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The cold water took her breath away. She pushed her sopping bangs out of her eyes to see a completely unrepentant Will grinning at her.
Something lightened inside of her chest, and she grabbed the feeling and the moment with both hands.
“Oh, you are so dead meat, Will Harrison. Come on, Evie.”
That was all the warning he got before she jumped feet¬first into the pool and joined Evie in sending as much water at Will as humanly possible.
She wasn’t as good at it as Will and Evie, but at least two-against- one helped even the odds a bit. Will fought back, using both arms and hands to keep the water flying as he moved in her direction and backed her up against the pool wall, leaving her helpless under the constant fall of water.
Evie, that little traitor, switched allegiances and joined Will in dousing her.
She needed to get off the wall and back in the open. Gwen calculated her move, waited for the right second, then slid quickly to her left, planning to go under, push off the wall and slip quickly between them.
No such luck. Will moved at just the wrong—or possibly right—moment, and her push off the wall sent her barreling straight into him. Those strong arms locked around her and pulled her to the surface, keeping her trapped against his chest.
His wet, hard, stuff-of-fantasies bare chest.
Gwen’s shout of outrage died in her throat as the bare skin of her back burned where it pressed against his. She gasped instead. Every memory of last night’s kiss and the fantasies it inspired flashed across her mind.
“You got her, Will!”
“Indeed I do.” He lowered his voice and dropped his head closer to her ear. “Now what should I do with you?”
She shivered as much from the whisper of breath across her ear as from his words. Will answered her shiver with a squeeze that pressed her more firmly against him. Every inch of her—from shoulders to ankles—sizzled at the contact. The seconds stretched out as she reveled in the sensation. But the hard flesh nestling right above the swell of her bottom brought her attention rocketing back to his whispered question.
“I call for a t-truce.”
Will chuckled in her ear and whispered, “Coward.” But he did release her, and she sank into the cool water, allowing it to balm her burning skin. With a knowing wink in her direction that only scrambled her thoughts more, Will swam away to the other side of the pool.
Gwen climbed the ladder on trembling legs and retreated to the relative safety of the cabana. She would not take the bait of being called a coward, but she wasn’t going to run and hide in her room, either. She placed her sunglasses firmly in front of her eyes, buried her nose in her book and tried to calm her rapid breathing.
Evie produced a Frisbee, and she and Will began a noisy game of catch, giving her a much-needed opportunity to mentally regroup.
Sarah had been brutally direct this morning with her analysis of the situation. “Sounds to me like the attraction is mutual.”
Okay, so maybe it was. She couldn’t deny or ignore Will’s attraction to her, and she knew for damn certain she wasn’t immune to him. Sarah had listened to the full list of Reasons This Would Be Bad, but countered with romanticized possibilities that would ease any worst-case scenarios.
There was no romanticizing or outthinking the biggest Bad Reason, however, and that Reason was rapidly moving to the top of her list.
And that Reason would be how much she liked Will. Really liked Will. Irritating BlackBerry, bouts of overbearing arrogance and all, she’d finally found a man she liked to talk to. One who could surprise her and make her laugh at the strangest things. Everything she thought she knew about him had proved false; instead she’d found a handsome, charming, funny guy who was smart and successful and cared about his little sister.
She, thanks to the papers and her debs, knew a lot about his dating history. He wasn’t exactly a playboy, but he did play the field one socialite at a time. That, coupled with what she knew about Will’s workaholic tendencies and bolstered by some casual comments dropped by Evie, made liking Will a danger. Maybe Will wasn’t looking for anything permanent, but could she enjoy what he did have to offer? It would be one fabulous ride—while it lasted. Could Sarah be right and the Worst-Case Scenarios actually be fixable? Could her heart and her ego take the hit if it didn’t work out?
Evie, though, was still a sticking point. She didn’t want Evie to get hurt. Had Will even given thought how his serial- dating technique might affect a fifteen-year-old?
And could she handle being the next installment in that serial? She remembered the feel of Will’s skin against hers and the taste of him under her lips. The gooseflesh that rose on her arms answered part of the question: her body was more than willing to give it a shot.
“Gwen?”
Gwen snapped out of her reverie to find Evie and Will standing in front of her with identical puzzled expressions. Evie had a sarong tied around her slim hips, and Will had a towel slung over his shoulders. Her eyes followed the thin line of hair down to where it disappeared into the waistband of his trunks, and her mouth went dry.
Oh, yeah, her body was more than willing.
“Book not any good?” Evie asked.
“Excuse me?” She tore her eyes from Will’s abs and tried to focus. Both of them were merely damp, meaning they’d been out of the pool for a while.
“You’re not reading it. You’re staring at it.”
“You seemed to be pretty far away,” Will added.
She looked at the book in her hands. “Oh. Yeah. Um…” She fumbled. “I was dozing a bit there. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Will’s eyebrow cocked up and she realized where he’d gone with her statement. Ugh.
Evie, though, accepted her statement at face value. “Are you hungry, then? We’re going to order some take-out.”
“Sure.”
Evie went for the elevator while Gwen packed up her things, very aware Will was watching her.
“You were thinking pretty hard there. Come to any conclusions?”
Good Lord, was she that easy to read? Or maybe he wasn’t talking about that. She could have easily been thinking about a number of different problems in her life. Even the strictest tenets of etiquette didn’t require her to give him a complete answer, so she settled for one that would give him something to think about.
If he’d been thinking in that direction.
“Maybe I did.”
Since the day he’d brought Evie home, he’d never wished her gone. Not once. He may have briefly considered boarding school for her, but that was because he didn’t feel like a suitable person to raise a teenager, not because of her. She had her moments when he could cheerfully strangle her, but he wasn’t too proud to admit he adored the kid.
So he freely embraced the guilt that prodded at him when he wished Evie somewhere else tonight. Not gone, just not here in the room with him and Gwen. Her room would work just fine, but at nine on a Saturday night, he had no good reason to suggest she go there.
Even if he could come up with a good reason, he was hesitant to do so. Evie was having such a good time. So was he. Even Gwen had eventually relaxed and seemed to be enjoying herself. Take-out sandwiches and DVD movies, followed by Chinese take-out and now a game of Monopoly with no end in sight. He hadn’t been near his BlackBerry all day, and the upcoming meeting with the Japanese seemed a long way away. It had easily been the best Saturday he’d had in ages, and as soon as Evie went to bed, it was going to get a lot better. That much he was sure of.
Gwen might try to hide behind that Miss Behavior wall of appropriate politeness, but he knew it was starting to crumble. Last night’s kiss, the way her eyes had caressed him all day, the way he’d felt her shiver with desire against him in the pool today…the next step was inevitable. He knew it, and he was damn sure she knew it too.
So as much as he’d like to investigate that inevitability right this second, he could be patient and bide his time. He was content for the moment to relax against the sofa and nurse his beer while his sister beat them soundly at Monopoly.
Gwen sat across the game board from him, also on the floor, her bare feet with their bright red toes tucked underneath her. After her shower, she’d dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a white T-shirt, and her hair fell loose around her face. Without makeup, she looked even younger, and as she paid Evie for landing on Boardwalk, he wondered how old she was. At that moment, he realized he didn’t know all that much about her.
Evie, of course, probably knew Gwen’s entire life story by now; too bad he couldn’t ask her. He settled for something simple and innocuous.
“So, Gwen, how did you come to be Miss Behavior?”
Gwen cocked her head, seemingly surprised at the question. “Well, that’s kind of a long story.”
He looked over at Evie, who was busy counting her piles of money with glee. “I think we have time while Miss Moneybags plays in her ill-gotten gains.”
Evie stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re just a sore loser. I’m going for another soda. Anyone want anything?”
Gwen shook her head, then settled back against a chair. “Well, I moved to Dallas five years ago after Sarah got her job at Neiman Marcus. I’d finished protocol training in D.C., done an internship and needed to land somewhere. I don’t really have a hometown because we moved so much, and since my folks mentioned eventually retiring in Texas, this seemed like a good choice.”
“I knew you didn’t sound native.”
“Nope. But my dad grew up in Houston, does that count?”
He nodded. “So how’d you end up on a Web site?”
She chuckled. “Accidentally, I assure you. I never planned to do anything with teenagers. But when I got to Dallas, I needed a job. I started working with a friend of mine who did some deb training on the side, and it worked out pretty well. I made a name for myself doing that without really meaning to. ‘Miss Behavior’ was a nickname my deb class gave me a few years ago, and when one of those debs started the TeenSpace site, she called and asked if I wanted to be one of the columnists. The rest is history.”
“Sounds like you fell into the right job, though.”
“Maybe. But I can’t be Miss Behavior forever.”
“Sarah says Gwen wants to ditch the debs and go back to working with grown-ups.” Evie sat back in her place and eye-balled the stacks of money.
“Grown-ups?”
“Sarah needs to keep her mouth shut,” Gwen muttered.
“Sarah says Gwen’s going to bigger and better things one day, but she needs the debs right now because that’s who’s paying her rent,” Evie continued.
That reminded him. Her check was still in his briefcase.
“Thank you, Evie. That’s quite enough.”
Gwen’s carefully clipped tone made him laugh silently. He loved to watch Gwen wrap herself in politeness. Too bad he couldn’t prod her more often.
“Gwen speaks Japanese, you know.”
“Ev-ie!” Gwen looked ill at ease, but he didn’t know why.
“Well, you do. I didn’t know it was some kind of secret,” Evie grumbled.
“You’re right. It’s not a secret.” Gwen turned to him. “I’m not completely fluent, but I get by. I also speak German and a little French. No,” she added as Evie perked up and opened her mouth to say something. “I won’t conjugate those verbs for you. Madame Louise expects you to know them by Monday. Have you finished yet?”
Someone else might not have noticed the way Gwen subtly moved the topic away from herself, but Will did. And though he was more curious than ever to know more about her, he respected her desire for privacy—for the moment at least. Maybe it was some kind of lesson meant to teach Evie about polite conversation, and he shouldn’t undermine Gwen’s work to appease his own interest.
But he could use some help with his own Japanese lessons. Maybe Gwen would be willing to teach him a few phrases. The thought of private lessons with Gwen led him right back to his original wish that Evie would go to bed.
As if she’d read his mind, Evie stretched, looked at the game board pointedly and said, “If you guys will concede defeat, I’ll go work on some French before I go to bed. I’m pooped.”
Gwen’s eyebrows went up as she glanced at the clock. It was still early, but he certainly wasn’t going to argue with Evie’s plan. It sounded great to him.
Once Evie left, Gwen began tidying up the game pieces. Her teeth worried her lower lip, and he wondered what she was thinking.
“Where does this go?” She indicated the box.
“Beats me. I didn’t even know we owned the game.” He took another long drink of his beer as Gwen rose up on her knees to place the game on the glass-topped coffee table and reached for her own glass.
She settled back in her original seat on the floor, her back against the chair and her legs stretched out in front of her. Silence stretched between them and without Evie in the room, the air became charged with electricity.
Only a few feet separated them, and he closed the distance easily, watching Gwen’s eyes widen, then darken with unmistakable interest.
Will ran his hand down the silky skin of her arm and laced his fingers with hers. She didn’t resist as he tugged her gently toward him, and when her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips, what little blood was still circulating freely rushed to heat his skin.
Gwen cleared her throat. “Today was a great day.”
He dipped his head to taste the soft skin on her neck and felt her shiver in response. “It’s not over yet, you know.”
She’d known this was going to happen. Her day of brooding may not have provided many answers, and she still wasn’t sure this was the wisest course of action, but the tension inside her had her stretched to the breaking point. Will hadn’t touched her since that moment in the pool, but the long, lazy looks that traveled over her as strongly as a physical caress had kept her on edge all afternoon.
She had two choices: turn tail and run or seize the moment. While retreat was the safer, far more rational choice, she’d lost the battle with her rational brain hours ago. She could be careful, try to safeguard her heart and her business, but she wasn’t going to pass on what could be the most amazing man who’d ever crossed her path. Years of doing the prudent thing, of always weighing the benefits and minimizing the risks, hadn’t netted her much beyond a job that didn’t satisfy her and an existence that suddenly seemed rather blah and bland.
The sensation of Will’s lips on her neck was far from bland, and she tilted her head back to provide him greater access. Heat rippled over her as his mouth traveled over her jaw and captured her lips.
Oh, yes. This was definitely worth the risk.
Gwen eagerly fitted her body against his, loving the feel of him, while his kiss wreaked havoc on her senses. She twined her arms around his neck, allowing her fingers to slide across the taut cords of muscles, and held on while the sensations tried to sweep her away.
She wanted to be closer, to feel more of him, to taste more of him. She pulled her mouth from his, gasping for air, and moved her lips to the same spot on his neck he’d found on her moments earlier.
She was rewarded with a hiss of pleasure as her tongue snaked out to taste his skin, and the hand that had been massaging her back in rhythm to his kiss moved down to her hip in a heat-filled caress.
Turning more fully toward him, Gwen slid her thigh over his, trying to get closer to the heat she craved. Will responded by capturing her mouth in another searing kiss, latching his hands around her hips, and lifting her until she straddled his legs.
Oh, yesss, she thought, as his hands locked over her buttocks and snugged her knees up next to his hips. Her new position gave her easy access to run her hands over the defined contours of his chest, over those wide shoulders, until she could bury her hands in his hair and hold his mouth against hers.
A growl of desire rumbled in Will’s throat as his tongue mated wildly with hers. She gasped as his hand cupped her breast, his thumb dragging soft cotton over her distended nipple, and she arched back, allowing him greater access.
Will nuzzled her, and she cursed the T-shirt keeping his mouth from her skin. Every nerve ending screamed for his touch, and her body shook as pure want fired her blood. She wanted to feel his skin against hers, to revel in the magic his fingers worked on her, to let him soothe the ache growing deep inside her.
But not here. Sane thought clawed its way through her befuddled mind.
As if reading her mind, Will cupped his hands under her thighs and surged to his knees. “Not here. Evie might—”
She nodded, but he didn’t release his hold on her.
“Hang on.”
It took a second for Gwen to realize he meant that literally. Will got to his feet, and she clung to him like a vine on a tree as he padded quickly down the long hallway, past Evie’s closed door and into the master suite at the far end.
Will barely paused as he entered, simply nudging the door closed with his shoulder before crossing what seemed like a huge expanse to deposit her on her feet next to the most luxurious bed she’d ever seen.
This is your last chance to back out, her conscience reminded her. She quickly stomped it back down. She wasn’t going to worry about what might happen tomorrow—or the day after that. She could simply enjoy Will for the time she had him, and she’d have to trust she’d be able to make everything else work out.
That was her last fully lucid thought, as Will grabbed the hem of her shirt to pull it over her head. He thumbed the clasp of her bra open, tossing it to the floor with her shirt. Her shorts and panties quickly followed, and she stood naked in the half-light of the room.
