He forced himself to drop his hand. If she was having second thoughts he wasn’t going to pressure her either way—because that would make this more than it was.
‘I...’ She blinked, looking taken aback. ‘That’s very gallant of you,’ she said.
Gallant? What the...?
He choked out a laugh, relieving some of the tension snapping in his gut.
‘What’s so funny,’ she asked, her clear-eyed pragmatism something he was becoming addicted to.
‘That’s another first for me,’ he said. ‘No woman’s ever called me gallant before, either. Now you owe me a first.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, looking genuinely surprised. ‘I suspect a lot of less gallant men would have expectations after flying a woman several hundred miles for a hook-up.’
Another laugh escaped on a spontaneous bark of amusement, but beneath it was a strange feeling of uneasiness. ‘Yeah, I’m one hundred and one per cent positive no woman’s ever even thought of me as gallant before,’ he said.
‘Then they were fools,’ she said, outraged on his behalf.
‘But you still owe me,’ he said, to keep things light as the weird clutching sensation he’d felt earlier—when she’d been so impressed with his hundred-buck gratuity, and again when she’d looked at him as if he’d given her something precious in Buena Vista Park—returned.
He wasn’t gallant—not even close. And he didn’t want to be. He took her hand in his and lifted her fingers to his lips. Time to get the night back on track. If she wanted gallant, he knew how to fake it.
‘So, are we good to go?’ he asked, lifting his eyebrows in a deliberately lascivious way that had her choking out another of those musical giggles.
‘I don’t think that was ever in doubt,’ she said, but then the blush seemed to intensify again. ‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s to do with my work for Zachary Temple and Temple Corp.’ She tugged her fingers from his, stumbling over the words. ‘I’m here to—’ He touched his finger to her lips to cut her off.
‘Shh...’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he added.
He’d heard of the British billionaire businessman’s reputation as a smart investor. Once upon a time Luke would have had to go cap in hand to a guy like him. But not any more. Not since he’d taken his company global and pushed his income and his industry cachet into the stratosphere. Thank the lord.
Perhaps she figured he was planning to prise information out of her about her boss? Or pitch for investment.
He should be insulted. He didn’t need investment, or to impress men like Temple any more. And he sure as heck didn’t need to mix business with booty calls. Broussard Tech had taken the tech industry by storm because it produced quality, innovative, unique products. Not because he used sex to further his business interests.
But, strangely, he wasn’t insulted—he suspected her hesitancy wasn’t because she was judging him, but because she was judging herself. He’d never met a woman before who was such a knockout but seemed so unaware of it.
He guessed it was one of the things he found so refreshing about her. But he did not want her nerves getting in the way of their booty call. Especially with the rain lashing against the fuselage as the storm arrived in earnest.
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to sleep with you under false pretences.’
Oh, for the love of...
‘Cassandra,’ he said, trying to sound firm, when the words ‘sleep with you’ in that prim UK accent had made the heat pounding in his pants hit critical mass. ‘There’s gonna be nothing false about tonight. As far as I’m concerned we left our professional interests back in San Francisco. Anything that happens tonight is between us and only us. You got that?’
She tugged at her lip again with her teeth, torturing him for one more excruciating moment, but then she nodded. ‘Okay...if you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’ He grasped her hand and tugged her across the console. ‘Now, let’s get up to the house before we drown.’
* * *
Cassie raced up the slick stone steps cut into the cliff-face behind Luke.
She was soaked through in seconds, but it was a warm, revitalising rain, washing away the guilt and the hesitation and leaving behind a freshness, a newness, and a woman committed to making tonight a memory to savour.
The relief was immense—but not nearly as immense as the tidal wave of excitement which swept over her as Luke’s house appeared out of the mist and rain, lit by the same solar-powered flares illuminating the steps up from the dock.
The Pacific Ocean churned below them as the wind picked up its pace and the storm arrived in all its glory. The sleek modern structure of glass and steel, redwood and granite, rose out of the rock face in stacked terraces, blending into the surrounding landscape of dense forest and millennia-old volcanic rock.
Oh... My.