The Girl Most Likely To... Read online

  “Sure.”

  She watched as he glanced over his shoulder at the love seat, arranged to face the entertainment center that held the television and the honor bar.

  “Hang on,” he said as he stepped away and put down his glass.

  Cal repositioned the small couch so that it faced the window. Apparently not quite satisfied, he switched on a bedside lamp at the far end of the room and then turned off the other lights.

  “Better,” he said, then picked up his mineral water from the now orphaned end table.

  He sat. “Join me?”

  Dana wasn’t certain what she’d expected, but she knew this wasn’t it. “Sure.”

  His long legs were stretched out before him. He looked every bit as relaxed as she was tense.

  He reached his right arm over the side of the couch and set down his glass. Ah, now they were getting down to business. Now she could ease into the casual attitude she’d been trying to muster with her offers of cocktails and scattered conversation.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve been doing some thinking about why it is you steamroller me every time we come near each other.”

  This didn’t sound casual at all. Hoping to push past the topic, Dana worked up a breezy, “Have you?”

  He nodded. “It’s like the photo of you that hangs in your salon.”

  She didn’t have to ask which one. He meant the black-and-white print from her early days here in Chicago. It was a seated nude, shot from behind. She was posed sitting next to a man as dark as she was pale. A narrow swath of black silk bound them together.

  “You come at me the way you do for the same reason you chose that photo for your salon. It’s like you’re daring the rest of us to say a word.”

  She took a quick sip of her water. “The best defense is a good offense.”

  “You only need a defense if you’re trying to protect yourself.”

  She answered without pausing to think. “Slick, Brewer, but I don’t think you came down here for ten rounds of psychoanalysis.”

  “My point exactly. Do you think at least now, here—” he gestured at the intimacy of their setting “—you could relax a little?”

  Feeling the need for distance, she began to rise, but he settled one broad hand on her bare upper arm.

  “Okay, I’ll stop.” If she didn’t know him for the love ’em and leave ’em guy he was, she’d think she saw regret in those usually unreadable eyes.

  “Come here,” he said. He drew her to him so her head was pillowed on his right shoulder. “Let’s just kick back and enjoy the night—and the view.”

  Enough light shone in the room that their reflections—ephemeral yet riveting—shimmered on the glass in front of them. Dana lost all interest in the glittering lights beyond their paired image.

  For a while, neither of them spoke. She learned the rise and fall of his chest, the beat of his heart, the clean, honest male scent that wrapped around her.

  The longer she sat with him, the more her own heartbeat accelerated. She wanted something—anything—to happen. Yet, short of barking, “Would you mind moving it along?” she was fresh out of ideas to initiate the action.

  Her seductress days were a distant memory. Besides, the thought of pulling an act on Cal didn’t sit well. And that was all she feared her charm had ever amounted to—an act.

  To distract herself, she asked, “So, just to even the score, what brought you to Chicago?”

  He shifted a little and splayed his left hand over hers, where it rested against her thigh. Heat spiraled through her.

  “Not good at peace and quiet, are you?” he said.

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  “I came down for a retirement party. One of my dad’s old buddies is retiring from the Chicago force. Dad’s in Arizona, with no intention of coming back, so I represented the Brewers at the party.” He paused. “I needed a break from Sandy Bend, anyway. It’s not always an easy place to live.”

  “Especially with someone in the newspaper second-guessing your every move,” Dana commented, referring to Cal’s competition for the permanent job as police chief.

  “Well, MacNee got on my nerves for a few weeks there, but I’m learning to live around him.”

  He wasn’t enough of a politician to carry off his casual statement. She knew the sound of aggravation when she heard it.

  She shifted her hand against his, so their fingers interwove. “MacNee’s always been a pompous jerk. No one pays attention to him,” she said, but they both knew she was skirting reality. Richard MacNee had set himself up as the all-knowing father of Sandy Bend. Nobody came across as more concerned, or as subtly condescending.

  Cal sighed, a long-suffering sound, and brought their joined hands to his mouth to brush a kiss against her palm. “Why don’t we leave Sandy Bend back in Sandy Bend?”

  She relaxed. “Sounds good to me.”

  Jazz played low and soft in the background as they talked about Dana’s favorite Chicago spots, and some of Cal’s misadventures with Steve when they visited the city. After a while, conversation dwindled.

  Eventually, Cal broke the silence. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

  She shifted to meet his gaze…and his kiss. She smiled at the humor curving his mouth upward. “Any reason you feel compelled to tell me first?”

  “Just giving you a chance to say no.”

  “I was thinking more in terms of a yes.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve had in a helluva long time.”

  He cupped her face with one hand. The kiss started warm and slow, not tentative. Dana already realized there was nothing tentative about Cal. Not the way he invaded the Ladies’ Lounge. Not the way he said what was on his mind. Definitely not the way he kissed.

  Soft and easy, possessive but not pushy, it was possibly the best kiss she’d ever had. Then again, it had been far too long since she’d had any man’s mouth against hers.

  Dana shifted impatiently and flicked the tip of her tongue against his upper lip. He took her act for the invitation that it was.

  He tasted of minty toothpaste and hot male. She wanted to be closer, but the cut of her dress hampered her efforts. It seemed Cal could read minds, though, or at least interpret the frustrated groan that was as close to speech as she could come.

  He reached behind her and slowly tugged down her zipper. Relief and anticipation overwhelmed her. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against his, as his fingertip traced the center of her back. When he’d gone as far as he could, she slipped from his grasp.

  Dana stood and glanced over her shoulder at the open curtains. The building directly across from them was filled with offices, dark for the night. All other eyes were far enough away that she didn’t care.

  One Martini, Two Martini, Three Martini…Floor again drifted through her mind—a kind of insulation against exactly what she was doing.

  She shrugged her way out of the dress’s tight bodice and shivered at Cal’s sound of approval as her breasts were bared to him. Her gaze locked with his, as she stepped out of the pool of sleek emerald satin at her feet. She had nothing left on but her black panties with matching lacy stockings and garters.

  “Come here.” His voice was low and raspy.

  She shook her head. “Take off your shirt, first.”

  He didn’t argue, didn’t joke, just pulled off the shirt. He tossed it so that it landed on top of her dress.

  Dana’s mouth went dry. She supposed they’d been together on the beach at one point or another, but she had no recollection of seeing anything quite as magnificent as this display of muscle and breadth.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  Much anything else and she’d be done for. She shook her head again.

  He held out one hand to her. “Then come here.”

  She took the three steps that brought her into the vee of his legs. He ran his fingertips over the sensitive skin exposed between the bottoms of her panties and the tops of her stockings.

>   “I knew you’d be beautiful, but…”

  She wove her fingers though his thick, damp hair as he traced the line of her waist. His hand moved higher to brush against the underside of first one breast, then the next. Dana drew in a shaky breath. She could feel a flush of color rising from her chest to warm her face. It wasn’t embarrassment; it was hunger, hammering at her hard and fast.

  She stepped out of his embrace, then knelt next to him on the small sofa. Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she straddled him.

  She wasn’t surprised that he knew what she wanted without her having to ask. With no prelude, no warning, his mouth closed over one nipple, already so sensitive that she cried out.

  Afraid he’d think she felt pain, she managed a strained, “Don’t stop.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She’d been so starved for this she knew she was spinning close to the edge of release. Then, one arm still wrapped around her waist, he slipped his other hand beneath her panties and touched her where no man had in so long. Head tipped back in abandon, she accepted his deep and knowing caresses. She wanted to extend the pleasure, to revel in the sensation. Wanted to, but was losing her battle to retain control.

  “It’s okay,” Cal whispered. “Go with it.”

  She had no choice, really; her body had decreed a rhythm of its own. All too soon, Dana arched and shattered.

  SHE WASN’T SURE how long she’d been curled up, limp, damp and sated in Cal’s arms, when he asked, “Back to earth now?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good.” His answer had a determined undertone.

  After depositing her on the love seat, he stood, walked to the bed and peeled back the covers. Then Cal scooped her up and laid her on the bed with an ease she found impressive. Still too relaxed to move, she watched as he picked up her dress and his shirt, then dropped them on a brocade armchair.

  He proceeded to strip with a single-mindedness that took her breath away. When he was done, he took his wallet and set it on the nightstand, then bent over her and divested her of her panties, garters and stockings in record time. He tossed them toward the armchair. About half of them made it.

  The mattress gave as he got onto the bed. He had her framed beneath him before she had time to blink. When she did, her hands went above her head in total surrender.

  “All rested up?”

  She looked him up and down and knew her shock must be showing in her eyes. He was big pretty much everywhere. “Um, I might need a minute or two more to recover.”

  He grinned. “Thirty seconds, then you’re mine.”

  “I can be ready in ten,” she offered after his first kiss. But Dana was lying. She was really ready in five….

  DANA SLEPT with a trust Cal suspected she never gave while awake. That made them a pair, he supposed.

  She lay on her stomach, one arm curved above her head, the other tucked next to her so her hand rested beneath the pillow.

  Careful not to wake her, he pulled himself up and leaned against the headboard. He gently rearranged the sheet until it rested just at the top of her thighs. The light shining in from the open curtains shadowed the curve of her bottom, the delicate run of her spine.

  Cal thought again of the photo hanging in her salon. The few occasions he’d been in there had been sufficient to indelibly burn the picture into his memory.

  Unable to help himself, he moved down to touch each distinct vertebra where it rested just beneath pale ivory skin. There was something so telling in this vulnerable bit of her, something he felt so connected to, though she wasn’t his at all. And never would be.

  With that thought, reality battered at the wall he’d built between them and the world. They were out there, just waiting for him—the guilt for having allowed himself this freedom, the regret that he couldn’t have it again. He planned to fight off the inevitable until sunrise. Even longer, if possible.

  He leaned forward and kissed the spot directly between Dana’s shoulder blades, then moved down to her waist, and finally the base of her spine, just above the lush rise of her buttocks. She stirred, murmured something, then came fully awake.

  She turned onto her back and gazed at him, but didn’t say anything. He wanted to offer something, some words of how she touched him, but he’d never been very good at speaking his thoughts in a way women liked.

  He saw the questions clouding her hazel eyes. Cal smoothed back a lock of blond hair from the smooth skin at her temple, then kissed her there, too.

  She opened her arms to him, and he went willingly. This way, he could tell her. This way, she’d have to understand how incredible he found her. He knew she’d feel it.

  THE CITY BELOW Dana and Cal woke and stretched. Buses growled their way down the street, and doormen whistled for cabs. Dana wanted to push back the day, but knew she couldn’t. She shifted restlessly on the bed, then stilled, not wanting to wake Cal.

  She studied him. He was beautiful, but in an entirely male way. The beginnings of a beard shadowed his face. Even with his summer tan faded, he had a golden cast to his skin, and a lean, hard strength that made her senses fly. He also possessed a tenderness she didn’t dare think about.

  Her marriage had left its mark. Any form of intimacy now made her freeze. She had screwed up big-time with Mike. In the midst of the leaving, the tears and accusations, she had sworn she wouldn’t get emotionally involved with another man. She didn’t have the time or heart left to give.

  And even if she were in the market for something serious, she’d have to be crazy to think that Cal Brewer had any interest in her outside this one fiery encounter. Public officials tended to shy away from women with pasts like hers. Though it was just that—the past—she had too many secrets, too many wild nights, to be involved with Cal.

  Richard MacNee would think he’d died and gone to hog heaven if he ever spotted her with Cal. She’d been Down ’n Dirty Dana ever since tenth grade. The name had been bestowed upon her by none other than Richard’s son, who’d spread the rumor that he had sex with her under the bleachers at a basketball game. The only thing he’d ever gotten from Dana was a bloody nose for grabbing her. Still, who did everybody believe—Dickie Junior, the class suck-up, or Dana, the class rebel?

  Feeling ancient, Dana slipped from the bed and headed to the shower. Soon, water pelted her and steam shrouded her. Being wrong was nothing new, except she couldn’t recall the last time she’d been so totally, irretrievably wrong. Hands braced on the slate shower wall, head tipped down, she fought the frightened, sick feeling simmering inside. Why had she thought she was ready to emotionally disconnect from an act as intimate as sharing her body?

  She needed to end this here, in Chicago. Today. Before she became tempted to beg for more.

  Dana turned off the shower, stepped out and towelled herself off. She slipped into the robe she’d left hanging on the bathroom hook the evening before, pinned on a serene expression and padded back to the bedroom.

  Cal still slept. She sat in the armchair not heaped with clothes and watched him, hoarding the sight. His eyes opened and his sharp blue gaze immediately found hers. It didn’t surprise her that his innate wariness carried over into his sleep.

  “Been awake long?”

  She shook her head. “Just long enough for a quick shower.” And some lengthy deliberations.

  “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to get back in bed?”

  He could, but it would do neither of them any good.

  She stood and glanced at the clock. “I thought you had to get back home. And I know I have some serious shopping to get done.” She gave a pointed nod in the direction of his clothing.

  His sleepy expression shifted into something harder. “So you’re done with me? You’re sending me out with the morning trash?”

  Her attempt at a cheery laugh came off brittle. “Come on, Cal, don’t get sulky. We both know the score. I’m in no more of a position to be continuing this…well, whatever this was, than you are. In fact, I�
�m not expecting so much as an invitation to coffee once we’re back home. We might have left Sandy Bend for a while, but now it’s time to accept reality.”

  He sat up and swung his long, muscled legs over the side of the bed.

  Even now, when she knew she had to get him out of her room while she still had the strength, she took an instant to appreciate just how male he was.

  And how angry.

  He stood. “So I was what—a way of blowing off a little steam?”

  She wrapped her arms around her midsection, trying to hold in the hurt. And the fear that Cal wasn’t about to go peacefully. She’d had too many ugly scenes with Mike to be able to bear another one. She set her expression to match Cal’s and walked away from the corner she didn’t recall backing into. “I’m just saying what you’re too polite to bring up.”

  At the look of surprise that crossed his face, she could tell she’d hit a direct blow.

  He stalked to the armchair and began sorting his clothes from hers. “I get the distinct feeling I’ve been used for sex. And I gotta tell you, I’m not real happy about it.”

  “We were two consenting adults, who—”

  “Save it. This consenting adult has never used a woman for sex. Never,” he repeated in a flat and very hard voice.

  “Oh, come on, with all the women you’ve dated—”

  He raised the palm of one hand. “Don’t argue this one with me. And don’t come looking for a repeat performance. You’re going to have to find somebody else to take care of your cravings. Got it?”

  He tugged on his briefs. “You know, I thought there was something special about you…that beneath the attitude, you were someone I’d like to get to know one day.” He shook his head. “Guess I was wrong.”

  There was nothing she could say.

  Dana went back to the window while he finished dressing. After he was gone, she permitted herself the luxury of a cry. So much for the joys of no-strings sex.

  4

  CAL WAS NORTH of Muskegon by the time he was through feeling furious and had worked his way down to generally ticked. A lake effect squall had blasted off Lake Michigan, and US-31 was thick with ugly gray slush. It wasn’t too much for his Explorer to handle, but enough that it required a slow pace and his full attention. All in all, the bleak driving conditions suited his mood.