Alison Kent - Striptease

Oh, no. This wouldn’t do. She was not going to stand here where she could smell a hint of the soap on his skin and the shampoo he’d used and the fragrance of the detergent with which he washed his clothes.

He was way too close, and his T-shirt revealed more than it covered. His stomach was flat, his chest sculpted and hard, his shoulders rounded with muscle, his biceps tightening the fit of his sleeves. He looked down at her from beneath a sweep of black lashes. She looked up and swore she was not going to take off her clothes.

He inclined his head, lifted a dark brow. “So?”

“So…what?”

With a tilt of his head, he gestured toward the dais and the choir box. “The cameras are all yours.”

“The cameras. Right.” Could she be any more of a moron?

And why weren’t her legs longer so she could kick herself in the butt? Or steadier, at least, so she could make it up the two short steps of the dais without falling on her face?

As it was, she’d never been more aware of the swing to her walk, or the shape of her legs from the hem of her short, pale yellow skirt to her matching faux crocodile slides. Even her lemon-chiffon poet’s shirt had become too revealingly sheer.

Her brainstorm to dress early for the ceremony, allowing more time to see to the video details, no longer seemed like the same stroke of preparatory genius. She’d much prefer to be wearing baggy khakis and a huge oversize camp shirt while under Jacob’s scrutiny. What he made her feel was too…itchy and unfamiliar and…real.

But when she reached the choir box railing, she’d never in her life been so glad to be female, itchy or not. Because looking into the LCD screen, she saw things that a real man could never understand about another man’s beauty and carnal appeal.

Hands at his hips, standing where Anton would stand to wed Lauren, Jacob Faulkner looked nothing like a groom, looked insolent and arrogant, looked like a model for DKNY or Calvin Klein. Or better yet, like a brooding hustler chalking a cue, waiting for a sucker to challenge his game.

It was an attitude, an aura, a sense of self more than it was the way he wore his dark wavy hair or the way he appeared to lounge like a lizard soaking in the sun. Melanie blinked, wet her lips and watched his other eyebrow lift in question.

If only she could remember the answer he was waiting for.

“Everything meets with your approval?”

You have no idea. Though, of course, she would never say anything so leading because she knew, any minute now, she’d get over this ridiculous and latent hormone attack. So she nodded, because he’d been right, after all.

The camera angle was perfect. And as hard as it was to admit after jumping to her earlier opinion, the man knew his business as well as she knew hers.

She moved to check the second camera, though really needn’t have bothered. Where the first had shown Jacob from his left side, this one gave her the full treatment of his right. Both sides were equally devastating to her ability to disassociate her body’s response from this man. She didn’t want to react to him in any sort of physical way.

He was annoying and bossy and way too…observant for comfort. All he had to do was stand there and stare at her and he made her unbearably hot. And now, during tonight’s wedding, she’d be sitting in the sanctuary, witnessing the ceremony, her attention drawn from the bride and groom to the cameras, with Jacob looking on.

He’d be sitting in the van in the parking lot. Studying the panel of monitors on which he could so easily watch her. And she would never know if he was looking at her or not.

Melanie ran a hand along the back of her bare neck and into the riot of spiky chunks she’d tamed into curls above her nape. Her gaze moved from the display screen to the floor, to the toe of her right shoe, where her skin, bare and only lightly tanned, contrasted with the yellow. Such a strange thing to notice in the midst of her meltdown.

“This will work,” she finally admitted, because there was nothing else she could think of to say. Not when her thoughts had taken off in directions she didn’t even recognize. Directions that were definitely not refined or genteel, or even logically intelligent. Directions that had her showing him the way to her bed.

She wondered what Jacob would think if he knew she’d undressed him a dozen times already, stripped him where he was standing and taken, uh, matters into her hands. That thought brought a grin; there was no need to wonder. He was a man, and the scenario she’d painted so typical of a male fantasy.

Guys were so simple, really. Wanting nothing more complicated than what it took to keep their urges satisfied. Discounting the fact that it had been a long time since she’d responded to any man the way she’d responded to Jacob, he was no different than the others. She refused to believe he was different.

Except he was. And understanding why would take more than their temporary working involvement. She just didn’t have the time.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, and she realized she still wore a smile.

Then she noticed he was now standing beside her on the dais. She looked at him over the narrow black rims of her funky rectangular glasses. She had to go. She really had to leave. This insanity had gone on far too long. “Funny? Nothing, really.”

“Then why the smile?” He moved closer, forcing her to tilt her head back, making her feel uncharacteristically small and deliciously feminine. “Come on, sweetheart. Tell me. You don’t want me to have to get rough, do you?”

She stepped back an arm’s length. “Sorry. Intimidation doesn’t work with me. But it does raise an interesting question.”

“Shoot.”

“Just who exactly is dealing with control issues here, Faulkner. Me?” She arched a cool brow. “Or you?”

August…

“OKAY, LADIES. Let’s hurry this up. We need to get back to business.”

CEO Sydney Ford’s admonition to the gIRL-gEAR partners had become as much a part of their weekly meetings as had the gossip that precipitated the warning.

But with Lauren so recently back from her honeymoon to Ireland, the seven girls had much catching up to do, multiple trip photos to pass around and many souvenir gifts to unwrap.

Lauren had already given Melanie an extravagant thank-you gift of a bed-and-breakfast weekend for managing the details of the wedding video.

So being handed a tiny box wrapped in silver paper came as an unexpected surprise.

“Lauren, you are totally out of control,” Melanie said, while pulling the tape from one end of the neatly wrapped package. “I didn’t expect you to bring me back anything.”

Sitting to Melanie’s right, Lauren leaned back in the conference room chair like a blue-eyed, blond elf on a mission from Santa himself. A huge marquis diamond glittered from her platinum wedding band when she waved an encompassing hand over the rest of the women in the room. “Just spreading the joy of the season.”

“What season? It’s August. It’s Houston. And I don’t find the combination particularly joyous,” Melanie said, cringing as Kinsey Gray, gIRL-gEAR’s fashion authority, squealed from the other end of the table.

Lauren crossed her legs and admired her wedding set against the background of her cream linen slacks. “The bridal season, of course. A June bride. A July honeymoon. And now an August newlywed. A wife.” Lauren sighed.

Her marriage-induced bliss had Melanie rolling her eyes as she pulled the gift box free from the tape and the paper. “Not trying to burst your euphoric bubble here, but the newlywed part will eventually wear off and you’ll be a wife long past August. At least I hope that’s the plan.”

“Are you kidding? Anton is stuck with me for years and years to come.”