“Actually, she could use help.” Stephanie earned a pleased look from Addy. “If that’s okay with you, Blair?”
Blair silently mouthed thank you. “As long as she’s not in the way.”
“She won’t be,” Stephanie assured, smiling her acknowledgement. “Oz will help keep an eye on her.”
Blair’s gaze shifted to Oz.
His brow arched.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His gaze lingered, searched hers, and something flickered in his eyes, unreadable and disturbing. Surprisingly, for once, he looked away first. Turning to Addy, he poured on his own lethal brand of charm, bowing reverently.
“So, Pipsqueak, looks like you’re in charge.” He straightened, grinned, held out his hands palm-up. “I’m a good helper, too. Can I be your envelope stuffer helper?”
Taking his outstretched hands, examining them as closely as he’d done hers, Addy pretended to consider.
“Hey!” Oz teased when she dragged out the examination longer than he deemed necessary. “It’s not like I have cooties.”
“You can be my helper.” Addy giggled, slapping her thigh at her joke. “Since you don’t have cooties.”
“No cooties here,” he promised. “Let me finish going over this form with Stephanie while you save your game, okay? Then we’ll show the world how envelopes are supposed to be addressed and stuffed.”
Two hours later, Blair had procured donations of several more items for the event. She reached up to massage her contracted neck muscles. Man, it had been a long day.
“Tired?”
Startled, she glanced toward where Oz stood in the doorway, watching her. Her fingers paused mid-knead.
“A little.” How long had he been standing there? “I sat too long without stretching.”
She rotated her stiff neck.
When Oz moved behind her, she knew what he was going to do even before she felt his fingers. She wanted to stop him, opened her mouth to do so, but her breath caught, held, burned in her chest.
He touched her tense flesh.
Shards of electricity pulsated through her, lighting fires where he touched and radiating out to the tips of her fingers and toes.
Blair’s insides turned to goop.
This was bad. Very bad.
But oh, my, did bad feel good.
Way too good to find her voice and make him stop.
It was just a quick therapeutic massage. Nothing more.
For therapy. That was all. Really.
Blair’s hands dropped to her lap.
He stroked her tight muscles with a feathery touch. His fingers traced across the curve of her neck. So lightly she could almost think she imagined the burn of his fingertips through the short strands of her hair.
But she wasn’t imagining his touch.
Or her reaction.
Every nerve cell zinged to life, jumped, flipped inside out.
Sighing, she closed her eyes.
His pressure increased.
Standing behind her chair, he worked on her neck and upper shoulders, dispensing every knot, leaving sensitized chaos in his wake.
Every breath echoed across endless time.
Every heartbeat thundered through endless space.
His fingers were magic that massaged away every reason she should tell him to stop, magic that made her forget she didn’t like him.
His hand moved around her neck, stroked over her shoulders, her clavicle.
“Mmm.” She angled to give him easier access, the back of her head brushing against his flat abdomen.
Oh, my.
His fingers skimmed back and forth, slow, teasing, caressing the column of her throat, her chin. He gently traced her mouth. Her tongue darted out to moisten her suddenly dry lips. His fingers paused.
Blair’s breath caught and held.
Butterflies danced in her belly, sending up a fluttery rainbow of sensations that brought her black-and-white world into Technicolor. Sensations that made her acutely aware that she was a woman.
It had been a long time since she’d felt that awareness.
She turned, looked up at him, saw the desire reflected in his eyes.
He reached for her, taking her hand, pulling her to her feet, their bodies so close they practically touched. In a daze, Blair breathed in his spicy scent, felt his palm cup her face, felt his body heat lure her closer, for her to close the small gap between them.
Although she knew she had to stop him, that she couldn’t kiss Oz when she had no room for him in her life, when he’d only end up hurting her if she let her guard down, she touched his face, running her finger over the cleft in his chin, fighting the strongest desire to do the same with her lips. She loved that indentation, that impression on his flawless face.
“Blair, I—”
“How’s it going, you two?” Stephanie stepped into the room.
Blair jerked away from Oz.
Oh, God.
What had she been doing? Thinking?
Addy could have walked in, seen.
Mortified, Blair couldn’t look at Stephanie. How could she when she’d just been caught with Oz?
A man she didn’t even like!
Dear, sweet heavens. She should have stopped him the moment he’d touched her.
She should have stopped him before her body throbbed from his touch, before she wanted to find out what all the hype about Oz Manning was really about.
A quickie massage didn’t mean anything to Oz. but darn it, she didn’t do this. Physical acts meant something to her, meant a lot to her, but…she should have stopped him. She wasn’t one of his groupies. How could she have behaved no better than any of his other conquests? Hadn’t she learned anything from her experience with Chris?
“Oh, sorry,” Stephanie began, a little red-faced and flustered, too.
No way could she not suspect what Blair and Oz had been about to do.
They’d almost kissed. Oh…oh…oh, darn!
This was insane.
Insane. That was exactly right. Temporary insanity.
Because that was what Oz had done. Driven her insane with his playboy ways and his tenderness toward Dr Talbot and Addy. How could he be such a cad with women and yet so appealing with her daughter and dearest friend? With his patients?
“Did you need something?” Oz’s eyes flashed with annoyance and perhaps relief, too, at Stephanie’s interruption.
“What’s going on?” Her gaze dropped to where his hand burned into Blair’s lower back like a hot poker. Her thin cotton shirt was no barrier to the sear of his touch.
Needing to put as much space between them as she could, Blair stepped forward.
Oz’s hand fell to his side. “Blair had a crick in her neck.”
Stephanie’s brow quirked. “And you offered to help out?”