At Her Beck and Call. Dawn Atkins

Wow,” he said grimly.

      They’d been so crazed they couldn’t make it to a house. What would that be like? Thrilling and scary, like the deep end of the pool she’d nearly slipped into with Mike.

      I want that. She felt it so fiercely she had to brace herself against her bumper.

      “So do we leave them here?” Mike asked.

      “If someone else sees, they’d be mortified.”

      “Yeah.” Mike sighed. “I’ll send them home. Unless you think you can sleep through that?” He nodded at the rocking car.

      “If I have to, I could.”

      “I know what you mean.” His eyes held heat. He didn’t want to have to listen to Mark and Jasmine doing what they wanted to be doing any more than she did.

      “Got a coin?” she asked him.

      “Huh?” He fished out a quarter.

      “You flip and I’ll call.”

      He smiled, braced it on his thumb and tossed it upward.

      “Heads,” she said, and they held each other’s gaze while the quarter flew and spun up, then down.

      Mike caught it without looking and slapped it onto the back of his hand. Tails shone up at them. “Looks like I’m the lucky one.”

      “Sorry.”

      “Get some sleep.” He touched her cheek, looking bewildered. “I don’t know what came over me.”

      “Oh, I do.” It was lust, pure and simple, stoked by the hours together, how comfortable they’d been, everything they’d shared. They’d slipped easily into a teasing flirtation and just gone too far. “Blame it on the desert, the night, the stars. Hell, blame it on golf.”

      “If you say so.” He backed away, still watching her, then raised a hand in farewell before turning to lope to the car to tell the couple where they would be banging the headboard.

      She stood for a second, trying to shake off the spell. Out there at the resort, she’d forgotten who she was, what she wanted, everything but the warm man whose lips were on hers.

      She realized she wasn’t scared to go to work now.

      Which caused a cold thought to trickle through her brain. What if the flirtation had been about the job? What if she’d worked the physical attraction because the mental challenge scared her? After all, if her boss was attracted to her, he’d have to keep her on. Had that been her unconscious trick? It was second nature to use sex appeal to get what she wanted.

      But that was unacceptable. The new Autumn was better than that. Smarter, too. And tomorrow she’d prove it.