Not exactly appropriate behavior for a conference meeting. His clients might feel slightly in the way.
Sadie placed her hands on the glass and stared down at the small cars and tiny people. The dog walker was gone but the pedestrians below often tipped their faces to the weak sun, enjoying the little heat on offer.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that night.”
Sadie groaned and placed her forehead on the glass between her hands. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, either, but she didn’t want to admit that, didn’t want to continue this conversation because Carrick’s observations both bemused and befuddled her.
The only thing she was sure of was that she couldn’t talk art and paintings and forensics while memories of that night swirled around her overheated brain.
“Carrick, please stop talking about it.”
Carrick moved closer, and Sadie could feel his heat. “Why? Because you regret it or because talking about it makes you hot?”
This wasn’t the behavior of a man intent on avoiding her. After he left and didn’t call or text, she’d assumed he considered her as just another casual hookup and had moved on. His comments suggested he wouldn’t mind a repeat.
Neither, dammit, would she.
But that would be foolish and Sadie wasn’t generally a foolish woman. Except she had totally lost her head when she allowed Carrick Murphy to push her up against the wall in her apartment and kiss her senseless.
She could lie to herself and say she wished she hadn’t slept with him, but she couldn’t force herself, even mentally, to issue such a whopper. She didn’t regret what they’d done, the hot evening they’d shared, but she had to move on. Now, immediately.
But man, when she looked into those light green eyes and saw his blatant desire, she felt foolish and reckless. The urge to strip was strong.
Nope, not happening. “It’s best if we just forget about that night,” Sadie said, pulling her hands off the glass. She gripped her hands behind her back and stepped away to put a solid amount of space between her and Carrick.
“I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon,” Carrick muttered, his deep voice rich with frustration. “I want you, Sadie. God, I know we shouldn’t, that it’s a crap idea, that we said it was a onetime thing, but then you walk into the room and all I can think about is being inside you as soon as possible. And judging by all that blue fire in your eyes, by the way they keep going to my mouth, racing over my body, I think you want that, too.”
He was spot-on, dammit.
But you can’t go there, you have to be sensible, Slade.“I also want to find out who modeled for Da Vinci in La Belle Ferronnière. I want to own one of Manet’s bride paintings, find the Russian amber room. But I’m a realist and I know that none of the above will happen, just like I know that a repeat of that night is a solidly bad idea.”
Also, because the last time I was this attracted, I ended up marrying the guy and he made my life hell.
Carrick, so she was told, was cut from the same cloth. Initially charming and attentive and then turning into a monster at the first hint of something deeper.
“Screw good ideas. They aren’t any fun,” Carrick muttered, jamming his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, pulling back his jacket to reveal his broad chest covered by a mint-green shirt.
His suit was designer—maybe Armani?—his tie Hermès and perfectly knotted. To anyone else, he looked like a ridiculously successful Boston businessman, but Sadie was beginning to see past the implacable facade he presented the world. Beneath his layer of perpetual cool, red-hot lava churned.
And damn, those contrasts, seeing the passion beneath the surface, made her hot. And horny.
What could happen if she spent one more night with him? Except that one night probably wouldn’t be enough and, in another week, maybe two, they’d be back in the same position again, yearning and burning.
Nope, it was better to be resolute now, to nip this in the bud.
Sadie opened her mouth to say no, fully intending to tell him there wasn’t the slightest chance that they’d hook up again.
“I’ll think about it.”
Sadie almost turned around, convinced that some other woman had uttered the words she’d never meant to say. Or maybe she’d imagined saying them, but then she looked at Carrick’s face and saw the flash of excitement in his eyes, the twitch of pleased lips. Oh, crap.
What in the world was wrong with her and since when did her mouth act independently of her brain?
Carrick cupped her cheek with his hand and placed his lips on her temple. Sadie forced herself to keep her hands at her sides, bunching her fists so she didn’t grip his hips, run her hands up that wide chest.
“Think hard. And think quick,” Carrick murmured.