Face-Off. Nancy Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ and regaled her with a few stories about him and his siblings as kids.

      When he talked about the past, she could see him as a little boy. The image filled her with warmth.

      He talked a lot with his hands, she noticed. They were big hands, the kind that wielded a hockey stick the way a Viking might have wielded a sword.

      Twice she became completely distracted watching those big hands, imagining them on her body.

      She grabbed her water and drank quickly, wondering if the wonderful wine he’d chosen had completely gone to her head. Or her nether regions. It was so unlike her to be having sexy thoughts about a stranger. And yet he wasn’t a stranger. He seemed familiar to her somehow, and so easy to talk to.

      Stranger or not, as the evening progressed, she realized she wanted him in the most elemental way. Even though they talked about a variety of subjects, not one of which was sexual, she knew, every time their gazes connected, that he was thinking the same thoughts. Suspected he knew she was too.

      But she wouldn’t go down that road again. If Michael had been too far above her on the social/sexual scale, this guy was in the stratosphere.

      Michael’s betrayal had hurt. Somehow, she thought that Jarrad’s would devastate her.

      “Your wrists are so tiny,” he said, looking at her right hand toying with the bottom of her wineglass. It was the first really personal thing he’d said. He reached over, picked up her hand. At the touch of his tough, leathery fingers on her skin, she shivered. He wrapped his hand around her wrist and it was thicker than a gauntlet. “You make me feel like an oversized baboon.” He glanced over at her, all steamy and delicious, “I’d be scared to break you.”

      She held his gaze. “I’m tougher than I look,” she said. Then almost gasped at her own boldness. Where had that come from?

      There was a beat of potent silence. He broke it, saying huskily, “I really want to kiss you right now.”

      Her heart jumped in her chest. The idea both panicked and excited her. She licked her lips.

      And the way he gazed at them, she realized he’d mistaken her nervous gesture for a provocative one. Oh, crap. She was in so much trouble.

      “Shall we go?” he asked.

      She nodded.

      As they left, he put a hand on her back, not exactly the most sexual gesture in history and yet she felt his heat burning through the material of her dress, felt the primal drumbeat of passion between them.

      He walked her to his car, opened her door for her, and when he got into his own side, he didn’t start the car right away. Instead, he leaned forward, closing the distance between them with tantalizing slowness. Then he captured her mouth with his, kissing her slowly as though savoring her.

      Oh, he felt so good. She loved the shape of his mouth, the feel of his lips on hers, the rasp of stubble when his chin brushed her. He touched his tongue to her lips and she opened for him, greedy and wanting.

      After about a year of kissing, he pulled away. Both of them were breathing fast. “I want to see you again.”

      “Mmm.”

      “Could it be tomorrow? I’m probably only going to be in town for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to waste any time.”

      “A couple of weeks?” She felt chilled suddenly. This promising beginning already had its end?

      And yet, on some level it was perfect. A brief fling with a great guy, somebody who couldn’t hurt her because there wouldn’t be time. He was the perfect antidote to the unpleasant aftertaste of Michael in her system. She hadn’t even had a date since he’d humiliated her, she certainly hadn’t kissed another man and she’d assumed it would be a long, long time before she’d trust a man enough to be intimate.

      But then Jarrad had come along. Jarrad who was a celebrity, a wounded hero, a man so far above her he was more like a fantasy than an actual human being.

      If he were permanently in Vancouver she couldn’t put herself through the possibility of being crushed. But if he was only here for two weeks?

      Then maybe he was absolutely, exactly perfect.

      Besides, some demon had taken over her body, and she felt like a completely different woman with Jarrad.

      If she only had two weeks, she didn’t plan on wasting any of it.

      She closed the distance between them, put her lips to his ear. “If we only have two weeks, why wait until tomorrow? “

      He put a hand to the back of her neck, dipped her back so he could look at her face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

      She breathed in the scent of him. So uniquely his and so utterly seductive to her. “Yes.”

      5

      HE DROVE BESIDE THE OCEAN, gray and moody as though depressed by the constant rain. He’d never realized how much he liked rain until he lived away from it. There was something comforting and familiar about the pound of raindrops on the roof, the splash of puddles in the road.

      “Where are we going?” she asked once, as they headed over Lions Gate Bridge and into West Vancouver.

      “My place.”

      “You keep a place here?”

      “Sure. I bought it a while ago. I’m up here enough that it makes sense.”

      In fact, this had been his first real-estate purchase, the heady plunge of a guy who’d suddenly made it. Luckily, he’d had good advisors and enough people who’d smack him down in a second if he got too full of himself that they wouldn’t let quick success go to his head.

      But nobody could have talked him out of buying the house when he first saw it. Tucked away in a quiet cove on the waterfront, the house had originally been a summer cottage back before a bridge connected Vancouver with the north shore. Back when you had to take a ferry across. Of course, since then waterfront property in West Van had risen in value with dizzying speed, and the home had been modernized, but it still had the bones of the original cottage and he’d resisted all ideas from well-meaning friends and his ex to knock the structure down and build a monster house. He didn’t want a fancy mansion. He wanted privacy, an ocean view and a bit of beach. And a house that felt like home. He’d spent enough nights out of town and in hotels that he’d really come to value having a home.

      Somehow, the Malibu place had never really felt like home to him. It was a status symbol, he supposed, a little like his wife had been.

      Sierra, he realized with a start, was like his West Van cottage. Modest on the outside but real and comfortable in the way his favorite things always were.

      He drove down the winding road that led to his place and a feeling of utter contentment stole over him. He loved this place and bringing this woman to it felt right.

      He pulled into the little wooden shed that was the one-car garage, killed the engine and led her out and down the path to his house.

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