Wicked Games. Alison Kent
motion, as if the movement allowed the gears in his head to engage. “The meeting I stayed in Denver to make?”
She nodded. “The one that caused you to miss the one here.”
“Yeah. That one.” He twisted his hand around her foot, stopped, started again. “It was over a restaurant design. A café, really. Two women who’d arranged their financing and were looking at models and plans.”
“And they didn’t like what you gave them.”
His mouth quirked. “Who’s telling this story, sister? You or me?”
She made the motion of zipping her lips.
“That’s better.”
“Hey,” she said, before remembering her virtual zipper. She mouthed the word, Sorry, and waited for Doug to go on.
“Warren Sill Group, the firm where I’ll be working in Denver, tossed the café my way. A welcome boon. Or so I thought.” He smirked. “The joke was on me. I learned the hard way that the café’s owners had turned up their noses at at least six top-notch concepts already.”
“And they made you number seven.” Kinsey broke her silence solely because she could sense what was coming and how painful the admission was going to be.
“Always been my lucky number, seven.” He shifted in his chair, moved her feet closer to the V of his legs and began to massage her soles. “Thing was, I’d seen what they’d vetoed and I’d read every word in the original proposal. I knew I’d nailed it. I knew it.”
But he hadn’t. She could tell he hadn’t, and that the setback had been a hard one to take. “I’m sorry. That must really suck. Especially with the added blow of disappointing your client here.”
“‘Blow’ just about covers everything,” he said with more than a touch of sarcasm. “I’ll get over it. Hell, I’m over it now.”
He obviously wasn’t, but she played along, wrapping her robe tighter around her shoulders and settling her legs more comfortably in his lap. “So, tell me about it.”
He frowned, stopped massaging in midrub. “About what? The meeting?”
“No, duh. The café’s design.” She smiled. “Astonish me with your brilliance.”
“I thought that’s what I just did in the living room,” he said, and the look in his eyes left her breathless.
Incorrigible flirt, making her heart beat like a jungle tom-tom. “Which part? The astonishment or the brilliance? Because I seem to recall doing most of the work.”
He squeezed her foot hard. “Do you want to hear about the design, or do you want to take this outside?”
“Bring it on, tough guy.”
He stared at her for several seconds, an expression on his face that she couldn’t define. His hands on her feet stilled while he seemed to consider where to take the conversation.
And then he shook his head; his lips quirked in a wry smile. “You don’t make it easy on a man, do you?”
Poor baby. He was not having one of his better days. She pulled her feet from his lap, tucked her robe around her body and leaned forward to kiss him. A simple kiss. Just a quick brush of her lips to his.
But Doug had other plans.
The moment their mouths made contact, his hands were in her hair, holding her head for a kiss that escalated beyond a comforting gesture into a desperate and needy embrace. He devoured her, and Kinsey’s mouth trembled.
She’d intended to soothe him, yet he seemed resistant to being easily calmed…as if…as if…nothing. She couldn’t express what she sensed in him except for a strange sort of despair.
And despair did not fit at all with what she knew of Doug Storey.
His kiss, on the other hand, was the one she remembered from Coconut Caye. Wild and hungry, reckless and hot. His tongue possessed her mouth, stroking over and around and along the length of hers, stirring both her body and her blood. Her heart raced, her breasts tightened, her sex quivered.
And then he was done, setting her away as quickly as he’d struck.
She sat back, stunned speechless by his shift in mood and emotion, thinking that she really had no idea what it was that made Doug tick. For months she’d enjoyed his company, but until hit with the news of his upcoming move, she hadn’t thought about Doug’s deeper appeal.
She’d really been stupid not to take him more seriously, not to learn what she could while she’d had the chance. A chance she now might never have.
“So,” she began, reaching for her napkin and dabbing it at her mouth. “What were we talking about?”
Doug sat up, stabbed at a bite of chicken, swirled it through a smear of papaya glaze on his plate. “About what you said to me during last summer’s vacation.”
“No. I’m sure that wasn’t it.” Think, think, think, Kinsey. Think. Why could she remember in great detail her rum-soaked ramblings from over a year ago, but nothing they’d said before that kiss? “The café. We were talking about the café and your design.”
Doug sighed, then shook his head, a momentary surrender, but she knew he’d be back. “My idea would actually have given the place more the look of a diner. But I went there with a reason after seeing what they’d been offered previously.”
“Which was?”
“They wanted retro.” He snorted. “And, no offense to anyone at Warren Sill, but I didn’t see a lot of thought in any of the concepts.”
Interesting. He wasn’t even settled into the job yet and the penis wars had already started. “Maybe it was a case of the group’s frustration in dealing with that particular client. I mean, why go all-out when faced with what sounds like guaranteed failure?”
“I don’t buy it.” He shook his head. “That’s a bogus way to work.”
She should’ve known he wouldn’t understand anything less than a commitment of two-hundred-plus percent. “Maybe, but it’s human.”
“Well, it would certainly account for the cliché after big stinkin’ cliché I saw. Booths and counters. Red vinyl. Black-and-white-checkerboard floor tiles. As if the designs were all dialed in.”
“Booths and counters say retro to me.”
He shrugged. “Sure. They say retro to everyone. But there’s a difference between retro and authentic. I read a New York Times quote once that basically said when it comes to retro fashion, historical accuracy is often beside the point.”
“And your diner design was authentic.”
He shook his head. “It was actually more reminiscent of a railroad dining car. True historic diners were prefab, usually stainless steel with porcelain enamel skins. I didn’t go quite that far.”
She felt her mouth tipping up in a smile. “Actually, I know that about diners.”
Doug blinked and then he grinned. “So? Astonish me with your brilliance already.”
“It’s a long strange series of coincidences that make the entire thing sound like fiction.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and settled back into his chair.
There he went again, making her feel like she was the center of his world. It was the sort of attention she was used to receiving before sex, not after, and it raised Doug’s rating a number of notches on her mating scale.
“I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard Sydney talk about her friend Izzy? Isabel Leighton?”
Doug shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
“I’ve heard her talk about her off and