The Bride Plan. Кейси Майклс

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      “Tell me something I don’t know,” Chessie all but gasped, trying to catch her breath, as she apparently hadn’t been breathing there for a while. Was surprised she hadn’t forgotten how. He didn’t have to talk. She didn’t need him to talk, preferred he didn’t talk. She just needed. If he didn’t watch out, she might just get there on her own, just from thinking about what she wanted him to do next. She’d never felt like this before in her life. She liked it!

      His low chuckle helped bring her back to earth. “No, I mean something in your pocket. I think it’s your cell phone.”

      Sanity knocked on the door to Chessie’s libido, and her libido, so entirely unused to company, idiotically let it in.

      “Oh. My cell phone. Right. It could be important. I should answer it, huh?”

      Jace stepped away from her just as her knees threatened to buckle. “To be continued later?”

      “Is … is that a question, or are you just being smug?”

      “Do you care?”

      Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. Sexual innuendo. Raw, primitive lust. Openly acknowledging that, yes, she wanted to have sex with somebody. There was no dance, no courtship, no promises. No flattery or flowers. No agenda or destination other than getting him inside of her as deep as he could go and then watching his face as he drove into her again and again until they both exploded in a physical release that was the entire object of the game.

      A sudden visual image stole her breath. Her caller could leave her a voice mail.

      “I have a date tonight,” she heard herself say. “A blind date. I can’t get out of it. It … it’s for a dinner party at my cousin’s house. If I didn’t show up, it would make the numbers uneven. And I think the only reason for the dinner party is to …”

      Jace picked up the plans and his measuring tape and began backing toward the door to the hallway. Was he angry? Did he look angry? Did he have any right to be angry?

      Chessie decided he wasn’t angry. And then got a little angry that he wasn’t angry.

      Talk about your mixed-up heads—she ought to have hers examined the first chance she got!

      “Set you up? Been there, done that.”

      “Got the T-shirt?”

      “Didn’t want one. I’m not into relationships.”

      “I didn’t ask.”

      “I know.”

      “I’m divorced. I found my wife in bed with another man.”

      “I was left at the altar. He ran off with my maid of honor, and I doubt they’d only been sharing longing glances before they hopped that plane to Mexico. Which do you think is worse?”

      He stepped back another pace, his eyes still very much locked with hers. “Are we keeping score?”

      “I’m just saying. I’m not into relationships, either.”

      “Good. Because I don’t want one.”

      “No. I know what you want. You made that pretty obvious.”

      “I didn’t hear you telling me to stop.”

      Chessie pressed her crossed hands against her chest. “Oh, darling, are we having our first fight?”

      Jace laughed, shook his head. “You’re something else, Chessie Burton. Don’t make me like you.”

      “I wouldn’t think of it. Whatever was going on here had nothing to do with liking. We know nothing about each other. We should probably keep it that way.”

      “What was ‘going on here’? Say it, Chessie. We were about to have sex, and if that phone hadn’t vibrated we’d probably be done by now, because there wasn’t going to be anything slow or easy about where we were heading.”

      Chessie felt another blush starting and turned her face away from his gaze. “Yes, I know. But you started it,” she said, feeling like a child in a childish argument.

      “Let’s at least be honest here, Chessie. We both started it, the first time we saw each other. And it’s not going to go away unless we finish it.”

      She turned to answer him, saying what, she didn’t know. But the doorway was empty.

      She dropped onto the bed, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she’d just run a marathon in some alternate universe, where she was a sex-starved nymph in transparent flowing draperies and he was the flesh-and-bone mating invention of some mad scientist out to re-populate the world with six-pack abs.

      A vacation. That’s what she needed. A long vacation far, far away from here. Long enough so that the addition would be done and he’d be gone by the time she got back. Because she could never face him again after this, and she was sure he wouldn’t have the same problem. No, he’d just be there every day for the next three weeks or so; no shirt, big smile, crinkly creases around his eyes, and oozing sex from every pore. Just there, waiting for her to give him the signal.

      Chessie sat up all at once. Signal? What was the signal? She didn’t know any signals. She didn’t even know who she was anymore, because she certainly wasn’t the woman who had almost … almost—Good Lord!

      “I’m not going to think about this anymore,” she told herself as she stood in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink, reapplying her lipstick. “Everyone is entitled to one aberration in a lifetime. He was mine, but I was saved by the bell, and now I’m over it. It’s out of my system. He’s out of my system. He was never in my system. I don’t even like him. He’s arrogant, and assuming, and clearly just out for what he can get, and I—

      “Good Lord. Now I’m trying to set myself up as either a victim or a Goody Two-shoes who didn’t know what I was doing even as I was doing it. The man is sex on a stick. He can’t help it. The only question is, do I take what he’s offering, or do I do the sensible thing and walk away?”

      Her reflection had no answer for her. Neither did her formerly rational brain nor her once-bruised and now wary heart.

      But her body? Oh, her body had cast its vote before she’d even finished the question.

      “Where’ya goin’, Jace? Is something on fire somewhere?”

      Jace had already picked up his lunch bucket and was heading toward the alley and his pickup when Carl asked his question. He turned back to look at the man, his mind racing to come up with a reason he was walking off the job. Okay, running off the job.

      “I need to go downtown, check on some permits. I think we’re going to enlarge Ms. Burton’s existing bathroom, make it a Jack-and-Jill open to the workroom, which is going to change the entryway from the bedroom to the workroom, and I’m going to have to amend the plumbing permit to do that.” As lies went, this was a pretty good one, and he decided he would do just that. He’d tell Marylou about it when he saw her. She’d approve it. She’d pretty much tossed the job at him and told him to do anything he wanted with it.

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