Jackie Braun - Claimed by the Rebel - The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses

Margot came back in with something else.

“Is that what you meant?” she asked uncertainly, gesturing at the untidy stack of mismatched papers in front of him. “I wasn’t quite sure what you wanted when you asked me to canvas my friends about a perfect date.”

Ursula was a friend of Margot’s? Good grief. His secretary had a whole secret life…that he absolutely didn’t want to know about!

“Hey,” he said brightly, “I wasn’t quite sure myself. Just tossing out ideas. It wasn’t actually for me, personally.”

“I told my cousin the, um, personal item was a little over the top, but again, I didn’t quite know what you were asking for.”

“I thought Daredevils should try and take a hard look at how to grow our female market. I was interested in how women think. What they like. Tap into their secret romantic desires as part of a marketing scheme.” He was babbling, and he let his voice drift off. “You know.”

She looked, ever so faintly, skeptical. “You seem to have a pretty good grasp on what women like.”

“I just needed some original ideas. I wanted to think outside the box.” His box anyway, because to date, not a single item in his little box of tricks seemed to have even the remotest appeal to Katie.

“This isn’t about business, is it?” Margot guessed suddenly, her eyebrow lifted, her hand on her hip.

He coughed, glowered at her, took a sudden interest in tossing a foam basketball from the dozen or so he kept on his desk through the hoop above his office door.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Margot said.

“Like what?” he said defensively. He missed the basket with his second effort, too. He had not missed that basket for at least three months, no matter what he had said to Margot earlier.

“I don’t know. A little unsure. I hesitate to use the word desperate but it comes to mind. Have you met somebody special?”

“No!” he said. Despite the quickness of his reply and the empathy of it, a little smile appeared on Margot’s lips. Knowing . His fear of being easy to read grew.

“Somebody has you rattled,” she said, not without delight, when he missed the basket for the third time. It was horrible that she had stumbled on his exact turn of phrase for how Katie Pritchard was making him feel.

“That’s not it at all!” he said.

“Boy, I’d like to see the girl that has you in a knot like this.”

“I…am…not…in…a…knot.” He said each word very slowly and deliberately. If Margot had seen what the girl who had him in a knot was wearing today she probably would have died laughing. Katie had had on some kind of horrible wrinkled smock that made her look pregnant.

But the outfit was deceptive, because it made her look like the kind of girl who should have fallen all over herself when he suggested in-line skating in the park. Instead, she had slipped her glasses down her nose and looked at him, regally astonished by the audacity of his invitation, as if she was the queen.

“I’m not dressed for skating,” she’d said, just as if it wouldn’t have been a blessing to wreck that dress in whatever way she could.

“It doesn’t have to be today,” he’d countered, registering he might be making progress. It had not been an out-and-out no.

“In-line skating,” she’d said, making him hold his breath when it seemed as if she might be seriously contemplating the suggestion. But then, “No, sorry, it’s not on my list of the one hundred things I have to do before I die,” she’d said.

“You have a list?”

She’d gone quiet.

“Come on, Katie, give. Tell me just one thing on it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would become part of this ridiculous campaign you’re on, and before I knew it I’d find myself riding an elephant in Africa.”

“Is that on your list?” he asked. He couldn’t have been more surprised. She didn’t even want to ride a motorcycle right here in North America!

“It was just an example.”

“You sure like to play your cards close to your chest.” Which, since he’d mentioned it, he snuck a quick look at. Gorgeous curves, neatly disguised by the wrinkly sack she was wearing. He looked up. She was blushing. With any other girl that might mean progress, but with her you never could tell. More likely his sneaked peek had set him back a few squares. Since he had yet to get past “go,” that was a depressing thought.

To offset the depression, he said, aware he was pleading, “Just tell me one thing off your hundred must-do’s. I promise I won’t use it. I’ll never mention it again.” He gave her his Boy Scout honor look, which was practically guaranteed to win the instant trust of fifty per cent of the human race—the female fifty per cent.

She had fixed those enormous hazel eyes on him—they had taken on a shade of gold today—and looked hard at him over the rims of her glasses. No one looked at him the way Katie did. The rest of the world saw the image: successful, driven, fun loving, daring, but it always felt as if she stripped him to his soul. The rest of the world fell for whatever he wanted them to believe he was, but not her.

Still, when she gave him that look, so intense, so stripping, the ugliness of whatever outfit she was wearing suddenly faded. It was an irony that he didn’t completely understand that the uglier she dressed, the more he felt as if he could see her.

She shrugged. “I’d like to swim with dolphins,” she admitted, but reluctantly. He was sorry he’d promised he wouldn’t use it to convince her to go out with him, because he had suddenly, desperately, wanted to see her swim with dolphins.

Hopefully in a bikini, though he was startled to discover that was not his main motivation. He wanted to see her in a pool with dolphins: laughing at their silly grins, stroking their snouts, mimicking their chatter. He wanted to see her happy, uninhibited, sun kissed. Free.

Had she been that once? Before her marriage had shut something down in her? He wanted to see her like that!

Okay, the bikini would be a bonus. Though judging from what she was wearing at the moment, Katie in a bikini was a pipe dream. If she owned a bathing suit at all, it was probably akin to a bathing costume from the twenties, complete with pantaloons.

“I’m going to put that on my list, too,” he’d said, amazed by how deeply he meant it.

“You promised you wouldn’t do that!” she said, and actually looked pleased because she had assumed he had broken his word so quickly.

“Not with you,” he said. “I’m putting swimming with dolphins on my list to do by myself someday.”

For a moment in her eyes, he saw the answer to why he was keeping at this when she wanted him to believe he would never succeed. She had flinched , actually hurt that he didn’t want to pursue the dolphin swimming with her.

She’d snorted, though, to cover up that momentary lapse in her defenses. “You don’t have a list.”

“Okay, so I’m going to start one.”

“And you don’t do things by yourself. If you ever swim with dolphins, I bet you have a woman with you. A gorgeous one, not the least bit shy about falling out of a bikini that is three sizes too small for her.”

“You’re talking about Heather,” he sulked. “It’s over. You should know. You sent the flowers.” No need to tell Katie the flowers had been dumped on the seat of his open convertible. It would probably up her estimation of Heather by a few notches.

“Dylan,” she said patiently, “your women are largely interchangeable, which is why I am determined not to become one of them.”

“Planet Earth calling Dylan,” Margot said, giving him a bemused look.