Page 20 of Her Captivated Hero

The little minx.

Nope, he wasn’t going to ask. She finally started to laugh. “I kind of thought it was a good thing for me, too. That is if we go out on a second date.”

“You can take that to the bank.”

Gray stood up and held out his hand. Riya looked up at him confused.

“Can I have this dance?” he clarified.

She jumped up from her chair. “Absolutely.”

Once more he was charmed by her delighted response.

“Ooops,” she said. It was then he realized she was short again. Before she had a chance to crawl under the table and every man in the thirty yard radius had a chance to ogle her butt, he volunteered to fish out her shoes.

“You don’t have to,” Riya protested.

Gray crouched down and grabbed her shoes.

“Oh yes I do, trust me,” he grinned ruefully, as he held up the first shoe.

“Aren’t you going to hand them to me?”

“I’m going to help put them on.” Gray realized he was developing a foot fetish.

She put her hands on his shoulders for balance, then arched her foot and he slid it on the first shoe. Gray couldn’t resist smoothing his hand up her calf as he helped set her foot down onto the ground. Then he held up the next one.

“I think you’re enjoying this,” she said, clearly surprised.

“Ya think?”

She looked more closely at him.

“Yes, I do,” she said with an impish smile.

He took his time putting on the second shoe, again stroking her tantalizing silk-clad leg. Then Gray rose from his crouch and took both of her small hands in his. “Dating a genius comes in handy. They understand what’s going on.”

He kept her close to his side as he maneuvered them through the tables and out to the wooden floor. It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly if he’d orchestrated it himself, the DJ started to play an old standard from the forties.

“Who’s this? I’ve never heard him before.”

“At least one Frank Sinatra song is played at every wedding. It’s mandatory,” Gray told her. Riya swayed closer to him, in time to the music. The top of her head came up to his chin. It was only because of those killer shoes.

“I like him.”

So did he. Especially if it meant that Riya’s head was resting on his chest. Her hair smelled like raspberries and some kind of flower. Gray kept his hand resting lightly on her back, tracing the bottom of her tattoo with his thumb.

She shivered.

The song morphed into something from Ed Sheeran, and Riya melted even closer. When was the last time he felt like this?

Never. That was when.

“Loo? Oh, Lieutenant Tyler.”

What asshole teammate of mine is interrupting the good thing I’ve got going on?

Gray looked up and saw Dex grinning at him. That was when he took note of the fact that they were playing some blasted pop song. People were getting their groove on all around them, while he and Riya were lost in their own little bubble.