Bedding the Wrong Brother(14)

But she'd still do it, Rhys thought, trying not to judge his brother's taste in women. He'd made plenty of bad decisions in his life, so he had no business judging anyone. Shaking his head, he began to rise. “I'm sorry, but I was just about to—”

“Hi.” The brunette strode up to his table and held out her hand. “I am so thrilled to meet you. I absolutely love your magic act. Would you mind if I join you?”

Sighing, Rhys sat back in his chair and watched as the blonde backed away, waved, and bee-lined for the exit, presumably to meet his brother. He focused on the brunette. She was decked out, fit, and had a charming smile, but he just wanted to go up to bed. Alone. The last thing he wanted was to talk about magic right now. But he didn't want to be rude to a fan either. “So where did you see the act?” he asked, catching the eye of the waiter and indicating he wanted another beer.



* * *



As Melina entered the hotel room, she half-expected Max to have done it up. Candles. Flowers. Something. But it was in its normal state, the linens straightened and the towels in the bathroom folded neatly, indicating that housekeeping had come and gone. Melina let out a sigh of relief.

Max was sticking to the plan, making this weekend exactly what she wanted, a straightforward tutoring session rather than something resembling a romantic rendezvous or false seduction. When a woman asked you to teach her how to please a man, very little seduction was necessary, after all. Pretending otherwise would have made her feel even more self-conscious.

Setting her single bag on the bed, she noted that Max had traveled pretty light himself. A suitcase in the corner, along with the familiar-looking magic case that held his cards and smaller close-up tricks. An evil urge to open the case and rifle through it took hold of her, but of course she couldn't do it. A magician's bag of tricks was his sacred possession. Neither Max nor Rhys had ever broken the magician's code by telling her how a trick was performed.

Of course, she'd done her own research on the Internet, but had never told them that. They would have been appalled. Growing up with professional magicians as parents had made Max and Rhys not just passionate about the craft, but mystical in many ways. They talked as if they actually believed it was possible to make a card appear from thin air. And they wanted her to have such belief as well.

Lucky for her, her scientific mind couldn't subscribe to such fodder. It was always better to deal with concretes. That way, you could calculate the risks and predict the outcome. Even then, the world was a scary place. Add something like magic to the equation? No, thanks.


It didn't take her very long to unpack, and soon she found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to stop herself from bolting.

Chewing on one nail, she glanced at the hotel clock. 7:30 p.m. Max had told her he would be back to the hotel room close to 8:30 p.m. and to get comfortable and wait for him.

“And by comfortable, I don't mean sweats and a ratty T-shirt, Melina. Bring something sexy to wear,” he'd ordered. “Wear your hair down. And ditch the glasses.”

“But I can't see well without my glasses,” she'd protested. “I mean, I won't run into walls, but I'll miss the finer details.”

Something like satisfaction sparked in his eyes, but then his expression went blank. “Don't you have contacts?”

“I can't wear contacts. I have dry eyes.”

Shaking his head with amusement, he said, “Just do it, babe.” Then he'd leaned forward, kissed her forehead as he'd done so many times in the past, and got up to leave. Before closing the door, however, he'd turned back to her. “You sure about this?”

Of course she wasn't sure, she'd wanted to scream. But he'd already said yes. Plus, she didn't relish the idea of telling fifty undergraduate students that she was a sexual coward. And, finally, she'd forced herself to remember the shame she'd felt at Brian's words. Telling her she wasn't good enough, sexy enough, to inspire a man's passion. She was never going to let another man hurt her that way again, and she trusted Max to teach her things that would put Brian's little vet resident to shame.

“I'm sure,” she'd said. “After all, tomorrow's my birthday. What could be better for me than a little continuing education?”

Education? What a dork, she'd thought. Thankfully, he'd just smiled. “That's right. Remember, no glasses, okay?”

“Are they really that ugly?” she'd asked hesitantly, lifting one hand to touch the wire frames she'd once thought were quite stylish.