Any Man Of Mine: A Waiting Game / A Loving Arrangement

Keena was dressed and waiting when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and mentally caught her breath at the sight of Nicholas in evening clothes, as she always did. With his dark hair and eyes, his bronzed complexion in that leonine face, his towering, wrestler’s physique, he was the stuff of which feminine dreams were made. And perhaps if Keena hadn’t been so wary of men, so unforgetting of that humiliating adolescent romance and the humiliating incident that had followed it, she might have fallen head over heels in love with him. But she’d seen Nicholas in action, and she knew the effect his dark charm had on women. She’d seen his occasional conquest swoon, fall, succumb and be heartlessly discarded too many times to risk joining that queue herself. Nicholas had found safety in numbers since Misty’s death, and he was apparently risking no emotional involvement by confining himself to one woman. Keena preferred the position of being just Nicholas’s friend and confidante. It was much safer than being added to the notches on his bedpost.

His own eyes were busy, sliding up and down her body with his usual careless appraisal.

“Delightful,” he said with a cool smile. “Shall we go?”

“I’m starved,” she told him as they got into the empty elevator and Nicholas pressed the main floor button. “I feel as if I haven’t eaten for days.”

“You look it, too,” he growled, eyeing her from his lounging position against the rail. “Why the hell don’t you give up that diet and put some meat on your bones?”

“Look who’s talking!” She glared. “It would take a forklift to get you up a hill!”

He moved toward her with a dark look in his eyes under that jutting brow. “Think it’s fat, do you?” he taunted. He caught her hands and dragged them to his shoulders. “Feel. Show me any flab.”

It was like discovering fine wine where she had expected to taste water. She’d never noticed just how broad Nicholas’s chest and shoulders really were, or how the scent of tobacco and expensive cologne clung to him. She’d never noticed how chiseled his mouth was, or how exciting it could be to look into his dark eyes at close range. It had been safer not to notice. But her hands touched him through the smooth fabric of his evening jacket and lingered there when she felt the hard muscles under it.

“Well?” he asked, a strange huskiness in his deep voice as he looked down at her.

“You... I never realized how strong you were,” she stammered. She looked up into his eyes and time seemed to stand still for a space of seconds while they looked at each other, discovering facial features, textures, expressions, in an unfamiliar intimacy, in the quiet confines of the elevator.

It took several seconds for them to realize that the elevator had stopped and the door had opened. Self-conscious and a little clumsy, Keena managed to get out a little ahead of him and lead the way to the front of the building where his white Rolls-Royce waited with Jimson at the wheel, staring straight ahead stoically.

“Doesn’t Jimson ever get a day off?” she asked Nicholas when they were inside the car with the glass partition up, giving them total privacy.

“Not lately. I’ve been working twenty-five-hour days,” he replied.

“I’ll never get used to this car,” she sighed, leaning her dark head contentedly back against the leather as he was doing.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asked curtly.

“Nothing! It’s just that few people ever get to ride around in a Rolls—white, no less.” She laughed.

He half turned in the seat, one big arm over the back of it, his eyes gleaming, though his smile had not completely disappeared. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asked with deliberate slowness.

She braved his glittering eyes. Why did he look so suddenly predatory to her? So dark and menacing? “Nothing—except that I feel as if I were on display every time I ride in it. That’s all.”

“You should be on display, Keena.” Something in the way he fairly growled her name sent a warm, unfamiliar tingle up her spine.

“Because I’m rich and famous now, you mean, and everyone back in Ashton would hardly recognize this Keena Whitman?” She laughed shortly, her words underscored with a note of self-derision.

Her answer hadn’t pleased him. It was in the hard lines of his face, the narrowing of his eyes. “No, not at all, though you needn’t take that little-Miss-Nobody-from-Ashton tone with me. You know what you are and what you’ve accomplished. And that you’re a very beautiful woman,” he said in that hard, matter-of-fact way of his.

If he had been looking at her, then he would have seen the shock register on every feature. Keena was suddenly thankful for the darkness between them and the sudden blare of a horn that had broken Nicholas’s steady gaze for just that instant.

“Damn city traffic,” he muttered half to himself. When he turned back to her, it was with a faintly puzzled expression. “Surely, you’ve had men tell you that before, that you’re beautiful? Scores of them, I’m afraid.” His words broke off abruptly, his gaze dropping to her slender body, outlining it with a masculine approval that was new and frightening.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked in a faint whisper.

His dark, quiet eyes eased back up to meet hers. “I was wondering what it would feel like to make love to you.”

CHAPTER TWO (#u58de6cb4-1391-5f43-a546-6b899e9ca7a9)

HER TOES TINGLED. She’d never felt such a wild surge of emotion and it came up suddenly, stunning her.

Nicholas began to chuckle, the deep sound of it faintly irritating.

“My God, what an expression,” he murmured, leaning back against the seat with a heavy sigh. “I thought that would get your attention.”

She glared at him. “Now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it?” she asked grumpily.

He glanced at her. “Get you back to the present. I loathe self-pity. Wait until I’m in Paris. I’ve got enough problems of my own without your dragging new ones from the past.”

“What kind of problems?” she probed.

His lips compressed. “Maria.”

Maria was his mistress. Keena had read about the relationship in the gossip columns long before Nicholas had introduced the two of them. It shouldn’t have bothered her. He was, at forty, an active, virile man, and it would have been absurd to expect him not to have women. But one evening soon after he’d picked up the volatile brunette, Keena had seen them together in a popular night spot dancing so close that the fabric between them seemed to burn. And she’d begged her escort, a harmless young man who’d only lasted one date, to take her home. She couldn’t bear the sight. She’d hated the surge of jealousy, but it had persisted until even now she could hardly bear to hear Maria’s name.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“She won’t believe it’s over,” he said curtly. “She’s calling me in tears twice a day, moaning over the lonely life I’ve condemned her to. Lonely, my foot, with two diamond necklaces, a new Porshe and an ermine coat!”

“Maybe she really does miss you,” she muttered, able to be generous now that she knew he’d lost interest. She felt strangely relieved.

“She misses the Rolls, honey, not me.” He laughed shortly.

“Was it good in bed?” she asked, tongue in cheek, and darted a glance at him.

“The Rolls or me?” he replied, refusing to be ruffled.

“I imagine she misses the warmth,” she retorted, grinning at him.

His dark eyes smiled at her. “Do you think I’d be warm?”

“Like a blast furnace, I’d imagine,” she said demurely. “Is that why you’re going to Paris, to escape Maria?”

“It isn’t funny,” he said, the smile fading.

“No, I don’t suppose it is, to you.” She shot him a teasing glance. “But your love life is like one ongoing adventure to me. I really think you should assign the girls numbers or something so you can keep things in order.”

“I’m delighted that my private life amuses you so,” he said in a chilling voice.

“You could always tease me about mine,” she said grandly.

His dark eyes cut around toward her. “You don’t have one,” he said. “Not a love life, anyway.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “What makes you so sure?”

“I keep a sharp eye on you, little one,” he said with a somber tone that startled her. “Sharper than you know. You don’t sleep around.”