“What is it with men and French accents or the French language?”
The grin transformed into a squint. “Are you kidding me? You don’t have any idea how hot it is?”
“Of course I don’t have any idea how hot it is,” she said. “I understand that other people find it arousing, but to me it’s just the way people talk.”
“Yeah, that thing in the middle about it being arousing? That’s why.”
She gave him a little nudge with her knee, then stood up and stretched.
He continued below her. “If the French language makes you think of other things, like French kissing—”
“Why doesn’t it make anyone think of the French horn? Or French fries?”
“It makes me think of French letters,” he said.
“I know what those are,” she said. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“The gutter is where I live,” he said as he got to his feet. Just like that the mood shifted, because his tone held not bitterness, but something else. Regret.
“Most people automatically assume I live in the gutter because I design lingerie,” she said before she remembered she had misgivings about forming a closer connection with Ryan. “I must think about sex all the time. But I don’t. Sex isn’t the only thing that can happen when a man finds a woman irresistible.”
He glanced away, as if discomfited. “Your process is missing a key component,” he said.
They were standing on the stoop, him on the step below her, so their faces were aligned. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at his mouth. He smelled like summer and beer and warm skin. That particular scent rose from the open collar of his shirt, where his pulse beat at the base of his throat.
“Let me tell you about it,” he said, his voice low yet light, almost teasing. “You should know what happens when a woman wears your designs, when the confidence you give her gets her the experience she wants.”
She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to kiss him, to set her mouth to his and taste him, to feel that sweet electric moment when his tongue touched hers. She wanted to take off his clothes and explore his skin, the different but no less potent beauty of the male body that was hers to command. She wanted to breathe in the air he had exhaled, take him deep inside herself in every way possible. Her body was growing slick and tight with desire, little flickers of want snapping under her skin. Based on the way he was looking at her mouth, he wanted the same thing.
A split second before she gave in to the temptation to lean forward, he stepped down one more step, then to the sidewalk. She inhaled shakily and tried to deny the regret deep in her belly.
“Think of me as a research assistant,” he said. He’d shoved his hands into his pockets; they balled into fists, as if to resist touching her. “Doing field work, so to speak. Reporting my findings.”
“You’re a cad,” she said.
“Who says cad anymore?” he shot back, but he didn’t deny it. He shrugged. “Besides, you don’t know if any of that was true. I could have made it all up.”
“Were you making it up?”
He laughed; the sound startled, but his gaze was sharp. To her surprise, he stepped up on the stair again. Her heart gave a wild leap, because the look in his eyes went beyond playful seduction to predatory. He leaned close, and his breath whispered against her cheek and ear. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t imagining her.”
His lips grazed her cheekbone as he drew back, the kiss the height of proper, Continental sophistication for two parting acquaintances, but the faint pressure sent heat spiking through her. “Don’t,” she said involuntarily.
“I know,” he said, and she could see that he did. She knew well enough to avoid his type, and he . . . he wanted something she would surrender reluctantly. “I shouldn’t. I won’t. But that doesn’t change how much I want to.”
This time she stepped back, her foot precariously positioned on the step above her, putting some much needed distance between them. He was bad news in every possible way, a wolf in pursuit of prey—money, women, success, status—and while she respected his drive, she knew better than to get drawn into his world.
He retreated to the sidewalk again, taking a single step backward without looking and somehow managing to transform giving ground into a challenge.
“See you around, Simone,” he said. Hands still in his pockets, he turned and set off down the street.
She closed her eyes. “Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, et tous les saints qui veillent sur nous,” she whispered, because he’d discerned the truth: through the whole story she’d imagined not the supermodel, but herself.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Her first mistake, she decided while she was negotiating terms with her Chantilly lace supplier, was letting him touch her.