Shivers spread through her. God,
this
man found
her
intriguing?
The tantalizing scent of roast beef reached her seconds before Philip’s voice shouted from the kitchen, “Five minutes to dinner!”
Caitlyn’s brows drew together. “Should he be cooking?”
Spencer laughed. “I’d like to see you try and stop him. The doctor told him to take it easy, and he insists that cooking for three is as easy as it gets.” He waved his arm for Caitlyn to precede him into the living room. “I’ve been a bad host. What would you like to drink?”
Before Caitlyn could answer, a high-pitched moan squealed from behind the closed door Spencer had exited moments ago. A split second later, a body thudded against the door, making it shake in its hinges. Caitlyn’s stomach dove as she rushed for the door. “Philip?”
“No, don’t open—”
Too late. She flung the door wide, startled to see a white fluff ball of a dog bracing itself against the far wall as if someone had shouted
On your marks!
The open door must’ve acted as an invisible starter pistol because the dog launched itself away from the wall and raced with cartoonlike speed toward Caitlyn.
She didn’t notice the puddle of urine separating them until the dog’s paws hit it. The little body flailed into a wet skid, ramming into Caitlyn’s bare legs with far more force than she’d expect from such a tiny thing. She tottered on her heels, the strap slicing painfully across her blister. With a gasp, she grabbed at the door knob to steady herself—a move she only realized was a mistake when the door swung into the bedroom and took her with it.
She tumbled onto the floor with a yelp, ass-first into the cold puddle of doggie pee. Stunned, she sat frozen for a second, as if she might wake up from this nightmare and discover the back of her white dress wasn’t piss-soaked. But she felt it, cold and wet, seeping up the fabric and into her bare skin.
Blurry movement from the living room brought her out of her daze. Before she could blink, Spencer grasped her arms and lifted her onto her feet. He held her like he worried she’d collapse again if he released her. Caitlyn’s shocked stare fell on Philip, who stood wide-eyed with trembling hands covering his horrified mouth. He seemed on the verge of tears.
“Are you all right?” Spencer asked softly, reaching down to pull the sticky hem of her dress away from the backs of her thighs.
God, Philip’s expression...the pain and humiliation in it burned Caitlyn’s eyes.
Keep calm and carry on.
She squared her shoulders and forced herself to meet Spencer’s look of concern with a smile. “Of course. Believe me, in my line of work, I’ve been covered in much, much worse.”
How not to make yourself attractive to a man—lesson one by Caitlyn Sweeney.
Actually, this would have to be lesson two, lesson one being
Bite his tongue when he kisses you.
At this rate, she’d be a frustrated virgin until the day she died.
Chapter Four
Caitlyn let the shower’s spray pound against her shoulders and back as steam billowed around her. Slowly, sensuously, she lathered her hands, lifted one arm and rubbed suds over the slick skin of her underarm, her breasts, her belly, sliding lower...
At least, that was what she was doing in Spencer’s imagination. But his imagination had got him in trouble plenty of times before, so he twisted his mental tap off and ended the dirty shower scene before she got to the good part.
The flesh-and-blood Caitlyn—and really, wasn’t that the one he’d rather see in the shower?—turned off his real shower in the bathroom next door. The click of the glass door told Spencer she’d stepped out of his slate-tiled shower and onto his bath mat. Had she wrapped a towel around herself first, or was she standing there naked and dripping while he lounged on a chair in his bedroom?
Stop that.
The visions made him squirm uncomfortably, all his blood rushing to one throbbing place. He rested his forearms on his widespread knees in a pose he hoped came across as casual instead of pervy as she opened the bathroom door and stepped into his bedroom.
An uncontrollable smile curved his lips at the sight of her in his gym shorts and London Legends practice T-shirt. She’d obviously been too short to wear any of his trousers, and thank God for that because he’d been struck dumb by the sight of her curvy legs in that white dress and sexy heels earlier. Her skin had turned a splotchy red from the shower’s heat, and her curly hair had seized up like a muscle cramp.
“Oh. You’re still in here.”
Damn. And there fled any remaining thoughts of them taking advantage of his granddad’s distraction with Minnie in the other room.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
And hide my erection from my granddad.
“You took quite a tumble.”
She grimaced and gripped the plastic bag he’d given her for her clothes against her breasts. “Yeah, unfortunately I don’t do anything daintily. I think I’ll retire those heels, even though tonight was their big debut. They gave me blisters the size of quarters.”
“Don’t move. I’ve got something for that.” He stood and strode toward the kitchen, sneaking past his granddad, who lectured Minnie with a disappointed voice Spencer remembered well from his teenage years. He returned to the bedroom seconds later with her gift.
She laughed. “That was supposed to be for your grandpa.”
“Yeah, well, I told you it was a bloody good gift. So good, in fact, that we can already use it. Sit down.” He gestured toward the bed, painfully aware that having her sit on it would be a huge mistake but unable to keep himself from making it.
She hesitated the barest second before following his order and perching her cute arse on the edge of the mattress, knees and ankles squeezed together tight as a virgin’s. He knelt before her, and her body jumped a little. “I can do it,” she said, reaching for the first-aid kit.
He set it on the floor, out of her reach, and looked up into her moss-green eyes, gut tightening at the confused mix of emotions he saw there. Visions of her breathing into his dying grandfather filled his mind, swiftly followed by the sight of her tonight, throwing her slim shoulders back, facing his humiliated granddad and acting like she didn’t consider it a good night out unless she returned home drenched in dog piss. She’d saved his life and then she’d spared his pride. Spencer could fall for a woman like this.
“Caitlyn, this may sound strange, but I want to do this little thing for you. Please. Let me.”
She stared down at him and his heart shifted in his chest, beating an irregular tattoo almost painfully against his ribs. Finally, she shifted her gaze toward her feet. A sign of assent. He wrapped his hand against the smooth back of her calf, noting that most of its curve came from the well-defined muscles underneath. Did she work out? Or was her work physical? Come to think of it, he knew she worked for a charity that helped women in desperate situations, but he had no idea what she did. He’d file that question away for a time when he wasn’t distracted by the heat of her soft skin against his palm.
He lifted her foot off the ground and examined it closely. Sure enough, an angry blister swelled the back of her heel. Resting her foot against his thigh—far too close to his still semi-interested erection for comfort—he cracked open the tin and rummaged around until he found a couple of plasters big enough to cover the area.
“So...you’re a model.”
Surprise made him laugh. “What? Oh, the advert. Jesus, don’t let Granddad hear you ask me that. I’ll never hear the end of it.” He shrugged, gratified to see he’d teased a smile out of her, and ripped open a plaster. “I guess...um,
sponsorship
...is how I make a lot of my money. But most people know me for being a professional egg chaser.”
Her face scrunched up in confusion.
Oh, yeah. American. “I play rugby,” he explained. “The ball’s shaped like an egg. Sort of.” Not really.
Her body, which he’d felt thrumming with nervous excitement seconds earlier, stilled. “Rugby? But...isn’t that a violent sport?”
“Can be, but there are rules. Biting, for instance, would get you a twelve-week ban.”
She closed her eyes in obvious chagrin, making him laugh.
“Worst injury I’ve had is a broken femur.” Motherfucker had it hurt. And nearly terminated his career. He shrugged off the memory. “It wasn’t too bad.”
Thank God he’d been twenty, full of calcium and fury, ready to work his arse off to prove himself a better man than he’d been made out to be in the papers.
He left the foot he’d treated on his thigh and picked up the other one, bending over to examine the back of it. Another violently red blister stared back at him, but his gaze also caught on a wine-colored blemish staining the side of her calf, too dark to have been caused by the shower’s heat. He trailed his fingertips over it, making her leg twitch.
“It’s a scar from a snake bite.” Caitlyn sounded almost breathless, her voice turning husky in a way that sent every cell in his body humming until her words broke through his pheromone haze.
“You’ve been bitten by a fucking
snake?
”
“I worked in Thailand after the tsunami. Stumbled across a pit viper—literally. Fell right over it. Fortunately it didn’t hold much of a grudge and only bit me quickly before trying to escape the scary red-and-white beast that nearly crushed it.”
His heart picked up pace. “You could’ve died.”
“Not likely. Not from a pit viper, anyway. And we had a field hospital nearby, so I got antivenom quickly. Believe me, the country was teeming with aid workers getting into all sorts of trouble. We probably outnumbered snakes ten to one.”
Jesus, her job sounded so worthy. And he’d practically bragged about surviving a broken leg so he could go on to play more rugby. Unable to restrain himself, he pressed his lips to the scar, his hands bracing both of her feet against his thighs. Her body froze, and he glanced up to see her hands tightly clasped in her lap, eyes closed and a slight smile curving her lips.
With only a second’s hesitation, he stroked a palm over her calf and kissed her bare knee. Her leg spasmed, and he clasped it harder, grinning up into her surprised face.
“You weren’t going to knee me in the teeth, were you?”
Her throat flexed. “Not intentionally. I’m, um, not very experienced, Spencer. You should know that up front. Before I accidentally hurt you.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, and he swallowed hard. “How not very experienced?”
She grimaced. Suddenly, her knee-clenching posture and all the mixed signals she’d thrown his way became clear in one terrifying, blindingly bright shaft of realization.
Goddamn it. She
couldn’t
be a virgin. She had to be at least in her mid-twenties. No...not possible. Certainly not possible for a funny, clever woman who had the added benefit of looking like a walking, talking wet dream.
She was jumpy as hell whenever he got close, but women her age weren’t virgins. Not unless they were waiting for the right man and simply hadn’t given up hope of finding him yet.
Spencer’s hopes plummeted. One thing he knew for certain: he wasn’t her Mr. Right.
Not having any fucking clue how to respond, he busied himself applying a plaster to her second blister, then stood and reached out a hand to help her up. She clasped it and let go as soon as she could, brows drawn together and lips pressed tightly to the side in an expression of ironic disappointment, as if she’d heard his thoughts.
Playtime was over. All he could give her—
any
woman, in fact—was summer. Once the season started again, he would dedicate every ounce of his focus to his career. The Rugby World Cup only came around every four years, and the next was just a year from now—in England, on his home turf for the first time in his life. He hadn’t been selected to play in a single World Cup since he’d screwed up in Australia, and he would be too old to compete in the one in five years’ time.
No, he couldn’t seduce a virgin and then dump her when the season started. He cared about her too much already to treat her that way. His whole body ached at the realization that all he could have of her was friendship.
Even that made his blood flow with temptation. Could he be man enough to walk away from her tonight and never see her again?
He would have to. For both their sakes.
He refused to be the first man to break her heart.
* * *
Lesson three in how to lose a man: let him know you’re a virgin.
For once
,
couldn’t you have unlocked your knees and gone with the flow?
Caitlyn glanced down at the yipping dog with bladder-control issues who was sprinting circles around her legs. “And I don’t mean the way you did, Minnie,” she muttered.
Both men had escaped to the kitchen to collect the food, giving Caitlyn a minute alone with her glass of sauvignon blanc and the psychotic canine humping her chair legs. As if she needed the reminder that even Minnie had a better chance of being sexually active than she did. She cringed, remembering the look on Spencer’s face as he’d practically leaped away from her as though she was radioactive—and who could blame him? With her feet resting that close to his package, he’d probably been terrified she would inadvertently crush his jewels to dust.
If only she could’ve assured him that wouldn’t happen. Unfortunately, getting close to a man who made her hormones cha-cha seemed to give her a temporary case of Tourette’s. Her body no longer listened to her rational mind, and God knew her mind shouted loud enough trying to bring it under control.
The door from the kitchen swung open, and Philip walked out carrying ceramic dishes in his oven mitts, closely followed by roast beef and Spencer, massive behind his diminutive granddad. Surely they couldn’t come from the same genetic stock.
“You must be starving, my dear.” Philip dodged a barking Minnie and slid the dishes onto table mats, removing their lids. “Carrots and peas in this one. Mash in that. I’ll go get the gravy and Yorkshire puds and then we can
mange.
Come, Minnie!”
He left the room as Spencer set a mammoth roast beef in front of her. Minnie, no dummy, sat where she could keep an eye on the meat, her tail wagging so hard that her whole body wriggled.
“Wow. That thing’s bigger than your dog.”
Spencer jerked back like he’d been shot. “Minnie’s
not
my dog. She’s Granddad’s and is leaving as soon as he does. Granny got her about three months before she died, so Granddad’s overly attached to the mutt and was too grief-stricken to train her properly when she was a puppy. Hence the spoiled pedigree nightmare you see before you today.”
He sat across from her, leaving the chair at the head of the table empty for Philip. Did he do it out of deference for the older man, or to put as much distance as possible between them?
Spencer reached for her empty plate and scooped vegetables onto it.
“How long ago did your granny die?”
“Two years.”
“I’m really sorry. Were you as close to her as you are to your granddad?”
He nodded and added veggies to Philip’s plate. “They raised me. Mum hadn’t exactly planned to get pregnant. She was living with them when I was born, and when I was in nursery school she moved out and left me behind.”
Dear Lord. “That must’ve been really hard, Spencer. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “I barely remember her. She came around for Christmas and my birthday, acted like a much-older sister and then left. She wasn’t around enough for me to get attached. My grandparents...” He paused and took a sip of beer, as if the subject parched his throat and he couldn’t get the words out. “They’re my only family. They’ve always been more like really old parents instead of the fun grandparents who’d spoil you and encourage you to be naughty, like you probably had.”
Which showed he knew jack-all about her childhood.
Philip walked out with a gravy boat and a basket full of strange concave biscuits. “Is that Yorkshire pudding?” Caitlyn asked, examining it closer.
“Goodness, girl, don’t tell me you’ve never had it before!”
Her denial sparked a long conversation during which Spencer and Philip delighted in describing all sorts of weird-sounding British food. When they’d finished demolishing the meal, Spencer reassured her, “Don’t worry, we won’t be serving spotted dick for dessert.”
Caitlyn nearly choked on her wine, gratified to see the grin and spark in his eye before he blinked it away and studied his plate.
Disappointment and confusion ate at her. He’d seemed so interested, and now he acted like virginity was contagious. She’d tried to be delicate, and just vague enough not to scare him away—fat lot of good that did. Maybe virgins started giving off a musty odor as they got older. She certainly felt like she’d long passed her expiration date.
Philip leaned back in his chair, careful not to disturb the snoozing dog that snored against his foot, and smoothed his hand over his gently curved belly. “That was the best meal, with the best company, I can remember in a long time.”