Calculated Risk (23 page)

“
She’d adore playing strip
gin, especially is she could lose. And with all due respect to
your
minor
in
psychiatry, I have no inhibitions at playing either.” One at a time
Roxanne displayed her cards on the table. “Gin.” Her fingers folded
together, her expression guileless. “I’ll take your
shirt.”

Bram struggled to talk around a tongue
that swelled like a sponge. “This is…you are…you’re joking.
Right?”

“
About gin, Auntie, or
taking your shirt?” Roxanne shook her head. “Say” – her eyes
narrowed – “not welching on the bet, are you?”

His muttered curses were drowned under
a sea of terry cloth as he pulled the tennis shirt over his head.
“So the Victorian Aunt never existed. Mathilda was, as H. L.
Mencken coined, an ecdysiast, and you’ve been secretly laughing at
me all this time.” Bram tossed the shirt at her. His eyes echoed
his hair – black with a burnishment of cobalt blue. “What else have
you been laughing at, fair Roxanne?”

“
I wasn’t exactly laughing
at you,” she protested, her tone decidedly censorial. “I wanted to
prove to you that even after twelve dates and four weeks of time
you’ve yet to really know the woman you claim to love.” Roxanne
found her smugness and complacent attitude dissipating under an
onslaught of pure feminine awareness and appreciation of Abraham
Tyler’s naked torso.

She could easily list a
dozen women who’d swoon over viewing a chest like his – including
Aunt Mathilda!
Especially Aunt
Mathilda,
her mind teased her.
She was a lady who reveled in viewing an undraped
body, artistic adoration notwithstanding. Bram’s upper body would
inspire an artist to brush in hand to capture on canvas his
magnificent male form. Roxanne’s half-hooded gaze flowed along the
sinewy landscape of his broad shoulders before transversing a
voyeur’s path through the curly black hair that forested his firm
flesh.

She silently cursed the sport of
tennis for contributing to Bram’s athletic physique. Why couldn’t
his chest have been concave and in dire need of weight training?
Why hadn’t she asked for his pants?