engaging her in conversation. But then she’d launched into her martinis-and-birthday confession and he’d found himself drawn in...then drawn to her.
When he’d shared that bit about his childhood—and what had prompted him to do so, he couldn’t say—her quasihuffy, amusing response had tickled his funny bone. Not many people managed to do that.
But Birthday Girl and her “gloom balloon”...
Shaking his head, he felt a grin tugging on the corners of his mouth again.
“You’re leaving me hanging here,” she said now.
He glanced up. She was beautiful. That had struck him immediately. Her shoulder-length hair was a mix of red, gold and brown. Her eyes were an arresting shade of pale blue, her skin creamy, with just a faint spray of tiny golden freckles peppering her small nose. As a builder, he had an interest in and appreciation of the bones of things, and those of this woman were both delicate and elegant. Her mouth was lush, though, its unpainted color a pale rose.
“Well?” she demanded.
And he could read her again, the slight truculence a defensive position. “This could be a dangerous habit, Birthday Girl.”
“This?”
“Propositioning total strangers.”
Her mouth dropped, and she yanked the key card back toward her. “I don’t—”
“Wait.” He placed his fingers over hers. “That came out wrong.”
She was staring down at his hand. Jace knew why. The instant they touched, heat snapped like an electrical shock, then ricocheted through his body. He supposed she felt something similar. All night, he’d been half-hard and her flesh beneath his was taking him the rest of the way.
Slowly, as if retreating from a skittish creature, Jace lifted his hand. Her gaze lifted, too, and those blue eyes zeroed in on his face.
“I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing,” she declared.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” And why the hell would he care if she propositioned a new man every night? But for some stupid reason he’d wanted to hear her say she didn’t out loud. He’d wanted to know that this...connection was something unusual for her, too. Different. Special.
Because it felt damn special to him.
Holy hell, she’d bought him birthday cake.
“We don’t know each other,” he heard himself say, though he’d never told anyone else about those daily frigid showers. It was true. His father had believed in cold water as the cornerstone of making a man out of a boy.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“Divorced.” And his ex was dead now, a recent circumstance that had wrought a huge change in his life. Just the thought of that made him toss back the rest of the whiskey that he’d switched to when the cards came out.
“Girlfriend?”
“No.” He paused, then lifted a brow. “Boyfriend?”
“If I had one, wouldn’t he be the one spending my birthday with me?”
Which made Jace think about what he’d been calling her. Birthday Girl. She hadn’t offered up her real name. He hadn’t corrected her when she misheard his as “Jay.”
This beautiful young woman was really offering up no-strings, one-night-only, stranger sex.
God knows he didn’t deserve it, but—
“Okay, then.” Birthday Girl slid off her stool and onto her feet. He was close and turned in her direction, so she landed between his knees, and swayed there a moment. To steady herself, one hand reached out and clutched his thigh.
Uh-oh. Those martinis were still in her system.
That thought didn’t stop another piercing zing of heat from rocketing from her hand to his crotch, just a few inches north. And it wasn’t only her touch that got to him. There was that sweet little dress she wore that showed a whole hell of a lot of bare leg in the front, then flowed lower around the back.
“I’m going,” she said, still looking a bit woozy. “It’s up to you whether you come with me or not.”
Jace sighed. Of course he was going with her. Whether he crossed the threshold of her room, well, first he had to make sure she got to it safely. He hopped off his own stool, feeling a twinge as his newly healed left ankle found the ground. “I’m right behind you, Birthday Girl,” he said.
Actually, he took her hand, as well.
That was weird. He wasn’t a toucher. When he was with a woman he didn’t worry about keeping her close. But this one was tipsy, he reminded himself, and though he’d been raised by a distant and unfeeling man, in this instance he wasn’t going to take after the old bastard.
Drawing her nearer, Jace could smell the sweet scent of her hair. Now he went a bit woozy.
“It’s this way,” she said, tugging him toward a steep staircase off the foyer. Judging by the architecture, the Deerpoint Inn had to be about a hundred years old. On the way inside earlier that night, he’d glanced at the framed magazine article about the place that hung on the entry wall. The building had started life as a boardinghouse for area loggers. Now they’d converted the original fifteen rooms upstairs to just six, each with its own bath.
Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night.
She wobbled on her heels as she mounted the first step, causing him to drop her hand and grasp her hips instead. Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night if she could make it to her door.
Jace, on the other hand, had a very uncomfortable few minutes as he was forced to watch the bunch of muscles in each fine ass cheek as she continued upward. He breathed easier when they made the narrow hallway. It smelled of old wood and roses.
With his fingertips hovering a quarter inch off the small of her back, Jace followed her to a door bearing a brass 6. He took the key card from her hand and inserted it in the slot. The mechanism flashed green and he heard a small snick. He turned the knob and checked out the environs over her shoulder, the room illuminated by lamps at each end of a long table centered beneath a narrow window. Papered walls, dark wood floor covered with a thick area rug with a floral design. A night-light gave him the glimpse of a tiled bathroom through a half-open interior door.
Birthday Girl stepped inside.
Jace realized it was now or never.
Hell, she was beautiful. Alluring. Tempting.
But...
He had a pile of regrets on his plate and using the circumstances—birthday, flames, liquor, lust—to get a quickie shag out of this pretty young thing would be just another black mark on his soul. In the morning, he didn’t want to be something she was sorry for.
There’d been enough of that in his life. From his father, his ex and, most likely, his daughter.
Her
