Revealed. Joanne Rock

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СКАЧАТЬ did tonight.”

      He had trouble focusing on her words. He was in a darkened stairwell with a half-naked woman and her perfume was driving him out of his mind. Greg found himself leaning closer, trying to catch a stronger whiff of her fragrance.

      Too bad she was already retreating down the stairs.

      “Bye.” She managed a little wave, releasing the tablecloth with one hand for all of a nanosecond. “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue.”

      Confusion jolted him out of his mission to track her scent. She was leaving?

      “Wait.” He didn’t know what he was going to say next, or how he was going to make her stay.

      But Greg De Costa knew one thing for certain.

      No matter that Jackie the Cat looked like walking mayhem, he wasn’t ready to let her saunter out of his life just yet.

      JACKIE PAUSED AND TURNED back, knowing she’d be hard pressed to deny the Adonis in corporate clothes just about anything. Had a tie ever looked so good slung around a man’s neck? Jackie’s eyes kept returning to the enticing hollow at the base of his throat, the hint of skin unveiled by one neglected top button.

      He looked way too out of her league—the kind of man who dated women in understated Calvin Klein couture, not misfits in polyester kitty fur. Guys like Greg appreciated women who worked for Fortune 500 companies, women whose golf game was as low as their IQ was high.

      Jackie, on the other hand, prided herself on always choosing the road less traveled or the man least likely to conform.

      And Greg wasn’t exactly a rabble-rouser. She barely knew him, but his designer tie and suspenders told a story of their own.

      “Yes?” She could at least see what he wanted, however. Sure, he was all wrong for her. But he had saved her from extreme mortification in the bar.

      Maybe he wanted to know her whole name.

      Or her number.

      Or maybe a night in her bed as compensation for his gallant tablecloth rescue—a thought that didn’t deter her as much as it should have.

      He loomed over her, taller than her to start with, and now he stood two steps above her in the narrow stairwell. His eyes were so dark she could no longer discern their color, but they glistened back at her in the dim light.

      “Let me at least drive you home.”

      “I’ll be okay.” The offer tempted her, but how could she accept a ride from a man she barely knew? A man who might have only been nice to her because he thought she’d be grateful. “But thank you.”

      “Do you know someone who can come pick you up?” Greg’s brow furrowed as he frowned, the gesture adding all sorts of interesting lines to his face.

      Jackie shook her head before realizing she should probably just say anything to extricate herself from this awkward social situation politely. The man was proving difficult to shake, but some part of her responded to his concern for her, too.

      Jackie had always been good at drawing attention to herself—whether she’d intended to or not. But she’d never mastered the art of holding an audience’s interest, and Greg’s continued attentiveness had her feeling a little light-headed.

      “Then let’s scout out a ladies’ room and I’ll tell you my plan.” Greg nudged her forward before she had the chance to register what he was saying.

      His hand hovered around the small of her back, not quite touching, yet Jackie was keenly aware of its proximity.

      “You need to find the ladies’ room, too?” she asked as they moved down three flights to the ground floor. Nervousness gave her the tendency to be flip.

      “No. I’m sending you into the ladies’ room with my shirt so you can pull yourself together minus the tablecloth.” He was already unbuttoning his way down the crisp cotton of his white dress shirt. The intimate action sent a wave of unexpected longing through her.

      Jackie couldn’t have stopped herself from peeking if she’d tried. Too bad it was so dark in the stairwell or she would have inspected every new inch of bronzed flesh on the corporate Adonis.

      His tan made her own skin look ghostly pale in comparison. And the hints of muscles in the V of that unbuttoned shirt…

      Jackie swallowed.

      Surely the shadows were playing tricks on her.

      “What will you wear home?” she asked mostly just to distract herself from thoughts she had no business thinking.

      Namely her lips tracing a path along ridges of muscle defining his abs.

      In the middle of that image, a vision growing more explicit by the second, Jackie remembered a popular musician’s myth that you couldn’t create works of great passion until you lost your virginity.

      A silly superstition of course. But the musician’s counterpart to an old wives’ tale was well known to those in the business. She’d had a fading diva for a music teacher once who’d told her she wouldn’t be able to sing until she’d screwed.

      Jackie had written off the bawdy advice with a laugh. Funny how that wisdom came roaring back in her ears as she stood drooling over Greg’s very male physique.

      What was the matter with her?

      “I’m a guy. I don’t need to wear a shirt home,” Greg assured her. “Besides, I live two blocks from here.”

      Jackie shook herself to ward off a sudden onslaught of sexual images. She’d never suffered from too much drooling over any man, or really regretted her doggedly persistent virginity either, for that matter.

      But the pangs of awareness shooting through her now had her wondering if maybe she’d been saving it up for a little too long.

      They’d reached the bottom of the stairwell, and Greg shouldered his way through the heavy door onto the street. Darkness had fallen, but the streetlights still made it seem brighter outdoors. They stepped out into a short alleyway, a few feet from the street that ran along the front of the bar.

      “No ladies’ room here,” Greg observed. “There must not be any access to the rest of the building from this side. Did you want to go back in the front doors?”

      No. No. And hell no.

      How did she get herself into these fixes? She truly did have a formidable IQ. And she had managed to ace college with a summa cum laude stamp of approval on her degree. Why did things like this always happen to her?

      “No. I’ll just go with the tablecloth, thanks.” She wondered if she looked as ridiculous as she sounded. Whiskers, a tail and a tablecloth. No doubt she looked twice as ridiculous. “I can drop it by the restaurant Monday after I have it cleaned.”

      A crowd of frat boys singing some college fight song stumbled out of the bar, passing the alleyway. They never noticed Jackie and Greg, but Greg stood between her and the street just in case.

      She didn’t know much about this СКАЧАТЬ