Taryn Leigh Taylor - Kiss And Makeup

“Yeah, well, it’s sexier than athlete’s foot.”

“Amen, brother.” She reached out to give him a high-five before quickly pulling on the other sock. She closed up her suitcase. “Okay, now that that’s taken care of, on to more important things, like food.”

He reached over to the nightstand and dumped the contents of the plastic ice bucket on the bed between them. An avalanche of candy spilled across the sheet. “Dinner is served.”

“Whoa. What’d you do? Knock over a vending machine?”

“I wasn’t sure what you’d be in the mood for—salty, sweet, stale ,” he offered, rapping a rock-hard, prepackaged Danish against the headboard with a disconcerting tap , tap , tap , “or all of the above—so I got one of everything.” He lobbed the Danish at the trash bin on the floor beside the television stand. It landed inside the plastic container with a heavy thud .

She did that cute nose-scrunch thing again as she deliberated over the colorfully-wrapped mound of sucrose and diabetes. “SunChips, Skittles, Aero Peppermint. And I’m taking the cherry Life Savers,” she decided, grabbing each of her picks from the junk-food dog pile as she named them. “You know, in case of emergency.”

Ben nodded contemplatively, undoing the buttons at his wrists. “Those are some bold choices, Masterson.” He rolled up his shirtsleeves in preparation for his own selection process. “Personally, I’m more of a traditionalist. I’m going for the Doritos with a side of Mike and Ike, Jolly Ranchers to cleanse my palate, and Twix for dessert. You want to split the pretzels as an appetizer?” he asked, ripping into them and holding the miniature bag in her direction.

“Why not?” Instead of taking one pretzel, though, she took a handful, and Ben liked that about her. She balanced them in a precise stack on her knee. “So does the wife know you leave the ring off while you’re away on business so you can lure pajama-clad strangers into sharing hotel-bed dinners?” she asked, crunching into a pretzel.

Ben shook his head. “Single and loving it.”

Chloe’s laugh was smug. “There’s a shocker.”

“So what about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Well, I know you’re a Masterson by birth because on the plane you said there was no Mr., but that still leaves plenty of options.”

She shook her head as she started on the SunChips. “Also single. Mostly loving it, except when I’m on the phone with my mother, dodging the grandkid discussion. I did, though. Have a boyfriend. We broke up about five months ago. He cheated on me,” she explained, answering his unspoken question. “A couple of times, actually. It was all very cliché. I have horrible taste in men. Spider and I were a mistake right from the beginning.”

Ben choked on his pretzel. “You dated a guy named Spider?”

Chloe nodded.

“Wow. Was he a professional wrestler?”

“No.”

“Did he have superpowers?”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “He owned a tattoo parlor.”

“That was going to be my next guess.” The chip she hurled in his direction bounced off his chest and landed on the sheets. “So where did you meet Spider ? Intermission at La Bohème ? Church book club?”

“I met him when he gave me these.” She set her chips on the pillow and reclined, tugging the waistband of her shorts down enough to reveal a pair of small birds etched just inside her hip bones, one on either side of her abdomen.

Ben almost swallowed his tongue. Christ, he ached to touch her. His hands flexed involuntarily, resulting in the decapitation of several pretzels unfortunate enough to be left in the bag he was holding. He set it on the mattress beside him and took a deep, steadying breath. And he’d thought the star on her arm was haunting him.

“Which is kind of ironic when you think about it,” she continued, oblivious to his slack-jawed appreciation of her body, “because swallows mate for life.” She snapped the elastic back into place and, instead of resuming her sitting position, she rolled onto her tummy.

Is she commando under those shorts?

“Anyway,” said Chloe, reaching toward the pillow to retrieve her dinner as though her extreme hotness hadn’t just evaporated every speck of moisture in his mouth, “I finally kicked his ass to the curb when I walked in on him and his latest conquest christening the kitchen table I paid for. And the rest, as they say, is history. How about you?”

Ben managed to work up enough spit to moisten his tongue. “I have never dated a guy named Spider.”

“C’mon, Ben. I showed you mine.” Chloe fished the last chip from the bag, crumpled the empty packaging in her fist and tossed it awkwardly over her shoulder in the direction of the garbage can. It hit the end of the bed and rolled onto the navy carpet. “Spill it. How did your last relationship go down in flames?”

Melanie’s face flashed in front of his eyes. He felt like a dick for giving Chloe a hard time. He was the king of clichés.

The boss’s daughter. The heirloom ring. The proposal eclipsed soon after by her announcement that she was leaving him. For some douchebag lawyer who was her father’s age and had enough money to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed. They’d walked down the aisle six months after she’d ditched his ass. They’d recently celebrated a year’s worth of wedded bliss.

Ben shook off the humiliating memory.

“Nothing to tell.” Ben poured some M&M’s into the palm of his hand and held them in Chloe’s direction.

“Love ’em and leave ’em, huh?” she ventured, selecting the three red ones from the mix and eating them simultaneously.

Ben transferred the remaining candies from his palm to his mouth and gave her a “whatcha gonna do?” shrug. “What can I say, Chloe? I’m a lone wolf. I don’t play by society’s rules.”

Smiling, Chloe tore open her Skittles. “Perfect. Then you can be the one to spike the punchbowl at the next family reunion. I’m tired of being the black sheep of the Masterson family.”

He grinned. “Much as I’d like to be in on your diabolical plots, I probably won’t be scoring an invite to the party. Grandpa and Grandma Masterson couldn’t have children. My dad was adopted.” He selected a blue M&M’s from the package and tossed it in the air, catching it in his mouth.

She froze, sexy green eyes wide. “We’re not twelfth cousins twice removed?”

The idea hadn’t even occurred to him, but he realized now it had been dominating her thoughts. And why wouldn’t it be? Unlike him, she couldn’t have been sure they weren’t related.

Something had shifted in the way she looked at him. It was a slight change, almost indiscernible, but he felt it in his gut. And a little south of his gut.

She took a deep breath and Ben was treated to an eyeful of cleavage. God, her breasts were amazing. His hands flexed again.

His pulse raced and Chloe’s breathing grew shallower. Her lips parted.

The piercing cry of the hotel telephone jerked him out of the moment.

He fumbled with the bulky receiver before bringing it to his ear. “Hello? Yes, this is Ben. No, I only requested one cot. Yes, I realize the room has a queen-size bed.”

His prey—or had she been the hunter?—took the opportunity to retreat, mouthing the word shower at him before grabbing her suitcase and disappearing.

* * *

SHEWASINBIG, big trouble.

Chloe tipped her head back and let the warm spray of the shower wash the remnants of the day and the smell of chemically-approximated flowers—courtesy of the Value Inn’s complimentary two-in-one shampoo—from her hair.