his shoulder at her and winked. Dana laughed as he turned away again. He really did have enough arrogance to fill the room. Reluctantly she had to admit inwardly that it had a certain element of charm about it. Wild horses wouldn’t drag the words from her lips, though.
Even as she laughed at his departing figure she was suddenly surrounded by arms, and lips kissing her cheeks. When she was finally freed she glanced round at the four grinning faces of her friends from the old days. The ones who had known the old Dana best.
‘Oh, my lord, Dana, where did you get that hunk of man from?’
‘How long have you been seeing him?’
It was Lucy who eventually stepped forward to silence them all.
‘Now, girls, give Dana time to catch her breath.’ She winked sideways at her. ‘And after seeing you in action I’d say you need a moment or two to catch your breath.’ She flapped a hand in front of her face before smiling a warm smile. ‘I never knew you two were an item. I thought you just worked together.’
Tracey McKenna blinked at her. ‘You know that man?’
‘Of course I do.’ Lucy nodded. ‘He’s Adam Donovan—as in Donovan & Lewis, the designers. Dana and Adam work together.’
‘You work together? How do you concentrate long enough to get anything done?’
Dana smiled. ‘Believe me, it’s tough. But I manage somehow.’
‘He’s sex on a stick, isn’t he?’
‘God, you always could get them.’ Ella Dawson blinked at her with a twinkle in her eye. ‘If there was a great-looking guy within fifty paces he always ended up chasing round after you.’
Dana searched for a hint of sarcasm in the woman’s eyes and blinked in surprise when she found none. She examined the words. Really? Ella thought that? She glanced around to see if a crowd of men had formed that she hadn’t noticed. Nope.
‘You really need to get glasses, Ella. There’s no rush of men in my general direction.’
‘Not while you have Adam Donovan with you, there’s not!’
No, and pretty much never, actually. She was a single parent who was apparently anally retentive; surely that in itself was enough to keep the men from breaking down her front door?
Lucy smiled. ‘You were always popular with the guys, Dana. And, in that dress, what warm-blooded male wouldn’t be interested? You look sensational.’
‘Doesn’t she, though? I said pretty much the same thing.’
The deep, familiar voice sounded beside her left ear, and Adam charmed all of the women as he rewarded them with a smile they each thought was meant only for them. He then handed Dana her glass with a sparkle in his eye, and immediately replaced his hand on her back, where the skin was still warm from the last time he’d touched her.
Dana raised an eyebrow as she sipped at her wine. He’d said no such thing, actually. What he’d done was gape at her from the bottom of the stairs, then steal glances at her on the trip over. And now he felt he had carte blanche to keep touching her.
‘We were just saying how typical it is of her to end up with the best-looking guy in the room.’ Tracey leaned towards Adam as she spoke. Lots of women did that, Dana knew.
Adam blinked. ‘Really? Bit of a goer, was she?’
Dana gritted her teeth beneath a smile and elbowed him hard in the ribs. ‘Isn’t he just the funniest?’
‘Just a small part of my many charms—isn’t it, babes?’
And if he called her babes again she was going to elbow him lower next time. She felt him move his hand across her back to her hip, leaving his thumb to play against her skin as he pulled her closer to his side.
‘She was just so much fun to be around.’
Adam gaped slightly at Lucy, the only one of the women he’d met before. Fun? To be around? Dana Taylor?
’Really?’
Dana glared up at him. If he was supposed to be pretending he was in some great relationship with her surely he shouldn’t look so damned surprised at the thought that she might actually be fun?
Fortunately Lucy appeared to be a couple of wine glasses past observant. ‘Oh, yeah! I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen her dance on tables or lead us all on some madcap trip somewhere. Do you remember the Twenty-Four-Hour Club, Dana?’
As his thumb continued to move along the edge of the material of her dress, over her skin and what he thought might be the minute string of her underwear, Adam’s mind worked overtime. He sincerely hoped that the Twenty-Four-Hour Club was no relation to the Mile-High Club, or he would never be able to share an office with Dana again.
Dana’s face began to flame. Not so much because of Lucy’s reminiscences of the past as the fact that she was now being completely distracted by Adam’s hand against her. The last thing she needed was for him to find his earlier assumption as to the kind of underwear a woman was forced to wear beneath this type of dress had in fact been correct. She tried to squirm subtly further away from the steel wall of his body.
But Adam was having none of it. He pressed his hand firmer against her hip and drew her closer. With a downward glance that said Oh, no you don’t, he asked the obvious question. ‘Twenty-Four-Hour Club, babes?’
She swallowed. He really could be quite intense close up, couldn’t he? She damped her lips. ‘Probably not what you’re thinking it was.’
‘Then why don’t you tell me?’
‘It was basically an excuse for drunken trips away.’
Dana grimaced at Lucy’s choice of words. They were accurate, which didn’t help her cause any. She gulped down more wine.
Lucy, meanwhile, continued. ‘The idea was to get as far away from base—which was college—as possible, and back again within twenty-four hours, on a pre-agreed budget.’
Adam smiled at the thought. ‘To anywhere?’
‘Oh, yes. We got all over the place—didn’t we, Dana?’
Dana opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again as Lucy continued. ‘It started with a boat trip to Scotland, then one to France, then some of us got a bit further afield until Dana the Master topped us all.’
His smile upgraded to a grin as he looked down at her. ‘Where’d you end up?’
‘New York.’ She finally managed to get a word in edge-wise.
‘On a budget of what?’
Lucy laughed. ‘That was the best bit. She dressed up as some kind of medical person, and carried a pig heart in a freezer case a medical student mate of hers had got from the hospital. She blagged her way onto the flight for virtually nothing because she was carrying a donor organ. Took some major flirting, from what I’ve heard, but she was famous after that.’
Adam
