of it.
“Several of them, all local. Lavender Field. Bread and sweets. That’s one of my pastries you’re gobbling.”
He swallowed. “Good stuff.”
“Thanks.”
The music stopped. They looked at each other, finding nothing further to say.
Tuck wiped his mouth with a napkin. He scanned the club from the etched-glass mirror behind the bar to the velvet curtains forming the private dining alcoves. Glass doors opened onto a deck with a sparkling view of the harbor. “Looks like Nolan went after Mikki.”
“I saw her heading outside.”
“What happened to your other friend?”
“My sister—Lauren. She’s probably circulating, collecting quotes for a freelance article she’s researching.” Again, the direct gaze. “Did you want to go find her? I saw you looking.”
“That’s okay.” Under the focus of Rory’s unblinking stare, Lauren’s face had faded from his memory.
“She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Not as up-front as Mikki, but she’s single and available.” Rory shifted on the bar stool, the hem of her long cotton dress lifting to reveal a smooth firm calf as she recrossed her legs.
“Are you trying to set us up?”
“I can, if you’re interested.”
“Not right now.” Suddenly his mouth was dry and the key was burning a hole in his pocket.
After a momentary silence the music started up again. Should he ask her to dance? The tempo was fast; the dancers were rocking. There was no doubt in his mind that Rory Constable was strictly a slow-dance woman.
“You’re fidgeting,” she said. “It’s all right if you want to leave.” Another hand wave. “Go. Circulate. Search for cute locks.” She gave him a doting smile. “You know you want to.”
“No.” He drained his beer in one long pull. “What I want is a dance. Are you game?”
She pressed a hand to her chest and batted her lashes, putting on, just a bit. “Me?”
“Yes.” He held out his hand. “You. Come on.”
Her hand fit snugly in his and she swung off the stool, giving him a peep down the neckline of her dress to the locket dangling between her breasts. Heat throbbed through him, in beat with the music.
As he led Rory to the dance floor, he had to remind himself one more time that she wasn’t his type. She was Mikki’s sister; he was Mikki’s husband’s best friend. They were destined to be friends who met up now and then at backyard barbecues or family birthday parties. They would drink a beer together and maybe share a moment when they remembered the night that they might have hooked up, if the dice had rolled another way.
Actually hooking up would make future encounters too awkward. He’d been down that road before, with a good friend of Didi’s who to this day shot diamond-cutting laser eyes at him whenever they ran into each other at his sister’s house.
But one dance wouldn’t hurt.
Rory was surprisingly carefree on the dance floor. For all his certainty that she was a slow-dancing type, she moved fluidly to the samba beat of “Hot, Hot, Hot,” the skirt of her black-and-white patterned dress swinging in a bell shape around her long legs as she swooped and twirled.
He finally managed to catch her close, keeping one arm firmly looped around her waist so she couldn’t slip away. He looked into her eyes. Their hips swiveled, side to side, forward and back.
Rory’s cheeks glowed, bathed in the hot colored lights. She licked her lips. “You’re a good dancer.”
“Only when the mood strikes.”
“The mood,” she repeated. Her eyes were liquid, the color of the expensive brand of Scotch he used to see in decanters at Nolan’s house.
He spread his fingers over the small of her back. Her hips moved just beneath them, the swell of her backside inches away. If he’d been even a little bit drunk and she hadn’t been quite so classy, he’d dip lower for a quick grope.
“Then the elusive mood must have struck,” she said, moving her face closer to his so he could hear. “I haven’t danced like this since…I can’t remember when.”
Her hair brushed the side of his cheek. He closed his eyes, inhaled a fragrance of sweet sage and lavender. The weight and warmth of her generous body was more arousing than he’d expected.
He could sink into her.
Go deep, get comfortable.
Spend the night.
Maybe even longer…
He tightened their embrace until her voluptuous breasts were riding plump and full up against his chest, the locked charm trapped between them. In heels, she was almost his height. Maybe twenty-five pounds under his weight, which meant that her curves fit just right against him, filling his arms, his senses.
Their palms slid together in the heat. Rory panted in his ear. He’d stopped hearing the music, but the beat was inside him, and in her, too. He felt it in the heft of her soft breasts and the sensuous sway of her hips and the glide of their feet, perfectly in sync.
He touched his lips to her warm cheek. She turned her head away a fraction and his kiss slipped toward her ear. He lipped her lobe, making the dangly earring swing against his chin. His nose nudged it aside as he sought her neck, sleek and moist and infused with the rising scent of aroused female flesh. He nuzzled, he kissed, he licked.
Rory’s hand tightened against his. “Tucker.” She pressed her face against his shoulder and let out a soulful moan. “Sweet mercy. What are you doing to me?”
2
“FOREPLAY,” Tucker said against her neck. The hot whisper of breath and the vibrations of his voice produced a frisson that played through Rory like fingers running scales along the keys of a piano.
Foreplay. On the dance floor. Was he nuts?
If so, she was equally crazy from the heat. She didn’t want him to stop.
“Foreplay,” she echoed, trying to regain her senses. “Are you asking—or stating your intentions?”
His lips stopped mid-nibble. “Do I need intentions?”
“Everyone has intentions.”
“Not the kind that a father brings up with his daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Slowly, she was coming out of the haze of arousal that had freed her inhibitions more thoroughly than a half-dozen body shots. A method she’d tried only once, in college, and promptly thrown up in a frat boy’s lap. “Don’t
