at the counter and went to work. She’d cut two thick slices before she realized he’d paused in the act of arranging the bacon on a microwavable tray. She turned, found him bent toward her, frowning, and almost collided with his nose.
Startled, she drew back a few inches. “Something wrong?”
“No.” He straightened, and a hint of red crept into his whiskered cheeks. “It’s your shampoo. I can smell the lemon but there’s something else, something I can’t identify. It’s been driving me crazy.”
Dawn tried to decide whether she should feel stoked by that bit about driving him crazy, or chagrined that it was her shampoo doing the driving. What she shouldn’t be feeling, though, was all goose-bumpy.
“That’s probably lotus blossom,” she got out a little breathlessly. “The company I work for manufactures this shampoo. Lemon and lotus blossom, with a touch of coconut oil for sheen. All natural ingredients.”
Oh, for pity’s sake! This was ridiculous. Men had leaned over her before. A good number of them, if she did say so herself. Some were even sexier than Brian Ellis. But not many, she couldn’t help thinking as he bent down again.
“I don’t think I’ve sniffed a lotus before.” He raised a hand, twirled a still-damp tendril around a finger. “Or felt anything so soft and silky. The coconut’s doing a good job.”
Well, damn! Who would’ve thunk it? This unexpected proximity seemed to have knocked Mr. Cool, Calm and Collected a few degrees off balance. The realization should have given Dawn a dart of feminine satisfaction. Instead, she had to struggle to remember where she was.
She barely registered the brick-walled kitchen or the copper pots hanging over the cook island. Brian blocked almost everything else from view. All she could see was the prickle of beard on his cheeks and chin. The slight dent in his nose. The narrowed blue eyes. She was still trying to decipher their message when he released her hair and brushed a knuckle down her cheek.
“About our discussion on the plane...”
Which discussion? She was damned if she could sort out her jumbled thoughts with his knuckle making another pass.
“I don’t dislike you.”
“Good to know, Ellis.”
“Just the opposite, McGill.” Another stroke, followed by a look of pure regret. “Which is why we can’t do what I’m aching to do right now.”
“You’re right,” she got out unsteadily as he cupped her cheek. “We can’t. Because...?”
As Brian dropped his hand, guilt hit him like a hammer.
Because, he thought with a searing stab of regret, we’re standing in the kitchen Caroline redesigned brick-by-aged-brick. Under the rack holding the dented copper pots she’d discovered in a shopping expedition to the Plaka in Athens. With a loaf of the pumpernickel she’d taught him to tolerate, if not particularly like, sitting right there on the counter.
Christ! He knew he shouldn’t keep hauling around this load of guilt. Everyone said so. The grief counselor recommended by Caroline’s oncologist. The various “experts” he’d consulted on issues dealing with single parenting. The well-meaning friends and associates who’d fixed him up with their friends and associates.
He’d dated off and on in the five years since his wife’s death. No one seriously. No one he’d brought here, to the home Caroline had taken such delight in. And he sure as hell had never ached to kiss one of those casual dates six ways to Sunday. Then hike her onto the counter, unsnap her jeans and yank them...
Dammit! Furious with himself, Brian stepped back and offered the only excuse he could. “Because Tommy’s upstairs. He might wake up and wander down to the kitchen.”
She recognized a pathetic excuse when she heard one. Eyes widening, she regarded him with patently fake horror. “Omigod! How totally awful if he walked in on us trading spit. He’d be so grossed out.”
“Dawn, I...”
She cut him off with a wave of the serrated knife. “I got the picture, Ellis. No messing around in the house. Not with me, anyway. Are you going to nuke that bacon or not?”
The flippant response threw him off. Almost as much as her smile when she attacked the pumpernickel again. It wasn’t smug. Or cynical. Or disappointed. Just tight and mocking.
Feeling like a teenager who’d just tripped over his own hormones, he tore some paper towels from the roll, covered the tray and shoved it in the microwave. Within moments the aroma of sizzling bacon permeated the kitchen and almost—almost!—wiped out the scent of the damned lotus blossoms.
Dawn was wide-awake and skimming through emails at midnight. Not surprising, since she’d zoned out for a solid five hours on the plane. Her mind said it was the middle of the night but her body thrummed with energy.
Then there was that near miss in the kitchen. She and Ellis had come nose to nose, close enough to exchange Eskimo kisses. Although there’d been no actual contact, electricity had arced between them. He’d felt the sizzle. So had she. Still did, dammit! No wonder she couldn’t sleep.
Dawn didn’t kid herself. She knew what they’d experienced was purely physical. She’d shared that same sizzle with too many deliciously handsome men to read any more into it than basic animal attraction. It was just Ellis’s pheromones responding to her scent.
As advertised, she thought with a grin. Dawn and her team had designed the labels for this particular line of bath products, which had been based on a study by the Smell & Taste Research Foundation in Chicago. The study demonstrated how combinations of various natural products triggered a wide variety of responses, including a few she found very interesting. Supposedly, the scents of lavender and pumpkin pie when sniffed together reportedly increased penile blood flow by forty percent!
Naturally, Dawn had read the study from cover to cover. She’d had to, in order to conceptualize the designs for the ads. She’d also conducted her own field trials of the new products. Her final choice of the lemon and lotus blossom shampoo didn’t appear to increase penile blood flow quite as dramatically as the lavender and pumpkin, but it had done wonders for her normally flyaway red curls. And it had certainly impacted Brian Ellis’s libido, she thought with a stab of satisfaction.
Not that she’d specifically intended to impact it. Although she was as attracted to Big Bad Brian as he apparently was to her, neither of them could let the sizzle gather steam or heat. He’d made it clear he wasn’t looking for any kind of permanent relationship, and Dawn was pretty well convinced there wasn’t any such animal.
She knew she came across as fun and flirtatious. Knew, too, she’d developed a love ’em and leave ’em reputation. The irony was that her parents’ toxic example had left her so gun-shy that she never went beyond flirting. Well, almost never. The only exceptions had come after she’d convinced herself she was in love—which only went to prove how flawed her instincts were.
That thought led to a quick glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was twelve twenty in DC. Six twenty in the morning in Rome. Kate and Callie would be up now and getting ready to leave for the airport.
Propping
