He watched her butt all the way out of the room, only letting out the breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding when she stepped out of sight. It was also when he registered the tightness in his jeans. He stared down at his straining boner.
Great. Just what he needed—the return of his libido at the most inappropriate time possible.
GRACE LINGERED. Then she loitered. She even lurked a bit. She went to the bathroom twice. She sorted through her in-tray. She made a couple of pointless phone calls to freelance script writers. She cleared out her junk e-mail folder.
And still Mac sat there. He’d taken up position in one of the random chairs placed throughout the open-plan outer- office and was just waiting her out. She swung between being irritated with him for being such a stubborn bastard and feeling stupidly breathless and dizzy at his proximity.
Every time she glanced up from her “work” and caught sight of his tall, powerful body sitting outside her office, waiting for her, she had to fight the urge to melt into a puddle beneath her desk.
It made her feel so weak and stupid. Which in turn made her angry with herself—and Mac Harrison for having won the genetic sweepstakes that made him so irresistible to her.
Finally, however, she was out of tricks. It was already more than evident that she’d been stalling and, after an hour of time-wasting, she gave in, snatching up her handbag and notepad and stalking out of her office.
“I’m ready. Unless something else has come up…?” she suggested hopefully.
He eyed her steadily and pushed himself to his feet. She suppressed a shiver as he loomed over her. He was so close— just like in her fantasy the other night. If she took a step forward, she’d be able to reach out and run a finger down his chest. She’d need to rip his shirt off first, of course, for it to be an accurate re-enactment of her fantasy, but she had strong hands….
The jangle of car keys snapped her out of the pheromoneinduced daze she’d sunk into.
God, she was so pitiful. Lips pressed together, she marched toward the exit. She could feel him following her, and she felt absurdly conscious of the wiggle of her hips. He probably hadn’t seen real hips for years, living in Hollywood. All the actresses on the show had visible ribs and chicken wings sticking out of their backs from their no-carb, no-fat, no-life diets. He probably thought she was obese by comparison. The thought spurred her to put a little extra sass in her walk.
“Over here,” Mac directed as they exited the building, and she turned toward the guest parking. And stopped abruptly.
“That is not your car,” she said disbelievingly, her eyes caressing the pristine curves of a Venetian-red-and-white 1957 Corvette soft-top with whitewall tires and red leather upholstery.
He shrugged. “We can put the roof up if you’re worried about your hair.”
She stared at him, then resolutely resisted the urge to glance toward the far corner of the lot where her own parking space was located. The last—the very, very last—thing she needed was for him to see her car. She’d been restoring her own ’57 Corvette for nearly two years, but it was a long, slow process. Compared to his shiny, showroom-condition dream machine, her baby looked like a very tired, very ugly duckling.
The story of her life.
It was almost enough to make her hate his car, too. But that would be taking things too far.
Wordless, she slid into the passenger seat and reached for the scarf and sunglasses she habitually carried in the side pocket of her handbag.
“The seat-belt catch is a little tricky…” Mac began to explain, but Grace had already snapped hers shut.
While he occupied himself with starting the car, Grace deftly tied the scarf over her hair and swapped her office frames for the cat’s-eye sunglasses she’d inherited from her grandmother.
Then she turned her face away from him, signaling her absolute lack of interest in any conversational gambits he might choose to throw her way.
For the hour and a half it took them to drive to Santa Clarita, it appeared he didn’t choose to throw anything her way at all. After the first five minutes of silence, he simply reached across and flicked on the stereo. She noted out of the corner of her eye that he’d had a suitably low-key CD player installed so as not to destroy the original dash. It was the same model she’d been eyeing for herself for the past six months, trying to justify the expenditure when there were other, more mundane things to fix on her car.
Damn him.
Her irritation only grew when she recognized the track he’d put on. Nina Simone’s “Sinner Man.” One of her favorites.
It was no wonder that she was feeling particularly snippy by the time she stepped out of the car at the winery. So far, he’d managed to subvert all of her preconceptions about him, and she was finding it very disconcerting. She was also quiveringly aware of him. Every breath he took, every shift of his hands or body—she was blindsided by how attractive she found him…and how vulnerable that made her.
Shedding her scarf but keeping her sunglasses, she didn’t bother looking behind herself to see if he was following as she headed for the front doors of the winery. Let him keep up, if he could.
She realized instantly that he wasn’t—she’d become so damned attuned to him so quickly that the absence of his presence behind her was like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. She paused in the shadows of the entranceway to check on him discreetly and saw that he had stopped to take shots of the location with a small camera.
Humph. A good idea, she supposed. Maybe he was more than just a life-support system for a whole lot of muscle.
Determined to get the inspection over and done with, she stepped into the coolness of the interior and began to look around. The entrance hall was attractive but small. She couldn’t help but wonder how it would translate on-camera. Following the signs, she walked through to the main tasting room and gift shop. Again, it was pleasant, but she wondered whether the art department would be able to dress it to the level of glamour required for the special.
She knew the moment Mac joined her and watched him survey the space out of the corners of her eyes. He snapped off a couple of shots, and she tensed as he moved toward her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s nice. Homey and cozy,” she said.
He nodded neutrally and looked around some more. He had such a great profile. She wanted to reach out and run her finger along his nose, rub her palm against his five o’clock shadow, run her tongue along the full curve of his lower lip.
“What’s wrong—not enough bling for your liking?” she asked coolly, furious at herself for staring at him.
He took his time answering, his blue gaze pinning her for a long beat. She had no idea what he was thinking.
“It’s cozy, like you said. But Gabe comes from money. The wedding needs to be lavish, over the top,” he said, turning to study the room again.
Even though she agreed with everything he was saying— or perhaps, because of it—Grace found herself defending the location.
“I know it’s probably not up to your own personal high standards, but I’m sure we can get a hot tub installed and borrow some of the bunnies from the Playboy mansion,” she said sweetly.
He raised an eyebrow, then shot her a slow, appraising look.
“I’m going to go look at the grounds,” he said, “and then you’re going to tell me exactly what stick you have up your ass.”
Grace spluttered angrily but he just walked away. She glared after him, unable to resist the lure of that perfect butt, even though he’d spoken so rudely to her.
Kind of the same way she’d been speaking to him. She