Stolen Kisses (11 page)

One minute, he was boyishly teasing. A second later, after his attention strayed over her shoulder, a blatantly sensual smile curved his lips. He didn’t bother to hide the masculine appreciation in his gaze as he looked down at her.

“Nice rabbit,” he said only for her ears.

She could feel the heat rushing into her cheeks. Although she’d taken the deflating balloons home, the rabbit now stood next to her credenza. The beast was only there to remind her to go very carefully, not what Trevor seemed to think. The man had a distinctly proprietary air about him now.

The phone rang before she could disabuse him of the idea. “Oh, hello, Wes. No, I can’t really talk right now,” she said, blessing him silently for calling at that moment. Trevor seemed to be looming closer, a frown taking the place of his seductive look. “Yes, that sounds wonderful. Why don’t I meet you at the restaurant about five-thirty? Thank your client for me as well. I’m looking forward to it. Bye.”

“Who’s Wes? Another idiot lawyer?”

“He’s an accountant,” she answered, making a show of opening her organizer to write down the name and time. With an air of surprise, she looked up and asked, “Was there anything else besides the cabinets you wanted to discuss?”

“Not right now,” he answered, making it clear that he still had some unfinished business to discuss. His eyes had darkened to almost black. “Just remember that I didn’t make any promises.”

He stood and walked quickly to the door. Just as he was about to step into the corridor, Jessie called his name and he turned back to face her. “Don’t push me, Trevor. I have my limits.”

He left without another word.

“Well, that was the most disgusting performance I’ve ever seen,” Gina exclaimed, barely waiting for the door to swing shut.

“I thought you liked Trevor.” Jessie gave her friend a wide-eyed innocent look.

“Don’t be obtuse. I was talking about you.” Her temper was beginning to show from the rapid tapping of her pencil against her desk blotter. “I thought you were going to give Trevor a chance?”

“I said I would be nice to him. I didn’t say I was going to throw myself at his feet.” For a moment, she remembered a few nights earlier when she had melted against him the second he touched her. What Gina didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. She had enough trouble with her friend’s loyalty without admitting the man’s kisses should be declared lethal weapons.

“Do you really think he fell for that ‘other man’ nonsense? The jealousy routine went out years ago.”

“I wasn’t trying to make him jealous,” Jessie shot back more heatedly than she intended. “I didn’t arrange for Wes to call. A grateful client gave him tickets to
Les Miz
for Thursday night. Wes usually doesn’t make plans this close to the tax deadline, but he didn’t want to miss this.”

Gina’s answer was a snort of disgust as she returned to her work. The floor plan in front of Jessie was neglected as she reviewed this last encounter with Trevor. She realized that he had changed his tactics, but just what was he going to do next?

“Tory, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I asked you to have lunch with me,” Trevor complained from his seat on the freezer in the Bill of Fare kitchen. His sister and Abby were busy shouting orders at the workmen in the front of the shop.

“I’m feeding you and not putting you to work, so stop whining,” she called to him before she disappeared through the swinging red saloon doors.

He bit viciously into his sandwich to appease his feelings. Tory was preoccupied with expanding her catering business to retail stores, the first one opening in two days. If he could just get her to stand still for ten minutes, he’d get out of her way.

“You know, after that prank you and Curtiss pulled on me on Saturday night after the rally, I really shouldn’t be talking to you at all,” Tory snapped as she bustled back through the doorway. She propped her hips against the freezer and grabbed his hand to steal a bite of his sandwich.

“Hey, get your own, Piglet.” He then regretted reverting to her childhood nickname. He wanted her to be on his side. It was just as well she didn’t know about the little talk he and Curtiss had with Logan on Saturday evening over dinner. If she was annoyed that they had tricked her into driving Logan back to Little Rock from the rally, then she wouldn’t be thrilled about her two brothers playing good-cop/bad-cop to find out the guy’s intentions.

“So what was so all-fired important that you got out of bed at a decent hour?”

“Don’t get too smart, or I’ll tell the Yankee that you’re madly in love with him.” He couldn’t help teasing her and enjoyed seeing his usually self-possessed sister blush. “I need to ask your advice about—” He broke off as Abby came through the swinging door.

“Did I come in at a bad time, I hope?” She gave Trevor a threatening look to tell him he was still in the doghouse. He groaned inwardly, since Abby was the last person he wanted to overhear this.

“I think my big brother is having girl trouble. Isn’t that cute?” Tory teased, ready to get back at him, though still unaware of the worst of her family’s interference in her personal life.

He debated on telling his sister about the family’s betting pool on how soon she and Logan would be engaged. Looking at the sharp knife she was wielding as she prepared her sandwich, he decided against it. Besides, he owed some loyalty to Logan, even if he was a Yankee. He also had his money on a week from Wednesday and didn’t want to ruin the odds.

“You might as well go ahead and spill your guts,” Tory told him, jumping up beside him a few minutes later. “Abby probably isn’t going to leave.”

“It’s not that exciting. I’m just getting some mixed signals from this particular lady,” he said grudgingly as Abby wrinkled her nose at him. “I think she likes me, but I’m not sure if she’ll go out with me if I ask her. I’ve done a couple of dumb things that involve her, so now she’s a little wary of me.”

“This must be pretty important, if you’re scared to approach her.” His sister munched on her sandwich, her dark eyes watching his every move.

“I talked to her yesterday, so I’m not scared of her. She just confused me. She accepted a date with someone else while I was sitting right there on her desk.” He couldn’t hide his indignation over what had happened. “She seems to have some ideal type of man, and I apparently don’t fit the bill.”

“What? She doesn’t want to date some irresponsible ex-jock who has a warped sense of humor? Smart girl,” Abby put in. “I’ve told you there isn’t an intelligent woman in the city who will take a risk of being your next victim.”

“You make me sound like Bluebeard, for God’s sake,” he grumbled, wondering if there really was a conspiracy against him. This is what Jessie had brought him to: paranoia. “Look, I’m not sure, but I think this one could be serious. I didn’t even flinch when she mentioned babies.”

That announcement left both women speechless, but not for long. Tory was the first to break the silence. “Let’s back up a little bit, okay? You can’t get a date with this woman, but she’s been talking about having a baby. She sounds like she has her priorities a little mixed up.”

“I’m not exactly sure what the deal is about the babies. It has something to do with my not being responsible enough to father her children. She was kinda angry at the time.”

“She wouldn’t be responsible for the crème de menthe stain on my linen tablecloth, would she?” Tory’s smile was pure malice as she considered the matter. “And Arnette was complaining about mysterious green stains on some of your clothes in the laundry she did this weekend. The woman didn’t happen to use you for target practice, did she?”

“You don’t have to look so pleased about it.”

“I told you not too long ago you’d have a hard time finding a woman crazy enough to take you seriously,” his sister declared, waving a pickle spear at him to emphasize her point. “What you’re going to have to do is quit pulling stunts like that one at Abby’s party. No woman is going to put up with your grabbing strange women and kissing them as a practical joke.”

“That’s true. Darn, I still haven’t called Jessie to apologize to her about that,” Abby added, making Trevor break out in a cold sweat. He didn’t want Abby and Jessie comparing notes too soon, at least not until Jessie got to know him a little better.

“Your best bet is to show her that you can behave like a rational, adult man.” Tory scrutinized him from head to toe. “That may be tough, but you might be able to pull it off. What about this guy she accepted the date with?”

“All I know about him is that he’s an accountant.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, while thinking about taking a satisfying punch at the guy.

“Since she’s going out with him, he must fit her scale of perfection,” Tory decided after a moment’s consideration. “Your next move is to find out about this list of hers, then see what the competition is like.”

Trevor finished his sandwich in two bites, digesting his sister’s advice as well. Jessie said that her partner told her to be nice to him. Would Gina be willing to tell him about Jessie’s list of requirements for the ideal man? And maybe she knew about the baby business as well. After saying good-bye to Abby and his sister, he walked down the mall in a much better frame of mind.

The minute he was out of sight, Abby turned to her boss. “Do you think he’s going to make any progress with Jessie?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, chewing on her lower lip as she considered the matter. “You’d better lighten up on him the next time, though. He might get a little suspicious.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the blonde exclaimed innocently.

“But you were planning to.”

“All right, so I was going to introduce them at my party. As it turned out I didn’t have to.” She shrugged off the matter but couldn’t resist giggling over the situation.

“It really is kind of funny,” Tory admitted, sharing her friend’s amusement, “but there will be blood on the moon if he even thought we knew about him and Jessie. He threatened me that day at the office.”

“I can imagine it had something to do with a certain Yankee.”

Tory’s smile quickly disappeared with the allusion to Logan Herrington. “We can’t stand here talking all day. There’s too much to get done before the opening.”

Chapter Six

Two days later, Jessie hesitated at the doorway to Trevor’s bedroom, a pen and pad in her hand, listening to Restless Heart sing their signature tune through her portable radio headphones. This was the last room on her list, and the song wasn’t helping her resolve. She’d already checked the other two rooms that had posed a problem, and that left her at an impasse. All she had to do before she returned to the office was to step across the threshold.

She’d been avoiding the sparsely furnished room since she discovered the identity of the owner. Knowing who slept here made her presence seem more like an invasion than simply checking measurements. For over a week she had been in and out of the house, carefully scheduling the time for when she was sure Trevor was gone, and she had been in every room except this one.

He hadn’t bothered to make the huge brass bed today. The rumpled sheet and indented pillow heightened the sense of his presence, as if he was going to step from the bathroom just finished with his shower. She adjusted the volume on her headphones as Michael Bolton began a soulful ballad. Double checking the window measurements wasn’t really that important today, was it?

Taking a step backward, she told herself the decision to wait had nothing to do with the discarded shirt at the foot of the bed. She knew she was acting like an idiot. It was only a room, nothing more. But she took another step backward only to collide with something solid. A split second later, an arm snaked around her waist. Her scream drowned out Michael Bolton’s smoky voice. Then the music was gone, the earphones pulled off her head.

“Dammit, Jessie,” Trevor swore in her ear, “you took about ten years off my life.”

She couldn’t stop trembling, leaning limply against the solid warmth of his body and gasping, “You didn’t do much for my blood pressure, either.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I came up the back stairs and didn’t know anyone was here.” His left arm curled around her shoulders, enclosing her in a soothing embrace. As he rubbed his cheek against her hair, Jessie relaxed in the comfort of his arms. Tinny sounds coming from the headphones looped around his forearm, however, quickly brought her back to reality.

She reached up automatically to turn off the radio. “I didn’t know you were home. I’ve been here for a half hour checking some measurements.”

“I was out in the garage working on the kitchen cabinets and came up to get ready for work,” he explained, the words warm and moist against her ear. His heartbeat was strong, slightly fast, against her back and echoing the rhythm of her own. “Do you wear this gadget often?” he asked, holding up the headphones.

“It helps me concentrate on the numbers when I’m alone.” Silently, she pledged that she was never going to wear them in his house again. Now that her initial terror had dissipated, she became all too aware of the masculine body holding her in the dark hallway. There wasn’t an inch to spare between her and his lean, hard body. Her difficulty in breathing seemed to be increasing, not decreasing. Staring down at the pen and pad on the floor, she wondered what to do with her hands, resisting the urge to run them over the corded arm around her waist.