About to start eating, she raised her eyes to his face. “Then maybe you’re in the wrong place. We just read books here.”
For as long as he could remember, women had come on to him. He’d never had a woman back away. But Jane Gilliam was definitely backing away, blocking all his best moves and his efforts at breaching her walls. Why? It wasn’t ego, but curiosity and a certain fascination that spurred him on.
“Did I do something to upset you, Jane?” When she didn’t answer, he took a guess. “Was it the flowers? Was sending them here embarrassing?”
She supposed that was as good an excuse to use as any. “It did put me on the hot seat.”
Jorge laughed. Whenever he sent flowers to a woman, he always made sure there was maximum exposure involved, not because he was sending them but because he knew that women liked other women to see that they were the center of someone’s attention. Jane was definitely different. And that really piqued his interest.
“You don’t like all that attention, do you?” he guessed.
“No,” she answered truthfully. “I don’t.”
“I have to admit, you are nothing like a lot of other women I’ve known.” And right now, he thought, he had to admit that he was drawn to her because of that.
Jane had no doubt that he had known enough women to populate a small city. “I’ve always been a private person,” she told him.
“A little mystery makes things interesting.”
She hadn’t meant it like that. Femme fatales were mysterious, not her. What you saw was what you got, she thought. But before she could say anything, Jorge was leaning forward.
Invading her space.
Making her pulse jump.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
The words left her lips in slow motion. “Mind what?” she asked in a hushed voice as he took her chin in his hand.
“You’ve got a little sauce right there.” Moving his thumb slowly across the corner of her mouth, Jorge wiped the sauce away. “Got it.”
He smiled at her just before he licked the side of his thumb.
Jane couldn’t draw her eyes away. The sauce disappeared between his lips.
He’d done it again.
He’d made the air stand still in her lungs. If this kept up, her brain was going to malfunction because of a lack of oxygen.
If it hadn’t already.
Chapter Seven
It took Jane a second to pull herself together and she had a feeling that he knew it. But there was no self-satisfied smirk on his face, no hint of a superior smile on his lips. If he did know what he was doing to her, he wasn’t showing it.
She still had no idea why Jorge was here, sharing a picnic with her. Was this all part of his initial bet, or had it evolved into some elaborate plan to prove that he could get any woman he wanted with minimal effort? Was there some prize waiting for him at the goal line, depending on her reaction to him?
But even if it was that, why should she be his target? It wasn’t as if she had some sort of reputation for being a removed, yet desirable ice princess. There was no one beating a path to her door. She was just an old-fashioned girl, someone her grandmother would have called a sweet bookworm—and her mother would have ridiculed.
If she held on to that thought, on to the knowledge that at best this was just some kind of a fleeting whim on Jorge’s part—for whatever reason—then maybe she could keep a tighter rein on herself and not get carried away.
Or grow hopeful.
Just enjoy the moment, as you would if you were getting lost in a book, she ordered herself as she continued eating what, in all likelihood, was the best chicken enchilada she’d ever had. Books always ended and so would this. She had to remember that whatever was going on, however wonderful it might feel for the moment, it was all just fiction. Just like the books she loved to read.
Before she realized it, she’d finished eating. Picking up the napkin he’d put out, Jane wiped her fingers. “That was excellent,” she told him.
“I’ll pass that along to my father,” he told her. “He’ll be pleased.” Jorge reached for the covered serving dish that he’d placed back in the basket. “There’s more if you like.”
“No, one was fine,” she said quickly before he could place another enchilada on her plate. “I’ll explode if I eat another one. Besides—” she smiled, nodding at the plate of stacked chocolate chip desserts “—I need to leave room for the sweet bread.”
He liked the way her eyes seemed to light up when she smiled. “So you have a sweet tooth.”
“Guilty as charged.”
Jorge placed a sweet bread on a napkin and put it in front of her. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
“Next time?” she echoed.
Two small words, neither of which, by themselves, were unclear. But in this situation, combined and emerging from his mouth, she found herself unable to absorb them or figure out precisely what they meant—because Jorge couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought he was saying. Wasn’t this idyllic indoor picnic just a one-time thing?
“The next time we get together,” Jorge elaborated and then suddenly stopped as a thought occurred to him. She’d been alone at the party, but that didn’t necessarily mean that she was unattached. “Unless—are you seeing anyone?”
Not anymore, she thought. “No. I already told you I wasn’t.”
Her answer produced another smile on his lips. She stared at it, mesmerized. “Then it’s all right if I see you again?”
If she didn’t know better—and she did—she would have thought that Jorge was acting almost shy. But that was impossible. Jorge Mendoza had never had a shy day in his life. In a relatively small town like Red Rock, everyone knew everyone else, or at least about everyone else. And she knew about Jorge, knew that the impossibly handsome man went through women like tissues.
At thirty-eight, was it possible that Jorge had gone through every desirable woman in Red Rock and was now trolling for female companionship down at her level? Not that she thought of herself as beneath him, but the women he tended to pursue came from a more sophisticated social circle than she did. Their idea of charity meant writing a check while hers meant getting down in the trenches and becoming personally involved.
“If that’s what you want,” she heard herself answer. She watched his expression intently, waiting for him to shout, “April Fool’s” even though they were four months shy of the date.
“Yes,” Jorge told her, “that’s what I want.”
Even as he said the words, it intrigued him that he really, really meant them. Sure, he had always liked women—loved them—but he had to admit, even though it unnerved him a little, that he had never quite felt this way before.
In general, he was captivated by vivacious women who liked life in the fast lane. Women who knew that having any long-term designs on him would only be futile.
Until New Year’s Eve.
This one was different, he thought, not for the first time. This one was not the kind of woman you enjoyed for an unspecified amount of time and then moved on from. Jane Gilliam was the kind of woman his mother would have called the marrying kind.
Jorge knew himself, knew that he had no desire to get married, to be tied down to one woman. But be that as it may,