Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,14

charging tiger that might pounce in a moment of brute force. He was nothing like that. And she wasn’t a member of an opposing defense to be tackled or plowed out of the way.

Still, there was something about him. She had sensed it that first night. Something that hadn’t been there in his youth. A confidence and control that allowed him to be pleasant because he would have the strength to handle any situation that did get out of control with quick, ruthless ease.

She shivered suddenly, and the shivering brought her out of her mental wanderings. She realized she was still rinsing a well-rinsed cup. “I’m inventing things!” she whispered to herself. “Wes is the nice guy he appears to be. And he likes me...”

But how did he “like” her? He was thirty-four, but he had never married. She was sure—simply from that virile masculinity that he exuded—that he had had a multitude of affairs. He was a sensual man—she was already keenly aware of his effortless magnetism. He was probably thinking of nothing more than an affair now.

“It can’t be just an affair!” Sloan spoke aloud to herself again, her tone desperate. He had to marry her!

He wanted her. Even if her instincts had been faulty, he had come right out and said as much. Yet how badly did he want her? Enough to marry her?

A flash of heat washed over her from head to toe as she thought about the strange moment when they had stood together in her bedroom doorway. Admittedly, she had felt stirrings she hadn’t experienced in over two years. Her senses had reeled more from his mere nearness than they had from any kiss by a would-be suitor.

Sloan dropped the saucer she had been holding into the dishwasher and crouched to the floor, circling her knees with her arms. She was attracted to Wesley, and the feeling was terrifying. She had to keep the upper hand; she had to be able to deny and demur all the time.

“And I will!” She fought the dizzy confusion that had assailed her like a forceful wind and stood, shaking herself. Lord! she told herself impatiently. I’m a twenty-nine-year-old widow! Not some naive half-wit! Not the type of sweet innocent to be led stupidly like a slaughtered lamb into a bed of seduction!

Semiconvinced, she straightened her shoulders unconsciously. She wasn’t exactly an overly humble fool, either. She was aware of her assets—a dancer almost had to be. She knew how to play the games of flirtation and seduction herself. Granted, she had never set out to be the vamp before, but it was a role she could—and would—assume.

This was a game she was determined to win.

Sighing, she wiped the kitchen counter and slowly folded the dish towel. There was no way she was going to be happy and at ease until...until the game was over. Her mind was waging too many wars. It was wrong...she knew it was wrong to purposely set out to marry someone for money, no matter how she swore to herself to be a good wife. She should bow out of the game before it ever began. She couldn’t begin to imagine what had possessed her in the first place to come up with such an idea.

But she had come up with it. And now it had become a dream...a dream of security that was so good she couldn’t forget it, couldn’t pretend that it had never existed.

Sloan bit into her bottom lip so hard as she walked into her bedroom to slip into her nightgown that she drew blood. There was no going back now. Wesley might not know that he was now engaged in the biggest game of his life, but he was. Another Super Bowl.

And this time, he was going to lose.

Sloan slipped between her sheets and turned off her bedside lamp. Even with her mind irrevocably made up, it was a long time before she slept. She tossed and turned and woke several times. She had been dreaming, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on just what it was in her dreams that kept awakening her.

Finally, as the pale light of dawn crept slowly through the windows telling her that her fitful night was almost at an end, she realized what was bothering her.

She was no longer seeing Terry’s thin, carefree face in her dreams. She was seeing Wesley’s. The penetrating, oceanic green eyes. The pitch black hair with the wings of silver. The hard, angular, strong planes of