“I called the Community Associationsomewhatintense,” he emphasized once more, “and if you ever tell them I said otherwise, I’ll drop you in the middle of a murder of cows and walk away, nomatter how much you beg me to save you. I’ll make certain your funeral is nice, though. Assuming the board members don’t kill me first.”
“As board members of community associations that are onlysomewhat intenseare prone to do.” She looked down her nose at him, her tone lofty. “In English, incidentally, I believe that’s called aherdof cows. Murder of crows, herd of cows.”
“I said what I said.”
“Whatever.” She handed over her tube of lipstick, the final item she needed him to carry that night. “I’m ready to go,skitstövel. Stop primping.”
He shrugged on his suit jacket, slipped the lipstick inside a hidden pocket, and ran a brush over his beard one last time, then took a good, long look at the woman in the bathroom doorway.
Shaking his head, he crossed his arms over his chest.
All his grooming efforts were pointless. It didn’t matter that his beard was soft and gleamed in the slanting sunlight from the bathroom windows. It didn’t matter that he’d plucked his most stylish suit, charcoal gray and perfectly fitted, from the walk-in closet they now shared. It certainly didn’t matter that he’d shined his shoes to a high gloss.
He could be wearing a fucking clown costume, and it still wouldn’t matter. No photographers were going to bother snapping photos of him at Alex’s charity auction. Not with her nearby.
The deep blue of her dress turned her skin luminous, and the garment was almost as beautiful as she was, with lavishly embroidered sleeves, a square neck that dipped low, and a hem that flirted high on those luscious thighs. The straps of her flat sandals wrapped lovingly, possessively around her ankles and calves. With seemingly two flicks of her wrist, she’d gathered her hair into acasual bun, just messy enough to be modern, with waving tendrils framing her gorgeous face.
He wanted to kiss that lipstick off her. Rip that dress off her.
She could keep the sandals on.
“Fy fan, Peter.” Her eyes swept over him in similar appraisal, from top to toe. “Forget the buffet. I could eat you for dinner instead.”
In case he’d missed the husky invitation in that comment, her eyes flicked to his dick, hopeful and hardening beneath his suit pants. Also doomed to disappointment, because they needed to get going.
“Save that thought for approximately four hours from now, sweetheart,” he said.
Taking her hand, he led her through the house and to the door. But right before they went outside, she halted and tugged him to a stop too.
Her eyes twinkled with malicious glee. “Just in case you thought I forgot about the Pippi reference from earlier...”
And there it was, albeit belatedly. A jar of pickled herring, shaken so close to his face he couldn’t actually focus on it without crossing his eyes.
It shouldn’t be scientifically possible. Was materializing seafood from thin air a special power all Swedes shared but kept secret from outsiders?
“Now we can go,” she announced, and swept out the door in front of him.
He watched the jiggle of her ass and let it soothe his concerns about the laws of physics.
A minute later, as he handed her up into the SUV, she suddenly snorted. “Oh, gods above, I just realized something.”
He grunted in response, because when she was sitting down, that dress—that dress.
Holy shit.
The short, wide hem would fit so easily over his head if he knelt at her feet in an abandoned hotel hallway, spread those fucking amazing thighs, and licked until she gasped and shook and came on his tongue.
“You live in a gated community, Peter, where you can make the gates open at your will.” Waiting, evidently, for his attention to leave her legs, she fell silent a long, long time until he met her eyes again. “You know what that makes you?”
He had no damn idea. “Wealthy?”
“God of the gates,” she told him, then screeched with laughter until he was laughing too, helplessly. “Oh,fy fan, it’sperfect.”
You are too, he thought, and wished for the millionth time he could banish the thread of fear woven amid all his joy.Heaven help me, you are too.
22
As soon as Maria and Peter made it past the red carpet and inside the upscale Beverly Hills hotel where Alex’s charity auction was occurring, she stopped, clapped a hand to her chest, and took a deep breath.