скачать книгу бесплатно
Not that anyone else seemed to notice.
While Renzo tracked her with his eyes as she inched her way between men and women playing complex games of flirtation, he realized no one else noticed the incongruity of this reserved creature in the midst of the urban jungle.
Talk about being thrown to the wolves. The feathery blonde looked completely unprepared to handle herself in a flagrant meat market like this one. Where was her big brother, damn it?
Rising to his feet, Renzo passed off his plate to a harried busboy and moved closer to the dance floor, all thought of second jobs and law school tuition forgotten for the moment.
Not that he was attracted to this woman, he told himself. Just that the protector in him couldn’t stand to watch her brand of innocence stomped by the lascivious lounge lizards populating the club.
He had already glimpsed some slick Don Juan type headed her way, two drinks in his hand. And no way did this man know the wide-eyed blonde. Renzo had seen this particular Romeo at the club every night he’d checked in on Giselle for the past month. Nico had tossed the guy out on his ear last week for aggressively dancing with a woman who obviously wanted no part of his company.
Renzo finished his bottle of water and tossed it on to the bar, keeping his eye on the silk-suited barracuda closing in on little Miss Innocent. Giselle wouldn’t exactly mind if he didn’t get back to the kitchen for another hour.
She could call him a chauvinist all she wanted. He had every intention of running interference for the blond newcomer—at least until he convinced her she was out of her depth in these shark-infested waters.
Swearing off women didn’t mean he couldn’t help out a lady in distress. Or possibly introduce himself after he’d given her a hand. He had a pulse, after all.
And, damn it, he wasn’t a monk.
ESMERALDA WONDERED if it was too late to back out of the blind date thing when she spied the man in a slick silk suit walking toward her with two drinks in his hand. He shared the same reedy, too-perfect good looks as her former boss, an association that brought a wave of nausea to her already quivery belly.
She forced herself to stand still, however, determined not to follow her instincts tonight. If this guy turned out to be Hugh Duncan, she would find a way to survive it. Although she suspected it would be easier to get through the evening if she’d worn her bra. At this rate, she’d be hunching her shoulders all night to disguise the fact.
Then again, her date might be very nice despite the strong cloud of musky cologne that reached her long before he did.
Her lovely neighbor Mrs. Wolcott assured her Hugh was a perfect gentleman.
Straightening her spine as the man approached her from the right and opened his mouth to speak, Esme jumped when another voice intervened.
“I’ve been keeping an eye out for you.” The warm, masculine rasp emanated from her left. Somehow she’d missed this man’s approach in her fear of turning her back on Mr. Reedy.
A damn shame considering the newcomer looked like a page on a girl’s pinup calendar. She had never possessed such a thing herself, but in the many hours of her life she’d spent ensconced in bookstores, Esme had most certainly spied hunk calendars. This guy, with his dark hair, even darker eyes and sexy bronze skin should have been in one of the “Studs of Italy” editions.
Not that she’d memorized her favorite titles or anything, either.
“You’ve been looking for me?” She wondered if her voice conveyed a pathetic amount of hopefulness. Glancing back and forth between Mr. Reedy who’d taken the liberty of ordering a drink for her already and the Italian stud who possessed killer muscles and yet not a hint of aggressive body language, Esme crossed her fingers that the Italian stud proved to be Hugh Duncan.
She cast a pointed look to her left, away from the overpowering cologne of Joe Slick. “I’m Esme Giles. Are you Hugh?”
The guy to her right bristled, raising himself a little taller in his polished leather shoes as he shoved a drink under her nose. “Hey, Esme, how about some sex on the beach?”
She struggled not to roll her eyes. Even the college history geeks had been above using that tired bit. Curious, she wanted to ask the man if that line had ever worked for him before, but Mr. Tall, Dark and Delicious inserted himself between them to face her.
“I’m the man you’re looking for.” He nudged the reedy guy’s glass aside with one hand while smoothly steering Esme toward the back of the club and away from the other man.
Very presumptuous. And okay, maybe a little sexy.
Part of her was grateful for the assistance since she’d been getting a sinus headache from the other guy’s cologne overload, but part of her didn’t appreciate being led around by the nose. Or in this case, the elbow.
The new Esmerelda had every intention of calling her own shots and following her own path in life.
She stopped just before they reached a secluded table, refusing to go any farther until she’d confronted Rambo.
Whirling on him, she sent her skirt in a swirl about her legs, the resulting breeze creating a delicious draft up her dress. But as she faced her rescuer again, she was struck anew by his sexy good looks. The bronze skin, the dark eyes, the longish dark hair. His sharply sculpted face was full of hard angles, relieved only by the soft fullness of his mouth.
And despite the serious feminine competition all around, this guy had noticed her and stuck around long enough to help her out of a sticky situation. The night seemed to be looking up.
Clearing her throat, she tried to remember Mrs. Wolcott’s description of Hugh Duncan and failed. Any mental vision she might have formed of Hugh had somehow transmuted into the hard edges and clean lines of the man standing in front of her. “I’m sorry, but did you say you were my date?”
“You’re meeting a blind date?” His dark eyebrows knit together in an intimidating furrow. “In this meat market?”
What a perfectly eloquent assessment of the place. Club Paradise was lushly beautiful with its rich appointments and clever lighting, but the atmosphere in the lounge was a bit—sexually overt. Mrs. Wolcott had given Esme a room here tonight so she would have safe territory to retreat to if her date didn’t work out. “It is a meat market, isn’t it?”
He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath about idiotic men as a group of dancers clad only in strategic white feathers breezed past them.
She noted with interest that his gaze didn’t stray to the expanse of exposed feminine flesh that passed almost under his nose. If anything, she had been more curious about the feathered dancers than he seemed.
Appreciation for meeting a real gentleman—something far too rare in her opinion—warmed her to her toes. And he’d known she was meeting a blind date. Obviously she had found her man. “If you think Club Paradise is such a pick-up joint, why did you want to come here tonight?”
“This wouldn’t have been my first choice, that’s for sure. Who was it you said you were meeting again?” He glared around the room as if surprised to find himself here.
“Hugh Duncan.” She snagged a fresh prepoured glass off the champagne fountain at one end of the bar and helped herself to a little more of the bubbly drink. As part of ladies night, the Moulin Rouge Lounge offered free champagne to its female guests until 1:00 a.m., according to a sign in the lobby. She’d had a glass a few minutes ago, but the nervousness chugging through her and the tingly awareness of the man standing next to her urged her to indulge in a little more. Between the rapid pounding of her heart and the swift whoosh of air in and out of her lungs, the sedative effects of alcohol would be most welcome right about now. “I’m so glad I found you. I have to admit I’m a little out of my element in here. I feel better already to be with someone I can trust.”
He was quiet for so long, she hesitated before sipping her champagne.
“Assuming you are my date tonight?” A wave of nervousness threaded through her. She’d be a little bit embarrassed at this point if he wasn’t.
He reached for the glass just as she put it to her lips, covering her hand with his own, effectively seizing the drink and awakening a long slumberous desire she hadn’t known she’d harbored until just this very moment.
“Why don’t you let me get you a drink?” He leaned closer as he spoke in soft, serious tones. The gesture was at once totally innocent and thoroughly intimate. His dark eyes cut through the shifting blue and red lights, making the rest of the noisy club disappear for one heated moment. “And I am most definitely your date tonight, Esme Giles.”
2
RENZO EASED the champagne glass out of Esme’s hand slowly, not wishing to scare her away by appearing too domineering. Didn’t she know the dangers of picking up a prepoured glass of anything in a crowded nightclub?
He’d have to talk to Giselle about getting rid of those filled glasses on top of the champagne fountain right away. The drinks were perched in a place where anyone could have access to them—not a good setup when date-rape drugs were so widespread. It took half a second for someone to drug a drink, a stat savvy club-goers kept in mind.
Not Esme Giles.
Her brand of innocence could be downright dangerous.
Applying light pressure to the small of her back, Renzo nudged her toward the table he’d staked out for himself in the back. Over her head, he crooked his finger at one of Giselle’s waitresses.
“Why don’t you let me order you a fresh drink?” He rolled out the Cesare charm, needing to keep Esme entertained and out of circulation in the lounge. “My sister is something of a food and drink wizard and she works in the back. How about if I ask her to prepare us something a little more exotic?”
Esme seemed to weigh the idea for a moment. Then she smiled up at him in a half-cocked grin that struck him as a rusty movement. “Yes. Absolutely. Exotic is exactly what I’m looking for tonight.”
God help him.
If she’d said as much to Don Juan the barfly who’d tried to corner her before, the guy would have hustled her out of the club and back to his room in five minutes flat.
Apparently Esme had no sense of how to protect herself in the bar scene.
And although Renzo hadn’t intended to misrepresent himself tonight, he also wasn’t about to allow Esme to wander the club alone looking for her idiotic blind date.
What kind of moron lured an innocent woman like Esme into the most scandal-ridden hot spot in South Beach? A guy who didn’t deserve her, that much was for damn sure. For that matter, maybe this Hugh person had sleazy intentions.
In which case, Renzo definitely wasn’t going to let him have a shot at her.
As he and Esme slid into the seats of the round booth table in the back corner, Renzo asked the waitress for a couple of Good Fortune Potions, Giselle’s most recent creation.
He’d simply enjoy a drink with Esme until he could put her safely in a cab back home. Surely he could justify not telling her the truth since he was only protecting her. It’s not like he had designs on her for himself.
Still, in an effort to forestall any questions about him, Renzo thought he’d better take the conversational lead.
“Esme is a great name.” Okay, admittedly his dating small-talk skills needed a little sharpening up, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice.
“Short for Esmerelda, but that’s a bit of a mouthful.” She peered around the club from the safe haven of their table, her dark-blue eyes absorbing the action with the passive interest of a woman accustomed to observing life rather than taking part. “My mother thought if she gave her daughter an exotic name I would eventually live up to it.” Esme gave a shrug, her exposed shoulder calling attention to itself a few feet away from him. “But no luck so far. I’m an out-of-work art historian with an interest in antiques. Not exactly the outgoing and adventurous type.”
Renzo allowed his gaze to wander over her again with this new information in mind. But his eye was distracted by the shadow of her body beneath her dress and the…
Holy hell.
She was naked underneath that dress.
Thank you, God, he wasn’t in the middle of taking a drink or he would have spewed it for sure. Luckily the waitress chose to make a reappearance just then, bringing with her a tray laden with the exotic concoction his sister had demanded he taste just last night for the first time. The blend of fruit juices, rum and who knows what else, garnished by a fortune cookie had been delicious.
Esme reached for hers, a gesture that put her breasts in close contact with the silky thin fabric of her lavender dress. Breasts he could now see that were shaped like small apples, tipped with dark, tight nipples.
A rush of male appreciation swamped his senses, alerting his every stray blood cell that a sexy woman sat within tantalizing reach. Heat crawled over his skin, making his whole body edgy and very…ready for action.
Great. This was just what he needed—he was trying to be noble and in the course of two steamy seconds his body had turned traitor to the cause.
How had he ever thought that dress of hers was conservative?
“I’m sure you’re living up to the name.” His words scratched across a throat gone slightly hoarse. Maybe this swearing off women thing hadn’t been such a good idea. His self-imposed sexual deprivation of the last few months was robbing him of necessary objectivity. “You risked accepting a blind date tonight. That takes a healthy sense of adventure.”
“Maybe a little.” She sipped her drink through the straw, her forehead puckered in wary concentration as she tasted the concoction. And smiled. “My compliments to your sister. This is delicious. Much better than champagne.”
She bent forward for another sip, her breasts grazing the fabric of her dress again. Not that he had a clear view with the table in the way and her sitting at a forty-five degree angle to him in the round booth. Still, his imagination easily supplied what he couldn’t see with his own eyes.
“You’re an art historian?” Think conversation. Think conversation. He refused to morph into some slick pickup artist just because he’d caught a glimpse of bare breasts. He could maintain an intelligent discussion even if Esme was naked beneath her dress. He hoped.
“I just left a position with the South Beach historical museum that I held for five years. We focused on preserving Floridian culture and we recently added a small exhibit on native architecture.” She did a double take as the lights dimmed on the dance floor and the music changed to a salsa beat. The club-goers who had peopled the floor moved to one side to make room for the hourly show. Leaning close, she whispered in Renzo’s ear. “What’s happening now?”
Warmth tripped through him along with her hushed words. What was it about a whisper that created an immediate veil of intimacy around two people?
“There’s a floor show every hour. Sort of a Vegas-style event with lots of—” Half-naked bodies. Painted-on tattoos over women’s nipples. See-through feathers in the place of panties. “—costumes.”
She’d see for herself soon enough. The parade of perfect female bodies and fluffy white feathers was already snaking through the club toward the open dance floor. He and Nico had been trying for weeks to convince Giselle that the sex-drenched club was no place for a young woman to work, but to no avail so far.
Renzo didn’t take any note of the parade of bare flesh, however. He simply watched Esme’s reaction, mesmerized by her transparent features as her face registered surprise, titillation and pleasure at the seductive moves performed by the Moulin Rouge’s dancers.
Her cheeks flushed pink the first time a dancer sent a limber high kick in their direction. Her soft lips parted on a little gasp when another woman brought her supple bump-and-grind routine a few inches from their table.
Was Esmerelda Giles—who, according to her, had never quite lived up to her name—as innocent as she appeared? She had to be in her mid-to-late twenties if she’d worked as an art historian for five years. Didn’t that sort of profession call for some kind of postgraduate work? Surely she couldn’t be all that inexperienced. But there was an undeniable naiveté about her actions, an unexpected sense of wonder Renzo found incredibly appealing.
So many women he’d dated were blatantly in charge of their sexual desire. The dating mentality these days seemed to be I want this, I want it nonstop for 12.2 minutes and I don’t want to wait for it. Did it make him a chauvinist to think that in women’s rush for control in the bedroom a certain willingness to go with the flow, an openness to try new things, had been lost?
Spontaneity seemed like a quaint notion of the past.
However, it seemed like a quality Esme Giles might possess.
Too bad he wasn’t going to act on the growing attraction he felt for her.
Besides, Esme wasn’t the sort of woman a guy could just cart back to his room. She was more demure than that. More subtle. A woman with delicate ethics and old-fashioned values.
JUST HOW DID A WOMAN go about enticing an Italian stud back to her bedroom?
Esme pondered the question as she stared across the table at her sexy-as-sin date.
The seductive performance of the feather-clad dancers had just ended and the music pulsing through the club switched from the blood-pumping salsa to a funky R&B song that had everyone on the floor. Something about the staged show remained with Esme, some vaguely erotic longing, a latent desire to perform and be noticed in the bold manner the dancers had called attention to themselves.
If she could claim that kind of sensual power, she would surely be an in-charge woman to be reckoned with. A fierce female. A woman who ran with the wolves.
All of which was exactly what she needed. And she’d be on her way to having those things with one simple seduction.
The decision to pursue her date wasn’t nearly as difficult as she might have expected. She couldn’t deny an instant attraction to his dark good looks and his fathomless brown eyes. Under normal circumstances she would have crossed her fingers that he would call her—knowing all the time he wouldn’t—and wasted a lot of time being disappointed.
But under her new life principle, she would do the opposite of wait around. She’d call the shots, she’d seduce him, and maybe—just maybe—she’d actually get what she wanted in life for a change.
Simple.
Of course, Esme fully recognized the brilliant plan was probably helped along by the happy combination of champagne and Good Fortune Potion zipping through her system. Other women did this all the time, however, so she refused to worry about the consequences.
Her date—Hugh, she reminded herself—leaned closer, the short sleeve of his black T-shirt brushing her shoulder as he did. “So what did you think of the show? The Moulin Rouge Lounge has caused a bit of a local uproar with the antics of their dancers.”
Esme rejoiced over the conversational opening and prayed she wouldn’t blow it. “I thought it was incredibly sexy. Very…stimulating. Definitely inspiring.”
Hugh’s jaw dropped just a little. Esme hoped that was a good sign.
“Really? Some of our local politicians are making a push to put more restrictions on the creative license of the performance.”
“The audience is appropriately mature here.” Esme shook her head, thinking of all the risqué artworks from antiquity that were accumulating dust in the basements and storerooms of museums all over the world. “Throughout history, there has always been a movement to suppress sexual art, but who exactly is getting hurt in the wake of a little titillation at an adult dance club?” She cast him what she hoped was a suggestive smile and flipped her hair over one shoulder. “So a few more men and women go home together tonight because a provocative dance has gotten them fired up. What harm is there in that?”
Hugh’s dark eyes widened.
Did he have no clue what she was driving at here? Perhaps a woman needed to be more overt about what she wanted.
