Love Me (Take a Chance)

chapter Two


Brianna leaned back in her desk chair with a sigh and rubbed her eyes. The financial projections on her screen looked grim. She hated that Thomas was right. But most of all, she hated that even now, Thomas Jones wouldn’t stop creeping into her thoughts.

Obnoxiously persistent even when he wasn’t here. Typical.

Why was he so insistent on taking her out tonight? Men like him normally didn’t give her a second glance; they were more interested in Bambi on the pole than Brianna behind the desk. He looked like he’d been a football player in high school. Some kind of jock. Just the type who would have scorned her back then, as the fat, ugly girl everyone shot spitballs at.

Just the type who should scorn her now.

She’d spent too many adolescent nights crying herself to sleep to entirely trust his motives. A football player had played nice with her once. Pretended to like her, invited her to Homecoming, then pulled a Carrie on her and left her at the mercy of the entire cheerleading squad. They’d used glue in the spitballs, that time. Shampoo hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. She’d had to shave her head, endure the cue-ball taunts, and tell her mother she was going through a punk phase.

If her mother had known the real reason, she’d have fainted in a dead heap on the floor—and probably pulled her out of school faster than it would take Brianna to get the smelling salts and revive Scarlett from the vapors. Her mother had idly mentioned home schooling once. With a choice between torture or her mother’s idea of teaching, she’d chosen the torture.

She shook her head and glared at the screen. Enough with the maudlin thoughts. She had a company to run, and she wasn’t that chubby insecure little girl anymore—but she was realistic. There had to be another reason he was interested in her…but what? Did he hope to charm her into accepting his account?

That had to be it.

With a sigh, she checked the time. Five more minutes and she could clock out and head downstairs. She wasn’t sure if she should even bother freshening up. Since she’d come back from the lunch meeting with Thomas, she’d been putting out fires left and right. A customer had been caught counting cards. Another had passed out across the table, very close to a severe case of alcohol poisoning, and when a waitress had checked his pulse he’d woken up and claimed sexual harassment.

A fairly typical day on the job, and she was a mess. Exhausted. Irritable. Bleary-eyed. She was pretty sure she had mascara on her lips, and she was too tired to care.

Yet five minutes later, she somehow found herself in the employee bathroom looking at her frazzled reflection in the mirror. Hopeless. It would take more than a little foundation to fix this, more like a tub of spackle. She hadn’t thought to bring anything with her but her business suit, but maybe that was for the best. She didn’t want to look available. She didn’t want to look desperate, and give him reason to think she could be wooed into acceptance.

But she didn’t want to look like death warmed over, either.

She washed her face with a damp paper towel and re-applied her makeup, slicking her lips with a sheen of cherry red. The tired blond waves of her hair were beyond recovery. She frowned, held her hair up off her neck, then twisted it up into a messy bun, fiddled a few pencils from her purse, and used them to pin her hair into place. It left her with a tumbled spray that looked as if she’d deliberately left it this messy, falling artfully into her face and wisping out from the bun. It would have to do.

Her reflection looked back at her with lips pinched in disapproval. What was she doing? It had been years since she’d tried to look good for a date…or for a man. Part of her had died with Michael. The part that made her feel like a woman. She wasn’t sure what was looking back at her from the mirror with wide, worried eyes: a woman or an androgynous business professional.

She shrugged out of her jacket, tossed it onto her desk chair, and flicked open the top two buttons of her blouse. A woman. Tonight she would be a woman, and even if she wasn’t really dressed for a date, at least she looked a little less uptight.

Though she wouldn’t let him past her defenses.

He had an agenda and she was part of it. This was simply another kind of business. Men like him knew how to schmooze, and thought their abs, shoulders, and cocks were just more bargaining chips on the boardroom table. He’d try to bag her and the deal all in one.

She squared her shoulders and slipped out through the casino and to the door. The hot Vegas evening opened before her like a sweltering, wet mouth. She perched her sunglasses on her nose. A few feet ahead, a man stood with his back to her, motionless beneath the shadow of the walkway’s overhang. Even from the back, she recognized him. The way he carried himself was distinctive. Underneath that practiced slickness was a certain grave, quiet authority and a brooding restlessness that spoke louder than the glib spiel he’d trotted out over lunch.

His white dress shirt clung to his back and biceps. She wondered if he’d done that on purpose. Dazzled her. Taunted her with the hard lines of his body. Made her want him until she wasn’t thinking about anything else.

If he thought she’d stammer and drool her way through dinner, he had another thing coming.

She lifted her chin and strode forward. She would get through this evening with dignity. “Thomas.”

He tensed, then turned. “Brianna.”

His gaze roamed her body, darkening with each moment, heated. When his eyes met hers again, the molten intensity there stole her voice and ran titillating fingers down her spine. He had this down to an art form, didn’t he? Slick.

“You look lovely,” he said.

“I’m wearing the exact same thing I had on at lunch.”

“A little less of it, actually.” He smiled, but something about it caught her. It wasn’t a real smile. It was too smooth, too practiced.

She tilted her head, studying him. He was smiling because it was appropriate at the moment, she thought. Not because he meant it.

He raked another look over her. “But if you’re that worried, we can swing by your place—”

“No.” Her heart seized. She forcibly lowered her voice and took a slow breath. “I mean, no. I’m fine, really. There’s no need.”

His brows rose with a subtly mocking tilt. “I’m not a serial killer. You can show me your house without fearing I’ll come back and kill you in your sleep.”

“I’m sure Ted Bundy said the same.” No way he was getting inside her house.

“I don’t think Ted Bundy would be able to bring himself to ruin your beauty.”

Oh, God. Was it going to be one of those nights? Brianna sighed. “That is the worst line I’ve ever heard.”

“Then you haven’t heard the rest of my repertoire.” This time his small, withdrawn smile was a touch more genuine. “But it got you to relax a little bit.”

She couldn’t stop her laugh. “Yes, it did.” She glanced at the door of the casino. “If you’ll come inside, I can give you the tour.”

“No need. I checked out the layout earlier. A little mystery shopping just to get the lay of the battlefield.”

“I didn’t even see you. When did you—?”

He caught her chin in his fingers and tipped her face up to his. Her voice shriveled in her throat. His eyes glittered in the descending red-gold twilight. “I told you when I want something, I’ll go after it. I want this account. And I want you.”

She swallowed. Her throat was as dry as the desert. “You can’t have us both.”

“We shall see.”

He truly was insufferable. And irresistible. And insufferable. She took a step back from him, wresting from his grip. He wasn’t really after her because he wanted her. He was using her—and she needed to remember that. “Yes, we shall. But you should know I’m onto your games. You can’t seduce me into a contract.”

His eyes flashed. He stepped closer so quickly that she stumbled away from him. Her back hit the wall of the walkway. His hands rose to brace himself against the brick on either side of her head, trapping her. Trapping her with his tall, hard body hovering close, radiating a heat so palpable it caressed her, wrapped around her heart, squeezed it tight. She caught the scent of his aftershave and something deeper, clean and bright as ocean air.

“Make no mistake.” His voice was low, dark, vividly intense, each word like a smooth velvet touch. “I don’t seduce potential clients to get the yes. I get the yes because I’m damned good at my job. What we’re doing here?” His gaze dipped to her mouth. “This thing between us has nothing to do with the contract. Nothing at all.”

She flattened herself against the wall and fought to get her breathing under control. She couldn’t look weak in front of him. Couldn’t look vulnerable. “I’d love to know your agenda, then.”

“Explain why I have to have an agenda to ask you out on a date.”

“Because I’m not exactly your type.”

He raised a brow. Cool and in complete control outwardly, but in his eyes she saw frustration. “I have a type, now?”

“A big ex-football player like you?” She tilted her chin up, glowering at him.

She thought to challenge him, but instead of offering a verbal response he dipped his head. His breath skimmed over her cheek, and she caught a sound in her throat. He was burning her and he never even touched her. The slightest brush of stubble set her skin on fire. His lips drew close to her ear. Close enough that she felt the two syllables he whispered: “Soccer.”

“Wh-What?”

“I was a soccer player. And I dated whomever the hell I wanted.”

Brianna closed her eyes. Her stomach was a riot, her body tingling. She had the feeling Thomas Jones did what he wanted rather often. She couldn’t let him think he could do whatever he wanted with her.

But then his fingertips grazed her cheek. Their tips were rough, the fingers of a man who used his hands for more than clicking next on a PowerPoint presentation—but their touch was gentle. Almost tender. Coaxing her to open her eyes and look at him.

His gaze captured hers. So dark—dark as a night she could lose herself in. As a little girl she’d been afraid of moonless nights; the world outside would seem to vanish into a gloomy half world where, if she weren’t careful, she’d be swallowed into that shadowed place and never find her way back again.

Thomas’s eyes were those moonless nights, and she was terrified he was already pulling her into the dark.

“It’s simple,” he whispered. “A man and a woman find each other attractive. The fact that we met in the high-stakes corporate pit of a Ruby Tuesday’s doesn’t matter. There is no agenda. Let it be as simple as it is.”

But could it be that straightforward? She’d trusted the simple and apparent truth too many times in her life and had been torn apart by lies every time.

Thomas was no different.

She set her jaw and pressed her hand to his chest, gently pushing him back. “Then let’s be perfectly clear,” she said. “I find you to be arrogant and obnoxious, and I’m not interested in starting a non-business relationship with you.”

“Your words say one thing, but your eyes say another.” He smiled. It was a slow smile, slow as molasses, and just as dark. “But I won’t argue with you. Let’s go.”

He withdrew, powerful arms bunching under his shirt as he pushed off the wall and freed her from the paralyzing envelope of his heat. He offered his arm with a sardonic tilt of his head.

“Shall we?”

No, she thought, and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow anyway. Damn it, he was right. She might be saying no, but her body was saying yes. Very loudly.

“I hope you like Mexican,” he said and led her down the walk.

He flagged a cab. As they settled into the back, his gaze burned her. Thomas murmured their destination to the cab driver, but Brianna hardly heard him. She was too busy staring out the window, trying to make sense of her jumbled thoughts.

Nothing good could come of this date. The man had a motive, no matter what he said. He was too persistent. Too focused on her, turning the full force of his admittedly irresistible—and obnoxious, she couldn’t forget—allure on her. He wouldn’t want anything to do with her if he knew who and what she really was. He didn’t know she was a widow, with three kids at home.

Somehow she didn’t think that’s what he signed on for when he asked her out. If she told him about herself, he would probably run away from her faster than the human eye could see. He would go away and she would be free to go home to her safe house, on her safe couch, watching her favorite television show.

Why, then, did she open her mouth to do exactly that…and close it without another word? She knew what to say. What to do. But she didn’t do it—and she had no idea why. After all, the most she could expect out of tonight was a one-night stand, and those always left her feeling cheap and slightly dirty. Like she was compensating for something. She’d never learned to let herself go and just enjoy it, like so many other lucky women did. She always doubted herself, just as she did now.

Because she hadn’t the slightest damned clue what he—or she—really wanted.