Emma Darcy: The Blind-Date Bride

Heat whooshed up her neck and into her cheeks as sexual electricity crackled from him and zipped into her bloodstream. Catherine was appalled at herself. She never blushed. She might flush in anger, but blushing belonged to adolescence and she was way past that. A sophisticated career woman did not blush.

‘You’re not exactly harmless yourself,’ she retorted defensively, only realising it was an admission of the attraction he exerted after she had spoken. Not that it mattered. He knew anyway. Impossible for him not to be aware of his effect on women, just as she was aware that many men fancied her.

He shrugged. ‘Sorry if I gave offence. This is my week off from being the Zack Freeman. In fact, it’s my last night off. I have to go back to being him tomorrow.’

‘You don’t like being him?’ Was being so successful such a burden?

‘It has its rewards and I’m not about to give them up,’ he stated, determination glinting in his eyes. ‘But there’s a time and place for everything.’

And it was clear he wouldn’t enjoy being with some star-struck woman who raved on about what he’d achieved or tried to ferret out the key to his meteroric rise to fame in his field.

‘So what would you like tonight to be?’ Catherine asked, somewhat bemused by his wish to set aside the recognition that most men’s egos would demand.

He paused to consider. His eyes beamed a speculative challenge as he answered, ‘Whatever two strangers want to make of it.’

‘Without a tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow I’m gone.’

Well, that was laying it on the line. No future with Zack Freeman. Not that she had had time to even think of one or consider whether it might be desirable.

‘Then I’ll just take this one night experience with the man behind the name,’ she countered, pride insisting that his schedule did not affect her expectations from this blind date, which had been zero before she met him anyway.

Sexual invitation simmered back at her. ‘I wonder if you will.’

She hadn’t meant a one-night stand. Another wretched blush goaded her into being uncharacteristically provocative. ‘You win some. You lose some.’ It was a warning not to assume anything.

He grinned. ‘The game is afoot. And you can’t cut and run because your sister is watching and she’ll kill you if you do.’

She laughed, trying to lighten the effect of a charge of nervous excitement. ‘You think I’m trapped?’

‘Why did you come?’

‘To please Livvy. It’s her birthday.’

‘Then you have a giving nature. That’s a trap in itself, Catherine.’

‘Oh, the giving only goes so far.’

‘What would you take, given the chance?’

‘That’s a big question.’

‘And you don’t intend to answer it yet.’

‘That would spoil the game.’

He laughed, entirely relaxed now and enjoying the flirtation he’d fired up and was stoking with every look and word. ‘I guess we’d better join Livvy and Pete. They’re waiting for us on the steps.’

So they were, paused halfway up the flight of steps to the restaurant and viewing her and Zack with an air of smug satisfaction—the successful matchmakers congratulating themselves on getting it right!

Except this blind date wasn’t going beyond whatever happened tonight.

Remember that, Catherine sternly told herself as she walked beside the man who had every nerve in her body agitated, her heart thumping, her mind bombarded with tempting fantasies.

There is no tomorrow, she recited, meaning it as a sobering caution to be sensible. Yet somehow it had the perverse effect of inciting a sense of wild recklessness—a desire to take what she could of Zack Freeman while she could. To have him. All he’d give her. If only for one night.

SHE had ordered the three scoops of different ice-creams for dessert and was tasting them each in turn, sliding the loaded spoon between her lips, consciously testing the flavour on her tongue. Zack found the action so sensual, his whole body was tightening up. Catherine Trent was one hell of a sexy woman and the urge to race her off into the night and ravage her from head to toe had a powerful grip on him.

He wrenched his gaze away from her mouth and turned it out to sea. Their table was on the open veranda that ran the length of the restaurant and he’d taken refuge in the view several times tonight, needing to cool the desire that kept plaguing him. Was she as hot for him as he was for her? Would she go for it, given the limitation he’d stipulated?

One night…

Problem was, he might end up wanting more and that would mess him up. She was like a fever in his blood and he needed a cool head once he hit Los Angeles. It was the wrong time to meet a woman like Catherine Trent. She appealed to him on too many levels. He liked the way her mind worked, liked talking with her, liked having her across the table from him, watching her face, the expressions in her fascinating eyes, her body language.

She wasn’t a stranger anymore, though he’d deliberately refrained from asking about her life, keeping their dinner conversation to very general topics. She’d still got to him, more than he recalled any other woman ever doing.

Better to let her go, he told himself. What had she said…win some, lose some? He’d never liked losing, but he had a lot at stake right now. Winning what he planned to win in L.A. was more important than losing out on a night of sex which could get him too involved with this woman.

‘Do you think a full moon really does affect people?’

There was a full moon tonight, big and white, hanging in the sky where he had turned his gaze, but he hadn’t been looking at it. Catherine’s question drew an instant reply from Livvy who’d been bubbling with high spirits all evening.

‘Course it does. The word, lunatic didn’t evolve from nothing.’

‘Historically it is associated with madness. And romance,’ Pete chimed in.

‘Which could be considered a form of madness,’ Zack observed dryly, looking back at Catherine, hoping she wasn’t nursing romantic thoughts about him.

It simply wasn’t on.

Yet the pull of her attraction was very strong.

‘I was just wondering…’ The musing little smile on her lips had his gut contracting with the desire to kiss her. ‘…how connected are we to the physical world? We get irritated when it’s windy. Sunshine tends to make us smile. The moon regulates the tides, so when it’s at full strength like this, does it tug at things in us, too?’

Was she wanting an explanation for what she felt with him?

An excuse for it?

Something outside herself so she couldn’t be blamed for wanting what he wanted, too?

‘You mean like amplifying the feelings we have,’ Livvy said speculatively. ‘Making mad people even madder.’

‘Swelling the tides of passion,’ Pete rolled out, relishing that idea and proceeding to banter with Livvy about possible lunar effects on human behaviour.

‘Don’t forget animals,’ Zack inserted after a while. ‘Why do wolves howl at a full moon?’

‘Because they prefer dark nights?’ Catherine suggested, looking at him with her head on a tilt as though mentally likening him to a wolf who prowled dark places.

‘Or maybe it’s part of the mating game,’ he couldn’t resist saying.

Her thick lashes lowered, veiling the expression in her eyes, though not before he glimpsed a vulnerability to the mating they could share.

Temptation bit into his resolution to let her go.

She wanted him. He wanted her. Where was the harm in a one-night stand? It wasn’t as though she was an inexperienced woman. Late twenties, he guessed, and given her face and figure, had probably been fending off or taking on guys since her mid-teens.