Читать книгу No Strings Attached - Alison Kent - Страница 12

HAVING ARRIVED at Haydon’s only minutes before Chloe, Eric leaned against the back end of his car, legs crossed at the ankle, arms crossed over his chest, and watched her pull her lime-green VW Beetle into the parking lot.

If he was a betting man, he wouldn’t take better than fifty-fifty odds that she’d worn the outfit he’d wanted her to wear. Still, she was here. And that was saying something.

He continued to watch as she jerked her sunglasses from her face, the keys from the ignition. With a look between a frown and a glare, she climbed from the car, her eyes never breaking contact with his.

“Well, blow my mind. A woman who can follow orders.” He grinned. He winked. Because seeing her in play clothes had just become the highlight of his day. “I think I’m in love.”

“I see your mouth is making promises you don’t have the backbone to keep,” she said, tucking both her shades and her car keys into her knapsack and slinging it over one shoulder.

“Not promises as much as observations,” he said, ignoring her dig. He pushed himself erect and headed for the passenger door, then added a dig of his own. “Unless you want me to see what I can do about paying up.”

Chloe, of course, ignored him. He’d opened the car door and now stood with both wrists draped over the frame. Chloe waited, one hand wrapped around her knapsack’s shoulder strap, the other at her hip, feet unmoving and eyes cutting from Eric’s to the Mustang and back again.

“I take it that you want me to get in?”

“You got it.”

“Do you mind telling me where we’re going? Or what we’re going to do? And, most of all, why you wanted me to wear this ridiculous getup yet again?”

Ah, yes. The Chloe he still didn’t love…but was starting to appreciate way too much. “How ’bout you get in the car and trust that all will be revealed in good time?”

“In your good time, you mean,” she groused, but she did slide down into the car’s bucket seat.

Eric closed the door behind her and skirted the rear of the car, slapping his hand on the trunk on his way to the driver’s side. Talk about your bad mood. He couldn’t believe Chloe could really be that worried about her position at gIRL-gEAR, worried enough to bite his head off when he was the one she’d come to for help.

She’d been one of the original girls. To his mind that made Chloe irreplaceable, the same way Ted Williams would always be a Boston Red Sox, Michael Jordan a Chicago Bull, Joe Namath a New York Jet. No. There was something else going on here. But Eric wasn’t going to ask her yet.

He slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and turned over the two hundred sixty horses beneath the Mustang’s hood. He shoved the five speed into reverse and whipped the car around, squealing his tires out of the parking lot and onto westbound Richmond Drive.

Chloe slid him a sideways glance. “Is the length of the skid mark a guy lays in direct proportion to his opinion of himself?”

“Nope.” Eric grinned. He wouldn’t be able to afford retreads if that were the case. “That’s just me giving the horses their head. Gotta put the sweethearts through their paces.”

“Humph. Typical man. Your car gets treated better than your date.”

Eric downshifted for the traffic light a half block ahead. “How do you figure?”

“‘Give the horses their head.’ ‘Put the sweethearts through their paces,”’ Chloe mimicked, digging for her sunglasses. The sun was at their backs, but glared off the approaching cars’ glass. “Your date doesn’t even get a straight answer when she asks where you’re taking her.”

Women. Couldn’t even give a guy a chance to spring a surprise. Had to be all distrusting and suspicious…though, in this case, suspicion was not unwarranted, Eric had to admit. “Trust me, princess. I know how to treat a date. And if we were dating, I’d be more than happy to show you what you’ve been missing.”

“I know exactly what I’ve been missing,” she mumbled. And he swore he heard her add, “Cary Grant.”

Eric frowned. The girl needed help. “Tell me something, Chloe. If you can’t find a man you’d like to keep company with, why don’t you quit dating instead of setting yourself up for disappointment?”

She was quiet for a long minute, staring straight ahead through the windshield. He was about to give up and turn the conversation to the weather when she finally said, “I don’t set myself up for disappointment. I mean, it’s not like I go into a date hoping the evening will crash and burn.” She gave a careless shrug. “It just happens.”

No one crashed and burned every single time. No matter what Chloe said, it just didn’t happen. “How open is your mind then? Because I gotta say, you’re not exactly little Mary Sunshine.”

“How would you know?” she snarled. “We’re not dating, remember?”

“We don’t have to be dating for me to see that you have a hell of a negative attitude.”

Chloe closed the front pouch of her knapsack; the jerk of the zipper sounded like she’d ripped a jagged hole in the air. “You can let me out anytime. I can get myself back to my car, thank you very much.”

Eric hated to do it. He really did, but he whipped the car in a U-turn and headed back to Haydon’s. He wanted her company, the company she usually offered, or had offered before she’d hit this personal downhill slide.

She was smart and she was funny. Her sharp tongue could slice a man into shreds. Her eyes could throw daggers at any part of him left standing. Her mouth could grind the fallen pieces into the ground.

But, oh, could she kiss and make it all better.

Which told Eric that part of what drove her was passion, and passion was one mother of a two-edged sword.

What he wanted from Chloe was to see the shine of the blade without feeling the sting of the razor. He had trouble enough with his own morning shave.

He shot up into the sports bar’s parking lot, coming to an amazingly gentle stop.

Chloe reached for the door handle. Eric stopped her with nothing more than an exaggerated clearing of his throat.

“You have something to say?”

“Just a reminder of our deal. And turnabout being fair play and all. You don’t grant my first wish, I don’t feel I have to attend your first function.” He frowned, paused for effect and added, “When was that, anyway?”

“Tomorrow. gIRL-gEAR is hosting an open house.”

“Tomorrow? Well, I’m not sure I’m going to be available. You hardly gave me any notice.”

“That’s because I’ve almost decided not to go,” she said softly, slumping down into the seat, closing her eyes and letting her head hit the window.

Uh-oh. “Did you tell Sydney you were bailing?”

“I haven’t bailed yet. I’ve just been wondering if any of this effort is going to make any difference.”

Not if you don’t change your attitude, he wanted to say, but instead he offered, “I still don’t get why you think you have to go to all this trouble.”

She shook her head, waved him off with the flutter of one hand. “Forget it. I’m just in a lousy mood. Chalk it up to a crappy Friday.”

“Another bad date last night?”

“No, actually. Last night was great. I stayed home, no one but myself for company, and watched old videos. Six hours of my favorite love stories and you’d think I’d be in a better mood, wouldn’t you?”

“If you like love stories. I’d be in a coma.”

“I suppose you spent all night watching a ball game or a fight or whatever sport is in season.” She made the accusation, then pulled off her sunglasses.

Eric had trouble keeping a straight face. “Actually, no. I had a date.”

She opened one eye, slid him a glance, opened the other eye and turned her head enough to look at him straight on. “Do tell.”

“What’s to tell? It was a date.”

“Dinner? A movie? Back to the bedroom?”

This time Eric shifted in his seat and did his best to face her. “That’s your idea of a date?”

“Not mine, no. But that’s what I’m usually offered.”

No wonder she went through men like he went through running shoes, if that was the height of her dating expectations. “And you’re going out with losers, why?”

She studied him for a minute, frowning slightly, her eyes that amazingly cool shade of sunset purple. Her lashes were long; he only noticed because of the way she blinked like that, so lazy and slow.

He didn’t think he’d ever seen her face in the buff, and wondered what she’d look like with her skin scrubbed clean. If she’d look as innocent as she did in his imagination. The same imagination that was making hard work of the lower half of his body.

She wore her makeup well, considering she used more than a lot of women. And he wasn’t sure he’d noticed until now how perfect she looked in the colors. Soft and feminine…like the bunches of wildflowers that had popped up all over the field at Stratton Park, where they were headed.

Or had been headed until Chloe got a bad-mood burr up her butt.

It probably wasn’t fair of him to hijack her this way, but she’d agreed to the terms of the deal and he was looking forward to seeing her sweat. It would do her good to get rid of those built-up stress toxins.

It would do him good as well to see her get all huffy and insulted at having to play ball. He needed the reminder that they would never get along as a couple. She stirred his blood wildly, but dinner and a movie and back to the bedroom was not his idea of a good time.

He loved it when a woman understood his passion for getting out and getting physical. The ones who shared his idea of having fun were the ones he enjoyed most in bed. They didn’t worry about wrinkles and tangles and makeup running in the sun and the heat.

And they brought that same energy and stamina, not to mention their strong warrior-woman thighs, to bed. He wondered about Chloe’s stamina. He wondered about her thighs.

Finally, he snapped to the fact that she still had her gaze trained fully his way. “Well?”

“I’m not intentionally going out with losers. You can take my word on that.”

“I thought all women had some kind of—” Eric waved one hand “—hormonal radar thing going. To lessen the chance of winding up with a jerk.”

“Do all men have one? Or, if they do, does the one they have work one hundred percent of the time?”

Eric ran cupped fingers back and forth over the curve of the steering wheel. “I guess that’s the better question, isn’t it? My gaydar never fails me. I’m not as lucky with my laydar.”

Shifting into a more comfortable, the-better-to-see-you-with position, she repeated, “Laydar?”

“Sure,” he said, and grinned. “The wiggly little stick that tells me if I’m going to get laid.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “That is about the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard.”

“C’mon, princess,” he said with a wink. “Don’t tell me you don’t wish you had one.”

She answered with a careless shrug. “I don’t need one. I can get laid anytime I want.”

“Now who’s being sexist?”

“I’m being a realist. You want me to lie about it? Deny that men find me sexy? Well, I won’t.” A self-deprecating smile lifted both corners of her mouth. “I’ll also admit that I can be an unadulterated bitch. But that hasn’t yet stopped a guy from begging to show me heaven.”

“And that would be right about the time you tell him to go to hell?”

“For all the good it does.” She gave a quick shake of her head, scooping flyaway hair behind her ear, before adding, “I so don’t get it. I mean, I understand the concept of coming back for more. But it’s not like I’m giving out candy here. I can’t decide if their egos are that resilient or if they have some sort of rejection fetish.”

Eric considered her dilemma, considered, too, the shell of her ear and the tiny little Spock-like point now exposed. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Kick me, beat me, make me beg? Yeah. It can happen with some guys.”

“But never with you.” The tone of her comeback asked the question she’d stated as fact.

Time to get a few things straight. “Chloe. I never say never because life offers too few sure things. But I can say this. You will never know what I do or do not enjoy in bed until you’re there to find out firsthand. Then, trust me. I won’t hesitate to show you what I like, where and how.”

And then he bit his tongue before inviting her to take a trip into his fantasy. Because his imagination had taken on epic proportions, and all she needed to know he could teach her with a quick zip of his fly.

For the next few moments she remained unmoving and silent, the only sound in the car the muffled noise of the engine and that of Chloe’s breathing, ragged and more than a little bit out of control.

Eric could only imagine the matching pulse beating in her wrist, her chest, the base of her throat. He could only imagine because he had no intention of looking away from her eyes. He could see her considering the possibilities. How would they fit together? Would he like her best on the bottom or on the top? Would he prefer she take control or surrender? Would he get his first? Would he even be able to make her come?

He smiled at that, not because he was a miraculous, all-powerful lover, but because he was surprised how many women had given up on orgasms. And how many men weren’t man enough to take the time and figure out what a woman needed.

They weren’t all built on the same assembly line, which meant where one woman needed a tweak, another needed a nudge and still another needed a nice little squeeze. All a man had to do was ask. Then figure out how to coax her to answer. Women were such amazing beings.

Finally, Chloe cleared her throat. “Well, Eric. Sugar. I’m not sure I know what to say. I would love to know what you’re like in bed, but since I’ll never be there to find out firsthand, I guess I’ll die an unfulfilled woman.”

She was so damn good at busting his chops. Why did she have to be so damn good?

He didn’t know another woman who’d ever been able to get his hopes up when he wasn’t even looking, only to crush him into line chalk by the time he got up to speed.

“Remember what I said. Never say never.”

She waved a hand in front of her face. “It’s getting rather stuffy in here. Think you could turn on the AC?”

Eric tossed his head back and laughed, adjusting the flow of refrigerated air. “I would’ve turned it on a long time ago if I’d known you’d be sticking around to need it. But you were so gung ho to get back to your car.”

“I know. I was.”

“But you’re not now? What’s with the change of heart?”

She turned her head, returned her sunglasses to her face. But not before a hint of grudging respect flashed in her eyes. “Nothing but that little ol’ promise I made to grant you three wishes. A deal is a deal.”

Eric rubbed his hands together. “My own personal genie in a bottle.”

“Just keep that rub-a-dub-dub business to yourself,” she said, slicing him with a sharp sideways glance.

“So, we’re ready to hit the road here again?”

She sighed. “I suppose I don’t have much choice.”

“What’re you talking about? You have all kinds of choices.” But he put the car into gear anyway, exited Haydon’s parking lot and headed again for Stratton Field.

“Sure. Like choosing between saving my job or giving it up to Poe without a fight.”

Poe. Eric’s first problem to tackle. Or to let Chloe talk herself into tackling. Women liked to talk. All those lips movin’ and jaws flappin’ seemed to jar loose whatever it was keeping their brains from calling the right play.

Give ’em a willing ear, and most of the time they worked things out just fine on their own. He didn’t claim to understand how it worked. He just knew that it did.

“I guess first thing you need to decide is if the job’s worth fighting for.” He downshifted as they rolled up to a traffic light and stopped.

“You have got to be kidding me.” She shifted in her seat, fighting with the seat belt in order to face him. “I am gIRL-gEAR. This is my career. My future. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”

There it was again, that passion. He wondered how aware she was of her nature, and how it must be killing her to rein it in, to bite her tongue when her tongue had so much to say.

And it was more than her mouth. Even the way she wore her makeup fit her personality. That and the way she culled her dates, a sort of aggressive search-and-destroy for…what? he wondered. What was it that drove her?

“Then I guess that answers my question. Though I do think that part about you being gIRL-gEAR is a bit over the top.”

“That coming from Mr. Sports Bar?”

Eric paused to consider the comparison. “Not the same at all. Eric Haydon. Haydon’s Half Time. Chloe Zuniga. gIRL-gEAR. Nope. Totally different arena.”

Chloe snorted. “You can’t even carry on a conversation that isn’t littered with—” she gestured dismissively “—your sports expressions.”

Eric had never really thought about it, but he supposed Chloe was right. He did think in the lingo. But athletics and competition had been so much a part of his life that he didn’t remember a day going by without it. Sorta like he didn’t remember a day going by without food or sleep.

“Besides,” she continued, “even if I am over the top about gIRL-gEAR, it’s a reflection of me. I’m fairly over the top about a lot of things. I don’t think that’s much of a secret. Between my profanity issues,” she said, sketching air apostrophes with her fingers, “and my problems with Poe, I’m a walking talking cry for intervention. Or so Sydney thinks. Having intervened.”

Eric chuckled and signaled his lane change. “So, how long has she been with gIRL-gEAR? This Poe of yours.”

“She’s not mine and she’s been there a little over a year. She started as Sydney’s assistant, but now she works as a buyer. When the position became available, she flexed her claws and got what she wanted. I don’t think she liked working directly under a younger boss,” Chloe said, and redirected the air-conditioning vent. “This way she has more autonomy.”

Eric adjusted the temperature of the refrigerated air. “How old is she?”

“Thirty, I think. And way more suited for a corporate environment. Not conventional, just…I don’t know. gIRL-gEAR seems too funky an atmosphere. I can picture her in Leo Redding’s law office. Though Macy’s only slightly more tolerant of her than I am.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not sure I can put it into words. You almost have to work with her, see her in action. She’s got this whole Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon thing going. Very composed, serene even. But you know behind those eyes she’s just waiting to go all martial arts on your ass. She…simmers, if that makes any sense.”

Checking the traffic in his rearview mirror, Eric couldn’t help but grin. “Simmers, huh? Takes one to know one, maybe?”

“I do not simmer.” Chloe pulled herself up straight in the seat. “I boil.”

“Right over the top.” Eric made a diving motion with his hand.

“Exactly.”

She seemed so proud of her fiery nature, he hated to bring up the obvious. “So, you don’t think your tendency toward, oh, I don’t know, aggressive behavior has anything to do with your dating problems?”

“Why would it? It’s not like I’m running them down with my car or—” she smiled to herself “—drop-kicking them over the goalpost.”

“Whoa. Be still my heart.” He pressed his palm to his chest and beat his fingers in a thumping tattoo.

“Don’t get too excited. I don’t plan to make a habit of it. Even for you.”

“You enjoy being a tease?”

“I am not a tease.”

He wanted to tell her to prove it. Instead, he said, “If you give the guys you date what they want to hear, then a lot of them are going to think you’ll give them anything they want.”

“All because I’m making the effort to be polite? To show interest, even if it’s bogus?”

“Oh, so now you’re a tease and a fake. A guy won’t know if he’s coming or going.”

“Sure he will.” Chloe paused, then added, “If he’s going, it’s yellow. If he’s coming, it’s white.”

Eric choked on a snort of laughter. “That is the sort of gutter mouth comment that’s going to get your ass fired.”

“Because I’m female. But if we were two guys talking, I could get away with referring to any bodily function I wanted to. And I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my job.”

“First of all, no guy I know is going to tell that joke.”

“Maybe not that one, but ones equally offensive.”

Eric continued to shake his head. “Not on the job, if he doesn’t want to find himself facing a sexual harassment suit.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have more class than to tell that joke at work. I usually have more class than to tell it at all.” Her tone was a cross between apologetic and defensive.

More than a little aggravated himself, Eric muttered, “Glad to know hanging out with me doesn’t require any class.”

She banged her head back against the seat. “Hanging out with you means I can relax. I don’t have to censor everything I say. But I do have an understanding of what is and is not acceptable in the workplace.”

“Just not what’s acceptable on a date.”

“No, actually. I think I am well versed in dating etiquette.”

“That’s right. This isn’t a date. You and me, here and now.”

“Duh. No. It’s blackmail.”

Eric took a deep breath and focused on the road ahead. He was so close to saying something he knew he’d regret. He had no business letting her get to him. She was right. This wasn’t a date. It was a deal. And getting mad wouldn’t do anyone any good, anyway.

“So, tomorrow? Is that going to be a date?” he asked, jumping from the frying pan into the fire. “I mean, I want to be sure I don’t get out of line. That I treat you like a date, if that’s what it is. Or that I treat you like one of the guys and swap smut jokes if it’s not.”

For several moments Chloe seemed more interested in the road flying by beneath the Mustang’s wheels than anything Eric had to say. A part of him wanted to take it back. A more perverse part was glad for every word he’d said, even though her hands remained locked around the strap of her knapsack and her feet pressed primly together on the passenger-side floorboard. Her posture was straight and her voice was soft when she spoke.

“I know what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t. You’re trying to make me behave the way you think I should behave. I get so sick of conventions. Who decided girls had to wear the ruffles and sit on the sidelines? I tell you,” she added, this time her voice barely above a whisper, “I’m sick to death of sitting on the sidelines.”

Eric didn’t know if she was speaking literally or making another sports analogy. He wanted to find out, to explore where Chloe came from, because he was curious to find out how she balanced her bad-girl body and her baby-doll face with her mouth that belonged in the gutter.

“Well, this should be right up your alley, then. No one does any sideline sitting when Haydon’s Half Time Hammers meet Big Boy’s Bad Boys for the city’s unofficial coed sports bar volleyball championship.”

“YOU WANT ME TO PLAY volleyball? In a pit filled with dirt?”

“It’s a court, not a pit. It’s sand, not dirt. And it’s clean.”

Having plopped down on the grass outside a court squared off with a permanent barrier of hard black rubber, Eric unlaced his high-tops. “C’mon, Chloe. Get rid of your shoes and socks. It’s too hard to maneuver with all that bulk.”

Oh, she knew what it took to maneuver. She knew exactly. And she couldn’t believe that of all things athletic Eric might choose for his wish, he’d conned her into playing volleyball. Volleyball! Screw her career. She should’ve stayed in bed.

She’d left her knapsack in the Mustang, realizing Eric’s little wish for a sporting adventure did not include a locker room or a shower. But taking off her shoes and socks and exposing the pedicure she’d had refreshed first thing this morning to the abuse of gritty sand? She did not recall this being any part of any deal.

Volleyball. She could only shake her head.

Still, she couldn’t deny that, on the drive from Haydon’s, Eric had given her a lot to think about. She wasn’t ready to cut him loose as a source of good conversation—or as the escort she needed. Besides, she was not completely unfamiliar with the concept of payback being hell.

As other players began to arrive and teams checked in with the league officials stationed across the court beneath a striped awning, Chloe crossed her ankles and sank to the ground. “I’ve been meaning to ask you if you own a tux.”

His fingers fumbled with the lace he was loosening and he came close to ending up with a big messy knot. “I hope you’re not expecting me to come up with a tux by tomorrow. You’ll be escorting yourself if that’s the case.”

Chloe wiggled the toes of her first bare foot, reached for shoe number two. “Oh, no, sugar. The tux is for the Wild Winter Woman fashion show.”

His hands stilled halfway through pulling off his second shoe. He finally looked up with one eye narrowed. “The one with the supermodels?”

Men. Eyes rolling, Chloe nodded.

“Would that be your function number two or three?” Eric asked, his narrowed gaze roaming down to Chloe’s naked foot and smooth bare calf.

She finished stripping off her second shoe, then set about tucking both socks inside, flexing her toes, her feet, stretching the muscles of both inner and outer thighs and her calves, realizing halfway through her warmup that Eric appeared to have been struck dumb.

She moved on to working the kinks from her torso, not totally for her own benefit, either. “Number three. Two is our first gIRL-gEAR gIRL awards ceremony and should merely require a nice suit. I’m just giving you fair warning here. Sort of like you did me when you ordered me to show up at Haydon’s this morning.”

Eric had the good grace to glance up from her legs and look guilty. “I wasn’t sure you’d show if I told you where we were going.”

“And you were right to worry.” Chloe handed Eric her shoes when he held out a hand. Then she got to her feet and brushed the loose grass from her backside. She wiggled her toes in the freshly mowed lawn, deciding gRAFFITI gIRL’s Bubbling Parfait was a perfect color and that her toes felt as good as they looked.

“Damn, Chloe.” Still sitting, Eric stared at Chloe’s legs. “Where’d you get those calf muscles?”

Chloe looked down, turning her legs this way and that while wondering what he’d think if he saw all the exercise equipment in her spare bedroom. “These little ol’ things? Why, I was born with them, sugar.”

“Well, if they work as good as they look, I might just have to revise my opinion of girls like you.”

Her hands went to her hips. Her chin went up and she waited for an explanation. “Girls like me?”

“Yeah, you know.” He grabbed up all four shoes and stood. “Powder puffs. Cotton candy. Marshmallows.”

Marshmallows? “You think I’m a marshmallow?”

“Not after seeing those legs.”

“You’ve seen me in shorts before. And I know you’ve seen me in skirts.”

“Yeah, but never from ground zero. Puts things into an entirely new perspective.”

“Well, then. This should really rock your world.” And tugging her jersey free from her shorts, she grabbed the hem and jerked the shirt over her head and off.

Eric obviously didn’t know where to look. For the longest time, he kept his gaze locked with Chloe’s until, at the tentative uncertainty she saw in his eyes, her heart softened and she gave a quick grin and granted him permission to ogle.

His gaze took in her full-coverage sports bra before moving down to her bare belly. The waistband of her shorts rode right below her navel and exposed the toned abdominals even Chloe recognized as music video material.

Eric let loose a long low whistle. “Woman, where have you been all my life?”

“Right here, sugar. Under your nose.”

“If you’d been under my nose, I would’ve caught your scent.” He shook his head, eyes wide with admiring disbelief. “Where you’ve been is under too many clothes.”

“Think so, huh?” Chloe moved two small steps forward, keeping hands tucked in the rear pockets of her shorts and her shoulders back. “Would you like it if I got rid of more?”

Eric tossed the shoes—one, two, three, four—into the back seat of the Mustang through the convertible top he’d lowered when he’d parked.

“I’d like it if you’d get rid of everything,” he said, and then he approached, stopping only when his bare toes brushed the tips of hers. He shoved his own hands down into his back pockets, mirroring her stance and, in the process, giving his shoulders an exceptional breadth.

Except at this near intimate proximity, Chloe was not as caught by Eric’s shoulders or stance as she was by his eyes. They were the blue of Paul Newman and of poetry, yet flowery compliments had never come easy and too often seemed like a big waste of words.

Besides, what Eric’s eyes made her feel was beyond her ability to describe. The beat of her heart echoed in her ears, drowning out the words wanting to be said. Even a backhanded compliment might get her into too much trouble. But they’d been standing still here so long now that she had to say something.

And so she did. “Are your eyes really that blue, or do you wear contacts?”

For a moment Eric didn’t have an answer, then he tossed back his head and roared. “Oh, princess. And here I was hoping that this time you weren’t yanking my chain, that we were getting serious.”

“Such a nice way to tell me to put up or shut up.”

He looped an elbow around her neck and turned her toward the volleyball court. “That’s because I’m such a nice guy.”

Chloe could hardly disagree. Especially when she knew that any other guy would have insisted she do one or the other.

Warmed by the weight of Eric’s arm, warmed further by the bright April sun, she shivered, reluctantly forced to admit that Eric wasn’t any other guy.

And that scared her half to death.