“Over.”
He couldn’t even nod.
She was quiet for a long moment.She placed her hand in his and lightly squeezed.He was so surprised he froze.Had he held hands with a woman?He must have.Probably to steady her or help her into or out of a car, especially if she was wearing ridiculous high heels.This felt like none of those times.Intimate.But nothing like his snatched physical encounters with women over the years.
“You want to honor Cam’s life and dreams.Build a legacy for him as you pursue your own.”
He swallowed.
“You’re gonna have to take the first step.Jump,” she whispered.“Analyze later.”
“That’s something Cam would say, but it’s not how I operate.”
She tugged him toward the edge of the curb.
“Are you nuts?”Sweat broke out along his scalp.“This is where Cam was hit by an SUV last week.He went out to get Thai food—something he never ate, but I’d been urging him to try the food truck, but I told him to get delivery.”His voice was as tight as his chest.
“I know,” she said patiently like he was a child.“And I know you haven’t had enough time to process, but I’m standing here now, and we are seizing this moment because it will never be easy.”
He pulled back, but she was surprisingly strong.
“I’ll admit, I am a poor option for a guardian angel or a spiritual guide.Long line of failures on that front, but because I’d rather focus on your problems than mine today, we’re going to hatch your next steps.I’ll be your interested, but emotionally uninvolved, sounding board.We’ll do a top ten—no maybe too ambitious.Top five list of next steps.”
“Oh.Let’s be ambitious,” he mocked, amused and irritated by her fierce determination and bullishness.“We’ll do my top ten and then yours.”
“Deal.”She dropped a curtsey, and then seizing his hand, she pulled him off the curb and across the street.
They reached the revolving door of his building without being flattened.
“I wish Cam could see you now,” she said.“I have a feeling he would have been high-fiving you.”And then she cupped his face in her two elegant hands and stared into his eyes.“There are many paths.You just have to choose one and take the first step.And then another.”
She intoned it as if she did have a flare of a spiritual leader.He wondered why she cared and why she sold herself short, but then she kissed him and his brain went into free fall.
*
She’d wanted tokiss him since lunch.Rare for her.But it was the dichotomy of his strength and his vulnerability—the flashes of seeming to be lost.She knew what that felt like.He was physically beautiful, but he seemed indifferent to it.He was intelligent but was trained by life experiences and his own knowledge seeking—no formal education.He was alone, like her.And though she had no intention of starting anything—especially marriage like Vesna had planned, she was not averse to a bit of a flirtation.And experience.
A weekend in Denver could shake her out of her post-job, post-Atlanta funk.
Her hands slipped to his shoulders, and she pressed close.She’d thought him cerebral.Cool, but he didn’t kiss like that.His hands were in her hair, shifting one of her scarves so that he could kiss her neck.He lit a fire deep inside her that ignited and burned gloriously hot, as he plundered her mouth and she his.She felt alive.
So much for playful.So much for analysis.All she wanted to do was tug open his tie and pull him across the sleek corporate lobby and into his private elevator and ravage him there, spill out into the penthouse, clothes off, scattered, and taste him, breathe him in, and feel alive and powerful and sensuous instead of wary, always holding back.
“God,” she breathed against his mouth, nipping his bottom lip.“You kiss like an angel and a devil.”
His flash of a smile and the heat in his eyes said it all.Carnal was on the table, and she was ready to feast.
“That’s one way to slay the dragon,” he murmured against her mouth, his voice deeply sexy, and the feeling of his heart slamming against hers, and his erection, long and thick, straining at the apex of her thighs had her barely holding back from grinding against him.
Totally inappropriate, but she didn’t care.She imagined Cam would approve, though again, she didn’t care what someone else would think.Cam had lived.And died.So had Alissa.Ayana and Telford were left standing on the ruins until it was their turn to tumble into the eternal dark nothing.
“Upstairs?”She slid one hand in his back pocket and squeezed his hard ass.“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Good choice.”Laughing she grabbed the two sides of his tie that she had undone and pulled him into the building and stumbled into a tall, slightly weathered cowboy.
Yeah, this was Denver.The west.But with the scuffed boots, the worn wranglers, the plaid, pearl-button shirt, angular face and piercing blue eyes offset by the dark Stetson, the cowboy looked rugged, dangerous, and out of a different era.
