because he found April an interesting woman and a study in contrasts.
He liked her ability to laugh at herself. She’d blushed furiously while people had commented about her suitcase of sex toys, yet she’d exhibited a calm, take-charge compassion that had managed to reassure a frightened child.
He’d wanted to know more about her and got her talking on the plane. She wasn’t currently involved with anyone—a good thing—but given her hesitation to discuss her love life, he questioned whether her experience included casual affairs, which was all he could offer.
His mobile lifestyle made the logistics of conducting long-term relationships ugly at best, so he avoided them at all costs and contented himself with casual affairs when mood and time permitted, which definitely wasn’t often enough. But he intended to go for it with April if she was interested.
The opening bedroom door dragged his attention to the lovely lady herself who appeared with a laptop case slung over a shoulder. She still wore her traveling clothes, jeans and a sweater, which alone was nothing more than a comfortable outfit. Yet on April, casual clothing clung to her every slim curve as though it had been poured on. The woolly pink sweater molded her full breasts in staggering detail.
“Wow! You’ve been busy.” She gave a low whistle, her gaze skimming over the equipment. “Got any room for me in here?”
She patted her laptop case absently, but there was nothing absent about the way Rex found himself taking in her appearance from the top of her soft brown hair to the tips of her manicured fingertips. His powers of observation were on in full force.
“Of course,” he said. “What have you got?”
Slipping the case from her shoulder, April deposited it on the table. “Just my laptop. You’ve got everything here. I won’t need to use the business center downstairs for much.”
“I’ll network you to my system so you can access all the equipment.”
“Great.” She moved around the table through the small pathway between the table and the desk, her gaze darting from scanner to laser printer to fax machine.
He watched her feet skim inattentively across the cable connecting his late-model system to the power supply and made another mental note to tape down the cable before his system wound up a pile of electrical circuitry on the floor.
Too late.
She snagged the cable. Rex saw the exact moment reflected in her face, in her mouth that formed a perfectly round O. She stumbled and reached for the table edge.
Grabbing the monitor before it went over, he had the wild thought that it might be safer on the floor beside the mini-tower, protected from the hotel sprinkler system and his whirlwind assistant. If he could just work lying down…
The keyboard went over in a clatter and April lunged for it, catching the cord in a spectacular save just before it hit the floor.
“Got it.” She heaved a relieved sigh when their gazes met across the table.
Her eyes reflected her emotions like a window and he recognized relief and embarrassment, not only in her face, but in the way she held herself frozen in midwince. A blush stole into her cheeks, a color that made her violet eyes seem even richer in hue, her skin even more translucent.
Something about her reaction suggested this wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with such accidents and her look of inevitability brought Rex to his senses. Relinquishing his hold on the monitor, he plucked the keyboard from her grasp and returned it to the table.
“Nice catch.” He smiled.
His smile had an incredible effect. April exhaled a pent-up breath, relaxed her primed-and-ready-for-disaster stance, and he realized then that she’d been awaiting his reaction, hadn’t expected him to make light of the incident.
Rex couldn’t say what it was about her relief that affected him, but it did.
Then with a light laugh, she breezed away and the moment passed. But not without leaving Rex with a few new insights. The first was that April was vulnerable behind that breezy laugh and her blushes, no matter how quickly she rebounded.
The second was that she had the most curious effect on him. Technically he shouldn’t be feeling anything but relief that he wouldn’t have to rush to an office supply store to replace his monitor. But segueing her through that uncomfortable moment made him feel ridiculously pleased with himself.
“Let’s look at your laptop and get you set up,” he said. “This is top-of-the-line equipment. The Luxurious Bedding Company issued you this?”
She lifted those big violet eyes to him again and damned if his pulse didn’t step up its beat.
“No. It’s mine. I need an up-to-date system to conduct adoption searches.”
More unexpected information. “Your own?”
“Afraid not. I abandoned my search years ago. I was born in a sealed record state. The woman I’m helping out now has a real good chance of tracking down a birth sister. She’s been waiting a long time and I’d rather not let the trail get cold. But my search won’t interfere with my work. I promise.”
She seemed so earnest that Rex had no doubt she meant what she said. Leaning back against the table, he folded his arms across his chest and pursued the topic, curious. “You couldn’t locate your family, but you help other people find theirs?”
She nodded, her gaze flicking up to high beam. “I learned so much with my own search it seemed a shame not to put the knowledge to use. I’ve been active in my local adoption society ever since college.”
“Really?”
Really, he soon discovered when she launched into a breathless tale of winding, often frustrating searches into the adoption system and how some states facilitated search efforts while others used legalities to thwart them entirely. She explained how luck could play a huge role in a search and how the outcomes weren’t always happily-ever-afters, although even unhappy answers were often better than unanswered questions.
Clearly these searches were her passion and he found her passion fascinating. As fascinating as he found watching her, her excitable movements drove home the fact that he had a long way to go before he could even contemplate seduction. Her nerves were making her downright dangerous, he decided while watching her sweep a hand around to illustrate a point, only to miss wiping out a table lamp by a bare inch.
“You’re knowledgeable,” he said hoping to keep April in her comfort zone, now that she’d finally stopped talking long enough to draw air. “I imagine the people with the adoption society consider themselves lucky to have you around.”
She shrugged, looked slightly embarrassed. “I’m sure that’s more than you ever wanted to know about adoption searches.”
“Not at all. Turns out that I’m very interested in things that interest you.”
“Oh.”
“Did you bring your cords?” he asked, deciding his best bet was to keep her off balance and reacting so she didn’t have time to analyze what was happening between them. “If not, I should have something that’ll work.”
She
