her, and she gave a little start, ashamed of her stare.
But why should she be? It was only nature, she told herself, swallowing hard. Nature's insidious yet undeniable influence.
It was pure biology and not her fault that she'd been wired at the cellular level to feel a physical attraction to a man who looked prepared to protect her and her offspring. As a matter of fact, it was no different from the gimme-gimme desire she felt looking at a particularly scrumptious pair of stilettos. Nature had set up that hankering too. Obviously, if you were ready to slide your feet into a pair of five-inch patent leather high heels, you weren't worrying about the tribe from down the valley sending out their warriors to rape and pillage you and yours.
As she walked toward him, her pulse beating like a wild thing at her throat, she told herself it was exactly the same way she felt walking into the Neiman Marcus shoe department.
He had dark gold eyebrows and blue eyes, so she figured he was a blond like his brother, but his hairstyle - or lack thereof, rather - suited him. Here I am, his shaved head announced. This is what I am. Nothing soft. Hard to the bone.
A couple feet away from him, she stopped. "Reporting for duty, sir," she said, lifting her hand in a crisp salute.
He grunted.
Desiree's arm dropped. See, that just went to prove she didn't have any kind of dangerous attachment to him beyond the biology thing. How could she fall for a man who grunted?
All that over-the-top, tough-guy stuff was not for her. Plenty of her boarding schoolmates had harbored sheikh fantasies, but she knew secondhand - as a child her mother had refused to allow her to set foot in her father's country, and apparently he didn't care enough about his daughter meeting his family to insist - what a culture clash and soul smother a macho man would be in real life.
From the beginning she'd decided she didn't want some swashbuckling warrior who would die before acknowledging a softer side. So her ideal mate had always been cut from different cloth. A poet, an artist, a teacher.
Someone tender and sensitive who could be counted upon to hold her heart in the soft cage of his gentle hands forever.
Troy pulled a pair of squishy pieces of neon foam out of his ears and frowned up at the speakers before turning that same expression on Desiree. "What did you say?"
Her hand snapped up again. "Reporting for duty, sir."
"Your salute sucks." He shoved the earplugs in the front pocket of his jeans and then reached over with his callused hand to adjust the cant of her fingers, his touch hard and impersonal.
Yet she felt it in some very personal places. She dropped her arm again and rubbed her palm on her thigh, ignoring the fluttering in her belly.
Troy's gaze followed the movement, lingering on her jeans for a moment before trailing upward again. Her knit camisole had ridden high on her belly, but her skin was still covered by her gauzy overblouse. Still, when he stared at the large amber drop that was hanging from a long gold chain and bumping against her belly button, the jewel seemed to heat up, almost burning her skin.
Just when she thought she'd have to grab it to put out the fire, he turned away. "Get the rest of the chairs to the floor," he ground out, then marched off.
He left her alone for the first couple of hours as she tried making herself useful, unsure what her exact job description might be. But he must have been keeping a pretty close watch on her, because when this one skinny yucktard in saggy jeans and a beanie caught her bending over and thought it was an invitation for him to slide his hand over her rear cheek and then down along the inside of her thigh - well, she'd never seen a big man move so fast. The skinny yucktard moved pretty quick too. One moment he was standing there grinning like a twelve-year-old, the next he was sailing through the front door like a grown man getting his ass kicked.
Desiree fluttered her eyelashes at Troy and clasped her hands together over her heart. "My hero," she cooed.
He shook his head, eyeing her with something that bordered on distaste. "My mistake."
After that incident, Troy took to barking orders at her.
"Bus that four-top in the corner." She figured out that "bus"