to much of anything she’d said. “Well, maybe this once you’d make an exception and give it the ol’ college try? I promise it won’t go any further, you making an effort, cross my heart and all that.”
He finally stepped back from the camera and straightened to his full height, his full breadth, giving her his complete attention and the up-front impact of his grin, his focus and his deep, dark eyes.
Whoa! Melanie blinked, caught again between his actions and words. Not that he’d said anything that registered. Or was doing much of anything at all—at least nothing to merit the two-left-feet trip her heart had just taken.
All he was doing, in fact, was looking at her. Looking into her. Looking beyond her defenses with an intensity that chiseled out a great big chunk from between the bricks of the wall that protected her from bad boys.
“And what’s a promise you make worth, Miss Craine?” He shook his head. “Never mind. With that control thing you’ve got going, you don’t break promises, do you?”
“Of course not.” Control? What control? And forget calling on her usual self-discipline.
She couldn’t even think of a retort, what with flutters of pleasure flitting in and out of her belly. She was not the type of girl taken to mooning over a man’s biceps and pecs and nice tight ass.
Sure, she appreciated beefcake as much as any of the women she worked with, but this…this was not simple appreciation. This was the sort of bone-jumping desire she’d always risen above.
For the life of her, she couldn’t remember why.
Or how.
He started toward her, across the dais and down the first step, the second, his stride lazy and loose, his chest a broad landscape in a black cotton T-shirt, his dark indigo jeans slack on his legs but snug where the waistband rode low.
Nothing had changed from five minutes ago except now he wasn’t looking at her pixilated image but at her flesh-and-bone body. Yet everything had changed for that very same reason, and Melanie could barely breathe.
He was seeing her both mentally and physically disheveled, not to mention at her absolute worst in terms of stress working her nerves. Her attitude was in the toilet. And her drive to mow down anyone in her way had no doubt made quite the unattractive impression.
And yet he still had that look in his eye. A look that spoke of all those unspeakable things that went on in cocky, bad boy minds.
Things she’d experienced only in her imagination since she avoided the type and stuck to men who were safe. Who presented no challenge. Who bored her to tears but shared her work ethic and professional drive.
She lifted her chin and retrieved her pride, then crossed her arms over her middle, hating how body language supposedly revealed one’s state of mind. She felt vulnerable and exposed, and was angry at herself for the weakness. This reaction was not in her man-response repertoire and she did not like being put on the spot.
She especially did not like the sense of anticipation slipping between her clothing and her skin. Too aware, that’s what she was, feeling the fabric against her body in a way that had nothing to do with comfort or fit but was all about sensation and sexual heat.
Jacob stepped from the dais into the aisle, his slow rolling stride bringing him closer, closer still, until he circled around and into her personal space. He moved to stand behind her, breathing, hovering, threatening, giving her cause to wrap her arms even tighter over newly budded nipples. Ridiculous, she thought, the warmth she felt sluicing over her at having him near.
He took another step and reached the groom’s position. The thud of her heartbeat climbed to the base of her throat, and Melanie turned her head slowly. She lifted her gaze to meet his, which was even more disturbing from this distance—really no distance at all.
Oh, no. This wouldn’t do. She was not going to stand here where she could smell a hint of the soap on his skin and the shampoo he’d used and the fragrance of the detergent with which he washed his clothes.
He was way too close, and his T-shirt revealed more than it covered. His stomach was flat, his chest sculpted and hard, his shoulders rounded with muscle, his biceps tightening the fit of his sleeves. He looked down at her from beneath a sweep of black lashes. She looked up and swore she was not going to take off her clothes.
He inclined his head, lifted a dark brow. “So?”
“So…what?”
With a tilt of his head, he gestured toward the dais and the choir box. “The cameras are all yours.”
“The cameras. Right.” Could she be any more of a moron?
And why weren’t her legs longer so she could kick herself in the butt? Or steadier, at least, so she could make it up the two short steps of the dais without falling on her face?
As it was, she’d never been more aware of the swing to her walk, or the shape of her legs from the hem of her short, pale yellow skirt to her matching faux crocodile slides. Even her lemon-chiffon poet’s shirt had become too revealingly sheer.
Her brainstorm to dress early for the ceremony, allowing more time to see to the video details, no longer seemed like the same stroke of preparatory genius. She’d much prefer to be wearing baggy khakis and a huge oversize camp shirt while under Jacob’s scrutiny. What he made her feel was too…itchy and unfamiliar and…real.
But when she reached the choir box railing, she’d never in her life been so glad to be female, itchy or not. Because looking into the LCD screen, she saw things that a real man could never understand about another man’s beauty and carnal appeal.
Hands at his hips, standing where Anton would stand to wed Lauren, Jacob Faulkner looked nothing like a groom, looked insolent and arrogant, looked like a model for DKNY or Calvin Klein. Or better yet, like a brooding hustler chalking a cue, waiting for a sucker to challenge his game.
It was an attitude, an aura, a sense of self more than it was the way he wore his dark wavy hair or the way he appeared to lounge like a lizard soaking in the sun. Melanie blinked, wet her lips and watched his other eyebrow lift in question.
If only she could remember the answer he was waiting for.
“Everything meets with your approval?”
You have no idea. Though, of course, she would never say anything so leading because she knew, any minute now, she’d get over this ridiculous and latent hormone attack. So she nodded, because he’d been right, after all.
The camera angle was perfect. And as hard as it was to admit after jumping to her earlier opinion, the man knew his business as well as she knew hers.
She moved to check the second camera, though really needn’t have bothered. Where the first had shown Jacob from his left side, this one gave her the full treatment of his right. Both sides were equally devastating to her ability to disassociate her body’s response from this man. She didn’t want to react to him in any sort of physical way.
He was annoying and bossy and way too…observant for comfort. All he had to do was stand there and stare at her and he made her unbearably hot. And now, during tonight’s wedding, she’d be sitting in the sanctuary, witnessing the ceremony, her attention drawn from the bride and groom to the cameras, with Jacob looking
