Jo Leigh - Going For It

“I mean, if you are gay, that’s all right.”

“I’m not gay,” she said, not daring to look at him.

“Ah. So actually being in the closet wasn’t symbolic or anything.”

“No. I was…” She cast about for an explanation, any explanation. “I was looking for my cat.”

“You got a cat?” Mr. Wojewodka asked.

She whirled around to find the building superintendent at the front door. Great. A witness to her humiliation. It would be all over the building by rush hour.

“Did I say cat? I meant hat. I was looking for my hat.”

Mr. Wojewodka looked at Chase. Chase looked back.

“Which,” she said, raising her voice, “is completely beside the point. Care to tell me why you broke into my apartment?”

“I didn’t.” Chase nodded at Max. “He was nice enough to let me in.”

She frowned. “Why on earth would he do that?”

“Because I didn’t want to leave that outside.”

She turned to where he pointed—to a long, gold box perched on her couch. Flowers. It had to be. Because what else would be in a flower box?

Quelling her urge to race over and rip off the top of the box, she faced Chase again. “Sometimes when a person doesn’t answer the door, there’s a reason.”

“Right. I should have figured you were locked in the closet.”

“I wasn’t.”

His right brow rose.

“It doesn’t matter where I was, or what I was doing. My home should be private.” She marched over to the door and Max, her bare feet slapping on the hard wood. “Mr. Wojewodka, I’m surprised at you.”

He had the decency to look embarrassed as he leaned toward her. “Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, I do. Do you?”

“Yeah, sure. He’s the top-seeded race-car driver in America. In the world.”

“And this makes him able to enter any apartment he wishes?”

“He was your friend. I did him a favor.”

“He’s not my friend.”

“Right,” Chase agreed. “I’m just supposed to seduce her. That’s all.”

Jamie winced. “About that…”

Chase moved over to the couch. It was a normal couch, but when he sat down it looked very small. She’d gotten it at an estate sale four years ago, along with the matching wing chair. She’d had them reupholstered in a cheery floral print, which Chase’s presence also changed. She’d never realized the material was so feminine.

“About last night—” she continued.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“What? I wasn’t going to.”

“Oh, okay.” He smiled at her, and his teeth were slightly crooked, which for some reason made him even sexier. His eyes were perfect and so was his hair and his chest. The fact that his nose was a little crooked didn’t detract from his face. On the contrary, like the small flaw of his teeth, it made him look more ruggedly handsome than if it had been straight.

“What do you mean, apologize?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I just figured, with you being in that bind and with me volunteering to help you out…”

“I wasn’t the one who asked you to play this game. That was Whittaker, remember?”

He nodded. “She would have done it, you know.”

“Done what?”

“She would have smeared your reputation, made sure there was plenty of bad press about you. She doesn’t much care for you.”

Jamie’s hands fell to her sides. “Why? I never did anything to her.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t get it. You’re too smart to play dumb.”

“Oh, you think she hates me because I’m successful? Because people listen to me?”

“That. And the other.”

She wasn’t about to ask what he meant. This whole conversation was going poorly, and the smart thing to do would be to stop right here, right now, and get Chase and his number-one fan the hell out of here.

She put her hands on her hips and opened her mouth to tell him to leave, but before the words came out, his gaze moved from her face to her chest. As he blatantly stared, his face changed. He smiled. Devilish, wicked, hungry. She felt her nipples harden and poke at her flimsy T-shirt.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice low and seductive.

She turned away, crossing her arms once more. “Please leave. And take the box with you.”

Max stepped outside the door, leaving her with Chase. She wanted him gone, too, even as his compliment swirled inside her head. He thought she was beautiful. It wasn’t that she saw herself as ugly…but beautiful? That wasn’t what mattered about her. She was smart, and she was ambitious, and she was able to talk to people. She’d never gone after beauty. Oh, she’d had compliments before, but as her mother was so fond of saying, beauty was the shallow refuge of incompetence.

He came up behind her, and her heart beat so hard she thought it might burst. When his hand touched her shoulder, her knees weakened and she forgot how to breathe.

It was nuts. Crazy. Why was she feeling like this? Chase was just a man. No big deal.

He turned her around until she faced him. Her arms were still covering her breasts, but from the way he looked at her, it was too little, too late. He’d seen her reaction. She closed her eyes.

“Jamie.”

She shook her head. “Please, go.”

“Jamie, look at me.”

She didn’t want to. But she couldn’t help it. Her eyes opened to find him closer still, close enough for her to see the gold in his dark brown eyes.

“I was going to call it off,” he whispered. “Then I started thinking about you. By the time I got here, I’d changed my mind.”

“Why?”

He smiled, and her tummy got tight with a wave of desire. “There’s something about you.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when I find out.”

“You don’t have to. The hell with Whittaker and her magazine. I don’t care what she says about me.”

“Neither do I. But I do want to spend the next two weeks getting to know you, magazine or no magazine.”

“I don’t see why. You’re a big-shot racing guy. You date movie stars. You live a different kind of life than me. Frankly, I’d bore you silly.”

“You let me be the judge of that.”

“What if I don’t want to see you?”

He leaned forward until their lips almost touched, pausing for an instant, and then he captured her lower lip between his front teeth. A second later, he let her go, only to steal her breath with a kiss, his soft lips on hers, his tongue teasing her mouth open. Her eyes fluttered closed and her arms moved from her chest to his back. With gentle pressure, he rubbed his chest against hers, sweeping against her nipples. Pleasure and heat flowed from her breasts down to her stomach, and then lower still. She squeezed her thigh muscles, but the feeling didn’t go away.

He did something terribly wicked with his tongue, thrusting it inside her, then pulling back, as if showing her what he wanted to do to her body. Goose bumps covered her flesh as vivid pictures came to mind. Him, naked—oh lordy—thrusting into her, making her scream.

She whimpered. He moved his lips from her mouth to her ear. “I’m going to explore every inch of you, Jamie,” he whispered, his hot breath making her shiver. “I’m going to know you better than you know yourself. And I’m going to give you pleasure you’ve never even dreamed of.”

Then he stepped away, and, before she could catch her breath, she heard the front door close.

When she got it together enough to walk, she went to the couch and took off the top of the gold box. Two dozen red roses were flared beautifully, the long stems stripped of any thorns. She picked up the small card lying to the side of the flowers: “Dear Jamie, I dreamed about us. You had roses. See you tonight, Chase.”