How To Succeed At Love. Susan Connell

a table huddle and a frantic flurry of whispers.

      Jade winced. She had yet to go anywhere with Spencer that he didn’t attract attention. She turned to give him a disapproving look but ended up tapping her toe on the floor. With his eyes still closed, she could only stare and wait for him to open them.

      Several seconds later she was still staring. From his sybaritic smile to the snug fit of his jeans, there was no way any female in a hundred-yard radius could not stare. He was a startlingly handsome man.

      Casually brushing at her bangs, she managed a peek toward the coeds. With the thumbs-up and appreciative smiles they were sending her way, the girls appeared to be in wholehearted agreement.

      She responded with a weak smile then turned around to face Spencer. “When you’re done emoting, you can hang up my coat,” she said, shoving it against the solid wall of his chest.

      She reached around him to shut the door but he was faster. His move brought his face inches away from hers.

      “Are you still mad at your mother because she insisted I drive her car?” he asked, his fingers covering hers in a warm caress.

      “I’m not mad at my mother. Unlike you, I know exactly what she’s up to.”

      He tilted his head. “And what’s that?”

      “I’ll give you a hint. Last time I brought someone home, she tried to throw us a surprise wedding.”

      Beneath her hand, Jade could feel soft laughter rumbling in his chest. An odd tickling sensation started deep in her own. She started to smile, but stopped the instant she realized her defenses were dropping away. Why had she told him that? Was he laughing at her? Or was he laughing with her? Drawing her hand away, she let him know by a quick change in her expression that she was through with their bantering.

      “What is her favorite color, by the way?”

      “Teal,” she said, lifting a newspaper from a stack near the door. Creasing it with a snapping sound, she tucked it under her arm. “Why?”

      “I overheard her and your father discussing what to get me for Christmas. I was hoping you’d give me a few suggestions for what to buy them.”

      “No. Don’t even think about it. You’ll only be encouraging them. Besides, I didn’t bring you here to talk about Christmas shopping. I have a much more serious subject to discuss.”

      “Uh, oh. So this is to be my farewell breakfast before I’m exiled to the Hotel Maxwell?”

      “You already had breakfast. And you know as well as I do that you can’t leave me now.”

      “Why not?” he asked, as he brushed a few drops of melted snow from the top of his head.

      “Because that fan club you started amassing at the train station yesterday and continued amassing at last night’s party would demand an explanation as to why my assistant moved out on me. And I can’t think of one.”

      “Hmm. Sounds like a valid argument for us to stick together.” His sympathetic expression would have convinced most people that he was concerned for her situation.

      But Jade wasn’t one of them.

      “Look,” she said, tapping her finger on the center of his chest. “You might as well know what I think of your presence in my life. You’re as welcome in it as a sharp stone in my shoe. Fingernails on a chalkboard. A paper cut. But as long as you’ll be leeching off my family, you and I are going to have to agree to a few ground rules. I’ve made a list of—”

      “Gotcha.”

      “No,” she said, jamming her finger a little harder against his colorful pullover. “I don’t think you do. I have a reputation to protect, and thus far your behavior has been borderline at best. Those two facts aren’t mixing well.”

      He moved to hang her coat over a sturdy hook. “You mean, you’re concerned that I could do something that would get back to Sylvia Bloomfield and put your job in jeopardy? Maybe damage her image and your career?”

      Jade’s mouth went dry when she tried to swallow. “Something like that,” she mumbled, as she fixed her gaze on the Santa Claus and reindeer stenciled across the café’s bay window. Spencer had an uncanny talent for catching her off guard, then scaring the heck out of her when she least expected it.

      Spencer patted her softly on her cheek. “You worry too much, kiddo.”

      The spur-of-the-moment touch was just what she needed. Thoughtful, tender, and the first sincere gesture from him that she could remember. And because of those things, his unanticipated tenderness was also just what she didn’t need. Her nerves were near the snapping point. Breaking into tears moments before she planned to tell Spencer what was expected of him would not be wise. She brushed his hand away. “Don’t patronize me.”

      “I mean it. Not everyone has parents as proud of their kid as yours. Last night I thought your dad was going to start crying along with your mother when your girlfriends started in about what a shining example you’ve always been to them. Even the mayor couldn’t say enough about you. And when that question came up concerning the whereabouts of your absent boyfriend, everyone was extremely sympathetic.”

      Clenching her fists, she fought to contain a growl, then turned and headed for a table in the back corner of the café.

      Spencer hung up his jacket then followed her. As he pulled out the chair next to hers, Jade dropped her leather bag on the seat. He shrugged then moved to the one directly across from hers. “What’s the matter?”

      “I was perfectly capable of explaining Richard’s absence without you butting in,” she said, dropping the newspaper on the table.

      “No, you weren’t. Your face got so red when your friend Rebecca asked you about him, I thought you were going to have a stroke.”

      “I thought I was, too,” she said, taking her chair then riffling through her bag for a pen and pad. “But not until you said he was in the hospital donating a kidney to his brother. Where do you come up with these things?”

      “I’m a writer.” He smiled. “A writer who badly needs another kick of caffeine this morning. You, on the other hand, look as if you could use a decaf.”

      “That I could,” she said, slapping a pen on the table as he started away. “Wait. You don’t know what I like or how I like it.”

      “I don’t? We’ll see about that,” he said, his devilish grin sending a pleasurable tickle straight up her thighs and deep into her belly.

      As he walked away, she forgot about looking for her pad of paper and looked at him instead. His confident stride through the maze of crowded tables reminded her of someone on his way to a podium to make a speech or accept an award. But it wasn’t tuxedo trousers pulling snugly across his behind, it was dark indigo denim. Those jeans were caressing his hips and thighs with the tenacity of a passionate lover. She indulged herself with an admiring sigh. Every step he took was an early Christmas gift...she had to decline!

      She planted her elbows on the table then pressed her face into her hands. He was trouble. A train wreck waiting to happen smack-dab in the middle of the worst crisis of her life. She was nuts for even thinking about what it would be like to touch him like that. Besides, she knew her strengths and her limitations. No matter the circumstances, she would never be so daring as to stroke a man’s behind.

      Lowering her fingers a few inches, she watched Spencer leaning against the counter as he talked to Megan. His natural charm and easygoing manner were undeniable, but so was the fact that while he obviously enjoyed the company of her girlfriends, he wasn’t out to seduce them.

      But what about her? She squirmed uneasily in her chair. When it came to sexual chemistry, she wasn’t totally stupid. The first time they’d spoken on the train, she had trouble keeping her eyes off him. And he hadn’t left her alone for more than a minute during the entire journey. She sighed and looked away. Yesterday afternoon