My Sexiest Mistake. Kristin Hardy

obviously hanging around with the wrong guys. I guarantee any man in this room would be thrilled if you walked up and started talking with him.” His eyes glimmered. “Unless his wife were sitting next to him, of course.”

      “Oh please.”

      “You don’t believe me?” He surveyed the room. “There are about fifteen or twenty men sitting in this bar. We can take a poll.” There was a burst of raucous laughter from the conventioneers. “Actually, I don’t need to take a poll. Those guys over there? The only time they’ve been quiet the entire night was when you walked through the door. Aunt Cordelia and her charge at the next couch over were very grateful.”

      Ryan caught the glare the older woman gave the group. “I noticed when I walked in that she wasn’t very happy. Why do you suppose she stays there instead of moving?”

      Cade shrugged. “Boston Brahmin—she was there first, why should she move for a bunch of savages?”

      Ryan’s smile flashed again. “You seem to know the type well.”

      “I was married to a baby Brahmin for a couple of years. I learned to recognize entitlement from fifty paces.”

      “Where’s the baby Brahmin now?”

      Cade took another sip of his drink. “Getting remarried, last time I heard. Hopefully it’ll stick for her this time.”

      It was Ryan’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “You don’t seem very bitter. Most people tend to be hostile after divorces.”

      He shrugged, his eyes dropping to where the blue silk dipped low over her breasts, then rising back up to meet her eyes. “No reason I should be. We just made a bad pair. It was best for both of us that we ended it.”

      “Was that how she felt about it?”

      “More or less. I think her family was relieved. They lived off a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old shipping fortune. Someone who worked like I did was an embarrassment to them.”

      She looked into his laughing eyes and found herself smiling at the thought of an unrepentant gigolo infiltrating an old-money Boston family. They must have been scandalized. “I take it you didn’t agree?”

      He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Not really. I dealt with people who had a certain set of needs and I came in and made sure they got satisfied. That seemed pretty worthwhile to me.”

      “So you leave satisfied customers behind you?” She took another sip of her martini and her eyes darkened as she licked a drop of vodka from her lip.

      Cade lost a beat watching her. “I do my best. I think satisfaction is a pretty worthy goal.” He hooked a finger in his tie to loosen it, then unbuttoned his collar.

      Ryan suddenly had an image of pulling the tie off, unfastening the buttons one by one as he lay back on a bed. She shifted on the couch and her thighs brushed together, a tendril of heat starting to grow between them.

      The bar had been gradually filling up with more patrons. Noticing the mood, the piano player switched from bad Harry Nilsson to bad Billy Joel. Ryan winced at the opening strains of “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.” “That’s painful. I didn’t think it could get any worse than the last tune.”

      “I think the quality of the material is irrelevant. He was murdering ‘Love is the Drug’ before you got here.”

      “I’m sorry I missed it,” she said insincerely.

      Cade grinned. “So let’s see. You don’t want the smooth talk, am I right?”

      “Oh, I like it when you talk pretty. Just skip the stuff that sounds like a line. You’ve already got me.” She took another sip of her drink and felt the warmth run through her.

      “Let’s see. Well, I could tell you that I’ve been sitting here thinking that your eyes are a very elusive color of green and I just realized that they match the olive in your drink. Now that’s straight from the brain, no lines in sight.”

      Ryan winced. “I think I liked it better the other way.”

      She laughed and something flipped in his gut. Well that was new, he thought. Beyond her, he saw the blonde he’d noticed earlier. Against the swirl of vivid color that was Ryan, she only looked more icy pale than before.

      Cade took another swallow of scotch, wanting to hear that soft, throaty laugh again. “So what do you do when you’re not hanging around hotel lobbies with strange men?”

      “Oh, I spin yarns,” she said airily.

      “Oh yeah? Tell me a good story.”

      When she’d been a child, her family would go to a lake in Maine in the summers. In early June, the water was still icy cold. There were two ways to approach it. You could start at the shore, stepping in an inch at a time, waiting for your body to acclimate until you got so chilled the water didn’t feel cold anymore. Or you could run off the end of the dock and jump in, take the shock all at once. In for a penny, in for a pound.

      Ryan had always jumped.

      She took a deep breath and looked in his eyes. “Let’s go upstairs and I will.”

      Cade blinked, and Patrick’s words came back to him. Maybe in a couple of minutes a gorgeous woman will show up out of the blue and come on to you. And if she does, do me a favor, buddy. Don’t question it, don’t ask why. Just go with it and let whatever happens, happen.

      Maybe Patrick was right.

      “Whatever you say, darlin’.” He rose and pulled her to her feet. “I’m all yours.”

      2

      JUST WHAT HAD HE GOTTEN himself into, Cade wondered bemusedly as he listened to Ryan’s heels click on the marble lobby tiles. He was pretty sure this was not the way pickups went in this day and age. But the scotch was singing in his blood, the flush of triumph was still flowing through him, and he couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to touch her skin.

      Ryan ran a hand through her hair, shaking it back. She’d thought she’d be more nervous, but somehow she was more at ease than she’d ever been with a man. Always before she’d wondered and analyzed, trying to figure out what he was thinking, how he felt.

      Whether he wanted her.

      This time, she didn’t have to wonder. Everybody knew what was going to happen up front. The situation should have made her feel awkward, but it was strangely liberating. The deal was done, she could just ride with it.

      And yet, somehow it didn’t feel like a deal. She could swear she’d seen heat in his eyes when she’d approached him. Maybe he was just very good at his job, but it seemed too genuine to be an act. Helene’s friend was right, it felt like a date. A perfect date who was going to put out. She laughed to herself.

      “What’s the joke?” Cade asked, those extraordinary eyes on her.

      Ryan smiled. “This. I thought it would feel so strange, but it doesn’t.”

      “Why should it?”

      She shrugged. “I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I’ve never done this before. You know where it goes from here. It’s all new to me.”

      “I have no idea where it goes from here,” Cade spoke with perfect truth. “I thought we’d work it out as we go along.”

      A chime rang as the elevator doors opened and they stepped into the car. “Fourteenth floor,” she said when he looked at her inquiringly. He punched a button and the car surged upward. Her stomach fluttered in a way that had nothing to do with the movement. Somehow their fingers were still entangled as though they’d fused together. The heat licked up her arm and a surge of pleasure washed over her. It felt so good to touch someone. Just to touch someone. Then his fingertips began tracing patterns over her palm, and she caught her breath.

      The