Her Boss by Day...

SHE WASN’T DRUNK, Willa told herself. Happy, relaxed … slightly buzzed, maybe, but not drunk. And she was having fun, she realised on a happy sigh. Fun … She rolled the word around her tongue. Well … hello, there, stranger.

She was twenty-six years old—jeez, nearly twenty-seven—and she’d played the part of young, gorgeous, thick trophy wife all her adult life because Wayne and what he’d wanted had been important … her, not so much.

She was a great example of why you shouldn’t be in charge of your own destiny when you were too young and too dumb to be making decisions more complicated than how to operate a teaspoon.

Willa pushed her heavy hair back from her face. She’d stopped loving Wayne years and years ago, and now she just wished she could finally be free of him—legally, mentally, comprehensively. And when she was she could fully enjoy men like … Rob.

Willa sneaked a look at that face and swallowed her lusty sigh. He was scruffy in all the right places, she thought. Sable-coloured curls that she longed to touch to see if they felt as soft as they looked, a four-day-old beard, a shirt that skimmed long muscles and tanned skin, giving hints of well-defined pecs, and an impressive six-pack.

Those grey piercing eyes seemed to be shockingly observant and yet basically unreadable.

Rough, rugged, and completely at ease in his skin. She couldn’t help but to compare him to the only other man she’d ever slept with—she was biggest of big girl’s blouses!—and it was like comparing instant coffee to Mountain Blue. Simply an exercise in stupidity.

Wayne was smart Italian suits and hair gel to cover the bald patch on the crown of his head. Cologne, cufflinks and designer labels. Rob was … not. He didn’t need to accessorise—he was excellent just as he was.

Sexy. Masculine. Nuclear-hot.

‘Honey, you keep looking at me like that and I’m going to have to do something about it.’

Willa blinked as his drawling voice pulled her back into the moment and she noticed Amy leaving the table with a tall blond guy. They were heading towards the dance floor in the centre of the club. When had that happened? Maybe while she’d been spending the last five minutes drooling over Nuclear-Hot across the table.

She turned back to Rob and blinked like an owl. ‘Hi …’ she whispered.

‘Hi back. You okay?’

‘Mmm. I’m having fun. I haven’t had fun for a long, long time.’ Willa tapped her fingers on the table in time to the music. ‘Do you dance?’

Rob’s mobile mouth kicked up. ‘If I have to.’

Willa looked from the dance floor to him and nibbled on the bottom of her lip. The last time she’d danced—really danced, with feeling and heart and soul—had been in the Whitsundays at that dive bar where all the staff employed at the hotels in the area had congregated to hook up, break up, kiss and make up.

She wanted to feel young again—eighteen again—when the nights had been long and had held a myriad of possibilities.

She wanted to dance with Rob …

Maybe it was the cocktails making her feel brave. If it was she’d have another three or four Screaming Os, thank you very much. Then you’d be face-down on the floor, commented doormat Willa.

Willa took a breath and blurted out her question. ‘Will you dance … with me?’

Rob immediately rose to his feet and held out his hand.

Willa took a moment to find her shoe before standing up and placing her hand in his much bigger one. She followed in his wake as he pushed through the packed crowds to the edge of the dance floor. Instead of finding a spot on the edge, Rob pulled her into the centre of the floor, flashed her a grin and started to move.

Willa stared at him in shock as he immediately picked up the beat and moved his hips in a sinuous rhythm that dried up all the moisture in her mouth. Dear Lord, those hips … If he took the same skill to the bedroom he would be declared a lethal sexual weapon in several countries.

‘I thought you said you don’t dance!’ Willa shouted.

Rob flashed her a smile as his shoulders lifted and rolled. ‘I said that I dance if I have to.’

Willa stepped closer to him so that she could speak directly in his ear. ‘You’re pretty good.’

‘Just one of my talents.’

Rob placed his hands on her hips and before she knew it her thigh was between his and they were rocking together. Willa swallowed the lump in her throat as Rob’s hand lifted to encircle her neck, using his thumb to push her jaw up so that their eyes met. Willa wasn’t that out of practice that she couldn’t recognise the attraction in his eyes, the accelerated pulse under the wrists she loosely held.

‘Man … you are seriously gorgeous. And to think that I nearly blew this off,’ Rob muttered, mostly to himself, as his other hand slid around her back and yanked her towards him so that their bodies were pressed flush against each other.

His chest was wider and bigger and harder than hers, Willa thought as she dropped her nose to the V of skin his shirt revealed and inhaled his man smell, his heat. Lust boiled and roiled and her happy place throbbed, echoing the beat of the music. His surprisingly soft chest hair tickled her nose and she felt rather than heard the rumble of a moan in his chest, his throat. One hand splayed across her back, between her shoulder blades, and the other dropped lower onto her ass, holding her firmly in place against him. And that, she could feel, made him very happy indeed.

Somehow he kept them swaying to the beat, pretending to dance.

‘So, twenty questions time?’

Rob’s deep voice in her ear did nothing to assuage the heat between her legs—in fact it sped up her sluggish blood.

Questions? Was he mad? Between him and the cocktails she’d didn’t have an operational brain cell left.

‘Yes … no … I don’t know,’ Willa murmured back.

‘Wrong, wrong and wrong,’ Rob responded with an appreciative grin. ‘Let’s try that again. Why do you have a lawyer?’

She didn’t feel like explaining about Wayne and her imminent divorce. She wasn’t going to see Rob again after tonight, but she still thought it would be tacky to explain about her ex while she was pressed up very close and very personal against him. Besides, she didn’t want memories of Wayne to taint this experience of her first fun night out in for ever. Her ex and her old life were in the past.

Rob was here—now.

Carpe diem, Willa.

‘Pass.’

‘Okay … next one. What do you do that you’re such an expert on the health and fitness market? Stockbroker? Financial analyst?’

She wished—she really, really wished.

‘I read. A lot.’ Even she, novice that she was at this flirting and seduction stuff, knew that he didn’t need to know that reading finance and business magazines was one of her favourite ways to pass some time. Willa squinted at him and pulled a face. ‘These are very boring questions …’

Rob laughed. ‘Okay, then—you hit me with one.’

Willa sucked in her cheeks. There were a million things she wanted to know about him, but the least important flew out of her mouth.

‘Boxers or briefs?’

Bad girl, Willa.

Rob’s laugh brushed over her skin.

‘Why don’t you drop your hands and find out?’ Rob suggested, and her face immediately pinked up. Taking one of her hands from his neck, he guided it around his hips and slapped it on his butt. ‘Feel free to explore.’

Oh, that was a mighty fine ass, she thought as she took him up on his offer. Hard, muscular … male.