Best Man with Benefits (Wedding Dare, #4, McCade Brothers, #3)(5)
No scorching looks allowed.
…
“How did I let you talk me into this?” Not quite sure why she uttered the question aloud, Sophie handed Logan his card key and then sipped her glass of champagne and tried not to melt into a puddle from the sheer proximity of his body next to hers.
When he’d left her to go to the bar where Colt and the other groomsmen were gathered, she figured he’d forfeited his room key for a clean escape—sort of like a wolf gnawing off his foot to free himself from a trap. She never dreamed he’d be back, or that he’d bypass the seat on the opposite side of the table and slide in beside her instead.
“What?” He brought his mouth closer to her ear to be heard over the din of conversation flowing around them. Her temperature rose another billion degrees. “How did I talk you into going casual tonight? Easy. You wanted to come.”
Boy, did she. But he meant to say she wanted to attend, and honesty forced her to set him straight. “No.” She sipped again, enjoying the way the champagne bubbles threw a party at the back of her throat. “Before you showed up in the lobby I fully intended to go to my room, order room service, and spend some time working.”
“That’s maybe what you intended to do, but that’s not what you wanted to do.”
His warm breath tickled her ear and every erogenous zone in her body sat up and begged for the same treatment. Unconsciously, she scooted a little closer to the wall, and then bit back a moan because shifting around only intensified the distracting pressure between her thighs. She glanced at him and hoped he couldn’t tell how turned on she was, just from sitting beside him. “It’s not?”
He smiled, and a groove appeared at the corner of his mouth. Her tongue tingled with an urge to trace the tempting little bracket.
“You wouldn’t want to disappoint Colt and Kady. They love you, and they want you to be part of their celebration, regardless of the dress code. Deep down, you would have felt terrible if you’d skipped out on tonight.”
Yeah. There was that. As her mom frequently pointed out, cowardice lay at the heart of shyness. Every time she caved in to her desire to run and hide, she forfeited self-respect.
“You’re right. Thank you for convincing me to come, and being my partner in fashion crime.”
He tapped his glass to hers. “I’ll be your partner in crime anytime.”
She laughed and tipped her head to sip her drink. For one long, suspended moment their eyes locked, and something in his gaze sucked all the air out of her lungs. Finally, he blinked, smiled a smile she could only call bemused, and shook his head. “Sorry for staring. It’s just…you look so different. You’re not a cute little kid anymore. You’re a beautiful woman. I almost didn’t recognize you in the lobby.”
Logan McCade just called you beautiful! Her heart nearly raced right out of her chest, even though he meant it in a damn-it’s-shocking kind of way. She opened her mouth to say thanks, but the perverse idiot inside her who could never gracefully accept a compliment immediately blurted, “Your mental picture of me probably includes braces, bad skin, and a misguided attempt at a Halle Berry pixie cut, which my mother correctly predicted would be a disaster. Anything would be a step up from where I started.”
His smile faded and she immediately wanted to bite her tongue. The shy girl’s other natural gift besides hiding in plain site? Always saying the wrong thing. The pathetic, self-conscious thing. He scratched his chin and gave her a measuring look, starting at the top of her head and ending…she didn’t know where, because she turned and stared down at the table rather than blush for him yet again.
“Nope,” he said after a moment, “it’s not debatable. You’re beautiful.” His fingers toyed with the fringe of her chin-length bob. She turned her burning face back to him. “And it’s not because you’ve grown out your hair and gotten your braces off. Those are superficial things. It’s more like…I don’t know…you’ve got secrets and a hint of determination hidden behind those soft brown eyes. Makes a guy want to figure out what’s going on in your head.”
“You’d be—” God, was she really going to say this? “You’d be running for the hills if you knew what was going on in my head.”
His mouth kicked up at the corner, and the sexy groove made an encore. He trailed his finger along the edge of her hair again, making her shiver, and then leaned closer. “Try me.”
Here? Now? Her last semi-functional brain cell took a minute to realize that “Try me” meant “Talk to me.”
Right. Conversation. “Oh-kay. Six months ago I challenged myself to accomplish three things.”
“Very adventurous of you,” he teased, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear.
Possibly, but the resolutions had been prompted less by a sense of adventure than overwhelming frustration. Colt and Kady had just announced their engagement, and happy as she’d been for them, the news had prompted her to take a good, hard look at herself.
The woman cringing back at her seemed pretty pathetic. An introvert who preferred to fly under the radar at work rather than muster up the courage to tackle a client-facing role. A wallflower living in bulky sweatshirts and baggy jeans, clinging to an extra twenty pounds like a buffer against the world. An unfulfilled woman who wouldn’t know passion and excitement except through the racy text accompanying the erotic product offerings of the spicy website she designed and maintained for her firm’s biggest client, Eve’s Closet. Eve’s Closet was the J. Peterman of adult toys. Every product told a story, and somewhere between Eve’s kinky adventures with riding crops, blindfolds, wrist restraints, and all sundry of clamps and rings, Sophie had realized how small and dull her world had become.