had been something terribly sexy about the way she’d pulled off her swim cap and shaken out her hair. Sexy, because she hadn’t known she had an audience. And then when she’d begun toweling herself—it’d been time for him to make himself known and gain control of the situation.
His smile had flustered her—just for a moment and then the damnedest thing had happened. She’d put him in his place with a laugh.
He indicated a table close to the bar’s muted light. “How about here?”
“This is fine.”
He placed his glass on the table and pulled out a chair for her. She took the seat with a murmured thank-you and crossed her legs. Dark nail polish gleamed against the pale length of her toes.
Jack sat next to her and caught the waitress’s eye, motioning her over. What would she order? He dismissed Sex on the Beach or Screaming Orgasm. Too obvious. Maybe a white wine or a piña colada with one of those paper umbrellas on the glass’s rim.
“Hi. I’m Jasmine. What can I get for you?” the waitress asked.
“Scotch. Neat.”
Okay. He was doubly intrigued. A woman who swam marathon laps and drank a real drink.
The waitress turned to him. “Anything for you, sir?”
“A fresh Glenlivet. A short one.”
“Both of these on your tab?”
He smiled. “Yes. Thank you, Jasmine.”
“No,” the woman said at the same time. “Put my drink on a separate bill and I’ll sign for it.”
He couldn’t get a read on her. “But I invited you for a drink.”
“And I plan to have a drink with you. But it doesn’t mean you’re buying.” Her teeth gleamed in a pleasant, resolute smile.
“Separate tabs it is then.”
Jasmine nodded and looked between Jack and the woman as if sizing up her competition.
“I’ll be right back.” Jasmine flashed Jack a smile and turned back toward the bar. He recognized her look. He could have more than a drink, if that’s what he wanted, when her shift was up. Jasmine was a known, familiar quantity.
He turned back to the woman at his table. Flickering candlelight painted her in sepia tones. Amusement danced in her wide-set eyes. What color were they? It was impossible to tell in the semidarkness. And he really wanted to know.
“You don’t even have to try, do you?” She leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers beneath her chin, watching him.
Women often watched him, but not with this detached amusement as if he were some specimen in a jar. “No. Not really.”
“I bet you’re lethal when you put effort into it,” she said, more speculation than come-on. Which made it even more of a come-on for him.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever really tried.” But maybe I will now. The thought hung unspoken between them.
She shook her head, her hair brushing the slope of her shoulders. “It’s a shame to never reach your true potential. That’s what happens to people when things come too easy.”
Jasmine returned with their drinks and saved him having to answer. And quite frankly he was at a loss as to how to respond—an unusual state for him.
Jack studied the woman next to him. Not beautiful, but attractive. What was it about her that had gotten under his skin? In a flash, he realized it was her utter lack of coyness. One of the most boring aspects of the women he’d met lately was the studied coyness they adopted—Cosmo devotees who’d read that they should drop their head, bite their lips and then glance through lowered lashes up at their targeted man.
He recognized the moves because he skimmed Cosmo, along with a host of other magazines, on a regular basis to keep his finger on the consumer pulse. And because he was a detached observer of life and its participants.
“Can I get you anything else?” Jasmine asked.
“No,” they both demurred and, after a moment’s hesitation and another glance his way, Jasmine slipped away.
The woman lifted her glass and sipped. She had a wide, generous mouth, perhaps a shade too large, but still quite lovely with plump, full lips.
“Mmm. Very nice.”
Jack resisted the urge to lean forward and taste the Scotch on her lips.
Instead he contented himself with a sip from his glass. “There’s nothing quite like a good single-malt Scotch, is there?”
“I like it, but it is something of an acquired taste.” Her arms gleamed in the candlelight, the muscles still delineated from her earlier swim. She pushed her hair back from her face and a faint whiff of perfume teased from beneath the unmistakable chlorine clinging to her hair and skin.
Jack found it refreshing that the woman didn’t attempt to fill the silence with chatter.
He ran his finger along the smooth curve of the glass. “Have you been in Chicago very long?”
“No. I just arrived today. Tonight actually. How about you?”
“Tonight as well. I’m unwinding before a business meeting next week. I’m traveling alone,” he volunteered, anticipating she’d reciprocate the information.
“I could tell.”
He raised his brow questioningly.
“You haven’t glanced over your shoulder even once,” she said. “If you were here with someone, you would’ve checked to see if they’d shown up at some point.”
Clever. “Neither have you. So, you’re here alone as well?”
She finished her drink. “I’m here on business,” she answered. She motioned to Jasmine for her tab.
Did she dispense with everything with that same slight ruthlessness? Swimming laps. Her drink. Him.
Jack realized she was about to leave. And he didn’t want her to leave. Not only was he not used to being dismissed, he found her total lack of seduction, well, utterly seductive.
“There’s no jealous husband at home to mind if I ask you to join me for a late dinner?”
“And I presume you don’t have a wife who would object to you inviting a woman to dinner?”
Once again, she ignored his question and posed one of her own.
“She wouldn’t mind at all.” He smiled at her start of surprise, delighted he’d finally managed to get one up on her. Then he relented. “I’m not married. Or divorced. Or attached to a significant other.” Jasmine arrived with the bills and promptly left. The woman reached for one tab.
What was her name? Where was she from? And what did she look like in the light? She’d piqued his interest and that hadn’t happened in a long time. “Would you join me for dinner?”
She hesitated, obviously undecided. Women didn’t usually hesitate. It took Jack a second or so to realize the knot in the pit of his stomach was nervousness. He wanted her to say yes quite badly. “I promise I don’t bite,” he added.
“I’ll make a note of that. Actually, I need to shower and change out of this damp suit.” She signed her bill and tucked a copy into her bag.
“That’s not a problem.” In his head, he slowly peeled her suit off, over the curve of her breasts, along the line of her back, past the indent of her waist, beyond her hips, down those luscious legs.
She pushed away from the table. “Give me forty-five minutes.”
His usual dates would’ve demanded an hour and a half. Jack stood when she did. “The restaurant off of the lobby?”