night—the ultimate male fantasy. But he’d forgotten how good this felt, how nice it was to slow-dance, to hold a woman and enjoy the feeling of her all relaxed against him.
Even if she did think he was dumb as a rock.
‘I think you’ve got this dancing thing down pat, darlin’,’ he murmured against her hair.
Cassie just heard him through the trancelike state she’d entered. Each breath she drew in fogged her head a little more, stroking along nerve-endings and leadening her bones. She was pretty sure she was drooling on his jacket.
But he had her in his thrall.
His hands felt big and male on her hips, and hot—very hot. She was aware of every part of her body. It was alive with the scent of him.
His chin rubbed the top of her head and she glanced up. Her gaze fell on the heavy thud of his carotid again, pulsing just above his collar beside the hard ridge of his trachea. Her mouth watered a little more and Cassie sucked in a breath.
‘Well, hey, y’all!’
Cassie dragged herself back from the impulse to push her nose into Tuck’s neck, grateful for Marnie’s interruption. She looked at her friend, who was dancing with a preppy-looking guy, still a little dazed.
‘It’s getting hot in here,’ Marnie said, then winked as her partner danced her away.
Cassie blinked at her retreating back and then glanced at Tuck, who was looking intently at her with his intense extra-terrestrial gaze.
What was she thinking?
She searched her brain for an answer. How great he smelled. How great he might taste. But more than that. She’d been thinking how small and feminine she felt tucked in under his chin, his hands shaping her hips.
How female.
She blinked, shocked by her thoughts. Since when had she cared about that? But her gaze was filled with his perfect symmetrical features and it all became fuzzy again. Why couldn’t he have a prominent forehead and squinty eyes and a crooked nose? He was a footballer, for crying out loud, didn’t they break noses regularly?
Why didn’t she feel like this about Len, her fellow researcher-cum-occasional-lover? She’d never once had to quell the urge to sniff him. They worked together every day, occasionally accompanied each other to university functions, and every once in a while he got antsy and irritable and they had sex, so he could concentrate on what was really important—astronomy.
She’d never slow-danced with Len. Nor did she want to.
She’d never wanted to crawl inside his skin.
It was a scary thought, and Cassie tried to pull away as another slow song started up, but Tuck held her fast and her damn body capitulated readily. Too readily. It was obvious biology was going to win out over intellect and logic tonight and that just wasn’t acceptable.
She needed to defuse the situation, to distract herself from the dizzying power of him.
‘So,’ she said, reaching for a safe, easy topic of conversation, ‘Tuck isn’t your real name?’
It was hardly Mensa level, and they weren’t about to unlock the secrets of dark matter, but at least it would give her back some control.
Mind over body.
And he looked like a guy who liked to talk about himself.
‘No.’ Tuck shook his head. ‘My Christian name is Samuel. Samuel Tucker. But no one calls me that. Except my mother.’
Even his wife had called him Tuck.
‘And Great-Aunt Ada,’ Cassie reminded him.
Tuck smiled. ‘And Great-Aunt Ada.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Why not be called by the name you were given?’
Tuck shrugged. ‘It’s a nickname.’ He looked down into her genuinely perplexed face. ‘Don’t they have nicknames in Australia? You’re called Cassie instead of Cassiopeia.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘No. Cassie is an abbreviation of my Christian name, not a nickname. If that were the case for you, you’d be known as Sam.’
Tuck waited for her to spell abbreviation for his poor addled brain. If she hadn’t felt a hundred kinds of right, all smooshed up and slow dancing against him, he’d be getting kind of ticked off by her attitude towards his mental prowess.
Instead he was prepared to humour her.
‘Except Tuck sounds cooler.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Cooler? Who says?’
Tuck liked the way her brows drew together, showcasing her grey-blue eyes to perfection. ‘Tens of thousands of football fans, screaming my name across every state in this great land for a decade.’
Not to mention quite a few more of the female variety also screaming it out loud in hotel beds across every state for just as long.
‘Oh.’ Cassie thought about it for a moment, but she’d never understood the dynamics of hero-worship regarding something as frivolous as sport. ‘Sorry, I don’t get that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a guy thing.’
Cassie suspected it was probably a jock thing, but she tucked it away anyway to ask Len about when they next spoke.
Thankfully the song ended and, feeling more in control of her recalcitrant hormones, she took the opportunity to step firmly away from him. ‘I’m done now,’ she said, and was proud of how strong her voice sounded when her body was howling to be nearer to him.
Tuck smiled and bowed slightly, ever the gentleman, as he gestured for her to precede him. It didn’t stop him from perving on her ass the whole way back to the table, though.
Almost two hours later everyone had left and Marnie, Gina and Cassie, under the direction of Great-Aunt Ada, had seen all the guests off and organised the removal of the gifts that had been left despite Reese insisting that no one bring any.
Tuck and his pheromones had also insisted on helping.
Cassie was getting twitchy. She had a paper to get back to. She didn’t have time for a big, blond ex-quarterback who’d obviously fallen out of the stupid tree. And hit every branch on the way down.
No matter how nice he smelled.
But somehow he was accompanying them back inside the grand entrance to the Bellington Estate, and then he was walking up the ornate stone staircase next to her, his arm occasionally brushing hers. When Marnie and Gina turned left at the top Cassie hoped that Tuck would do so too.
No such luck.
He smiled at her as he turned right. ‘After you,’ he said.
Cassie looked over her shoulder at Gina and Marnie, who had stopped and were looking at her with bemused expressions.
Gina
