Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(5)
Except he knew the deal. They’d canceled the flight to give this woman time to worm her way into his head. Yes, damn it, they had that much power.
“There are no more flights tonight,” a man informed them, sounding disgusted as he walked by.
“I have to find an airport hotel,” another woman said into her phone. “I am not sleeping in the terminal.”
Chessie looked up at him, her eyes wide, as if this news actually surprised her.
He put his hand on her shoulder. “A hotel might be a good idea, Francesca.”
He felt her shudder under his touch. A shudder that felt damn real, and damn…interested.
Just how far would this talented little spy take her mission tonight?
Chapter Two
There was a low-grade panic humming through the tight squeeze of humanity packed into the Marriott hotel’s airport shuttle. Or maybe that was just Chessie’s fried nerve endings vibrating with a bad case of now what?
As if she didn’t know what.
The other dozen or so stranded travelers were griping about inconvenience, worried about room availability, questioning where they’d get a toothbrush or clean underwear. Chessie, with nothing but a handbag, laptop, wallet, cell phone, and an e-reader, was in the same boat.
But she could handle the possibility of wearing the same clothes for twenty-four hours. Her tension was caused by a whole different unexpected problem—namely, taking off those clothes with a perfect stranger.
Damn near perfect, and getting to be less of a stranger with each passing minute. Right this second, he was the intense, sexy, attentive, and oh so ridiculously hot guy who made her laugh and whose muscles tensed against her every time the van hit a bump.
By unspoken agreement, they’d stuck close to each other in the airport, getting information on possible solutions, the shared travel glitch intensifying, and justifying, the connection. They’d finally walked with a small group of weary travelers to the transportation area and stayed close while waiting for the shuttle to an airport hotel reported to have vacancies.
He hadn’t texted or called anyone, she noticed, and he didn’t seem overly put out by the delay. She’d sent a text to Gabe that she’d be on the first flight to Fort Myers, leaving at ten thirty a.m., and then she did the unthinkable and shut off her phone.
Just that little act of defiance sent a shiver of anticipation through her, a little frisson of tension that made her feel like anything could happen. Anything and everything.
She glanced up at the man on her right and caught him eyeing her as well. Silent in their secret companionship with only the background sounds of unhappy phone calls and explanations still going on inside the overly warm van, it was like they were magnetically pulled to each other.
“You need anything to make it through the night?” he asked.
Um…sex. Lots of it. “I’ll buy a toothbrush and can sleep in my clothes.” Or naked. She swallowed, her throat dry.
“You can borrow a T-shirt, if you want.”
His voice, with just enough of a timbre of implication, rolled over her, warming her so much that she turned to the rain-streaked windows, tempted to press her cheek against the cool glass. Instead, she let the blur of the Atlanta airport pass by.
Chessie had never had a one-night stand, didn’t do the hookup thing that was considered the norm among many thirty-year-olds. The whole idea was just too damn spontaneous for a planner like her. But this situation was different. Weird. Electrified. Off anything that resembled a plan.
Screw a plan.
No, no. She fought a secret smile and a tingling in her lower half. A plan was not what she wanted to screw tonight.
“Here we are,” Mal said, shifting slightly in his seat, making her unable to think about anything except how his leg felt pressed against her. It was hard, thick, and strong. She’d never really thought about a man’s leg before. She was a shoulder and biceps kind of girl. But his leg…
Lust had clearly fried her motherboard.
He met her look with the slightest hint of amusement in his dark eyes. Like he knew something about her that even she didn’t know. That was part of his appeal, she noticed. Always a very subtle, tacit hint that he knew what she was thinking.
And she was thinking about legs. And…other parts.
She let out a sigh as the van pulled under the hotel overhang, the lights of the lobby looking warm and inviting on the cool, December night.
“You okay?” Mal asked, leaning close to her ear so his breath fluttered some of her hair and launched a landslide of goose bumps.
“Yeah, sure. I mean…” She wet her lips and looked up at him. “Are you?”
They were dancing around the obvious. Are we doing this or not?
He broke into a slow grin that made her stomach feel like a butterfly garden during a windstorm. “Define okay, Francesca.”
And did he have to say her much-hated name in a way that sounded like a warm breeze over flower petals? She wanted him to say it again and again, in her ear, against her mouth, as he got on top of her and—
“Out to the right, please,” the driver barked as he stopped the van and silenced her thoughts.
Blood thrummed in her head as she waited her turn to climb out from the corner at the way back, but Mal was on her right, so he had to go first, giving her a bird’s-eye view of his ass in jeans.