24
After the waiter had cleared away the mess, and Sophie quit crying, Gage led her out of the restaurant. They had been driving for a few minutes when she realized he wasn’t taking her home.
“Where are we going?” Sophie asked.
“This is the last surprise.”
They pulled into the driveway of the hotel where they’d first met. Gage handed Sophie out of the Jeep and led her into the dark interior of the hotel bar.
The music was lively, but Gage was intent on finding someone, and ignored the dance floor altogether. Finally, he located the person he was searching for, and he led Sophie over to the bar to sit down next to a man with his back to her, talking to a beautiful woman with raven black hair. Gage reached around her and tapped on the man’s shoulder.
As he turned, Sophie recognized him and threw her arms around him in a big hug. “Bryce!”
“Hey, Sis. Don’t squeeze so hard; I can’t breathe.”
She loosened her hold on him and smiled happily. “Oh Bryce, guess what just happened.”
He rolled his eyes and replied in a monotone, “Gage proposed, you accepted, and I will gain a new brother-in-law. So, why are you so excited?”
Sophie punched him in the shoulder and glared at him accusingly. “You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you could say I did.”
“You little sneak.”
“Face it, Sis, you’re gullible, unlike your worldly brother. You may be older in years, but I’m by far the oldest in wisdom.”
Sophie rolled her eyes and snorted in a very unladylike manner. “In a pig’s eye!” Then noticing for the first time the beautiful woman sitting next to him, she asked, “Who’s your friend?”
Blushing, Bryce turned to the lady in question and smiled with a lopsided grin.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to spend the entire evening doing my best to find out. Now scram, Sis.”
He turned his back to her and resumed his conversation with the mysterious woman.
Gage held out his hand. “Sophie, would you like to dance?”
She took the hand. “Not really, what do you want to do?”
“It’s your night, you choose.”
“Then I choose...” Standing on tiptoe, she put her lips close to his ear and whispered something, so that no one else could overhear.
He bent close and listened carefully to her words, his eyebrows rising toward his hairline.
When Sophie stopped talking, Gage straightened, grabbed her elbow and led her to the nearest exit.
Bryce was frustrated. Gage had asked him to meet them at the hotel bar after their dinner to help celebrate their engagement. Not having anything better to do, he had arrived early and taken a seat at the bar to wait for his sister and her fiancé.
He ordered a drink and turned to rest his back against the bar to watch for Gage and Sophie. Halfway through his drink, he noticed a woman step through the door and pause. She had glorious raven-colored hair, falling in waves past her shoulders. She was not too short, and not too tall, but just the right height.
She wore a blood-red dress that circled around her neck, halter-style, with a deep v-neckline, exposing a significant amount of her full, rounded breasts.
The woman walked through the room and stopped within ten feet of Bryce, turning to face the dance floor. Her dress was cut so low in the back it barely covered the crease of her firmly rounded bottom. The hemline was only long enough to conceal what needed to be covered to be legal.
Bryce realized he was staring with his mouth wide open and managed to close it before she turned toward the bar and him. He took a quick gulp from his drink and set it on the counter, trying to appear calm, sophisticated, and smooth.
“Is this seat taken?”
The raven-haired beauty spoke in a low husky voice, sending tingles down his spine. “No!” he squeaked, “My ball teens, bake it.”
Her pretty brow wrinkled. “What did you say?”
Bryce sent a prayer of thanks to the guy who dreamed up low lighting for barrooms as heat spread up his neck and into his face.
“What I meant to say is, by all means, take it.”
“I thought that’s what you meant.” She smiled. “You know, you’re kinda cute.”
“I am? I mean, I am.” More heat surged into his cheeks and spread all the way out to his ears. He shrugged. “Will you excuse me a moment while I change the feet in my mouth?”
Getting up to leave before he slaughtered more words in her presence, he was stopped by a hand on his arm.
“Please, don’t go,” that soft sultry voice said. “I like you and would like you to stay.”
“Are you sure? It seems that all I can do is drool and sound like a blithering idiot.”
Her lips twitched. “I happen to like drooling, blithering idiots. Please stay.”
Shrugging, he sat back down. It was at this juncture, Gage and Sophie made their appearance. He was surprised the woman stayed while his attention was diverted to his sister and her news. But she had, and looked to be interested in continuing where they left off.
“Do you come here often?” Bryce asked.
“No. I’m in town, visiting a relative. Actually, I’m staying here. My relative has a cat, and I’m allergic, otherwise I would have stayed there.”
“Allergic to cats? I knew there was something I liked about you. I’m not allergic, but I don’t particularly like them. Especially my sister’s sadistic mongrel. But, never mind cats, how long will you be in town?”
“Not very,” she said evasively.
“That’s too bad. I was hoping to get to know you better.”
“So, what’s stopping you?”
Her already low voice took a seductive dip, and he watched as her gaze traveled from his head to his feet in a slow and deliberate perusal. He felt his groin tighten at the suggestion in her eyes.
“Would you like to go to my place?” His voice came out again in a high-pitched squeak.
“Oh, why must we leave, when I have a room upstairs where we can, shall we say, talk more intimately?”
That’s it. His blood rushed through his veins pushing all rational thought out of his head and forcing all reactions into his groin.
The mystery woman slid off the barstool and began to walk away, hips swaying side to side. She stopped a few feet away from Bryce and looked back over her shoulder, motioning with a slight flick of her head for him to follow.
Feeling somewhat out of his league, but unable to resist, Bryce fell off his stool, picked himself up and followed the low-cut red dress through the doors to the elevators. The bell dinged, and the doors slid open. The woman stepped in, reached back out and grabbed Bryce by the hand and pulled him inside before the doors closed.
After punching the button for her floor, she took advantage of the empty elevator to move close to Bryce and run her fingers through his hair, twirling the strands behind his ears.
“I love a man with a full head of hair. I’ll bet you have hair all over your body.”
Bryce gulped. “Pretty much.”
This woman was intimidating the hell out of him. She was much more experienced than most of the college coeds he’d dated in the past.
She ran her hands down the back of his neck, pulled him close and pressed her full, sensuous lips to the pulse throbbing in his throat. Her tongue darted out, tracing the length of the vein up to his earlobe, where she nipped and teased him.
Bryce groaned and wrapped his arms around her, reveling in the heat of the bare skin on her back. He dropped his hands lower to the curve of her bottom, cupped her cheeks and pulled her against his hardened desire.
The ding of the bell indicated their floor, and the doors slid open as Bryce dropped his hold on her.
She led him down the hallway, stopping in front of a door where she ran her key card over the locking mechanism. The lock clicked, she opened the door and pulled him in behind.
A soft light had been left burning on a table in the sitting area of the suite. Bryce glanced around, noting the bed through the open door of the bedroom.
The black-haired woman in the red dress sailed toward the bedroom door, hips swaying. She stopped as she reached it, and looked back over her shoulder. “Are you coming?” Her sexy voice pulled him toward her as if he was a marionette on a string, dancing at the whim of the puppeteer.
He followed.
As he crossed the threshold, the woman wrapped her long fingers around his neck and pulled his face down to hers, pressing her lips to his. Her kiss deepened, and she allowed his tongue into her mouth to toy with her own. She pushed her hands between them, loosened the buttons on his shirt and slid her palms over his skin.
She engaged him in a passionate kiss, stealing his breath away. Then she stepped away, leaving him standing alone and confused.
“I’m just going to go slip into something more comfortable.” Her voice oozed with passion. “Please, make yourself at home,” she said with a sweeping motion of her hand toward the king-size bed in the center of the room.
The raven-haired vixen disappeared into the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind her.
Bryce took several deep breaths in an attempt to gain control of his raging hormones. Then he moved into action and ripped the last button from his shirt in his hurry to shed it and the rest of his clothes. He stood naked in the center of the room, hoping the cool air would calm his raging desire. Then he made a leap for the bed and stretched across it to wait for her.
And wait, he did.
After fifteen minutes, he left the bed and went to the bathroom door to knock softly. “Hey, are you okay?”
When there was no answer, he twisted the knob and opened the door. The room was empty with a door standing open on the opposite end of the bathroom. He walked through it into the sitting area of the suite.
The raven-haired woman had completely disappeared.
Bryce returned to the bedroom, scooped his clothing from the floor and put them on. He walked again through the bathroom as if he just couldn’t believe she had gone. Back in the sitting room, a square white envelope caught his attention on the table in front of the small sofa. On the front of the envelope, written in bold handwriting was the name BRYCE.
Bryce ripped it open, read its contents and groaned.
Dear Bryce,
I really did go to slip into something more comfortable. It just happened to be my car. Thank you for an interesting evening, despite how it turned out. You can thank your future brother-in-law for this gift. He told me to call it “Pay back”. Whatever, I enjoyed meeting you.
Love,
Me