Callan's Proposition. Barbara McCauley

won’t we?” he murmured. “Now say my name.”

      She swallowed hard, then squeaked, “Callan.”

      He rolled his eyes. “You sound like Minnie Mouse. Try it again.”

      She looked at his mouth again, felt her own lips tingle. “Callan,” she breathed.

      His gaze dropped to her mouth, and before he released her, she could swear his thumb brushed over her jaw. Still staring at her mouth, he cleared his throat. “Well, there. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

      No, she thought with a sense of dread. It wasn’t hard at all. In fact, it was much too easy.

      He rose suddenly, still looking at her as he tripped over the leg of her coffee table. “You don’t need to come in to the office this morning. I’ll, ah, meet you at the tavern at one o’clock.”

      “But—”

      “One o’clock,” he backed toward the front door, then closed it behind him on his way out.

      This was a bad idea, she thought and stared at the door. Bad, bad idea. They would never get away with it.

      Closing her eyes, she realized that she hadn’t even warned him about her aunts and their…unpredictable behavior. Unless Emerald and Ruby were unusually subdued, which Abby seriously doubted, Callan Sinclair was in for a lunch he’d never forget.

      With a gasp she opened her eyes abruptly.

      Oh, no.

      There was one other little minor detail she’d forgotten to mention. Only it wasn’t exactly minor, and it certainly wasn’t little.

      Groaning, she slumped back on the couch and realized the full meaning of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

      “You want me to pretend you’re what?” Standing behind the bar, Reese Sinclair looked up sharply from the beer mug he was busy filling. “To who?”

      “Keep it down, will you?” Callan frowned at his brother, then quickly glanced over his shoulder at Abby and her aunts sitting at a table in the middle of the tavern. The lunch crowd was heavy today, and neither Abby nor her aunts had spotted him yet. “Engaged. I want you to pretend I’m engaged. To Abby.”

      Beer poured over the sides of the frosty mug in Reese’s hand. He swore, then reached for a towel. “You’re kidding, right? You and…Abby? Since when do you call Abigail Abby?”

      He’d decided that if they were going to be “engaged” he should think of her as Abby. “Since this morning.”

      “This morning?” Reese raised both brows. “You mean morning, as in, woke up next to her?”

      “Something like that.” He’d actually woken up under her, he recalled and remembered the feel of her soft, slender body on top of his. Strange, but he could still feel the warmth of her skin on his chest and the brush of her silky hair against his face.

      Reese slung the towel over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “She was a little tipsy when she left here with you last night. If you’re trying to string her along to ease a guilty conscience, I’m not having any part of it.”

      “Reese, for God’s sake, will you—”

      “Abigail’s a nice girl,” Reese went on. “A little dull, maybe, but sweet. I wouldn’t like to think that my own brother took advantage of a kid like that.”

      Kid? Abby was no kid, Cal thought, remembering the womanly curves she’d been so insistent on showing him last night. And under different circumstances, with any other woman, he would have been more than eager to see that incredible body. But this was Abby, for God’s sake. He couldn’t think that way about Abby.

      “She’s twenty-six, for your information,” Cal said irritably. “And no, I didn’t take advantage of her, you moron. We fell asleep on the couch, with our clothes on, that’s all.”

      Well, maybe there was a little more than that, but whatever happened last night was between him and Abby, Callan thought, then glanced over at the table again. As if she knew he was watching her, she slowly looked up and met his gaze.

      He felt an odd catch in his throat as he stared back at her. She wore a high-collared gray sweater, and he realized it was the first time he’d seen her without a business suit—well, other than last night, but she had been wearing her suit then, too, or at least most of it. He looked at the oversize sweater she had on, the big, black-rimmed glasses, the tight knot of blond hair at the base of her neck, and he wondered why all this time she’d been hiding behind a facade of plain, when she really wasn’t plain at all. She was actually kind of pretty. More than kind of, he thought. She had really soft, smooth skin, her eyes were an unusual shade of gray-green, and that body, well, hot damn, that body was—

      “Cal, hello, anybody home?” Reese waved a hand in front of his face and pulled him out of his illicit thoughts. “What’s the matter with you?”