His Style of Seduction Read online

  “What was that?” Jack’s voice was louder. He’d come into the bedroom.

  “I knocked something over. There’s probably glass all over the floor.”

  “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll get a flashlight. But don’t get out of the shower or you’ll get cut.”

  She blew out a breath and an unfamiliar sense of helplessness took hold. “You be careful, too. Are you still barefoot?”

  Was that a rumble of thunder or his laugh? “You don’t miss a thing, huh?”

  No, she didn’t. And that’s what she was paid to do. “Just hurry, Jack. I’m getting cold.” She shut the shower door again.

  “Hang on, I have an idea.” In a moment she heard a soft whoof and gentle thump. “Okay, sweetheart. It’s safe to come out now.”

  She drew back, realizing he was right on the other side of the shower door. “Safe?”

  “I laid a throw rug from the bedroom on the floor,” he explained. “There’s no glass on it.”

  “That was imaginative.”

  “I’m the creative director, remember? Imagination is my…second greatest attribute.”

  She laughed lightly. “Your first would be humility?”

  “That’s third.”

  She shook her head, still smiling. “Go away now, and I’ll get out and find a towel.”

  “Go away?” He sounded insulted.

  “Yes, go away. I’m not wearing anything.”

  “Including shoes. I’ll guide you to the bedroom so you don’t accidentally go off this carpet and slice your foot with glass. I can’t see either, but I know how big the carpet is and where I’ve laid it.”

  “In other words, this is not your evil scheme to see me naked.”

  “That comes later.”

  Water snaked down her spine at the same time as a zing of anticipation raced up her tummy. She touched the shower door handle. “I’d say close your eyes, but—”

  “You know I won’t.”

  She slid the glass wider, inch by agonizing inch. Still, the darkness was complete and she couldn’t see anything at all. “All right. Where are you?”

  “Right here.” His hand closed around hers. Could he see her? Did he have some kind of night vision that she didn’t?

  She sucked in a little breath at the warmth that emanated from him. Heat seemed to cloak his skin. Along with an earthy, manly scent that somehow mixed perfectly with the ocean aroma of the shower gel.

  In one step, she could press her naked body against that powerful chest. Run her shower-soaked fingers through that mane of golden silk. Arousal blasted through her and her nipples, already budded from the chill, ached with a rush of blood and the undeniably erotic thought that he might see her, might touch her.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” he urged, tugging her hand gently. “Unless you want me to climb in there with you.”

  “You’re bad, Jack Locke.”

  “Actually, I’m very, very—” The light flashed so blindingly white that she gasped. In the endless, timeless instant that they were suspended in illumination, all she could see were his eyes widening and dropping to her body, his gaze as hot as the lightning, his fingers tightening their grip on her hand.

  And then the velvet blackness descended again.

  She waited through the thunder, expecting a quip. The sly remark. The banter that he used as efficiently as a pirate with his sword.

  But he only let out a long, slow breath, as though he needed it to steady himself.

  “Lily,” he whispered as the rumble silenced. “You’re gorgeous.”

  Nothing could have undone her more effectively.

  Her hammering heart sent liquid heat through her veins, so she took her own steadying breath, lifted her left leg and found solid ground on his homemade safety mat.

  “Don’t move from this spot,” he instructed, “or you might step on glass. I’ll look for a towel under the sink.”

  As if she was in a position to argue.

  “Here we go,” he said after a moment.

  She reached out for the towel, but instead her hands landed on the solid planes of his chest as he closed his arms around her, wrapping the towel around her back.

  Grasping the terry-cloth ends at her chest, he drew her one step closer to him and closed the towel around her.

  She could see shadows now. She could make out the angles of his jaw, the shape of his mouth, the soft wave in the long hair that framed his face.

  His eyes locked on to her and he tugged that towel, and her, closer.

  His lips parted. Lily’s chest nearly burst as her pounding heart and trapped breath warred for space and release.

  “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to take a shower during a thunderstorm?” he asked, a tease and gentle warning in his voice. “You could have been electrocuted.”

  Which couldn’t burn any more than his voice, his touch, his very warm body. “I took a chance,” she admitted.

  “You like to take chances, Lily?” The question was so loaded with double entendre she almost laughed.

  “No,” she managed to say. “I prefer to have control.” Right. Then why was she standing there, arms at her sides, letting him manipulate the situation with one well-placed fist? All he had to do was open his fingers and she’d be naked and trapped by those sea-green eyes.

  Fire sizzled straight through her, melting her bones and curling her toes at the thought. She lifted her face toward his, aching to taste his mouth on hers. But he merely took her hand, lifted it to her chest and gave her the ends of the towel to hold. Keeping her little cover on was now her job, not his.

  “There. Now you have control.”

  Not exactly.

  “You know, for a minute there, I thought you were going to kiss me,” she admitted.

  He laughed softly and disappeared into the darkness, although he was no farther than two feet away. “Now you know my secret weapon,” he said quietly. “I never do what people expect.”

  And that’s precisely why changing Jack Locke would be one hell of a challenge.

  That, and the fact that if he hadn’t transferred the control back to her hand, if he had leaned down and kissed her, she would have done nothing to stop him.

  Two

  I t took Jack about six minutes to locate a flashlight near the kitchen sink. Would that be enough time for Lily to feel her way around her suitcase and find some clothes?

  God, he hoped not.

  Shining the beam on the steep, curved stairs, his racing blood propelled him to take two at a time. He froze as another sudden burst of light washed the stairway in stark whiteness, and then left him with nothing but the pinpoint of his flashlight. The thunder rolled over his memory of what the last great bolt of lightning had revealed in the bathroom.

  Talk about being thunderstruck. Jack was never at a loss for words, ever. Words were his personal power tool, and he used them to persuade, impress, intimidate and delight. But that woman, naked, wet and bathed in nature’s klieg light, had rendered him speechless.

  The soggy linen dress had been one thing, but seeing her taut breasts pointed straight at him with rivulets of water meandering over the hard pink buttons of her nipples nearly brought him to his knees. He’d had just enough time to follow the water down her stomach and stop at the glistening darkness between her legs.

  When jokes failed him and words eluded him, Jack was capable only of telling the truth. And that’s what he’d done upstairs. She was gorgeous.

  He let out a quiet groan as he reached the top of the stairs and adjusted his jeans around the hard-on he’d had since long before the storm had offered him an unexpected burlesque show. She’d stoked his fire the moment he saw her dripping in the foyer.

  Come to think of it, he’d never actually seen her…dry.

  “Is that you?” she called from the bedroom as his beam made its way in front of the threshold.

  “Yep. It’s the pool boy, carrying a torch for you.”

  She laughed and stepped into the circl
e of light in the hall.

  Six minutes had been enough for her to find a pair of dark, hip-hugging workout pants, a pink T-shirt that didn’t quite cover her midriff and a pair of flip-flops.

  “You didn’t go back into the bathroom, did you?”

  She shook her head. “When the power comes back, I’ll take a pass at cleaning it up. In the meantime, I’ll stay away from the glass. It must have been a jar of potpourri or—” she gave him a look of irony “—a candle that we really could use.”

  He inched the light up to get a better look at her, without shining it in her eyes. “I realize I’ve only known you an hour or so, but do you know I’ve never seen you when you weren’t soaking wet?”

  “The curse of being a pool boy. Did you only get one flashlight?”

  He nodded. “But we can probably scare up some candles downstairs. And we could get power back at any minute, if the electricity gods are smiling on us tonight.”

  Unless they were really smiling and left them alone in the dark all night.

  “The electricity gods?” She raised her eyebrows. “Do they have any influence over the dinner gods? Because I’m starved.”

  “Don’t worry. Dorothea Slattery would sell her soul before she’d let me go hungry.” He took her hand and pointed his light down the hall to the stairway. “Stay close. Even with the flashlight those curved steps can be tricky.”

  “Lead the way, but only because you seem so familiar with this place. I take it you’re a regular here?”

  He kept his eyes on the round circle of light that guided them, enjoying a definite jolt from the sensation of her smooth, slender hand in his much larger one. “Oh, yeah. I come out here a lot just for fun, mostly, and then for these kinds of weekends.”

  She slowed imperceptibly and he felt her eyes on him. “What kind of weekends?”

  “Brainstorms,” he said. “We do this two or three times a year. Get a bunch of brilliant minds together and focus on one or two specific client problems. That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  A tiny, secret smile lifted her lips. “I guess you could call it that.”

  He stopped walking. “What would you call it?”

  “Reggie just asked me to come out to Nantucket and…” She shrugged one shoulder in a very practiced—and fake—gesture of indifference. “And get to know some of his management team.”

  His mind scrambled as he processed this. “And then he only invited the two of us?”

  “I guess.”

  At that moment, just as when he’d been struggling with a creative jigsaw and finally, finally, the answer appeared, everything snapped right into place and presented one whole picture to him.

  The reason she was here was suddenly so clear, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out sooner.

  Maybe Mr. Wilding’s keeping me a secret.

  There are no other guests this weekend.

  So you’re the infamous Jackson Locke.

  How could he have missed all the clues? Reggie had been unclear about the agenda but adamant that Jack be here on this particular weekend and no other. And then he was detained by weather. And Mrs. S., rushing off to leave them alone and not taking his offer to drive her—something he’d done plenty of times.

  Oh, yeah. This was no-holds-barred, by-the-book matchmaking. Reggie and Samantha Wilding wanted nothing more than for Jack to find one woman and settle down into the decades of married life that they had enjoyed.

  And something about Lily Harper’s vague responses told him she was totally in on it.

  But how long would it take until she admitted the truth? He gently tugged her toward the stairs.

  “How do you know Reg?” he asked, as casual as she had been. “Or are you a friend of Sam’s?”

  “Sam?”

  She didn’t know Saint Samantha Wilding? “Reggie’s wife.”

  “I’ve never met her.” There was nothing but honesty in her voice.

  So Reggie picked this flower all by himself? Wowzer, Reg. Jack’s already sky-high respect for the older man increased exponentially.

  “She’s a good lady,” he told her as they rounded the hand-carved banister newel at the bottom of the steps. “She should have had twenty kids, but didn’t have any. Treats me like her very own son. We’re going straight back to the kitchen now.”

  He tightened his grasp on her fingers and guided her toward the back of the sprawling house. Every corner remained bathed in an eerie darkness, with only the occasional lightning, and even that had seemed to slow a bit. The steady rain had lessened to a soft staccato against the windows.

  Let’s get to it, Lily. “So if you don’t know Sam, and you’re not here for business, how do you know Reggie?”

  “A client referral.” Her tone left no room for questions. End of discussion.

  But he knew every client of Wild Marketing. “Which one?”

  “You know, I’m not exactly sure who referred me.”

  All right, so she was in on the setup and playing coy. But still, she’d packed her bags, got on a plane, braved the elements and taken a chance on meeting him. Was she in the market for Mr. Right? Too bad if she was.

  However, if she was shopping for Mr. Have a Really Good Time on a Rainy Weekend, then she’d found her man.

  He studied her in the soft artificial light and realized that…the battery in the flashlight was dying a slow but very real death.

  Then it would be dark again. Who cared? There was no business to worry about, no brainstorming to distract them, just one elaborate blind date. Jack was free to flirt, fool around and take this as far as she was willing to go.

  The gods, every flippin’ one of them, were so good to him he could cry.

  “Oh, here’s the wine Mrs. S. mentioned.” He shone the dimming light on an excellent bottle of Château de La Tour, with two sparkling crystal wineglasses and a corkscrew thoughtfully left out for them. “I’m not sure, but it looks like the good stuff.”

  She let out a quick breath as she peered at the label. “I’ll say.”

  “Reggie must want us to be extremely, uh, comfortable.”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said with a smile in her voice. “I think Mrs. Slattery is secretly in love with you and she raided the wine cellar for the best she could find.”

  “You think?”

  Lily chuckled and started a slow prowl around the kitchen. “She all but threw her arms around you to kiss you when you offered to drive her to her father’s house.”

  Yep. And then, conveniently, had to disappear. He balanced the flashlight on the counter, so that it spilled an umbrella of light over them, and pointed what was left of its ray directly to the ceiling.

  “Don’t worry. She’s not my type.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  At her matter-of-fact tone, he glanced at her, then started the process of uncorking the wine. “Can you see well enough? Do you think you can find what she’s left us to eat?”

  “Maybe.” In the shadows she moved to the double doors of a Sub-Zero refrigerator. She pulled the door open, but of course it was dark inside, so she closed it. “I need the flashlight. I don’t want to leave the door open for long and let all the cold air out. We don’t know how long we’ll be without electricity.”

  The cork slipped out with a hollow pop. “Let’s have wine first, then we’ll forage for food.” Surely a little bit of La Tour would get the truth out of her. She’d admit she was Reggie’s niece or neighbor or the daughter of a country club acquaintance sent in for a weekend of potential romance.

  “I’ll have some,” she said, scooping the flashlight off the counter. “But with food.”

  This lady definitely liked to call the shots. “Whatever you prefer,” he said, pouring two glasses without benefit of light. Some things he could do in the dark. Most things, in fact.

  She aimed the light inside the fridge. “Oh, a beautiful tomato and mozzarella salad.”

  “Mrs. S. is a genius.”

  “And some s
hrimp cocktail.”

  “Her specialty.”

  She stuck the flashlight between her teeth and used it like a miner’s lamp, leaning into the fridge to pull out a tray. “Aah ah ah-ah ah-ah,” she mumbled around the cylinder.

  He chuckled and ambled behind her with the glasses of wine. “I don’t speak flashlight, sweetheart.” He set one glass on the counter and slid the flashlight out of her mouth.

  “I said ‘and some pasta salad.’” She reached back into the fridge and he stood behind her, the light just bright enough for him to make out the silhouette of a sweet round bottom jutting toward him. Her T-shirt had ridden up to reveal some butter-smooth flesh and a precious little dip in her lower back. His throat went bone-dry at the temptation she unknowingly offered.

  Then she stood and turned, and his breath caught at how pretty she was in the dimly lit kitchen, damp tendrils of long dark hair curling around a face completely devoid of makeup.

  Beautiful. Natural. Confident.

  How did Reggie know exactly, precisely, right down to the dimples—top and bottom—what Jack liked in a woman? And then how could his boss be so sly as to not breathe a word in advance, knowing that happily single Jack would have found some highly creative reason to be a no-show?

  Sometimes Reggie knew Jack better than Jack knew himself. This would be one of those times.

  He stepped back as Lily glided efficiently through the ever-darkening kitchen, letting her rummage through drawers and cabinets for plates, silverware and napkins.

  “The flashlight’s fading,” he said, taking a pass at a few drawers himself. “But I can’t find candles and matches.”

  “Okay. We can eat fast. I’ll just set us up at the bar.” She set two places at the granite counter that lined the center island.

  “Do we actually need place settings?” he said, a little incredulity in his laugh. “I mean, this pretty much qualifies as an emergency situation, don’t you think?”

  “I never eat without a proper place setting,” she responded, leveling him with a cool look.

  Well, la-di-da. “I don’t think you’re going to worry about place mats when that battery dies,” he said. “But suit yourself. And here.” He slipped the glass of wine into her hand. “You haven’t had a sip yet. Let’s toast.”