Megan shook her head before she found enough voice to croak, “No.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “No.”
Gayla's cheerful, round face collapsed. “Damn! Terry's going to kill me. Kill me. He always cautions me about flapping my jaws. Well, shoot, you should know.” She caught Megan's hand and squeezed it tightly. “They were engaged about three years ago. Then, out of the blue and for no reason I could ever I see, he told us it was off. Just like that.” She snapped beringed fingers.
“I don't recall seeing anything about it in the papers.” The muscles of Megan's throat were playing tug-o’-war with each other, making it painful to speak and breathe.
“No. It was one of those brief affairs that died before it ever got started. Anyway, I was glad when Terry told me Josh had a new girl. A man like that shouldn't go to waste.” She patted Megan's hand again before hailing her husband across the room. “Terry Bishop, come back and order me some dinner.”
There were titters of laughter as Terry rushed back to his wife, apologizing profusely to her and Megan for keeping them waiting.
Josh slid his lean body into his chair and reached beneath the table to squeeze Megan's knee. “Miss me?” he asked, bending so close that his breath wafted over her lips.
Deeply distressed by what Gayla had blithely told her, she answered, honestly and almost inaudibly, “Yes.” Could the tears welling in her eyes be detected in the candlelight?
Josh's index finger traced the delicate sculpture of her jaw. Eyes with more facets than cut topaz blazed into hers, then dropped to her chest as though he would burn through the cloth that dared to shield her breasts from his avid gaze.
She felt herself gravitating toward him and was saved from embarrassment only by Gayla's imperious, “What should we eat?”
Josh had the pressed duck, Megan the chicken with lemon sauce. Both voiced accolades to the chef, who had been lured away from a prohibitively expensive hotel in Nice, France. “Want to sample a bite of mine?” Josh asked Megan. He lifted a forkful of the succulent meat toward her mouth.
“I was hoping you'd ask.”
He guided the fork to her lips, and she closed them around the tines of the fork. Slowly, her eyes glued to Josh's, she moved her head back until the fork came away clean. His eyes stayed riveted on her mouth as she chewed languidly. She didn't realize until she saw the dangerous glint in his eyes how clearly sexual her behavior had been.
Her tongue darted out nervously, fleetingly, to lick the corners of her lips. Josh's breath hissed through his teeth as his eyes came flying back to hers. She read the passion lurking in their golden depths, and her heart beat a triumphant tattoo. Or was it pounding out of fear?
The meal was pleasant. She enjoyed the Bishops’ company. The only thing that marred the perfection of the evening was the wistful glances she saw Laura Wray sending Josh. He seemed to be oblivious of her, never, to Megan's knowledge, glancing at her. Yet each time Megan looked at the woman across the room, she was staring at Josh.
“Would you like to dance, Megan?” Terry asked as they were sipping liqueurs and coffee.
“Yes, thank you,” she said enthusiastically. The melodic strains of the small orchestra had been haunting her throughout dinner, and more than once she had found herself swaying to the slow rhythm. She loved to dance and didn't have much opportunity to do so.
Josh returned the favor by asking a flustered Gayla to join him on the dance floor. As soon as another song started, Megan was claimed by a television executive from Charleston whom she had met at a sales conference the year before.
She was laughing at his story about one of their colleagues, when she glimpsed Josh dancing with Laura Wray. The laughter was trapped in her throat as though a cork had been pushed into it. A knife of jealousy ripped through her. The fierceness of her jealousy frightened her. She'd never known an emotion to poison her this way.
The woman's head was tilted back, her blond hair sweeping the tapering hand that was pressed against her back. They talked, smiled, and laughed lightly. When the song ended on a poignant refrain, Megan saw Josh lean down and kiss Laura softly on the mouth. To hide her feelings, Megan chatted volubly with her partner as he escorted her back to her table, hoping what she said made sense.
Before she had a chance to sit down, she was pulled into a pair of arms, the strength and possessiveness of which couldn't be mistaken. Hate for the woman he'd just danced with so consumed her that Megan held herself rigid against him.
Soon, however, the spiciness of his cologne, the strength of the muscles that rippled against her body, and the lulling notes of the music all soothed her. She was caught up again in Josh's web of sensuality, and for the moment she didn't want to escape.
Driven by an irrational need to prove to him that she was as much a woman as the one he'd once asked to marry him, she adjusted the curves of her body to harmonize with his.
“I thought dinner would never end.” His lips moved on her temple. “I couldn't wait to get my hands on you.” Smiling with secret pleasure, she began to lift her arms around his neck. “Please, Megan, put your arms down. I don't want to fight off a gang of would-be attackers.” He flattened her hand on his lapel, folding her arm between them and holding her other hand in his. She knew it was no accident that it lay against her breast.
Magically they moved with the music. The room, bathed in candlelight from brass sconces mounted on the walls and hurricane lamps on the tables, was filled with romantic ambiance.
Lazily, Josh's thumb honored Megan's full breast. The caress brought a tickling sensation feathering up from the pit of her stomach to the back of her throat and down again, deeper this time, to the very heart of what made her a woman. Her cheek rested against his hard chest, where she could hear the thudding of his heart.
She should be angry with him for not telling her about Laura Wray. She should scorn him for the indifferent way he cast women aside once he was through with them. But her arsenal of vituperations had been sealed up when he took her in his arms and held her to him as though she belonged there.
“It feels so good to hold you this way,” he whispered, letting his mouth linger at the top of her ear. “To do this.” The caress of his thumb on her breast was subtle, invisible to anyone else, yet from the currents it sent sizzling through her body, he could have been touching her in the most intimate way possible.
“It's driving me to distraction to think that one mere scrap of cloth is all that's keeping your breasts from my eyes.”
His other hand slipped to her waist and drew her closer still. “From my hands.” He kissed her just below the ear. “From my mouth.”
She trembled and pressed her face against his shirt-front. “Josh, you shouldn't say things like that to me here.”