Amy Andrews - Girl Least Likely to Marry

‘You sure danced like I was your date.’

Heat flooded her cheeks as she remembered how she’d clung and buried her nose in his clothes, as if he was her own personal scratch-and-sniff jock. Cassiopeia Barclay did not blush—ever! Curious at the strange phenomenon, she brought her palms up to cradle her face.

She cleared her throat. ‘It was…crowded,’ she said defensively, dropping her hands and folding her arms primly.

Tuck’s gaze dropped. Her folded arms had pushed her breasts up and together, exposing a nice curve of bare flesh at the criss-cross front of her dress for his viewing pleasure. Tuck had seen a lot bigger. He’d also seen smaller. Cassie’s looked just about right to him. A perky B cup, he’d hazard a guess.

Tuck grinned. ‘Come on, darlin’, it’s late. Let’s get you to bed.’

Cassie shoved her hands on her hips, determined not to let an image of him sprawled in her big hotel bed derail her thoughts. ‘Don’t call me darlin’.’ She mimicked his slow, easy Southern drawl to perfection. ‘And I’m perfectly capable of finding my way to my room. I can count.’

Tuck’s grin broadened. ‘Well, maybe you can help me find my room?’ He scratched his head in the most perplexed manner he could muster. ‘There’s a lot of wings in this place and it does get kind of confusin’ after a hundred, don’t it?’

Cassie rolled her eyes. The man was living proof that evolution could go in reverse. ‘How on earth do you count all those millions that kicking a stupid ball around earned you?’

Tuck shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Got me some bean-counters for that.’

Cassie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was going to be one of those has-been sports stars whose money was all gone in a matter of years because he had a little too much yardage between the goalposts to keep track of it himself. And he trusted too easily.

‘Follow me,’ she said huffily as she headed down the long grand hallway.

Tuck’s gaze ran over the contours of her back and settled on how her dress swung and fluttered with each movement. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he murmured under his breath.

Tuck deliberately took his time, stopping to examine old paintings hanging on the stonework, suits of armour and the antique vases that dotted the magnificent corridor. He kept up a running commentary for Cassie’s sake, purely because it seemed to annoy her.

‘Will you hurry up?’ she said impatiently, looking over her shoulder for the tenth time as he stopped to read the name of the artist of a particularly austere portrait. ‘I have a paper to get to.’

Tuck looked up. ‘You brought work?’ He shook his head at her and tsked as he meandered closer. ‘All work and no play makes Cassiopeia a dull girl.’

Cassie glared at him as they got underway again. ‘Not that I expect you to understand this, but there is nothing dull about auroras on Jupiter.’

‘Auroras?’

‘Yes—you know, like the Aurora Borealis?’ His blank look didn’t seem promising. ‘The Northern Lights?’ she clarified.

Tuck had witnessed the Aurora Borealis in Scandinavia on two separate occasions, but he wasn’t about to disappoint Cassie’s assumptions. ‘Isn’t she some mermaid?’

Cassie sighed. There really was no grain in his silo. He was an empty vessel. ‘No. It’s a real thing. It’s why I’m here. I’m completing my PhD studies at Cornell so next year I can go on a research trip to Antarctica. And Aurora was Sleeping Beauty. Ariel was the Little Mermaid.’

Tuck shrugged. ‘Well, it sounds like a mermaid if you ask me.’ And then he shot her his best goofy grin for good measure.

Thankfully her room approached, and Cassie all but leapt at the ornate doorknob. ‘This is me,’ she said. ‘What did you say your room number was again?’

She’d barely been able to concentrate on anything he’d said. When he wasn’t wandering off like a distracted child or lagging behind to look at things he was right there beside her, weaving his heady scent all around her.

Like he was now.

Tuck smiled. ‘Three hundred and twenty three,’ he said, and watched the fact that he would be sleeping directly opposite her dawn slowly on her face. ‘Howdy, neighbour.’

‘Oh.’ Cassie looked at the door opposite. Too close for comfort. Her highly developed sense of fight or flight kicked in as another dose of his masculinity wafted over her.

‘Right, then,’ she said, fishing in Gina’s glittery clutch purse for her room key and locating it with shaking hands.

The adrenaline. It had to be the adrenaline.

‘Goodnight,’ she said, barely looking at him as she turned away and reached for the door handle, hastily swiping the plastic card through the electronic strip.

The light turned red and she swiped it again, her hands even shakier. Another red light elicited a frustrated little growl from the back of her throat. She needed to get inside her room. Inside was work and logic and focus and sanity.

Out here with Tuck’s quiet presence behind her was insanity. And damnation.

She could feel it pulling at her body with sticky tentacles, drugging her with its perfume, wrapping her up in its heady thrall.

She swiped one more time. Red light.

‘Allow me.’

Cassie’s fingers stilled as Tuck’s hand slid over them. His body moved in behind hers and she was instantly cocooned in his intoxicating aroma. She shut her eyes as her nipples responded to the blatant cue. She could feel his breath in her hair, the warm press of his chest against her back, the power of his thighs behind hers.

She leant her forehead against the door, desperately reaching for logic. ‘I spend all day probing the outer depths of our solar system through a massive telescope,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty sure I can open a damn door.’

‘Shh,’ Tuck said, easing the key out of her unresisting fingers. ‘Some things don’t need big brains,’ he murmured. He took the plastic. ‘Some things need a slow hand…an easy touch.’

He slid the card through the strip with deliberate slowness. The lock whirred, the light turned green and he smiled as he turned the handle and pushed the door open a fraction.

‘Easy.’

Cassie practically whimpered at the low, deep sound of his Southern accent. It weaved around her like the melodic notes of a snake charmer, trapping her. The door was right there. It was open. All she needed to do was move. But she couldn’t.

‘Cassie?’

Tuck could feel her trembling and a surge of desire crested in his belly. His groin tightened. His blood slowed to a thick, primal bound. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and, to his surprise, she turned. Only a whisper separated them as heat flashed like a solar flare between them.

Her eyes looked all misty and dazed, her pupils large in the grey-blue depths. They seemed to shimmer up at him and he fell headlong into them. Her mouth was slightly parted and it drew his gaze. He picked up a long dark ringlet draped forward over her shoulder and wound it around his finger. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re quite beautiful?’

Cassie’s throat was dry as a sandpit as she shut her eyes against the seduction in his. No one had ever told her that. And she’d never cared. ‘I’ve never aspired to be beautiful,’ she dismissed. She was more comfortable with brainy.

He waited for her lashes to flutter open again before saying, ‘Well, you’ve failed.’

Tuck only intended to give her the briefest of kisses as he slid his palm onto her cheek. Just a little taste of her mouth. The mouth that had dissed him all night. Just to show her how pretty damn clever he could be.

And to leave her wanting more.

But the second his mouth touched hers and she opened to him as if he was water and she was dying of thirst it all went flying out of the window.