An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,36

from the carrier and holding it out.

She was forced to close her fingers over it. "Thank you. I, well, I..."

A redwood trellis above them created diamond-shaped patches of shade, and Johnny leaned against one of its supports to sip from his own coffee. "We've got to do something about that."

But there wasn't going to be any "we," she knew, because this property had once belonged to Giovanni Martelli, a man the Carusos were rumored to have killed in retaliation for her father's murder.

"Listen, Johnny. There's something I should have told you last night..." He was digging in a brown bag centered on the carrier and she let her voice die out as she stared at the shock of golden hair falling over his forehead. Last night she'd been half-asleep during the first moments of the call. Then, later, when she should have told him she couldn't take the job, she hadn't wanted to.

She'd wanted to see him one more time. One last time. That perfect hair, that rangy yet elegant body, those long, strong fingers that had touched her face and cupped her cheek, the mouth that had made her want to strip off her clothes and her common sense to let all her badness out.

Her chest rose on a deep breath, and then she forced open her mouth again. "Johnny, the fact is, I can't - "

He pushed a morsel of something from the bag between her lips.

" - mmf." The taste of buttermilk and cinnamon melted against her tongue, derailing her train of thought. It was good. It was so good. She swallowed, the sweetness conga-dancing like a train of wanton women through her system. "What is that?"

"Cinnamon scone." He pinched off another piece and held it out to her.

"No." She stumbled back, then quickly righted herself, aware of the pool just behind her. 'Thank you, but no. I don't eat sugar."

"No sugar?'

"As little as possible." Tea brushed at her tan dress, a bias-cut sheath with a flaring skirt that fell just below her knees, to make sure crumbs weren't clinging. No sense in setting up an opportunity for a traitorous wet fingertip to go looking for them later.

Johnny was staring at her, golden eyebrows raised, still holding the piece of scone between his fingers.

"What?" she asked.

"I had no idea it was this bad," he said, frowning.

"This bad? This bad how?" She wanted to step back again, but there was that pool and she wasn't going to sabotage her professional image this time by falling into it. "What?"

He seemed to shrug off the thought. "Never mind."

Oh, yeah, as if she could let it go now. "Tell me. What? What's bad?"

"This is more than a typical good-girl thing, Tea. This is some serious self-denial."

She made a face at him and his diagnosis. "Oh, come on. It's watching my weight."

"No." He shook his head. "It's more. You don't allow yourself any of the sweet things in life. Now why is that?"

He had stepped closer to her. Uncomfortably close. Hadn't he?

Because she could see the gray pinwheels in his blue eyes and the way the sun had tipped the very ends of his hair an almost baby-blond. When she took a quick breath, over the roasty scent of Starbucks she smelled a faint tang of chlorine. "You've been swimming."

"Thirty laps in the hotel pool. But you're avoiding the question."

Because she should be avoiding him, and avoiding thinking of his long body stroking through the water, shoulders rearing up, hair slicked back to expose all the masculine angles of his face.

I'd like to back you into that pool and dive in after. Right here, right now. Both of us wet. You getting wetter.

At that imaginary Johnny-voice in her head, her gaze jumped to his face. He was looking down at her, his expression bemused. "What are you thinking now?" he asked.

Not what he was really thinking, was it? Of course not.

Blame it on the swimming. She'd had a thing for swimmers since the last summer Olympics. To be truthful, she'd had a thing for the jock Johnnys of the world since she was twelve years old and dreamed of class rings and homecoming dances to escape the reality of missing fathers and FBI raids.

"Tea?"

"This coffee is making me hot." She fanned herself with her free hand.

He lifted a brow and one corner of his mouth turned up. "Tea, Tea, Tea... "

Just the way he was saying her name, and smiling, made her want to run screaming for safety. Could he hear her