Face-Off. Nancy Warren

certain of—Jarrad McBride wouldn’t be seeing her naked.

      4

      WHY DID HE KEEP picturing her naked? Jarrad could not figure it out. He wasn’t the kind of guy to perv around a woman he barely knew. Besides, compared to the curvy babes in his regular world, Sierra wouldn’t stand out.

      And yet, he realized with most of the women he knew, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to picture them naked. Sure a lot of them were gorgeous, some even that lucky by nature, but there was a kind of sameness to the big-breasted, long-limbed, long-haired, Chiclet-toothed, tanned females he’d been surrounded by in L.A.

      Sierra was so different. Her curves were discreet. He doubted she even filled a B cup. Her hips weren’t extravagantly full or boyishly slim, but somewhere in the middle. She wasn’t tall or short, but average. And because the obvious places didn’t grab all his attention, he found himself noticing how delicate her wrists were. How slim and elegant her neck. How much he liked the slight imperfection of her teeth when she smiled. One of her side teeth overlapped another, giving her a charming smile. Everything was so real with this woman.

      Including her intelligence. Not that he wanted to put down his ex, but her idea of news was to check Perez Hilton daily and pass on the bitchiest tidbits to him.

      He’d asked for a private room in a restaurant he used to frequent, partly because of the upstairs space. Until he was no longer news, he really didn’t want to be seen publicly. Not that the media in Vancouver were anything like the L.A. bunch, but he didn’t want any problems. Besides, he didn’t imagine Sierra wanted her photo on some gossip blog. She seemed to be a woman who liked her privacy. And who could blame her?

      So, when the maître d” had escorted them upstairs to a private room, her eyes had widened for a moment but she hadn’t commented.

      Which made him explain.

      “I’m sorry to do this to you, but there’s been some media interest in me lately. I thought we might like some privacy.”

      She nodded. “I understand,” she said softly. What a relief not to have to explain.

      WELL, THE EVENING WAS going exactly as she would have imagined. He was already hiding her away, no doubt ashamed of himself for having asked her out. She couldn’t imagine how much he was hurting now that he could no longer play hockey. Then he’d lost his wife to another man.

      The icing on the cake would be for the media to report that he’d fallen low enough to be seen with a nobody who could barely fill a B cup.

      And yet he didn’t seem as if he regretted his choice of date for the evening. He acted genuinely interested in her and so like the man she’d thought he was at the rink that she relaxed and found herself telling him about some of her adventures in the classroom. Michael had always been bored and dismissive of her job. But Jarrad laughed at her stories, and regaled her with a few stories about him and his siblings as kids.

      When he talked about the past, she could see him as a little boy. The image filled her with warmth.

      He talked a lot with his hands, she noticed. They were big hands, the kind that wielded a hockey stick the way a Viking might have wielded a sword.

      Twice she became completely distracted watching those big hands, imagining them on her body.

      She grabbed her water and drank quickly, wondering if the wonderful wine he’d chosen had completely gone to her head. Or her nether regions. It was so unlike her to be having sexy thoughts about a stranger. And yet he wasn’t a stranger. He seemed familiar to her somehow, and so easy to talk to.

      Stranger or not, as the evening progressed, she realized she wanted him in the most elemental way. Even though they talked about a variety of subjects, not one of which was sexual, she knew, every time their gazes connected, that he was thinking the same thoughts. Suspected he knew she was too.

      But she wouldn’t go down that road again. If Michael had been too far above her on the social/sexual scale, this guy was in the stratosphere.

      Michael’s betrayal had hurt. Somehow, she thought that Jarrad’s would devastate her.

      “Your wrists are so tiny,” he said, looking at her right hand toying with the bottom of her wineglass. It was the first really personal thing he’d said. He reached over, picked up her hand. At the touch of his tough, leathery fingers on her skin, she shivered. He wrapped his hand around her wrist and it was thicker than a gauntlet. “You make me feel like an oversized baboon.” He glanced over at her, all steamy and delicious, “I’d be scared to break you.”

      She held his gaze. “I’m tougher than I look,” she said. Then almost gasped at her own boldness. Where had that come from?

      There was a beat of potent silence. He broke it, saying huskily, “I really want to kiss you right now.”

      Her heart jumped in her chest. The idea both panicked and excited her. She licked her lips.

      And the way he gazed at them, she realized he’d mistaken her nervous gesture for a provocative one. Oh, crap. She was in so much trouble.

      “Shall we go?” he asked.

      She nodded.

      As they left, he put a hand on her back, not exactly the most sexual gesture in history and yet she felt his heat burning through the material of her dress, felt the primal drumbeat of passion between them.

      He walked her to his car, opened her door for her, and when he got into his own side, he didn’t start the car right away. Instead, he leaned forward, closing the distance between them with tantalizing slowness. Then he captured her mouth with his, kissing her slowly as though savoring her.

      Oh, he felt so good. She loved the shape of his mouth, the feel of his lips on hers, the rasp of stubble when his chin brushed her. He touched his tongue to her lips and she opened for him, greedy and wanting.

      After about a year of kissing, he pulled away. Both of them were breathing fast. “I want to see you again.”

      “Mmm.”

      “Could it be tomorrow? I’m probably only going to be in town for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to waste any time.”

      “A couple of weeks?” She felt chilled suddenly. This promising beginning already had its end?

      And yet, on some level it was perfect. A brief fling with a great guy, somebody who couldn’t hurt her because there wouldn’t be time. He was the perfect antidote to the unpleasant aftertaste of Michael in her system. She hadn’t even had a date since he’d humiliated her, she certainly hadn’t kissed another man and she’d assumed it would be a long, long time before she’d trust a man enough to be intimate.

      But then Jarrad had come along. Jarrad who was a celebrity, a wounded hero, a man so far above her he was more like a fantasy than an actual human being.

      If he were permanently in Vancouver she couldn’t put herself through the possibility of being crushed. But if he was only here for two weeks?

      Then maybe he was absolutely, exactly perfect.

      Besides, some demon had taken over her body, and she felt like a completely different woman with Jarrad.

      If she only had two weeks, she didn’t plan on wasting any of it.

      She closed the distance between them, put her lips to his ear. “If we only have two weeks, why wait until tomorrow? “

      He put a hand to the back of her neck, dipped her back so he could look at her face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

      She breathed in the scent of him. So uniquely his and so utterly seductive to her. “Yes.”

      5

      HE DROVE BESIDE THE OCEAN, gray and moody as though depressed by the constant rain. He’d never realized how much he liked rain until he lived away from it. There was something