He's the One: Winning a Groom in 10 Dates / Molly Cooper's Dream Date / Mr Right There All Along

He was quite masterful when he used that tone of voice. She sat down.

“I lost the fish,” she told him.

“I’m beginning to think fishing is overrated, anyway.” He rowed them in a big circle around the pond.

It was a ridiculous way to conduct a courtship, Sophie thought. No flowers, no wine, no fancy dinner, no dancing until dawn. But she was the one who never seemed to get anything right.

But if that was true, why did this feel so right? Probably because watching him pit his strength against a water-filled boat that was growing more uncooperative by the second was just about as sexy as watching him lick ice cream off his wrist.

“You know that painting?” he asked her.

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s a reason no one’s in the damn boat.”

And then they were laughing, and the sun was going down, and the water sloshing around her ankles felt wonderful, though not as wonderful as watching him pit his pure strength against the oars until it was so dark they could hardly see each other anymore.

As they exited the boat and wrestled it back up the slippery bank toward his vehicle, the evening seemed to be ringed with magic, suffused with a golden light.

“I’m picking the next date,” he told her, swatting at a mosquito. “If this was your idea of romantic, you are in big trouble.”

“It may not have been romantic,” she said, “but it was fun, and Brand, given a choice, I think I’d choose fun.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fun over romance. Good grief, girl, what kind of a dork were you engaged to, anyway?”

“Don’t even pretend you know what a dork is,” she teased him.

“But I do, Sweet Pea. Because you taught me.”

“So, what is your idea of a romantic date?” she asked him.

“Given the limited choices of the town, its probably still the movies on Friday night.”

“This week’s feature is Terror in the Tunnel. Even you can’t make that romantic.”

“That just goes to show what you know. It’s not about the movie. Besides, if we’re trying to be highly visible, I don’t think Glover’s Pond quite does it.”

Sophie decided that Brand Sheridan was both the easiest man she had ever spent time with and the hardest. It was so easy to talk to him, to be with him, to laugh with him, and so hard when she remembered the truth: this was all a charade.

As she was getting ready to go to the movie, it felt real. The hammering of her heart, the tingling anticipation she felt waiting for the doorbell to ring, the way her heart swooped when she saw him in the door watching her come toward him. It felt all too real.

Especially the palpable electrical tension between them.

“Showtime,” he said, parking as close to the theater as he could and holding open her door for her. “Pretend you love me, Sweet Pea.”

He paid for the show, Sophie slipped out her wallet to pay for the popcorn.

He gave her a look. “Not even in a pretend world would I ever let that happen,” he growled in her ear.

The theater was packed. Before the movie started, everyone was sending surprised looks their way. Several people were nudged by others, turned in their seats and craned their necks to look at Sophie and her new beau.

“You were right about this date,” she whispered to him, “highly visible.”

The lights went down. The movie started. With a bang. A terrible explosion filled the screen.

Sophie gasped. She hated this kind of movie.

And then his hand found hers in the darkness.

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “It just startled me.” When he didn’t let go of her hand, she leaned closer to him, “You don’t have to do that. No one can see us.”

“When we walk out of here, it will be written all over you that we did this.”

“It won’t!”

“If it’s done right, it will.”

“You are just a little too sure of yourself, mister,” she hissed.

“I know,” he growled in her ear, “but my supreme confidence in myself is not unfounded.”

And then he did that thing with his fingertips on her knuckles, even though that was not in the rules, even though no one could possibly see them. Just when she thought maybe, maybe, she could get accustomed to the pure masculine possessiveness of his touch without her heart doing double-time, he moved his hand up to her wrist and traced slow, sensuous circles around the delicacy of her bones.

Who knew wrists could be such zones of sensation?

When he had thoroughly debilitated her with the wrist thing, he turned her hand over, and his fingers did the same sensuous exploration on the palm of her hand.

Throughout the movie he toyed with her fingers. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, he treated her wrist and her palm as if they were parts of the female body that were worshipped in one of those exotic places he had been.

When the final credits rolled, she didn’t know what the movie had been about and she could barely get out of her seat. She stumbled so badly in the aisle that he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in close to him.