Читать книгу Plain Jane and the Playboy / Valentine's Fortune: Plain Jane and the Playboy - Allison Leigh - Страница 10

She’d died.

There was no other explanation for the way she felt, Jane thought. She must have died and zoomed straight up to heaven. And not even the regular heaven, but some higher plane reserved for the incredibly saintly, incredibly fortunate. Because there was nothing remotely earthly about the feelings she was experiencing right at this moment.

To the casual observer, Jane was certain that it looked as if like nothing more than a traditional New Year’s Eve kiss was being shared by two people at the stroke of midnight.

A lot the casual observer knew.

There were fireworks exploding in her veins, not to mention that her head was spinning wildly, threatening to throw her completely off balance and utterly out of control. Granted, her experience when it came to men and kissing was rather sadly limited, but even she knew that this was something unusual, something really and deliciously different. She’d never been on the verge of a complete meltdown before.

Jorge tasted incredibly sweet and he smelled even better. Everything about him aroused her.

Bold was a word that had nothing to do with her personality, outside of those times when she attempted to secure more funding for her nonprofit organization. But she felt bold now. Bold enough to press her enflamed body against Jorge’s in an attempt to absorb every nuance, every fragment of this incredible experience that had taken her completely by surprise and swept her not just off her feet but off to another dimension.

Another universe.

Like a woman trapped in a mind-boggling, sensuous trance, Jane wove her arms around Jorge’s neck, praying the dream she was having would never end. Praying that the moment she was in would stretch out until eternity. She’d never felt so alive, so wonderful before. And probably never would again.

He was rattled.

Few things ever rattled Jorge Mendoza. He was thirty-eight and eons away from being a boy, even though he still possessed not only a boyish grin, but boyish charm. Even in his teens, he’d been more man than boy, with a man’s take on things. And heaven knew he’d kissed and been with more than twice his share of women.

Life had been good to him that way, he’d often thought, blessing him not just with exceptional looks but, more importantly, with a magnetic charm. Charm that now aided him in his professional endeavors—currently he was gathering financial backing for a trainer who raised the finest quarter horses in Texas—as well as in the seduction of willing women.

But none of that was on his mind right now. Instead, he felt complete and total, unabashed surprise. He hadn’t thought that he could ever feel like this. Like there were rockets going off in his veins.

That kind of feeling hadn’t happened to him since the first time he’d slept with a woman.

But this pretty, intelligent but obviously inexperienced young woman had just managed to do what no other woman had in the last twenty-four years. She’d jarred him down to his very foundations and made him feel like a boy on the brink of manhood again.

It was with incredible effort that Jorge managed to finally, albeit reluctantly, draw his lips away from Jane’s.

Taking in a deep, steadying breath, he looked down at the young woman the way one might look at a soul-shaking revelation, attempting to analyze it. Very slowly, surprise gave way to abject pleasure.

“Happy New Year,” he whispered softly against her hair.

“Right.” She was rather stunned that she could actually talk rather than simply gasp. “Happy New Year,” she repeated, each syllable accompanied by the mad beating of her heart. Hands down, this certainly was the best New Year’s Eve moment she’d ever experienced.

His dark eyes danced, smiling directly into her soul. “So,” he asked her, “what are you doing for the rest of the year?”

“Recovering.”

The honest admission had just slipped out before Jane could think to stop it. But being coy was not something she had any practice at, or, truthfully, any desire to become proficient in. There’d always been something off-putting to her about women who felt the need to play games with the men in their lives.

By the same token, though, she’d discovered that since she didn’t play games, it wasn’t very long before she had no one to even contemplate playing games with. The few men who had passed through her life would come on strong and when they didn’t get what they were after, they would just phase her out.

She refused to believe that all men were only after one thing—but so far, she had very little proof to the contrary. None, actually.

Jorge laughed at her response, amused that she was so honest. He was used to women who liked to be mysterious, to exercise their feminine wiles on him. In reality, a great many of them were about as shallow as saucers—not that he required much depth in his partner of the moment. It made things far less complicated that way.

But this one was different.

This one didn’t seem at all versed in the flirtatious give-and-take that went on between the male and female of the species. Rather than being as devious as a cat, she came across more like Bambi, with all of the famous fawn’s innocence.

A trace of guilt began to nibble away at him. Jorge was beginning to regret his bet with Ricky. He hadn’t counted on the fact that there might very well be feelings involved. And there were. He could see it in Jane’s luminous eyes.

He also hadn’t counted on the fact that he would be attracted to his target. Not just physically, but in a way that he couldn’t even quite put into words.

Jorge certainly couldn’t pin this feeling on alcohol consumption because he hadn’t really consumed any. Just one quick toast of white wine with his parents, sisters and their spouses before the Fortune Foundation party had officially gotten under way. But since then, he hadn’t had anything stronger to drink than a ginger ale.

No, Jorge couldn’t blame his reaction to Jane on anything other than the petite woman herself.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, so, for the time being, he decided not to think about it.

“You’re laughing at me,” Jane protested self-consciously, the aura of her out-of-body experience beginning to fade just a little.

The faint pink color he witnessed creeping up her rather seductive high cheekbones was oddly arousing, Jorge mused. With the rest of the evening stretching out before him, he decided he definitely wanted to get to know this woman better and discover what made her so different from the legions of other women he’d known—other than her obvious lack of sophistication and her innocent manner.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Jorge told her gently. “I’m laughing with you.”

Now even she knew that was a line. Or was he just poking fun at her? “You might not have noticed,” she pointed out quietly, “but I’m not laughing.”

Jorge didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he slipped his hand behind her head, cupping it.

For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her again and she could have sworn that the wattage at Red went down several notches as the very room grew dark. She struggled to hang on to her consciousness.

“Sure you are,” Jorge told her. “I can see it in your eyes.”

The very remark coaxed a smile to her lips, whether out of nervousness or just because being so near to this dynamic, gorgeous man made her want to smile all over, she really didn’t know. For the moment, she didn’t care, either. What mattered was the proximity. She wanted to remain this close to Jorge for as long as humanly possible without having to resort to handcuffs.

God, she was babbling and her lips weren’t even moving.

Things like this didn’t happen to people like her, she thought again. And while it was happening, she was just going to go with it and enjoy it.

Because she knew it was never, ever going to happen again.

“If you say so,” Jane answered, her voice deliberately low to keep it from cracking.

Did she have any idea how sexy she sounded, Jorge wondered.

He had a feeling that she didn’t, that Jane Gilliam had probably gone through her whole life seriously underestimating herself. It didn’t take a student of women to pick up on that. He could tell by her body language and by the very way she wore her clothes. She dressed nicely, but there was no sign that there had been any extra fussing, any extra care taken. The same applied to her makeup.

He caught himself wondering about her. Really wondering about her as a person, not a conquest.

Leaning his head against Jane’s, he looked into her eyes, then he shifted so that his lips were near her ear. “Who are you, Jane Gilliam?” he asked her quietly.

His breath sent warm shivers up and down her spine, and she was afraid he’d see how very inexperienced she was—he’d probably already guessed that anyway.

Why had he kissed her, she wondered again. A man like this wouldn’t have been alone any night of the year, especially not one that was considered to be the most important. She curbed the urge to ask, sensing that the answer might send her plummeting to the ground.

Jane felt as if she were trapped inside some kind of bubble—and bubbles always burst. There was no getting away from that. But not just yet.

Not just now.

Jane ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. What was he asking her?

“Do you mean what do I do for a living?”

“That’s as good a start as any,” he acknowledged, aware that any one of a number of women he knew would have taken the question and given him some sort of existential, philosophical answer. Jane, apparently, was grounded.

His mother, he realized, would love her.

Jorge quickly glanced around, hoping that Maria Mendoza wasn’t standing somewhere close by, taking all this in. She’d misunderstand immediately, especially since Jane was not like any of the other women he kept company with.

“I work for Red Rock ReadingWorks,” Jane told him, tripping over the alliteration for the first time since she’d joined the organization. If she wasn’t careful, any second she was going to start sounding like a chatty fool. “That’s a nonprofit organization that—”

Jorge held up his hand to stop her before she launched into a lengthy description of Reading-Works and all the services that it offered.

“I’m familiar with ReadingWorks,” he told her.

She clamped her jaw shut to keep it from dropping in surprise. “You are?” The next moment, Jane realized her oversight. “Of course you are. You said that Isabella was your cousin.” And the pretty thirty-year-old dropped by the storefront building where ReadingWorks was housed often enough. Isabella probably had mentioned the place to him once or twice.

Jane felt self-conscious. She always did when attention was focused on her. She made an attempt to deflect it back to him. Besides, she really did want to find out a few things about this man who had set her on fire.

“What do you do?”

He glanced at the glass on the table, the one he’d initially offered to fill. “Well, tonight, I’m a bartender.”

She sincerely doubted that bartending was Jorge’s sole occupation. He looked far too vital, far too intelligent to be satisfied with mixing drinks and wiping down a counter.

“And other nights?” she prompted. “And days?” Jane added quickly when she realized what her initially innocent question had to sound like to him.

Broad shoulders shrugged casually beneath his royal blue shirt. His easygoing grin nonetheless created a knot in the pit of her stomach.

“A little of this, a little of that.” He saw the curiosity in her eyes. She really wanted to know, he thought. Most women just wanted to see the size of his billfold—among other things. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he added.

“That sounds interesting. Tell me about it.”

She actually sounded genuinely interested, he thought. Before he knew it, he began talking about his latest venture.

Oh man, what an operator Jorge was, Ricky Jamison thought, standing over in a corner and watching his idol’s every move. Because he was so far away and there was so much noise, Ricky couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could certainly see what was going on. Within the space of a few minutes—and, from the looks of it, one hell of a kiss—Jorge had brought the bookish woman to a melting point.

Ricky sighed, shaking his head. His friend Josh and Josh’s girlfriend, Lindsey, had their heads together over in the corner, sharing something private. Ricky felt a pang as he wished he had that kind of ability, to make girls fall for him.

When he was older, Ricky thought wistfully, he wanted to be exactly like Jorge Mendoza. The man was a god in his eyes.

Patrick Fortune rang in this New Year’s the very same way he rang in all the others since he’d met his bride: by kissing Lacey.

His arm rested comfortably around his still-beautiful wife’s shoulders as he surveyed the very crowded banquet hall. He recognized almost all the faces here, and that was his own doing—his and Maria Mendoza’s. It wasn’t every New Year’s Eve that he managed to gather together so many members of his family under one roof. Sadly, not all of his five children and their spouses could make it. But on the bright side, his brother William and William’s five children were all here, as well as Cynthia’s children.

Bolder than sunlight, Cynthia had always marched to a different drummer and made her own rules, usually as she went along. Still, he wished she’d taken him up on the invitation and come. He wanted all his siblings here, all his nieces and nephews as well as his own children. Not because he had any special announcement to make, but just because he felt the need for their presence.

Family was everything.

The older he became, the more inclined Patrick felt to forget any past grievances that might have once caused him to turn his back on one member of the family or another. Life was too short—and it was getting shorter all the time. He’d thought that his cousin Ryan would live forever and Ryan had been dead now for four years. It seemed impossible, and yet it was true.

He still missed the man a great deal.

The swish of Lacey’s dress as she turned toward him caught his attention.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said, leaning in so that he could hear her. He’d looked entirely too pensive for the last few minutes and she wondered if there was anything wrong.

Patrick laughed at the way she’d asked her question. “And that,” he declared, his mouth curving in amusement, “is how our fortune continues to remain intact. Your frugality.”

“Very funny.” She threaded her arm through his as she looked up at him. He was still an exceptionally handsome man, she caught herself thinking. “Where are you right now?”

Patrick patted her arm. “Right here beside you, my love.” He sighed. “Just missing Ryan, that’s all. He used to love family gatherings like this.”

Ryan Fortune had been a good man who always saw the best in people. Lacey liked to think that Patrick was the same way. She tightened her hold on his arm. “He wouldn’t want you to be sad, Patrick.”

Lacey was right. As always. He supposed that what had triggered his thoughts was seeing Lily tonight—Ryan’s widow. Seeing her made him expect to see Ryan somewhere in her immediate vicinity. If only.

“No, you’re right, he wouldn’t. Just give me a minute to get my party face back in place,” he teased.

Just then, someone bumped into him, hard. If there had been any more space between him and Lacey, he might have actually fallen into her, bringing her down with him. Patrick turned to look at the man who had stumbled into him.

“Sorry,” the other man apologized. “I think I’ve had just a little too much to drink. I’m going to get some air,” he said by way of an excuse.

“Good idea,” Patrick agreed, addressing the words to the back of the man’s head. He stared after him for a second. There was something vaguely familiar about the man, but most likely, it could have just been his imagination. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to the party.

The man kept going, weaving his way in and out of the crowd, working his way to the front door. Once he was confident he was out of Patrick’s sight, his meandering gait ceased.

One down, he thought, a self-satisfied smirk playing along his thin lips.