“Um…hello?” Christine repeated again after several long, uncomfortable seconds had passed.
He hadn’t said a word. He just stood there. Looking her up and down. Slowly. Very slowly.
“Hello,” he said finally, his voice deep and gruff. Very, very gruff. “Hello, hello, hello,” he repeated slowly.
His smile had returned. A pleased, surprised, uniquely charming smile, and if she wasn’t careful, she might start to think he actually was happy to see her. And that he actually liked what he saw.
“You have legs,” he said, standing back to take another long, blatantly appreciative look. “Nice legs.”
“Um. Well.”
Sparkling response, Christine. Just sparkling.
“Nice, Chrissie,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “You look very, very nice.”
“Um. Well.”
Is there a really stupid echo in here? And why are my cheeks so hot?
“I’ll…I’ll, um, just go get my purse.”
“It will be my pleasure to wait here and watch you go get it,” he said, another grin in his voice that made her glance back over her shoulder—and get caught off guard by the heated look in his eye.
She turned her head back so fast, she made herself dizzy. At least, that’s why she thought she was dizzy. It had nothing to do with the way he looked in his rich cobalt-blue suit and expertly knotted silk tie. Or the way he smelled—like some pricey, seductive, masculine cologne that brought to mind mint and musk and the subtle undercurrents of testosterone.
And it definitely had nothing to do with the way he was looking at her. As if he wanted to gobble her up in one big, wolfish bite.
Wolfish? Get real. This wolf usually hunted for foxier game than her. He probably had indigestion or something.
She felt a hot river of self-consciousness trickle through her. Why was she putting herself through this? Maybe he did like what he saw—but what he saw was an illusion. A surprise in something other than drab mode.
She was still exactly what Jacob Thorne thought she was—a dowdy, inexperienced, pushing-thirty old maid trying to play dress-up. A woman who was so afraid of men because of what her father had done to her and her mother and so afraid of letting herself fall into that same horrible spiral of humiliation and pain that her M.O. was to make herself as plain and unappealing as possible so men wouldn’t notice her. And God forbid a man ever showed any interest in her, because she’d pop out her porcupine quills and warn him away with her bristles and barbs.
She felt chilled to the bone suddenly. And hot all over at the same time. Talk about self-discovery. Why did she have to experience this particular discovery now? And why did it have tears gathering in her throat?
“Chris?”
She turned her head to see Alison standing in the bedroom doorway holding her purse. The concern in her eyes had Christine blinking back tears again.
“Oh, sweetie. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I’m not the kind of woman who can go out to dinner with that kind of man.”
“The hell you can’t,” Alison said, intuitively sensing that Christine was in the midst of a monumental cold-feet moment. “Don’t you dare put yourself down that way.”
Alison shoved the little black clutch purse into Christine’s hand. “Now, you are not going to waste that dress and that hair and that makeup, do you understand me? You. Look. Incredible. Work it. Enjoy it. Feel the power, girl. You own it tonight. And the way you look, you’re gonna own him, too.”
Alison hugged her hard, then turned her around and literally shoved her into the hall.
“There you are,” her date said when she lurched into the living room. “Thought you’d decided to bail on me.”
Alison’s words bounced around in her head.
Feel the power. You own it…
As incredible as it seemed, when she looked and saw real interest—not just surprised curiosity—in Jacob’s eye, she did feel the power. At least, a little power surge. For all of his smooth words and sexy smiles, she’d never seen him quite the way he was tonight.
Off balance. Just a tad uncertain. As though maybe he really did like what he saw—and it had surprised him.
Maybe the balance of power had shifted in that moment when she’d opened her door and he’d seen her standing there. Not looking like Prissy Chrissie Travers, as even she had begun to think of herself. But looking like a woman. A vibrant, self-confident woman who recognized her burgeoning power—yes, power—over a man who had always had the upper hand.
Okay. Maybe that was overplaying it. But there was something. If not power, at least a measure of self-confidence she’d never felt before. With luck, it would last through the evening.
“Bail? No,” she said as a calm resolve descended over her. “I’m not going to bail.”
The stakes were suddenly too high. This was no longer just about acquiring Jess Golden’s things. This was about something bigger. Much bigger. And as soon as she figured out exactly what was happening to shake her and yet empower her, she’d know what she wanted to do about it.
Butterfly, Jake thought as they walked into Claire’s and he got a whiff of some exotic, flowery perfume. She’d definitely turned into a butterfly. Sleek, satiny and mysterious. And, man, had it been worth the hassle to witness the full effect of the metamorphosis.
Superserious, profoundly professional and supremely prickly Christine Travers with her sensible clothes and plain-Jane package was long gone. In her place was a sophisticated, sexy siren possessed of an underlying vulnerability that sent his heart rate rocketing.
He liked it. He liked it a lot. And he was starting to think that maybe she might be a woman he could like a lot, too. Not that he hadn’t always liked her, it was simply that the dynamics of their relationship had changed drastically when he’d invited her to dinner. He was used to prickly Chrissie. Had taken great pains to bring out that side of her.
Now he was faced with sexy Chrissie—a side of her he’d always known existed if she would just let her come out and play. Yet for some reason this new face made him a little nervous—which was nuts because he was never nervous around women.
She’d done something amazing to her hair. Not that he didn’t think it looked cute when she wore it down and straight and framing her pixie face in a businesslike do. It was just that with all that fine blond mass swept up on top of her head…well, it had an effect, was all. It accentuated the model-slim line of her neck and exposed a delectable-looking nape. A nape that tempted him mightily to bend down and place a kiss there when she sat at the table for two he’d reserved and he pushed the chair in for her.
He caved in to a spike of better judgment and had to satisfy himself with wondering how badly him kissing her there would rattle her as he settled across the table
