He was fast, but he was also a big lug. Something in the way she moved inevitably seemed to make him laugh, and that slowed him down considerably. In seconds, she’d touched him. In seconds, he was flinging the ball toward her again.
She caught it and feinted left. So did he. She darted right. So did he. She stopped dead, staring with open mouth up into the empty bleachers. “Good heavens, what is that?” she hissed.
He glanced back. She whirled past him, bounced the ball on their makeshift goal and shouted, “Touchdown!” She added demurely, “My thirteenth. I thought you said you could play this game.”
“Come over here!” he roared.
She cocked her head, grinning at him. “Give me one good reason why I should risk getting within a mile of you.”
“You’re terrified of me,” he said smugly.
“You bet your sweet booties I am.” She darted backward, holding out a hand defensively when she saw two determined eyes closing in on her. “Now, just take it easy-take it easy, Mitch.”
They were playing touch, not tackle. He tackled, at the ten-yard line. He not only tackled but tickled, and when she was gasping for breath he kissed her, gathering her up like so much putty, twisting her so that his was the body against the cold, damp grass. Her mattress was the long, strong length of him. Her lips matched his in tenderness, in sharing, in a precious promise of intimacy that locked the breath in her lungs, silenced her laughter.
She stared at him, wanting him in a way she had never understood wanting before. His liquid eyes were haunted with desire.
A moment later, he was tugging her up, dusting off the seat of her pants, scolding her. “Of all the stupid ideas, and in the middle of the night. If you catch cold, I swear I’ll-” He went off for her coat while she stood there. When he came back, she was still silent. He put the coat on her, buttoning it up meticulously, turning up the collar, pulling her hat on her head. “Don’t you catch cold,” he growled.
He was so beautiful. His dark hair and dark eyes and the way he moved, his breadth of shoulder and lean, taut thighs and the soul of him, so rich when he opened up. Humor, gentleness, the tender, special touch of his hands… She didn’t know all of his mysteries yet, but she trusted him all the same. It wasn’t sane, but it was instinctive. This man she could love.
“Mitch?”
His fingertip traced the tremble of his name on her lips. He traced it once, then a second time, then roughly started shoving her hair under her hat. “This time,” he murmured, “you’re going home. You don’t even know me, dark eyes.”
“Whose fault is that?” Kay said softly.
Mitch hesitated, and then offered a very slow smile. “Mine?”
Kay planted her hands on her hips. “You’re getting smarter, handsome. I’ll give you that.”
Chapter Seven
Kay tapped her foot in front of her open closet door. “Appear, ravishing outfit,” she commanded.
At least a dozen skirts and dresses mutely confronted her. Nothing was strictly wrong with any of them. At least nothing had seemed wrong with them yesterday.
Mitch had said it was to be a business dinner. With a man they would pick up at the Spokane airport. Stanley Hemerling. They would meet his flight, wine him and dine him, and put him back on the 10:45 plane to Los Angeles.
Very odd.
But she’d jumped at the chance to learn more about Mitch, to be included in his life. The only problem was what to wear. Formal? Casual? Was she supposed to impress or understate? Exactly what do you wear for two men who collect rocks for a living?
Rocks, she muttered dourly. Something was rotten in Denmark. But what can you expect from a man who interrupts an incredibly successful seduction to play football?
She tugged a violet-striped shirtdress from the closet, studied it and shoved it abruptly back in place. Boring. The red frock was dressy enough, but didn’t seem appropriate. Black made her skin look like a washed-out dust cloth; she hated the thing. The pink was just a little on the bright side.
At 6:25, she rapidly tugged on an Oriental number her mother had given her the Christmas before. Her mother had the same love for wild colors that Kay did. The dress was a blend of violets and pinks and orchids, with black piping at the mandarin collar and long sleeves. Viewing her image in the mirror, she grimaced. Conservative it wasn’t. Actually, expensive it wasn’t either; she just loved the crazy dress.
In the four minutes she had left to put on makeup, she played up her eyes with shadow and mascara. She was about to swing her hair up in a coil when the doorbell rang.
In the next life, of course, she was going to be punctual. She slipped on black heels as she pumped the perfume atomizer at her throat and wrists, and with a hairbrush in her hand raced for the door.
She took one look at Mitch and muttered a despairing “oh, God” before racing back to the bedroom.
“I know. We’re meeting a plane,” she called back. “Just give me five minutes, Mitch, no more, I promise-”
Thoroughly rattled, she fumbled with the frogs at the front of her dress while simultaneously glancing through her closet again. Oriental would not do. The dress slipped to the floor, ignored, as she fumbled with hangers.
“What on earth are you doing?”
Kay ducked instantly behind the closet door, still fumbling with hangers. When she had tugged on a black knit skirt, she ventured a quick glance around the door. Mitch was still standing there, looking totally intimidating in a stark navy Savile Row suit-he’d never bought that in Moscow-and a crisply starched white linen Oxford shirt.
The dark suit and his dark coloring brought out the dramatic intensity of his looks, but it wasn’t that. She could suddenly picture him in a boardroom, quelling people with a look, commanding respect with total authority. Nice, she thought wryly. Why did she keep telling herself he needed someone to pull him out of his shell? The man dripped assurance.
The only thing familiar about him at all was his eyes. They looked exceedingly wicked, and very familiar.
“Could you at least give me a small hint why you’re changing a perfectly good dress at this particular time?”
She could hear the distinct note of Patient Male in his voice. Ducking her head back inside the closet, she burrowed into the black knit top. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I can’t hear you.”
She finished tugging the top over her head and peered over at him with a sudden grin. Men could occasionally be ridiculously stupid. There was no point explaining that if he was dressed in a five-hundred-dollar suit, she could hardly pair up with him looking as if she’d just stepped out of a bargain basement. “Since you’re here you can make yourself useful.” She backed up.
He zipped. And then he watched her rapidly fuss with her hair, piling it all up into some kind of topknot. Her cheeks were flushed; he understood that she was embarrassed because he was in her bedroom while she was dressing, but he couldn’t move.
He stared at her, mesmerized. The black outfit was classically styled, and the knit clung faithfully to her figure, and he recognized the rope of pearls she slipped around her neck as very old and very good, probably an heirloom. She’d achieved the sophistication she had apparently been aiming for. And Mitch was fascinated with watching the transformation, the way she fussed with bottles and brushes and riffled through the tiny jewelry box on her bureau.
She was beautiful…but black was not her color, and he knew instinctively that she wasn’t going to be his Kay for the entire evening. Her eyes were overbright, and when she confronted him in the doorway with the finished product, her posture was a little stiff-not at all Kay. And her hands didn’t quite know what to do with themselves.