Looking Inside

His slow smile made something curl tight in her belly.

God, I’m crazy about him.

He snorted with laughter as they both stared at the image of playboy Hugh Hefner surrounded by a bevy of buxom bunnies.

“Some irony, that ol’ Hugh would be the one to interrupt a moment like that. Traitor,” she said with amused irritability.

“At least he had the decency to wait until the finale.”

“Barely.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

“I always hated the stupid thing. Now I have even more reason to dislike it,” she muttered, beleaguered.

His low, rough laughter made her sensitive skin prickle with awareness. He turned, taking her into his arms, his blue eyes lambent with amusement and the heat of his previous blazing arousal. She hugged his waist. He bent his knees and dropped a kiss on her mouth. Their lips clung together, hunger still lingering even after their explosive lovemaking. “You know, I think I hate Hugh too,” he mused, his warm, fragrant breath brushing against her upturned mouth. “I’m learning that I don’t like anything that keeps me from you, Eleanor.”

A ripple of emotion went through her. She wished she could believe what she saw in his eyes at that moment, but it seemed too incredible, like signing on for a fantasy when she knew better.

She felt him lift his arm and realized he was checking his watch. “It’s going on seven fifteen. Do you still want to make the reading event?” he asked her quietly.

“No way. I still need to shower and change. There’s isn’t time.”

“Okay. Then how about if I make you dinner? We should talk.”

She froze. What the hell does he mean by that?

“We should?” she asked hollowly, her heartbeat starting to drum in her ears.

He nodded. He leaned down and rubbed his lips against her flushed cheek.

“Okay,” she whispered.

And then he was kissing her again, deep and wet and wholesale, and her curiosity and anxiety faded. It’d never been clearer to her that she was in way over her head.

But before Trey, she’d had no idea that drowning could be so sweet.

TWENTY

They agreed in the cab that Eleanor would go to her condo to shower and change and then go over to Trey’s penthouse.

“Can you really cook?” she asked him as the cab flew down the inner Lake Shore Drive.

“Are you surprised?”

She shook her head, smiling. Their scorching, unexpected interlude in the basement had left her feeling euphoric again . . . almost intoxicated. She still couldn’t get over the fact that he’d not only not been angry at her misleading him about her job, he’d also—impossibly—found her work persona attractive.

“Not really,” she replied. “I’m starting to think you’re capable of anything.”

He arched his brows in a questioning gesture.

“I thought you’d be angry, when you saw me down there in the basement of the library today,” she told him impulsively. “That’s what surprised me most of all.”

His smile faded. She saw the city lights gleam in his eyes. “Because you were dishonest with me about what your job was like,

you mean?”

Her throat tightened. She glanced ahead, assuring herself that the cab’s partition was shut so that the driver couldn’t overhear. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t think I was exciting as I was making myself out to be, at the reading event,” she admitted quietly, glad for the cover of night to hide her blush. “That’s why I misled you about my job.”