Wicked Games

“Like what?” He laced his hands over his flat abs and stretched out his legs even farther, hooking a foot around her chair leg and dragging her practically into his lap.

Two could play his game, she mused, abandoning her plate and propping her legs, ankles crossed, over his thighs. “Like the fact that we don’t fit well together standing up. Your legs are too long.”

He shook his head. “Your legs are too short.”

“My legs are not short.” She angled them this way and that until Doug did as she wanted and touched her, running his palm from her ankle to her knee.

“Not too short if you’re standing over my lap, but for normal vertical sex?” His mouth curled into a deliciously wicked grin. “Definitely too short.”

Kinsey tossed her open robe back over her legs, which he’d bared. “Then I suppose we were lucky the veranda had such a sturdy railing.”

“Then you do remember.”

“I told you I did. Would you like any more chicken?” she asked, not quite ready to give everything away.

But Doug wasn’t ready to let it go. “Do you know that I still have that pair of your bikini bottoms? String ties are truly a man’s best friend.”

She was not going to let him get to her. She was not, was not, was not. She had to let him know he’d met his match if a match was what she was looking to explore. Calm, cool and collected.

Ohhmmm. “Personally, I’m a big fan of those little tiny mesh pockets in swim trunks. The perfect size for stashing a condom.”

“Be Prepared, that’s my motto.”

“Stealing from the Boy Scouts these days?”

“Why not? Thousands of kids can’t be wrong.”

“Maybe not.” She went back to innocently moving lettuce and carrots around on her plate. “I just would’ve thought you might have more originality about you.”

She waited for one beat, two beats, three beats, four, and then she looked up. But the teasing Doug of seconds ago was gone. In his place brooded the Doug from earlier in the evening, the one who’d been fairly hard on himself for missing the meeting with Media West.

Her phone rang again. She ignored it. She wanted to know what was going on behind those intensely focused green eyes. Sure, they could banter and bed their way through a relationship, but she was certain, she knew, he had so much more to offer than a sexual good time.

And if she discovered that all this time she’d been wrong, well, then—

“Aren’t you going to get that?” he asked before the phone rang one last time.

She shook her head. “That’s what voice mail is for. I’m more curious to hear the voices in your head.”

“The ones telling me to haul you back to the sofa?”

That one she wouldn’t mind listening to herself. “No, the one that shut you down the second I questioned your originality.”

Doug snorted, glancing toward the living room, ignored her question the way guys usually did when they haven’t yet worked out the best possible reply in their minds. She supposed that was one thing she liked about him so much.

He was one-hundred-percent-predictable male, even while surprising her constantly.

He finally returned his hand to the leg he’d bared again, stroking her ankle in a circular motion, as if the movement allowed the gears in his head to engage. “The meeting I stayed in Denver to make?”

She nodded. “The one that caused you to miss the one here.”

“Yeah. That one.” He twisted his hand around her foot, stopped, started again. “It was over a restaurant design. A café, really. Two women who’d arranged their financing and were looking at models and plans.”

“And they didn’t like what you gave them.”

His mouth quirked. “Who’s telling this story, sister? You or me?”

She made the motion of zipping her lips.

“That’s better.”

“Hey,” she said, before remembering her virtual zipper. She mouthed the word, Sorry, and waited for Doug to go on.

“Warren Sill Group, the firm where I’ll be working in Denver, tossed the café my way. A welcome boon. Or so I thought.” He smirked. “The joke was on me. I learned the hard way that the café’s owners had turned up their noses at at least six top-notch concepts already.”

“And they made you number seven.” Kinsey broke her silence solely because she could sense what was coming and how painful the admission was going to be.

“Always been my lucky number, seven.” He shifted in his chair, moved her feet closer to the V of his legs and began to massage her soles. “Thing was, I’d seen what they’d vetoed and I’d read every word in the original proposal. I knew I’d nailed it. I knew it.”

But he hadn’t. She could tell he hadn’t, and that the setback had been a hard one to take. “I’m sorry. That must really suck. Especially with the added blow of disappointing your client here.”

“‘Blow’ just about covers everything,” he said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “I’ll get over it. Hell, I’m over it now.”

He obviously wasn’t, but she played along, wrapping her robe tighter around her shoulders and settling her legs more comfortably in his lap. “So, tell me about it.”

He frowned, stopped massaging in midrub. “About what? The meeting?”

“No, duh. The café’s design.” She smiled. “Astonish me with your brilliance.”

“I thought that’s what I just did in the living room,” he said, and the look in his eyes left her breathless.

Incorrigible flirt, making her heart beat like a jungle tom-tom. “Which part? The astonishment or the brilliance? Because I seem to recall doing most of the work.”

He squeezed her foot hard. “Do you want to hear about the design, or do you want to take this outside?”

“Bring it on, tough guy.”

He stared at her for several seconds, an expression on his face that she couldn’t define. His hands on her feet stilled while he seemed to consider where to take the conversation.

And then he shook his head; his lips quirked in a wry smile. “You don’t make it easy on a man, do you?”

Poor baby. He was not having one of his better days. She pulled her feet from his lap, tucked her robe around her body and leaned forward to kiss him. A simple kiss. Just a quick brush of her lips to his.

But Doug had other plans.

The moment their mouths made contact, his hands were in her hair, holding her head for a kiss that escalated beyond a comforting gesture into a desperate and needy embrace. He devoured her, and Kinsey’s mouth trembled.

She’d intended to soothe him, yet he seemed resistant to being easily calmed…as if…as if…nothing. She couldn’t express what she sensed in him except for a strange sort of despair.