Speed Dating (5 page)

“Adult movie…?” For a second she was stumped, then she sucked in a breath. “You mean pornography?”

“Hey, listen, I’m all for good, clean fun in the privacy of your living room but, like I said, I’ve got to be careful.…”

She turned to him. “You think people would pay to see me in sex movies?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling better than she’d felt all night. “But I am not a porn star.”

That crooked grin was aimed her way and with it the crinkling of that scar that for some reason made her weak at the knees. “You kiss like one.”

She tamped down her delight with feigned severity. “And how would you know how a porn star kisses?”

His evil chuckle was drowned out by the approaching sports car. The low, red car zoomed up and Dylan opened the door for her, then walked around to tip the valet and slide into the driver’s seat.

She found herself back in that convertible flying along the highway a million miles an hour.

When she tilted her head back to look up at the sky, it was like a kaleidoscope where the pattern kept changing too fast for her to keep up.

“So, are you going to tell me what this award’s about?” Dylan yelled over the combined noise of the road and the wind.

“No. Not yet. But I promise it’s perfectly respectable.”

“I’m trusting you here, Kendall.”

“Trust,” she said emphatically, “is the cornerstone of good business.”

“You know, honey, you are an interesting woman.
You talk like an accountant with the same mouth that kisses like a porn star.”

“Well, trust me, all resemblance to a porn star ends with kissing.”

He laughed and threw an arm around her shoulder. “Why don’t you let me decide?” That’s when she realized he had misconstrued her meaning.

She blinked at him. He appeared more than pleased by the notion of having sex with her. In two years Marvin had never looked that interested.

But then, Dylan had only known her a few hours, and he thought she was someone else.

Was it her imagination or did they travel back to the hotel a lot faster than they’d traveled to the wedding?

Impossible to tell, but before she could believe it, he was pulling up in front of the hotel. Oh, cool. He was using valet parking. She felt rich and important as she slid from the car, while yet another parking attendant held her door open for her.

“Good evening, Mr. Hargreave,” the doorman said, then nodded to her. “Miss.”

When she swooshed through the door and found herself in the main-floor lobby, she blinked. There was the illuminated sign confirming that the actuary banquet was in ballrooms A and B.

“Where are you going?” Dylan asked as he fell into step with her.

“The actuarial banquet. I’m going to take a peek and make sure I have time to run upstairs and grab my speech.”

He studied the sign, then glanced at her. “You’re kidding me.”

“No,” she said, feeling like Cinderella would have if
she’d transformed back into the dowdy drudge before Prince Charming’s eyes.

Instead of looking disappointed, or jumping into his race car and zooming off, he tipped back his head and laughed, a big, booming sound. “This, I have to see.”

Most of the doors to ballrooms A and B were shut, but she found one that was propped open. She crept toward it and stuck her head inside. Amazingly, the president had kept it short this year. He was winding things up. There was no time to get herself another key and run upstairs and get her speech. She’d barely made it here in time.

Oh, well. She’d practiced her speech so many times, she’d mostly memorized the thing, anyway.

The president of the actuary association of America was praising someone who exemplified all the qualities of the best actuary.

“This year’s winner combines a keen mind with exceptional organizational abilities. She’s been top…”

“What are we doing here?” Dylan whispered, coming behind her and kissing her neck.

“Basking,” she said. “And keep doing that.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to present this year’s Sharpened Pencil Award to Kendall Clarke.”

“Hah,” she said, tipping her head back to smile at Dylan. “Talk about good timing.”

“This is your award?”

“Yep. I’m Actuary of the Year. I have to give a speech. Kiss me for luck?”

He did, and the tingle on her lips was just the fuel she needed to make the long walk to the podium.

All the dark-clad men and women at all the tables in ballrooms A and B were clapping.

They were clapping for her. The tiny voice that had ruled her, sleeping and waking, for so many years, was throwing some kind of hissy fit, but she couldn’t hear it over the sound of polite applause.

S
HE WALKED
to the microphone and there was the president of her organization, Gordon Carstairs, staring at her as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Mr. Carstairs had been a friend of her father’s and ran the only insurance company in Portland larger than the one where she worked.

“Thank you very much.” She reached forward to kiss him, Hollywood-style, and he pushed the award forward, Actuary Association-style. The sharp point of the trophy, a sharpened pencil, poked her right above her heart. Somehow, that seemed significant.

She stared out at all those dark suits and dresses, all those white-moon faces staring at her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, guests, colleagues.” Pause. Breathe. “Trust is the cornerstone of our business.”

Trust.
The word seemed to shimmer in her mind so each letter sizzled neon.

“Trust.” She repeated the word, hearing it echo around the still, waiting room.

Three hundred ghostly faces stared at her. Marvin sat about three tables from the front. Through some trick of the overhead lighting, or maybe the fluorescent bounce of his pale blond hair, he stood out.

If she scanned her gaze to the left, to the entrance and exit to the ballroom, there was Dylan, standing with his back against the wall, watching her.

In that moment, everything inside her went still.

The silence lengthened to become a palpable thing—something you could feel in the air, like humidity. She heard some shuffling, and a couple of cleared throats. Somewhere, somebody started chatting in a low voice.

She felt dizzy, and realized inside her she’d sailed blindly into the perfect emotional storm.

She glanced at the Sharpened Pencil Award she’d placed on the podium. So straight that pencil was, so sharp. And she started to speak.

“I am honored that you would choose me for this prestigious award, but I can’t accept it.”

Actuaries weren’t the most emotive of souls, and there was not so much as a gasp from the audience. She noticed that the chatting stopped, though, and the silence felt keener.

She smiled. “I know these speeches are usually pretty boring. Let’s face it, our jobs are pretty boring, but what we do is important. Without us and our calculations, retirees could run out of money before running out of life. Insurance companies would go bankrupt if we didn’t calculate risk. What we do matters.”

She took a sip from the glass of water that had been provided.

“I talked about trust, but there’s more than just trust involved in being a good actuary. We also need to act with integrity and good judgment.”

She looked straight at Marvin. “I’ve always prided
myself on my judgment, but somewhere I went badly wrong. I became engaged to a man who has been carrying on with another woman under my nose. We three are colleagues in the same office, and I was clueless.”

She shook her head, appalled. She had everyone’s attention now.

“I think a person who is so blind to the kind of deceit and drama going on in her own life might not be sharp enough to catch discrepancies in her work.”

She paused to sip more water. Her hands were surprisingly steady.

“Trust, integrity and good judgment are three cornerstones.”
And what kind of judgment are you showing now?
an inner voice railed.

“But a building has to have four corners or it will topple. Honesty is, I think, the final piece. I have lived dishonestly for the last four months, through no fault of my own except blindness. My colleague and fiancé informed me earlier this evening that he’s in love with someone else. I’ve been blind, foolish. I’ve been living a lie. So, you see, I am the wrong person to accept this award, although I hope one day to be worthy of it. Thank you.”

And she turned and walked slowly away, leaving the sharpened pencil pointing in the air like a rude middle finger.

D
Y WATCHED
his date of the evening with a combination of shock and admiration.

Okay, so he’d already pretty much figured out that Bryce hadn’t sent her and she wasn’t like any actress he’d ever met. But her speech still shook him to the toes.
She’d been dumped by a cheating fiancé if he understood her speech correctly, and was refusing an award that probably meant a lot to her—on ethical grounds.

Wow.

He’d pretty much written off the evening as a nightmare before it even started. How had he ended up having such an amazing time?

There was something about this woman, with her quiet sexiness, her clear intelligence and her obvious integrity, that got to him.

He wondered why the evening had been so different than he’d imagined and then it hit him. He hadn’t been bored.

Boredom had been a part of his life so often recently that it was like an allergy—he’d become so used to it that when the symptoms cleared up he felt incredible relief.

Of course, not a soul in the world knew about this problem of his. Only a loser would whine when he had everything he’d ever wanted.

And he wouldn’t do that. He’d flipped the bird to his family, his predestined future and pretty much the world a lot of years ago and set out to prove himself.

Here he was, with everything he’d ever wanted. And if sometimes it all got to be too much of the same old, same old, then he’d suck it up and shut up. Faking being on top of the world was pretty easy when everybody already accepted that that’s where you were sitting.

But when had he last laughed from that ticklish place deep in his gut that had been so accessible as a kid and so unreachable now? He couldn’t remember. Until tonight when his supposed party girl had announced she wasn’t an actress at all, but an actuary.

No wonder Kendall had kept him the opposite of bored. Between grabbing him back from Ashlee, slapping down his ex-wife’s dirty old daddy and now standing up there and pretty much blowing off her career because of her principles, she not only amused him, she won his admiration.

When she came off that stage, the applause was tepid, the glances sent her way were everything from confused to disbelieving.

She appeared more shocked by her behavior than anybody. She looked like a rookie after a first major race. She was pale and shaky and looked as if she might puke.

What she needed was for somebody to take her mind off the ordeal. “Hey,” he said. “Great speech.”

“Thanks.”

“Would it hurt your career any if I kissed you?”

“I think I just threw away my career,” she said in a voice of stunned shock.

“Then I guess this can’t hurt.” And he leaned in and kissed her. What was it about this mouth of hers that he found so irresistible? It talked smart and kissed sexy. He was barely aware of the hundreds of people in the room except that he wanted them all gone and to have Kendall alone. He raised his head and she said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He grinned at her. “You must have read my mind.”

“Kendall,” a man said in a furious tone. He and Kendall both looked back at the guy he recognized from the elevator. The nervous-looking redhead clinging to his arm must be the one he’d been kissing. “How could you be so small-minded and…and vindictive? You made a fool out of me.”

Dylan’s date looked at the guy for a long moment and said, “No. I didn’t. You did that all by yourself.”

Dylan scooped her hand into his and they left without a backward glance.

“What do you want to do now?” he asked her as they crossed the mostly deserted lobby.

“I’m thinking of locking myself in a bathroom somewhere, then throwing up and doing a lot of moaning.”

He chuckled. “No, you’re not. You totally impressed me. Probably a lot of other people, too.”

“I did?” Her eyes were serious but with an edge of dreaminess he liked.

“Yeah. You told off a whole roomful of suits and you never raised your voice once. If I was the president of that association I’d be getting your ex’s ass fired and making you CEO of the company.”

The line between her brows disappeared. “You would?”

“Yep. You’re the one with guts and integrity.”

“Thanks.” They walked a little farther. “You’re right. We have to celebrate. I did something I’ve never done before. I stood up for myself and told somebody off.”

“You’ve never done that before?”

“Not really. Well—” she glanced at him “—Ashlee, earlier tonight, but that was acting.”

“I have to say, you’re doing great for a beginner.”

“Thanks.” She sighed and gazed up at him. “You know what I want to do now?”

“What?”

“I want to do something else I’ve never done before. Do you have any idea how many things I’ve never even tried?”

He was curious as to what she’d say. “No.”

She started listing things off on the fingers of one hand. “I’ve never scuba dived, even though I love the ocean.”

“Well, we’re kind of far from it here. And they don’t let you go out if you’ve had a drink or two.”

She gasped. “And that’s another thing. You know I’ve never been drunk?”

“Didn’t you ever turn twenty-one?”

“Of course I did. But I was studying for final exams. I couldn’t waste a whole study night to go drinking.”

“Now that is just plain tragic.”

“Where are we going?” They’d walked outside the hotel. The air was warm and dry. Even though it was dark, he slipped his sponsor’s shades on, hoping the suit and the sunglasses would make him less recognizable. There were so many race fans in town for Sunday that he was liable to be mobbed if he was recognized.

“I figured out the perfect thing for you.”

“Something I’ve never tried before?”

“That’s right. I’m guessing you’ve never raced a stock car before.”

“No-o-o.” She licked her lips and gazed up at him, that little line appearing between her brows. “I thought I’d move my way up through my list. Starting with easy things. I’m not sure I should be racing quite yet.”

“Trust me. You’ll love it.”

“O
H MY GOSH
, I clipped him. Aaaaggh! I’m going too fast. I can’t hold on. I’m going to crash.”

Dylan was getting as much of a kick watching Kendall play the new NASCAR video game as she was
playing. Her fingers were welded to the controller and her eyes wide as she stared at the moving images on the screen.

She’d never be a beauty, but there was something very appealing about the way she gave her whole focus to what she was doing, whether it was playing a video game, telling off her ex or kissing him.

When she’d played four games in a row, she finally threw up her arms and gave up.

There were six of them at the table—his crew chief, a few guys from the team and Carl Edwards, a little younger than Dy, but he’d become a good friend. They’d both been featured in
People
’s 50 Hottest Bachelors issue, and what had started out as good-natured ribbing about which of them was really the hottest had turned into a friendship.

Since Carl was a lot better at video NASCAR, he’d taught Kendall. By the time she’d mastered the basics, they were fast friends, and he was toasting her success. “Kendall, you’re a natural.” He glanced at Dy with that grin that melted a lot of female hearts and signaled to Dy that trouble was on its way. “We should get her a ride, Dy. She’d be a great driver.”

“Are you kidding? I crashed three times, lost control once and I’m pretty sure I made the yellow car blow up.”

“Sounds like a good day on the track to me,” Carl said with that toothy grin a lot of women seemed to go for.

Kendall laughed as though Carl was the funniest guy in NASCAR. He had to be a few years younger than she was. Carl didn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, Dylan might have to remind his fellow driver to find his own woman before the night got much older.