to make love to his date before she got her unnecessary beauty sleep. Lucky Greta.
“You didn’t exactly try to kiss and make up, did you?” Trenton charged.
Ah, the temperament of the politically hungry. Melodie ignored his tone, swallowed back a disturbing thickness in her throat and adopted her own implacable smile as she nudged Trenton toward a paunchy older gentleman. Work. Paris. She would not speculate on what Roman was doing with that Swedish sex kitten.
Nor would she wonder what her life would look like right now if she’d allowed Roman to take her back to his hotel room that day four months ago. Had she been tempted? On a physical level, absolutely. Even now, she regularly woke up damp with perspiration, deeply aroused, remnants of sexually explicit dreams lingering behind her clenched eyes.
Why did he have to torture her this way?
A man who could set aside revulsion toward a woman and bed her anyway was obviously incapable of the sort of love and respect she had always wanted. He’d battered her heart so thoroughly she doubted she’d ever recover.
Which made her furious with him all over again.
Firm hands descended on her waist from behind.
She gasped under a jolt of electricity, nerve endings flaring hotly, immediately aware who was touching her. She covered his hands, trying to remove them, but he only held on more possessively.
Trenton broke off midspiel and glanced at her, brows going up as he recognized who stood behind her. “I thought you were taking your date home?” he said.
“She’s staying on the eleventh floor. Dance with me, Melodie.”
No. She couldn’t breathe to speak.
“Good idea,” Trenton said, piercing her with a significant “be nice” look.
Numbly she let Roman guide her onto the dance floor. Actually, she wasn’t numb. She was so sensitive every touch and smell and sound overwhelmed her. She couldn’t pick out the beat in the music or tell whether his hands were hot or her skin was flushing in reaction to his hold on her. Her throat hurt where her pulse thrummed. Her limbs felt clumsy as she set one hand on his shoulder and the other hand in his.
“Why—?” she tried, but her voice didn’t want to work. She wasn’t sure what she was asking anyway. So many questions crowded up from the hollow space between her knotted stomach and her tight lungs she couldn’t make sense of a single one.
“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked with seeming disinterest. “He’s married, you know.”
She snorted, disdainful words choking past the locked gate of her collarbone. “I’m aware, and no. He’s my boss. What happened to Greta? Turn you down?”
“I don’t sleep with clients, but she wanted to make an appearance.” His touch on her changed, fingers closing more firmly over hers. His hand weighed more heavily at her waist. A hint of dry humor glinted in his eye. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way...”
“I don’t care,” she tried, but came up against her own dishonesty as quickly as his smirk flashed and disappeared.
“No. Of course not. You hate me. Why are you dancing with me, then?”
“I was told to be nice to you.” Offering a lethal mimic of Greta’s smoky look, she warned, “Do not get me fired, Roman. I will kill you.”
“He’s a sycophant.”
“So am I,” she retorted, squirming inwardly at being caught out as one of Trenton’s minions. “It pays the bills.”
Roman’s mouth tightened briefly before he allowed, “You’re good at working a room. I’ve been watching you.”
Melodie tingled with awareness at the idea of his watching her, covering her reaction with a blasé “Mom always needed a wing woman at these sorts of things. When it was her turn to host, I made all the arrangements. Ingrid’s wedding really would have come off beautifully under my hand, you know. How are the arrangements coming along?”
“I have no idea. She’s training her replacement and that’s enough comedy for my tastes.”
“Because weddings are a joke? Falling in love is for the weak and pathetic? I’m beginning to agree with you, Roman. Which makes me hate you all the more,” she added with a quiet burst of ferocity.
He spun her off the dance floor and behind a mirrored column.
“I tried to apologize to you that day,” he reminded hotly.
“You tried to pick me up,” she threw back, scraped raw all over again.
* * *
Four months had passed since their last meeting and Roman had managed to convince himself he’d forgotten her. The moment he had entered the room, however, a preternatural sense had sparked awake in him. He’d known she was here.
Then he’d spied her, toffee hair swept up to reveal her long neck and those deliciously modest pearls. Her shoulders were bared by her dress. The rest of her gown had hardly impacted upon him as he’d taken in the statue-still bust her head and shoulders made staring back at him.
She still hated him, he’d seen immediately, judging by her lack of a smile.
Then he’d seen her date touch her arm and something had snapped awake in him, an emotion that was blade sharp and ferocious. He suspected it was jealousy, because for a moment he’d been blind. All the hairs had lifted on his body and his blood had pumped in anticipation as he had prepared to shove through the crowd to get to her.
Sense had prevailed, albeit very weakly. He hadn’t been able to dump his date fast enough and get back to Melodie once she’d opened the borders and spoken to him. Now her scent filled his nostrils and his muscles twitched to clamp his arms around her. He was primed to throw her over his shoulder and steal her from the room while fighting off rivals.
He was damned close to doing so. The bitter look she gave him was filled with acid and ate away at what control he had.
“Do you think I wouldn’t control this if I could? That I don’t hate you for affecting me like this?” He threw the words at her.
Her head flung back as if he’d slapped her.
“No, it doesn’t feel very good, does it?” he gritted out, skin threatening to split under the pressure of containing himself. “It’s not me doing this to you, Melodie. It’s us. I’m this close to having you against this damned wall with the entire room watching. It’s that powerful.”
“Even though you hate me.” She turned her face to the side, eyes glistening.
“What do you want me to say? That I love you?” The word caught like a barbed hook on the way out, snagging in his chest and the back of his throat. It wasn’t a word he even understood beyond its bastardized use. I love this car. I love crème brulée.
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did, but I want the man I sleep with to say it,” she said with a break of anguish in her voice. “I want
