To Love and Protect (Must Love Diamonds 4)

“How do you know he’s not watching right now?”

“Because if he was, he wouldn’t have let that guy in the lobby get within five feet of you. And he damn well shouldn’t have let me lay a hand on you.”

“So you do know you’re acting like a jerk,” she snapped.

Dev ignored that as he glanced farther down the hall, toward where the guest rooms started around the corner, about ten feet away. “I also saw him disappear a good fifteen minutes ago with that blond he was chatting up at the church.”

Her eyebrows rose as she looked in the same direction. “Noelle?”

Distracted by the soft, dark curls accentuating the graceful line of her neck, he muttered, “Whatever her name is.”

“That’s my cousin.”

That kind of rang a bell. “Of the D.C. Diamonds?”

“Yeah.”

He remembered how she and her brothers and sister used to joke about the D.C. Diamonds, the Dallas Diamonds, and the Denver Diamonds. They’d always seemed closer to the cousins in Dallas than in D.C.

A slight frown dipped her eyebrows as she continued to stare down the hall. Even with a frown, she was beautiful enough to steal his breath away. At the church, he’d had to force his gaze to the stained glass windows when he noticed his sister’s too-perceptive FBI gaze shifting from him to the object of his attention for most of the ceremony.

For years, he’d only ever seen Shelby with her long, dark hair in a sleek ponytail. As a kid, and on through her teens.

But tonight, she was all woman—a fact that had slammed home when he’d slid his arm around her waist back there in the lobby. If he hadn’t been so focused on running Chad off, the feel of her lush body combined with the light, summery notes of her perfume would’ve had him hard in seconds.

With the formal elegance of her upswept hair, a rich burgundy gloss staining her lips, and the way her shimmery velvet dress clung to her breasts and hips, she was classy and sexy. The seductive drape of velvet below her bare back got a man thinking about the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra as his gaze traced the line of her exposed spine, down to her perfectly shaped ass.

How easy it would be to slip a hand inside the back of that dress and skim around to the front, sliding up over her ribs until he could cup the weight of her breast in his palm. If her nipple wasn’t hard already, a teasing brush or two of his thumb would do the trick—

The rush of blood to his groin had him jerking his thoughts back to reality at the same time Shelby faced him again.

Desperate to redirect his thoughts, he moved past her to look around the corner of the hall. Closing his eyes briefly against the scent of jasmine that teased his senses, he steeled his resolve and turned back to ask, “Who was that guy in the lobby? Do you know him?”

She flicked her gaze in the direction they’d come from a few minutes earlier. “Chad Mayer. I worked with him on my dad’s campaign a couple years ago.”

“I didn’t notice him at the church.”

“Well, no, because he wasn’t invited.”

Explained why he was dressed a hell of a lot more casual than the rest of the wedding guests. “Then what’s he doing here?”

“He was with friends at the bar.”

Disbelief arched his eyebrows. “In this hotel?” Where the drinks were at least double what they’d pay at a club?

“He said one of the guys had a work thing nearby, so they came here after.”

“Do you

actually believe that?” Because there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he did.

Her gaze wavered in a moment of hesitation. “I have no reason not to.”

“How well do you know him?”

She shrugged, looking slightly uncomfortable. “We hung out some during the campaign, and went to dinner this past summer after he helped me with some permit issues for my veterinary clinic.”

The thought of her on a date with that guy made his gut twist.