Hope swept in like a riptide.
And it wasn’t until that very moment that she realized how desperately she’d feared, on a subterranean level, that she’d never get a chance to hear the end of a sentence begun two days ago at Devil’s Leap.
And how very, very much she wanted to hear it.
She’d had only two sips of wine, but as she watched him, she imagined him hurling aside all the people in his path like a linebacker to get to where she was faster. He probably totally could.
When he saw her, their eyes practically clinked together like wineglasses.
He made a beeline toward her, gracefully enough, not mowing anyone down.
She was pretty sure she didn’t breathe the entire twenty seconds.
He arrived in front of her and stood smiling.
And she was smiling.
They both seemed to need a second to adjust to each other’s presence.
“...a woman like me...” she prompted finally.
“...tough, but not as tough as she thinks she is. A little reserved, but that’s because the waters run deep, and she protects those waters fiercely. Passionate. Graceful.”
She stared at him, as dumbstruck as if he’d reached over and unhooked her bra.
He hadn’t missed a beat.
“But I’m only guessing.” His tiny, tilted smile was literally as sexy as a finger dragged slowly along the short hairs at her nape.
And from that particular recollection, memory spread like dawn over the land that her body was, in fact, a veritable map of pleasure. With little territories unexplored in what seemed like eons that could yield seismic jolts and electric currents of pleasure.
“Damn, Your Excellency, you don’t mess around,” she said finally.
His words were still kind of reverberating across her nerves. Shocking and delicious, like a strummed power chord. And just as invigorating.
She regarded him speculatively.
“I thought I’d cut to the chase,” he said, “as we both claimed to prefer it.”
“I guess I did say that.”
“And?”
She thought for a second.
“I guess I do like it.”
He smiled at that, slowly. The smile of a man whose risk had paid off in precisely the way he’d thought it would.
The crowd surged and heaved like a ball pit, and up popped the cheery face and body of Rhonda Grellman. “Hello, Eden! Oh, Gabe Caldera! Where have you been, you naughty man? It’s about time you showed your face at one of these events again. Come talk with us about the Hellcat Habitats fund-raiser. We have some amazing ideas.”
By “us” she meant her husband and a couple of the other board members.
Rhonda gave Gabe an encouraging tug, and off he went.
Eden would have watched him walk away just to savor that view, too, but she pivoted to a touch on her arm and found a smiling Ernie Digiulio, the best mechanic in Hellcat Canyon. “Eden, my wife and I want to talk to you about doing the flowers for my daughter’s wedding.”
Yay! A happy occasion. And lots more money!