toy with the strip of chemically altered hair he was referring to. “It’s not all blue,” she muttered.
That bought her a too-handsome grin and flash of very white, perfectly straight teeth. “Just enough to let the world know you’re a rebel, right?”
Wow, he had her pegged, didn’t he? And he wasn’t taking no, thank you, for an answer.
Dropping the hank of hair, Jessica pushed her shoulders back. She was a rebel, as well as a confident, self-reliant woman. But she wasn’t stupid.
“I could lose my job,” she said simply.
He cocked his head. She wasn’t the only self-assured person in the room.
“But you won’t,” he told her matter-of-factly. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “Would it make you feel better if I said I won’t let that happen?”
With anybody else she would have scoffed. But knowing who Alexander Bajoran was and the power he held—even here in Portland—she had no doubt he meant what he said and had enough influence to make it stick.
“You’ll be on your own time, not the resort’s,” he pointed out. “And I’ll let you decide whether we order from room service or go out somewhere else.”
She should say no. Any sensible person would. The entire situation screamed danger with a capital D.
But she had to admit, she was curious. She’d had male guests proposition her before, give her that salacious, skin-crawling look reserved for when they were on out-of-town business trips without their wives and thought they could get away with something.
Alexander was the first, though, to ask her to dinner without the creepy looks or attempts at groping. Which made her wonder why he was interested.
Did he suspect her of snooping around where she didn’t belong, or was he just hitting on a pretty, no-strings-attached maid? Did he recognize her as a Taylor and think she was up to something, or just hope to get lucky?
Of course she was up to something, but now she wanted to know if he was up to something, too.
So even though she knew she should be running a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction, she opened her mouth and made the biggest mistake of her life.
“All right.”
Three
Jessica didn’t get many opportunities to dress up these days. But she was having dinner this evening with a very wealthy, very handsome man, and even though she knew it was a terrible idea, she wanted to make the most of it. Not so much the man and the dinner but simply the act of going out and feeling special for a little while. Putting on something pretty rather than functional. Taking extra time with her makeup and hair. Wearing heels instead of ratty old tennies.
She even went so far as to dab on a couple drops of what was left of her favorite three-hundred-dollar-an-ounce designer perfume, Fanta C. Alexander Bajoran might not be worth a spritz or two, but she certainly was.
She was wearing a plain black skirt and flowy white blouse with a long, multi-strand necklace and large gold hoop earrings in her primary holes. The others held her usual array of studs and smaller hoops.
As she strode down the carpeted hallway, she fiddled with every part of her outfit. Was her skirt too short? Did her blouse show too much cleavage? Would the necklace draw Alexander’s eye to her breasts? Or worse yet, would the earrings pull too much of his attention to her face?
Flirting—even flirting with danger this way—was one thing. Truly risking being recognized by her family’s greatest enemy, though … No, she didn’t want that.
Which was why she’d chosen to meet him here, in his room at the resort, rather than going out to a public restaurant where they might be seen by someone they—especially she—knew.
Getting caught in a guest’s room after work hours would be bad, but being spotted out on a date with Alexander by one of her relatives or somebody who might tell one of her relatives would be exponentially worse. She would rather be fired than deal with the familial fallout.
Reaching the door of his suite, Jessica stopped and took a deep breath. She straightened her clothes and jewelry for the thousandth time and checked her small clutch purse to be sure she had her cell phone, a lipstick, a few bucks just in case. She didn’t know if she would end up needing any of those things, but wanted to have them, all the same.
When there was nothing left to double-check, no other reason to put off the inevitable, she took another deep, stabilizing breath, held it and let it out slowly as she tapped on the door.
The nerves she’d tamped down started to wiggle back toward the surface as she waited for him to answer. Then suddenly the door swung open, and there he was.
Six foot something of dark, imposing good-looks. Slacks still smooth and pressed, despite being worn all day. Pale, pale lavender dress shirt unbuttoned at his throat and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but no less distinguished than when he’d been wearing a tie and suit jacket.
He smiled in welcome and a lump formed in her throat, making it hard to swallow. Suddenly she was almost pathologically afraid to be alone with him. It was two mature adults sharing a simple meal, but almost as though she was watching a horror movie, she could see around all the corners to where scary things and maniacal killers waited.
A thousand frightening scenarios and terrible outcomes flitted through her brain in the nanosecond it took him to say hello—or rather, a deep, masculine, “Hi, there”—and step back to let her into the suite.
She could have run. She could have begged off, hurriedly telling him she’d changed her mind, or that something important had come up and she couldn’t stay.
She probably should have.
Instead, a tiny voice in her head whispered, What’s the worst that can happen? and showed her images of a lovely, delicious meal at an establishment where she worked but never got the chance to indulge, with an attractive man the likes of which she probably wouldn’t meet again for a very long time. Not given her current circumstances.
So she didn’t run. She told herself she was here, he was a gentleman, and everything would be fine.
“Thank you,” she murmured, surprised when her voice not only didn’t crack, but came out in a low, almost smoky tone that sounded a lot sexier than she’d intended.
She stepped into the suite, and he closed the door behind her with a soft click. More familiar with these rooms than she cared to admit, she moved down the short hallway and into the sitting room where there was already a table set up with white linens and covered silver serving trays.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of ordering,” Alexander said, coming up behind her. “I thought it would save some time.”
True enough. Mountain View employed one of the best chefs in the country and served some of the best food on the West Coast, but room service was room service. It sometimes took longer than guests might have liked for their meals to arrive, especially if the kitchen was busy trying to get food out to the dining room.
Cupping her elbow, he steered her around the
