Major Attraction (4 page)

As her eyes swept past Ethan, she hesitated. They sat too far away to talk, but for several charged moments, their gazes locked. Her pupils dilated, turning her eyes to twin pools of midnight blue. Something secret and hot passed between them, loaded with questions, begging for answers. He'd been unabashedly staring, with the motive of defending her. But now that protective rush of testosterone became something much more basic as it thickened like hot honey through his blood.

Ethan lost himself in the unguarded depths of those haunting eyes. On some level, he must have imagined losing himself inside her because, rationality aside, he had the most amazing hard-on of his adult life. And he hadn't done a damn thing beyond look at the woman and fantasize about kissing her.

“Yo, Major.” It took a thump on his shoulder for Ethan to finally realize that Travis had been talking to him.

For a brief second, Ethan tore his gaze from his blue-eyed fantasy and concisely communicated that his little brother's interruption was unwelcome. But by the time he glanced to the opposite end of the bar once more, the spell had been broken.

The woman's eyes were lighter in color and shuttered now. She spared him a graceful nod of her head, then flipped open a page in the notebook that sat on the bar in front of her, effectively tuning him out and turning down an unspoken opportunity to get acquainted. She jotted something down, closed the notebook, then scanned the bar, looking almost everywhere else except at Ethan. Weird.

Travis's breath rasped against Ethan's ear in an amused whisper. “Are you gonna go for it?”

Ethan bristled at the challenge. She was older than most of the coed types he'd met tonight. She had the looks. But no way would that eccentric flirt make a suitable impression on the top brass. “What do you suppose she's writing over there?”

Travis settled back onto his seat and shrugged. “Phone numbers? Maybe she's a modern woman and wants to call the man instead of waiting for him to call her.”

“That's an awful lot of phone numbers.”

“She's got nice hooters. Not very big. But perky in all the right places. And her eyes are about as blue as—”

Ethan slowly turned and glared him into silence. “Do I want to have this conversation with you?”

“Defensive, huh?” Travis let the attack slide off his back. “So, we finally found your type. Cheeky brunette. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to go over and ask her to be yours for the next two weeks?”

Technically she wasn't a true brunette. As she shifted to pack her pen and notepad inside a large tote, the lights from the mirror behind the bar caught in her hair, revealing subtle auburn highlights. But that was hardly the point of Travis's comments. Ethan shook his head. “She looks the part—classy, smart.”
Sexy.
“But she's a little too free with her affection for my taste.”

“Isn't that the type of woman you want for a two-week relationship?”

Ethan watched her get up, drape her bag over her shoulder and head for the exit. She was average in height, but there was a leanness about her long legs and narrow waist that made her seem taller. There was also an earthy sway to her backside that had Ethan's hormones firing up again. Of all the women he'd seen tonight, she was the only one
whose effect on him had lasted beyond his initial observations.

He checked his watch. Zero-fifteen hours. After midnight by civilian standards. By dinner tonight, he needed an escort with an engagement ring on her finger to take to the Cherry Blossom Ball. He was out of options.

Ethan faced the dare that lurked in Travis's expression. “Damn, I hate when you're right.” Ethan stood and tossed a couple of bills onto the bar for a tip. “I'd better suck it up and go introduce myself.”

“Better move fast,” Travis warned him. “She just went out the door.”

“I'm moving.” Ethan straightened the tuck of his shirt at the waistband of his jeans and smoothed his palm over the top of his hair. Hell. He was more nervous than he'd been when he'd asked Amy Bartlett to the senior prom.

“Hey, if you're not back here in fifteen minutes—” Travis slapped him on the back, taking on the tone of experience “—I'll expect you to call me in the morning to fill me in on how it went. Not too early, though. I intend to see some action myself.”

“Shit.” But it wasn't Travis's teasing that hardened his nerves into something closer to anger.

The tattooed man who'd kissed Ethan's soon-to-be-asked-fake-fiancée-for-two-weeks had nudged his buddy at the pool table, and now they were both hurrying out the door. They turned the same way the woman had gone.

Ethan's suspicions revved into gear, his instinct to detect danger canceling out any trepidation he felt at asking this woman a huge favor. His long strides quickly ate up the distance to the exit. With his shoulders thrown back, his senses on keen alert, he shoved open the door and trailed the men outside. Beyond them, he spotted the woman in the parking lot, strolling across the pavement
at a confident pace, oblivious to the danger that pursued her.

Cajoling each other, the two men quickened their steps to a slow jog and headed straight for her. Ethan's hands fisted at his sides. He was unarmed and out of uniform. But he was still a Marine. It was his duty to protect.

And whether it came down to his rank or his clear-thinking or his big, badass self, the blue-eyed brunette was going to be safe.

And she was going to be his.

 

J.C.
ADDED THICKHEADED
to her list of all the undesirable qualities to be found in a military man.

The Marine who'd kissed her in the bar had destroyed the last of her patience. He couldn't seem to quite grasp the concepts of
no. You're not my type. Thank you, but I'm not interested.

As if that gorillaesque, wet tongue thing he'd done with his mouth would change her mind about his Neanderthal charm!

“Oooh.” She shivered with revulsion, remembering that lip-lock assault with the same fondness of her last trip to the dentist. “Of all the nerve.”

She dug her keys from her tote as she hurried to her car, anxious to get home and start her next column. The patrons of Groucho's Pub had given her plenty of raw material to work with. Already she could generate columns about awkward pickup lines made all the less endearing when uttered in the form of a command or wishing for substance behind dashing good looks.

J.C. halted a few feet from the rear of her Camaro and routinely checked underneath her car and the one parked beside it before sliding between them. At the very least, she could write a paragraph about not needing to primp
to pick up a soldier. She'd worn nothing more provocative than jeans and a gray knit shirt with three-quarter sleeves. Yet she'd received no fewer than seven compliments about how nice she looked.

“Hey, baby.”

J.C. froze with her key in the lock at the inebriated drawl behind her. Her evening had just gone from mildly amusing and mostly annoying to downright awful. Gorilla-boy had followed her to her car.

She fixed a superior sneer on her face and turned to face him. She froze. Forget awful. Make that scary. Gorilla-boy had brought a friend with him. Both were drunk, both were ogling her breasts and parts south. And she was trapped.

Panic flared in her chest and tried to strangle her throat, but she fought back the urge to scream and opted for sarcasm instead. “If I'm not interested in one of you, I'm not going to be interested in two.”

“I know you want me.” The black-haired man who'd introduced himself as Juan—make that Don Juan—Guerro entered the slot between the cars and backed her up against the concrete parking barrier. “I saw you write down my name after I left.”

“No. I—” He snatched her bag off her shoulder, and though she struggled to hang on to it, he pinched her wrist in a way that shot pain up her arm and made her fingers refuse to work. “Ow. Jeez.”

He easily pried the bag from her limp grasp and tossed it to his sidekick. “Check it out.”

“That's stealing.” But her argument fell on amused ears.

While Juan's buddy dumped out her bag on her trunk and rifled through her things, Juan himself kept hold of her wrist and turned her so that she butted against the
hood of her car. He moved forward, sliding one of his legs between hers and leaning over her in such a way that she could smell beer and cigarettes on his stale breath.

“Find the book, Manuel. See what fine thing she said about me.”

Oh, God. If he could decipher shorthand, seeing
prick
next to his name would hardly endear her to him. She was in trouble. J.C. flattened her hands against his chest and shoved. “I told you no, and I meant no.” He stumbled back into the neighboring car, giving her a chance to go after her bag. She waved an accusatory finger at the sidekick who was rudely touching her things and tossing them aside. “I will call the cops and have you arrested for purse snatching.”

But Juan was a trained Marine. Drunk or not, he was still physically stronger and swifter than she would ever be cold sober. He grabbed her arm and jerked her back against the car. Her elbow smacked against the sideview mirror.

“Ow!”

He thrust his groin against her hips and pressed his cold gorilla lips to her ear. “I'm saving you from your shyness.”

Shy? Her?

“Stop it!” J.C. twisted and aimed with her knee, but she was pinned beneath his hips and hands and that awful tongue. She curled her fingers into claws and scratched at his forearm, but it was hardly enough damage to free herself. If he angled his head just a little farther, she would chomp down on his ear.

“Hey, Juan.” His sidekick must have found her notebook. “This don't make no sense. It's all numbers and scribbles. If your name's here—”

The sidekick fell silent with a startled
oof.
The car
shook behind her as he slammed into the trunk of her car and then collapsed to the ground.

“What the—?” Juan muttered and lifted his head.

“Get your hands off her. Now.”

If Gorilla-boy wasn't intimidated by the deep-pitched precision of that order, she was.

She shoved him as he turned to the commanding voice, and scuttled back against the wall, away from the unwelcome contact with his body. Juan looked stunned to see his buddy curled up in a ball on the asphalt, holding his bloody nose. “Manny? What the hell?”

J.C. saw him before Juan did. A tall, broad, golden hunk of hero materialized at the back of her car. He was gathering up her things and dropping them into her bag, all without looking away from Juan or even blinking his battleship-gray eyes. “Your ears work?” he challenged.

Juan bristled. “You mind your own business, old-timer. I saw the lady first.”

Old-timer?
J.C. recognized the broad-shouldered man from the bar. She'd caught him staring at her with such intensity that she'd forgotten the military shave of his head and the stiff carriage of his shoulders and responded to the hungry appreciation in his eyes. He was fit and strong and might even be handsome if he ever relaxed the rugged lines of his face and smiled.

But there was no mistaking him for old. Serious, yes. Authoritative, definitely. He was a mature man in the prime of his life. And he'd wanted her.

“What unit are you two with?” he demanded.

The terse trade-off of information continued as J.C. relived those few tension-fraught moments at the bar when she realized she'd lusted after a man who made her forget her purpose for being there. Those few charged moments had been about sex and desire and long-denied need.

The tips of her breasts had tingled and her panties had gotten damp. All because he'd looked as if he'd wanted to bed her on the spot. Without saying a word, it had been the most straightforward invitation of the evening. And the most flattering. The raw desire flooding his expression had caught her off guard. First base and beyond had been a real possibility for a moment.

But a split second later, she'd wondered if that was the same kind of inexplicable attraction her mother had felt when she'd met her father for the first time. Remembering her mother's pain, she'd finally found the strength to look away.

“If you want to stay a corporal, you'll move aside.” That clipped, low-pitched voice brought her instantly back to the here and now. “Honey?”

The blond man's gaze slid beyond Juan's stunned posture and swept over her. He extended a large, trim-fingered hand toward her and urged her to come out from between the cars and join him.
Honey?

She'd just mentally complimented the man on his honesty. What game was he playing now? Had she missed something important? She bought herself a moment by playing along. “Sweetie?”

“Come out of there,” he urged her again.

This time, with Juan's dark-eyed scowl over his shoulder to remind her of the danger she'd been in, she scooted around Gorilla-boy and reached for her rescuer's outstretched hand. She fixed a smile on her face. “I'm glad you showed up.”

That much was true. But the charade was going to be more than just verbal. He handed her her bag and slipped an arm behind her back, claiming her as his own, carefully angling her away from the moaning man with the bloody nose and Juan's cautious advance.

“Are you telling me she's yours?” Juan challenged.

“You questioning my word?” Her
sweetie's
hand settled with a possessive grip on her hip and he pulled her snug against the mile of hard, muscular lines that formed his thigh, waist and chest.
Yowza.
J.C.'s sex drive kicked in, remembering everything he had promised in that long, heated stare earlier.

“No, sir.” Juan took another, more hesitant step forward. “But you two weren't together inside. And I wasn't the first guy to hit on her.”

Setting aside her libido, J.C. understood the game plan now. “So we had a little fight and I wanted to make him jealous. I'd still rather go home with him than with you.”