His Unlikely Lover (Unwanted #3) (9 page)

“
Christ
Almighty
!” he swore shakily. He was—for the umpteenth time that weekend—fully and painfully erect and had been since the moment she had pushed the damned overalls down over her slim shoulders. Shaken, he turned away from the cubicle and tried to compose himself. This was beyond ridiculous . . . He pushed a trembling hand through his hair and inhaled deeply as he tried to get himself under control again.

This for damned sure couldn’t be healthy. Surely a man couldn’t will away this many erections in such a short time without suffering severe physical and mental repercussions? He was just managing to get it under control when he felt her hand curling around his bicep. He nearly leapt out of his skin at the contact.

“I’m ready,” she said with a slight smile, and he blinked, confused.

Ready for what
? No way in hell was she ready for what he wanted to do to her. She wasn’t ready for him to lift her onto the bonnet of that damned car she’d been under just minutes ago. She wasn’t ready for him to cover her tight body with his own and shove her thighs apart. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready for him to drag those tempting shorts down her thighs before thrusting his full length into her.

He peered down into her expectant face and found his eyes dropping down to her smiling mouth. Her lower lip had a generous curve to it that made it look as ripe and juicy as a peach . . . and damn it, remembering that it tasted as good as it looked wasn’t helping one bit.

“Gabe?”

“Hmmm?” Another small taste wouldn’t do any harm would it? He leaned toward her and her hand tightened around his bicep to give him a slight shake.

“Gabe!”
He shook his head and the haze of lust that had obliterated his reason for the past few moments reluctantly dissipated.

“Are you okay?”

Was he
? Who the hell knew anymore? He was riveted by her pretty mouth: bow-shaped and bee-stung, it would look more at home on a ’40s bombshell movie star than the skinny tomboy standing in front of him. He barely stifled a groan as he suddenly pictured those lips wrapped around his length and . . .

“I’m fine,” he gruffly assured the still-concerned Bobbi. “Sorry about that. I was thinking about a problem at the office.”

“Okay . . .” She sounded unconvinced but didn’t push it. “You ready to go?” He nodded and led her toward his car parked out front.

“Guys, keep an eye on the place, okay?” she yelled at the three men who were sitting at a picnic table in the park opposite the road. None of them bothered to look up when they heard her voice and the only acknowledgment she got was a lazy thumbs-up from Sean.

She headed to the driver’s side of the car and watched Gabe expectantly from across the gleaming red roof. He stifled a grin and merely raised an eyebrow at her. She seemed to recognize the
no way in hell
look he was giving her, and her shoulders slumped a bit.

“When are you going to let me drive this baby?” she asked, her hand lovingly trailing over the sleek curve of the Lamborghini’s bonnet. Gabe tried,
very hard
, not to remember that same hand running over his body with equal reverence. He mostly succeeded and tried to focus on her question.

“I don’t know. I think that the answer to your question lies in a place called
Never
Land, which is located just east of when hell freezes over and to the north of when pigs sprout wings.”

She didn’t respond to that and lowered herself into the comfortable black and red leather passenger seat with a blissful sigh. She took a moment to enjoy the new car smell and turned her cheek to nuzzle the luxurious leather headrest. The last time she had traveled in the car, she had been too hung over to pay the respectful homage she seemed to reserve for this automobile in particular. She made up for that now. Her hands traced every feature on the control panel between the seats and her fingers caressed their way across the dashboard until she was leaning over to stroke the smooth leather of the steering wheel. Gabe had made his way around the front of the car and was now staring at the sensual movements of her hands in fascination. Aware of the fact that his crotch—which was showing embarrassing signs of life again—was in her direct line of sight, he crouched with one arm resting on the roof of the car and the other on the head rest of the driver’s seat.

“Are you quite done groping my car?” he asked, cringing when the words emerged in a growl rather than in the casual tone he was aiming for. She sighed and settled back into her seat. While she fumbled with her seat belt, he lowered himself behind the wheel.

God, he
loved
this car. It had been his reward to himself after stepping up as CEO of GNT. He wasn’t one for the usual trappings of wealth—he lived in the house he’d grown up in and rarely traveled unless it was for work. But he had a weakness for sleek, expensive, classy cars and sleek, expensive, classy women, and he frequently indulged himself. He collected sports cars and dated women that Chase loved to call brainy, beautiful, boring babes. Which was somewhat unfair. Sure his ex-girlfriends all tended to be a bit on the . . . dry side, but they weren’t
that
bad, just a bit serious. Okay, so the last one—a pathologist—had talked about blood a
lot
. So much so that Bobbi had taken to calling her Vampira behind her back. The name had stuck and all his friends had started doing the same—Gabe had broken it off after nearly slipping up and calling her Vampira while they were on a date. He hadn’t known until that moment that he had started thinking of her by that unfortunate nickname as well.

“You’re so selfish with your toys, Gabe,” Bobbi accused with a pout, and he shrugged as he turned on the car, grinning in satisfaction at the low, throaty purr coming from the engine.

“Manny’s for lunch?” he asked, pulling away from the sidewalk as he spoke.

“Only place I’m dressed for,” she pointed out, and his eyes involuntarily dropped to her bare thighs again. He cleared his throat before refocusing his attention on the road. An uncomfortable silence followed and Gabe hunted for a way to fill it.

“So how do you plan to save that old heap of Jason’s?” he blurted out.

“She’s not an old heap,” Bobbi protested. “She’s just a bit faded and I’m going to restore her to her former glory. She’ll look amazing afterward and she’ll handle like a dream.”

“How’s business?” he asked, hating how he seemed to be reaching for conversational topics with her—usually conversation flowed naturally between them, but suddenly he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that didn’t feature the words
screw you senseless
somewhere in the mix. She didn’t seem to notice his discomfort, leaning forward to investigate the speedometer instead.

“Passable.” She shrugged, tapping at the glass pane. “Is this thing broken or are you
really
going that slowly? In a frikkin
Lamborghini
?”

“In case it’s escaped your notice, we’re on a busy main road,” he pointed out. She said something less than complimentary beneath her breath. For some reason her disdain grated and he was stricken by the unfathomable urge to gun the engine and disregard the rules of the road. He had never felt this uncharacteristic need to impress her before.

“I’ll take you out on an open, quiet road sometime and let her loose,” he offered, and her pretty eyes lit up as they met his for a few brief seconds before he had to focus on the road again.

“Seriously? Will you let me drive?”

“No.”

“I’m a good driver.”

“You’re a
reckless
driver.” He could feel the waves of fury emanating from her after his words but she said nothing in response. She said nothing at all even when he parked in front of Manny’s a couple of minutes later, and that’s when he realized that she was actually giving him The Silent Treatment. He hid a grin. She could never keep it up for longer than five minutes—so it didn’t bother him at all that she chose to seethe in silence. She
was
a reckless driver. She loved speed way too much, and while she handled cars competently enough, being in a car with her in the driver’s seat was enough to give anyone gray hairs.

They walked into Manny’s together, and Gabe curbed the ridiculous impulse to rush forward and get the door for her.

“Hey, Bobbi,” a chorus of male voices called as she walked in.

“Come over here and settle a bet will you?” It sounded like Jason, but Gabe couldn’t be sure, there were too many bodies between them and the voice.

Gabe watched with a frown as she wove her way through the tables that were scattered haphazardly around the pub’s floor to make her way to the bar where a random group of their friends were gathered. The men were all laughing and talking loudly and the tall, bulky frames soon enveloped Bobbi’s slight figure as she disappeared from his line of sight completely. Irritated, he stepped forward, determined to reclaim his lunch date. He could hear her quiet voice above the deeper voices of the men, and they all paused for a beat before an eruption of whoops and groans went up in response to whatever she’d said or done. Money exchanged hands and curious now, Gabe stepped into the throng. Bobbi was grinning impishly.

“Gabe,” Jason eventually noticed him and slapped him on the back enthusiastically. “Good to see you, man! I just wanted Bobbi to do that thing with the dart. My old university buddies are visiting and wouldn’t believe it until they saw it.”

“What thing?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t the same “thing” he had warned Bobbi against doing years before.

“You know,” Jason prompted with a laugh. “When she balances the sharp end of a dart on the bridge of her nose?”

Damn it!
The crazy woman could put an eye out with that stunt. He found her defiant eyes through the crowd of still laughing men and she angled her stubborn jaw upward, obviously daring him to say something about it. He bit back the words of censure, not wanting to be too predictable and knowing that while she was braced for them they would have little to no impact on her.

“You ready for lunch yet?” he asked pointedly and saw the flicker of surprise on her face before she nodded. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm as he sarcastically ushered her toward one of the empty tables in the middle of the room. She kept her head down as she passed him and when he turned to nod his farewell to Jason he noticed that all of the other man’s friends had their stares firmly fixed on Bobbi’s derriere and naked thighs. He barely refrained from shoving the guy closest to him, the one who was actually tilting his damned head for a better view and instead took immense satisfaction in placing his own bulk between Bobbi’s departing figure and the leering gazes of the gathered men.

She was already sitting down when he reached the table and took the seat opposite hers, fighting back an irrational surge of anger and frustration when he saw the slight indent and red mark on the bridge of her cute nose. The minute mark marred her pale, smooth skin and seeing it there aggravated him beyond measure. She was watching him warily, but he refrained from commenting and merely called over a waitress and then waited for a long irritating moment while Bobbi perused the familiar menu for ages before placing her order of calamari and chips. He didn’t bother to glance at the menu and instead ordered his usual fare.

Bobbi snorted when she heard his order and he inclined his head in question.

“What?”

“They
do
have other stuff here, Gabe,” she elaborated—her voice lightly frosted with scorn. “But you always order the ribs, chips, and salad.”

“I know they have other stuff here,” he countered, his tone measured as he arranged the condiments to his liking. “And I’ve tried them all but I like the ribs the most. I don’t see why I should order anything else when I know that this is what I like best.”

“Some variety wouldn’t kill you, you know?” She groused as she very deliberately rearranged the bottles that he had painstakingly placed in order of preference. “It’s okay to order the steak instead of the ribs. It’s perfectly fine to get a buzz cut or grow your hair down past your collar.” Her eyes went up to his conservatively cut and parted hair, and it took every ounce of his willpower to refrain from self-consciously raking his fingers through said hair. Instead he focused on putting the bottles back into order, ignoring her snort of amusement.

“And while we’re at it, it’s all right to date a dumb brunette once in a while instead of a brainy blonde. I swear to God, that bloodless parade of boring blondes you date has sucked every ounce of life and fun out of you.”

“I suppose I should be more like you?” he murmured scathingly, raking his eyes over her scruffy figure scornfully. It nearly killed him not to linger over her silky smooth legs and pert breasts but he had a point to prove. “More careless and carefree? You live your life without any structure or order, Bobbi. Sure you’ve managed to open that shop but you have no real business plan and you have everything vested in that damned car of Jason’s. What will you do if, or more likely
when
, that plan fails? It would behoove you to be less carefree and more responsible. You now have employees—people who, unfathomably enough, depend on you for their livelihood. Maybe it’s time to stop being such a child. Stop balancing darts on your nose, racing motorcycles at the track, and dressing like a two-bit little . . .” He stopped himself before he completed the sentence but her wide eyes told him that she knew exactly what he’d been about to say. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and tried to apologize but the words wouldn’t come.

They sat in silence until the waitress brought their food, avoiding eye contact at all costs, and Gabe felt like a complete bastard for the unspoken word that now hovered between them.

“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” She suddenly broke the loaded silence—her voice small and uncertain.

“Nothing.”

“But you said . . .”

“Look I was being an idiot.” He kept his eyes firmly on his plate.

“You wouldn’t have mentioned it if you didn’t think there was something wrong with my clothing.”