“Damn,” he said through a harsh breath. Then he turned on his heels and was gone. Leaving Jane stunned and bewildered. Shocked for the fourth time that night.
Chapter 10
Blindsided: Hit from Behind
Jane closed her laptop on Honey Pie and her latest victim, a hockey player Honey had met on the observation deck of the Space Needle. A hockey player who looked a lot like Luc Martineau.
She rose from the chair, pushed aside the heavy drapes, and looked out the hotel window at downtown Denver, Colorado. She’d definitely developed an infatuation for Luc. Probably an unhealthy one too. In the past, she’d sometimes based Honey’s victims on real people. She’d changed their names, but readers could still figure it out. A few months ago, she’d put Brendan Fraser into a coma for subjecting moviegoers to Monkeybone, Dudley Do-Right, and Blast from the Past. But this was the first time Jane had written someone she knew personally into the column.
People might recognize Luc when the magazine hit the shelves in March. Definitely the readers in Seattle would. He’d probably hear about it too. She wondered if he’d mind. Most men wouldn’t, but Luc wasn’t most men. He didn’t like to read about himself in books, newspapers, or magazines. No matter how flattering. And the Honey article was extremely flattering to him. Hotter and more passionate than she’d ever written. In fact, it was the best thing she’d ever written. She hadn’t decided if she was actually going to send it in. She had a few days before her deadline to decide.
The drapes fell from her hands and she turned back to the room. It had been about sixteen hours since Luc had kissed the breath out of her. Sixteen hours of reliving and analyzing every word and action. Sixteen hours later, she still didn’t know what to think. He’d kissed her and changed everything. Well, actually, he’d done more than just kiss her. He’d touched her breast and told her she drove him crazy, and if his sister hadn’t been sitting out in the car, Jane might have thrown him down and checked out that lucky tattoo, which was driving her crazy every time she saw it in the locker room. And that would have been bad. Very bad. For a lot of reasons.
Jane kicked off her shoes and pulled her sweater over her head. She tossed it on the bed as she moved to the bathroom. Her eyes were scratchy and her brain fuzzy, and instead of locking herself in her room working on her Honey Pie article, she should be at the Pepsi Center, talking to the coaches and players before tomorrow night’s game. Darby had mentioned that the best time to talk to the coaches or front-office management was during practice. And Jane wanted to ask them about their new acquisition, Pierre Dion.
She jumped into the shower and let the warm water pour over her head. That morning when Luc boarded the jet, wearing his dark glasses, blue suit, and striped tie, her stomach had fluttered like she was thirteen again with her first junior high school crush. It was horrible, and she was old enough to know that having a crush on the most popular boy in school would only bring her heartache.
After fifteen minutes, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed two towels. If she was honest with herself, something she tried to avoid if possible, she could no longer fool herself into thinking that what she felt for him was nothing more than a crush. It was more. So much more, it scared her. She was thirty. Not a girl. She’d been in love and she’d been in lust and she’d been somewhere in between. But she’d never allowed herself to fall for a guy like Luc. Never. Not when she had so much to lose. Not when there was more at stake than just her contrary heart. Something more important: her job.
A broken heart would mend; she could get over that. But she didn’t think she could get over blowing the best opportunity she’d been given in a long time. Because of a man. That was plain stupid, and she wasn’t stupid.
A knock interrupted her thoughts, and she moved to the door. She looked out the peephole, and Luc stood on the other side, all windblown and perfect. He glanced down at the ground and she took a moment to study him. He wore his leather coat and a gray wool sweater, and he must have just come from outside because his cheeks were pink. He looked back up and his blue eyes stared at her through the peephole as if he could see her. “Open up, Jane.”
“Just a sec,” she called out, feeling foolish. She moved to the closet and pulled out a terrycloth bathrobe. She tied the belt around her waist, then opened the door.
His gaze rose to the towel wrapped around her head, lowered to her mouth, then, in no great hurry, slipped to the tips of her bare toes. “Looks like I caught you just out of the shower again.”
“Yes. You did.”
He slid his gaze back up her legs and robe and looked at her without expression. He either was uninterested or doing a really good job of appearing uninterested. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” She stepped aside and let him in. “What do you need?”
His long strides took him to the center of the room and he turned to face her. “When I saw you this morning, you seemed uncomfortable. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me, Jane.” He took a long deep breath and stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “So I think maybe I should apologize.”
“Apologize for…?” But she knew and she wished he wouldn’t.
“For kissing you last night. I’m still not sure how it happened.” He looked over her head as if the answer were written on the wall. “If you hadn’t cut your hair and been looking so good, I don’t think it would have happened.”
“Wait.” She held up one hand like a traffic cop. “Are you blaming my hair?” she asked, just to make sure she was hearing him right. Hoping she wasn’t.
“Probably had more to do with that dress. That dress was designed with ulterior motives.”
He’d kissed her, and she’d fallen so deep into infatuation that she wasn’t sure it even was infatuation anymore. Now here he was, blaming her hair and her dress as if she’d purposely tricked him. As if he wouldn’t have kissed her if he hadn’t been tricked. Knowing how he felt hurt more than it should have. He was a jerk, no doubt about it, but she was a fool. The latter was the hardest to take.
Pain and anger tangled into a knot around her heart, but she was determined not to let it show. “It just was an ordinary red dress.”
“It didn’t have a back and had only two strips of material up the front.” Luc rocked back on his heels and lowered his gaze from the towel wrapped around Jane’s head, down the front of her robe to her bare toes again. Since last night, he’d been thinking about that kiss in her apartment, and he wasn’t certain what had driven him to kiss her. The dress. The lips. Curiosity. All of those. “And the little gold chain hanging down your back was there for only one reason.”
“What? To hypnotize you?”
She was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t that far off. “Maybe not hypnotize, but it’s there so any man seeing it will think about unhooking it.”
She raised one brow and looked at him as if he were an idiot. He sort of felt like an idiot. “I’m telling you the truth. All the guys last night were thinking of unhooking your dress.” None of the guys had mentioned it to Luc, but he figured that if he’d been thinking it, they had too.
“Is this your idea of an apology or your way of rationalizing what happened?” She grabbed the towel from her head and tossed it on her bed.
“It’s a fact.”
She combed her fingers through her hair. “It’s delusional.”
If she were a guy, she’d see the logic in it.
“And it’s stupid.” Her wet curls tangled about her fingers as she pushed them back from her face. “It puts the blame on me, and I didn’t walk into your apartment last night and kiss you. You kissed me.”
“You didn’t protest.” He didn’t know what had shocked him more. Him kissing her, or her response. He never would have guessed that so much passion could be contained in so little a package.