more to her than the pretty, rich-girl package—and he didn’t mean just the grade-A ass, lickable thighs and oh-so-delectable everything else. She was funny, sharp, smart. Wrong for him in some ways—her being on the verge of going to bed with another dude being one of them. But right in others. So right he was going to have a hard time sleeping tonight without thinking about the softness of her skin and the sweet scent of her hair, and oh, the taste of that mouth, that soft tongue, those succulent lips. Heaven.
And belonging to someone else? Hell.
Was all the rest of her going to be someone else’s, too? He had to know. “So you’re going to that party,” he told himself. Because the one thing that would guarantee he got no sleep was if he tortured himself all night long wondering if his prediction that she wouldn’t go through with seducing her date had been right or wrong.
He needed to know if she was going home alone.
After cleaning up, taking a quick shower and changing into one of the few pair of dress pants and dress shirts he owned, he headed outside. The party had thinned out a little, but even if it hadn’t, he would have easily spotted his new neighbor. She had changed back into her green dress. Her hair was smoothed into place … as if he hadn’t had it tangled around his fingers forty minutes ago.
She sat at a table with Anna and Anna’s husband, who’d insisted on being called Obi-Wan. Obviously the guy was a Star Wars fan. A man and woman Anna had pointed out as the engaged couple sat there, too. And standing at the end of the table, behind Mimi, was a tall guy in a suit.
The boyfriend. No doubt about it.
He wished he didn’t immediately recognize that the guy was good-looking. Like, totally hetero male-model good-looking. He was well-built, broad-shouldered, masculine. He wore expensive-looking clothes and a half smile that said he owned the attention of every female in the crowd, and knew it.
Damn. He’d been picturing some sexually ambivalent, boring, pasty-faced, middle-aged guy who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like Mimi and therefore didn’t grasp the appeal of a thong. Unfortunately, judging by the way this one was resting his hand with casual possessiveness on her shoulder, he knew. He was practically holding a mine sign over her head, and looked like a fourth grader waving around his brand-new Xbox in front of all his less fortunate buddies the day after Christmas.
Xander had no business curling his fingers into fists. None at all. But curl they did.
She’s not yours yet, pal, he silently told the other man.
Spying him, Anna immediately waved him over. “There you are—and looking so handsome!”
He handed her the key. “Thanks for the rescue.”
“I take it you found your way to where you needed to be?” the older woman asked.
The sparkle in her eye made him wonder if he’d gone exactly where she’d wanted him to. Was his landlady playing matchmaker? “Eventually. Getting there was a bit of an adventure.”
“Some people around here could use one,” she admitted.
Across the table, Mimi watched, silent, but definitely focused on their conversation. She looked back and forth between him and Anna, but didn’t appear surprised. So she’d apparently already figured out Anna had intentionally given him the wrong directions. Interesting.
“Everyone, I want you to meet our new resident, Xander McKinley,” Anna said.
They made the rounds saying hello, and he congratulated the bride and groom. Then, when his eyes met Mimi’s, he murmured, “Of course, Mimi and I have already met.” Some spark of wickedness made him want to pierce a tiny bit of air out of the stiff-necked male model still hovering over Mimi’s chair. “Did you ever figure out what to do about that problem you were having?”
She shot him a malevolent glare, but quickly forced a smile to her beautiful lips. “All figured out.” Her chin going up, she added, “Thanks for that last suggestion you called out. I have a feeling that’s definitely going to do the trick.”
His last suggestion. Commando.
Xander swallowed hard, trying not to think about how silky that dress must feel against her bare skin. And especially not to think about who she was wearing all that sexy nothingness for.
“Xander?” said the lucky son of a bitch, his smile tight. “What an … interesting name.”
“Thanks. Yours was Dimitri, right?” he replied evenly, letting his emphasis say what he wanted to say. Let the other guy’s hypocrisy come through all on its own. Who the hell was he, anyway, the name police?
“Okay, everyone,” Anna interjected, cutting through the sudden tension that had erupted between them, “time for our party favors!”
“You shouldn’t have,” said the bride, Lyssa, a tall, attractive woman who looked like an Amazon. She had a good three inches of height on her groom, who’d been introduced as Duke.
“It’s just for fun,” Anna said as she reached under the table and retrieved a large, white-lace-covered box. “Everyone gets one. Before you put your hand inside, I want you to think about what you’d most like to know about your life.”
She passed the box around. The guests reached in one by one and pulled out plastic-wrapped fortune cookies, reading out the fortunes as they were drawn. One was apparently going to come into some money, another was about to experience high highs and low lows and a third was destined to change the world.
Of course, they all played the standard, sexy fortune-cookie game—adding the words between the sheets after the fortune. There was a lot of commentary about the high highs to be had between the sheets, and he found himself laughing along with the group, most of whom were friendly, young professionals. He might be the only blue-collar guy here, and a stranger to them all, but he didn’t feel at all an outsider. Southerners just had a gift for making people feel welcome.
When Mimi drew out her fortune—after one more admonishment from Anna to be sure to think about what she wanted—Xander really started getting interested. What, he wondered, did she most want to know about in her life?
Anna was the first to notice there was more than one tiny slip of paper within Mimi’s cookie. “Ooh, a double fortune, that’s lucky!”
Mimi merely smiled and plucked the paper free, scraping away the crumbs. Drawing them closer, she said, “There are actually three.”
The three tiny slips were stuck together, some kind of factory mistake, but Anna oohed and aahed some more. Her husband, Obi-Wan, who’d been pretty quiet tonight and hadn’t had much to say to anyone, piped in. “Must have been some hard concentrating you were doing there, Mimi. The universe is definitely trying to answer your question.”
“Read them out loud,” someone called.
Mimi smiled and opened her mouth to read the first one. But she just as quickly closed it. Her fist closed around the papers and she reached for her glass of wine.
“What’s wrong?” asked Dimitri.
“Nothing. It’s just silly. Let someone else have a turn.”
“Not until you read,” Xander insisted, something making him want to know what it was she didn’t want to share.
She frowned at him, then quickly looked away. But, as if realizing nobody was going to let her get away with ignoring her fortunes, she finally unclenched her fingers and lifted the slips again. Her voice low, she read the first one.
“‘The man of your dreams is always there to catch you when you fall.’”
“Between the sheets,” called one tipsy female.
Everyone laughed. Everyone except Mimi. And Xander. And Dimitri. Because the guy might be okay-looking, and he might be rich. But Xander wasn’t sure he met the dashing-hero definition. At least, that’s what