What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(55)

She took a sip of the wine to clear her palate and couldn’t help making a face. She didn’t know how wine was supposed to taste, but this Merlot thing made her want to scrub her tongue.

She let her neckline fall to one shoulder, then the other, so he got a different view with every breath she took—but never more than a glimpse. Her nipples tightened with every pass of the scarlet fabric across her breasts.

Neither of them spoke, but Jase’s eyes followed her every move. Did he realize she was testing his endurance, daring him to action?

Jase speared his last shrimp and lifted it toward his mouth. Upping the ante, Laurel slipped off a shoe and nudged his ankle under the table.

The fork slipped from his hand, and she made a moue of distress, as if apologizing, and withdrew her foot.

He crossed his fork on his plate and stared at her.

A heady thrill shot through her. She licked her lips in excitement, but the look she gave him was pure, wide-eyed innocence.

He poured himself a second glass of wine, lounged back, and sipped at it slowly, never taking his eyes off her.

She’d never realized how loud silence could be, how fraught. The very air seemed electrified. She shivered, but not from the cold. Instead, a wild heat spiraled along her nerves, and moisture pooled exactly where it needed to. Maybe she should have worn panties after all. It was going to be hard to explain to the nice Vietnamese woman at the dry cleaners in Waco exactly what sort of stain she’d gotten on her scarlet dress.

Now for the coup de grace. She stood up and turned her back to him so he could see her back was bare halfway down her butt. “I’ll go get dessert.”

Jase shoved his chair back so hard it crashed to the floor. “You—you minx!”

Before she knew what was happening, he’d crossed the room, his eyes dark with desire, and pressed her against her until she felt the wall at her bare back.

A minx? She, Laurel Elizabeth Harlow, the preacher’s daughter, the nicest girl in Bosque Bend High School, the class salutatorian, was being called a minx?

It was the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her, and there was only one way to respond—she clung to his shoulders and ground her mouth into his. She wanted his arms around her, wanted his hard chest pressed against her, his erection teasing her thighs. She wanted him inside her as deep as he could go.

He pushed the slippery scarlet fabric away from her hips, opened his fly, and entered her. She buried her head in his neck and met him, thrust for thrust, then screamed in ecstasy and went limp.

Jase guided her with one hand as she slid down the wall, while his other hand hitched his trousers together. “If that didn’t bring the cops down on us, nothing will,” he muttered, swinging her up in his arms.

Laurel waved her arm weakly toward the table. “My shoes…”

“Get ’em tomorrow.”

Then, just like Rhett Butler, he carried her up the wide stairs to her room, and the night was all she could have ever dreamed of. Afterward, she slept with her head on his heart.

*



Jase put his arm around Laurel, who was curled up against his side. For once, she’d fallen asleep before he did, but he’d pretty well worn her out. And he’d fulfilled his ambition—the whole town must have heard her come.

He’d half wondered if her insistence on a “special” evening was just a put-off, another example of her strange reclusiveness, but excuse or not, it worked for him. The food was passable—although he’d suspected she’d ordered in—the atmosphere was sexy as hell, and Laurel was a goddess of sensuality.

That dress—he couldn’t believe Reverend Ed’s daughter had something as hot as that in her closet. The color was like a flame against her ivory skin, and every time she moved, it clung to her in a different way, now outlining a breast, now the thrust of her hip. She’d really gotten him going with her peek-a-boo performance during dinner, but when she’d turned her back to him…

He ran his hand absently down the groove of her spine, and she shifted against him.

It was amazing how quickly he’d gotten accustomed to sleeping in the same bed with her—all night, not just for an hour after sex.

He liked sleeping with her. He liked waking up with her. He liked walking through the Shallows with her and having meals with her, even when they were as bad as that chicken, and having her sit in the den with him while he worked out business details. He wanted to put off returning to Dallas forever.

But he had responsibilities—the business, his employees, his family. If only he could take Laurel with him.

He rolled over on his back and folded an arm under his head.

Well, why not? Apparently she didn’t want to stay in Bosque Bend any longer. Why not ask her if she’d come back to Dallas with him? Permanently, like in marriage. The idea had been playing around in his mind ever since he’d talked with Rafe McAllister, but he’d been afraid to voice it, even to himself.

Lolly had voiced it, of course. Just this afternoon, in fact. “If you marry her, Dad, she really would be my mother.”

Marriage.

He pictured Laurel seeing his house for the first time. All her life, she’d lived in a century-old mansion on the busy main street of a small town in which everyone knew everyone else. What would she think of the sprawling contemporary retreat Rafe McAllister had designed for his eight wooded acres just on the fringes of North Plano? He wasn’t even sure he’d recognize his neighbors on sight.