real, desirable woman again. For the part of her that knew this was the man who could make that happen.
His fingers tightened on her hand. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth, and it started to tingle too. Her heart pounded harder, reminding her that Tanner Hart was no boy.
And that in the war between the sexes, she'd just surrendered all her weapons.
FROM THE DESK OF HANNAH DAVIS
Things I Hate about New year's:
Gym overcrowded with new members who won't make it through March.
Chapter 13
Desiree discovered that even sleepy Coronado could suffer from traffic jams. She tried swallowing her impatience and waited out the delay, drumming the heel of her hand on her steering wheel in time to Patti LaBelle's "New Attitude." That's what she needed, she decided, a fresh way of dealing with Troy and the always-on-his-sleeve disapproval.
She turned her wrist to check her Tiffany watch and muttered a pithy French curse as she noted the time. Let's get this show on the road, she mind-ordered the backup of cars in front of her.
To night, she couldn't be late.
She couldn't screw up the job.
She refused to give Troy reason to toss her out on her ear.
The traffic cleared and she jumped on the accelerator, the back end of her BMW wiggling like perhaps she should do to night in her just-like-lipo jeans. Troy was a man, wasn't he? Though he might dislike her personally, if she twitched her butt enough times, surely she could make him sweat. It would be a sweet little payback for all the times he'd made her do the same.
But was that smart? she questioned herself, pulling into the parking lot at Hart's. Frowning, she steered her car to a far space, leaving free the convenient up-front ones for the customers. Then she slid out of the seat, her frown going to a grimace as tight denim adjusted to her new upright position.
She'd chosen to wear these pants as part of some half-thought-through Make Troy Crazy plan, but again she had to wonder.
It was obvious he already considered her an overprivileged, underscrupled, spoiled sexpot. Maybe she should keep her butt-wiggling to a minimum. Because if she could change the way he thought about her, then maybe, just maybe...
She could change the way she thought about him.
Which was often. In terms that had started her worrying she'd inherited more from her man-manic mother than long legs and a love of lipstick.
Checking her watch again, Desiree hurried to the front door of the bar. Her hand touching the cool metal, she paused, second-guessing once again. Maybe she should forget all about this. She could pack her clothes and her iPod, tuck her laptop under her arm, and be off to...where?
Despite the nomadic DNA downloaded on her paternal side, she didn't really like moving from place to place. And she didn't have that many places she was free to explore anyway, what with her mother flitting between Chicago and New York, and her father having staked out Europe and the Middle East.
In practical terms, that left Desiree with the western half of the United States, which meant she might as well stay here. In Coronado and with her new employment, for the first time since college graduation two and a half years before, at least she had a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Okay, so that reason took her back to Troy again, but she pushed the worry out of her mind and pulled the door open.
Music was already blasting from the speakers hung throughout the large space. A heavy-on-electric-guitar, light-on-melody rock screech had a guy behind the bar head-banging the oxygen around him. Troy was at the far end of the room, his back to her as he lifted chairs off the tabletops and positioned them onto the floor without any visible effort.
Thanks to her occasional surf-stalking, she could easily imagine the bunch and pull of every muscle underneath his faded T-shirt. He was six-five, and she had no idea how many pounds it required to create such a broad and rippled physique. As usual, she couldn't tear her gaze away - and she didn't want to. Instead she let it run over him, warm and liquidy like she was starting to feel inside, moving from his shaved head to his feet and then back up again, absorbing each detail from the heels of his work boots, to his long calves, to his tight butt, to his wide shoulders.
Without warning, he turned, catching