.
Tuck deliberately took his time, stopping to examine old paintings hanging on the stonework, suits of armour and the antique vases that dotted the magnificent corridor. He kept up a running commentary for Cassie’s sake, purely because it seemed to annoy her.
‘Will you hurry up?’ she said impatiently, looking over her shoulder for the tenth time as he stopped to read the name of the artist of a particularly austere portrait. ‘I have a paper to get to.’
Tuck looked up. ‘You brought work?’ He shook his head at her and tsked as he meandered closer. ‘All work and no play makes Cassiopeia a dull girl.’
Cassie glared at him as they got underway again. ‘Not that I expect you to understand this, but there is nothing dull about auroras on Jupiter.’
‘Auroras?’
‘Yes—you know, like the Aurora Borealis?’ His blank look didn’t seem promising. ‘The Northern Lights?’ she clarified.
Tuck had witnessed the Aurora Borealis in Scandinavia on two separate occasions, but he wasn’t about to disappoint Cassie’s assumptions. ‘Isn’t she some mermaid?’
Cassie sighed. There really was no grain in his silo. He was an empty vessel. ‘No. It’s a real thing. It’s why I’m here. I’m completing my PhD studies at Cornell so next year I can go on a research trip to Antarctica. And Aurora was Sleeping Beauty. Ariel was the Little Mermaid.’
Tuck shrugged. ‘Well, it sounds like a mermaid if you ask me.’ And then he shot her his best goofy grin for good measure.
Thankfully her room approached, and Cassie all but leapt at the ornate doorknob. ‘This is me,’ she said. ‘What did you say your room number was again?’
