has an engagement party on a Wednesday night?”
Gabby supposed it was a fair question, but in an extended family of more than one hundred, you didn’t wait solely for the weekend to get together. The Sanchez family often spent time together. “My aunt is hosting dinner tomorrow night at her home. We’ll celebrate then.”
“I’ve never been engaged, but isn’t that something people do on weekends?”
The knowledge he’d remained perpetually unattached only added to those sizzling hormones that seemed to spring to life in his presence, but Gabby resolutely ignored them.
She had him on the hook.
“I have a big family. If we waited only for weekends, we’d never fit in all we have to celebrate.”
“And you want me to go to a private family event?”
“As my date.”
He stilled at that, his earlier humor settling into the craggy grooves of his face. The color had returned to his cheeks, and he no longer looked on the verge of passing out, for which she was grateful.
“Your date?”
“It’s my lack of a love life that has my mother so upset. Bringing a date for the evening will give me some breathing room for a few months.”
“Why does she care?”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have, Mr. St. Germain?”
“One. A sister. And it’s Knox.”
“Is she older or younger?”
“Older.”
“Does she get up in your business?”
Something flashed across his face. She saw it in the brief tightening of his jaw before it was shut down. Firmly. “She’s my sister. Of course she does.”
“I have five brothers. I also have forty first cousins, more than half of whom are women. And I have my mother. And my grandmother. And too many aunts to count. Trust me when I tell you interference is a way of life in my family.”
“If that’s the case, why do you need to get your mother off your back? Isn’t that the definition of her job?”
“Mine’s gotten worse since this cousin got engaged. Maria’s the third in three months. Add on that three of my five brothers are married and giving her grandchildren...”
He shrugged. “Okay. So they’re living their lives and you’re living yours. So what?”
“I’m her daughter. I should have given her no fewer than three grandchildren by now.” She leaned forward and offered up a conspiratorial whisper. “You know. Because I’m over thirty.”
“And that’s some sort of tragedy?”
“It is to Elena Sanchez.”
He studied her for a moment, and she wanted to squirm under the perusal. His gaze was raw—unyielding—and in that moment she knew why Knox St. Germain was so good at his job. He missed nothing.
“And she’s fine with you bringing just anyone?”
“You’re a man and you’re breathing. You fit the bill.”
Gabby fought to keep her gaze on his face, even as she imagined the hard chest and tapered waist that reinforced her point in every line of his fit male form.
A small light glinted beneath eyelashes to die for, and he leaned closer, his already deep voice dropping into a husky register that she suspected had removed more than one pair of panties in Knox’s past. “Will there be kissing?”
“There can be. It is what dating people do.”
“And touching?”
Oh, my.
She fought the rising wave of pure lust that thundered through her midsection at the idea of Knox running his hands over her body. The heated response did serious battle with the self-righteous anger that still lingered over his handcuffing her.
She’d brushed off unwelcome advances before; she’d do it again. He meant to get a rise out of her and nothing more. “It’s hard to kiss if you don’t touch.”
He moved a fraction closer. “What about hand-holding?”
You are aloof and unaffected. You are a rock. You see through his act. “Isn’t that touching?”
He leaned back abruptly, the sudden movement jarring her from the vision of them kissing on her aunt Corrinda’s back patio.
“I’m not sure you’re up for it.”
The vivid lights rimming the scene faded from her mind as Knox’s words registered. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I can’t swoop in like some conquering hero, kiss you and love on you, and then leave. What will your family think of me? And you by extension.”
“They won’t think anything.”
“I’m hard to forget.”
“You’re a pompous as—”
The words hadn’t even fully left her lips when Knox struck like a cobra, swift and immediate. His lips were on hers, warm and soft, and she had the abstract thought that the man ought to have a warning label tattooed onto his forehead.
Sexy voice, sexy abs and sexy lips are not to be toyed with.
Even as alarm bells hit every note on the scale, she refused to pull away. Her mother wasn’t the only one who lamented Gabby’s lack of a significant other. Gabby was the one who went to bed alone each night. And she was the same one who opened the front doors of this shop between five and six o’clock every morning.
She knew what she was missing.
And she was damned sure she wasn’t going to miss a shot at a few make-out moments with the British god who’d shown up at her front door.
Heat radiated through his T-shirt in delicious waves, and she pressed her free hand to a firm shoulder—the one not currently sporting her catering napkins—while her other hand lay against his, somewhere in the vicinity of their laps. The attachment that had felt intrusive and insulting only moments before suddenly felt like a bond. A tight bond with slightly wicked overtones.
Just like his tongue. Strong and sure, he’d invaded her mouth as neatly as he’d invaded her shop, and Gabby was hard-pressed to push him away. Long, sure strokes against her own tongue had her seeing stars, the intrusion welcome and increasingly urgent, and she responded in kind, unwilling to give him the upper hand.
His fingers tightened over her back as their breaths mingled in the cool air of the kitchen, the slightest reprieve before they both dived back into the moment.
Had she ever been this wanton before?
The thought whispered through her mind as Knox took her under in another soul-searing kiss. Hot, carnal and full of sensual promise, he was a man who knew what to do with his mouth. And whether it was the increasing discomfort building in her body or the realization that it would be so very easy to fall for this man’s conquest tactics, she knew she had to put a stop to things.
The hand she’d laid on his shoulder drifted up to his neck, the tips of her fingers threading through soft wisps of hair. She shivered at the strength she felt in the corded muscle, the physical confirming what she already knew: he was a powerful man.
And she’d have to be content with the knowledge she affected him, especially if the hard beat of his pulse beneath her palm was any indication.
With a final stroke of her tongue over his—one for the road, as it were—she pulled back, her gaze on his in the dim lights of the kitchen.
“You’re still a pompous ass.”
“I work at it.”
The