She was vaguely aware of something sharp digging into her right shoulder blade. Of an ache in her left knee where it was still hooked around him.
“I may never move again,” Archer mumbled against her. But he put lie to those words by cupping her breast in one hand and running his tongue over her nipple.
The shaft of sensation streaking through her was almost painful in her satiated state and she laughed weakly. “Don’t. Torture.”
He braced his hands on either side of her and pushed upward. His hair was messy and falling over his brow and his bare chest bore a sheen of sweat. And his eyes, so deeply green, were almost enough to make her pull him down to her all over again.
Particularly when the corners of his lips tilted in a wicked smile. “What’s a little torture?”
“This was completely unprofessional.” She winced a little as she unlatched her ankles.
He dropped a kiss on the point of her shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing I wasn’t looking for a professional.”
She found enough energy to glare at him. “Funny.”
“I thought so.” He straightened a little more, too, then winced himself and swore softly. “Your dorm room floor was softer than the edge of this desk.” He finally straightened all the way with a faint grunt. “I may never stand straight again.”
“At least you haven’t been tattooed by a computer keyboard.” She dragged the offending object from beneath her shoulder blade and weakly shoved it aside. It was easier to keep talking than to let the momentousness of what they’d done sink in. “And I don’t recall you protesting too much.” She slid off the desk, only then realizing that she was still wearing those sexy tall shoes.
His arm hooked her around the waist and he pulled her up flush against him. His gaze held her just as certainly as his arm did. “Neither did you, sweetheart.”
Her fingers curled against his chest and her skin prickled. “This, uh, this doesn’t change anything.”
One of his eyebrows went up. “Like what?”
She felt stupid for having said it. “I don’t know. But it just, you know. Doesn’t.” Brilliant, Nell. Just...brilliant.
“You’ll still feed the cat, then?”
“What? Why?”
He dropped a hard, fast kiss on her lips and gave her a decidedly inappropriate swat on the behind. One that caused an equally inappropriate zip of excitement to race right through the center of her.
“I need to be in Colorado for a few weeks. Maybe longer.” He hitched up his jeans and leaned over to grab his shirt off the floor. “Have a couple cases coming to a head and I need to be there.”
She felt a jab of unwarranted unease. His schedule had nothing to do with her. Nor did she want it to. He was Archer Templeton, for God’s sake. Just because he hadn’t said a word about clients needing him in Colorado the night before when he was busy making her his “succession plan” didn’t mean he was making them up. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
The look he gave her was so mild it would have alarmed her if she’d been the alarmable sort. It was the kind of look that said he knew she thought he was making excuses.
She looked away and picked up the tuxedo dress from the floor. She would have much preferred to pull on her own dress still heaped in the corner, even though it was just as shapeless now as it had been when she’d purchased it. But she couldn’t. Not with him watching her. So she pushed her arms into the long sleeves once again and began buttoning that long row of buttons.
She hadn’t even reached her waist when he brushed her hands aside to take over.
She damned the need that clutched at her insides when his knuckles brushed against her bare skin.
He obviously knew it, too, because he seemed to deliberately slow the task, and devilment was glinting in his eyes again. “The only reason I came here this evening was to tell you I had to leave town.”
“There’s this thing called a telephone.”
“Yeah.” He pushed through the button right below her navel. “But think of the fun we’d have missed.”
She willed the wobbliness out of her knees. “Your grandmother will be disappointed. She was expecting you here for her cocktail party.”
“She has you. She’ll be fine.”
At any other time, Nell might have appreciated his easy confidence of that fact, but it wasn’t any other time.
“You going to wear your panties?”
Her skin went hot all over. “Excuse me?”
He leaned over again and when he straightened, her plain cotton panties were dangling from his finger.
She snatched them away, then balled them in her fist behind her back when the door suddenly opened and Delia stuck her head in.
She looked surprised for a moment to see her cousin there. Then speculative as her gaze bounced from Archer to Nell and back again.
“Knew the dress would fit,” she said, and closed the door again.
Archer laughed softly. “Good thing she wasn’t here five minutes earlier.”
Nell just covered her face with her hand and wished the world would swallow her whole.
Chapter Twelve
The cocktail party was in full swing when Nell finally made it down to the patio some time later. She’d freshened up as much as she could in the powder room next to her office. She was still wearing the tuxedo dress, but at least her hair was back up in its familiar knot.
There was no sight of Delia among the people on the patio. As for Archer, he’d escaped the mansion.
As long as Delia never mentioned seeing him, his grandmother would never know that he’d been there at all.
Fortunately, Delia had been correct about Montrose. The buffet tables were positively glorious with their artful arrangements of meats and cheeses, fruits and breads. Wine was flowing. All of the guests were smiling and soft violin music—Vivian had been strangely specific about that—was coming from the speakers built into
