Serena Bell - Hot and Bothered

Still, if Mark needed his buttons checked, Haven would be willing to help out. In fact, she might be willing to go to the mud pit with Judy for the privilege. And Haven didn’t do muddy, any more than she did outdoorsy or sleep-in-a-big-T-shirt or just have a few people over and I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean the house .

Judy shamelessly ran her hand over Mark’s butt—was that really necessary?—to emphasize the clean fit of the charcoal-gray dress pants. That butt was a mighty fine specimen, Haven mused, giving up on not having an opinion. It was firm and high and tight and round and she bet he knew how to use it to great advantage as leverage for—

“Nice line in front, too.” All three of them stared at Mark’s crotch in the mirror. Whatever Mark was packing under there was evident even under the “nice line” of expensive dress slacks. She briefly wondered whether it was arousing to have them both staring at his endowment like that. It would be pretty embarrassing to get an erection right now. Wouldn’t it?

She raised her gaze from the front of his pants and found herself staring into Mark’s eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she watched her own face turn the same flaming pink as her nail polish. Heat swept through her, tightening her nipples and pooling between her legs. Mark’s dimples deepened, even though his mouth didn’t quite break into a full smile.

She wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die of frustrated desire before the shopping session was over.

As much as she wanted to deny it, her body had decided this was foreplay.

She’d never been attracted to a client before. Never. She’d done image makeovers on male clients, and she’d sat in Judy’s upholstered seat while Judy ran her hands over different sets of equally impressive shoulders, pecs and abs. Mark Webster should not have been any different, should not have been turning Haven’s excellent brain to mush.

“I’m going to get some water,” she said, and for that, she got a full-on Mark grin. It was a startling, marvelous thing, bright and white and all the way into his eyes, and she ran the hell out of that dressing area.

For the rest of the fitting, she stood at the far edge of the room, out of his sight in the mirror. He went through plain white T-shirts, a new, unscuffed leather bomber and several blazers and jackets. He tried on baseball jerseys and printed T’s, fine-gauge sweaters and casual button-down shirts, ties, a pair of suspenders, new gym clothes.

He looked good in all of them. He looked as though they’d been made for him, as though he’d been sculpted to fill them perfectly.

Haven was fatigued from the effort of watching as Judy checked the fit of a raglan sleeve over Mark’s substantial biceps, knelt at his feet to make sure the trousers broke over expensive Italian leather shoes the way she wanted them to and—this was the final insult—ruffled his hair as she placed a fedora in a ridiculously sexy tilt over one gray-blue eye .

Haven’s only hope was that Saturday night with Jewelry Marketing Guy would turn out better than the last six or eight dates. Maybe Jewelry Marketing Guy would be so smart, so thoughtful, so interesting, so brimming with pheromones that she would want to sleep with him on the first date. Then she wouldn’t need to imagine stripping Mark out of his formfitting new wardrobe, thrusting her fingers into his thick, scrumptious hair and pressing her mouth—actually, her whole freaking naked body—against his.

“Do I have to wear this stuff all the time?” Mark turned to ask her the question. Sullenly.

It was probably a good thing that he was still a pain in the ass. A hot, trouble-making, pain in the ass.

“Not when you’re locked in your own apartment.”

He sighed. “I hate you.”

His eyes told her he didn’t.

“I’ll wear this home,” he told Judy. He was in a gorgeous fine-knit striped V-neck sweater and butt-snugging jeans. Haven wanted to beg him not to wear those clothes out of the store. To have mercy.

He went to the men’s room while Haven paid for his things. She’d bill the whole lot back to Jimmy, and Jimmy would take it out of Mark’s tour earnings. God forbid Mark screw up again, because Haven had no idea who’d foot the bill if he torpedoed his chance to be part of the tour.

Judy handed Haven Mark’s shopping bags, plus an unmarked plastic bag. “The clothes he wore in here,” Judy said. “Unless you want me to just throw them in the trash right now. Or burn them.”

Haven took the bags. She felt a peculiar tenderness for the ratty jeans and the tortured jacket, and on top of that she had a totally perverted desire to pull out the T-shirt and see if she could detect Mark’s scent in it. Not the expensive hair-care products and fabric sizing from today, but the real Mark smell of coconut, leather and clean male sweat.

“Nah,” she told Judy. “I’ll give it to Goodwill.”

“They might not want it. That jacket—”

“I know,” Haven said fervently.

While she waited for Mark, she tucked the plastic bag of his clothes into one of the shopping bags, where it couldn’t tempt her.

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