The Centennial Ballroom was the biggest in the hotel, and Sara doubted they could squeeze one more person in tonight. And yet, with all these people around, Ryan still stood out from the crowd. At the moment, he was in a lineup for the bar, and Nicki had slipped into his vacant chair. “Looks like the ibuprofen helped.”
Sara tore her gaze away from Ryan’s tall form, where she’d been admiring how well his designer suit showed off his broad shoulders, and leaned in so Nicki would hear her over the noise in the huge space. “Thank heavens, yes. I even felt well enough to have some champagne with dinner.” Sara had woken up that morning with a killer hangover. Still, she’d survived the morning TV show spot, despite having a fuzzy head, and with the help of the extra-strength medication, this afternoon’s photo shoot had gone off without a hitch. Unless you counted her insides melting every time Ryan looked at her.
“Good to hear, then I won’t feel guilty for doing this.” Nicki swatted Sara’s hand.
“Ouch!”
“That’s for not telling me how frigging hot your wolf man is.” She did it again.
Sara swatted her back then pulled her hand out of range. “Nicki! He’s not my anything, and I wish you guys would quit referring to him like that.”
“That one was for not taking me dress shopping with you. And the way your wolf wrangler has been devouring you with his eyes tonight, he will be your something before long. Damn, girl, you are on fire in that number.”
“I’m sorry, but there wasn’t time. We only had an hour before we had to be back here and get ready.”
Had he really been watching her? If yes, she was suddenly glad she’d let her sister bully her into buying the outfit. The front was sleek with a boat cut neckline and the full-length fall of slinky black fabric flowed nicely over her frame. But it was the dress’s thigh-high side slit and open to the waist back, which her sister had insisted was Sara’s style, only hotter, that had her pulling out her credit card. “Hailey informed me it was classy, yet daring enough to push me out of my comfort zone.”
Hailey grinned. “I also said it would make the wolf man drool.”
*****
Zander was an idiot. Ryan was still indecisive after their earlier talk. Talk, ha! More like lecture. His head was already messed up after spending the last couple of days with Sara, and every moment they’d been together, he’d enjoyed her company more. Not only was she beautiful, she was smart as well as funny and had a unique way of looking at the world through her writer’s lens. Hell, she even got his warped sense of humor.
“It’s not like you’re in a real relationship, whelp. Yours is a business arrangement at best, and one you know full well has no out clause on your side.”
The bartender handed him his order, and Ryan dutifully dropped a tip in the man’s jar. “Thank you.” He turned away, his gaze automatically drawn to Sara.
“And, I must say, it’s seems your little author is as tied up in knots as you are.”
Was she?
“Hell, every time you two are near each other, the rest of us could die from pheromone poisoning.”
Zander’s prodding had been plaguing him for hours, and looking at her now, it was all he could to do to not give in. Gods, she looked amazing tonight. That dress hid as much as it hugged and hinted at, and all he could think about was getting her out of it.
You can’t do that.
His wolf snorted in disgust over that idea as Ryan wove his way back toward the source of his dilemma, and Zander’s earlier lecture picked up in his head where it’d left off. “Ryan, don’t be an ass. You know why you wanted to rip out that studio jerk’s throat? You’re a Wulver male in his prime who hasn’t gotten laid since the last blue moon, that’s why. Your wolf is on the scent of something it wants, and it ain’t hard to see it’s not the only one feeling that way.”
Shaking his dubious friend’s assessment from his thoughts, Ryan shifted to his right where it looked like he had a better chance of getting clear of the bar’s congestion. Consequently, he bumped into a tall blond woman wearing something…stiff? “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Are you blind or just stupid?” Her voice was as sharp and pinched as her face. “This dress cost more than you make in a year.” She tilted her platinum bleached head to the side and sneered. “Make that two years.” With a look of disgust, he was sure she gave every offensive thing with the nerve to stick itself to her designer shoe, the ice-queen sailed off.
Damn it. The ice-queen had an evil twin, and he was about to enter an irrevocable mating bond with her. He’d end up impotent with anyone but her, while Niola, after the one coupling needed to fulfill the contract, fully intended to do whatever she pleased, with anyone but him.
Ryan looked at Sara laughing, so full of warmth and life, and the chill receded. Why was he hesitating again? Maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea of enjoying each other for the time they were here. He cut a path toward her, and with each step, his previous reasoning on the subject fell farther behind and the wolf inside him quit snarling. Besides, if he didn’t try, wouldn’t he end up wondering if something might have happened and regret not giving it a shot?
Maybe Zander wasn’t such an idiot after all.
*****
Sara spotted Ryan parting the crowd with their drinks in his hands and a gleam in his eye.
“Hailey! Stop calling him that. Here he comes.” Sara had to admit her sister had been right about the dress. Ryan’s reaction tonight had given Sara several giddy moments. Ones that were hard to overcome during their part in the promotional portion of the evening. Dinner next to him had been another level of distraction, and she’d discovered she wasn’t all that hungry, at least not for food.
Was she really going to try to seduce him tonight?
“Here we are.” Ryan put the cocktails down then leaned close and spoke in her ear so she’d hear him over the music. “Do you like to dance?”
Rather than yell, she nodded as giddy charged back onto the scene undermining Sara’s tissue-paper confidence. It had been a lot easier deciding to seduce someone with a belly full of liquid courage and twenty-four hours to go before you had to act on it.
“Sara?”
Damn, she was doing it again. Sara tuned back in, willing herself to ignore her cold feet and placed her hand in Ryan’s much larger one as she stood. “Sorry. Yes, I do. Thank you.”
A wide smile split his handsome face, bringing out the laugh lines near his eyes. “Whew, you had me worried for a second. The way you were staring, I thought I had some dessert hanging from my lip.”
Hailey, who was sitting in the chair next to Sara’s snorted. “That’s not what she was picturing hanging off your lip.”
Ryan’s brow wrinkled. “Pardon?”
Sara glided between them and pinched Hailey’s ear as she passed behind her chair. Ignoring her sister’s colorful protest, she smiled up at Ryan. “She said not to worry, there was nothing hanging from your lip.”
His eyes squinted, but thankfully, he dropped it. Hailey, the brat, on the other hand, didn’t and was sticking her tongue out at Sara as they made their way to the dance floor. Ryan’s deep voice rumbled in her ear. “Your sister’s quite the character, isn’t she?”
Sara shivered at his warm breath caressing her skin, and the touch of his fingers on her exposed back had the nerves beneath it purring like a kitten. Sara lifted her lips closer to his ear, hoping he’d have a similar reaction. “You saw that, did you?”
Ryan spun her into his arms and expertly eased them into the sultry waltz currently playing. “Right now, all I see is you.”
Sara’s breath caught and her heart rate sped up. “Really?”
He pulled her closer with one hand and lifted the other to brush her hair back over her shoulder. “Yes, really.”
Wow, maybe this seducing thing wasn’t going to be as hard as she thought.
His outdoorsy scent wove around her, and she had the sudden urge to press her lips to the beating pulse in his neck. “I hope you like what you see.”
Ryan tilted his head back and gave her a look that could melt butter. “I’d have to be blind and an idiot if I didn’t, and for the record, I’ve been dying to hold you close like this since we met.”
“You have?”
His gaze traveled over her heated face as though committing it to memory, turning Sara’s knees to mush. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
“Absolutely, and there’s something else I’ve been dying to do.”
Sara involuntarily licked her lips, drawing his attention to them like a laser locking on target. “Oh?”
His head slowly dipped, bringing his lips to within a hair’s breadth of hers before pausing, sending her already accelerated pulse into overdrive.
“Oh, a-and what might that be?”
“Kiss you.” He closed the gap more, but again, not all the way. “May I?”
Sara’s brain was beyond coherent speech, so she closed her eyes and bridged the gap herself.
Suddenly getting Ryan back to her room as soon as possible seemed like a brilliant idea.