Josh Bennett had a penchant for elegance, as was obvious when he came forward to greet them. He spoke a friendly greeting to Jo, but his eyes burned into Megan's as he curled his fingers around her elbow.
“I'm glad you could join us on such short notice, Megan.”
She ground her teeth in an effort not to remind him she'd had no choice in the matter. Instead she replied with cool politeness, “Thank you for the invitation.”
He seemed amused by her slightly sarcastic words. His finely molded lips tilted at one corner. “Mr. Bishop is already here. This way.” He led them to a circular, tufted vinyl booth in a corner of the dimly lit bar.
A slender, middle-aged man with mussed gray hair and thick eyeglasses stood up. “Hello, Mr. Bishop,” Jo said.
“Miss Hampson, I've asked you to call me Terry,” he said, taking her hand and shaking it.
“When you drop the Miss Hampson,” she retorted.
He turned toward Megan expectantly. Josh took his cue. “Terry Bishop, Megan Lambert, local sales manager of WONE.”
“Mr. Bishop,” she said, smiling graciously and extending her hand. She liked the man immediately. She had expected a wheeler-dealer in the same league as Josh Bennett. Instead this man looked ill at ease in these extravagant surroundings. He'd probably feel more comfortable bent over his drafting board than at a business dinner.
“Call me Terry, please,” he said. “I've been anxious to meet you. Josh has told me so much about you. I understand you've been friends for a long time.”
Megan ignored Jo's bemused look as she slid into the booth beside Terry Bishop. “Yes, we met through my husband several years ago.” Josh's looming presence behind her forced her to scoot around the booth and allow him to move in beside her. Had the steel jaws of a trap closed around her, she couldn't have felt more confined.
Terry Bishop was saying, “Yes, Josh mentioned that. Your husband's early death was tragic.”
“Yes, it was,” she mumbled, covering her agitation by adjusting her skirt over her knees and placing her purse and shawl between her and Josh's hard thigh. Immediately he picked them up and laid them on the far side of him. Megan shot him a warning look, but he didn't catch it. He was asking Jo what she wanted to drink.
“And you, Megan? What do you want?”
I want you to stop pressing your thigh against mine, she wanted to shout. Instead she answered with cold civility, “White wine on the rocks, please.” He kept the hovering cocktail waitress waiting while he momentarily studied her mouth.
She released her pent-up breath when he turned his head and gave the waitress their order. If only he weren't so close. If only she couldn't smell his tantalizingly spicy cologne. If only he weren't so damned good-looking. If only she couldn't remember how her name had sounded on lips that had kissed her with more passion than she'd ever known. If only she couldn't remember the way his mouth had tasted as it devoured hers.
Jo launched into an animated tale about a man who had come to her wanting to advertise his recipe for homemade bubble gum on television. His advertising budget was limited to fifty dollars. Terry was still listening avidly when the waitress returned with their drinks. “Will there be anything else, Mr. Bennett?” she crooned as she leaned down, threatening to spill an impressive bosom out of her tight black velvet weskit.
“I'll let you know,” Josh responded, smiling a slanted grin that Megan knew could melt even the coldest of feminine hearts.
“Please do.” She turned away with a deliberately seductive motion of her hips beneath the short red plaid skirt.
Josh chuckled as he took a sip of his scotch and water. “Whatever happened to the hard-to-get approach?”
“I would think you'd be charmed,” Megan said in a vindictive whisper for his ears alone. Jo and Terry were engrossed in their own conversation.
Josh set down his glass with a decided thump. For an endless moment, impaling topaz eyes held hers, before sliding down her throat to the deep cleft under the tapering collar of her dress. “That waitress has too much of a good thing. I've always held to the idea that it's quality, not quantity, that counts.”
Megan's throat constricted painfully. His eyes seemed to penetrate her clothing, stroke the most secret, sensitive places of her body, and reacquaint them with sensations she had long put to rest. Lot's wife had superb strength of character compared to Megan when he raised his eyes to hers once again. She was powerless to look away, even though Jo had launched into another story.
Josh lay a single finger on her arm as he asked softly, “Did you talk to Atherton today?” But he didn't appear to be as interested in her meeting with her boss as he was in the diamond-studded earlobe he was studying intently. He moved his finger along her arm only enough to stir the fine hairs.
“Yes,” she said tightly, jerking her arm from beneath his hand.
“And?”
“I'm here, aren't I?”
“I wasn't sure you'd come. You didn't have to.”
“Oh, I had to or, believe me, I wouldn't be here,” she scoffed. “You knew damn well I'd come, Mr. Bennett. Don't you always get what you want? Don't you do exactly as you please?”
“No,” he growled under his breath, leaning dangerously close to her. “If I'd done as I pleased four years ago, I'd have carried you off that night, made love to you until we were both senseless, and used force, if necessary, to keep you from marrying James Lambert.”