Page 43 of Tempting as Sin
“He’s horrible.” She took a sip of her coffee and looked up at him through her lashes. It was effective. “But I had it covered.”
“I saw that. Same as that first night, with that fella with the cuff links. Consider me the exclamation point, then. The cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae.”
She stopped sipping her coffee and flirting with her eyes and studied him. “So the sundae is me shutting him down? Really?”
“Yeah.” He drank his smoothie like the casual guy he wasn’t right now. “It is. You could call it a two-scoop sort of thing. If I get to watch you do that, and then I get to step in myself, and watch him leave? Definitely two scoops. I could be getting addicted. It could be an issue.”
“That hard day and all. Why are you dusty?”
He’d rather have talked about his damsel-rescue techniques. He scratched his nose, took another sip of his drink, and said, “I’ll tell you if you’ll explain how somebody could possibly tie those little ribbons on that bra into those neat bows every time. It’s bothering me.”
“I thought you weren’t being sleazy,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m being analytical.”
She took another look at her thumb, apparently decided that she was done bleeding, discarded the tissue and set down her coffee, then flipped around the hanger with the bra. “Hook and eye. You don’t untie the ribbons. You just…” She flicked the little bow with her thumb, and the lace covering the not-breast beneath fell open into her waiting palm. “Like a nursing bra,” she told him. “But…not. Exposable. You see.”
The blood had left his head. Unfortunately, it had gone elsewhere. He leaned against the wall in a would-be casual fashion, crossed his ankles, sipped at his drink, and thought,Cool down, mate.Aloud, he said, “Yeah. I get it.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was fastening the cup back into the band again, then moving on to another bra on her rack, clipping it into place with its own safety pins and saying, “It was an experimental purchase. Nothing sleazy, like crotchless panties, because thisisn’ta porno store, and I think suggestive is sexier than blatant. That’s the market I’ve aimed for.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I agree. That that’s where you are, and that it’s sexier. Because that bra is about the sexiest little thing I’ve ever seen, especially because it’s white. If it were black? No. But in white…” He sighed. “Yeah.”
“Pretty,” she said, “but you aren’t expecting her to be naughty until you see it. And especially—until you figure it out.”
“The prize,” he managed to say.
“That’s what I thought.” She was re-hanging nightgowns now, only giving him a glance from time to time. He was watching for that glance. “Could you answer a question for me?” she asked. “Or a couple? I was just thinking that I should get a…” She cleared her throat. “A man’s opinion. I do get male shoppers.”
I’ll bet you do,he didn’t say. “Sure,” he said instead.
“And anyway,” she said, “I’d like to know if what I think would please men actually would. If you see what I mean.”
“Keeping in mind,” he said, “that I’m just one man—fire away.”
She pulled the bra hanger off the rack, held it in front of herself, and unfastened the cup again, keeping the little bow held delicately between finger and thumb. Her nails were rounded ovals tinted the palest pink. Even her nail varnish turned him on. She said, “First thing. Are hooks and eyes actually sexier than snaps, or does it just feel like it because they’re more old-fashioned? Like undoing her corset?”
Bloody.Hell.He angled his hips, crossed an ankle again, then jumped and uncrossed it.
“What?” she asked, checking him out more closely than might be wise.
“I may have fallen off a horse today,” he said. “Never mind. I’d rather talk about this.”
“Ithoughtyou were limping,” she said. “And dusty. Seriously?” Some more smiling, but of the non-dirty kind. She was laughing, in fact. Brilliant. “On your first lesson? Really?”
He said, “Excuse me? There’s a perfectly logical explanation. When you ride a motorcycle, you grip with your thighs, especially if you’re doing anything hard. Riding fast. Dirt bike. Racing. Et cetera. You’re not hanging on with your hands. You’re controlling it with your thigh muscles as you lean into the turns.”
“But if you’re riding a horse…” she said.
“Then you’re giving it two signals at the same time,” he said. “Ask me how I know. A go-ahead with your thighs, and a please-stop with your hands. Which is me hauling back on the reins, until my horse—and who starts a fella off with a horse named Thunderbolt who’s nineteen feet tall and has a grudge against humanity, I’d like to know—decided he’d had enough and reared. I know the word now, you see. Reared. Means he stands up on his hind legs and you fall off. And he didn’t just do it once. I’m not a natural.”
She’d started to laugh for real, and he had to grin. “Yeah,” he said. “That was my day. Afterwards, I found a beach and stripped down to my undies and got in the water, is why I was wet. First, I stank of horse, and second, I hurt. If I was hiding the tears as well, that’s my secret. I also nearly got flattened by a logging truck. And since I’ve confessed all that, how about asking me some more sexy questions about lingerie? Better than aspirin.”
“That does sound like a bad day.” She was trying not to laugh and to look sympathetic, but it wasn’t working. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested for indecent exposure, too. Here in Montana, we do not swim in our underwear. And how could the instructor let that happen more than once?”
“Said it took her twice to figure out why I’d be doing something so stupid. You could call her a proponent of the ‘failing up’ method. Or as she puts it, ‘You gotta do the dumb things to know what they are.’ I’m all good on that front, apparently.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, still looking like she was trying not to giggle. “You’d better drink your smoothie.”
