Can't Get Enough (27 page)

"Don't. You look fine—great—like that," he said.

She smiled weakly, her mind fixated on the contents of her underwear drawer.
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"But I'm not dressed for—" she began to say, but strong hands were on her shoulders, turning her toward his car.

"Relax. We'll go to this place I know near the river—lots of patio space and a great view. You'll fit right in."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if all the other patrons would
be sans underwear, too, but instead she just ducked her head and slid
into the all-encompassing embrace of his leather upholstered seats.

"I know the owner of this place," Jack enthused as he started the
engine. Its low, subterranean hum reverberated throughout the car.

She was aware of his gaze flickering across to her before he pulled out
from the curb, and she made a futile attempt to tug the dress hem
closer to her knees. Pointless. Sally was a party girl, and this was a
party dress.

"They just started up about six months ago, so I try to go there as
often as possible. Figure if I'm giving my money to anyone, it might as
well be to friends."

He grinned across at her, and she found herself smiling back.

That was a nice thing to do, helping friends out with their fledgling
business. She sat up straighter, giving herself a mental slap about the
head. She had to be on her guard tonight. She already knew that she was
attracted to Jack. The last thing she wanted was for him to realize
that. She could just imagine his amusement if he knew that his
pity-assignment was lusting after him this very minute. No, she had to
be on the alert. Keep her guard up. One glass of wine, no dessert,
straight home. Absolutely.

"MORE CHAMPAGNE?" Jack asked, and Claire found herself nodding
blithely, watching the straw-colored fluid rise up toward the top of
her tall glass.

A warm haze had settled over her, the result of fantastic food, Jack's
witty conversation and two—no, three, counting this one—glasses of
champagne. Real French champagne, too, full of yeasty bubbles that
tickled her nose.

"This is so nice," she said, raising her glass to her lips.

"Come on, you said you were going to eat half of this," Jack prompted,
and she stared at the spoonful of sticky date pudding he was holding
under her nose.

"I don't—" she started to stay, but he leaned forward and the spoon
with its delicious mouthful was on her lips. Unthinking, she opened her
mouth to accept his offering, and she caught a glint of something in
his eyes.

Triumph? It confused her, and she snatched up her own spoon when Jack indicated he was ready with another mouthful for her.

"So…the Pro Series. How long have you got to train?" he asked idly, chasing the melting ice cream
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across the plate with his spoon now.

She answered without thinking.

"Might not go. Who knows?"

He looked startled, and she had to think back over the past few minutes to remember what she'd said.

"Really? You'd just call it quits?"

She shrugged, searching for a way to end this conversational tangent
but knowing he was tenacious when he thought she was lying.

"Maybe I got what I wanted out of it," she said, concentrating on scooping up another mouthful of pudding.

He made a grunting noise of disbelief, and she glared at him. Reaching
for her champagne glass, she took a big swig before speaking again.

After all, why not? Why not reveal all her petty inadequacies to this
man? He'd already seen her passed out from fear, so it couldn't get
much worse.

"Maybe I just realized I've been doing it for all the wrong reasons."
She could feel his attention focusing fully on her, and it made her
tremble with awareness. What must it be like to have all of that
blue-eyed intentness beside you in bed, no interruptions, no
hesitations? To have him thinking of nothing but you and him together?

She shoved her champagne glass away from her. Boy, was she a two-glass screamer or what.

"What are the wrong reasons, Claire?" he asked.

She reminded herself that she'd started this. "That note earlier. It
was from Harry. I mean, my dad. He phoned yesterday, left a message
that he was going to be here for the finals. We had a…discussion, I
guess you could call it, a few weeks ago. I told him I wasn't going to
be the only one doing any work to stay in contact from now on."

"But he didn't turn up?" Jack prompted.

"No. And the whole race, I was looking for him in the crowd, wondering
where he was. I had it all worked out beforehand, too. I was going to
win and show him that I was a success, that he'd missed out by not
being around. But you know what? When he didn't turn up, I realized it
was really all about wanting him to be proud of me, not about me
sticking it to him. I have told myself over and over again that it
doesn't matter what he thinks or does, but here I am. Ridiculous, huh?"
She couldn't look up. It sounded so small and sad saying it out loud.

"Everyone wants their parents to be proud of them. It must be tough
having a father who's not involved. I can't even imagine it."

"But I thought I'd beaten this. When I hadn't heard from him after my little outburst, I thought that was it.
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That we'd both just do our own things, that any pretence was over and
done with. And then he goes and does this, and I jump at the chance to
prove I'm worthy of the great explorer. 'Hey, Dad, look at me!

Just because I can't climb a mountain doesn't mean I'm useless.' All
these years of training—just so I can prove I'm good enough for him,
force him to be proud of me."

"What was his excuse?"

"Oh, some sponsorship opportunity or something. It doesn't matter.
Harry is a closed book. I should never have tried to open him. He's
been seized shut ever since my mom died." She shook herself suddenly
and sat up straighter.

"Well, that's enough navel gazing from me. Next you'll have me
confessing I never had a date for the school dance," she joked, aware
that she'd just revealed a great deal about herself. Jack half smiled,
but she had a feeling he wasn't ready to let her off the hook yet. She
was right.

"You think you won only because you thought your dad was there, don't
you?" he asked. That made her look up, straight into his eyes. How did
he know this stuff?

"It's obvious, isn't it? All this training. Pretty much everything I do
at Beck and Wise—it's all because I want him to sit up and take notice
of me."

There, it was out. She reached for her champagne glass, but Jack was
there ahead of her and he slid it out of her reach. She glared at him,
but he just shook his head.

"Let's go crazy and have a discussion where both of us are in our right minds," he said, his smile self-deprecating.

"Maybe I don't want to be," she mumbled, acutely aware of how exposed she was feeling right now.

"Reckless talk," he said lightly.

"Sure. I mean, why not? All my life I've done the right thing, toed the
line, took what was offered. I've flossed and eaten oat bran and stayed
within the speed limit. And where has it got me? When we were in the
elevator, you said I was uptight. At the time, I wanted to mess you up,
bad. But you're right. I am uptight. I'm so worried about what other
people think—what my dad will think—that I don't do anything unless I'm
sure it's safe."

She stopped, aware that she had just spewed her innermost thoughts onto
the table in front of a man who probably was wishing a trap door would
appear at his feet and save him. Then she realized that she was doing
what she always did—worrying about what other people thought, allowing
herself to be paralyzed by it.

"Are we remembering the same elevator? The one where we jumped each other like crazy people?

Doesn't sound like someone who's uptight or plays it safe to me," Jack
said. Claire blushed, mortified that he'd brought up their encounter in
the elevator just when she thought they'd both agreed to pretend it had
never happened.

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"That was different," she mumbled, eyeing her champagne flute with
longing. If she had to be embarrassed, she could at least be drunk.

"You're the sort of person who's always going to strive to achieve, no
matter what anyone else thinks or wants," Jack continued. "It's in your
nature. That's why you're about to start up a brand-new magazine.
That's why people respect you. That's why you won today."

She shook her head, intent on exposing all her dark places tonight, for good or bad. He'd said it earlier: reckless talk. She
was
feeling reckless. She'd won today, but she felt like a loser and she
didn't like it at all. She hated her life, hated what she'd become in
trying to please her father. She leaned across the table
confidentially.

"You want to know how uptight
I am? Even now, I'm sitting here regretting having said a word to you
about any of this. Worse, I'm sitting here worried about the fact that
I'm not wearing any underwear, terrified of every breath of breeze that
comes our way. And I'm scared spitless of what would happen if I told
you that I wished Morgan had never interrupted us last night. How
pathetic is that?" She raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to
laugh or mumble an excuse about having to go home and wash the cat or
take a violin lesson. But he just stared at her for a moment, his
expression unreadable. Then she noticed a muscle in his jaw flexing,
and she realized his eyes had darkened to almost navy.

"No underwear, huh?" he asked, his voice husky.

Jack Brook was turned on by the fact that she, Claire Marsden , wasn't wearing any panties.

"Forgot to pack a change of clothes," she said vaguely, absolutely fascinated by the intent look in his eyes.

"Right. You forgot," he repeated.

Suddenly she felt powerful. This man wanted her. He wanted her right
now. And she wanted him. And they could do something about that,
because they were both grown-ups with no strings attached. Lots of
skeletons in the closet, of course, and monkeys on their backs, but no
strings. If she could just find the courage to ignore a lifetime of
coloring within the lines…

"Take me home."

Her invitation hung between them. Jack licked his lips, took a deep
breath, then nodded. The instant he said yes, all of her newfound
courage disappeared down some invisible sinkhole at her feet. Oh, boy,
what had she just done?

You want this,she reminded herself.
You've been fantasizing about this for the past two weeks.
Then why was she feeling as if she'd just put her head in the lion's mouth?

She almost jumped when Jack's hand slid around her hip and onto the
small of her back as he guided her toward his car. Could he sense the
turmoil within her? Was that why he was being so…circumspect?

Because she'd kind of expected him to kiss her once they were alone in
the parking lot. At the very least. She'd just offered him an
incredibly blatant invitation. Shouldn't he be all fired up by now?

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She snuck a look at him as he opened the car door for her. What was he
thinking? She slid into the car, trying very hard to keep a neutral
expression on her face.

JACK CIRCLEDaround to his side of the car, aware that his heart was
beating a little too fast in his chest. Could he make it all the way to
her place before he jumped her? It was going to be a close-run thing,
but he dearly wanted to ensure complete and utter privacy before he got
Claire naked, because he planned to keep her that way for a long time.

She intrigued him. She excited him. And she touched him. While he had
supportive parents who erred more on the side of too much attention
than not enough, he understood what it was like to yearn for something
unattainable. And it must be so much worse when the person you want to
connect with should have every reason in the world for wanting exactly
the same thing, but didn't. And just because Claire understood that
there were all kinds of fathers in the world didn't make it any easier
to accept the facts. Did a person ever fully resign herself to
something like that?

And was he a predatory rat for taking her up on her invitation when she
was obviously feeling vulnerable tonight? Shouldn't he just drop her
off at her place and keep driving? Was he that much of a gentleman?

He glanced across at her, noticing that she was playing with the hem of
her skirt. And, inevitably, his thoughts turned to what was beneath
that skirt. Those smooth, toned thighs of hers…and no underwear. He'd
tasted her once, briefly—too briefly. He wanted more, a whole lot more.
He shifted to ease the sudden tightening in his jeans.

So, no, he wasn't that much of a gentleman.

But he would give her the opportunity to back out, if that was what she
wanted. That was the best he could offer, because he wanted her so bad
that he was half-inclined to simply pull over and make love to her in
his car. Only the thought that there wasn't nearly enough room to do
everything he wanted kept his hands on the wheel and his foot on the
gas. He knew that once he started touching her, nothing short of a
biblical event was going to stop him from drinking his fill of her. But
if they got to her place and she wanted to back out, then he'd let her
go, he told himself virtuously. This time. Maybe.

15

CLAIRE TWISTEDthe hem of her skirt around and around, longing for some
sign from Jack that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

Then she remembered exactly what she'd said back at the restaurant:
take me home.
She closed her eyes briefly. She was such a doofus .

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What on earth did
take me home
mean, when you got right down to it? She'd meant "Take me home and make
love to me till I forget my own name." But what had he heard? "Please
return me to my place of residence now that I've revealed I am lacking
in the panty department"? Or, "I'm so desperate and sad and pathetic,
please would you consider throwing a bit of casual sex my way to
alleviate my pain"?