Lucky 7 Bad Boys Contemporary Romance Boxed Set (5 page)

She smiled in the dark of her apartment as she thought of all the exciting changes that would be happening in her life soon.

Opening her eyes, she stared at the changing patterns of light on the ceiling and slowly, the shifting patterns lulled her to sleep.

* * *

The denim jeans and shirt molded to his muscles were wet with sweat. Dirty from the labor he had done. As if sensing her presence, he turned and grinned at her, the dimple in his cheek deepening. His gaze as hot as the summer day as he skimmed it over her.

His grin kicked up her heartbeat a notch and awakened other parts of her anatomy.

He laid down his hammer and walked toward her, the swagger in his hips all too enticing and accentuated by the leather tool belt which rode low on those hips, like a gunfighter's belt. Rey stopped when he was only a few inches before her and pulled off his heavy work gloves.

This close, his very male smell reached her nostrils as did the heat pouring off his skin. He cradled her cheek and she leaned into his caress, loving the rough feel of his palm. Reaching up, she grasped his hand and brought it to her lips, kissing the hard earned callouses there. Biting at the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb and drawing a sigh from his lips.

"Bianca," he said as he took a breath and moved a step closer until the leather of his belt was rubbing against the bare skin of her midriff.

She smiled at him, laid her hand on the smooth, satiny expanse of his muscled chest. Her hand was pale against the darker, pale caramel color of his skin. Skin warm from the summer heat and his exertions. Slightly, damp, slick and salty, she thought as she leaned forward and licked her tongue across the center of his chest.

He moaned and grasped her head to hold her close. The buckle of the belt bit into her skin and she reached down between them and began to undo the fastening.

The blare of a car horn from the street below jolted her awake.

Bianca jumped up in bed, breathing heavily, and covered with sweat. Incredible guilt swept over, almost as if she had just been caught cheating.

Bianca placed a hand against her chest to quiet the rapid beat of her heart and chastised herself. She had no right to be dreaming about Rey. She was supposed to be in love with David. It was David she wanted, right?

But what if that wasn't the case? she questioned.

She settled back against the hard bedsprings and tried to ignore the lingering wants the dream had left behind. Such wants were not good. Especially when they involved someone other than her current boyfriend.

Which made her wonder what it was about her relationship with David that was so lacking that she was dreaming about a man she had only just met?

Although she wouldn't admit it to Eduardo, she had wondered more than once about her relationship in the past few weeks. But she hadn't been able to put her finger on what the problem was, if anything.

They had fun together after all, and in general, David wasn't as much of a jerk as he had been tonight. She wrote that off to performance anxiety. After all, if she had been sitting there all night expecting that the two of them to go back and hook-up, she would have probably been a little tense and uptight also.

She would give him a pass as to why he had been in a rush and somewhat insensitive. In all fairness, she had been insensitive as well, clueless as to what he might be expecting to celebrate their "anniversary." It hadn't occurred to her, maybe because she thought of David in other terms.

David was sometimes too serious and incredibly reliable, but usually fun and caring. She'd give him the benefit of the doubt about tonight's kind of asshole behavior. But hooking up with him. . .

She wanted more than that, she realized. Sex without the caring, without the passion and love that Eduardo had talked about, just wasn't worth it.

Maybe that was why after all this time she hadn't become physically involved with David. He didn't kick up her pulse a notch whenever she saw him.

He didn't come to her in her dreams? the annoying little voice in her head asked.

Shutting down that voice, she reminded herself that when she dreamed, it should be of David.

If it wasn't, it was time to think about setting him free. About setting herself free to explore the strange and unexpected feelings she was having toward a total stranger.

Chapter Three

The hot sting of the spray beat against Rey's shoulders, pounding away the soreness from the six straight hours of hard labor he had put in after overseeing all the jobs he had in progress and the meeting with Bianca and Eduardo.

He leaned his hands against the tiled wall and let the massaging stream pulsate against the muscles of his chest. Slowly the heat soaked in and relieved the tension he had been feeling since that afternoon and Bianca.

He had done as he promised and dropped off the blueprints at the local copy center. Luckily they had been relatively quiet and had been able to sneak in the job right on the spot. Normally, he would have tackled the bid immediately, but in the back of his mind was the disturbing thought that he should forget about this project. He was worried it would bring nothing but trouble.

But as he stood there, the steaming water sluicing over his body and easing an assortment of aches and pains, he admitted that it was Bianca and not the project that had him concerned.

The project itself was actually a dream. The building had immense potential and its location was really prime. How many places sat on palisades overlooking one of the best and most coveted views in the world?

From the restaurant, the Manhattan skyline was visible as far as you could see and as he knew from the view from his own home, it was magical at night. He still worried, however, that the location and the chance to work on a really exciting project just wasn't enough to make up for having to deal with Bianca.

She was just too damn distracting and annoying.

Not that he hadn't worked for an attractive woman before. He had on dozens of occasions. He could even deal with the fact that she found him attractive. That flare of interest on her end had been impossible to ignore. He had learned to deal with that kind of reaction from women since he had looked in a mirror lately. Not that he usually gave much thought to his physical attributes. He'd done nothing to earn those. They were just a case of genetics.

He'd rather that people judged him by what he had accomplished on his own, like building a successful contracting business.

Plus, he prided himself on being interested in a woman based on more than just her looks. When he got involved with a woman, he wanted someone who appealed to him on a number of levels. Things like a reasonable amount of intelligence, a sense of humor, and a whole bunch of other things he couldn't name at the moment.

Which was why he needed to stay far far away from Bianca.

To say she was attractive was an understatement. She was of average height, but that was where the use of the word average stopped. Her face was stunning, an exotic blend of seduction and innocence. Today she had been the seductress with her red lipstick and smoky eye makeup. Her rich caramel brown hair had been loose and tousled, almost begging for a man's hands to tunnel through it and smooth it out. But he could picture Bianca looking all innocent, her face free of makeup with that irresistible girl next door thing going on. Her dark mane of hair up in a ponytail, swinging against the elegant length of her neck. Her green eyes wide and inviting.

Her looks weren’t the only enigma she presented. He had called her "princess" for a number of reasons that morning. With her regal bearing, jewelry, and the expensive clothes, she wore her class as well as any royal. But he couldn't imagine that most princesses liked to get their hands dirty. Still, he knew she used those hands every day as a chef. The one time he had touched her today to shake her hand, the slight roughness of her palm had proven to him she wasn't above manual labor.

Since it was too easy to imagine that hand touching him again, running all along his body, making him crazy hard and needy, he drove that idea out of his head by blasting on the cold water until he was shivering and all thoughts of Bianca had been cleansed from his mind and body.

Then and only then did he exit the shower and dress, hoping to make it an early night.

But as he walked past his drafting desk, the blueprints screamed for attention and he recognized he wouldn't be able to truly exorcise Bianca from his system until he gave her his bid.

Hopefully she'd turn it down and save them both a load of grief.

* * *

Bianca and Eduardo were in the kitchen two days later, talking to someone in the kitchen when Rey arrived to drop off his bid and his suggested changes for their plans. As he walked in, Bianca noticed his entry and swung open the door to the kitchen.

“We’ll only be a little bit longer. Would you mind waiting?” she asked.

“Anything for you, Princess,” he said and winked, intentionally pushing her buttons to hopefully piss her off enough that she’d decide she’d never ever want to work with him.

“Thanks, Rey,” she replied tightly and he knew that if she could have, she would have slammed the door in his face. Instead, it just whooshed back and forth loudly from the force of her shove.

Smiling, Rey made himself comfortable on one of the stools at the bar. As he sat there, he glanced around the interior of the restaurant and pictured how it might look when it was done. Once again excitement rose up in him at the chance to work on the project, but he fought it back with one thought.

Bianca.

A few minutes later, Eduardo and Bianca walked out with their visitor, amicably chatting as they escorted him to the front door.

Now that he had more time to really study her, he decided that she was looking innocent today. Innocent mode being way more dangerous than the seductress he had seen a couple of days earlier. Faded jeans hugged her shapely legs and an incredible ass. Because of the late summer heat, she wore a skimpy tank top that exposed the toned muscles of her arms and the fine lines of her collarbone and shoulders. He wouldn't even think about the fact she had to be braless beneath the shirt.

Her hair was tucked up in a ponytail as he had imagined, but with tendrils of loose hair around her face, and long wispy bangs. He hadn't noticed the bangs the other day or the trio of earrings adorning one ear, making her look way too young.

He slipped off the stool and handed her the blueprints and a slim, dark blue folder with the name of his construction company embossed on it. "I just wanted to drop these by," he said and hated that his voice sounded husky.

"Thanks, we weren't really expecting your bid so soon," Bianca replied with forced civility as she accepted the papers from him.

"I know you want to get going. I tried to do what I could to save you money. I also made some alterations in the original design. I hope you like the changes."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, feeling like a bug under a microscope as she unrolled the copies of the blueprints he had marked up, and she and Eduardo perused them.

Their confusion was obvious as they looked at the plans.

He leaned over, close to her, and pointed out the changes, what they meant structurally and how they affected the costs for the job.

"But how will that change the whole look of the place?" she asked and peered around the interior of the restaurant, as if visualizing it, before looking up to meet his gaze.

It was then he realized how near they were to one another. Her lips were barely inches from his, and up this close, it was impossible to miss that her eyes were an amazing shade of green, with intriguing flecks of yellow, blue and grey mixed in. Eyes he could lose himself in, if he wasn't careful.

"Rey?" she prompted again when he failed to answer.

He coughed, drew away from her, and reached for the portfolio he had given her earlier. He pulled out the sketches he had done of the interiors with the proposed alterations, laid them next to the blueprints, and explained.

Bianca heard what he was saying, but was afraid she wasn't listening very well to his technical explanations. She was too interested in the warmth that seemed to pour off his body as he unintentionally leaned against her and the way his large hands swept over the blueprints and the sketches. He moved his hands with confidence, but also with passion and animation as he detailed the changes. His voice, slightly husky and low, created a response in her she would rather not have.

As he paused to allow Eduardo to comment, she pulled away from him slightly, and tried to really focus on the plans. When she did so, she realized not only how much care he had put into them, but how much of himself. He had given it that something extra the architect had failed to find with his designs.

Rey had brought the place to life with changes that were filled with passion and an artist’s eye for color and space.

She picked up one of Rey's sketches of the interior and ran her hand over it, imagining how the restaurant would look. Recognizing that what he had done was more innovative and more thoughtful than what the architect had delivered to them. Clipped to the back of the sketch was a photo copied from a book on Cuba with notes in strong masculine handwriting. She noted how he had taken the architectural design from the building and updated it.