Just Between Us...

“Like my engagement party,” Layla said.

“Or my reopening two weeks ago,” Reilly pointed out.

“You guys didn’t need me at either place.”

“No,” Layla said, “but we wanted you there.”

It was nice, Mallory thought, how these guys needed her, even if sometimes it was a little suffocating. Didn’t they understand that she was used to looking after herself and only herself? That growing up she’d been so much extra luggage that her mother probably wouldn’t have filled in the lost baggage form at the airport should Mallory have gotten misplaced en route to her latest husband’s apartment/house/condo?

Of course they didn’t understand. Because she’d never really told them about life growing up as Mallory Woodruff. Because to do so would be to dredge up the past. And there was that thing about her liking only to look out on to the future.

“Sorry,” she said blithely.

They laughed.

“Okay, maybe that could have sounded a little more sincere,” she admitted. “But the sentiments are there. The last thing I want to do is hurt any of you.”

Layla leaned over and gave her a hug. “Now that sounded more genuine.”

Even Jack seemed to be looking at her a little too closely. Mallory reached across for his last sticky bun. He moved it out of reach.

Layla smiled. “I’ll see you guys at six. On the dot. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later.”

Mallory gave her a military salute, which, she supposed, was apropos given what she wore: fatigues, short black boots and T-shirt that read Three Stages Of Marriage: Lust, Rust And Die. “Yes, sir. I mean, ma’am.”

“I’m going to make you pay for that one,” Layla said.

Considering all that was going on over the next day and a half, Mallory had little doubt that she would.

TWELVE HOURS LATER at Layla and Sam’s rehearsal dinner Jack watched Mallory as if it were the first time he’d seen her. The woman had absolutely no clue how he really felt about her. Of course, it probably didn’t help that whenever they were around Layla and Reilly he had to be so careful to keep his expression neutral. He watched the way Mall’s mouth moved when she talked and wondered why it was he always wanted to kiss her when she was speaking.

For a moment there, the briefest of moments, the agitation he’d been feeling lately dropped away and he was able to enjoy Mallory the woman. For a moment there, she’d emerged something other than the driven, career-minded producer. She’d even seemed a bit human, somehow.

Then the moment had passed and he was left staring at a sexy, dynamic woman he wanted more than any other woman he’d ever met.

A woman who was beginning to irritate him to no end.

That wasn’t normal, was it? Was it possible to want to have sex with someone yet want to kill them at the same time?

“I feel naked,” Mallory was saying to Layla’s stepmother—who looked younger than Layla and not a fraction as smart.

Jack’s gaze took in the simple black slacks and vest Mallory had on. Definitely not naked. But definitely not her usual attire of jeans and a T-shirt bearing an offensive saying on the front, either. How Mallory would ever make it through tonight and tomorrow without being able to express her emotions through her clothes loomed an unanswered question.

Of course Sharon Hollister wore little more than lingerie by way of a pink slip dress, which meant it was unlikely she’d get where Mallory was coming from. For all intents and purposes, Sharon might as well be naked.

Hmm… Jack wondered how much he’d have to pay Mallory to wear one of those dresses….

“If you’ll excuse me, I think my husband’s motioning for me to rejoin him,” the trophy wife with the artificially enhanced lips and unnaturally plump, unmarked brow line said politely. Then she made a beeline for anywhere away from Mallory.

Jack looked over the exclusive room at the Beverly Hills Wilshire Hotel that the Hollisters had reserved for the occasion. In his monthly columns he often criticized the extravagant spending and monetary excesses of the rich, mostly because he had witnessed countless examples of it growing up in the wealthy Daniels family. But he didn’t think Layla would forgive him if he shined his light on her father and stepmother’s desire to dump the annual income of five families into one wedding occasion. Lord knew Layla hadn’t wanted the spectacle. She and Sam had wanted to take off to Vegas for a five-minute quickie wedding in front of an Elvis impersonator.

He looked over to one side of the palm-decorated room, which held just the right amount of tasteful holiday decorations without going overboard. There, Layla talked to what he knew was her real mother, who looked about as comfortable in her surroundings as Mallory purportedly felt. He noticed Mall yet again perform a shimmy, trying to get comfortable in her clothes, and then he took in the other twenty guests. It struck him that no one would miss him and Mallory. If only for a few precious minutes.

He leaned backward and cracked open the door to the service hall. Everyone had already eaten, the rehearsal with the minister had gone off without a hitch, and aside from the female bartender manning the open bar across the room, there wasn’t a single service person in sight.

Jack grasped Mall’s wrist and yanked her back into the corridor with him.

She gasped, instantly trying to break free. “Are you insane?” she demanded, her dark hair curling wildly around her round, kissable face, her light brown eyes almost yellow as they flashed fire at him. Enough fire that he knew she was as turned on as he was by the possibilities their solitude presented. “They’ll see us for sure.”

“So we’ll tell them I needed a cigarette and you came out to keep me company.”

She narrowed her eyes and licked her lips in telltale anticipation as he tugged her down the corridor, found a linen closet, then pulled her inside and closed the door.

Being Mallory Woodruff’s lover usually took a lot of invention and a whole lot of stick-to-itness. Unless she was the initiator, that is. Then all bets were off. All he had to do was hold on for one helluva ride.

Jack looked around for the switch to turn off the light but couldn’t find one.

Mallory didn’t seem to mind as she yanked her vest over her head then started on her slacks. “God, I’ve been itching to get out of these things all night.”

Oh, yeah. But unfortunately she’d have to put them back on way too soon.

When she finally stood in front of Jack wearing nothing but a pair of black panties and bra, he chuckled. It seemed Mallory had managed to get her point across through her clothes. Only tonight she’d done so by way of her naughty black panties. Across the satiny front they read Bite Me.

He gripped her hips and hauled her to him. Biting her was exactly what he planned to do. For starters.

“You’re not getting undressed,” she complained as her hands slid over his rear through his slacks then snaked around front to dive into the waist.

“One of us should try to stay as undisheveled as possible.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, rerouting her hands to his hair where she proceeded to ruffle the hell out of it. “Explain how a cigarette did that,” she murmured before plastering her full, juicy mouth against his and kissing him like a woman bent on destruction.

“The wind.” Jack worked his fingers under the elastic at the back of her panties until he firmly cupped her sweet flesh.

Mallory was at least a foot shorter than he was, which had proven a challenge in the beginning, but was something he barely noticed now. When they were lying in bed, height didn’t matter.

Now, however, with both of them standing and no available object around to help level the playing field, he felt a crick building at the back of his neck already. As she licked his neck and pressed her womanhood full throttle against him, he also felt on fire with need.

“We’ve got to hurry,” she rasped, unfastening the front of his pants and freeing his rock-hard arousal.

Jack stretched his neck and clamped his teeth together as her fingers encircled him. No matter how many times he felt her touch, it was like the first time all over again. It never failed to amaze him how much control this one little spitfire had over him. He’d wanted her every second of every day for three years. In the beginning, he’d been successful at staving off his attraction to her. At least to some extent. Now he was as much a slave to it as he had once been to drink.

Addictive personality disorder. That’s what an overpaid shrink had told him when he was nineteen, in college, and drunk more than he was sober. In a life where he could rely on few things—his jet-setting parents had been too busy with their social life and traveling around the world for him to form any meaningful bond with them—the whiskey bottle had always been there. Empty? No problem. Twenty bucks bought him another one.

But with Mallory…

With Mallory he felt constantly like a guy staring at an empty bottle wanting more. Except at moments like this. When he could feel her nipples pressing into the middle of his palms. Hear her rapid breathing and whispered orders in his ears. Sense the urgency in her as his own reached a feverish pitch.

Mallory’s fingers squeezed his shaft almost to the point of pain then moved up and down.