Two Week Seduction (5 page)

“You’re so sweet,” she said with beaming smile. “All right. My place at six. And my favorite flowers are—”

“Tube roses. Yes, I know.”

She chuckled as John’s expression turned stonier and a dull flush rose under his shirt collar. She’d usually correct Brad to tell him her favorite flowers were sprigs of lavender, but to admit that now would defeat the purpose. So she kept up her flirtatious smile. “See you at six.”

Brad grinned right back. Sadly, it left her cold. He was the freckle-faced friend from the classroom down the hall. They could talk education for hours, but sexual attraction? Apparently, all her body wanted were cavemen. But she kept her disappointment from her face as she pretended to be entranced. Mostly she was trying to think of a way to get rid of him faster, but then he solved the problem for her.

“God, I gotta go get cleaned up.” He ran a self-conscious hand over his chin. Then he glanced out the half-open doorway. “You want me to call the janitor or something about those platters?”

Platters? She looked behind him to see her china shattered in the hallway outside her door. “Oh damn,” she muttered. She liked that pattern. There weren’t many with lavender on them.

“I’ll get it,” said John, his voice curt.

She took a moment to figure out the clues. “That’s why you’re here. To return those platters to me.” But then he’d dropped them when he thought she was in danger.

He shrugged. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, I—”

“I said, I’ll take care of it.”

There was no arguing with that tone of voice. Meanwhile, Brad’s gaze was shifting back and forth between the two of them, and his eyes were narrowing. Just because he didn’t push her body’s chemistry buttons didn’t mean he was dumb. He had to sense the undercurrents in the room though she had no idea what he made of them. Truth be told,
she
had no idea what to make of them. She just knew she felt jumpy around John. And conflicted. And turned on.

Brad took another step into the room. “So, how about I stick around for a bit? We’ve got that big district meeting coming up. There’s a ton of things we need to discuss before that happens.”

It was a lie. There wasn’t a thing they needed to iron out, but here was yet another guy trying to protect her when she didn’t need it. “No thanks, Brad. I was just heading out anyway.” She reached behind her coatrack for the broom she kept there. “It’ll just take me a minute—”

“Thank you.” That was John, pulling the broom from her hand. She hadn’t even seen him move, but there he was, lifting the broom from her fingers. She couldn’t do more than gasp at the nearness of him.

He bent down and pulled the dustpan off the bottom where it was attached to the handle. And damn it, she couldn’t help but watch the way his butt was revealed. Nice glutes, especially in those low-riding jeans. And when the man sauntered out into the hallway, his slow strides moved like poetry in motion. Very hot poetry.

“Alea?” Brad said, as he cleared his throat.

Oops. Her gaze hopped back to her date’s face. “Hmmm?”

“I was just saying I’ll see you at six?”

What? Oh yeah. “Six o’clock. Do you need my address?”

“No,” he said loudly enough that John would hear it out in the hallway. “I’ve been to your place lots of times.”

If by lots of times he meant once, but whatever. She just smiled and nodded. “See you then.”

But he didn’t leave. Nope, he just crossed his arms and watched her watch John sweep up the broken platter shards. Five minutes later, John had tossed out the pieces and returned the broom to its place. Then he, too, just stood there staring at her.

This is what it was like being the center of a testosterone battle. Awkward didn’t begin to cover it. So she did what she always did when she felt uncertain. She lifted her chin and went on doing exactly what she’d intended in the first place. Which in this case meant gathering her papers and her purse, then leaving her classroom for the weekend. And the whole time, she had her two “protectors” shadowing her on either side…

She made it to her car, waved to both men as she buckled in, then zoomed out of the parking lot. Once home, she knew she should cancel the date and stay home with Ben & Jerry’s. She was too antsy, too conflicted to spend an evening with Brad. But she didn’t. Instead, she dressed in a flirty skirt, put on darker makeup and large hoop earrings, and when Brad arrived promptly at six, she put his bouquet of tube roses in her kitchen where it was least likely to stink up the whole apartment.

Then she sat through a lovely meal at P.F. Chang’s that proceeded exactly like all her dates did. She ate, she laughed, she enjoyed the company of a very nice man, and she was bored, bored, bored. There was nothing wrong with Brad and a zillion things right. But there was no spark, and, damn it, he was smart enough to realize it.

That’s what made the evening a total disaster. After dinner, he walked her to her door, paused as if to kiss her, but then gave her a shrug. “I don’t do it for you, do I?”

How was she supposed to answer that? “Uh, Brad, I really like you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Then he flashed her a sad smile and turned around. No kiss goodnight, which, frankly, was a relief. But his dejected manner was painful. He was her friend. And she’d seriously hurt any woman who made him look like that.

God, she sucked.

She headed into the apartment fully intending to go to the freezer for some comfort ice cream, but she never made it. Instead, she did the one thing that made her feel better. No more Miss Proper Schoolteacher, no more sedate grandmother act. Time to free herself from her straitjacket and become who she really was—all bad girl.

She dug the clothing out of the back of her closet. She scrubbed her face clean, then put on every dark and dangerous shade she owned. And when she was done, she strutted out of the apartment in a leather mini and thigh-high stiletto boots like a completely new woman.

Which she was. In fact, where she was going, they only knew her by her middle name—Cynthia. Or Cin, for short. Cliché, yeah, but she owned it.

Chapter Five

This is why he hated coming home. John gestured for another beer from the bouncy blond waitress with the triple Ds. She refreshed him with a wink, making sure to lean over far enough to display her assets. He gave her a decent tip, but didn’t do more than that. Instead, he glared at his beer as he imagined Alea in pearls and a cashmere sweater letting Brad the Bastard fondle her assets.

He wanted to kill the jerk, but he didn’t have that right. A single mind-blowing kiss didn’t give him dominion over her body. She wasn’t meant for him.

It had begun on prom night ten years ago. Her best friend had been his date, but he’d spent the whole time looking at Alea, thinking about her, wishing he were with her. He might have fooled Alea, but Sam had seen every bit of lust that churned through him. Which meant the night had ended with a facer from Sam and the words, “Do whatever you want with anyone else, but leave my sister the fuck alone.”

Sam had never been subtle.

John didn’t blame his friend one bit. Alea had always been electric, alive and sassy in ways that made other girls pale copies. He was sure Sam had warned off every guy in high school. A few in college, too.

But the warning had gone deeper with John.

He’d spent a few hundred thousand hours at the Heling home. Eaten off the china plates and sterling silver. He’d listened to the lawyer talk from Papa Heling, Aunt and Uncle Heling, even Grandpa Heling. He’d also seen the guys that Sam’s older sisters brought home. Clean-cut Harvard types. Gentlemen who wore ties to dinner and talked about mergers and acquisitions. And then he’d gone home to his crappy house where the neighbors had dead cars on their lawns and his father was pitching his latest get-rich-quick scheme.

Girls like Alea might have a quick fling with guys like him, but they didn’t marry them. Besides, he wasn’t staying around long enough to test the waters with her. A two-week leave, then he was back halfway across the world.

That didn’t stop him from wanting to beat Brad into a bloody lump. Instead, he signaled for another beer. And that’s when he saw her.

It was the shock of red hair. He’d recognize her in a battle zone. But the hair was the only thing the same about her. The woman beneath the hair was Alea and yet not Alea. The miniskirt and thigh-high boots were bad enough, but he’d seen that on the teen Alea. It was her top that blew his mind. It was short, slinky, and the exact same shade as her hair. It looked like a waterfall of shimmering red caressing her tits, which would give every man here a hard-on as they imagined stripping that off her with their teeth.

Good God, did her brother know she went out like that? He wanted to throw his jacket around her. And he for damn sure wanted to punch out all the men who watched her steady progress to the pool tables. It took him a moment of staring before he had enough blood in his brain to start thinking.

First off, she was carrying a case for a custom pool cue. Obviously, she’d been playing since high school. Enough that she was waiting for the first table, probably to establish herself there.

Second, though she looked hotter than sin, all the guys were giving her space. No sleazy come-ons, and no inadvertent ass grabs. That told him she was a regular. Here at his neighborhood watering hole? WTF?

She waited her turn, watching the pool table with a self-confident expression he hadn’t seen on her face since…well, ever. She was a queen here, and she knew it. She smiled at a few people who greeted her, made some joke that set a handful laughing, and then gestured at the bartender for a drink. She didn’t even have to put her order through a waitress. The bartender flashed her a grin and nodded.

“So you’ve got the hots for her, too?” The words came from the triple Ds waitress who was plopping down his next beer.

“Who?” he asked, pretending that he hadn’t been staring.

TD sniffed. “Sin.”

“Sin?” Seriously?

“That’s the name she goes by here. Comes in every now and then to hustle pool.”

So Alea had gotten a
lot
better at pool. “It’s not hustling if everyone knows she’s good.”

The woman flipped her hair aside, using the motion to jiggle her breasts. “Whatever. They play her anyway. They like looking at her ass for the deep shots.”

He bet they did. The image made him raw with fury but he held it back and looked at the waitress. “You’re not a fan.”

She shrugged. “She’s okay. At least she classes up the place. Guys don’t get too rowdy around her.”

“How’s that?” In that outfit he’d think there’d be a brawl every night just to get to stand beside her. Or behind her.

“She’s got this stare that puts guys in their place. A cold hard look that…yup. That’s the one.”

He glanced over at Alea and realized she’d spotted him. Not only spotted him, but saw him with his face practically in TD’s tits. Given that the waitress then grinned and all but dropped into his lap, he knew he was in trouble. Alea thought he’d been hitting on the waitress.

A flash of irritation coursed through him. She had a ton of nerve looking at him like that. Freezing him out with her teacher stare.
She
was the one dressed like trouble. He was just drinking his beer.

And then, just because she’d pissed him off, he wrapped an arm around TD and squeezed, all the while lifting his glass to give Alea a quiet salute. She was far enough away he wasn’t sure she could see him clearly through the press of bodies. But a moment later, a flush of red crept across her chest and cheeks. Oh she’d seen him all right. And apparently, she didn’t like him wrapped around the waitress any more than he liked her in that getup.

Tough shit. He didn’t have any say if she wanted to seduce every man in the bar, so she couldn’t get her panties in a twist if he fondled his overly endowed waitress. Which he proceeded to do.

“Come here, sugar,” he said though he’d never called anyone “sugar” in his life. “Let me give you a real tip.”

It was the cheesiest line he’d ever used, but apparently TD didn’t care. At his urging, she leaned down and let him press a kiss to her mouth. TD kept it short and sweet because she’d probably get in serious trouble if she was seen sucking face with a customer. Then she scribbled something on her tray when she straightened up. A second later, her name and phone number dropped in front of him, written in dark ink on a napkin.

He grinned at her, but his attention centered on Alea watching from the pool table. She hadn’t moved. He’d kept her in his peripheral vision even while he’d been pressed close to TD. She was furious. Flat-out seething angry with narrowed eyes, clenched fists, and flared nostrils. If she’d been wearing pearls and a sweater, he might have called the expression cute. But given that she was dressed to kill, that rage looked dangerous.

Let her have a taste of all the torment he’d suffered with her close but so out of reach. Yeah, maybe he’d stayed away because his best friend ordered him, but she’d known it and still hadn’t left him alone. He was being a prick, but her reaction made him grin.

He watched her get ahold of herself. Her mouth flattened into a line and suddenly she threw her shoulders back. He thought she was going to stalk over to his table, but she didn’t. The pool table had opened up and it was her turn.

She set down her case, popped it open, then assembled her cue stick. A different waitress brought her a drink—scotch neat from the looks of it. Alea slammed it back and he felt his hands clench as the entire bar ogled her chest with the motion. She might not be up to Triple D’s, but what she had was round and pert, and would fit perfectly in his palms.

Then she set the drink down, leaned against the table, and spoke to the crowd. Her voice was raw from the scotch, but her words carried.

“Well, boys, I’m in a mood tonight. So here’s the deal. First guy who beats me gets to bed me. Hundred bucks to try your luck.”

And then she leaned back against the table and watched the line form.

…

Alea slammed back her second drink and nearly choked. Holy shit, it was real scotch. She had a running arrangement with the bartender to give her ginger ale that looked like scotch. And her first one
had
been ginger ale. But apparently her wild challenge to the bar had everyone conspiring to get her good and drunk. They wanted to see her get laid tonight. Or at a minimum, they wanted to see her lose.