Never Trust A Lady

hands where they gripped the handles of her tote bag. “You do seem to keep turning up, Mr. Hawkins. Everywhere Campbell is, everywhere I am…there you are. You must admit, it’s quite a coincidence.”

There was a sharp bark of laughter, and then more of that strange, pulsating silence. Jane’s mouth grew dry and her chest tight before he stirred and said in that same caressing voice, “What would you say if I told you you were right-that it wasn’t a coincidence, that I have an ulterior motive for… turning up, as you put it?”

Jane smiled. I’d say you were telling me the truth for a change. She turned to him, but the words never made it past her lips. He’d taken off his sunglasses finally, and the message in his eyes was crystal clear.

Here it comes. Hawk watched her eyes for the expected flare of awareness and surprise. He’d caught the shocked little bump in her breathing. All’s fair, he reminded himself when his belly tightened with guilt and self-disgust. If seduction is what it takes…

And then, to his great shock, she laughed. Without malice or artifice, just a warm little ripple of pure amusement, her eyes sparkling with it, crinkling up at the corners in that way he liked so much. He hadn’t thought it possible for so small and innocent a thing to have such an effect on him. It hit him in places he hadn’t known he still possessed-guy-places like ego, and pride, and others even more deeply buried and longer dormant that he couldn’t bear to give names to.

Detachment, his greatest defense, enfolded him in a shell of ice. It enabled him to coolly arch his eyebrows and inquire, “Why is that funny?”

She shook her head, still chuckling, and looked down at her hands. But Hawk had noted a faint blush of color in her cheeks, the slightest tremor of her lips. Now he zeroed in on them and unleashed his imagination. It didn’t take much. Good old reliable lust.

He concentrated on the shape and texture of her lips, until he could feel the heat of her mouth and taste her essence on his tongue. He thought about her hands, too…thought about those nice, strong, no-nonsense hands unbuckling his belt and peeling off his pants, encircling him, stroking him to that edge-of-explosion readiness. He called up the memory that had haunted him in the night, of that nice, firm fanny of hers pressed up against him, her breasts tumescent in his hands…

“You’re a very attractive woman,” he said, noting the sultry timbre of his own voice with detached satisfaction. “Don’t you know that?”

She lifted amused eyes to his. “Oh, please, Mr. Hawkins, I know perfectly well what I am. And who I am.”

Hawk shifted uncomfortably and muttered, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He was beginning to feel just a little lost, as if he’d suddenly found himself in a foreign country, with unfamiliar language and customs; the woman’s responses weren’t what he’d expected and not at all what he was used to. Plus, the pounding in his belly and the intense heat in his loins was making him wonder if he should have been more careful about giving his libido free rein, considering how long it had been since he’d had a woman.

“I mean,” she began, and then paused, head tilted to one side, while she thought about it. Watching her, Hawk saw the flush in her cheeks deepen, caught the flicker of a pulse beat in her throat and felt a primitive surge of triumph at the realization that she wasn’t as immune to him-or his comments-as she wanted him to think she was. She drew a deep breath, and he felt his own pulse thumping against his breastbone.

“I’m hardly the femme fatale type,” she went on finally, speaking in a low, husky voice, and this time when she looked him in the eyes, although she was still gently smiling, he had the impression it wasn’t easy for her. Her vulnerability made him feel thoroughly ashamed of himself. “Certainly not the type of woman attractive and dashing strangers make passes at in the middle of a public park in broad daytight. I’m sorry-I don’t mean to be rude-but those things just don’t happen, except in movies and romance novels, I suppose. At least not to me.” She shifted to face forward again, giving the words a note of finality, like a sentence from a merciless judge.

In the silence that followed. Hawk realized that his jaw was aching from the tension of his tightly clenched teeth. And that his hands itched with the sudden urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her out of that damn composure of hers, shake her until her head fell back and her mouth opened and her breath came quick and shallow, and then… “You’re wrong, you know,” he growled.

She shook her head, implacable and yet serene. “I don’t think so.”

“What would I have to do to convince you?” he asked, masking his frustration with a smile he knew must look as crooked as his motives. “Kiss you?” It would serve her right…serve her right! “Right here and now? In broad daylight… in a public park?”

She looked at him and, with that maddening serenity, replied, “Probably.” Calling his bluff-he couldn’t believe it.

It would serve her right, he raged silently. Do it. Do it now. He thought about her lips crushing under the onslaught of his, her mouth opening…the clashing of teeth, the mating of tongues…her hands raking his back, her breath sobbing in her throat… Do it!

Sudden, unexpected desire curled inside him like tongues of flame, twisting his belly into knots, pounding in his temples. He felt almost sick with wanting… Do it now.

He almost did. He even reached out his hand to touch her, to take her chin and turn her to face him, to tilt her mouth to his pleasure. But then, for some reason, his lust-fogged gaze happened to focus on the little fan of crow’s-feet at the corner of her eye. And he thought, Nice….

And just like that the fog cleared, and he was rational again. But not detached. Hardly. Shaken. Shaken to his core.

She turned to look at him when he put on his shades-and a damn good thing she hadn’t done so before, he thought, or no telling what she’d have seen in his eyes, and he’d have lost her for good, for sure-fixing him with a look more rueful than amused. Perhaps even, he thought, with a touch of regret.

“You see,” she said softly, “I was right, wasn’t I?”

He gave a short laugh, a sound like sandpaper scraping over stone. Hearing it, her lips smiled without changing her eyes, and she reached up to touch his face along the hard, raspy edge of his jaw. “For some reason, I think… you’re too honorable to lie about such an important thing.”

With a movement like a snake striking, he caught her hand and imprisoned it in his grasp, holding it like a captured bird in the space between his face and hers. Looking across it, he caught and held her eyes, as well, knowing his were safely hidden now behind the hunter’s blind of his sunglasses.

Still vibrating and reckless from the effects of his brush with disaster, he said roughly, “About kissing you? Who said I was lying? Lady, you misjudge me. I do want very much to kiss you.” He was surprised to find that he meant it. Surprised, too, by that same primitive something in him that surged at the flicker of uncertainty-even alarm, and yes, desire, too!-he saw in the bottomless depths of her eyes. “Just not here, in broad daylight in a public park, as you put it. That’s not my. style. When I kiss you…” he smiled at the almost imperceptible jerk of response he felt in her hand “… when I kiss you, I’d want it to be private enough for what comes after. You follow me?”

He didn’t wait for her nod; the small, convulsive movement of her throat, the slight parting of her lips and the shine of perspiration across the tops of her cheekbones were enough for him.

Changing the nature of his grip on her hand, and with it the mood and tenor of what was between them, so that even he wasn’t sure now that the sexually charged moments had really happened, he rose and pulled her to her feet.

In a different voice, a light, teasing voice, he said, “And now that we’ve established that we both think the other is attractive…” He paused to smile at her gasp of protest. “You did, you know. You said attractive- and dashing. I have a very good memory.”

He was delighted by the grace with which she accepted his words, like a shifting of gears, or the change in tempo that signals a new movement in a symphony. Turning her hand in his so that it was more like, and more than, a handshake, she said sweetly, “Well, don’t let it go to your head, Mr. Hawkins. I also happen to think the bald guy in the Maytag commercials is adorable.”

Hawk grinned and touched his temple with two fingers in an unspoken touche. The heat was ebbing slowly from his body, leaving his mind clear and once more focused on the game at hand. And already plotting strategy several moves ahead.

“So,” he said as he bent to retrieve the briefcase from under the bench, breaking the vibrating silence that was