felt anything but.
She tapped at her phone. “I have a couple of dresses. Which one do you think will work best?”
“I don’t know anything about this guy, Mia.” He could be a tits or ass man. He could be into a shapely shoulder or have a fetish for feet. But if he had even an ounce of common sense, he would be a Mia man.
“But you know what guys like. Should I go with something short? Slutty? Classy?”
“Classy,” he muttered, grabbing the phone from her. The first dress showed far too much skin. The second one, more of the same. “You can practically see this chick’s pu—underwear.”
“Are you saying that no man wants to see all the goods on display? That’s not been my experience.”
“Then why are you asking my opinion if you’ve already made up your mind?”
“Because you know stuff.” She took the phone back. “So I was reading this list of ways to snag a man in the fifties.”
He exploded. “He’s in his fifties?
“No, it was written in the fifties. As in the 1950s?” She tapped a few more times. “It’s ridiculously funny, actually. One of the tips is to walk into a room with a hatbox—”
“Is that code?”
She laughed, full and melodic. His dick reacted predictably.
“I know, some of the stuff is crazy. But a couple of things struck a chord. Like stand in a corner and cry softly so he’ll ask what happened.”
“That’s … ludicrous.” And a genius move. No man would resist asking a woman why she was crying. He took the phone from her again. “You want to go in sounding like a sad sack? What else have we got? Tell him funny stories. Wear a Band-Aid. Ask his advice.” He looked up and grinned, when inside he didn’t feel like grinning at all. He felt like snarling, then punching out all these idiots who needed to be strategized into falling for a woman. “Ah, Mia, is this a cunning ploy to seduce me after all? Does this guy even exist?”
Something changed the moment he said it. Maybe the funny old notion that she might be plotting to seduce him, Cal, and not this other guy, who he fucking hated at this point because he wanted her to think of Cal this way. To work this hard to get him. To want him the way he wanted her.
The charge in the air was thick, electric, so when Mia laughed, he heard her nerves, and it strangely excited him.
“Of course he exists.” She took a sip of her soda.
“But …”
“But, what?”
He tilted his head. “You don’t sound so sure. All this advice-asking could be your way of finding out what works for me. Like asking for a friend but the other way around.” His pulse was racing, not because he believed the nuts-and-bolts of this theory for a damn second, but because he wasn’t alone in thinking about the possibilities. Of them.
It had definitely occurred to her, maybe a vague notion of what it might be like. To touch, to kiss, to want ... a bolt of lust thrashed through him and knocked him on his ass.
“You’re crazy, Foreman.” It came out faint and unconvincing.
“Am I?”
“Would it work?”
“Would what work?”
Her voice was a whisper. “The cunning ploy to ask you advice about some guy?”
Sometime in the last sixty seconds, she had stepped in closer and he became vaguely aware of his thighs parting, accepting her into their embrace. An invite to get in good and tight against the part of his body that needed her so fucking badly.
“It might,” he said, warming to the hypothetical situation. “You talk about all the things you might be able to do to win him. To seduce him. To make him yours. And all this time, you’re really thinking of me. Of what might work to get my attention. And I’ll tell you here and now, Mia …”
“What?” She licked her lips and his cock turned as hard as the granite countertop he was leaning against.
“I wouldn’t need any games. No pretend crying. Or funny stories. Or wearing a Band-Aid. Or carrying a damn hat box. Because one look at you and I’d be all in. No seduction necessary.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, inky, sooty frames for those lovely eyes, ones he’d happily fall into. Drown in. Die in.
The air zipped with the energy that always existed between them, a thick, drugging force of knowing and what he now realized was recognition. Of seeing inside someone’s soul. He didn’t dare speak