She laughed and the deep, throaty, full sound of it, rippled over the conversations in the bar and danced to the rhythm of the music. It seemed to reach for him and grab him by the throat.
“You?” she asked. “Patient?”
Her fingers were still caressing the cue stick and he had to force himself to look away. But meeting her gaze wasn’t much safer. Had her eyes always been that color of blue? Sort of summer skyish? He gritted his teeth.
“I can be patient when I have to be,” he countered. Like now. It had been a long month. The stupid bet with his brothers was making him crazy. But he was patient—even if Emma didn’t think so. And he’d make it through the next two months.
As long as she didn’t bend over again.
“Yeah?” She tilted her head, and that fall of hair swung out past her shoulders. “How are you at pool?”
He lifted the rack off the triangle of balls, hung it on the hook at the end of the table and forced a nonchalant shrug. “Take your best shot and let’s find out.”
She nodded slowly. “Twenty bucks a game.”
“High stakes.”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Scared?”
Well, that helped. His dignity won out over his hormones. “Hell, no. I can take you.”
“Really?” she said softly. “And just where did you plan on taking me?”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she bent over the table, lined up her cue stick and drew it back and forth between her fingers while she aimed her shot.
Unfortunately, this gave Connor way too much time to appreciate the view of her breasts, practically spilling out of her tank top.
His body went to DefCon 2.
And he suddenly knew just where he’d like to take her.
A back room.
A flat surface.
On the damn pool table.
Crap. He rubbed his face and damn near slapped himself. He wanted Emma. Now. More than he could ever remember wanting anything else in his life.
The only thing that stopped him was he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have worked. Just because he was acting like a slobbering horn dog didn’t mean she was feeling the same thing. And the only thing worse than falling off the wagon and losing the bet would be trying to lose the bet and having Emma tell him thanks but no thanks.
She took her shot, and the triangle of balls scattered across the green felt surface. She looked up at him and grinned, and Connor’s breath caught in his throat.
“You sure you’re willing to risk the twenty bucks?” she asked, her voice teasing.
“I’m not afraid of a challenge,” he countered, leaning both hands on the cherry wood edge of the table. “How about you?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about me, Connor. Trust me, I’m up to the challenge.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “And after I’ve won your twenty bucks, then what’ll we play for?”
Emma lined up her next shot, then paused to slant him a look. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
CHAPTER FOUR
EMMA JACOBSEN WAS DRIVING him over the edge and damned if she didn’t seem to be enjoying the ride.
Connor lost two games of pool and couldn’t even resent the laughter from the handful of people gathered around to watch the competition. How could he? Hell, if he’d been watching, he’d have been laughing his butt off at the poor guy getting worked by the petite woman in the tank top.
But damned if he could help himself.
How was a man supposed to concentrate on a game when he kept getting distracted by a woman’s breasts? Or her legs? Or her laughter? Or the way she walked?
Damn it.
Emma crossed to the wall and set her cue stick into the rack before slowly maneuvering through the crowd to his side. Holding out her hand, she waited for him to hand over his last twenty.
“You were using secret weapons,” he said and dropped the bill into her hand, too wary of actually touching her. Though the thought of his fingers brushing her palm sent a jolt of heat darting through him, he figured he shouldn’t risk it. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop touching her if he got started.
“Is that right?” she asked, and grinned up at him. Her smile packed a hell of a punch. Something else he’d never noticed. Emma had smiled at him maybe hundreds of times over the past couple of years. Why had it never hit him just what a great mouth she had? What…had he been going through his life blind or something?
“Oh, yeah.” Connor forced the words past the hard knot in his throat. “Trust me when I say you weren’t fighting fair.”
Shaking her head, she laughed and said, “And here I thought I just played way better than you.”
“Another match another time,” he promised. As long as she was wrapped up in an Eskimo jacket.
“I’m always ready for a challenge.” She smiled and tucked the twenty-dollar bill into the dip of her cleavage. He watched it disappear and his mouth went dry.
Behind them, a couple of guys moved in to take over the pool table. Emma stared up at him for a long minute or two, and Connor’s brain tried to kick into gear. He had to say something. Something to convince—if not her, then at least himself—that he wasn’t a slobbering moron.
But apparently his mind was taking the night off.
In those sky-high heels of hers, she was taller than usual. Her mouth was close enough to kiss and tempting enough to make him want to risk it. He could almost taste her and that thought splintered inside him until he had to curl his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her.
Damn it.
This was Emma.
Has to be the bet, he told himself.
Then she spoke and he listened up. Her voice was soft, so he had to strain to hear her over the clash of music and conversation. Not to mention the thunderous pounding of his own heart.
“You’re staring at me.”
“No, I’m not.” Stupid.
“Okay,” she allowed, a smirk curving her lips. “You’re staring at the wall behind me and I’m just in the way?”
He scraped one hand over his face, hoping to stir himself out of the sexual coma he’d slipped into. Didn’t help much. “Sorry. Thinking.”
Yeah, thinking about tossing her onto the pool table and peeling her out of that tank top and skirt. Geez, he could almost feel her amazing legs wrapped around his hips.
DefCon 1.
He was definitely in too deep here.
“Uh-huh,” Emma said, with a shake of her head that told him she wasn’t buying the whole “lost in thought” excuse. Already turning, she said, “Well, it’s been fun, Connor, but I’ve gotta be going.”
She was leaving.
He should be grateful.
He wasn’t.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked, voice tight.
She stopped and looked up at him.
He mentally scrambled for something to say. Something that would convince her to stay for a while. He wasn’t finished torturing himself. Wasn’t finished being amazed by the surprise that was Emma.
Blowing out a breath, he said, “I’d offer to buy you a beer, but somebody just won all my cash.”
A quicksilver grin flashed across her face and was gone again in an instant. “So if I was a good sport, I’d buy you a beer?”
“Something like that.” Anything, he told himself. He just wasn’t ready yet for this time with her to be over. Wasn’t even sure why, but he knew he wanted to be with her. Even over all the other scents colliding in the air of the bar, he could almost taste the scent clinging to her alone. It was fresh and citrusy and reminded him of long summer nights under star-filled skies.
And he couldn’t quite believe it was Emma Jacobsen making him feel all these things. Maybe that was why he didn’t want her to leave yet, he told himself, grasping for a reason, any reason. Maybe he had to prove to himself that it wasn’t Emma herself affecting him. That it could have been any woman at this point in
the bet. That he was just a hormone-plagued, needy Marine, and any good-looking woman could have been the last straw on this particular camel’s back.
No doubt about it, either, she was real good-looking. Up, down or sideways, Emma had something that was making him reel.
“Sorry,” she was saying. “Work tomorrow, so I’m heading out.”
She turned and weaved through the crowd, moving for the front door. Guys she passed craned their necks for a better view. Connor was surprised there wasn’t a river of drool running through the bar. As he watched them watch her, he felt the sudden, driving urge to slam all their heads together and let them fall.
Where the hell did they get off watching Emma?
A couple of long seconds ticked by before he reacted. But then he was moving fast, pushing past the people in his way, as if they were deliberately trying to separate him from Emma. He caught up with her just outside.
The scent of jasmine was thick and sweet in the hot summer air. The silence, after the door swung closed behind him, was almost startling after the prolonged exposure to blaring music. And in the relative quiet, he heard her steps, crunching in the gravel of the parking lot. Instinctively he followed.
She spun around, right hand raised and fisted, with keys jutting out from between her fingers.
“Whoa!” Connor held both hands up in mock surrender.
Emma sighed and let her hand fall. “Darn it, Connor, you scared me.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t considered the fact that she might get a little spooked having someone chase her into the parking lot.
In fact he’d never stopped to think about Emma that way and suddenly, he realized that she must cross lots of dark parking lots. What about at night, when she closed up her shop and she was alone? And he wondered why he suddenly felt as though he wanted to be the guy protecting her.
Oh, man.
This just kept getting worse and worse.
“What do you want, Connor?”
He lifted her right hand, ignoring the heat that spread from her hand to his and up his arm. Silently he examined the keys she held primed between her fingers. “You were ready for trouble, weren’t you?”
“Uh, yeah.” She pulled her hand free and released her tight grip on the keys. “A smart woman pays attention and doesn’t take chances. So, why’d you follow me out here, Connor? Forget to tell me something?”
“No,” he blurted, and took her elbow in a firm grip. She felt warm and soft and, damn it, way too good. “I just thought I’d walk you to your car.”
She glanced down at his hand on her arm and he wondered if she felt the same sweeping sensation of warmth that had jolted through him at first contact.
“That’s not necessary,” she assured him, pointing off to her left. “My car’s right there.”
He glanced in that direction and spotted her small, two-door, silver sedan about thirty feet away, parked directly beneath one of the light poles. Smart, he thought. Emma’d always been smart.
Then he shifted his gaze back to the sky-blue eyes still watching him. “Fine. You don’t need me to do this. But it’s necessary for me.”
“I can take care of myself, Connor. I always have.”
“I know.” He’d never thought about it until tonight, but now he wondered why the hell he hadn’t. Emma’d always been his friend. Someone he could shoot the breeze with as easily as he could one of the guys on base. He’d never really stopped to think of her as being female.
But looking at her tonight, he couldn’t imagine thinking of her as anything else ever again.
“Humor me.”
“Why should I?”
He smiled. This was the Emma he knew. Stubborn, ready to argue at the drop of a hat, unwilling to accept help if she figured she could handle something—and she always figured she could handle anything.
“Because,” he said, smoothing his fingers over her elbow, enjoying the slide of skin to skin, “you just beat me into the ground in front of about a hundred witnesses. Every Marine I know is going to be giving me hell about losing a game of pool to you.”
“Three games, but who’s counting,” she corrected.
“Two,” he said and leaned closer, “and I’m counting.”
“Of course you are.” Connor’d always been competitive. Which was why he’d gotten himself involved in that silly bet in the first place.
The bet.
The reason she was here, dressed like…well, she didn’t really want to think about what she was dressed like. She’d spent most of the evening feeling really exposed. At least, until Connor had arrived. Then she’d pretty much just felt warm.
Emma inhaled slowly, deeply and told herself to get a grip. But it wasn’t easy. The feel of Connor’s hand at her elbow was swamping her brain with way too many emotions and too few clear thoughts.
She’d thought this was going to be easy.
Work him into a frenzy, seduce him, then tell him how she’d tricked him into losing the bet with his brothers.
She hadn’t expected that she would be having trouble keeping focused.
But having his heated gaze locked on her body for the past two hours had churned her up so much that it was hard to remember to breathe. In fact, she hadn’t taken an easy breath at all until the minute she’d stepped out of the bar and started across the parking lot.
Connor coming up behind her and scaring her out of five years of her life hadn’t helped anything, either. But now he was here. So close. Close enough that she could look up into his eyes and see her own reflection staring back at her.
“So, are you going to let me play white knight?” he asked softly, “Or are you going to force me to follow you at a distance to make sure you’re safe?”
Something inside her softened and then toughened up again. Sure, it was nice having someone care enough to make sure she got to her car safely. But if she’d wanted, or needed, an escort, one of the bouncers would have walked her out. The fact that Connor was all of a sudden acting like Sir Walter Raleigh or something was both flattering and infuriating.
She hadn’t missed the fact that he’d only treated her like a girl when she was dressed as he thought a girl should be. If she was smart, she’d play along, keep reeling him in to the fact that for the night, she was a soft, helpless female type.
But she just couldn’t do it.
“First tell me something.”
“What?”
“How come you never offered to walk me to my car before tonight?”
“You know,” he admitted, lifting one hand to brush the side of his head, “I was just asking myself the same thing.”
She watched him, admiring the strain of his black USMC T-shirt across his broad, muscled chest. “And did you get an answer?”
He straightened up again, and looked down into her eyes, pinning her gaze with his until Emma saw that his deep, ocean-blue eyes were churning with emotions she’d never expected to see.
“Only one,” he muttered, taking a firmer grip on her elbow and steering her across the dark lot. The lights rimming the lot shimmered in pools of brightness splashed across the shadows.
“Which was?” She hurried her steps to keep up with his much-longer legs.
He stopped and looked at her. “I’m an idiot.”
She smiled. “I can accept that.”
Standing in one of the pools of light thrown from overhead, Connor’s face was in shadow, but she felt him watching her anyway.
“You surprised me tonight, Em,” he said, and his voice sounded softer than the breeze that drifted past them.
Her stomach did a slow spin. “Why’s that?”
He shrugged. “I just never thought of you as—”
If he came right out and said, “I never thought of you as a girl,” again, Emma might just have to punch him.
“As what?”
He paused, then seemed to catch himself. He took a step back, shook his head and muttered, “A pool player.”
/> Disappointment curled in the pit of her stomach. He could have said, sexy, or hot stuff or gorgeous. But, no. Apparently, the shock was still too much for him. Well, fine. So she wouldn’t be seducing him on the first try. She had time. She’d get him into bed yet.
“Live and learn,” she said, and stepped past him to open her car door. She slid inside, rolled down the window and looked up at him. “See you, Connor.”
“Right. See you.”
She put the car in Reverse and pulled out of her parking space. As she slipped the gear shift into Drive, she looked in the rearview mirror to see Connor, standing where she’d left him, still watching after her.
The fact that she really wanted to go back and kiss him meant absolutely nothing.
“IT’S Emma, for crying out loud.” Connor snatched the basketball thrown at him, then dribbled it absentmindedly.
“You gonna play or what?” Aidan ran up to him, grabbed the ball away from him, turned and made a jump shot, sending the basketball through the hoop.
“Maybe he’s got something else on his mind,” Brian said, wiping sweat off his face with his forearm.
“What about Emma?” Liam asked, grabbing the ball in rebound and bouncing it back down the driveway behind the rectory.
Connor looked at his older brother and wondered how in the hell he could explain what had happened to him two nights ago. Hell, he still couldn’t figure it out for himself.
But since the moment Emma’d hopped into her car and driven away, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else but her. And that was just way too weird.
“I saw her the other night,” he said, and instantly a vivid image of Emma in that short, tight skirt leaped into his mind and hovered there to torment him.
“So?” Aidan moved in closer, taking the beer from Brian’s hand and draining it.
“Hey!” Brian complained.
“Get another one, geez,” Aidan sniped.
Sunshine poured down on the concrete driveway and bounced off the cement surface to surround the brothers in steamy summer heat. Hardly a breath moved through the trees and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. But they’d made plans to play basketball today and come hell or dehydration, they were going to play.