Curious about the games, she got up and took a closer look. The game they were so intent on masked a geography lesson, one of Sammy’s poorest subjects.
“Pretty sly,” she told Jason, when Sammy finally went to his room, leaving the two of them alone.
Jason came over and nudged her legs aside, so he could sit across from her. Dana was all too aware of the way their knees intimately bumped, her faded jeans a sharp contrast to his expensive wool slacks.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Jason said.
“Oh, really? I suppose it was just an accident that the game focused on geography.”
“True,” he said, his expression all innocence. “It looked like fun. I’d seen a lot about it in magazines and on public television. I’d just never gotten around to trying it.”
“You’re a crummy liar, but thank you. For the first time, I think Sammy realized learning could be fun. He’s never loved books the way I have. He’s just wanted to experience things, to see them firsthand.”
Jason tucked her sock-clad feet in his lap and began massaging them. The deep strokes were both soothing and oddly exciting. Tingles shot from her toes straight to her midsection.
“There are some who say that his way is right, that people who get all their education from books never really learn about living,” he said as if it were no more than an idle thought. His caresses said otherwise.
Dana’s breath had gone perfectly still. “Is that what you think? Do you think I’ve been missing out on life?”
His gaze met hers. “It doesn’t really matter what I think. What do you think?”
Dana had to try very hard to stay focused on the train of the conversation. “Maybe I’ve missed out on some things, but not the important ones.”
Jason’s hands slid beyond her feet and began a hypnotic caress of the bare skin just above her socks. She’d had no idea just how shivery sensitive that part of her anatomy was.
“What about love?” he said as matter-of-factly as if he’d asked about the likelihood of snow. “Isn’t that one of the most important things?”
“I suppose. What about it?” she asked, her voice suddenly choked. That increasingly familiar ache was back again, that deep-down need that was aroused in her by Jason’s most casual touches.
“Don’t you think that’s one of those things you have to experience to understand? You can read about it, but until you’ve felt your heart open up to another person, you don’t really know what it is. I’m just beginning to realize that myself. How about you?”
“Maybe.” Her voice was a near whisper as she succumbed to the delicious warmth spreading through her. With the fire crackling in the fireplace and Jason’s intoxicating touches, she felt as if she’d discovered paradise. If ever she was going to allow herself to love a man, it would be this one. He could be exasperating and arrogant and stuffy, but his heart and his touch were gentle.
His fingers came to rest just above her knee. Her stomach quivered in anticipation. Yet nothing more happened.
Why wasn’t he finishing what he started? she wondered, filled with a frustration she couldn’t quite explain. Why, for the first time in her life, wasn’t she afraid of what might happen next? Could it be that she was actually ready to admit she needed another person in her life and that Jason Halloran was that person?
Fending off male advances had become second nature to her by the time she was twelve. The guys in her neighborhood hadn’t been respectful of age or innocence. Dana had known intuitively that the first time she gave any one of them the slightest encouragement, she would become fair game for them all. That’s when she’d learned exactly where to hit to prove that no meant no.
To her confusion, she wasn’t the least bit interested in saying no now. On some level she couldn’t explain, it was as if she’d waited her whole life for this moment, yet Jason was holding back. His touches teased, inflamed, then left her wanting. Agitated by the sensations and her own unexpected response to them, she dared to meet Jason’s gaze. At once she saw the turmoil, saw her own turbulent desire reflected there.
“Jason?”
“What?”
“I think I need you to kiss me.”
A half smile came and went, then his mouth slowly covered hers with exquisite tenderness. His tongue coaxed her lips apart, and Dana’s senses went spinning. It was a response she’d come to expect and, again, she wasn’t afraid.
Nor was she satisfied. There was a sweetness to the kiss, a gentle persuasiveness, but she knew there had to be more, and she wanted it, desired it with a fierce intensity that shook her to her very core. She wasn’t ready to label the wanting love, wasn’t ready to think at all beyond tonight. Tonight, though, she wanted to be held in Jason’s arms.
The daring prospect was fraught with obstacles. Sammy, for one. She couldn’t make love to Jason with her brother in the same house. And what would Mrs. Willis think if she discovered that Dana’s bed hadn’t been slept in?
Those were just excuses, she told herself. Jason’s master suite was at the opposite end of the house from the rooms she and Sammy had taken. As for the housekeeper, Mrs. Willis wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary if Dana’s room was tidy when she first entered it tomorrow. Dana was too used to making her own bed to leave it for someone else to do. Even this morning everything had been neatly in place before she’d ever walked out the door. Though Mrs. Willis was clearly inclined to pamper her while she was there, Dana had explained that she was used to doing things for herself.
There was nothing, then,
