Plain Jane and the Playboy / Valentine's Fortune. Marie Ferrarella

he asked her, “what are you doing for the rest of the year?”

      “Recovering.”

      The honest admission had just slipped out before Jane could think to stop it. But being coy was not something she had any practice at, or, truthfully, any desire to become proficient in. There’d always been something off-putting to her about women who felt the need to play games with the men in their lives.

      By the same token, though, she’d discovered that since she didn’t play games, it wasn’t very long before she had no one to even contemplate playing games with. The few men who had passed through her life would come on strong and when they didn’t get what they were after, they would just phase her out.

      She refused to believe that all men were only after one thing—but so far, she had very little proof to the contrary. None, actually.

      Jorge laughed at her response, amused that she was so honest. He was used to women who liked to be mysterious, to exercise their feminine wiles on him. In reality, a great many of them were about as shallow as saucers—not that he required much depth in his partner of the moment. It made things far less complicated that way.

      But this one was different.

      This one didn’t seem at all versed in the flirtatious give-and-take that went on between the male and female of the species. Rather than being as devious as a cat, she came across more like Bambi, with all of the famous fawn’s innocence.

      A trace of guilt began to nibble away at him. Jorge was beginning to regret his bet with Ricky. He hadn’t counted on the fact that there might very well be feelings involved. And there were. He could see it in Jane’s luminous eyes.

      He also hadn’t counted on the fact that he would be attracted to his target. Not just physically, but in a way that he couldn’t even quite put into words.

      Jorge certainly couldn’t pin this feeling on alcohol consumption because he hadn’t really consumed any. Just one quick toast of white wine with his parents, sisters and their spouses before the Fortune Foundation party had officially gotten under way. But since then, he hadn’t had anything stronger to drink than a ginger ale.

      No, Jorge couldn’t blame his reaction to Jane on anything other than the petite woman herself.

      He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, so, for the time being, he decided not to think about it.

      “You’re laughing at me,” Jane protested self-consciously, the aura of her out-of-body experience beginning to fade just a little.

      The faint pink color he witnessed creeping up her rather seductive high cheekbones was oddly arousing, Jorge mused. With the rest of the evening stretching out before him, he decided he definitely wanted to get to know this woman better and discover what made her so different from the legions of other women he’d known—other than her obvious lack of sophistication and her innocent manner.

      “I’m not laughing at you,” Jorge told her gently. “I’m laughing with you.”

      Now even she knew that was a line. Or was he just poking fun at her? “You might not have noticed,” she pointed out quietly, “but I’m not laughing.”

      Jorge didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he slipped his hand behind her head, cupping it.

      For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her again and she could have sworn that the wattage at Red went down several notches as the very room grew dark. She struggled to hang on to her consciousness.

      “Sure you are,” Jorge told her. “I can see it in your eyes.”

      The very remark coaxed a smile to her lips, whether out of nervousness or just because being so near to this dynamic, gorgeous man made her want to smile all over, she really didn’t know. For the moment, she didn’t care, either. What mattered was the proximity. She wanted to remain this close to Jorge for as long as humanly possible without having to resort to handcuffs.

      God, she was babbling and her lips weren’t even moving.

      Things like this didn’t happen to people like her, she thought again. And while it was happening, she was just going to go with it and enjoy it.

      Because she knew it was never, ever going to happen again.

      “If you say so,” Jane answered, her voice deliberately low to keep it from cracking.

      Did she have any idea how sexy she sounded, Jorge wondered.

      He had a feeling that she didn’t, that Jane Gilliam had probably gone through her whole life seriously underestimating herself. It didn’t take a student of women to pick up on that. He could tell by her body language and by the very way she wore her clothes. She dressed nicely, but there was no sign that there had been any extra fussing, any extra care taken. The same applied to her makeup.

      He caught himself wondering about her. Really wondering about her as a person, not a conquest.

      Leaning his head against Jane’s, he looked into her eyes, then he shifted so that his lips were near her ear. “Who are you, Jane Gilliam?” he asked her quietly.

      His breath sent warm shivers up and down her spine, and she was afraid he’d see how very inexperienced she was—he’d probably already guessed that anyway.

      Why had he kissed her, she wondered again. A man like this wouldn’t have been alone any night of the year, especially not one that was considered to be the most important. She curbed the urge to ask, sensing that the answer might send her plummeting to the ground.

      Jane felt as if she were trapped inside some kind of bubble—and bubbles always burst. There was no getting away from that. But not just yet.

      Not just now.

      Jane ran the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. What was he asking her?

      “Do you mean what do I do for a living?”

      “That’s as good a start as any,” he acknowledged, aware that any one of a number of women he knew would have taken the question and given him some sort of existential, philosophical answer. Jane, apparently, was grounded.

      His mother, he realized, would love her.

      Jorge quickly glanced around, hoping that Maria Mendoza wasn’t standing somewhere close by, taking all this in. She’d misunderstand immediately, especially since Jane was not like any of the other women he kept company with.

      “I work for Red Rock ReadingWorks,” Jane told him, tripping over the alliteration for the first time since she’d joined the organization. If she wasn’t careful, any second she was going to start sounding like a chatty fool. “That’s a nonprofit organization that—”

      Jorge held up his hand to stop her before she launched into a lengthy description of Reading-Works and all the services that it offered.

      “I’m familiar with ReadingWorks,” he told her.

      She clamped her jaw shut to keep it from dropping in surprise. “You are?” The next moment, Jane realized her oversight. “Of course you are. You said that Isabella was your cousin.” And the pretty thirty-year-old dropped by the storefront building where ReadingWorks was housed often enough. Isabella probably had mentioned the place to him once or twice.

      Jane felt self-conscious. She always did when attention was focused on her. She made an attempt to deflect it back to him. Besides, she really did want to find out a few things about this man who had set her on fire.

      “What do you do?”

      He glanced at the glass on the table, the one he’d initially offered to fill. “Well, tonight, I’m a bartender.”

      She sincerely doubted that bartending was Jorge’s sole occupation. He looked far too vital, far too intelligent to be satisfied with mixing drinks and wiping down a counter.

      “And other nights?” she prompted. “And days?” Jane added quickly when she realized what her initially