Wrangling the Redhead - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,60

neck and her cheeks. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

And her mouth, ah, that mouth was pure temptation. He grew hard just thinking about its clever, wicked ways. As he studied her, her lips curved slowly and he realized she was staring at him with amusement.

“What?”

“That’s what I should be asking you,” she said. “You were studying me as if I were some sort of exotic specimen you had to report on.”

“You are, you know. You’re the most exotic creature I’ve ever met. You’re sexy and mysterious and sometimes I have to wonder if I even know you at all.”

Something that struck him as alarm flared briefly in her eyes, but was gone in a heartbeat. He couldn’t be sure he’d even seen it at all.

“Of course you know me,” she said, then gave him a dazzling smile. “Pretty much every inch of me, in fact.”

“I’m talking about more than sex,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, her expression cautious. “What did you want to know?”

Everything, he thought with a neediness that surprised him. He wanted to know everything about her childhood, about her years in California, what kind of foods she liked, what her favorite color was. It sounded silly when he put it that way, but it was true. He wanted to know Lauren inside out, the way she seemed to know and understand him. She had gotten him to reveal secrets he’d never shared with another living soul, and she seemed able to see exactly how his past had affected the man he’d become, but he knew none of the same sort of secrets from her past. Had she deliberately kept them hidden, or had he simply never asked?

“Let’s start with something simple,” he said slowly, his gaze locked on her expressive face. “Do you realize that never once in all these weeks have you told me your last name?”

This time there was no mistaking the panic that flashed in her eyes, even though, once again, she covered it almost instantly. He watched and waited, growing increasingly flustered when she continued to hesitate. What was the big deal about a last name? Most people who dated shared that much from their first meeting.

Finally, the casual note in her voice sounding forced, she said, “It’s Winters, Lauren Winters.”

“You said that as if there was some sort of secret about it,” he said, completely baffled by her uneasy reaction.

“No, of course not,” she said hurriedly. “I guess I hadn’t realized I’d never told you or that you hadn’t heard it from Grady or Karen. Funny how you can completely forget about something like that if it’s not out there at the very beginning, isn’t it? How embarrassing to think we’ve slept together and you didn’t even know who I was.”

She was babbling. Wade had never seen her react so nervously…and to what? He’d just asked her last name. Considering the fact that they’d shared a bed, this hardly seemed important. He was missing something here, something important, but maybe it could wait for a moment when she was less edgy. Her mellow mood of a few minutes ago had certainly vanished.

“Come on over here, Lauren Winters,” he coaxed. “Let’s get reacquainted.”

The full-fledged smile she bestowed on him was worth sacrificing a few more probing questions. She slipped into his lap and settled her head on his shoulder with a contented sigh.

“This is lovely,” she murmured.

It was, Wade thought. More than lovely, in fact. It was just about perfect. If only he didn’t have this increasingly sick sensation in the pit of his stomach that it was all going to blow up in his face.

Lauren had thought for a few minutes that her heart was going to leap straight out of her chest. When Wade had pressed her to reveal her last name, she had been consumed by a terrible sense of dread. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed to say it aloud, to force a nonchalant tone into her voice.

Only when it had become clear that the name meant nothing to him had she been able to breathe again. Only then had her heartbeat returned to normal. Obviously Wade didn’t follow movies or the gossip about celebrities that had been a mainstay of her life for so many years. She had forgotten that there were people in the world to whom all of that meant less than nothing.

Why, then, hadn’t she told him the rest? Maybe he wouldn’t have realized just what