Читать книгу Hot Under Pressure - Kathleen O'Reilly, Kathleen O'Reilly - Страница 7

HIS NAME WAS David McLean. His hair was a rich brown, cut conservatively short, but it suited him, suited the all-American, man-most-likely-to-know-how-to-fix-a-car-engine allure. Yes, he’d never model like one of those designer-wearing scruffy-jawed man-boys, but there was something about him that fascinated her. He was curious and intelligent, asking questions about everything, yet not so willing to talk about himself. Eventually she discovered why.

He was divorced and his jaw clenched like a vise when he’d mentioned it, so it wasn’t one of those “parting as good friends” situations.

The restaurant was quiet and dark, the wait staff moving efficiently and effortless, and the large, overstuffed booths were conducive to divulging confidences to perfect strangers.

“It’s not easy, is it?” she asked, thinking of her own divorce. Two weeks of wounded pride, several weeks of sorting out the finances and understanding what was whose and five months of awkward questions and well-meaning advice from friends. But then Ashley woke up one cold December morning and she knew she would be okay. Not fine, not great, but she was going to live. It was while in that fragile state that Valerie convinced her that she should do something radical with her life, live out her dream and buy a chain of four small Chicago boutiques. Start fresh.

“Not going that well?” asked David, when she told him what she did.

“Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know. You don’t have the joie de vivre that a lot of small business owners get when things are breezing along.”

“You see a lot of small business owners?”

“Oh, yeah. From Omaha to Oahu. Kalamazoo to Klondike. I’ve seen a lot.”

“Oh.”

“Owning your own business is a lot of work. I sit on the sidelines and tell people how much their business is worth, how much it’s not worth, what they are doing wrong, and recommend whether our investors should go all in or not. My job is the easy part. After I look over the operation, talk to a few customers and suppliers, I go plug some numbers into a spreadsheet, and then I’m on to the next business, the next opportunity.”

“I used to be an insurance claims appraiser.”

His mouth quirked, amused, and she cut in.

“Don’t say it. I know. I have the insurance adjuster look.”

“Nah, not an insurance adjuster. Maybe bookstore owner or candy maker. Something more personal.”

“I think that’s a compliment.”

“It is. You’re too cute for the insurance business. So why fashion?”

Cute. He thinks you’re cute.

He’s from New York.

Who cares? Take a chance, Ash.

For a second she met his eyes—a little more bold than usual. “I want to prove something. I want to take a plant and nurture it, care for it, water it and watch it bloom.”

He snapped his fingers. “Florist. I can definitely see that in you.”

She began to laugh because if he ever saw her plant shelf, he would be rolling on the floor, too. “No florist, sorry. I wanted to do something that I could master. Something challenging. I was stuck, and I needed to prove that I could do something different.” It was nearly Valerie’s post-divorce speech verbatim, but Val had been right. Ashley had just neglected to tell her sister that last key point.

“And fashion is challenging?”

Ashley nodded. Men really had no idea. It had taken her two hours to decide on the yellow gypsy skirt, the perfect pale green cotton T-shirt and a kaleidoscopic glass-bead necklace. The outfit had vague Easter-egg overtones, but worked nicely with her hair, and best of all…no wrinkles when traveling.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

He sat back from the table, his eyes tracking to the bank of departure monitors nearby. “We better go back to the tarmac of terror.”

“You’re anxious to get out of here?” she asked, noticing the slight jaw-clench again. That, and the disappearing smile.

“No. It’s fine.”

Yeah, she’d seen that movie, too. Knew the ending. “Denial, much? Don’t worry. It’ll get better.”

His gaze met hers, and the warm green was analytical hazel once again. “Has yours?”

“Oh, yeah,” she lied. It hadn’t gotten worse, but it hadn’t gotten better. Instead she was stuck in this post-divorce limbo where she had no knowledge of how to proceed, and no inclination to leave the comfort of her own solitude.

“So when’s the last time you went out?”

“Not too long ago.”

“How long?” he probed, and she didn’t like the awareness in his eyes. It was that same probing look that her sister got before she would launch into a lecture. Ashley shifted in her seat.

“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely. The divorce had been three years and eight months ago, but she didn’t like the idea of dating again. It felt too wrong. She was a thirty-two-year-old woman, not a twentysomething college kid. She couldn’t go sit in a bar. If she signed up for a matchmaking service, she was afraid no one would pick her. And most of the blind dates she’d had had been with total losers. People had good intentions, but their judgment left a lot to be desired.

“Has it been longer than a year?”

“Maybe. But I’ve been busy,” she said, dodging the question.

He stayed silent for a second before nodding. “Understand that. I’m not one of those men who has to be married. I cook. I do my own laundry. There’s a whole group of guys who get together to watch the games in a bar. I’m independent. I like my independence.” It was the battle cry for the walking wounded. Ashley knew it well.

“Then it sounds like you’re in a good place.” She gave him the fake smile. The one that says, “whatever you say is fine.”

“I think I am. You?”

“Oh, yeah.” Abruptly, she decided to stop the charade. Here was a comrade in arms. Someone who knew exactly how it felt. Why not tell the truth? She missed cooking for two. She missed waking up on a Sunday morning and not having to plan out the day. She missed being able to come home from work and laugh about her coworkers—not all of them, but there were a few who were laugh-worthy. Ashley and Jacob had been married for seven years, and it was never the world’s greatest marriage, but still…“Sometimes it is, but sometimes it’s not. Well, you know, there are things I miss.”

“Gawd, yes.”

“At night. It’s lonely.”

“Exactly.”

“I mean, I know I can get Valerie to watch…” He shot her a shocked look and then recovered quickly, but not before she noticed. Oh, man, he thought she was talking about sex, which she wasn’t, but now, okay, her mind was going there, she was thinking the sex thoughts…No, don’t think about it, Ash. Quickly she fumbled back into the conversation. “I like watching horror movies at night and my sister is a total wimp. All we get are historical dramas. Television is something best done with another person.” Okay, Ashley, got over that one. Not too shabby.

David, however, still looked mildly shell-shocked. “Totally,” he answered in a tight voice.

“You like horror movies, too?” she asked, getting a little cocky and daring to tease.

“We should get back to the plane,” he answered, not taking the whole teasing thing well. She knew that men got a lot more wired than women about sex, but he seemed more laid-back than that. Wrong, Ashley. Quickly she changed to a safer topic.

“Get back to Junior? You’re as sadistic as Valerie.”

“Maybe he’s asleep.”

THEY HAD NO SUCH luck once they got back on board. Junior was riding a sugar high, judging by the chocolate smeared across his face and the way he kept bouncing on his seat. But at least all weapons were out of his possession.

David watched as Ashley changed shoes again, noticing how nice her feet were. Smooth, compact, lots of well-turned curves. His cock stirred and he turned away. Turned on by a foot? Weak…very, very weak. It’d been a long time since he had spent several confined hours in the company of a single woman. After the divorce, he’d thrown himself into work, mainly because he liked it, he was good at it, and if he couldn’t have a family life, at least he could build up his retirement account. Today had been like a cold dunk in a deep ocean, the familiar patterns coming back to him, the jittery nerves coming back to him, and the hard-on coming back to him as well.

It was because there wasn’t anything they could do about it. That’s what this was. Economics. Supply and demand. Decrease the availability of supply, and boom, demand shoots out from every pore, zipping in his brain. Ergo, the hard-on.

If she hadn’t mentioned sex. Well, honestly, she hadn’t mentioned sex, she just mentioned the word night and his imagination took off from there, wishing they weren’t at an airport, wondering if that skirt was as easy to slip off as it looked so he could feel her skin under his hands. Tawny skin, creamy skin, soft, touchable skin rubbing up against him…

David studiously avoided looking at her skin, his eyes moving upward, touching on her chest. Lots of well-turned curves there, too. After that, he looked away, met Junior’s knowing eyes and glared. Heading to an altitude of thirty thousand feet, it wasn’t going to get any easier, so better to concentrate on other, less arousing things. Junior launched a Lego piece in his direction.

Like survival.

TWO HOURS LATER they were still at the gate. They were waiting on either a part, or a new plane, the pilots weren’t sure which would arrive first, but they had high—ludicrously delusional—hopes for getting away tonight. In the face of such facts, Ashley had long abandoned her fear of flying. It was obvious they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Instead she was thigh-locked with David, who had very nice thighs, too. Hard. His arms were fab as well. Thirty minutes ago, he’d pushed up his sleeves, and her gaze kept stalling out on the biceps, which were bigger than most, an odd incongruity for khakis and a button-down, and she wondered why. He wasn’t bulky enough to be a weight lifter, but his arms were too big for a swimmer or a runner, and definitely too big for a tiny airplane seat. They kept brushing against hers, casually, which didn’t explain the electric shock to her system.

Not that he was making it any easier. Conversation had ceased about half an hour ago when she caught him staring at her chest, and they both looked politely away.

Damn.

She crossed her legs, uncrossed her legs, and had a hare-brained urge to ask him to join her in the bathroom. She’d pulled out Vogue and Harper’s and Lucky, but even the lure of the sloe-eyed models in their daring designs hadn’t dimmed the awareness that simmered in the air.

The bright spot in the tension was Junior, which said a lot about her feelings of desperation. Junior wrote on David’s hand with a pen, and David laughed, sounding more relieved than amused. Junior ran up and down the aisle, and Ashley counted the number of times, choosing note to fixate on the discreetly covered ridge in David’s khaki slacks.

Do not go there.

Go there, Ashley.

Oh, yeah, good of you to talk. You can’t have sex on a plane, Valerie.

People do.

Not me.

There was a momentary pause in her thoughts, because right now, given readily available options, she could so have sex on this plane.

Another thirty minutes passed, and the flight attendants were passing out drinks. Yes, alcohol, the world’s most potent aphrodisiac. When the flight attendant stopped at their row, David shook his head, Ashley shook her head, and Junior’s mother and father opted for double vodka tonics.

Outside the window, the lights of the airport started to dim. If she lowered her hand one inch, just one tiny inch, she would be touching his thigh. If she were careful, it would look like an accident.

Junior spilled a glass of orange juice on those khakis that she was not looking at, and David shot sideways, and there was a momentary barrage of touches. His hand, her breast. Her hand, his thigh. She jumped back, arching toward the window, and he moved away, hugging his seat. Junior’s mother apologized, and Ashley’s nipples were powered by a thousand jet engines, ready for takeoff.

It was shortly after her breasts had recovered from the shock that the captain came on the speaker and announced that moment they all had been expecting.

“Ladies and gentleman, we tried. But there’s bad weather in New York, and we couldn’t get the plane that we were hoping for, and they can’t get the part here until the morning. So I’m sorry to say, we won’t be going anywhere. If any of you need hotel accommodations at the airport, there’s a flight attendant waiting to give you the details.”

A hotel. Suddenly the word took on new connotations and images. A hotel implied a bed, privacy, something much more comfortable than a tiny bathroom designed by Boeing. A hotel implied sex.

The cabin lights went on, and people around them began to move. Everyone was moaning and complaining, and, in general, not in a very happy place. However, Ashley’s happy place was getting happier by the second. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to assume, most of all she didn’t want to act as if she didn’t know what she was doing. After all, she was mature, she was an adult, and after eight hours of sitting thigh-to-thigh with this man, she was primed to explode with only a touch.

He turned, a slight inclination of his head, and she met his eyes. It was ESP of the most carnal kind. She licked her lips, his gaze tracked her tongue and she knew that he knew.

He leaned down, his mouth near her ear. “You should know that right now, I’m a very happy man.” Ashley felt the touch in her ear, down to the soles of her feet, and every single inch in between, especially the happy place. She tried to smile, but that involved mind-body cooperation, and right now there was none. Slowly she regained the capability to speak and she did manage to smile, although she wasn’t sure how it looked.

“Happy is good,” she told him.

She was going to have sex with David. She was going to peel off his shirt, feel the muscles of his bare chest crushing her breasts. She would rip off his briefs, since she instinctively knew he wore briefs—tight, white briefs, with his sex jutting out from the band—and then finally, finally, he would push up inside her, filling her…

She felt her muscles contract once, contract twice.

Her mouth tightened and her eyes opened and spied David, who was watching her with eyes that were nearly black.

Ashley nodded once. “I think we need to go. Now.” He grabbed the carry-ons and then they both took off running through the airport, Ashley’s bunny slippers cooperating nicely.