honest.
“I changed my mind,” she said simply.
“Now, after I’ve left town? How the hell did you reconcile our differences?”
“Do you mean declining to date you when you asked?”
He nodded.
“The limited time frame of the grand opening solves the problem, don’t you think?”
He looked skeptical. “One of them, maybe. I’m leaving in three weeks, so there’ll be no question about commitment.”
“Problem solved then. As long as we’re clear on what we want from each other.”
“I know what I want from you, Laura. I’ve always known.” His dark, silky tone promised enough bare skin and killer orgasms to send a shiver through her. “What exactly do you want from me?”
“I want to be your lover.” She gave his words back to him, needing to give as good as she got, that familiar feeling rising up like it always did with him, that…need to do something to catch his attention, to make him notice her.
“Really?” He arched an inky brow. “You wouldn’t go on a date with me because you don’t do flings and I’m not the man of your dreams.”
Now he shot her long-ago words back to her with that deep, sexy voice, his gaze holding hers so steadily that she could feel the effects low in her belly. “Can’t a girl change her mind?”
“What made you change it?”
“You’re the man of my fantasies.” She watched his reaction flash across his handsome face. His nostrils flared. His jaw tightened. His whole body tensed. “It’s this chemistry between us, Dale. It drove me crazy while you were here. I thought after you left I’d get over it.” She shrugged. “Read my invitation. It’s all there. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
His eyes bored into her as if demanding her truths, questioning, not quite daring to believe his sudden good fortune.
“Three weeks in this suite seemed like the perfect opportunity to get this chemistry out of the way…unless you don’t want me.”
“You know better.”
The heat was pooling really low now, potent enough to make her take drastic action. Okay, so she’d have to convince him. Fair enough. She’d gone from red-hot to ice-cold when he’d asked her on a date so long ago.
Turning away, she opened the hall closet and slipped off her jacket. “I have to be back downstairs for dinner at seven.”
Here was another perfect opportunity, this one designed to convince him that she was serious about wanting a fling. Swinging her braid over her shoulder, she unfastened the button at her nape.
“Did you tell Annabelle to chase off my date?” he asked.
Laura shook her head. While she might earn brownie points if he thought she’d masterminded the deal, she couldn’t lie. Especially not when she still had pangs about the woman leaving.
“I only sent Annabelle to pick your brain. If you came in alone she was supposed to find out if you were expecting a date. If not, she could give you my invitation. If you arrived with someone, she was supposed to tear up my invitation and swallow the pieces so there wouldn’t be any evidence.”
He laughed. That husky-edged sound rippled through her but Laura still didn’t look at him. It was easier to be calm, cool and courageous when she wasn’t on the end of that gaze. Much, much easier.
Time to level the playing field.
Unfastening her skirt, Laura let it slip to the floor, leaving her standing in a shell, panty hose and practical pumps.
“What the hell are you doing, Laura?”
“I’m convincing you I’m serious about wanting a fling.”
After their long business affiliation, undressing in front of this man was beyond outrageous. But as much as she wanted to see his reaction, she refused to let him see how important his reaction was to her. She hung her skirt on a hanger, instead.
“How can I be the man of your fantasies but not the man of your dreams?” He sounded unconvinced. “Please explain the difference to me.”
His voice had lowered another sexy octave and Laura fought to keep her calm, as if stripping in front of an attractive man was a commonplace occurrence. “The man of my fantasies is a man I can enjoy myself with. When it’s over, it’s over. We both go our separate ways and take away some pleasant memories.”
She tried not to wax too poetic when she said, “The man of my dreams is the man I want to share my life with. He’ll be someone with similar values who wants similar things from life. He’ll share some of my interests and be willing to explore new ones that we can share together. He’ll bring out the best in me and I’ll do the same for him.”
Dale’s snort sounded less than amused, so Laura placed the hanger in the closet and chanced a peek at him.
The frown darkening his expression warned her a storm was brewing so she wasn’t entirely unprepared when he arched a brow and asked, “How do you know what I want from my life? I don’t recall ever having that conversation with you. Or one about values, either.”
She forced a laugh, unsure why she’d offended him. “You’re a bad boy, Dale. The man of my dreams won’t be.”
“Define bad boy.”
“The guys who drive fast cars and chase faster women.”
“This is your opinion of me? Based on what? I behaved exemplarily while I was on this property.”
He sounded so indignant that she had to swallow back a real laugh. “That may be the case, Dale, but let me point out that you can’t help flirting no matter how young or old a woman might be. I don’t think you’ll deny that.”
His frown morphed into a scowl. But on the up side, his heated gaze kept dipping from her face, and she thought he might have noticed that she didn’t wear panties under her panty hose.
“Flirting doesn’t make me a degenerate.”
“I never said degenerate. I said bad boy. There’s nothing wrong with bad boys but they don’t stay forever. They like skirting the edges and pushing the limits. They like being challenged.”
“This is bad?”
“Not at all. It can be perfectly exciting in a lover. But the man of my dreams won’t work a job where he travels all over the world for extended periods of time—”
“Sounds like you have a problem with my job, not me.”
“I don’t have a problem with either,” she clarified patiently. “I just didn’t want to complicate our working relationship when you weren’t what I was looking for in a man. It’s not that I’m opposed to a fling per se, but a fling is meant to be short. We’ve been working on this project for two years and much of that time we were
