curls, she remembered Tomas saying he didn’t like sleek. She set down the straightening tool and smiled slowly. “Oh, yeah. I rather like it wild, too.”
Except she wasn’t thinking about her hair.
She huffed out a breath, hot with memories and keen with anticipation, and eyed her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a woman thinking about sex. Heat traced the line of her cheekbones and glowed dark in her eyes. And when she stood up and braced her shoulders, she felt the sweet tug of arousal in her breasts and satin panties.
Perhaps she should really surprise him and take them off. Perhaps she would after she’d fortified her bravery with a glass of merlot.
Yes, she needed a glass of wine. And to check the meal one more time. She straightened the neckline of her white gypsy top, smoothed the sitting-down wrinkles from her jeans, and set off for the kitchen at the opposite end of the house. With every step she could feel the friction of her clothes against each sensitive peak and fold of her body. Perhaps she should take everything off and really surprise him…although that would take a lot more than one glass of bravado!
Smiling at herself, she pushed through the kitchen door and came to a stunned standstill.
Tomas was home.
Right there in the middle of the kitchen, actually, although he hadn’t yet noticed her arrival. He stood in profile, a tall, dark, dusty hunk with a long-neck bottle in his hand. She watched his head tilt back as he raised the beer to his lips. Watched the movement of his throat as he drank…and she drank in his almost sybaritic enjoyment of that first long, slow pull from the cold bottle.
In that moment he wasn’t Tomas Carlisle, heir apparent to Australia’s richest cattle empire. He wasn’t any “Prince of the Outback.” He was just an ordinary cowboy at the end of a hellishly long working day.
A quiver of pure desire slid through her body, from the tingling in her scalp all the way to the freshly painted tips of her toes. She wanted to walk right up and kiss him on his drink-cooled lips and breathe the commingled scents of horse and leather and Kameruka dust on his skin. But more even than the physical, she longed to share dinner without sniping and harsh words. She wanted to let the evening flow naturally all the way to the moment when they stood in unison and walked hand in hand to bed.
Was that too much to ask?
Suddenly the hand holding the bottle stilled halfway back down from his mouth, and Angie had enough time to answer her own question—yes, definitely too much— before his head turned slowly her way. She could feel the tension in her bones and knew it seeped into the innocent kitchen air. And all she could think to say was, “You’re home.”
He grunted—possibly an acknowledgment, possibly a commentary on the intelligence of her opening remark.
“I didn’t hear your plane,” she continued, with a sweeping gesture toward the roof.
“I’m not surprised.”
Angie frowned. She’d turned off the music so she wouldn’t miss his arrival. “What do you mean?”
“You were in the bath.”
What? That was hours ago. And how did he know she—
“You wouldn’t have heard me above the music.”
Holy Henry, he must have been in the house earlier. How could she not have known? Angie blanched, remembering how she’d belted out whatever lyrics she knew and improvised the rest. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked on a note of dismay.
“I only came in to change.”
And since he wasn’t laughing or looking horrified, perhaps he hadn’t heard her singing. Relaxing a smidge, she now realized the significance of her first impression. He wasn’t dressed for a business trip but for get-down-and-dirty cattle work, because he’d returned early and come to the house to change. Her gaze slid over his dusty blue Western shirt and lingered on the Wranglers he wore so well.
“What’s going on, Angie?” he asked with a hint of suspicion. And when her gaze flew back to his face she caught him giving her a similar once-over. “Where is everyone?”
“I gave Manny—” who’d been rostered for kitchen duty “—the night off.”
“Why?”
“I thought it would be easier, given you want to keep this just between us.”
He’d started to lift his beer again, but hesitated as the knowledge of what that meant arced between them, hot and sultry and heavy as a summer’s night. At least that’s how Angie’s body felt. Without breaking eye contact he took another long drink, another long swallow. “Is that why you’re all dressed up?”
She almost laughed out loud, remembering how many times she’d changed her clothes in an attempt to dress down. But, still, she liked that he knew she’d made an effort. She wasn’t afraid of letting him know she wanted him.
Slowly she crossed the kitchen floor, closing down the space between them, never losing that hot eye-to-eye connection. She ached to kiss him, to hold him, to have him right here and now. But beyond the surface of his blue-heat eyes she detected a flicker of wariness that held her back. Instead of reaching for the man, she reached for his beer and lifted it to her lips.
As she drank she watched him swallow, and desire beat so hard in her veins she swore she could feel its echo in every cell of her body.
“You’re why I gave Manny the night off and you’re why I’m wearing satin underwear,” she said huskily. “But first you’re having a shower, and then we’re having dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
While he showered Tomas tried to work up a decent sense of outrage. Without asking she’d used his bathroom again. She’d given his staff the night off. He’d let her know, in plain language, how this would happen and she’d gone ahead and set up a seduction scene.
But it was hard to maintain rage in a body tight and hot with anticipation. She’s waiting out there alone, it throbbed, for you. She’s wearing satin underwear, it pulsed, for you. She’s starving, it thundered, for you.
Despite the insistent ache of arousal he forced himself to dress unhurriedly, to arrive slowly, to sit and eat and talk. The wine helped. After one glass he realized he wasn’t going to ignite every time their eyes met in an awkward conversational lapse, or each time his gaze was drawn to the erotic caress of her thumb over the rim of her wineglass.
It only felt that way.
He shifted in his chair, surreptitiously rearranging that insistent ache of arousal. He was a sad case. There she was, chatting away about the innocuous and everyday, oblivious to the effect of her unconscious glassware fondling. Lucky he’d worn roomy chinos because sitting down in jeans, in his condition, would have been murder.
“Hello?”
He looked up to find her waving her hands to attract his attention.
“You didn’t hear a word of that, did you?”
“I was—” Tomas frowned “—thinking.”
