His smile was all shark. ‘Maybe I have some other factors in my favor too.’
She figured he meant his looks. Yeah, so good-looking her toes were curling. All kinds of muscles clamped down—mostly in her nether regions. As if they were trying to dampen the inferno blazing there.
‘Well, you don’t need to worry about me, you’re not my type,’ she lied, feeling sassy and amused and surprisingly in control.
‘No?’
She froze. She hadn’t expected that direct challenge—his tone as loaded with tease as hers had been.
She narrowed her gaze. ‘Definitely not. You’re too arrogant.’Waytoo arrogant.
He leaned closer, his smile even more wicked. ‘Lots of girls like arrogance. Confidence.’
‘Lots of girls like bad boys too. I’m not like lots of girls.’
‘That’s true.’ All of a sudden he frowned. ‘Roxanna,whatare you doing here?’
‘Auditioning,’ she cooed, to maintain the tease. ‘And it’s Roxie.’
Yeah, it was fun flexing flirt muscles that had been dormant so long. Really, it was easy. Because she could see the reaction—the glint in his eyes. And she could feel that pull between them; it was out-of-this-world strong.
‘You told me Roxanna yesterday.’ He stepped that little bit closer, his voice dropping.
‘You caught me by surprise yesterday,’ she breathed softly, holding eye contact. Nerves squeezed down tighter in her lower belly.
His gaze travelled across her face—eyes, lips, then dipped to her chest. ‘So now you’re Roxie.’
‘Yes.’ She tossed her hair defiantly and lifted her chin at him. ‘I’ve always been Roxie.’ Inside she had anyway. And ‘Roxie’ was certainly having an effect on him. She wasn’t a total innocent. She’d had a boyfriend—one who had let her down in her hour of need, for sure, but she knew the look—and there was no disguising the look Gabe was giving her now. Oh, it had been worth every cent, every never-ending minute in the salon this morning. Poor Roxanna had never stood a chance, but add a little blonde, a little oomph to her assets? It was a different story. She couldn’t believe men could be so shallow. But right now she didn’t care, she was just basking in the heat in those eyes. The novelty was heady.
He shook his head very slowly. ‘Well, Roxie, we’d better take a look at it.’
Look at what? Oh, her bee sting. She looked down at it and sighed; seemed as if the fun moment was over.
‘I want you on the bed.’
Roxie almost gasped at that instruction, until she quickly looked up and caught his too-bland expression. He was baiting her right back.
But he frowned when he glimpsed the circle of red, swollen skin on the inside of her thigh when she moved and sat up on the narrow bed against the wall. ‘You weren’t kidding.’
‘Of course not,’ she grumbled. As if she’d make up a bee sting just to get within five meters of the team doctor. He had such an inflated opinion of himself ‘Hurts like hell.’
He bent to look more closely. ‘You can see the mark, but it looks like the actual sting is out. You’ve always been allergic?’
She nodded. ‘But I haven’t been stung in years. I thought I might have outgrown it.’
‘Shame,’ he murmured with evil intent, his breath a warm cloud brushing her thigh. ‘When you’ve gone to such effort to grow up in other ways.’
She felt a very un-grown-up urge to throw something at him and his patronizing attitude.
‘Never mind, Roxie.’ His bedside manner came out more like a taunt. ‘Maybe you’ll get to dance overseas.’
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged like as if she didn’t mind, as if it wasn’t the disappointment of the year.
‘Spread your legs wider,’ he instructed casually, but with that dangerous glint back in his eye.
Externally she froze, internally she melted.
‘How wide?’ she managed to ask.
