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And at this point, she didn’t want to.
With another forbidding glance, he slapped down the first card. A deuce.
Hers was a king.
Several minutes later, when the game was over and all the cards were piled in front of Shay, she began to stack them neatly.
“Round two?” he asked. There was a tense note to his voice.
Likely because he thought they’d have to sit here all night playing cards instead of having another kind of round two...around dawn.
In her room at the inn.
They could do that, though, couldn’t they?
Her heart started beating faster and she could feel her pulse thudding in her throat and at her wrists. She’d never propositioned a man before...but now she wanted to. Really wanted to, and hadn’t she promised Mel she’d have fun? Glancing at the clock on the wall, she noted it was after midnight.
It truly was her birthday now. “You know, there are rooms here...” she began.
His gaze was trained on her face. She had the impression he was counting each and every one of her eyelashes. “I was told there’s no vacancy,” he said.
Shay’s hand crept toward her purse, still hanging on the hook. From it, she pulled out the plastic key card, which she placed on the bar’s surface and then slid toward the man at her right. He was turned toward her on his stool, his elbow on the bar. “I reserved the last one,” she whispered.
Hesitating, she ran her gaze over his rugged shoulders, his wide chest, his powerful thighs. If she scooted closer, she’d be between his legs, surrounded by him. Closer to the clean scent that she’d been aware of for hours.
Shay cleared her throat and reminded herself she was due a present. “The bed’s big enough for two.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c61536d5-6abb-5849-8452-d0b64b77f603)
JACE JENNINGS STARED down at the innocuous rectangle of plastic. Birthday Girl’s fingers touched one edge, the nails short and painted with clear polish. Transparent, the same as her face.
He’d been able to read every expression flitting across it all night long.
At first, she’d been shy. She was younger than he was, by a decade, he supposed, and he’d had no intention of even engaging her in conversation. But then she’d launched into her martinis-and-birthday confession and he’d found himself drawn in...then drawn to her.
When he’d shared that bit about his childhood—and what had prompted him to do so, he couldn’t say—her quasihuffy, amusing response had tickled his funny bone. Not many people managed to do that.
But Birthday Girl and her “gloom balloon”...
Shaking his head, he felt a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth again.
“You’re leaving me hanging here,” she said now.
He glanced up. She was beautiful. That had struck him immediately. Her shoulder-length hair was a mix of red, gold and brown. Her eyes were an arresting shade of pale blue, her skin creamy, with just a faint spray of tiny golden freckles peppering her small nose. As a builder, he had an interest in and appreciation of the bones of things, and those of this woman were both delicate and elegant. Her mouth was lush, though, its unpainted color a pale rose.
“Well?” she demanded.
And he could read her again, the slight truculence a defensive position. “This could be a dangerous habit, Birthday Girl.”
“This?”
“Propositioning total strangers.”
Her mouth dropped, and she yanked the key card back toward her. “I don’t—”
“Wait.” He placed his fingers over hers. “That came out wrong.”
She was staring down at his hand. Jace knew why. The instant they touched, heat snapped like an electrical shock, then ricocheted through his body. He supposed she felt something similar. All night, he’d been half-hard and her flesh beneath his was taking him the rest of the way.
Slowly, as if retreating from a skittish creature, Jace lifted his hand. Her gaze lifted, too, and those blue eyes zeroed in on his face.
“I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing,” she declared.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” And why the hell would he care if she propositioned a new man every night? But for some stupid reason he’d wanted to hear her say she didn’t out loud. He’d wanted to know that this...connection was something unusual for her, too. Different. Special.
Because it felt damn special to him.
Holy hell, she’d bought him birthday cake.
“We don’t know each other,” he heard himself say, though he’d never told anyone else about those daily frigid showers. It was true. His father had believed in cold water as the cornerstone of making a man out of a boy.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Divorced.” And his ex was dead now, a recent circumstance that had wrought a huge change in his life. Just the thought of that made him toss back the rest of the whiskey that he’d switched to when the cards came out.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.” He paused, then lifted a brow. “Boyfriend?”
“If I had one, wouldn’t he be the one spending my birthday with me?”
Which made Jace think about what he’d been calling her. Birthday Girl. She hadn’t offered up her real name. He hadn’t corrected her when she misheard his as “Jay.”
This beautiful young woman was really offering up no-strings, one-night-only, stranger sex.
God knows he didn’t deserve it, but—
“Okay, then.” Birthday Girl slid off her stool and onto her feet. He was close and turned in her direction, so she landed between his knees, and swayed there a moment. To steady herself, one hand reached out and clutched his thigh.
Uh-oh. Those martinis were still in her system.
That thought didn’t stop another piercing zing of heat from rocketing from her hand to his crotch, just a few inches north. And it wasn’t only her touch that got to him. There was that sweet little dress she wore that showed a whole hell of a lot of bare leg in the front, then flowed lower around the back.
“I’m going,” she said, still looking a bit woozy. “It’s up to you whether you come with me or not.”
Jace sighed. Of course he was going with her. Whether he crossed the threshold of her room, well, first he had to make sure she got to it safely. He hopped off his own stool, feeling a twinge as his newly healed left ankle found the ground. “I’m right behind you, Birthday Girl,” he said.
Actually, he took her hand, as well.
That was weird. He wasn’t a toucher. When he was with a woman he didn’t worry about keeping her close. But this one was tipsy, he reminded himself, and though he’d been raised by a distant and unfeeling man, in this instance he wasn’t going to take after the old bastard.
Drawing her nearer, Jace could smell the sweet scent of her hair. Now he went a bit woozy.
“It’s this way,” she said, tugging him toward a steep staircase off the foyer. Judging by the architecture, the Deerpoint Inn had to be about a hundred years old. On the way inside earlier that night, he’d glanced at the framed magazine article about the place that hung on the entry wall. The building had started life as a boardinghouse for area loggers. Now they’d converted the original fifteen rooms upstairs to just six, each with its own bath.
Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night.
She wobbled on her heels as she mounted the first step, causing him to drop her hand and grasp her hips instead. Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night if she could make it to her door.
Jace, on the other hand, had a very uncomfortable few minutes as he was forced to watch the bunch of muscles in each fine ass cheek as she continued upward. He breathed easier when they made the narrow hallway. It smelled of old wood and roses.
With his fingertips hovering a quarter inch off the small of her back, Jace followed her to a door bearing a brass 6. He took the key card from her hand and inserted it in the slot. The mechanism flashed green and he heard a small snick. He turned the knob and checked out the environs over her shoulder, the room illuminated by lamps at each end of a long table centered beneath a narrow window. Papered walls, dark wood floor covered with a thick area rug with a floral design. A night-light gave him the glimpse of a tiled bathroom through a half-open interior door.
Birthday Girl stepped inside.
Jace realized it was now or never.
Hell, she was beautiful. Alluring. Tempting.
But...
He had a pile of regrets on his plate and using the circumstances—birthday, flames, liquor, lust—to get a quickie shag out of this pretty young thing would be just another black mark on his soul. In the morning, he didn’t want to be something she was sorry for.
There’d been enough of that in his life. From his father, his ex and, most likely, his daughter.
Her head tilted, and the room’s light caught the warm fire in her hair. “Well?”
He couldn’t help but lean toward her. She took a half step, getting closer, and then her eyes closed as she offered up her mouth.
Jace’s cock turned to steel at the anticipation of a kiss written all over her face.
She was more than halfway drunk, he reminded himself.
Too young for him.
Too sweet.
And yet...
She was too appealing not to touch one more time. He pressed the pad of his thumb to her lips—God, so soft and lush—and whispered in her ear. “Many happy returns.”
Then he strode away, cursing himself, the constricting denim of his jeans and his suddenly discovered streak of decency.
Downstairs, the management was trying to make the refugees comfortable in the dining room. Jace opted for his SUV instead, reclining the seat and trying to get comfortable on the stiff leather. By leaving that lovely offer of a night with Birthday Girl on the table, at least his conscience couldn’t nag him, he decided.
Except that it could, of course.
There was still the small matter of his daughter to consider. She was mere miles away, at his house situated on the shores of Blue Arrow Lake. Though he hadn’t seen her in a decade, Jace wasn’t as frustrated as he should have been that their meeting was postponed for another day. Truth to tell, he was grateful for the reprieve.
A lousy night’s sleep seemed a fitting punishment for that.
At first light, when he smelled coffee emanating from the inn, he climbed from his car. His muscles were stiff and he limped inside, his left foot not long out of its soft cast and not yet completely normal. His head ached, too—though not like it had after the debilitating concussion he’d suffered that had made focusing on paper or screen or even spoken words sometimes impossible—and reminded him he’d downed plenty of beer and whiskey the night before.
He wondered how Birthday Girl was faring.
And then he saw her, the back of her anyway, sitting on the same stool she’d occupied yesterday evening. She was dressed in jeans this time, but her auburn hair was unmistakable. Jace paused, uncertain how to proceed. He looked for an open spot at one of the tables in the restaurant, but it wasn’t a big space and some of the patrons were still sleeping, stretched on two chairs.
The only seat free was the one beside her. Why not take it? He’d done the noble thing, hadn’t he? It would have been much more awkward to wake up on the neighboring pillow, after all.
As he approached, his gaze caught that of the bartender’s. He signaled the need for java by miming a mug to his mouth and then he slid into the empty place beside Birthday Girl.
Though she didn’t glance his way, her body stiffened.
Jace hesitated again, his gaze focused on the gleaming wood grain in front of him. Good manners dictated he should at least look at her, not to mention express a friendly “good morning.” But during the course of the night in the SUV, he’d begun to rethink the hours they’d spent sitting together and the unprecedented appeal she’d had for him.
It was just some birthday cake and card games, he’d told himself and the moon, its beam shining through the windshield. Too much booze. In the light of day, she probably wouldn’t be as pretty as he’d thought.
The intense attraction was likely overblown in his mind as well, Jace had decided then. And...
And for some reason right now he didn’t want confirmation of that.
Stop being ridiculous. Just get out a greeting and let reality assert itself. “Good morning,” he finally said, sliding a look at her.
Her face turned toward him. Icy-blue eyes. A faint flush obscuring the tiny freckles on her nose and edging her fabulous cheekbones with a delicate pink. Her rosy lips pursed. “Really?” she said, her voice frosty.
Okay.
Okay, fine.
The booze, the fire and the cake had not caused him to exaggerate anything. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.
Just as sexy.
She made him just as hard.
But the disdainful expression on her face communicated clearly that she was no longer as sweetly dispositioned as she’d been before he’d rejected her generous offer and left her with only the touch of his thumb at the door. He winced. “Birthday Girl—”
She slid from her stool and, with her coffee in hand, stalked off. He stared at the insulted line of her spine and the angry sway of her hips. Oh, yeah. She still made him hard. Very hard.
Jace sighed, shifting on his stool to adjust the fit of his jeans. Damn.
And he’d thought taking her to bed would result in regret. Instead, he’d learned that being a good guy left him feeling no more satisfied than being a bad one.
* * *
HALF HORRIFIED AND half humiliated, Shay escaped toward the stairs that would take her to her room. She glanced back at the bar and saw Jay still in place, his head turned to watch her go.
Another wash of heat rose up her neck and burned her cheeks. In the morning light he wasn’t any less masculine. Still had that charisma in spades, too. She could feel the pull even from here, as if he’d lassoed her waist and was steadily drawing on a rope held between his big capable hands.
