“The shoes. Lose them. They’re ludicrous.”
“And expensive! No way!”
He made a face. “Lord, you’re stubborn.”
She mirrored it right back. “God, you’re obnoxious.”
They glared at each other for a moment.
“Fine,” Conner said. “Keep the damn shoes.”
“Thank you, I will. Now if you’ll please put me down.”
He actually snorted at her. “Can’t you just accept my help gracefully?”
Before she had a chance to respond, he was carrying her toward a midnight-blue convertible sports car sitting in the first slot of the parking lot. It was the most dazzling car she’d ever seen in her life. And totally intimidating. Low, sleek, catlike in grace and Transformer-like in technology. It had to have cost more than she earned in a year. Or two. His hand moved and a couple of beeps sounded. The two car doors rose up like the wings of a giant bird.
“Holy moly. What is this, the Batmobile?”
“No, a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster.” He lowered her into the passenger seat. She sank down into the buttery leather and it hugged her backside like a lover spooning her body. Softly firm and enveloping. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s, um…” Luxurious. Flashy and unreasonably sexy, like its owner. Totally out of her league. Like its owner. “Nice.”
“Nice, huh?” He gave her a lopsided grin as he dropped down to sit on his heels next to her car door. He pulled the seat belt over her lap, leaned over and fought with the airy poofs of her faux wedding dress for a moment finding the socket to snap it into.
She heard the click. But his arms stayed lost in the voluminous folds of the gossamer fabric. Almost like he was looking for something else. His fingers suddenly touched her legs. A shiver of unwilling excitement shimmered through her body. Under the white silk skirt she was still only wearing her thigh-high stockings and a G-string. If he wanted, he could slip his hands up under and touch her. For one crazy second she almost opened her legs to let him.
Good grief, what was wrong with her?
Instead, his hands glided down her calves. Slowly. Deliberately. As though he were memorizing every inch of the descent. Her heart pounded. When he reached her ankles he paused, then wrapped his fingers around her crystalline shoes and tugged them off.
With a flick of his wrist they sailed into the narrow space behind the driver’s seat. “There. That’s better.”
She couldn’t decide if she felt more outraged, or breath-lessly aroused. “Do you manhandle all your clients like this, Mr. Rothchild?”
“Only the ones who need handling,” he said with a completely unrepentant smile. He came around and slid behind the wheel. “And it’s Conner.”
“Not if you’re my lawyer, it isn’t.”
“What, because I’m your attorney we can’t be friends?”
She searched his eyes. Which were the exact color of the morning desert, she noticed for the first time. A morning desert in the springtime, when the landscape was at its most beautiful. Falcon brown with flecks of rich green. Surrounded by long, dark lashes, and a sensual tilt to arched brows that matched his movie-star-perfect brown hair.
He was dazzling.
And so colossally out of her universe it made her stomach do crazy somersaults.
His smile widened. “I’ll take that as a yes, we can.”
Huh?
The engine revved and they took off, were waved through the FBI guard post and drove out onto the street. As they gained speed, the billowing skirt of the wedding dress fluttered up around her shoulders, filling the open convertible.
The night was dark and desert-warm, the winking lights of the Strip just ahead. Rusty mountains ringed the city, sometimes a cozy cocoon that circled the city in its own private haven, sometimes menacing omnipresent watchers of the multitude of sins that went down there in Vegas.
But for now, the bright lights reigned supreme, shiny and colorful, lending the city its famous carnival atmosphere.
As soon as they reached downtown, it started—the honking horns and the shouts and thumbs-up. Tourists waved and whistled. Obviously everyone thought she and Conner were newlyweds, coming straight from some outlandish Las Vegas wedding chapel with a preacher dressed as Elvis or some other zany impersonator.
She wanted to sink right through the soft leather seat and disappear forever. “Damn. I should have changed clothes,” she said, chagrined. “Sorry.”
Conner waved back to a blue-haired old lady walking with an equally old guy in a pair of screamingly loud plaid shorts. “Don’t be. Haven’t had this much fun since I drove the UNLV homecoming queen around the football field at halftime.”
Figured he did that.
Probably dated her, too.
Probably last year.
Damn.
“How old are you, anyway?” she asked, suddenly irrationally, absurdly and completely inappropriately jealous.
The flashing neon lights of the Strip glinted back at her from his eyes as he smiled. “Thirty-three. You?”
“Twenty-four.” Her mouth turned down. “Obviously a little too old for you.”
He chuckled. “More like a little too young. I generally prefer my women older, more experienced. Fewer misunderstandings that way.”
Red alert, girl. Well. At least he was honest about it. “I’m sure.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
She sank farther into the seat and scowled. “Not at all. Very considerate of you not to break all those young, impressionable hearts flinging themselves at you. I suspect you could do some genuine damage.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you’ve had yours broken by some insensitive older guy.”
The lawyer was too perceptive by half. She shrugged as casually as she could manage. Her heart was none of his damned business.
“I apologize on behalf of all older men,” he said. “The jerk must have been a real idiot.”
“Which one?” she muttered.
“Ouch.” Somehow his hand found hers in the folds of her dress and squeezed it. “Every last one of them.”
Their eyes met, and again that weird feeling sifted through her. Part longing, part relief, part visceral hope.
Totally insane.
She pulled her hand away. As seductions
