Page 2 of Bedding his Innocent Mistress

“It’s fine. It was my fault,” Ivy promised. “Now can we go?”

Lisette pulled her lower lip between her teeth, and her pink lipstick was so determined that it didn’t budge from its place as gift-wrap across her mouth. “There’s got to be a bathroom here with a dryer.”

“Great, and I’ll smell like a distillery all night.”

Lisette winked. “That’ll block out the lingering aroma of eau de aristocracy, yeah?”

Ivy shook her head, but her smile was irrepressible. “I’m going to give you one more hour and then we’re going to dinner.”

Lisette rolled her blue eyes. “Not hungry.”

“I know a great Indian place around the corner,” Ivy bribed, pinpointing her cousin’s food weak-spot with ease.

“Yeah, yeah, maybe.” Lisette lifted the remainder of her scotch to her lips and threw it back. “Bring us back drinks when you’re dry.”

Ivy nodded. “I won’t be long.”

She sucked in a breath and turned around, her eyes instantly pinpointing the location of the Gorgeous Man. Disappointment was instant. He wasn’t there.

So? What had she been going to do? Talk to him? As if. She cut through the crowds, her mind distracted.

She lifted a finger and toyed with her earlobe, twirling the diamond earrings Steve had given her while imagining just what she’d have said to that hunk of yum. “You really fill out that suit well.” “You look like a Greek God come to life.” “Let’s go back to your place.”

She shook her head stiffly and stepped into the hallway that had a golden sign indicating the facilities were somewhere down the rabbit hole.

“You’re wet.” The words were a low rumble and she froze immediately, her eyes jerking up from the marbled floor, clashing with his automatically.

Up close, they weren’t just steel. There were flecks of copper and gold around the dark black pupil. They were stunning eyes. “Huh?” His voice had been just like it should have been. Coarse and masculine with a sense of authority even in those two small words.

“You’re all wet,” he drawled with the same sardonic insolence that was conveyed by the way he’d draped his frame casually against the wall.

“Oh. My dress,” she replied belatedly.

“What else?” His lips were lifting in the corner and her stomach rolled.

“You’re laughing at me?”

He nodded, a slow, droll movement that did nothing to settle her nerves. “Partly.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been staring at me all night and now you look like a rabbit in the headlights.” The more he spoke, the more she could detect his accent – Italian? Greek? Spanish? Something summery and spiced, and completely sensual.

Oh, hell. She was lost. She fluttered her eyes closed for a second, sucking in a deep breath, then looked at him with obvious speculation. “Yeah, well, you’re kind of stareable,” she said honestly. “But I guess you know that,” she added for good measure. Because he must, surely, be aware of the effect he had on women.

He pushed up from the wall, taking a single step towards her, his dark eyes locked to hers as if with an actual physical tether. She couldn’t look away. Not that she wanted to.

He was close. So close she caught the slight hint of orange peel and clove and her gut kicked with growing awareness. “You’re pretty stareable, too.”

What was she doing?

Steve swam before her eyes. Steve with his dependable smile. His chubby cheeks. His tuft of blonde hair that he liked to style in a spiky way that had gone out of fashion at least a decade earlier.

“Then I guess I should say it’s a pleasure to stare at you,” she said. It had meant to be a flippant take on ‘nice to meet you’, but his expression was so serious, his body so close, his warmth an actual wall that was beginning to build around her, that nothing felt remotely flippant.

“And if I want to do more than stare?”

Immediately Steve disappeared, like a balloon that had been pricked with a sharp needle. This man was there instead. No suit. Just him. Steve had always been clean-shaven. This guy had a stubbled chin and she wondered absentmindedly if it would feel strange to be kissed by him.

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