She gulps as she looks up at me. I want to peer into her mind and eavesdrop on her thoughts. I hope she’s thinking what I’m thinking.
“The boat is leaving in about ten minutes,” I tell her as my heart pounds with a nervous dread. “If you have to leave, you’re going to have to do it now.”
She looks back at the boat and is silent for a long moment that nearly ruins me.
I’m just about to collapse when she turns back to me with a sexy grin on her face.
“What are we having for dinner?” she asks.
“Whatever you want,” I tell her as relief and happiness flood into me.
She can pick the dinner.
Because I’m the one who’s going to be choosing the dessert…
Chapter Six
Janice
* * *
“You can’t wear that!” I say when Shane walks down the stairs, looking sinfully hot in a fitted grey suit, white shirt, and black tie.
He looks himself over and then turns back to me. “You don’t like grey? It doesn’t look good?”
“No, you look incredible,” I say, feeling my cheeks start to blush. “That’s the problem. You’re over there looking like that, and I’m still wearing this!”
I look down at my dirty pink shirt and cut-off jeans and wish I had packed my hot little red dress on the mission. It would really come in handy right now. I’m about to have dinner with a gorgeous man who I’m crushing hard on and I look like I was dragged out of the ocean (which I kind of was).
“You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he says as he stares at me in awe.
I start to feel a little bit better with those sexy eyes on me.
“You’re just saying that because you haven’t left this oil rig in twelve years!”
“First of all,” he says as he continues walking down the stairs, “it hasn’t been twelve years, and I’m saying it because it’s true.”
My heart starts hammering as he walks up to me, his musky cologne hitting my lungs and making me all lightheaded and giddy. I gulp as he gently touches my chin with his thumb and forefinger and tilts my head up until I’m looking into his beautiful brown eyes.
“You are stunning. In every way, Janice. Absolutely mesmerizing, to the look, to the smell, to the touch, and if I may…”
He leans down and kisses me softly on the mouth. I moan as he parts my lips and I feel his warm masculine tongue against mine.
“…and to the taste,” he says with a lick of his lips.
I already want another kiss. Badly.
This man has a control over my body that is so unexpected. I’ve never experienced anything remotely close to this before and it’s unnerving. I’m sure I’d do anything he asked me. I just want to please him so badly. It’s all I can think about.
“I would have dressed up for you if I could have,” I say with my body warming up.
He leans in with a wolfish grin on his sexy lips. “It’s you undressed that I really want.”
I swallow hard, wondering what it would feel like to get undressed in front of this man. What would he think of my body? Would I be shy? Excited?
I have to stop thinking of these dirty thoughts because I keep getting wet and all worked up. I’m never like this.
“Let’s hope that dinner goes well and you get everything that you want,” I say with a bat of my eyelashes. It’s so forward, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
“Come with me,” he says as he hooks his big muscular arm around mine and brings me to the door. “Let’s get dinner over with then.”
“Aren’t we eating here?” I ask as I turn back to the kitchen.
He opens the door and leads me outside instead. “It’s a beautiful night. Warm. Gentle breeze. I was thinking we could eat with a view instead.”
Any table with Shane at it is dinner with a view.
I can’t get over the spectacular sunset as he leads me along metal walkways. It’s crazy. Every hue of pink, blue, orange, red, and purple is present throughout the vast evening sky. It’s like someone up there kicked over a table of paints and they spread all over the sky in a mess of brilliant colors.
It’s so beautiful that even Shane peels his eyes off me for a few seconds to admire it.
“You did this?” I ask, smiling wide when I see a romantic table for two set up on the platform. There are fancy plates, a tablecloth whose corner is blowing in the warm breeze, wine glasses, an ice bucket with a bottle of white wine sticking out, and those cool silver covers on the plates that I always wanted to try, but was never fancy enough to get.
“I had the chef prepare it before he left,” Shane says, looking pleased that I’m happy.