“Are you going to stay out there all night, cowboy?”
Was it his imagination, or was her voice shaky?
He stepped closer and opened the door. “Just doing my nightly rounds. Saw the candles and thought maybe some of the teenagers had decided to sneak in.” Right.
“No. Just me. I’m sorry. Just couldn’t sleep.”
“Again?”
She nodded. “Seems to be a problem lately.”
“So you come up here and—do yoga?”
“Yeah.” She hugged her arms around her midsection, looking defensive at the same time the color in her cheeks made her look—aroused. “Or dance, I guess. It’s what I do at home when I can’t sleep. Benefit of living over my own studio.”
“Nope. Not a lot of call for it out this way. It’s kind of a city thing.”
She laughed, and the sound made him want to keep amusing her. “Yoga is not a city thing. Come here, cowboy.” She motioned to him with her index finger, and he felt like a sailor to the Sirens. His damn feet were walking toward the woman, without his permission.
No frigging way would he be caught dead doing yoga.
Twenty minutes later, Jess’s low voice had almost soothed him to a dead sleep as he lay on a yoga mat in the middle of the studio. The tone of her voice as she walked slowly around him was both seductive and calming, and that combination made him alternately want to sleep—and pull her down on top of him so he could kiss her silly.
She placed some sort of cushiony thing over his eyes and pressed down gently, and he felt like he could smell the north meadow. Then she ran her fingertips lightly over his shoulders, up over his scalp, and down his cheekbones. He’d be damned if she didn’t hit every damn nerve he owned along the way.
He lay still, just letting her trace his features, drinking in the scent of her body and the feel of her skirt swishing against him as she leaned to rub one shoulder, then the other. After a few minutes, he was so relaxed that he was afraid he might not be able to actually stand up.
“Still hate yoga?” Her voice was low, soft near his ear.
“Never said I hated it.”
“There was definite disdain in your voice, cowboy.”
“I was uneducated. But now I know better.” A strange feeling down low made him wonder whether she treated all of her clients like this.
“And?”
“It’s got its pluses. I’ll give you that. Do all of your clients get this sort of—attention?”
She laughed again. “No. You’re getting the super-deluxe private-edition lesson.”
“Sounds pricey.”
“Oh, it is. It’s going to cost you.”
He smiled, still only able to hear her, not see her. “What, exactly, is it going to cost me?”
“A dance.”
He pulled the cushion off from his eyes. “A dance? Haven’t you had enough dancing?”
She shook her head slowly, hands now clasped in her lap as she sat by his side. Was there fear in her eyes?
“What kind of dancing would you like to do?”
Her face flushed, and her hand fluttered to her throat. “I liked how we were dancing at Salty’s. At the end. Before we—stopped.”
He looked at her, long and hard, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that. I just—I don’t know. Didn’t know how much—Jell-O—you had on board. Didn’t want you to wake up with regrets.”
“From dancing?” Amusement started to crowd out the fear in her eyes.
“Well? Having you in my arms like that? I have to admit, I wasn’t thinking about just dancing.”
“You were just afraid of Marcy.” She smiled.
“Exactly. That’s what it was.” He rolled his eyes, standing up and reaching for her hand. “All right. I’ll dance with you, cowgirl. You have music?”
Jess nodded, reaching down to grab her phone. She tapped the screen nervously, scrolling through list after list, but never settling on anything.
“How much music do you have on that thing?”
“Kind of a lot,” she admitted, still scrolling.
He reached out a hand. “Can I see?”
“Nope.”
He laughed. “Why not?”
“Because.” She cupped her free hand over the phone so he couldn’t see the screen. “My music choices may tell you things about me that I’m not ready for you to know.”
He laughed, putting out his hand. “Let me see.”
Reluctantly, she handed over the phone, and he started scrolling through her playlists. Huh. Here he’d thought he’d find a bunch of instrumental New Age