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He held her gaze, shaking his head slowly.
Fighting an urge to fidget she thought she’d conquered years ago, Dara sighed. She still felt a pinch when she remembered how she’d fallen hard for one man’s line, only to learn that what he’d really wanted was an association with her godfather. The experience had made her gun-shy. “It sounds corny,” she said quietly, “but I just want to be wanted for me. I want someone who, for the most part, doesn’t really care that I’m Harrison Montgomery’s goddaughter.”
Dara resisted her need to look away from Ridge although she was too aware of him, of how close his knee was to hers, of how his musky male scent mingled with her perfume, of how curious she was about him when she shouldn’t be. Taking a deep breath, she instinctively turned the conversation away from herself. “And what about you? What do you want?”
A charged silence stretched and tightened between them. Ridge leaned forward and placed his hands on either side of her legs. His teeth flashed in a slow, big-bad-wolf grin. “Are you making an offer, Miss Seabrook?”
Her heart hammered against her rib cage. Heat and confusion tangled inside her. “I, uh, I—”
“Because if you are…”
Panic won over excitement. “No!” She pressed her back against the seat. “I was just wondering—”
“I’m wondering, too,” Ridge interrupted in a voice threaded with intimacy. “I’m wondering what’s going on in your mind when your eyelids flutter.”
Her mouth desert dry, she stared at him.
He slid his thumb just under the hem of her dress on the outside of her thigh and her breath hitched in her throat. Watching her with his compelling, golden eyes, he moved his thumb in one slow stroke that made her feel branded. “I wonder a lot more, but if you’re concerned that I’ll take advantage of you, don’t worry. It’s my job to guard your body, Dara, and that’s what I’ll do, even if it means protecting you from me.” Ridge removed his hands and eased away from her. “I make it a policy never to get involved with a client.”
Heaven help her if he changed his mind! She’d been about as threatening as a wet noodle. She should have slapped his inquisitive hands. Next time she would. This time, she just wanted an ice cube. Dara searched for her breath and finally found it. “Good,” she managed to say, nodding emphatically and wishing her hands would stop trembling. “Very good. I think that sounds like a… uh—” She cleared her throat and wondered why she felt like a bomb had gone off inside her. “A wise policy,” she finished, and breathed a sigh of relief when the limo pulled to a stop outside the hotel.
“Here they are. Just what you ordered.” Wearing a dubious expression, Clarence handed the bag to Dara.
Sitting on the plush sofa of her hotel suite, Dara glanced inside the bag and gave a weak smile. “Thank you. They look fine. Did you find anyone who can coach me?”
Clarence adjusted his bow tie. “I asked a couple of people at the local campaign headquarters, discreetly of course, but none of them had any, uh, experience with, uh, rollerblades.”
Ridge watched the interplay between the two of them curiously.
Dara sighed and tucked a lock of her damp hair behind her ear. Fresh from a morning shower, weaning blue jeans that cupped her well-shaped rear end and revealed tantalizing hints of bare flesh from strategically placed tears, along with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that stretched across her breasts, she looked more like a college coed than the current darling of the press. Her face and feet were bare. With all the polish rubbed off of her, she still exuded a subtle but provocative energy that lured his attention and held it.
The only thing that proved, he told himself, was that his hormones were in working order.
“I don’t want to sound vain,” she said, “but this is something I really don’t want to see on the evening news for the rest of my natural life.”
Clarence nodded sympathetically. “Forrester should have asked you first, but you know how he is when he gets going. I suppose we could attempt to cancel,” he said, his voice full of doubt.
“It would be easier to die.”
Ridge tried to put the pieces of the conversation together. He knew Drew Forrester was Montgomery’s cracker jack media specialist. “Cancel what?” he finally interjected.
Both heads turned toward him. Reservation shimmered in Dara’s eyes. She’d deliberately ignored him since last night. Ridge wondered if that was a result of his actions, and felt the slightest sting of regret. He’d intentionally made her uncomfortable because he’d seen that reckless glint in her eyes, the womanly curiosity. Perhaps he could have let it pass if he hadn’t felt an answering flicker of restlessness inside him. But, hell, the last thing he needed was for Montgomery’s goddaughter to spin her feminine wiles around his head and seduce him.
“Cancel what?” he repeated.
Clarence cleared his throat. “Well, it seems that Mr. Forrester accepted an invitation for Miss Seabrook to participate in an athletic event for the purpose of promoting Mr. Montgomery’s campaign.”
Dara threw Clarence a long-suffering glance. “What Clarence means is that Drew promised the three major television networks and the rest of the free world that I would skate in a parade next week.” She pulled the pair of hot pink and black in-line skates from the bag and spun one of the wheels. “I’m surprised this wasn’t in my file, too,” she muttered darkly under her breath, then tossed Ridge a look of defiance. “I can’t skate, can’t ski, can barely dance. It took me a long time to get used to high heels.”
Her confession amused him, but he restrained himself from laughing. “And you can’t cancel,” he said, confirming her earlier statement.
“Drew doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no,’” she said glumly.
“Quite true,” Clarence agreed. He paused, assessing Ridge. “I don’t suppose you know how to—”
“Absolutely not,” Dara said, rising from the sofa. “It’s not in Mr. Jackson’s job description to teach me how to skate. Besides, I’m sure he hasn’t spent the last few years whizzing around on in-line skates, so—”
“I could teach you,” Ridge casually intoned. “I’ve been on rollerblades a few times. And a fair portion of my misspent youth,” he added cynically, “was spent on skateboards.” There’d been so much darkness when he was a teenager, that sometimes all he could recall of that time was his mother and her addictions. He was surprised by the faint glimmer of his fond memory. “I even won a ribbon once.”
“That doesn’t mean—” Dara began.
“What size skates do you wear?” Clarence asked.
“Eleven.”
Clarence was already on his way out the door when Dara called after him. “Clarence!” She ran to the door. “Wait! I don’t want—” She groaned in exasperation when the door closed behind the campaign coordinator. “Oh, Lord, save me from controlling men.” She turned around to face Ridge. “You really don’t know what you’re getting into. You may carry a gun and know how to go hand-to-hand with the bad guys, but you are really out of your league on this one. This is going to take more than patience.”
Ridge had to confess that Dara was turning this into the most interesting job he’d had in years. “I’m a patient man,” he said in a mild voice.
She waved her hand dismissively. “This is going to take more than skill.”
“I have plenty of skill.”
“You don’t understand. This is going to take a miracle. We are talking about a woman who gets dizzy walking across the beginner’s balance beam. I never could balance a book on my head for my finishing school class. I’m not a balanced kind of person.”
Complete silence followed. Ridge cleared his throat to cover the chuckle he couldn’t contain.
Dara narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Ridge agreed, but couldn’t keep his amusement from his voice.
“I meant that I have a problem with keeping my balance.”
“Right.”
Dara gave him a withering glance. “If I hear you make one crack about my being unbalanced, I’ll—” Tossing her head, she glared at him, obviously trying to come up with a suitable threat. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something rash,” she promised, all heat and bluster.
Something rash. Ridge irreverently wondered what that would be. He’d love to see it. “I haven’t said a word.”
“Yes, you have,” she muttered. “You just didn’t say it out loud.”
Three hours later, in a quiet little park, Dara’s rear end came into intimate contact with concrete for the twentieth time. “That’s it!” She began tugging at the laces to her skates. “I won’t be able to sit down for a whole week.”
“You’re quitting.”
Dara heard the surprise in Ridge’s voice and glanced at him. “I wish. No. This is just a temporary retreat. I’ll try again in a couple of days.” She turned her attention back to the laces and felt her own jolt of surprise when Ridge’s strong, warm hand covered hers.
“One last try,” he said, leaning down beside her. “This time I’ll pull you.”
Dara had rejected this suggestion every time he’d made it. She could handle the instructions, and though he hadn’t made any jokes, she could have handled them, too. She just didn’t want him touching her. He made her feel flustered. “We’ve been over this. You won’t be able to pull me in the parade. I need to be able to do it myself.”
“And you will. This is just one of the steps m learning. C’mon.” He gently urged her to her feet.
Immediately feeling her feet roll in opposite directions, she grasped for Ridge. “I’m going to fall again,” she said, half warning, half plea. “I’m going to—”
Ridge pulled her flush against the front of him. “No, you’re not,” he growled, his voice full of determination, his body a wall of rock-solid strength.
Struggling for a sense of balance that was depressingly elusive, she looked up at him and shook her head. “You’re taking this personally and you really shouldn’t. I warned you it would take a miracle. I told you—”
Ridge’s hard gaze met hers and Dara bit her tongue. “You will learn to skate. I’ll make sure of it.”
She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Have you always been this strong-willed?”
Something flickered in his eyes, perhaps a memory, Dara thought, because his expression relaxed slightly.
“Yeah, I guess I have,” he said. “What about you?”
She was surprised by his assessment. Most people didn’t remark on her will. For the most part, Dara thought she kept that quality well hidden. She glanced down. “No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“Make your skates face forward,” he told her. “And hold on.”
“Don’t worry,” she murmured, concentrating on her feet.
“Look up. If you watch your feet, you’ll end up tripping. You have to watch where you’re going.”
He started skating backward, pulling her gently along. “So when did you develop your stubbornness?”
“I thought we used the term strong-willed.” Keeping her gaze trained over Ridge’s right shoulder, Dara tried not to think about the warm, bulging biceps she was clinging to, the way Ridge’s hands curled around her waist, and the brush of his spearmint-scented breath over her face as he chuckled.
“Okay,” he conceded. “Strong-willed.”
Their speed picked up the slightest bit and Dara tightened her grasp. “My mother raised me, and she was sick a lot when I was growing up. I guess you could say it was a case of what doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.” She felt his gaze on her and looked up at him to find him regarding her intently. “What?”
He paused. “My mother was sick a lot, too.”
She felt a wave of understanding and saw the same emotion mirrored on his face. In that one moment there was a link between them, a shared experience that had shaped and hurt and left its imprint.
In some corner of her mind she heard a bird chirping and felt the October breeze brush over her, but her senses were dominated by the man who held her in his arms. As she clung to him, she sensed they’d both stepped onto a tiny piece of common ground, and for the first time in months she didn’t feel alone. “How long was she sick?”
Ridge slowed, and the distance between their bodies dwindled from inches to centimeters. “From the time I was born until the day she died. She was a drug addict.”
She heard the grief, and again, identified with it. His gaze flickered between her eyes and mouth, and Dara held her breath. His eyes were tawny, nearly topaz. She’d always thought of them as unusual, and now she knew why. They reminded her of a lion’s eyes, compelling and a bit untamed. A ripple of awareness quivered and quaked inside her.
His closeness was an emotional and sensual seduction more powerful than anything she’d ever experienced. It scraped off the layer of poise she’d hidden behind for months, leaving her bare. His chest was no more than a breath away from her breasts. Her heart pounded, and she didn’t know if she should stop the spell or make it last. But another need surfaced, the need to be known.
“My mother is mentally ill,” Dara confided quietly. “She wasn’t diagnosed for a long time. When she stays on her medication, she does well, but sometimes she forgets.” She took a deep breath. “I always thought it would have been nice to have my dad around, but he wasn’t.” She shrugged, suddenly wondering if she’d revealed too much. “What about your father?”
Ridge’s gaze turned turbulent. “He wasn’t in the picture, either.”
“My father died. He-”
“Mine might as well have,” Ridge said, his tone flat, his eyes giving away the anger.
Dara sensed an immediate distancing from him, and felt upset. It was as if he had teased her by opening the door a crack, then slamming it quickly. Stiffening in distress, she looked down and immediately stumbled, the movement throwing her against Ridge’s chest again. “Oh! I’m sorry. I think-”
“You looked down again,” Ridge said in a low voice that made her too aware of how close his mouth was to her forehead.
Desperately struggling for her equilibrium, she shook her head. “I know, I know. It’s a terrible habit, isn’t it? I think the lesson has lasted long enough.” She pushed ineffectually at his chest. “This sidewalk’s done enough damage to my rear—”
Ridge swore. “Stop pushing me away. You’ll fall again.”
Falling was okay, Dara thought. Falling was easier than being held by Ridge. “Then I’ll just sit down so I can get out of these skates,” she announced, immediately bending her knees.
“Let me help—” Ridge began to kneel.
“No!”
Ridge stared at her.
Dara winced. She lowered her voice and managed a small smile, but she didn’t even attempt looking at him. “I appreciate it, but I can do this much myself. Really,” she insisted when he sat beside her. “You’ve done too much.”
Dara meant that last statement with all of her heart. In more ways than one, and in every way that counted, Ridge had done entirely too much.
After they left the park Ridge gave Dara a wide berth, as much for himself as for her. Quiet and guarded, she kept her conversation with him to a minimum. It was so different from the openness she’d exhibited that he felt a strange sense of loss. He wasn’t totally sure what had happened back there, but he knew it shouldn’t happen again. There was one thing he was sure of, though.
He had wanted to kiss her.
Not just a gentle, friendly brushing of their lips. What he’d really wanted was to taste her, to slide past her lips and teeth and take her breath and let her take his. He’d wanted the tangle of her sweet tongue with his. And if he were honest, he would admit that he wanted to join more than his mouth with Dara.
Stifling an oath, Ridge decided honesty was definitely overrated. He needed Dara for one thing, and it wasn’t sex. He needed her to get to Montgomery.
When they returned to the hotel suite, Dara flipped through her messages and frowned. “I’ve got some calls to make. My mother and Drew,” Dara said, looking worried. She headed for her bedroom.
The expression on her face gnawed at him. “Is she okay?”
Dara glanced over her shoulder, meeting his gaze for the first time since they’d left the park. Caution and need smoldered in the blue depths of her eyes. Ridge wondered how he’d ever thought of her as cool and superficial. “I don’t know,” she said, and hesitated for a moment. Then her lashes swept down, shuttering her eyes from him. “Thanks for asking.”
Two hours later, after Ridge had heard the faint lilt of her voice beyond the wall and the rush of water for her bath, Dara came back into the darkened living room of the suite where he sat watching a ballgame on TV. Dara gave a covetous glance to the two slices of pizza left in the box.
“You can have it,” Ridge offered.
“Are you sure?” Standing in front of the coffee table, she paused, wondering if she should have just stayed in her room the rest of the night. She could have waited until tomorrow to tell Ridge about the change in schedule, but she’d felt restless and hungry.
“I’m sure.” Rising, he took a few steps into the adjoining kitchenette and opened the refrigerator. “Beer or cola?”
Dara nudged the olives off a piece of pizza and took a bite. “I don’t suppose there’s a margarita or two in there.”
Ridge cracked a smile at the wistfulness in her voice. “No, but I’m sure we could get one sent up from the bar.”
