Jameson (In the Company of Snipers #22) - Irish Winters Page 0,27
her blood.
“Show you w-w-what?” she whispered, her heart beating in her chest like a kid’s pajama-clad feet pounded on Christmas morning when he ran downstairs to see what Santa left.
That same adorable smile quirked Jameson’s manly lips, lips she wanted to touch and taste and nibble. “Where do you keep my size shirts?”
‘Who needs a shirt?’ her new-found wicked imagination asked.
Maddie could only see her wild-eyed reflection in his dark, round lenses. The woman looking back at her was still a timid girl with stage fright and no courage. Yet her fingers clenched, wanting to lift those dark glasses off the expertly carved bridge of this man’s perfect nose. To smooth the errant chunk of black hair off a forehead that lined with gentle wrinkles when he smiled. To look into his eyes and truly see him. Were a blind man’s eyes still the windows to his soul? She wanted to know.
Yet she wouldn’t, so she didn’t. Her life was already complicated, and the last thing Jameson needed on his first day at work was trouble. Taking his hand resolutely, she steered him a full step backward and to his right.
“H-here,” she said, her voice lost and her throat dry for some reason. “This bin should fit you.”
“But I don’t want to wear a bin,” he told her, his voice so damned low and sweet and adorable that she wanted to faint in his arms.
But this was their place of employment, and this wasn’t a hook-up. Okay then. Her lungs started working again. She sucked in a deep breath and muttered, “Smart ass. Bins are in. Didn’t you know? It’s all the rage. Wear one on your head or go without. Be a has-been. It’s all the same to me.”
Just as quickly as she’d found her breath, she lost it again.
Jameson had set his cane against the rack and jerked his dress shirt out of his slacks. He’d started unbuttoning it and—Good God!
Maddie closed her eyes. Then opened them. Then shut them again. But why not look? He didn’t seem embarrassed or shy being bare-chested, and he didn’t know she was staring goo-goo-eyed at his physique, and who else would know she was staring at a lean-muscled god with just the right dusting of dark, crisp, chest hairs sprinkled over two manly pecs that begged to be petted and nuzzled and—?
No. Just no. I’d never do something like that! Daring girls reached out and touched half-naked men. Sassy, full of life, courageous, risk-taking girls grabbed onto guys like Jameson. Not her. Not ever. But if she were that kind of woman…
There were no words to describe the capricious winds of fate that had put her with this man in this room today. He’d stripped his dress shirt off, then faced her. The shirt now lay over the bin from which he’d removed one folded black TEAM polo shirt. It hung off the ends of his long, elegant but manly fingers. Trim cuticles and neatly trimmed nails led to strong, tanned arms covered with dark hairs that lay in one direction, as if they’d been combed. Purpled veins that declared this man worked out, ran over his hands and inside his arms. From there, her eyes strayed to his sharply defined biceps, relaxed now, but obviously capable of more than just lying beneath a dress shirt.
A neat trail of dark hairs trailed from his navel to a simple square belt buckle, and for some crazy reason, Maddie licked her lips at the way his slacks fit his thighs, his long legs. She couldn’t have quit looking if the earth ended. He was too much. So much. Smooth, tanned muscular shoulders. Matching collarbones that came together in a sexy hollow that begged for her nose or her lips or her—
“Tags?” he asked, his head cocked again in that endearing way she was beginning to like.
For the first time, Maddie wondered if he was listening to the wild thrumming throughout her body. Could he feel her temperature rising from all her deliciously wicked thoughts? Did he know what she was thinking? What he was doing to her? What she wanted to do to him?
Heated waves coursed up her neck and over her cheeks. “N-n-no price tags,” she breathed, her voice gone as wispy and limp as a spring breeze.
“Well, then…” He stood there stock still. His magnificent chest as unmoving and solid as stone. Warm stone. Granite she wanted to touch.
He’d done it again. He was studying her in his quiet, psychic way.