Striptease. Alison Kent
Читать онлайн книгу.
toward him. The point caught him on a downward arc and barely even grazed his chest. “Damn. I was hoping that would fly up your nose and into your brain.”
A videotape held in one hand, Jacob bent to pick up the pencil, straightened and gave Melanie a look that was half smirk and half smile. “I wasn’t sure you credited me with having a brain.”
Slowly, she closed the useless gift catalog. Her concentration had been shot before he showed up. Now it lay gasping on the ground. Even so. He might have been put on this earth to ruin her life, but he was not going to ruin what was left of her day.
Now, now. It’s hardly his fault you can’t get him out of your mind. It wasn’t even his fault for having gotten under her skin, and that was the crux of her problem. She was the one at fault here—a fact she hated facing, a weakness she wanted to deny. She knew better than to be taken in by a cocky, bad boy attitude and a body to make a woman weep.
What had they been talking about, anyway? His total lack of brains?
“Brains I can’t speak to,” she said. “But I can credit you with having a good eye. Perception, placement, nuances of lighting that most people miss. Stuff like that.” She shrugged, figuring she’d just appeased his ego, though she’d only been speaking the truth.
“A rather backhanded compliment, but I’ll take it.” He crossed the office’s trademark deep purple carpet to return the pencil. “Here. In case you want to give it another shot.”
She twirled the pencil between her thumbs and index fingers while pretending to consider, then shook her head. “Bad idea. Might poke an eye out this time. And you need both, considering you’ve apparently been assigned to tape our documentary.”
“I wondered how you’d feel about that.” He balanced the video cassette on its side along the front edge of her desk. “You weren’t too thrilled last time you came face-to-face with my camera. Guess I can’t expect that to have changed.”
“Except for one crucial thing.” She nodded toward the cassette. “Now that I’ve seen Lauren’s wedding video I can’t argue with your skill.” Which was a shame, really, since a verbal set down might get him out of her personal space so she could think. He was way too close, too masculine, too…everything that made him who he was.
Confident. Competent. In total control, she admitted, forcing herself not to sigh. If only he’d shown an inkling of respect for her opinion, her input. But no. Things had to go one hundred percent his way. She stared at him and his ridiculously beautiful eyes—a hazelnut sort of brown hiding behind that dark fringe of coffee-bean-colored lashes. She suddenly wanted a latte in a very bad way.
Melanie blinked, then stiffened her melting spine, noticing how strangely he was staring at her. As if she were an oddity to be studied, or a prospective subject for one of his documentary scenes. Any second he’d discount her skin-and-bones body as a waste of good videotape, her mouthiness as abuse of the audio….
She shoved back her chair, stood and headed for the bookcase, where she slipped the gift catalog into the first in a row of magazine holders. Nerves hummed beneath the nubby taupe sweater she wore bunched at the waist over slim black pants. Nerves solely related to the strain of having to work with this man in a professional capacity when he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
Yes, he got the job done. But the way he went about it—slouching and shrugging on one hand, issuing bossy orders on the other—was going to drive her mad. Madder than the struggle to keep her hands off and her clothes on was making her.
Striving for nonchalance, she turned and waited for his gaze to lift and meet hers. “Why are you here? To deliver an advance warning that you’re back to boss me around?”
“And horn in on your power trip?” He carelessly hitched one shoulder. “Hardly. I’m just doing some preliminary fieldwork.”
“That’s odd.” She leaned back against the bookcase, her hands flat behind her on a hip-high shelf. “You told me you never worked hard at much of anything.”
“So I did.” Jacob left the video on her desk and made his way to stand beside her, leaning one shoulder against the bookcase and tucking his hands into khaki pockets. “Didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”
And she would make sure he continued in that uninformed state for the next however many weeks he was in and out of the office. “Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I rarely forget much of anything people tell me.”
For a long, drawn-out moment he studied her intently. His expression, brilliantly cutting and sharp, possessed a life of its own, as if he was considering whether or not a response was required. Finally, he reached out, and she thought for a moment he was reaching for her. A ridiculous notion, because he obviously wasn’t, and because that one thought spawned others. And she found herself wondering what she would do if he did.
If he touched her.
If he moved closer, into her space, breathed her air and brushed the curve of her jaw with his lips.
But he didn’t. He picked up the frosted glass figurine behind her instead. He turned it over and around, balanced it on his palm, used his thumb to test the smooth curving surface of the woman’s glass bottom, her breasts, her face lifted to the sky.
Melanie’s fingers itched to take it from him, to return the sculpture to the shelf and move his hands to her body, but she didn’t do the first and certainly wasn’t about to do the second, no matter how quickly her heart tripped or how hot and itchy her skin felt beneath her summer-weight sweater.
She nodded toward the figure. “Lauren brought that back from Ireland. I keep forgetting to take it home.”
“Nice,” he said, before returning it to the shelf. “Why take it home? Why not enjoy it from here?”
“I do,” she admitted, surprising herself and moving her gaze from Jacob’s face to the figurine. “It’s just that I have a collection of this artist’s pieces at home. Keeping the lot of them together seems logical.”
“Do you like his work? Or do you like the work that he does?”
She frowned, shook her head as she looked back at him. “I’m not sure I understand the difference. Or is the redundancy meant to trip me up?”
Jacob took a step closer. “Do you like his eye, his style, maybe the way he interprets emotion in the figures? Or do you just have a thing for naked bodies?”
The way he asked the question, the timbre of his voice, the flash of teasing fire in his eyes made it easy to imagine that his query was more leading and more personal than he’d intended it to be. Then again, he was a guy. What was she thinking? Leading and personal was the name of the game.
Common sense told her to blow him off, but too much time together loomed in their future, and she was loath to give him any inkling of advantage. “Yes, actually, to both. I like his style, the way he portrays the human form. And, as far as having a thing for naked bodies, I can’t think of anything as compelling as a beautiful nude.”
He didn’t even blink. Didn’t even smirk. Did nothing but ask, “Are you talking art here?”
“Doesn’t the best art imitate life?”
He took a minute to consider the scope of her reply, a minute during which he picked up and fondled the figurine. Yes, fondled, because there was no other word to describe the silky glide of his fingers over the lush glass curves.
Melanie told herself to look away; the words fell on her own deaf ears. And she admitted to the almost painful need to know if he would touch her with half as much awe.
“Is your collection gender specific?”
Melanie’s gaze snapped from his beautifully made hands to his face, which was equally compelling in a purely masculine way. “You mean do I only collect females?” When he gave a single nod, she lifted her chin and answered with a simple, “No.”
“Interesting,”