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“I need you to give me an interview,” she blurted. “I’m working on a piece about key parties and you’re gorgeous. I mean, perfect. I mean, perfect for my demographic.”
Oh, God, could she just die now and get it over with?
But when he threw back his head and laughed, she realized he wasn’t laughing at her. He had the same kind of let-it-all-out humor that Emma Constable, her foster mother, possessed. The kind that attracted people to her the way people always walk to a fireplace when they enter a room.
“Is that all you want me for?” Josh said at last, when his amusement had simmered down to a smile. He smiled with his whole face, eyes included, which were crinkled at the corners. “I was hoping for a little more than that. Such as a prize. And a drink. And a dance, too. To start.”
The smile took on another dimension, something hot and focused and filled with meaning.
Whoa. Lauren tried to take a breath and found she had to work at it. “Demanding, aren’t you?”
“Not demanding.” His eyes sparkled. “But when a woman tells me she needs me, I like to give her options.”
Oh, there were definitely options here. Excitement and anticipation began to beat in her blood. “Why don’t we start with the prize? That’s the easy part.”
“And the rest of it’s hard?”
Lauren gave him a sideways glance as she led the way to the stage, a glance filled with humor and invitation. “That depends on you, doesn’t it?”
He laughed again as they reached the podium. Maureen looked from Lauren to her companion and Lauren could swear the other woman physically restrained herself from reaching out and stroking him.
Lauren could hardly blame her, since she felt like doing that herself. Josh was incredibly touchable. The fabric of his shirt draped his shoulders and chest in a way that made you want to find out what was underneath. Most men wouldn’t have worn black jeans to a semi-dressy event like this, but then, she didn’t hear any of the women complaining about the way those jeans hugged him at thigh and hip. Or the way they accentuated his long stride.
Josh took the pair of tickets Maureen handed him and gave one to Lauren. “Dancing in the Street.” He glanced at her. “I can’t remember the last time I went to the theater. The way my work schedule has been, I think it was 1999.”
Uh-oh. Shades of Carl the programmer.
The jungle beat of anticipation in Lauren’s veins faded to a four-finger tap of disappointment. She knew the type—they romanced you just because they could, and then on Monday it was back to work in the corporate castle, where they felt safe and in control, and people were paid to do what they said, and they forgot to call.
Sure, he might be interested. God knew she was. But not enough to risk her self-esteem yet again with a guy who would put her on his scale of priorities somewhere between the office and his daily workout at the gym.
She needed to get out of this gracefully, with her pride still intact. Behind Josh’s back, Lauren raked the sea of people with a hasty glance. Where were her sisters when she needed them?
GETTING THE LOVELY LAUREN to stay in one place long enough to talk to her was proving to be as difficult as pinning down George Lucas for an interview.
Josh had succeeded with Lucas, mind you, and the resulting story had been in the issue the magazine’s readers had voted “Best of 2004.” But so far tonight, all he’d managed with Lauren was to launch her at Kit Maddox—thereby losing a dance—and to win a theater ticket, after which she’d promptly vanished.
So she’s not interested. Write it off.
That was the problem. He could swear she was interested. Part of it was the way she said outrageous things and then let her hazel eyes lock on his mouth while she waited for him to respond. Part of it was the way she’d looked at him after she’d come back from her dance with Kit Maddox—she’d lit up like a kid at Christmas when she’d seen him waiting for her at the edge of the dance floor. It was pretty hard to resist a woman who looked at you like that.
Not that Josh had any intention of resisting. Until now he’d poured his concentration into work, into making enough money so that he’d finally feel safe. He had a knack for analyzing popular trends and seeing what consumers were going to need a few years down the line. That, combined with a business confidence that appealed to fellow venture capitalists, had made him a success in the oak-sheltered enclaves along Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley.
However, it didn’t do a damn thing for his social life. Which brought him back to this club and Maureen Baxter’s charity bash. She was a friend of one of the other investors in Left Coast magazine, who had talked him into coming after the last quarterly forecast meeting. It hadn’t taken much to convince him. It was time to put some serious investment into the opposite sex.
Both women and entertainment hadn’t been on his agenda much in recent years. He was—he admitted it—rusty. He was going to change all that.
Okay. But there are a lot of beautiful women here in short black skirts with fabulous legs. Pick one of them.
Nope, he thought, obstinate even with the voice of reason in his head. I have the key to Lauren’s lock. That’s supposed to mean something.
The adventurer in him enjoyed a challenge. The logician figured the odds were pretty good she was as attracted to him as he was to her. And the male underneath it all wanted to know how those legs might feel wrapped around his waist, what that generous mouth would taste like under his, wanted to test the weight of those small breasts under her fragile silk top.
If things progressed that far. He was going to do everything in his power to see that they did.
Fifteen minutes later he found her sitting alone at a table near the dance floor, speaking rapidly into a minirecorder. The music had slowed down, and colored spotlights circled the floor, illuminating her skin and then leaving her in the muted glow of the table lamp.
He folded himself into the spindly gilded chair next to her and waited for her to finish dictating her thought. “No rest for the published,” he said, indicating the recorder.
She didn’t apologize for losing him earlier. Nor did she look unhappy to see him. Either she had social Attention Deficit Disorder or she was focused in a major way on her story. He liked focus in a woman. But selfishly, he wanted that concentration turned on him for a little while.
“I still have what you need,” he went on. “We haven’t gotten around to that interview yet. Who do you write for?”
She put away the little unit in an evening bag that, from what he could see, didn’t have room for much more than the recorder, a credit card and a lipstick. As she concentrated on the mundane task, her hair tumbled forward and hid most of her face. “I’m a freelancer. Anyone who will pay me, basically.”
“I know how that goes,” he said with sympathy. In his view, it wasn’t important that he owned a thirty-three percent interest in the magazine. What mattered was the writing. He’d been submitting stories on spec since he’d been in high school, and his progress toward acceptances by Left Coast put him, in his opinion, at the top of his game. “Some months I could barely come up with the rent, much less pay the bills.”
She shook her hair back. “Are you a journalist, too? I thought you might have been in the movie business.”
He made a face. “Not me. The closest I get to movies is interviewing the odd producer or actor, which is why I knew Kit Maddox. No, I write for Left Coast.”
Something flashed in her eyes before her lashes came down and veiled them. “Lucky you. I’m not sure Left Coast is in the market for a piece on key parties.”
“You wouldn’t think so,” he said easily. “Depends on the slant.”
“Oh, come on. They only buy the kind of stuff that wins prizes. And I hardly think the Pulitzer panel would consider something like this.”
From her tone, he couldn’t tell whether that was a good thing or a bad one. “Well, I don’t write my stuff with the Pulitzer committee’s opinions in mind. Talk about a way to shut down your creativity.”
To his relief, she smiled and the light came back into her face. For a moment suspended in time, he gazed at her. Her skin was smooth and tinted with color, her eyes the color of tea in the warm light from the lamp. Hair like spun taffy cascaded around her shoulders in an uncontrolled way that gave him an involuntary picture of how it would look tumbled on a pillow.
His pillow.
Tonight.
The band launched into the sensual, minor chords of an old blues song. At the same moment Lauren raised her gaze from where it had settled on his lips and met his eyes. He’d wanted that look turned on him. Oh, yes. Josh felt a shower of heat.
“Why did you run away from me?” he heard himself say.
The music wrapped around them, insinuating itself into his heartbeat, pulling them together. “Because you’re a menace,” she said softly.
A menace? Had he misheard her? He leaned in, close enough to hear. Close enough to smell her perfume. “How can that be?”
“The way chocolate is. The way it’s so bad…and tastes so good.” Her voice was low, her gaze locked on his mouth in a way that excited him past bearing.
“Would you like to dance?” His words came out involuntarily, a knee-jerk reaction to physical stimulus instead of the result of actual thought.
In response, she rose and held out her hand. He took it and led her onto the dance floor, feeling her fingers, cool and slender, in his. A pianist’s hands. Or a journalist’s, made for keyboarding. Touch typing.
Touching.
Would you relax? It’s just a dance. Keep this up and she’ll have you arrested.
She was too tall to fit under his chin, but she fit pretty nicely everywhere else. Her cheek brushed his as she settled into the rhythm of the music, their feet sliding into a lazy rhumba step.
“You’ve had some experience at this,” he murmured into her hair, trying to make small talk while he got his equilibrium back.
“You like the way I move, do you?”
So much for small talk. In the space of eight words she turned the dance inside out so that all he sensed was the feel of her, the scent of her hair that combined something herbal with lemon, and the way her thighs brushed his with every step. He was pretty much in sensory overload, with no cycles left to initiate speech, so he settled for a noise in his throat that meant he agreed.
Yes, sir. His whole body agreed.
“I never thought of dancing as a social activity,” she murmured. “Everyone should just admit that it’s the opening act to something much more fun.”
“Like what?” he managed to ask.
“I’ll give you one guess.” Her smile told him he wouldn’t need more than that. But that smile, up close and personal, scrambled his brain.
Get a grip. Maybe you’re misreading her. “An interview?”
She giggled against his shoulder and he closed his eyes in sheer pleasure at the movement of her breasts against his chest. So much for getting a grip. Try again.
“I’m still working on my original list. I’ve got the dance. We can have a drink afterward. And then it’s up to you.”
He hoped that she opted for “full speed ahead.” His body, her body, the gypsy-blues music—all three combined in a heady mix that was going to set off fireworks any minute now.
Hell with it—maybe he should just think about getting Lauren out of here.
“About that interview,” she murmured in his ear. Her lips moved against his earlobe and made desire spike through him. “I’m trying to think how I might describe you.”
“Hardworking writer? Owns his own condo, paid off his car, definitely interested in the author of this piece. How’s that?”
“Mmm, I was thinking of something more descriptive. Like a dark chocolate truffle. Sinful and rich and everything I know I shouldn’t want, but that I crave.”
She craved him? Josh gave up on trying to talk his body out of doing what it wanted to do when hers obviously wanted to do it, too. He glanced over the heads of the crowd. Where the hell was the door?
“I’m not sure I want you to think of me as food,” he murmured. “Teeth are scary to a guy.”
Again, her breasts bumped his chest gently as she muffled a laugh in his shoulder. And again, sparks of heat flared to life in his blood.
“I never use teeth on a truffle. I like to lick them on the outside until they melt. Then explore their lovely rich centers with my tongue.”
Breathe, before your lungs collapse. “Suck them dry, do you?”
“Oh, yes,” she purred in his ear. “And they love every minute of it.”
Need sang through every vein and he forgot dance steps, propriety, everything but getting her alone. Then he remembered the private dining rooms, big enough for half a dozen—or two. With any luck, one of them would be empty. He slid his arm closer around her waist so that her hips ground against his and danced her over to the dark side of the room.
THE UNIVERSE WAS LAUGHING at her, Lauren thought, trying to talk sense to herself when her body and her runaway mouth definitely did not want to be sensible.
Yes, she was dancing to something very sexy and slow with a man who turned her knees to butter. Yes, her deprived libido had taken over and given him a shameless come-on.
She was behaving like the notorious Lorelei, the woman who chewed social commentary and pop culture for lunch, the woman the male sports writers loved to hate. Why, oh, why, did she have to be unlocked by a staff writer from Left Coast magazine, the very place she’d give her eye teeth to write for?
She’d laugh about this with Rory and Mikki tomorrow, over a latte and at least two of Rory’s blueberry-cheese croissants. But for now she was going to steal these lovely moments and enjoy the heck out of them for as long as they lasted.
Because of course they wouldn’t last. She couldn’t afford to keep him around, looking gorgeous and sounding sinful and jeopardizing her career with every breath he took.
The music merged into something just as slow and sexy, some Latin love song that picked up where the gypsy blues left off. Josh’s arm tightened around her and their haphazard direction took on purpose. Lauren brought her mind back from the hazy place where it was thinking about truffles and sex to the clear place where it thought about danger and realized that Josh had danced her into one of the club’s private dining rooms.
“Now, then,” he murmured, and pulled her flush against him. They might have had to be socially acceptable on the main dance floor, but in here, it appeared, all bets were off.
Yes, it was dangerous. But, oh, Lord, it felt so good. The two White Knights she’d consumed earlier had made her low opinions of key parties and her determination to work go all blurry and insubstantial. And who wanted opinions, anyway, when reality had eyes like this and a mouth to die for? What she wanted was Josh, and he was pressing against her at this moment as though he meant business. She slid her arms around him and let her body melt into the hardness of his.
Really hard.
Her knees, which had begun to get their strength back, weakened as her body welcomed the bulge behind the button fly of those black jeans. Desire spangled her blood with tiny little rockets, all going off at once.
“Josh,” she managed to get out, “what if someone comes in?”
“We’re slow dancing,” he murmured, his lips brushing her ear, his hips suggesting illicit things against hers. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
She shivered. If his mouth could make her body react like this when he spoke, what would happen if he actually kissed her? And those hips—they promised paradise. “Not as long as you stay between me and the door over there.”
“What is it about you that has this effect on me?” he whispered. His tongue touched her earlobe and she closed her eyes as the little rockets went off again, trailing fire from her ear to her belly.
“My razor-sharp intellect?”
His hands slid over her skirt. “Mmm. That’ll do for a start.”
She couldn’t stand it one more second. Leaning into him, she backed him against the wainscoting and took his mouth with hers.
He made a little sound of pure male pleasure in his throat and his lips opened. His mouth wooed, his tongue seduced and, before she knew it, it was she who was backed against the paneling, hanging on to him for dear life, because by God, if she let go she’d fall. She put everything she had into kissing him because he demanded no less.
Somehow he knew when to release her and let her breathe, dropping his lips to the neckline of her tank top and tracing kisses over her collarbone, working his way along her throat.
If it were possible for a man to seduce and worship at the same time, Josh was doing it.
When one hand slid up and cupped her breast, Lauren was sure she would come just from the fire of sensation in her nipple under his teasing thumb. She felt barely contained, ready to erupt. She was so ready, in fact, that if he even—
The other hand slid under the hem of her short, black chiffon skirt. Her thigh muscles, which under any other circumstances would have tightened in preparation for fending off the attack, relaxed and said, “Oh, yes.”
“No stockings,” he whispered in her ear, setting off a host of goose bumps. He touched her thigh, then cupped her bottom again, with no fabric between her skin and his bare hand this time. A brief exploration gave him his answer. “A thong.” His voice held pleased discovery. “What color?”
What color? The color of flushed skin, the color of ripe fruit…oh, that was it. The color of her tank top.
“Peach,” she managed to say.
