Jaeger’s voice didn’t hold reproach or irritation, and his recital of the facts calmed her. She looked down at her phone and waved it back and forth. “I’m still not comfortable not having a signal.”
“Okay.” Jaeger pulled out his phone and looked at the display. “I have a signal. Not a lot, but some. Text Ceri my number and tell her to call me if she can’t reach you. Or I can call a taxi to take you back home.”
She so appreciated his calm attitude. Piper looked at Jaeger standing with his hands in his pockets, patiently waiting for her to make up her mind. He wore a beige linen blazer over a light blue long-sleeve shirt, blue jeans threaded with a burgundy leather belt. Designer sunglasses rested in his hair.
“Look, Piper, if you don’t want to stay, it’s okay,” Jaeger said. His mouth lifted at the corners. “Of course, if you leave, I’ll be at Amelia’s mercy, but I’m sure I can fight her off.”
Piper managed a smile, but she sent an anxious look toward the hall. “It’s just...he’s so little and he’s sick.”
Jaeger lifted his hands. “It’s your call.”
Piper bit her lip. She really wanted to see Amelia’s collection, and Ty had seemed better. She wouldn’t have left otherwise. Walking into the hall, she sent Ceri a quick message with Jaeger’s number. Ceri’s thumbs-up emoji was instantaneous. Her next message, Ty’s fine, still asleep, will text you and Jaeger when he wakes up, came a few seconds later, and Piper exhaled her tension.
She dropped her hunched shoulders and walked back into the collector’s room. Jaeger was examining a pencil drawing on the wall next to the reinforced door.
“We good?” he asked.
“Very. He’s fine, and Ceri now has your number.” Piper wrinkled her nose. “I suppose you think I am a neurotic mother and overly anxious.”
Jaeger’s eyes dropped from hers to her mouth and back up again. “I think you are a good mom who is, naturally, worried about her kid.”
His easy acceptance touched her; it wasn’t what she’d expected from Manhattan’s Main Man. She’d thought he’d be impatient and dismissive, not kind and accepting. His eyes darted to her mouth again, and he shook his head. “God, I could so take up where we just stopped.”
“We can’t,” Piper murmured, touching her tongue to her bottom lip and sighing when she tasted him there.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to have you up against the nearest wall,” Jaeger said, his voice almost a growl. He placed his hand on her shoulder and turned her so she faced the sketch he’d been examining. “I think that’s a Degas.”
Instead of the ballerina the artist was famous for, this sketch was of a naked woman lying on her back, her legs open. Degas didn’t go into a lot of anatomical detail, but her sprawling, boneless posture suggested she’d been well loved. Piper had seen a lot of erotic art, much of it designed to titillate, but looking at this sketch, knowing Jaeger was watching her reaction, heated her from the inside out. Her skin prickled, her saliva disappeared and she could feel the insistent throb between her legs. Her libido screamed that she wanted this man. That she had to have him. Again. Soon. Now.
“Not the most appropriate sketch to show me when we’re trying to cool down the situation, Ballantyne,” Piper pointed out.
“That is what a woman should look like after making love,” Jaeger said, his voice low and supersexy. “I want to make you look like that.”
She was sure he had.
After Jaeger rocketed her from orgasm to orgasm in Milan, she’d felt sexy and sated. He’d made her feel incredibly feminine and wonderful, and if she turned and faced him, she wouldn’t be able to hide her desire from him. He’d know exactly how he’d made her feel then and how much she wanted him now. He’d kiss her. They wouldn’t stop. Because their chemistry was so combustible, he’d take her up against the nearest wall.
God, that sounded so good.
Calm the hell down, Mills, and think!
Getting involved with Jaeger, even just for a hookup, was asking for a heap of trouble.