Untangling The Stars (9 page)

The past two days had alternated between the extremes of snail’s pace slow and light speed fast, and the vertigo for Andie was all too real as her mind traipsed through these possibilities. As it was, she had almost managed to convince herself that she had fallen off the deep end and now here she was, trapped inside Guy Wilder’s empty hotel room while he waited her out on the other side of a locked door. You watch celebrities on TV and fantasize about going on dates with them—you don’t
actually
go on dates with them. That was reality, and anything else was simply not how life worked. The swarm of butterflies had somehow morphed into wasps and were buzzing angrily in the pit of Andie’s stomach. She steadied herself with her hands on the back of a couch, which luckily saved her from crumpling to the floor.

She sucked in one deep breath, two…three, four, five.
Get it together, Foxglove
. There was nothing sexy about hyperventilating. She spotted her reflection in a large ornate mirror that seemed out of place in the very modern hotel room. At least, she thought it was her reflection, but the girl in the mirror looked much more like a deer trapped in headlights. Forget her kidneys; Andie was more likely to die of a heart attack.

Since she’d had no idea what the night would hold, Andie had decided to go classic and opted for her favorite little black dress—the one she’d hoped to wear to the gala. The smooth, woven sleeveless sheath—topped with sheer lace shoulders and paired wonderfully with the peep-toe watercolor heels—was the perfect LBD for any occasion. Now the smooth fabric was bunched and twisted around her waist as she cowered against the couch, staring at her own reflection in the mirror. Seeing herself like that, all trembling and cowardly, resurrected Andie. She snapped up straight, smoothing out the folds of her skirt as she rose.

Oh, hell no! You will
not
be timid and miserable, Alessandra Foxglove
, she scolded herself.
You will put your big girl panties on and face this man like…well, like a man. Whatever
.
And if he doesn’t want you here, you are going to show him
exactly
what he is missing out on.
He asked
you
here—don’t forget that.

She nodded curtly at herself in the mirror and pushed her bangs out of her eyes. There, the logical Andie and the deer in headlines doppelganger were agreed. That little pep talk seemed to be just what she needed to pull herself out of the pathetic wallow of self-pitying insecurity she’d jumped into. She was ready to turn and march back across the room to bang on Guy’s shut door when his reflection slid suddenly behind hers in the glass.

“Oh.”

One glance told her exactly what had taken him so long. No longer in jeans and a t-shirt, Guy had been tucked away, transforming himself from rags to riches like Cinderella readying for the ball. He was now swathed in a slim-cut speckled charcoal suit, with a striped shirt that alternated between cornflower and royal blue, and a skinny navy blue tie speared with a thin gold arrow clip that looked to Andie like something Cupid himself may have tagged him with. He’d left the stubble of his mustache and beard intact, but his cheeks were smoothly shaved and his hair was combed back in a slick wave (that one unruly strand had been already fallen into place perfectly above his right eye). He was still barefoot, but this time it felt intentional, like an ending piece of punctuation just to see if she’d notice. She did. Holy sweet mother of lustful thoughts, did she notice.

“I didn’t know powdering your nose could look so good.” Great. That didn’t even make sense.

He smirked at her, all uneasiness gone and replaced by a collected confidence that was neither arrogant nor bold, but cool and slick…like a graceful predator closing in for the kill. The butterflies in her stomach dropped dead.

Andie didn’t remember saying anything, but some sharp intake of air must have pushed between her lips because as if on cue Guy took a resolute step toward her. One of his hands moved to do that false adjusting the knot of his tie thing that men were want to do, the other slid into the pocket of his suit jacket. She watched his reflection come closer until he stood beside her. They stared at each other in the glass.

Mirror Guy’s eyes moved over his own reflection. He smoothed his hair flat against the sides of his head. “I thought I should change.”

Andie opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. She blinked mutely at Guy in the mirror. Well, this was just not what she had expected at all.

Guy turned to face her, but Andie couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the mirror. She watched his reflection pivot with liquid grace. He brought his fingertips so close to the edge of her elbow that she could almost feel what she saw in the glass. The little hairs on her arm leapt to attention in the static electricity that buzzed between them. Without touching her, he gently prompted her to turn toward him, and she found herself staring almost evenly into his striking blue eyes. Although Guy still had several inches on her, Andie’s four-inch heels were a fierce contender against his bare feet, and their heights were more closely matched. This close, with his head bowed toward hers, that little strand of uncombed hair tickled against the top of her forehead. It sent a shiver tickling down her spine, like the kind of static electric shock you got when you touched a metal surface.

Andie lowered her eyes, forbidding herself to get stuck in the ring of honey around his pupils. She tried to concentrate on the molten slate gray of his suit instead, or the stripes on his shirt—basically any parts of him that she could separate from the man whose heart beat behind threads of cotton and wool. Even that left her little breathing room. She could still smell the faint musk of his leather jacket clinging to his skin, the warm scent now laced with creamy tones of dried rose petals and fresh milk—sandalwood, she thought. He smelt liked sandalwood.

If heaven had a smell, it would smell like Guy Wilder. It would
definitely
smell like Guy Wilder.

Out of the corner of her eye, Andie watched Guy’s hand hover millimeters away from the prickled flesh of her bare arm. For a heartbeat, his hand simply stayed there. Then, finally, he pulled his hand away and slid it back inside his jacket pocket. That was the second time he’d stopped himself from touching her. Why was he stopping? Not that she wanted him to touch her—or rather, that she didn’t want him to touch her. But, she wanted him to want to touch her, or at least she thought she did. Andie had no idea what she wanted. It was infuriating as hell.

The air between them was thick and seemed to sizzle. Guy cleared his throat, and the sound snapped in the silence.

“So. You look”—his lips moved as he struggled for the word he wanted—“amazing, Miss….Dr.…Foxglove.”

Without look up Andie could feel his eyes wandering over her. She inhaled deeply and took a step backward, putting a hand’s length worth of distance between them. Keeping that much electricity pinned between them seemed like a fire hazard. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She dared herself to look up and was surprised to find that his eyes weren’t wandering at all. He was staring at her in the same curious way that he had done before, when they’d talked about French wine and love spells, which was somehow worse. Wandering eyes, she could deal with, but this look of such intensity was a whole different thing entirely. She took another step backward—two hands now—and felt for the edge of the couch behind her. She’d better hold on to it before she swooned beneath that intense look of his. The last thing she wanted—or the thing she wanted most but wouldn’t allow herself to want—was to find herself caught in Guy’s arms.

Guy’s face shifted. It didn’t sharpen exactly, nor did it soften. It just...shifted. Andie’s eyes were locked so tightly inside his steel blue gaze that at first it didn’t register that he’d taken a step forward. Then another, those magnetic blue eyes becoming larger in the limited scope of her tunneled vision. He stepped toward her wordlessly, resolutely, and closed the space between them until he was so close that she could feel his heat pushing against her dress.

Andie’s thoughts scrambled in her head. She should say something, shouldn’t she? It seemed like she had barely said anything since she’d been rushed in through the door. But, what was there to say? Instead, she took another step backward, trying like hell to look confident (which was basically impossible) as she sidestepped the couch. She backed away from Guy one step at a time, attempting to widen the space between them, until her back pressed against the cold glass of the windows overlooking downtown.

But for each step she took backward, Guy took another forward. He kept walking toward her, looking like a man on a mission with lightning-bolt eyes fixed straight on her. Now she had her back up against the wall—or window—trapped between a mix of gorgeous devil and hungry predator…but in a good way.

“So, what’s the plan then?” Her voice sounded like someone had stepped on a mouse.

“The plan?” Guy stopped moving forward and cocked his head curiously at her.

“Yeah, the plan. Dinner, a movie—where are we going? We are going somewhere, yes?”

A blink transformed Guy from confident to uncertain. Then, he paused and seemed to reevaluate something as he considered her position squished against the glass. A coy smile spread across his face. “Well, if you keep walking backward we’re going to be base jumping off the Ritz without a parachute. That might put a damper on dinner.”

Andie looked at him stupidly and wondered what the hell he was talking about. Then, the realization hit her. She wasn’t against the glass of the window, but of a glass door to a small deck outside. It had never occurred to Andie that there would be a balcony on the edge of this glass mountain, but of course there would be. This was the penthouse at the Ritz, not the Holiday Inn, and they were in Denver, Colorado—not Las Vegas. She laughed under her breath, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and did her best to make it look like she totally meant to be leaning against the door by leaning more heavily on her back. It was a cold night. Not cool. The glass felt like a slab of ice against her skin, and then—

It was too predictable. The door fell open behind her and she stumbled backward in her heels, losing her footing as she grasped for something solid in the empty air behind her. Her back hit the balcony gate and her body tipped, her hands trying and failing to make purchase on the railing. She was falling, a breath away from plummeting over the edge.
So this is how it ends
, she had time to think. Instead of “Local Professor Gets De-Kidneyed in Celebrity Bathtub,” the headline would recount her last moments much more pathetically, “Local Professor Ends Date with Gorgeous Celebrity by Throwing Herself off Balcony.” In one movement, Guy’s hand was around her back, pulling her safely away from certain death. His arm curled around her back as he brought her into him and clasped her firmly against his chest. It was a rush. Adrenaline raced through Andie’s body and she fell forward into him. He caught her easily, his arms tangled around her back, hers around his neck. The four inches of stiletto and pair of bare feet mixed together, making finding safe footing impossible. Ultimately, the inertia barreled them, wound together, into a heap on the same fluffy white couch Andie had previously been cowering behind. Oh, wasn’t that ironic.
Now
the couch was helpful.

From his impromptu resting place underneath her on the couch, Guy’s face looked up at Andie. She probably had the same expression stamped on her face—eyes big, breath ragged, and all emotion smeared away by a general “what-the-hell-just-happened” sort of look. Vertigo overcame her, and Andie felt like she was falling again, but this time it wasn’t into danger, it was straight into every perfect dip and angle of Guy’s face, into eyes the color of a sky just broken by the morning sun, into lips pink and pale and bathed in stubble shadow. Before she could talk herself out of it she was leaning down, letting her body melt into Guy’s arms and chest and legs still tangled around hers. His eyes stayed locked on her as she came toward him, one of his hands sliding in a warm plane up her back to curve against her neck. His hand was hot, vibrating heat on her skin where he held her. She closed her eyes.

A gentle press of his palm on her shoulder stopped her. The world stopped spinning.

“We should—” Guy’s awkward movement underneath her broke the melting spell. She scrambled to the cushion beside him and he stood stiffly, his back to her. The cloth of his suit made smoothing sounds as straightened his tie, adjusted his jacket. He was still fidgeting with his clothes when Andie’s senses finally returned to her. What in the world had just happened? It was all a blur. First he was standing next to her in the mirror, then coming toward her, then she was falling, and before anything made sense she was looking down at him, breathless, and, and… moving to kiss him?
Oh shit
. She was too stunned to be embarrassed. No wonder the poor guy was fumbling, trying to get himself back together. Even she couldn’t decode the mixed signals she had to be sending. He’d saved her from flinging herself off the balcony, not scooped her up into her arms and carried her over the threshold.

Andie righted herself on the couch, and decided to let Guy make the next move.

Guy turned back toward her, a practiced, confident, and completely rehearsed smile stamped on his face. “We should order dinner.”

Order dinner?
Andie was confused. “Order dinner?”

Guy nodded, pursed his lips together. He seemed to be steadying his breathing. “Yes, the restaurant in the hotel is fantastic. I thought we’d order food up, and just…talk.”

Andie blinked up at him and lowered her eyes, frantically trying to read between the lines in his words. He’d been in jeans in a t-shirt when she got there, but then changed into a suit—that meant that he wanted to be dressed similar to her to go out, right? Why else would he change? He wouldn’t get so dolled up to stay in, right? But now he was talking about having food delivered in. It didn’t jive. Something was up.