The Hot-Blooded Groom

She blushed, guiltily conscious of her x-rated dreams about him. ‘Not to the extent of actually copying another person.’

‘You’re content to be you.’

‘I guess I think…this is my life, however imperfect it is.’

The twinkling green eyes intensified to a sharp probe. ‘What would make it perfect?’

Sunny couldn’t reveal that, not when her idea of perfection revolved around the man he was. She could feel her blush deepening and frantically sought some kind of all-purpose answer.

‘I don’t think we can expect perfection. Making the most of who we are is probably the best aim.’

‘So a good career in your chosen field would satisfy you?’

Was he testing how long she might stay in his employ? She couldn’t bring herself to lie. A career that interested her was great but it wasn’t everything. ‘Well…not completely,’ she admitted, hoping he didn’t need total dedication to her work. ‘I think most of us would like to have a…a partner…to share things with.’

Surely he would, too. Being alone was…lonely. Though he probably never had to be alone if he didn’t want to be. Here she was…providing him with company, simply because he chose to have it, and he hadn’t even met her before today. Maybe he was self-sufficient enough not to need any more than a bit of congenial company whenever he cared to fit it in.

‘What about children?’ he asked, jolting her out of her contemplation of what she wanted for herself, and hitting directly on a highly sensitive need.

‘Children?’ she echoed, unsure where this was leading.

‘Do you see yourself as a mother some time in the future, or are babies a complication you don’t want in your life?’

She sighed. It probably wasn’t the smart answer but she simply couldn’t pretend that missing out on having a family—at least one baby—wasn’t any big deal to her.

‘I would like to have a child one day…with the right father,’ she added with a wry wistfulness.

‘What would encompass right to you, Sunny?’

This was getting too close to the bone. Having envisaged him as the genetically ideal father, Sunny’s comfort zone was being severely tested by his persistence on these points.

They had descended the staircase from the street overpass into the MGM casino area, and were now moving past a café with a jungle theme. Unfortunately Tarzan did not leap out and provide a distraction, and Bryce Templar’s question was still hanging.

‘What relevance does that have to my job?’ she asked, deciding some challenge should be made on the grounds of purpose.

‘It goes to character,’ he answered smoothly. The green eyes locked onto hers, returning her challenge with an intimate undercurrent that flowed straight around her heart and squeezed it. ‘I’m very particular about the character of anyone I bring into close association with me.’

Close.

The word pounded around her bloodstream, stirring up a buzz of sexual possibilities again.

‘Some women’s prime requirement of right would be a certain level of income. The child-price, one might say,’ he said sardonically.

Sunny frowned. ‘I could support a child myself. That’s not the point.’

‘What is?’

She rounded on him, not liking the cynical flavour of his comment, and hating the idea of him applying any shade of it to her. ‘You have a father. What was right for you as a child?’

His mouth curled with irony. ‘For him to be there when I needed him.’

Which she could no longer trust Derek to do. The clanging casino noise around her drove that home again.

‘You’ve just said it all, Mr. Templar,’ she stated decisively.

Her eyes clashed with his, daring him to refute that this quality overrode everything else. It carried the acceptance of responsibility and commitment, displayed reliability and caring, and generated trust…all the things Derek had just demonstrated wrong about himself.

Bryce Templar didn’t refute it. He stared back at her and the air between them sizzled with tense unspoken things. Sunny had the wild sense that he was scouring her soul for how right a mother she would be, judging on some scale which remained hidden to her but was vibrantly real in the context of mating.

‘Let’s make that Bryce,’ he said quietly.

And she knew she had passed some critical test. They stood apart, yet she could feel him drawing her closer to the man he was, unleashing a magnetism that tugged on all that was female in her…deep primitive chords thrumming with anticipation.

He smiled…slowly, sensually, promisingly. ‘You must be hungry by now. I am.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, almost mesmerised by the sensations he was evoking. She was hungry for so many, many things, and every day of this week in Las Vegas she had felt them slipping away from her, leaving an empty hole that even the most exciting career couldn’t bridge. Maybe she was crazy, wanting this man to fill the emptiness so much, she was projecting her own desire onto him.

‘This way,’ he said, and proceeded to guide her around the casino area to the MGM reception desk.

Sunny was barely conscious of walking. She was moving with him, going with him, and he was taking her towards a closer togetherness. Dinner for two. On first-name terms. Sunny and Bryce.

She expected him to ask about restaurants at the desk, but he didn’t.

‘Bryce Templar,’ he announced to the clerk. ‘A suite has been booked for me.’

‘Yes, Mr. Templar. The penthouse Patio Suite. Your luggage has been taken up. Your key?’

‘Please.’

It was instantly produced. ‘If there’s anything else, sir…’

‘Thank you. I’ll call.’

He was steering Sunny towards the elevators before she recollected her stunned wits enough to say, ‘I thought you were staying at the conference hotel.’

‘I’d already checked out when I saw you in the lobby.’

She frowned, bewildered by this move. ‘Couldn’t you check in again?’

‘I preferred to keep my business with you private.’

Private…in a private penthouse suite.