Simply Sinful. Carly Phillips
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going on?”
“I can’t pretend I’m a geek in need of training.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think that’s the services we offer?”
“Let her be Charmed!?” he asked, repeating her aunt’s company slogan. “It was on the pamphlet my friend gave me.”
“I see. Well, we’ve advanced beyond those days. Not that we can’t offer basic etiquette lessons if you need them, but…What do you mean you can’t pull this off? That you can’t pretend you’re a geek in need of training?” she asked warily, steering the conversation back to her main concern. It wasn’t like her to be sidetracked by a good-looking man—which made this one all the more dangerous.
“A friend of mine sent me here. He attended one of your dance classes last year. Your name is too unique for me to be mistaken.”
She narrowed her gaze. “What’s your friend’s name?” Kayla asked.
“John Fredericks. Says he nearly flunked out of Ballroom Dancing.”
She rolled her eyes, remembering the lessons her aunt had insisted Charmed! offer. Kayla never did understand how they filled a class. “That’s because he had two left feet and was preoccupied with landing a date for New Year’s Eve.” She couldn’t see the good-natured but shy man as a friend of Kane McDermott’s, but apparently appearances were deceiving. If John and Kane were friends, Kane had just handed her a reference she could trust. “How is he?” she asked.
“His company sent him overseas. He said to ask your aunt for tips on dating French women,” Kane said with a grin. “For the next time he calls.”
Kayla felt a pang of regret. “She’d have been glad to give him advice. She liked John, too.”
“What happened?” Kane asked.
“She and my uncle were killed a few months ago.”
“Together?”
“Yes.” Tears stung behind her eyes, as they did each time she thought of the accident and the aunt with whom she’d had so much in common. They shared an above-average IQ as well as a special relationship, due in large part to the fact that her aunt understood the oddity of being too smart.
She shook off the memories and focused on her visitor. “The police said they skidded in the rain and hit a tree.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been rough…losing both of them at once.”
“I didn’t know my uncle well. They’d only been married a little over a year, but at least he made her happy before she—” Kayla stopped, realizing she was confiding in a total stranger.
“I’m sorry.” He paused. “John will be sorry, too.”
“Thank you.” She lowered her gaze before meeting his stare once more. “But my aunt being gone doesn’t change the facts.”
“Which are?”
“You came in here pretending to be something you’re not.”
He flinched. “And that was wrong. But John…he thought we’d hit it off.” He glanced down at his hands.
“Why didn’t you just say that when you came in?”
“Because you can’t trust someone else’s opinion. Hell, that’s like accepting a blind date. So I…came in here to check you out,” he admitted sheepishly.
“John must have told you about me a long time ago,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because Charmed! rarely offers classes for the dating impaired anymore and neither does our brochure. We concentrate more on the international business arena now.”
He had the grace and manners to look embarrassed. “I knew the minute I walked in here I couldn’t pull it off,” he muttered.
“So you said.” Kayla narrowed her gaze. “Why is that?” she asked, hoping that her cup size had less to do with his answer than the chemistry. She was attracted to his looks, but a lot of good-looking men existed in the world. This one affected her on a deeper level.
“You’re even more beautiful than I’d hoped.”
A little too smooth, she thought with chagrin. So much for her futile hope he’d be special.
“But beyond that if you actually teach all these classes, there’s a wealth of knowledge in there and, I’m not ashamed to admit, smart women turn me on,” he said with a boyish grin.
Despite herself, she laughed at his obvious attempt at humor.
“Does this mean you’ll go out with me?” he asked.
Oh, how she wanted to, but dating a stranger wasn’t a smart move. She glanced at his determined gaze and doubted he’d take a straight no for an answer. “I wish I could, but I have to be here for the repairman.” She forced a regretful smile and squelched the female buried inside her who wanted to accept his invitation.
He unbuttoned his suit and slipped the jacket off his broad shoulders before flinging it onto the nearest chair. “It was that or be roasted alive.” He turned back to her. “Now where were we? Oh, yes…you going out with me.”
She opened her mouth to insist she’d made her final decision when the phone rang. She picked it up, grateful to discover on the other end the plumber returning her call. Gratitude quickly turned to dismay. She placed the receiver back on the cradle.
Kane raised his dark eyebrows. “Problem?”
She nodded. “The repairman. He’ll be here. Tomorrow. He hopes.” She plucked at her damp shirt.
“Well then.” He started to unbutton the cuff on his shirt. “We’d better get to work.”
“We?” she asked.
“You and me. I don’t see anyone else volunteering.” His gaze darted around the room. “Do you?”
“No, but…are you a plumber?”
“No, ma’am. But living in an old apartment, I’ve seen my share of broken heaters. So let’s get going.” With a flip of his wrist, he began rolling up his sleeve. When the first one was finished, he began on the second, revealing muscular forearms and bronze skin. With her fair complexion, she always admired deep-olive skin, but his coloring had little to do with the pulse-pounding adrenaline flowing through her system.
It was one thing to sense this man’s strength, another to witness the physical evidence of it firsthand. Kayla’s mouth grew dry and she grabbed for the bottled water sitting on her desk. She wet her parched lips before attempting to speak. “Wrench?”
“What?”
She plucked up the tool she’d deposited on her desk earlier. “I asked if you needed a wrench. To shut off the heat.”
“Take it along and we’ll see.”
She followed him into the back room. He knelt down to examine what she considered a foreign piece of equipment.
“The temperature’s already turned down,” he said.
“The cleaning crew must have turned it on by mistake. It was near ninety when I got here. I got the dial turned down but the heat didn’t follow.”
“It probably needs to hit its peak before it’ll start coming down.”
“You mean it’s going to get hotter?” she asked, fingering the damp bangs that stuck to her forehead.
“Count on it.” His searing gaze zeroed in on hers and the heat in the room seemed to soar. No man had ever had such a heart-stopping effect on her before. Drawing a deep breath, she wondered how to handle such raw masculinity. She’d made too many mistakes to mess up again.
He