‘I usually require several pieces of evidence from trusted
sources before I change my mind about anything,’ she said primly, taking the
seat.
‘Noted,’ Tuck murmured, stifling a grin as he took his seat. He
lounged back in it, regarding Cassie as she fiddled with her cutlery. ‘So, you
don’t sound like you’re from around these here parts,’ he said.
‘No.’ Cassie refused to elaborate. Just because Reese thought
it was a good idea to sit them together, it didn’t mean she had to be
agreeable.
Gina rolled her eyes and took pity on Tuck. ‘Cassie’s
Australian.’
‘Ah. Whereabouts? Sydney? That’s one pretty little city you
have there,’ he said.
‘Canberra,’ Cassie said as she ran her finger up and down the
flat of her knife. ‘It’s the capital,’ she added. A lot of people didn’t realise
that.
And he
was
a jock.
‘Well, now,’ he said, leaning forward in his chair, his gaze
acknowledging Gina before returning to Cassie, ‘we can have us a meeting of the
United Nations.’
‘Hardly,’ Cassie said, desperately trying to sit as far back in
her chair as possible and remember that he was a jock—a
footballer—
even if he did have pheromones so potent he should be
being studied at the Smithsonian. Or milked and sold to the highest-bidding
perfume manufacturer.
‘There are one hundred and ninety-three member states in the
United Nations. And they meet in Geneva.’ She looked at Tuck. Jocks weren’t very
good with geography. ‘That’s in Switzerland.’
Tuck raised an eyebrow. He was used to people making
assumptions about his intelligence. Truth be told, he played up to them
mostly—because calling people on their ignorance was usually an amusing way to
pass the time.
It looked as if he was going to have a whole lot of fun with
Cassie. ‘That’s just north of Ireland, right?’
Cassie pursed her lips. ‘It’s in Europe.’
‘Europe?
Dang,
’ Tuck said,
broadening his accent. ‘I’m always getting them muddled up.’
‘Of course if you’re talking about the Security Council,’
Cassie plunged on, as the deep twang in his accent twanged some invisible
strings low down inside her she’d never known existed, ‘that’s in New York. And
you’d be in luck as Australia has just scored a seat on the Security
Council.’
Tuck shot a look at Gina, who winked and grinned, clearly
enjoying herself. Tuck was about to say something like,
They
wear
those
funny
blue
helmets
at
the
Security
Council,
right?
But the imperious tones of his and Reese’s
Great-Aunt Ada interrupted.
‘Samuel Tucker,’ she said in her brash, booming New York
accent. ‘How’d you sneak in here undetected?’
Tuck stood and smiled down at the self-appointed matriarch of
the family. A died-in-the-wool Yankee, she liked to pretend that the Southern
branch didn’t exist most of the time, but he had a soft spot for the
sharp-tongued octogenarian.
‘Aunt Ada,’ he said, sweeping her up in his arms for a hearty
hug. ‘Still as pretty as a picture, I see.’
Cassie felt herself sag a little as Tuck and his overwhelming
masculinity gave her some breathing space.
‘Don’t sweet-talk me, young man. What are you doing all the way
over here?’
Tuck gestured to the table. ‘I’m keeping Reese’s friends
company.’
‘Reese…’ Ada tutted. ‘Running off after that Marine… That girl
hasn’t got the sense she was born with…lucky she’s my favourite.’
‘Now, come on, Aunt Ada,’ Tuck teased. ‘I thought
I
was your favourite.’ Ada gave him a playful pat on
the shoulder, then lifted one gnarled old hand and squeezed his cheek.
Gina’s mobile rang and she almost ignored it. She couldn’t
decide what was more fascinating—the big blond quarterback sweet-talking an old
lady or Cassie’s deer-in-the-headlights face. But it rang insistently, and Ada
turned to her, looking imperiously down her nose.
‘Well, girl, are you going to answer that or not?’
Gina, recognising authority when she saw it, picked it up
immediately. The screen display flashed a familiar number. ‘It’s Reese,’ she
announced.
‘Reese.’ Ada tutted again. ‘Tell her to get back here. This
non-wedding party was
her
hare-brained idea.’
Gina laughed, but as she answered the phone Ada’s interest had
already wandered.
Cassie felt her shrewd gaze next.
‘This your girl?’ she said, turning to Tuck.
‘Absolutely not,’ Cassie said indignantly.
Then Tuck undid his jacket button and it fell open, wafting a
heady dose of pheromones her way. She shut her eyes briefly as her pulse spiked
in primal response.
‘She’s not your usual type,’ Ada said, ignoring Cassie’s
denial.
‘I am
not
his girl,’ Cassie
repeated, even though she could practically hear every cell calling his
name.
‘It’s okay,’ Ada assured her. ‘I hate his usual type.
Too…fussy.’
Tuck looked down at Cassie. She was frowning at him, her
eyebrows weren’t plucked, and she wasn’t wearing a single scrap of jewellery. No
one in the world would have described her as fussy. And yet there was something
rather intriguing about her…
‘We are
not
together,’ Cassie
reiterated. The thought was utterly preposterous.
‘Reese says she and Mason aren’t coming back tonight,’ Gina
announced as she terminated the phone call, interrupting the conversation.
‘Right, then,’ Ada said. ‘Looks like we have a show to be
getting on with. Samuel, go and tell that dreadful DJ to announce dinner. I’ll
get the wait staff to start serving.’
The three of them watched her sweep away. ‘Wow,’ Gina said.
‘She’s scary.’
Tuck grinned. ‘Hell, yeah. Excuse me, Gina, Cassiopeia.’ He
dropped his voice an octave, then bowed at her slightly, finding and holding her
gaze. ‘Keep my seat warm, darlin’, I won’t be long.’
Cassie gaped as his cosmic blue eyes pierced her to the spot
and his voice washed over her in tidal wave of heat.
Gina’s low throaty laughter barely registered.
Two hours later Cassie was strung so tight every muscle
was screaming at her. Tuck was holding court at the table, charming all and
sundry.
Big, warm-blooded, male
and
there.
A giant sex gland, emitting a chemical compound her body was,
apparently,
biologically programmed to
crave.
Him. A
jock.
Why
him?
Every time their arms brushed or his thigh pressed briefly
along hers her pulse spiked, her hands shook a little. And when he laughed in
that whole body way of his, which he did frequently, throwing his head back,
baring the heavy thud of his jugular to her gaze, her nostrils flared and filled
with the thick, luscious scent of him.
An insistent voice whispered through her head, pounded through
her blood.
Smell him. Lick him. Touch him.
With
every tick of the clock, every beat of her heart, it grew louder.
It was insane. Madness.
This sort of thing didn’t happen to her. Hormones. Primal
imperatives. She was above bodily urges. Her head always—
always—
ruled her body.
But here she was, just like the rest of the human race, at the
mercy of biology.
It just didn’t compute.
The man was as dumb as a rock. He’d thought they were talking
about food when she’d mentioned Pi. He’d called a truly amazing piece of
equipment unlocking the secrets of the universe the
Hobble
telescope. He didn’t even know the Vice-President of his own
country.
He was a Neanderthal.
But still every nerve in her body twitched in a state of
complete excitement.
Cassie desperately tried to recall the aurora research waiting
in her room—the research she’d been looking forward to getting back to at the
end of the night. When was the last time she’d gone two hours without thinking
about it? She’d been working on the project for five years. She ate, slept,
breathed it.
And for two whole hours it had been the
furthest
thing from her mind.
Marnie laughed at something Tuck said, dragging Cassie’s
attention back to the big blond caveman by her side. She checked her watch—was
it too early to leave? She wasn’t used to feeling this out of her depth. Sure,
social situations weren’t her forte but this was plain torture. If she could get
back to her room and the comfort of the familiar Tuck and the awful persistent
thrum in her blood would surely fade to black.
She glanced up at Gina, who shook her head and mouthed, ‘Don’t
even think of it.’
Cassie sighed, resigned to her fate, as the raunchy strains of
Sweet
Home
Alabama
blasted around them. Marnie whooped and
leapt up to dance along with a few others from the table.
Tuck looked across at Gina and winked. He stood and looked down
at the woman who had sat beside him for two hours as if she was afraid his
particular brand of stupid was contagious. Didn’t she
know
he was God’s gift to women?
He grinned as he held out his hand towards her. ‘What do you
say, Cassiopeia? Fancy a dance?’
Cassie stared at his hand. It was big, and she swore she could
see waves of whatever the hell he was emitting undulating seductively from his
palm. ‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t dance.’
Tuck hadn’t got to where he was today by giving up at the first
hurdle. He kept his hand where it was. ‘It’s not hard, darlin’,’ he murmured.
‘Just hang on and follow my lead.’
Cassie swallowed. That was what she was afraid of. She had a
very bad feeling she’d follow that intoxicating scent anywhere. She shook her
head again and looked at him. A bad move as his cosmic gaze sucked her in closer
to his orbit.
‘I’m a terrible dancer,’ she said. She dragged her gaze from
him. ‘Isn’t that right, Gina?’
Gina nodded. Cassie had no rhythm at all. ‘She speaks the
truth. But…’ She looked at Tuck, then at Cassie. Her Antipodean friend looked as
if she’d rather face a firing squad then dance with Tuck.
Interesting.
She’d never seen Cassie so ruffled and, bet or no bet,
she wanted to see where this went.
‘I think every woman should dance with a star quarterback once
in her life,’ Gina said.
Tuck raised an eyebrow at her as Gina conceded the bet to
him.
‘Ex,’ Cassie said. And when Gina looked at her enquiringly she
clarified, ‘He’s an ex…quarterback.’
Gina drummed her fingers on the table. ‘You know, it
is
customary at weddings for the bridesmaids to dance
with the groomsmen,’ she pointed out.
Gina had taken it upon herself to be Cassie’s social guru
during the year they’d roomed together, and Cassie had learned a lot about
social mores that no textbook could ever have taught her. But she was big on
survival instincts, and Cassie was pretty sure staying away from Tuck was the
smart thing to do.
And
she
was
very
smart.
Even if she was rapidly dropping IQ points every time she
looked at him.
‘But this is the wedding-that-wasn’t,’ she pointed out,
striving for the brisk logic she was known for. ‘We are the
bridal-party-that-wasn’t. Surely that cancels out societal expectations?’
Tuck waggled the fingers of his still outstretched hand at her.
‘I think it’s important to keep up appearances, though,’ he said. ‘These Park
Avenue types are big on that.’
Cassie looked away from the lure of those fingers at Gina, who
nodded at her and said, ‘He’s right. You wouldn’t want to embarrass Reese, would
you? It’s okay,’ she assured her. ‘Tuck looks like he knows what he’s
doing.’
Tuck grinned, but he didn’t take his eyes off Cassie. ‘Yes,
ma’am.’
Cassie glanced back at him, towering over her in all his
intoxicating temptation. Maybe a dance would help. Maybe if she got the chance
to sniff him a little this unnatural craving taking over her body, infecting her
brain like a plague of boils, would be satisfied. That seemed logical.
Cassie slipped her hand into his.
And her cells roared to life.
TWO
By the time
they got to the dance floor the last notes of
Sweet
Home
Alabama
had died out and the music had changed to a
slow Righteous Brothers’ melody. All the couples that had been boogying
energetically melted into each other and the singles left the floor. Cassie
turned to go as well, but Tuck grabbed her hand and pulled her in close,
grinning at her.
‘Where are you going, darlin’?’
Cassie’s breath felt like thick fog in her throat. ‘I…can’t
waltz.’
She found it hard enough co-ordinating her hands and feet with
some space between her and her dancing partners. She was going to do some damage
to his feet for sure.
And she did not trust herself too close to him.
‘Sure you can. Just hold on,’ he said, taking her resisting
hands and placing them on his pecs, ‘and shuffle your feet a little. There ain’t
no dance police here tonight.’
Cassie didn’t hear his crack about dance police. Her palms were
filled with hard firm muscle as the fabric seemed to melt away. The music melted
away too—as did the people crowding around them.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the sight of her hands on his
chest.
Tuck smiled to himself. ‘There you go—see.’ He took a step
closer, his chin brushing the top of her head. He slipped his hands lightly onto
her waist. There was definite curve there and he snuggled his palm into it. ‘I
don’t bite.’
Cassie fought through the fog, dragging her eyes away from how
small her hands looked in comparison to his broadness. She looked up. Way up. He
was tall. And close. A hand-width away, she guessed.
Before tonight she would have been able to assess the distance
accurately, but she simply couldn’t think straight at the moment. He was
radiating heat and energy and those damn pheromones, totally scrambling her
usual focus. His hands at her waist were burning a tract right down to her
middle.
He smiled at her, his starburst eyes showering their
effervescence all over her. She looked down, but that was a mistake also as his
chest filled her vision, the knot of his tie swaying hypnotically in front of
her with every movement of his body. And all the time an insistent whisper
played in her head, swarmed through her blood in time with the swing of him.
Smell
him
,
lick
him
,
touch
him.
She dragged her gaze upwards, desperate to stop the pull of the
hypnotic rhythm. It snagged on the slow, steady bound of his carotid, his growth
of whiskers not able to conceal the thick thud of it. She wondered what he’d
smell like there. What he’d taste like.
Her nostrils flared. Her breath grew thick. She dug her fingers
into the flat of his chest as she battled the urge to take a step closer.
Dear
God
,
she
was
growing
dumber
by
the
second.
Shocked and dazed, she dragged her gaze down. Way down. Down to
their feet. Down to the hole she wished would open up.
Tuck also looked down, frowning at how rigid she felt in his
arms. As if she was going to shatter at any moment. Or going to bolt at any
second. No woman had ever been so reluctant to be in his company. Or so keen to
be away from it.
She could give a man a complex.
One thing was for sure. She needed to relax or she was going to
have a seizure. ‘So…Cassiopeia? That’s not a name you hear every day. Is that a
family tradition?’
Cassie looked up. His eyes flashed at her and she lost her
breath for a moment. Were they closer? He seemed nearer. More potent. His chest
was closer.
‘Cassie?’
She blinked. What? Oh, yes. Talking. That was good. She was
good at talking. Usually…
‘My mum…she named me. After the constellation.’ She paused. Did
he even know what that was? ‘That’s a group of stars,’ she clarified.
Tuck chuckled. This woman was going to give him a complex.
Who’d have thought he’d be interested in such a little snob? The endearing thing
was she seemed oblivious to it all. ‘Like the Zodiac?’ he enquired, purposefully
broadening his accent again.
Cassie gaped at him. How could she possibly want to lick the
neck of a man with a pea-sized intellect?
There was just no accounting for biology.
‘No,
not
like the Zodiac.’
He feigned a frown. ‘Ain’t you into astrology?’
‘Astronomy,’ she said, gritting her teeth.
‘A-stron-omy.’
‘So, that’s not like…Sagittarius and stuff?’
‘No,’ she said primly. ‘It’s the study of celestial objects.
It’s
science.
Not voodoo.’
Tuck laughed again. He liked it when she got all passionate and
fired up. There was a spark in those blue-grey eyes, a glitter. Would they get
like that when she was all passionate and fired up in bed?
Suddenly it seemed like something he wouldn’t mind knowing.
The song ended and the pace picked up a little. A couple behind
them bumped into Cassie and she stumbled and stood on his foot. ‘Oh, God,
sorry,’ she gasped, pulling away as her front collided with his.
His broad, muscular front.
‘Hey, there, it’s okay,’ Tuck said, steadying her under her
elbows, holding on as she tried to pull away, keeping her close. Their bodies
were almost—but not quite—touching. ‘No harm done,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘Why don’t you just lay your head here on my chest and stay awhile longer?’
She should tell him to go to hell. But her nostrils flared
again as something primal inside her recognised him as male. And he smelled so
damn good.
A whisper ran through her head.
Do
it.
Lay
your
head
down
.
Shut
your
eyes
.
Press
your
nose
into
his
chest.
Cassie fought against the powerful urge as long as she could
but she was losing fast. Each sway of his body bathed her in his
eau-du-
male scent and before she knew it her cheek had
brushed against the fabric of his jacket and was angled slightly, her nose
pressed into his lapel.
She inhaled. Deep and long. Every cell was filled with him.
Every tastebud went into rapture. Every brain synapse went into a frenzy.
It was so damn good she never wanted to exhale.
It was only the dizzying approach of hypoxia that forced her
hand. She quickly breathed out, then took in another huge greedy gulp of him.
His scent seduced her senses, stroked along her belly, unfurled through her
bloodstream.
She pressed herself a little closer and her eyes rolled back in
her head as his heat flooded all round her.
Tuck was surprised when Cassie’s body moved flush against his
after her standoffishness. But he liked the way she fitted, her body moulding
against his, her head tucked in under his chin nicely. And she let him lead,
which was a novelty. Most women he danced with weren’t so passive in his
arms.
They danced all flirty and dirty and sexy.
Not that Tuck had anything against
flirty,
dirty
or
sexy.
He was
all for them. But too often it felt like an act. As if the women he dated felt
they
had
to gyrate and shimmy and generally carry on
like a B-grade porn star to attract or keep his attention.
Okay, he’d never had a reputation for longevity—his two-year
marriage was a sure sign of that—but he was, at his most basic, a guy. And just
being
female
was enough to keep his attention.
Ever since his divorce he’d gone back to his partying
ways—living the dream, a different woman every night—the ultimate male fantasy.
But he’d forgotten how good this felt, how nice it was to slow-dance, to hold a
woman and enjoy the feeling of her all relaxed against him.
Even if she did think he was dumb as a rock.
‘I think you’ve got this dancing thing down pat, darlin’,’ he
murmured against her hair.
Cassie just heard him through the trancelike state she’d
entered. Each breath she drew in fogged her head a little more, stroking along
nerve-endings and leadening her bones. She was pretty sure she was drooling on
his jacket.
But he had her in his thrall.
His hands felt big and male on her hips, and hot—very hot. She
was aware of every part of her body. It was alive with the scent of him.
His chin rubbed the top of her head and she glanced up. Her
gaze fell on the heavy thud of his carotid again, pulsing just above his collar
beside the hard ridge of his trachea. Her mouth watered a little more and Cassie
sucked in a breath.
‘Well,
hey,
y’all!’
Cassie dragged herself back from the impulse to push her nose
into Tuck’s neck, grateful for Marnie’s interruption. She looked at her friend,
who was dancing with a preppy-looking guy, still a little dazed.
‘It’s getting hot in here,’ Marnie said, then winked as her
partner danced her away.
Cassie blinked at her retreating back and then glanced at Tuck,
who was looking intently at her with his intense extra-terrestrial gaze.
What
was
she
thinking
?
She searched her brain for an answer. How great he smelled. How
great he might taste. But more than that. She’d been thinking how small and
feminine she felt tucked in under his chin, his hands shaping her hips.
How
female.
She blinked, shocked by her thoughts. Since when had she cared
about that? But her gaze was filled with his perfect symmetrical features and it
all became fuzzy again. Why couldn’t he have a prominent forehead and squinty
eyes and a crooked nose? He was a footballer, for crying out loud, didn’t they
break noses regularly?
Why didn’t she feel like this about Len, her fellow
researcher-cum-occasional-lover? She’d never once had to quell the urge to sniff
him.
They worked together every day,
occasionally accompanied each other to university functions, and every once in a
while he got antsy and irritable and they had sex, so he could concentrate on
what was really important—astronomy.
She’d never slow-danced with Len. Nor did she want to.
She’d
never
wanted
to
crawl
inside
his
skin.
It was a scary thought, and Cassie tried to pull away as
another slow song started up, but Tuck held her fast and her damn body
capitulated readily. Too readily. It was obvious biology was going to win out
over intellect and logic tonight and that just wasn’t acceptable.
She needed to defuse the situation, to distract herself from
the dizzying power of him.
‘So,’ she said, reaching for a safe, easy topic of
conversation, ‘Tuck isn’t your real name?’
It was hardly Mensa level, and they weren’t about to unlock the
secrets of dark matter, but at least it would give her back some control.
Mind over body.
And he looked like a guy who liked to talk about himself.
‘No.’ Tuck shook his head. ‘My Christian name is Samuel. Samuel
Tucker. But no one calls me that. Except my mother.’
Even his wife had called him Tuck.
‘And Great-Aunt Ada,’ Cassie reminded him.
Tuck smiled. ‘And Great-Aunt Ada.’
Cassie frowned. ‘Why not be called by the name you were
given?’
Tuck shrugged. ‘It’s a nickname.’ He looked down into her
genuinely perplexed face. ‘Don’t they have nicknames in Australia? You’re called
Cassie instead of Cassiopeia.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘No. Cassie is an
abbreviation
of my Christian name, not a nickname. If that were the
case for you, you’d be known as Sam.’
Tuck waited for her to spell
abbreviation
for his poor addled brain. If she hadn’t felt a hundred
kinds of right, all smooshed up and slow dancing against him, he’d be getting
kind of ticked off by her attitude towards his mental prowess.
Instead he was prepared to humour her.
‘Except Tuck sounds cooler.’
Cassie frowned. ‘
Cooler?
Who
says?’
Tuck liked the way her brows drew together, showcasing her
grey-blue eyes to perfection. ‘Tens of thousands of football fans, screaming my
name across every state in this great land for a decade.’
Not to mention quite a few more of the female variety also
screaming it out loud in hotel beds across every state for just as long.
‘Oh.’ Cassie thought about it for a moment, but she’d never
understood the dynamics of hero-worship regarding something as frivolous as
sport. ‘Sorry, I don’t get that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a guy thing.’
Cassie suspected it was probably a
jock
thing, but she tucked it away anyway to ask Len about when they
next spoke.
Thankfully the song ended and, feeling more in control of her
recalcitrant hormones, she took the opportunity to step firmly away from him.
‘I’m done now,’ she said, and was proud of how strong her voice sounded when her
body was howling to be nearer to him.
Tuck smiled and bowed slightly, ever the gentleman, as he
gestured for her to precede him. It didn’t stop him from perving on her ass the
whole way back to the table, though.
Almost two hours later everyone had left and Marnie,
Gina and Cassie, under the direction of Great-Aunt Ada, had seen all the guests
off and organised the removal of the gifts that had been left despite Reese
insisting that no one bring any.