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What was she thinking?
She searched her brain for an answer. How great he smelled. How great he might taste. But more than that. She’d been thinking how small and feminine she felt tucked in under his chin, his hands shaping her hips.
How female.
She blinked, shocked by her thoughts. Since when had she cared about that? But her gaze was filled with his perfect symmetrical features and it all became fuzzy again. Why couldn’t he have a prominent forehead and squinty eyes and a crooked nose? He was a footballer, for crying out loud, didn’t they break noses regularly?
Why didn’t she feel like this about Len, her fellow researcher-cum-occasional-lover? She’d never once had to quell the urge to sniff him. They worked together every day, occasionally accompanied each other to university functions, and every once in a while he got antsy and irritable and they had sex, so he could concentrate on what was really important—astronomy.
She’d never slow-danced with Len. Nor did she want to.
She’d never wanted to crawl inside his skin.
It was a scary thought, and Cassie tried to pull away as another slow song started up, but Tuck held her fast and her damn body capitulated readily. Too readily. It was obvious biology was going to win out over intellect and logic tonight and that just wasn’t acceptable.
She needed to defuse the situation, to distract herself from the dizzying power of him.
‘So,’ she said, reaching for a safe, easy topic of conversation, ‘Tuck isn’t your real name?’
It was hardly Mensa level, and they weren’t about to unlock the secrets of dark matter, but at least it would give her back some control.
Mind over body.
And he looked like a guy who liked to talk about himself.
‘No.’ Tuck shook his head. ‘My Christian name is Samuel. Samuel Tucker. But no one calls me that. Except my mother.’
Even his wife had called him Tuck.
‘And Great-Aunt Ada,’ Cassie reminded him.
Tuck smiled. ‘And Great-Aunt Ada.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Why not be called by the name you were given?’
Tuck shrugged. ‘It’s a nickname.’ He looked down into her genuinely perplexed face. ‘Don’t they have nicknames in Australia? You’re called Cassie instead of Cassiopeia.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘No. Cassie is an abbreviation of my Christian name, not a nickname. If that were the case for you, you’d be known as Sam.’
Tuck waited for her to spell abbreviation for his poor addled brain. If she hadn’t felt a hundred kinds of right, all smooshed up and slow dancing against him, he’d be getting kind of ticked off by her attitude towards his mental prowess.
Instead he was prepared to humour her.
‘Except Tuck sounds cooler.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Cooler? Who says?’
Tuck liked the way her brows drew together, showcasing her grey-blue eyes to perfection. ‘Tens of thousands of football fans, screaming my name across every state in this great land for a decade.’
Not to mention quite a few more of the female variety also screaming it out loud in hotel beds across every state for just as long.
‘Oh.’ Cassie thought about it for a moment, but she’d never understood the dynamics of hero-worship regarding something as frivolous as sport. ‘Sorry, I don’t get that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a guy thing.’
Cassie suspected it was probably a jock thing, but she tucked it away anyway to ask Len about when they next spoke.
Thankfully the song ended and, feeling more in control of her recalcitrant hormones, she took the opportunity to step firmly away from him. ‘I’m done now,’ she said, and was proud of how strong her voice sounded when her body was howling to be nearer to him.
Tuck smiled and bowed slightly, ever the gentleman, as he gestured for her to precede him. It didn’t stop him from perving on her ass the whole way back to the table, though.
Almost two hours later everyone had left and Marnie, Gina and Cassie, under the direction of Great-Aunt Ada, had seen all the guests off and organised the removal of the gifts that had been left despite Reese insisting that no one bring any.
Tuck and his pheromones had also insisted on helping.
Cassie was getting twitchy. She had a paper to get back to. She didn’t have time for a big, blond ex-quarterback who’d obviously fallen out of the stupid tree. And hit every branch on the way down.
No matter how nice he smelled.
But somehow he was accompanying them back inside the grand entrance to the Bellington Estate, and then he was walking up the ornate stone staircase next to her, his arm occasionally brushing hers. When Marnie and Gina turned left at the top Cassie hoped that Tuck would do so too.
No such luck.
He smiled at her as he turned right. ‘After you,’ he said.
Cassie looked over her shoulder at Gina and Marnie, who had stopped and were looking at her with bemused expressions.
Gina waved her fingers and said, ‘Need someone to tuck you in?’
Marnie seemed to have trouble keeping a straight face and Cassie frowned at her.
‘I think she’s got that covered,’ Marnie said. ‘Night, Cassie. Night, Tuck. Sweet dreams.’
Cassie glanced at Tuck, who was also smiling.
‘Good night, ladies. See you in the morning.’
Before Cassie could make further comment her ‘friends’ had turned away and she was watching their backs retreat. She hoped that Marnie and Gina would use the time to talk, because it had been awkward between them at the table tonight. Although if the distance between them as they walked was anything to go by it didn’t look like they were ready to bury the hatchet just yet.
She looked at Tuck, and even though he was a good two metres away his aroma wafted her way and she instantly forgot about the animosity between her friends. Her belly tightened and then looped the loop.
‘What’s your room number? I’ll see you to your door.’
The last thing Cassie wanted was to have Tuck anywhere near her room. In fact she’d be perfectly happy never to be anywhere near him again. She was unsettled. Confused.
She was never unsettled. Never confused. And she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
‘I don’t need you to accompany me to my room,’ she said, taking care as she passed him to keep her distance.
Tuck watched the swing of her ass again for a moment or two, then called after her, ‘My momma would tan my hide if I didn’t see my date to her door.’
Cassie stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. ‘I am not your date.’
‘You sure danced like I was your date.’
Heat flooded her cheeks as she remembered how she’d clung and buried her nose in his clothes, as if he was her own personal scratch-and-sniff jock. Cassiopeia Barclay did not blush—ever! Curious at the strange phenomenon, she brought her palms up to cradle her face.
She cleared her throat. ‘It was…crowded,’ she said defensively, dropping her hands and folding her arms primly.
Tuck’s gaze dropped. Her folded arms had pushed her breasts up and together, exposing a nice curve of bare flesh at the criss-cross front of her dress for his viewing pleasure. Tuck had seen a lot bigger. He’d also seen smaller. Cassie’s looked just about right to him. A perky B cup, he’d hazard a guess.
Tuck grinned. ‘Come on, darlin’, it’s late. Let’s get you to bed.’
Cassie shoved her hands on her hips, determined not to let an image of him sprawled in her big hotel bed derail her thoughts. ‘Don’t call me darlin’.’ She mimicked his slow, easy Southern drawl to perfection. ‘And I’m perfectly capable of finding my way to my room. I can count.’
Tuck’s grin broadened. ‘Well, maybe you can help me find my room?’ He scratched his head in the most perplexed manner he could muster. ‘There’s a lot of wings in this place and it does get kind of confusin’ after a hundred, don’t it?’
Cassie rolled her eyes. The man was living proof that evolution could go in reverse. ‘How on earth do you count all those millions that kicking a stupid ball around earned you?’
Tuck shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Got me some bean-counters for that.’
Cassie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was going to be one of those has-been sports stars whose money was all gone in a matter of years because he had a little too much yardage between the goalposts to keep track of it himself. And he trusted too easily.
‘Follow me,’ she said huffily as she headed down the long grand hallway.
Tuck’s gaze ran over the contours of her back and settled on how her dress swung and fluttered with each movement. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he murmured under his breath.
Tuck deliberately took his time, stopping to examine old paintings hanging on the stonework, suits of armour and the antique vases that dotted the magnificent corridor. He kept up a running commentary for Cassie’s sake, purely because it seemed to annoy her.
‘Will you hurry up?’ she said impatiently, looking over her shoulder for the tenth time as he stopped to read the name of the artist of a particularly austere portrait. ‘I have a paper to get to.’
Tuck looked up. ‘You brought work?’ He shook his head at her and tsked as he meandered closer. ‘All work and no play makes Cassiopeia a dull girl.’
Cassie glared at him as they got underway again. ‘Not that I expect you to understand this, but there is nothing dull about auroras on Jupiter.’
‘Auroras?’
‘Yes—you know, like the Aurora Borealis?’ His blank look didn’t seem promising. ‘The Northern Lights?’ she clarified.
Tuck had witnessed the Aurora Borealis in Scandinavia on two separate occasions, but he wasn’t about to disappoint Cassie’s assumptions. ‘Isn’t she some mermaid?’
Cassie sighed. There really was no grain in his silo. He was an empty vessel. ‘No. It’s a real thing. It’s why I’m here. I’m completing my PhD studies at Cornell so next year I can go on a research trip to Antarctica. And Aurora was Sleeping Beauty. Ariel was the Little Mermaid.’
Tuck shrugged. ‘Well, it sounds like a mermaid if you ask me.’ And then he shot her his best goofy grin for good measure.
Thankfully her room approached, and Cassie all but leapt at the ornate doorknob. ‘This is me,’ she said. ‘What did you say your room number was again?’
She’d barely been able to concentrate on anything he’d said. When he wasn’t wandering off like a distracted child or lagging behind to look at things he was right there beside her, weaving his heady scent all around her.
Like he was now.
Tuck smiled. ‘Three hundred and twenty three,’ he said, and watched the fact that he would be sleeping directly opposite her dawn slowly on her face. ‘Howdy, neighbour.’
‘Oh.’ Cassie looked at the door opposite. Too close for comfort. Her highly developed sense of fight or flight kicked in as another dose of his masculinity wafted over her.
‘Right, then,’ she said, fishing in Gina’s glittery clutch purse for her room key and locating it with shaking hands.
The adrenaline. It had to be the adrenaline.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, barely looking at him as she turned away and reached for the door handle, hastily swiping the plastic card through the electronic strip.
The light turned red and she swiped it again, her hands even shakier. Another red light elicited a frustrated little growl from the back of her throat. She needed to get inside her room. Inside was work and logic and focus and sanity.
Out here with Tuck’s quiet presence behind her was insanity. And damnation.
She could feel it pulling at her body with sticky tentacles, drugging her with its perfume, wrapping her up in its heady thrall.
She swiped one more time. Red light.
‘Allow me.’
Cassie’s fingers stilled as Tuck’s hand slid over them. His body moved in behind hers and she was instantly cocooned in his intoxicating aroma. She shut her eyes as her nipples responded to the blatant cue. She could feel his breath in her hair, the warm press of his chest against her back, the power of his thighs behind hers.
She leant her forehead against the door, desperately reaching for logic. ‘I spend all day probing the outer depths of our solar system through a massive telescope,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty sure I can open a damn door.’
‘Shh,’ Tuck said, easing the key out of her unresisting fingers. ‘Some things don’t need big brains,’ he murmured. He took the plastic. ‘Some things need a slow hand…an easy touch.’
He slid the card through the strip with deliberate slowness. The lock whirred, the light turned green and he smiled as he turned the handle and pushed the door open a fraction.
‘Easy.’
Cassie practically whimpered at the low, deep sound of his Southern accent. It weaved around her like the melodic notes of a snake charmer, trapping her. The door was right there. It was open. All she needed to do was move. But she couldn’t.
‘Cassie?’
Tuck could feel her trembling and a surge of desire crested in his belly. His groin tightened. His blood slowed to a thick, primal bound. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and, to his surprise, she turned. Only a whisper separated them as heat flashed like a solar flare between them.
Her eyes looked all misty and dazed, her pupils large in the grey-blue depths. They seemed to shimmer up at him and he fell headlong into them. Her mouth was slightly parted and it drew his gaze. He picked up a long dark ringlet draped forward over her shoulder and wound it around his finger. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re quite beautiful?’
Cassie’s throat was dry as a sandpit as she shut her eyes against the seduction in his. No one had ever told her that. And she’d never cared. ‘I’ve never aspired to be beautiful,’ she dismissed. She was more comfortable with brainy.
He waited for her lashes to flutter open again before saying, ‘Well, you’ve failed.’
Tuck only intended to give her the briefest of kisses as he slid his palm onto her cheek. Just a little taste of her mouth. The mouth that had dissed him all night. Just to show her how pretty damn clever he could be.
And to leave her wanting more.
But the second his mouth touched hers and she opened to him as if he was water and she was dying of thirst it all went flying out of the window.
Cassie mewed as his lips brushed hers and her senses filled up with him. There was no thought or logic or analysis in play any longer as she overdosed on his intoxicating scent, sucking him in, drenching her cells in his pheromones. Her body had completely taken over and left her brain out of the equation.
She raised herself up on tiptoes. Her hands slid around his neck. Her mouth parted of its own accord. She moaned and dragged him closer as hot, scalding lust lashed her insides and flayed her flesh with the driving need for more.
It didn’t make any sense. Not when she swiped her tongue across his lips, or pushed it inside, or stroked it against his. Not when she moaned. Not when she gasped. Not when she grabbed his lapels to press herself closer.
She’d never been kissed like this.
She’d never kissed like this.
And still she was full of him. Her head buzzed with the essence of him. Her mouth was on fire. Her belly was tight. The heat between her legs tingled and burned.
Tuck barely managed to hold onto her as Cassie kissed him as if she was an evil genius intent on wicked things and he was her latest experiment. He might not be dumb as a rock but he was certainly as hard as one now as her deep, sexy kisses, body-squirming and desperate little whimpers stroked all his hot spots.
She even kissed differently from other women. No mouth gymnastics, no hands down his pants in seconds, no theatrical panting, no Oh, baby, baby. Just a scorching one hundred percent, full-throttle touchdown of a kiss. Her lips on his lips. Open and going for it.
He pushed her hard against the door, wanting to get closer, to kiss her deeper. But he’d forgotten it was already slightly open and she stumbled backwards. Their mouths tore apart.
He grabbed for her, finding her elbow, dropping it once she’d stabilised. And then they stood staring at each other, breathing hard, not moving for a moment, neither sure which way to jump.
Tuck knew enough about women to know that look in Cassie’s eyes. He knew he could pick her up, stride into her room and lay her on the bed and she’d follow wherever he took her. And enjoy every single second of it.
But he saw a whole bunch of other stuff in her eyes too. Most of it he couldn’t decipher. But he could see her confusion quite clearly. Obviously that kiss just did not compute for Cassie.
She looked as if she needed some time to wrap her head around it. Hell, he sure as hell did!
‘Are you okay?’
Cassie nodded automatically but she doubted she’d ever be okay again. What the hell had just happened? She felt as if she’d just had a lobotomy. Could a kiss render you stupid?
‘I think I should go now. Unless…’ He dropped his gaze to her swollen mouth.
Cassie shook her head and took a step back. No ‘unless’. Go, yes. Just go. He’d turned her into a dunce.
Tuck smiled at her dazed look. It was nice to have left an impression on Little-Miss-Know-It-All, even if he was going to go to bed with a hard-on the size of Texas. ‘Goodnight, Cassiopeia.’
Cassie was incapable of answering him. She feared she’d been struck mute. As well as dumb. She watched him swagger to his room opposite, slot his key in, open his door. He turned as he stepped into his room.
‘I’ll be right over here. If you need a cup of shhu-gar.’
Cassie had no pithy comeback as his door clicked quietly shut.
THREE
After tossing and turning for most of the night—not something that was good for her sanity—Cassie woke at nine a.m. and the first thing she thought about was Tuck. She dragged a pillow over her head and bellowed a loud, furious denial.
She always woke at six. And most certainly never thought about a man.
Cassie’s brain was engaged the moment her eyes flicked open after her regulation eight hours’ sleep. For the last several years her waking thoughts had centred on her aurora research and she’d spring out of bed and head straight for her computer.
This morning her head was full of Tuck and the kiss.
Her computer, the research, her will to live—all lost in a sea of oestrogen.
She yanked the pillow off her head and turned on her side. Her baggy T-shirt was twisted around her torso and the movement pulled it taut against her breasts. Her nipples responded to the brush of fabric, her belly clamped, and a red-hot tingle took up residence at the juncture of her thighs.
Cassie dragged some deep breaths in and out, trying to conjure up the latest deep-space images she’d seen yesterday. But it was no use—she could still smell him in her nostrils and taste him on her mouth.
The phone rang and she snatched it up immediately, grateful for something else to do, to think about.
‘Hello?’
‘Cassie, get off that computer and get your heiny down here now,’ Marnie demanded. ‘Reese is back and we’re having breakfast.’
Her friend’s Southern accent reminded her of Tuck’s lazy Texan drawl and Cassie almost groaned out loud. ‘I’ll be there in ten.’
Anything—anything—to take her mind off the annoying jock.
Cassie entered the grand dining room exactly ten minutes later, completely oblivious to the eyebrows her rather informal attire was raising. She’d thrown on a pair of loose leggings and a baggy T-shirt with a slogan that said ‘Back in my day we had nine planets’—one of the many geek-themed shirts Gina, Marnie and Reese had sent her over the years.
She hadn’t even bothered to brush her hair—just pulled it back into her regulation low ponytail, with her regulation floral scrunchie, and pushed one of her many-toothed Alice bands into it, ensuring it stayed scraped back off her forehead. There really was nothing more annoying than hair getting in the way when she was in the middle of something.
Actually, there was now. And its name was Tuck.
Unlike the rest of the people in the dining room, dressed in their country club pasteles, her friends didn’t bat an eyelid as Cassie scurried their way, then plonked herself in one of the three empty seats at the round table. They’d have been shocked had Cassie dressed in any other way.
Cassie forced a smile to her face as she looked at a glowing Reese, radiating the same kind of happiness she had a decade ago when she and her Marine had first met. ‘When did you get back? Where’s Mason?’
‘An hour ago.’ Reese grinned, sipping at some coffee. ‘He’s taking care of some business.’
Cassie barely registered Reese’s reply but nodded anyway. A waiter interrupted and Cassie, ignoring the piles of pancakes the others were tucking into, ordered the same thing she had every morning for breakfast—yoghurt and muesli and two slices of grain toast with Vegemite. When he informed her they didn’t have Vegemite she ordered jam.
‘You okay?’ Reese frowned. ‘You look kind of tired.’
‘I didn’t sleep very well,’ Cassie said.
Marnie looked at Gina, and Gina narrowed her eyes at Cassie. ‘Since when doesn’t Little-Miss-Eight-Hours not sleep well?’
Cassie looked at her friends all watching her with curiosity. She shrugged. She didn’t know what to tell them because she’d never not slept well.
Gina lounged back in her chair, her arms crossed, her fingers tapping against her arms. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with a certain quarterback, has it?’
Marnie sat forward, her blonde hair neat as a pin in a high ponytail that was one hundred percent more cute and perky than Cassie’s. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’
Reese frowned at both her friends. ‘Tuck?’
‘Tuck and Cassie danced last night,’ Gina said.
‘Real close,’ Marnie added.
Reese blinked at her. ‘Cassie?’
Cassie had decided on her way down to the dining room that she wasn’t going to tell a soul about the strange feelings coursing through her body, but she felt herself sag under the scrutiny of three sets of eyes. She’d always been a great believer in solving problems by seeking out experts in the field. And, having lived with these three women and been through all their relationship ups and downs, she had to admit she had a panel of experts in front of her.
What better people to confide in?
‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ she murmured. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I always sleep. I need to sleep. It’s vitally important that I do. I take specific medication to switch off my brain so I can sleep. And it never fails. I’m out like a light. Usually… And this morning I didn’t wake until nine… I’m always up at six. Always.’
‘Well, you were tired,’ Marnie reasoned.
‘And do you know what my first waking thought was about?’ Cassie continued, ignoring Marnie.
‘I’m guessing it was about something a little closer to the earth than usual?’ Gina said.
Cassie sighed in disgust. ‘It was him. The jock.’ She looked at her friends for answers. ‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me.’
Her friends didn’t say anything for a moment, as if they were waiting for her to say more or to clarify something. Then, one by one, the three women opposite her broke into broad grins.
She frowned. ‘What?’
Her friends had the audacity to laugh then, looking at each other as they cracked up. Cassie glared at them. ‘This is not funny.’
‘No, of course not,’ Reese soothed as she struggled to regain her composure. ‘Falling in love is never funny.’
Cassie gaped at Reese. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she spluttered.
‘Aww…’ Marnie purred, ignoring Cassie’s protest. ‘Our little girl is all grown up now,’ she teased.
‘And to think,’ Reese continued, ‘we voted you the girl least likely to ever fall for a man.’
Cassie crossed her arms across her chest and waited for their frivolity to wane. She would not entertain such unscientific mumbo-jumbo. Love was a fiction perpetuated by romance novels and Hollywood.