One Wild Wedding Night_ Getaway - Leslie Kelly [8]
Not with her in that dress, an internal voice reminded him. He ignored it. He’d deal with that issue when he had to.
“Is it a safe house?”
“No.”
She met his stare in the rearview mirror, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Please don’t tell me you’re taking me back to your place for my own good. Because I might have been Miss Naive a few months ago when I fell for your routine, but I’m not that girl anymore. And if you kidnapped me for any personal reasons, I’ll have you thrown into jail.”
Dean couldn’t help barking a laugh at her fierce expression and threatening tone. The woman was not the quiet bookkeeper he’d first met last summer, which wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, the fiery, feisty Bridget was the one he’d most missed after he’d had to cut ties with her because of the case.
“We’re going to a place right outside the city.” He watched her expression as she absorbed that news, not missing the way her lips parted on a quick, inhaled breath, or the slight widening of her glittering eyes.
He’d bet money it wasn’t fear he saw in her face. It was excitement. Because though Bridget might want to deny it, they’d had intense chemistry. That had been proven one afternoon in her office. Dean had found one of the other salesman making an aggressive move on her and had tossed the other guy out on his ass. Pure anger and the sexual awareness that had been sizzling between them for weeks had come to a head and he’d ended up with his tongue down her throat and her legs wrapped around his hips. He could have had her right there, on top of her desk, and he’d wanted that more than he’d wanted to see another morning.
He hadn’t done it. Both because of the job…and because she’d have hated him even more once she found out who he was.
Not that it mattered. She hated him enough already. Except…that little flare in her eyes and the way her tongue now flicked across her lips to moisten them said her hatred hadn’t stopped the other feeling she’d had for him.
Desire.
“I can’t go stay in some hotel with you. I don’t have so much as a toothbrush with me, much less any…” Her words trailed off, her eyes dropping, no longer meeting his in the mirror. And he knew her mind had instantly gone to other, more personal items she might be missing.
Like spare panties.
His teeth almost breaking as he clenched them together, Dean cleared his throat. “We’ll make do.”
“I am not going to wear this bridesmaid dress until I testify Monday.”
She had a point.
Apparently getting over her embarrassment, she tossed her head back in visual challenge, she added, “And you can absolutely forget about me wearing nothing but what’s under this bridesmaid dress until then, either.”
Damn, there she went reminding him of the panties. And not only that, her words had sounded almost like a challenge. The thought of accepting it—of seeing how long he could hold out if he saw her wearing nothing but silk and lace, maybe in the same sexy shade of red as her dress—made Dean shift in the driver’s seat. A litany of images flashed in his brain as he pictured her in her strappy high heels…with nothing else on her but him.
“Stop somewhere so I can get some clothes.”
“It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday night after a blizzard.” His voice sounded gruff, even to his own ears. The tone was caused not by irritation with her for the demands, but rather at himself…for being unprofessional enough to get a hard-on for a woman he was supposed to be protecting.
“Then take me back to my hotel so I can grab my suitcase.”
“Your hotel room was compromised.”
Bridget’s mouth fell open and she sagged back into her seat. “What?”
He began to explain, assuming she’d have questions. But when he caught sight of her reflection, the words disappeared. Bridget’s eyes were closed, her lips sucked into her mouth. She was shaking her head back and forth in silent denial. And she was trembling, long shudders racking her body.
But not, he suspected, from the cold.
She’d been strong, holding it together, not asking