Ridge: The Avenger. Leanne Banks

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      Her heart hammered against her rib cage. Heat and confusion tangled inside her. “I, uh, I—”

      “Because if you are…”

      Panic won over excitement. “No!” She pressed her back against the seat. “I was just wondering—”

      “I’m wondering, too,” Ridge interrupted in a voice threaded with intimacy. “I’m wondering what’s going on in your mind when your eyelids flutter.”

      Her mouth desert dry, she stared at him.

      He slid his thumb just under the hem of her dress on the outside of her thigh and her breath hitched in her throat. Watching her with his compelling, golden eyes, he moved his thumb in one slow stroke that made her feel branded. “I wonder a lot more, but if you’re concerned that I’ll take advantage of you, don’t worry. It’s my job to guard your body, Dara, and that’s what I’ll do, even if it means protecting you from me.” Ridge removed his hands and eased away from her. “I make it a policy never to get involved with a client.”

      Heaven help her if he changed his mind! She’d been about as threatening as a wet noodle. She should have slapped his inquisitive hands. Next time she would. This time, she just wanted an ice cube. Dara searched for her breath and finally found it. “Good,” she managed to say, nodding emphatically and wishing her hands would stop trembling. “Very good. I think that sounds like a… uh—” She cleared her throat and wondered why she felt like a bomb had gone off inside her. “A wise policy,” she finished, and breathed a sigh of relief when the limo pulled to a stop outside the hotel.

      “Here they are. Just what you ordered.” Wearing a dubious expression, Clarence handed the bag to Dara.

      Sitting on the plush sofa of her hotel suite, Dara glanced inside the bag and gave a weak smile. “Thank you. They look fine. Did you find anyone who can coach me?”

      Clarence adjusted his bow tie. “I asked a couple of people at the local campaign headquarters, discreetly of course, but none of them had any, uh, experience with, uh, rollerblades.”

      Ridge watched the interplay between the two of them curiously.

      Dara sighed and tucked a lock of her damp hair behind her ear. Fresh from a morning shower, weaning blue jeans that cupped her well-shaped rear end and revealed tantalizing hints of bare flesh from strategically placed tears, along with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt that stretched across her breasts, she looked more like a college coed than the current darling of the press. Her face and feet were bare. With all the polish rubbed off of her, she still exuded a subtle but provocative energy that lured his attention and held it.

      The only thing that proved, he told himself, was that his hormones were in working order.

      “I don’t want to sound vain,” she said, “but this is something I really don’t want to see on the evening news for the rest of my natural life.”

      Clarence nodded sympathetically. “Forrester should have asked you first, but you know how he is when he gets going. I suppose we could attempt to cancel,” he said, his voice full of doubt.

      “It would be easier to die.”

      Ridge tried to put the pieces of the conversation together. He knew Drew Forrester was Montgomery’s cracker jack media specialist. “Cancel what?” he finally interjected.

      Both heads turned toward him. Reservation shimmered in Dara’s eyes. She’d deliberately ignored him since last night. Ridge wondered if that was a result of his actions, and felt the slightest sting of regret. He’d intentionally made her uncomfortable because he’d seen that reckless glint in her eyes, the womanly curiosity. Perhaps he could have let it pass if he hadn’t felt an answering flicker of restlessness inside him. But, hell, the last thing he needed was for Montgomery’s goddaughter to spin her feminine wiles around his head and seduce him.

      “Cancel what?” he repeated.

      Clarence cleared his throat. “Well, it seems that Mr. Forrester accepted an invitation for Miss Seabrook to participate in an athletic event for the purpose of promoting Mr. Montgomery’s campaign.”

      Dara threw Clarence a long-suffering glance. “What Clarence means is that Drew promised the three major television networks and the rest of the free world that I would skate in a parade next week.” She pulled the pair of hot pink and black in-line skates from the bag and spun one of the wheels. “I’m surprised this wasn’t in my file, too,” she muttered darkly under her breath, then tossed Ridge a look of defiance. “I can’t skate, can’t ski, can barely dance. It took me a long time to get used to high heels.”

      Her confession amused him, but he restrained himself from laughing. “And you can’t cancel,” he said, confirming her earlier statement.

      “Drew doesn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘no,’” she said glumly.

      “Quite true,” Clarence agreed. He paused, assessing Ridge. “I don’t suppose you know how to—”

      “Absolutely not,” Dara said, rising from the sofa. “It’s not in Mr. Jackson’s job description to teach me how to skate. Besides, I’m sure he hasn’t spent the last few years whizzing around on in-line skates, so—”

      “I could teach you,” Ridge casually intoned. “I’ve been on rollerblades a few times. And a fair portion of my misspent youth,” he added cynically, “was spent on skateboards.” There’d been so much darkness when he was a teenager, that sometimes all he could recall of that time was his mother and her addictions. He was surprised by the faint glimmer of his fond memory. “I even won a ribbon once.”

      “That doesn’t mean—” Dara began.

      “What size skates do you wear?” Clarence asked.

      “Eleven.”

      Clarence was already on his way out the door when Dara called after him. “Clarence!” She ran to the door. “Wait! I don’t want—” She groaned in exasperation when the door closed behind the campaign coordinator. “Oh, Lord, save me from controlling men.” She turned around to face Ridge. “You really don’t know what you’re getting into. You may carry a gun and know how to go hand-to-hand with the bad guys, but you are really out of your league on this one. This is going to take more than patience.”

      Ridge had to confess that Dara was turning this into the most interesting job he’d had in years. “I’m a patient man,” he said in a mild voice.

      She waved her hand dismissively. “This is going to take more than skill.”

      “I have plenty of skill.”

      “You don’t understand. This is going to take a miracle. We are talking about a woman who gets dizzy walking across the beginner’s balance beam. I never could balance a book on my head for my finishing school class. I’m not a balanced kind of person.”

      Complete silence followed. Ridge cleared his throat to cover the chuckle he couldn’t contain.

      Dara narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

      “I’m sure you didn’t,” Ridge agreed, but couldn’t keep his amusement from his voice.

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