“We have two choices,” he said, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “We try to make it past Kirstin and head back to my bedroom, or we put this off until later.”
“A third choice would be to forget it ever happened.”
“I can’t do that. Can you?” The heat in his eyes said he was being honest, and he dared her to be honest, too.
“No,” Jazz admitted. “But it’s not something I want either,” she added, since they were being so honest.
The muscle in his jaw appeared to be experiencing a seizure. She watched it with fascination.
“You could have fooled me. Care to explain?”
“I’m not interested in getting involved with anyone,” she said, then pivoted toward the door, all set to make a face-saving exit.
“Hang on a sec.” His hand on her arm stopped her. “I’m not going to ask you to do anything you don’t want. Don’t let one little kiss scare you off.”
As if.
She’d been afraid plenty of times in her life and it had never stopped her, before. It was the possibility he might know what held her back when she didn’t that she couldn’t handle. He had a way of picking bits of information out of her, then piecing them together, that was starting to freak her out.
And also annoy her.
“You’re right. It was just a little kiss,” she said, hoping to annoy him a bit too, and going straight for his male ego to do it.
“I wouldn’t say it waslittle.” He looked mildly affronted, so it appeared she’d succeeded.
“No? I distinctly heard you refer to it as ‘one little kiss.’ It’s okay,” she said generously, because she played with fire for a living, “I happen to agree.”
The thumb of the hand holding her arm rubbed circles against the soft inside of her elbow.Ignore it, her stern, inner voice—the one that kept her alive—ordered. His level of self-control was far more impressive than hers. The heat in his eyes had downgraded from a boil to a light simmer in a matter of seconds.
“Why don’t we try it again? For comparison’s sake?” he suggested.
Much like when he’d tackled the obstacle course, it seemed Dan didn’t know when to quit. Fortunately for them both, Jazz didn’t suffer from the same affliction. She hadn’t jumped out of an airplane that very first time without calculating the odds, and the way she tallied them now, he wouldn’t stop unless she did.
There was a time and a place to accept a challenge from him, however, and although she wasn’t sure when that moment might be, this wasn’t it. If she let him kiss her now, she had no doubt she’d find herself on her back on the floor, right here in the lounge, where anyone could walk in and catch them, giving Adriana one heck of a story. She was amazed no one had walked in already. The public bathrooms were right next to the main entry.
While she didn’t care for the idea of an audience, the possibility of getting horizontal with Dan did hold a certain appeal. Enough so, in fact, that it was becoming harder and harder to remember why it was such a bad idea. Did she really want to sleep with her boss?
Because that was where things between them were headed.
“Maybe some other time,” she said, taking care to sound indifferent despite the way her heart was pounding out jumping jacks in her chest. Whether temptation or alarm drove the rush of adrenaline, she couldn’t say.
“At least stick around for the barbecue this evening. It’ll be fun. What do you say?”
“Why not?” she said, because the best way to avoid temptation was to play with it, of course. He’d accepted rejection a lot more easily than she’d anticipated—suspiciously, possibly disappointingly so—meaning he was most likely up to something, and she was curious.
He took her hand and twirled her around so that she faced the door, leaving her head spinning for a whole different reason. “Lead on, then. It wasn’t as if we were going to make it past Kirstin, anyway,” he said.
*
The jury wasstill out on Dan’s sister—Dan too, for that matter—but his mother was lovely.
Freda McKillop introduced herself to Jazz while Dan was busy fielding good-natured congratulations on finding a woman and rounding up contestants for the junior rodeo the Endeavour’s cowhands had organized. Jazz was watching him from the other side of the paddock fence. Adriana and her cameraman must have opted to cut their losses because they were nowhere to be found.
Jazz had wondered at first if everyone left Dan to hang himself because they didn’t like him, or maybe they were simply jealous of his good fortune. It turned out that neither was the case. If anything, they seemed genuinely determined to help keep him real.
A tall, red-headed man with the lean hips and muscular upper body of a cowboy clapped Dan on the shoulder. “Congratulations on finally upgrading to a real woman from those fancy latex dolls that perform all the same functions.”
“Thanks. I guess you’ll be wanting them back,” Dan replied, proving he could take a joke, and earning a few laughs from the cowhands while he was at it.