he was no longer holding her, he was still close. Too close not to savor the way the slate gray T-shirt molded to his chest, the damp material calling out the mouthwateringly work-honed muscles in his upper arms while suggesting he’d been working under the summer sun all morning. Too close not to let her gaze wander down to the tauntingly snug fit of his well-worn jeans. And too close not to appreciate the almost-black stubble dusting his angular jawline and the glistening skin above his upper lip as her attention drifted slowly back up.
Damn, he looked good fresh from the field. Sweaty and unshaven. The overlong bangs of his thick, dark hair hanging at an angle, nearly caressing his right eyebrow. Like she should take him back to his office and see if she couldn’t get him sweatier yet.
Behind her, Candy gave a discreet cough.
Courtney’s thoughts zipped back to the present, to the fact that she was grinning like a fool again. Well, geez, the guy had probably saved her life, what did people expect if not a little hero worship? Okay, and a little horny drooling.
“Looks like I owe you another thanks,” she finally got out. “The liquor was stronger than I thought it would be.” Truthfully, the candies were downright nasty, but given their cost, she would withhold her judgment. Beside, maybe others would like them.
Grabbing the box off the table, she held it out to Blaine. “Want one?”
He eyed the chocolates skeptically. “Not if they’re going to kill me.”
She waved the box around the lunchroom. “Anyone else?”
Apparently deciding she was okay, several people had returned to work. Those who remained declined the offer. Courtney set the box back on the table as she slid onto her chair. She grabbed her water bottle and guzzled a long drink in the hopes of getting the revolting taste of the liquor out of her mouth and making her tongue feel normal in the process.
Blaine moved to stand at the head of the table. He tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and watched her drink through narrowed navy blue eyes. “Sure you’re all right?”
Courtney set the bottle down, considering his tone and stance. He seemed every bit as concerned as Candy. Possibly more so.
Had the chocolates been from him and was he now feeling guilty over her reaction to them? The answer was totally irrelevant, and still she was dying to know. “I’m fine. Aren’t you supposed to be working in the field?”
“Keeping tabs on my schedule?”
“I needed a dollar figure for a job and knew you could rattle it off the top of your head much faster than I could look it up. You weren’t in your office so I checked the sign-out sheet.” Total fabrication, but lying was far better than admitting she wanted to see how he would behave around her after the incident in his kitchen.
The concern left his eyes. “I was on a job site. Things were running smoothly, so I came back to the office to finish up some paperwork. Speaking of which, I should get to it.” With a parting nod to her and Candy, Blaine headed for the lunchroom door.
Courtney sighed as she watched him walk away. Given his indifference toward her once she assured him she could breathe normally, their actions Friday night had left him unfazed. She’d been just another woman he’d brought pleasure. Now, he was back to business as usual. While she was left to ogle his ass and wonder if there was still a chance Candy had been accurate about his supposed time-and-again urges to ogle Courtney’s own.
3
A knock sounded outside Blaine’s open office door, followed by Courtney’s “Is now a good time?”
With an absent nod, he looked up from scanning a set of plans. She came inside, pulling out an armless, padded green chair on the opposite side of his desk and sitting down. A half hour had passed since he left her in the lunchroom. Long enough to move past the heart-pounding fear he felt upon realizing she was choking. But not long enough to forget how amazingly good she’d felt cradled against him, once the candy had dislodged from her throat.
In any other venue, he would have given in to his urge to nibble on the sweet spot of her neck. Not at work. Even in his office with his lower half hidden behind his desk, he shouldn’t allow himself to be physically turned on by her.
At least he’d made it back to his office before his cock had grown noticeably hard. Closing out the paperwork portion of a project he’d been avoiding had taken his mind off her to the point that his erection had faded away.
Now to keep his mind focused on work while she sat across from him in that bull’s-eye red top. The square cut of the neckline didn’t show off her cleavage, like so many of her shirts did these days, but when he’d been standing behind her, he’d had a prime view down the front. Her white cotton bra fit the secretly sensual woman she used to be instead of the outward vamp she’d become.
Blame it on the fact he’d yet to end his celibacy streak, or maybe the way his time in a mostly impoverished area had strengthened his appreciation for the simple things, but the plain style was a huge turnon.
Turning off that line of thinking, Blaine set the plans aside. “Looking for that figure?”
Courtney frowned. “Figure?”
“The reason you knew my schedule.”
“No. I ended up tracking it down myself.”
Had she? Or had she made up the need for a project fee to avoid admitting she wanted to track him down for another reason like to discuss what had happened in his kitchen Friday night? The openly appreciative way she’d eyed his body in the lunchroom suggested as much.
Resting her crossed arms on the edge of his desk, she sat forward. “I know I sort of said thank you for helping me, but words seem a bit weak considering it’s potentially my life we’re talking about.”
He had been afraid. And he had been trying to be good. Now his thoughts were centered on the press of her arms around her breasts, creating a generous supply of cleavage where before there had been none.
Pulling his attention back to her face, Blaine risked testing the waters. “Did you have a good time Friday night?”
Wariness shot through Courtney’s eyes. Her gaze zipped to his open office door.
For someone who’d recently made a habit of flirting with every guy at Pinnacle, be they single or attached, she was awfully worried about being overheard. “Dancing,” he improvised. “I heard you tell your friend you wanted to go out dancing.”
Visibly relieved, she looked back at him. “It was a pleasurable experience.”
“You’re into pleasure?”
Her eyes narrowed a fraction, conveying what he already knew—that he shouldn’t have asked the question in this setting. Her voice dropped to a throaty whisper with her response. “I’m not into pain, if that’s the alternative.”
Since he’d dared to start the conversation, there was no point in backing down. Giving her breasts an open leer, he pointed out, “Then you’ve never been exposed to the right kind.”
“Of pain?” She looked and sounded appalled.
He wouldn’t mind one bit changing her stance on the issue. His cock twinged with the idea of pinking her backside, and he amended that “wouldn’t mind one bit” to “he’d downright love it.” Keeping his tone professional, he said, “Like most anything else, there’s good and bad.”
Courtney seemed to turn the words over, as if weighing whether to give pleasure-pain a try in the near future. Then all at once, a naughty smile took over her lips and she asked, “Can I take you out to dinner tonight?”
If her smile was a foreshadowing of the night she had in mind, then the answer was a big hell yeah. Before he accepted the offer, Blaine made one thing clear. “I don’t date.”
“I meant as my way of saying