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It would also satisfy the flash of desire she felt whenever he was near. Give her an outlet for the emotional turmoil dogging her. Allow her a physical release she’d forbidden herself for far too long.
She caught her tiny smile in the mirror, envisioning Jake’s reaction when she made her intentions known. Would he run for the door? Or would he surprise her with an equally interested response? Either way, she viewed it as a win-win situation.
She took body lotion from her handbag and began smoothing it over her skin. Her neck. Her breasts. The balls of her feet. No, she would not by any means be mistaken for a seductress. Her black camisole was pure cotton, and her panties were plain. But she didn’t think even straight-shooting Jake McCoy could miss her message when she walked into the bedroom.
Fastening her attention on her hair, she smoothed it first this way, then that, frowning as strands sprang free like thick, unruly corkscrews. With the help of a little water and one of Lili’s rubber bands she found in her purse, she managed to pull it back in what resembled a twist, every wild strand smoothed, tucked and pinned in place.
Her fingers encircled the doorknob and she hesitated—likely the first time she’d ever hesitated in her life. Why, she couldn’t be sure. But in that one moment she knew a fear of rejection she was unfamiliar with.
Aside from their kiss at the D.C. café, there was no solid proof Jake was attracted to her. Yes, his gaze ignited the most delicious of desires within her. But her reaction could be based on nothing more than her need to escape the gravity of her situation.
She released a gusty sigh. There she went again. Analyzing everything too much.
She turned the knob then pulled the door open, standing in the passageway with only one thought in mind….
JAKE TURNED his cell phone over in his palm again and again. He really should call David, or someone at D.C. headquarters. But he couldn’t seem to make himself do anything more than listen to the sounds on the other side of the closed bathroom door.
He’d never been in such close quarters with a woman before. Well, yes, he’d been with a few women, and took some amount of pride in the fact that they numbered more than the fingers of one hand, but he’d never listened to one take a shower before. The images that slipped through his mind were just this side of pornographic and long past carnal. He could practically see the warm water sluicing over Michelle’s compact little body. Dampening her hair. Rolling over those soft, soft lips, tempting her tongue out to catch a drop or two. Splashing over her pointed breasts, causing them to swell and the tips to harden. He turned the phone over faster and faster as he inserted an image of himself standing in that shower with her. Bending down to claim her hot, wet mouth—
The bathroom door opened. Jake lunged for his cell phone, which had jumped from his hand.
Dear God, help me.
His gaze slid over her well-shaped frame. From the high-cut panties that gave her legs the appearance of being extremely long. To the camisole that clung to her torso and her breasts in a way his fingers itched to, to the way her hair was slicked back from her face, emphasizing the width and depth of her dark eyes, the fullness of her mouth, the long curve of her neck.
She couldn’t have provoked a more complete physical reaction from him had she walked out in nothing at all.
He forced himself to stare at the phone in his hands. “I put your pie on the nightstand next to the bed,” he forced himself to say.
She didn’t move.
He didn’t, either.
“Thank you.”
He shrugged off her thanks and reached for the remote control. But the blasted thing refused to work. After a couple of moments spent futilely punching at the buttons, he tossed it onto the round, scarred table.
“I thought you could sleep in the bed closer to the bathroom,” he said.
“So you could be closer to the door.”
He looked up to catch her smile and felt the irresistible desire to smile back. “Yes.”
She slowly crossed the room to the bed in question and began folding back the hideous bedspread. “I had another thought in mind.”
Stick to her face, McCoy. Stick to her face.
She propped up the pillows on both sides of the bed. “I thought we might share one bed.”
Jake nearly crushed his cell phone altogether.
She sat down and pulled her knees close to her chest. Far from the femme fatale her words implied, she acted as though she’d just suggested they engage in a long chat about the change in the weather. “Our being so…close would allow you to keep even a better eye on me.”
Jake cleared his throat. “Um, yes, that it would.”
“You object?”
He shook his head, then nodded. With a strangled sigh, he slipped his phone into his jacket pocket then pulled the jacket closed. “I find you very…attractive, Michelle. There’s no denying that. But it would be…” Unprofessional? Crazy? Decadent? “It would be, um, imprudent for me to entertain ideas of you and I…well, making love.”
He realized he hadn’t even considered that this might be some sort of ploy on Michelle’s behalf to gain her freedom. In his usually highly suspicious mind, he was notably unwary of her motives. Perhaps it was because of the way she looked at him, as though she was as interested in exploring the sparks that flew between them as he was. Or maybe it was the casual, unaffected way she invited him into bed with her. Either way, he knew, just knew on a deeper level he was hesitant to explore, that her desire to sleep with him was a result of just that—desire.
“Imprudent?” she questioned, the word rolling like melted sugar off her foreign tongue.
“Wrong,” he said.
“Oh.” She wriggled her toes until they were tucked under the white sheets. Her skin was as pale as the crisp linen, and appeared softer. “Because of your…job.”
“Yes, of course, because of my job.” Suddenly agitated, Jake stood. What he wouldn’t give for a little of her chattiness right about now.
“I see.”
“Good.” He stepped to the curtains and pulled them back to stare outside. Rain came down in drenching sheets, making the night dark and intimate.
He watched her reflection in the glass as she got up and went into the bathroom again, then came out with her monster-size purse. Within moments, she was on the bed, propping something up on the nightstand next to the generous helping of cherry pie from the all-night diner next door. He slowly turned, finding her running a fingertip along the surface of a picture. Then she sat against the pillows and closed her eyes.
“Your daughter?”
She blinked and looked at him. “Yes.”
He sat on the other bed and folded his hands tightly between his knees. The little girl looked nothing like he’d imagined she might. Rather than the dark hair and eyes he’d given her, she had straight blond hair that shone nearly white, and large green eyes.
Nearly four years old and she’d gone without seeing her mother for eight weeks. Jake ran his hand over his face then rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been seven years old when his mother had died. And the days afterward, recovering from the shock, had seemed like months. Years.
Michelle propped her chin onto her bended knees and gazed at him. “Explain to me why your job makes it—what is the word that you used?”
“Imprudent.”
She pressed her mouth against her skin. “Yes. Imprudent. Imprudent for us to have sex.”
Jake shifted on the mattress, which reminded him that he was sitting on a bed. And that Michelle was sitting on another bed not a foot and a half away. He focused on his white-knuckled hands. “I could lose my job.”
“If anyone found out.”
“I’d know.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, it’s not in my, um, nature to sleep with someone I just met twelve hours ago.”
“Eighteen.”
“Huh?”
“We met eighteen hours ago. Remember? When we bumped into each other in the parking lot.”
“Oh. Yeah. Eighteen hours ago, then.”
She rubbed her cheek against her knee. “Why?”
He grimaced. “Why what?”
“Why is it not in your nature to have sex with someone you just met eighteen hours ago?”
He didn’t miss her word usage. He’d described the possibility of their coming together as sleeping together. She’d called it having sex. He cleared his throat. And that’s exactly what they would be doing, wasn’t it? Having sex? They didn’t know each other well enough for the word love to enter into the equation. He thought back, trying to remember if he’d ever done it. Had just plain sex. All six of the women he’d been with intimately had been longtime girlfriends, and he’d cared for them to varying degrees. But had he loved them? At the time, he supposed he had, which meant he’d made love to them, not had sex with them.
He gazed at Michelle. With all that wild hair pulled into that neat little twist, she looked different. More presentable. More like the type of woman he would be attracted to. Then why did he have the irrepressible urge to take it down? Watch it cascade down her back in silky, curly strands?
“Do you do that often?”
Her soft, feathery brows drew slightly together. “What? Have sex?”
He averted his gaze.
“Not nearly often enough.”
He didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond.
“I haven’t been with a man…well, since before Lili was born.”
Over four years.
Jake didn’t know why that should make him feel better. The woman had just suggested they climb between the sheets and have at it, and she didn’t know him any better than the man in the moon. But he did feel better.
His want of her also shot up a hefty notch.
Michelle’s lusty sigh pulled his gaze to her face as she leaned against the pillows and stretched her legs out in front of her. “I thought it couldn’t be true. The rumor that Americans are sexually uptight. I guess it’s the truth.”
The word sexually came out sounding like a highly provocative suggestion. Jake fought the desire to stare at her mouth, though she had likely just insulted him. “I don’t know that we’re sexually uptight. We’re just cautious, that’s all. These are dangerous times we live in.”
She shrugged, the movement making her small breasts jiggle under the cotton of her camisole. “That’s what condoms are for.”
“There’s more than that to be cautious about.”
“What? What is there that could possibly be important enough to keep a man and a woman apart when it’s apparent they want each other?”
He was unable to tug his gaze away from her openly poignant one. She looked so unimaginably sexy, her eyes alight with fire, her mouth lushly challenging. “Fatal Attraction?”
Her burst of laughter was nearly his undoing. “You’re talking about that movie, yes? The one where Michael Douglas’s lady friend boiled his daughter’s pet rabbit?”
He grinned. “Yes.”
“Do you have a rabbit?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t very well boil it, now, can I?” She rubbed her toes against the arch of her other foot, her expression shifting. “Anyway, I’m returning to France tomorrow. There’s no risk there, is there?”
He stared at his hands again. “I guess not.”
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