Girl Least Likely to Marry (6 page)

‘I’m not suggesting she
marry
the
man,’ Gina said. ‘Not
everyone
needs to get married,
Reese.’ She turned to look at Cassie. ‘I think she should just use him for
sex—get him out of her system. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who’d object
to being used as a scratching post for a horny thirty-year-old genius.’

Cassie felt something tighten low and deep inside her at the
mere thought of being horizontal with Tuck. ‘Maybe I could just up my meds?
Suppress my libido chemically?’

Marnie reached out her hand and placed it over top of Cassie’s.
‘There could be worse ways to iron out a few kinks, Cass. He’s a mighty
fine-looking man. Very sexy.’

Cassie was pretty sure there weren’t. Why did her body want
him?
Mighty fine or not, the man had clearly
forgotten to pay his brain bill. What on earth were they going to talk about
while they were
doing
it? She and Len discussed
their research. What could she talk to
him
about?

‘Yeah, but I’m not sure I want to be naked in front of a guy
who doesn’t know what Pi is… Why couldn’t he be a geek? Smart men are my kind of
sexy.’

Reese shook her head. ‘He played dumb, didn’t he?’ she said to
Gina.

‘Yep. To be fair, though,’ Gina said, ‘Cassie
was
speaking to him slowly and using very simple
words.’

Reese sighed. ‘Yeah, he does that when people make
assumptions.’ She looked at Cassie. ‘Well, you better hold on to your hat,
Cassiopeia, because Tuck’s brain is about as big as his ego. He graduated
summa cum laude
in pure math and he’s currently
working with a young start-up company in California developing a stats app for
the NFL. He’s no savant, but he’s no dummy either.’

It was Cassie’s turn to blink. ‘Maths?’ She
loved
maths.

Reese nodded. ‘Not just a pretty face.’

Marnie straightened up. ‘Speaking of pretty faces….’

Gina and Reese also straightened. ‘What?’ Cassie turned to look
behind her. Not that she really needed to. She could already feel his pull.

She sucked in a breath as Tuck swaggered towards them, once
again greeting his fans with casual aplomb. Was it his broad chest and narrow
hips, beautifully showcased in dark trousers and a pale lemon shirt unbuttoned
at the throat, that flared her nostrils and set her mouth watering? Or maybe it
was his short
crinkly blond locks that would surely curl with any kind of
length?

Or was it just his big beautiful brain that made her want to
lick him all over?
Dear God, she was turning into an
animal!

Cassie quickly turned back, her brain already shutting down.
Reese glanced at Gina and Marnie, who were both watching Cassie’s reaction with
bemused expressions. They’d seen their friend flustered before—but never over a
man.

‘Morning, ladies,’ Tuck said as he drew within a metre of the
table. ‘Cassiopeia,’ he murmured as he pulled up the chair beside her and sat
down.

He turned to smile at her. Except Cassie this morning was very
different from the one last night. Her hair was straight and ruthlessly pushed
off her face, her make-up was non-existent, and she was wearing something baggy
and voluminous that totally obscured the body she’d been showing off last
night.

She was no swan this morning, that was for sure.

But her pretty grey-blue eyes still looked at him with that
compelling mix of intelligence and confusion and he liked that he was still
rattling her.

‘You turn into a pumpkin, darlin’?’

‘Tuck!’ Reese gasped.

‘What?’ he protested, looking at his cousin completely
unabashed. ‘I’m just saying Cassie’s looking a little…different this
morning.’

Cassie wasn’t remotely insulted by the observation. How she
looked or didn’t look had never mattered. What concerned her was the riot going
on inside her body as his scent, now encoded into her DNA, pulled her into its
orbit. The sudden leap in her pulse, the flare of her nostrils, the gush of
saliva coating a mouth as dry as stardust.

He smelled different this morning, but the same. There was a
hint of something sweet, a tang masking the earthy smell of male, but it only
added to his allure. It tickled at her nose with each inhalation. It wafted over
her in sticky waves. It undulated through her breasts and belly.

She could see the hollow at the base of his throat, the steady
bound of his pulse, and it took all her willpower to stop herself leaning into
him and burying her nose right there.

Dear God—he might not be as stupid as she’d thought, but she
was losing IQ points fast.

Everyone was looking at her.
Say
something, damn it!

‘Why, when you have a maths degree, did you lead me to believe
you were dumb?’

Tuck shot a look at his cousin. ‘Aww, Reese,’ he said, putting
on his best yokel accent, ‘you done went and spoiled all my fun.’

‘Knock it off, Tuck.’ Reese tutted. ‘You shouldn’t bait people.
It’s not nice.’

Cassie frowned, ignoring them. ‘I don’t understand why you
would underestimate your intelligence.’

Tuck supposed Cassie wouldn’t, in her world of logic and
reason, so there was no point trying to explain how crazy being treated like a
dumb jock made him. She hadn’t been deliberately obtuse, like so many others,
just clueless, so he was prepared to cut her some slack.

‘Would you have let me kiss you some more last night if you’d
known I was smarter?’

Cassie suspected she very much would have. Brains and
pheromones were apparently a dangerous combination. Hell, the man could kiss her
right now, in front of a dining room full of people, and she’d be powerless to
resist.

‘Some more?’ Gina said, her eyebrows practically hitting her
hairline.

‘He kissed you!’ Marnie spluttered.

‘You kissed her?’ Reese demanded.

Tuck looked at the three fierce women opposite him and then at
the silent one beside him, her gaze roving over his throat like a vampire
deciding where to make her first bite. It branded him like a physical caress and
streaked heat to his groin where things stirred with the same potency they’d had
last night.

‘Cassie?’ Marnie prompted.

Cassie dragged her eyes off Tuck’s neck. ‘Oh, yeah. I left that
bit out, didn’t I?’

‘Er,
yeah,
’ Marnie said.

Cassie looked at her friends, all looking at her expectantly,
waiting for more. Tuck was watching her too. And all the while his pheromones
battered and pulled at her, weakening her resistance. She had to get away from
them.

From him.

She stood. ‘I have work to do.’

‘Oh, no—wait, Cassie,’ Marnie said. ‘You can’t spend all your
time at a luxury estate holed up in your room on your laptop.’

Tuck couldn’t agree more. Being holed up in her room with her
on his lap, making Little-Miss-Know-It-All come undone, sounded much
preferable.

‘Marnie’s right,’ Gina said. ‘We’re going to the spa for the
day. Why don’t you join us?’

Cassie was surprised that Marnie and Gina were voluntarily
spending time in each other’s company. Although was that a desperate
please come
look in Gina’s eyes? Normally she would
have agreed to be their buffer zone, but a day where their deflection would land
squarely on her and, by association, Tuck, was not something she wanted to
volunteer for.

Gina might be convinced that
bonking
Tuck was the solution, but Cassie wasn’t ready to allow
hormones and libido to conquer brainpower.

She just needed to get absorbed in her work again.

‘Stars wait for no woman,’ she said, glancing at Tuck for good
measure, to send him a message too—
she wouldn’t be derailed
by biology.

And she fell into his cosmic blue eyes, temporarily forgetting
her own name.

Tuck smiled at her, raising an eyebrow slightly at her defiant
expression. But she wasn’t fooling him. He could see other things in her gaze as
well, like the hunger from last night. Maybe he could convince her about the
beauty of a different kind of star. The kind that popped and exploded behind
shut lids as she rode the tail of a stratospheric orgasm.

‘Join us later for something to eat.’

Cassie dragged her gaze from Tuck’s, grateful to Gina for the
interruption. He looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and
it was unsettling. ‘I’ll see,’ she evaded as Gina’s desperation not to be alone
with Marnie was confirmed. ‘I have a lot of stuff to get through before I start
at Cornell next week. I’ll probably get room service.’

She might not be looking at him but she could still feel his
eyes on her. His words from last night came back to her.
All work and no play make Cassie a dull girl.
She’d never been
tempted to ditch her work before, but his hot gaze made her want to do a lot of
things she hadn’t done.

‘We’ll call you when we’re done,’ Marnie said.

Cassie nodded. She stood awkwardly for a moment or two,
conscious of all eyes on her, then bade them goodbye.

The four remaining occupants of the table watched her walk
away. Tuck shuddered as her shapeless shirt hung like a bag on her frame.

‘Now, why would a woman want to hide such a damn fine figure?’
he asked as he turned back to face the table.

Three sets of female eyes were trained firmly upon him and he
shifted uncomfortably. He was a man used to female attention—but not like
this.

‘What?’ he said warily.

‘Don’t play with her, Tuck,’ Reese warned. ‘She’s not like your
other women.’

Tuck kind of liked that the most about Cassie, but he cocked an
eyebrow and tried to look a little insulted. ‘My other women?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Reese said reproachfully. ‘She’s not a
player.’

‘She’s pretty sheltered,’ Marnie added.

Tuck looked at Cassie’s three musketeers. ‘She’s a big girl.
Surely she can look after herself?’

‘She’s not experienced with guys like you,’ Gina explained.

‘Guys like me?’

Gina shot him a silky smile. ‘Man-whore guys.’

Tuck faked a hurt look and shot it his cousin’s way. ‘Reese,
honey, your friends are being mean to me.’

Reese snorted. ‘Tuck. Listen to me. I know your career ending
in injury the way it did was hard, and that you’ve been a little aimless since
your divorce and have been…enjoying the spoils of being God’s gift to women…but
I’m asking you to
not
choose Cassie as your next
form of denial.’

It was Tuck’s turn to snort. His career ending, his impulsive
marriage crumbling, his infertility—all had been body-blows over the last couple
of years. Separately they would have been challenging to any man’s ego, but
together they’d been an enormous whammy. So what if he’d been trying to prove he
was still
the man?

But Reese was right, Cassie wasn’t his type. He dated women who
knew the ropes. And he didn’t need a PhD in relationships to know that Cassie
did not.

He put up his hands in surrender. ‘Okay. I won’t go near her. I
promise.’

Reese patted his hand. ‘Atta-boy.’

By ten o’clock Cassie was ready to weep with
frustration. She’d achieved exactly nothing all day. Instead of auroras and how
they affected weather patterns on Jupiter she’d doodled Tuck’s name on a writing
pad all day. Every web search she’d conducted, every paper she’d picked up,
every image she’d looked at, Tuck and his smell and his accent and his lazy grin
had hijacked her thoughts.

Her whole body ached with trying to deny the surge of hormones
that had her in their thrall. Two cold showers hadn’t helped—she still felt hot
and feverish, as if she was craving a drug. She’d tried to work through it, she
really had, but everything got back to Tuck.

One night—that was all she had to do. She just had to get
through this night and then she’d be gone in the morning, and far away from him
and his pheromones, and she could get her brain back. Her focus.

She stared at her door for the thousandth time. Just through it
and across the hallway was the cause of all her angst. Cassie took a step
towards it.
No!
She forced herself to stop, turn
around. She snatched up the phone instead and dialled Gina.

‘I need you to talk me off the ledge.’

‘Well, hello to you too,’ Gina said.

‘I mean it. I can’t stop thinking about him.’

‘If you rang me to talk you out of it, you rang the wrong
friend—should have chosen Marnie. I absolutely think you should go for it.’

Cassie gripped the phone. Suddenly she
was
ready for hormones and libido to trump brainpower. ‘Tell me more
about your theory.’

‘What…the bonk Tuck theory?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s simple, really. You’re the one who’s always telling us
we’re biological creatures at heart, with primal needs, right?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘So isn’t it logical, then, to follow that biological
imperative?’

Cassie liked logic—a lot. And she couldn’t fault Gina’s. She’d
just never imagined that
she’d
be at the mercy of
biology.

‘Look upon it as an experiment to prove the theory,’ Gina
continued. ‘You scientists are big on that, right? You have a problem. Tuck
could be the solution. But there’s only one way to find out for sure,
right?’

‘So like a…a sexual experiment?’

‘Yes,’ Gina said enthusiastically. ‘Exactly.’

‘I guess I could submit to a one-off experiment,’ Cassie mused,
chewing her lip, her heart pounding at the thought. ‘To test the theory.’

‘Er…it might take more than a one-off, Cass.’

Cassie considered that for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t
think I’m wired for more than one-offs…and it’s about biology after all, right?
So, theoretically, the act of copulation should be enough to satisfy.’