Mystery Date (Harlequin Blaze) (2 page)

The growl made her stay up most nights, running her hand over her belly, circling, then going lower, trying to give herself what she’d never gotten from all the ho-hum sex she’d had before with the lights off so that her few, steady partners wouldn’t see all her bulges and cellulite.

And so that they wouldn’t call her “Cushions,” just as they had in college when she’d been pledging with Margot and Dani.

“Sorry,” Leigh finally said, absently toying with the seam on her jeans again. “I’m pretty nervous, and I’m saying things I don’t mean.”

Margot softened. “Are you sure it’s not excitement you’re feeling?”

That could’ve been it, too. “There’re just a bunch of second thoughts attacking me right now. I keep thinking that if you hadn’t been so adventurous with your basket, I probably wouldn’t have been so daring with mine. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Why didn’t I just offer an innocent little picnic at the reunion and leave it at that?”

Margot bit her lip, and Leigh could tell she was stifling a laugh. They’d always been competitive—when they were dorm roommates, when they’d lived together at the sorority house, even after college when Margot, the Girl Most Likely to Succeed, had shot to infamy with all the “single woman on the go” travel books she’d written. Margot had always made Leigh want to be better, to keep up with her, and the baskets had been no exception.

“I suppose you’re right,” Margot said. “This
is
all my fault. I’m an awful person for making you want to have some fun.”

A moment passed; then they both laughed and for a moment Leigh’s nerves actually mellowed.

But the sight of the mansion on the hill remained in her peripheral vision, and she didn’t laugh for long.

Seriously—what
was
she getting herself into?

That familiar growl gnawed through her belly, making her ache a little between her legs.
Admit it,
she thought.
You want this.

She wanted to let go of all her chubby-girl neuroses, wanted to see what it would be like to come out of her modest closet in a big way. She wanted to go on a mystery date with her own sexy basket and the taste of honey it offered, literally with a humdinger of a meal, and figuratively with...

Oh, God, she had no idea what else was in store for her tonight.

Margot got out her smartphone, dialing it as she glanced at Leigh. “You need an extra push out of this car, sweetie.” Then she smiled brightly. “Dani? I’m putting you on speakerphone with me and Leigh.”

Dani, who rounded out their best-friend group, was laughing when she came on the line. Leigh could almost imagine her, with her curly bobbed red hair, her doe-gray eyes and her milk-pale skin. She tried
not
to think about the look on Dani’s face that she caught sometimes.... Was it disappointment that she wouldn’t have the grand nuptials she’d always dreamed of, ever since college when they’d nicknamed her “Hearts”? Or was it the cold feet Leigh and Margot suspected Dani might be suffering after an engagement that had lasted for years now?

“You haven’t gone into his place yet?” Dani asked Leigh.

Leigh rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be catering for someone?”

“I’m on a break at work, just like I was when I gave you a pep talk before you left the hotel. I wish I could’ve driven down there with Margot to meet you.”

Leigh shot the phone a disgruntled glance as Margot laughed and said, “You’ve got work, and
I’ve
got this covered, Dan. Except I wish you were here to help me kick Leigh’s butt up this long driveway. You should see what’s at the end of it. The mansion is straight out of
Jane Eyre
or—”

Leigh cut her off. “Margot is having a grand old time, Dani. She’s playing on my last nerve because it’s hilarious to her.”

Margot shrugged innocently. “You’re so easy to mess with, though.”

“Just don’t listen to Margot,” Dani said. “It’s not like you’re going into an unsafe place, Leigh. Beth Dahrling said she’d meet you there, right?”

Beth Dahrling, the woman who’d bid on Leigh’s basket in place of the Mystery Man.

“Right,” Leigh said. “But I doubt she’ll be chaperoning the whole night. She’s just a friend of this guy, and she set everything up.”

“She’s a fellow sister. Plus, she told you that Mystery Man was a brother in our very favorite fraternity, and a brother would never put you in a bad situation.”

True. Riley, Dani’s fiancé and a Phi Rho Mu brother to boot, had all but promised Leigh that one of his own would never harm her. Besides, Beth would be here. Still, Riley had no idea of Mystery Man’s identity, although he’d done enough online research to try and uncover it. Margot put a hand on Leigh’s arm, and it was a comforting touch. “It’ll be a good time, you’ll see. My bet is that he’s just one of the fraternity brothers—a San Joaquin cowboy whose ranch is making the big bucks—and he’s having some fun with you. He’ll ask the TV chef to cook him dinner, and while you’re eating, you’ll have a major laugh over this whole secrecy thing.”

Leigh locked gazes with Margot, her frenemy, the woman who’d always had everything come so easily to her. The person Leigh had wanted to emulate in college and beyond, even as they went toe-to-toe with each other.

It was as if Margot saw all of that in Leigh’s eyes, and for some reason she glanced away.

This wasn’t the first time Margot had acted like this recently, and Leigh had been wondering why. Her friend had started a new book about a city girl living the country life on Clint’s cutting-horse ranch, and she had a new blog that was drawing all kinds of interest. So why did she occasionally look as if she was hiding something?

Leigh wanted to ask what was going on, but Dani was already speaking on the phone.

“Well?” she asked. “Are you going to stay in that car all night or are you going to have an adventure?”

Leigh sent one last look to the mansion, her stomach in knots...

And that growl combing over every inch of her.

* * *

A
DAM
M
ORGAN LEANED
against the wall near a barred window in the top story of the rented house. He was watching the Prius that was parked at the end of the long driveway, near the open iron gates that separated him from the eucalyptus-shrouded lane that led up here.

“She’s not coming in, is she?” he asked.

Next to him, his good friend Beth Dahrling was also peering out the window. “Well, Leigh’s here, at least. I don’t think she would come this far to turn around.”

She had to be right, because he had hired a small plane, in cash, to fly Leigh down here to the Pismo Beach area from her home up in Lodi. He’d decided to have this dinner away from Avila Grande, where they’d both attended Cal-U.

For a short time, in Adam’s case.

He glanced over his shoulder at Beth, whose long dark hair was swept back into a tortoiseshell barrette. In her chic printed silk wrap dress and with her rosy-brown skin, she seemed colorful and exotic, but the melancholy expression she wore gave him pause.

“You still think this is a bad idea,” he said, a trace of amusement in his voice.

“I think it’s an odd one.” She turned her liquid-brown gaze on him. “I think all you had to do was bid on Leigh’s basket and reveal who you were.”

“She wouldn’t remember me.” He hadn’t stuck around the university long enough for there to even be a picture of him on the walls of the fraternity house, where he’d pledged for only a short time before he’d had to drop out and return home.

But several months ago, when he’d seen Leigh on TV for the first time, he’d certainly remembered
her.
And when Beth had mentioned the basket auction that was being held at the reunion for their connected organizations, he’d thought of Leigh as she had been fourteen years ago, laughing all the time, taking a moment to smile at the shy freshman pledge who didn’t say much to girls—the kid who’d disappeared without ever becoming an official Phi Rho Mu brother.

Beth sighed and walked away from the window. Adam turned around, folding his arms over his chest while she spoke.

“Do you blame her for being cautious about this?” she asked. “For all she knows, you could be the Phantom of the Opera in this old house.”

He dodged her comment. “I didn’t want to use any of my own homes.” Not for a one-night basket date that had sparked his imagination.

“You know damned well that it’s not your homes I’m talking about,” Beth said. “Really, Adam, this is the strangest thing you’ve ever done. In fact...”

She didn’t have to say anything else. Ever since his wife, Carla, had withered away from breast cancer two years ago, he had become a recluse, uninterested in most things that happened outside the walls of his homes, except for the many property and business investments that he’d inherited from Carla, money that kept his bank accounts flush, thanks to the way he’d multiplied the investments.

“Hey,” he said, walking over to Beth and reaching out, chucking her under the chin with his finger. “This is going to turn out all right. No worries.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’ll turn out all right for you. This date will provide some temporary entertainment, and then you’ll move on to whatever comes next. I’ve seen it before with your women, but none of them have ever been one of my sisters.”

She was talking about the women he’d met online. Women he would talk to behind yet another wall—this one created by the computer. They provided mental fantasies for him, and that was all he’d needed for a couple of years now....

Until he’d seen Leigh on TV, wearing a red-and-white-checkered shirt that was unbuttoned down to
here,
her stomach bared because of the knot she’d tied above her waist, her long blond hair pinned away from her heart-shaped face and tumbling down her back as she worked in her
Come-on Down Kitchen
by candlelight, creating sensual country meals on her show.

She’d taken off a lot of weight since college, but he thought she’d looked just as beautiful with her curves and soft skin back then. He’d first seen her at a casual party populated mostly by his fraternity brothers and the Tau Epsilon Gamma sorority, and his heart had skipped a beat while she’d joked with her friends across the room. Her laugh had captured him in some physical way that he’d never been able to explain, but it had consumed him that night, and he’d never forgotten. And that smile she’d given him in passing—that dazzling, pure smile that had reached inside and grabbed him.... If he’d been less shy, he would’ve taken that as encouragement, but the fact that he’d never had the chance made Leigh Vaughn into a figment of his college imagination, made her into the ultimate “what could’ve been” girl.

Of course, that had been just before he was called home after his dad succumbed to a heart attack and Adam had taken up the mantle of “man of the house.”

He turned back around, moving to the window again. He could see that the car was still parked, and even now his heart flipped. But it wasn’t because of some old never-consummated crush. It was because of tonight’s scenario.

The basket.

He’d initiated all of this out of sheer curiosity. How had Leigh turned out so many years later? Did she still have the same warmth a man could feel even from across a room?

Adam gripped the window frame. He wasn’t someone who needed warmth—it was the curiosity that was driving him. That was all. And these days he could afford to appease it.

He could afford almost anything that broke up the boredom.

As he kept looking through the barred window, he could faintly see his reflection: dark hair and nearly gold eyes from his mom’s Spanish heritage, a mouth drawn tight. A man wearing a black shirt and jeans. Someone he barely recognized.

“This is only a harmless date, Beth,” he said. “For everyone involved.”

“I’ll bet Leigh’s ready to jump out of her skin. Does that turn you on or something?”

He paused. Did it turn him on to know that she was wondering who he was?

Yeah. Yeah, it did. And he liked that she would never know enough about him to contact him for another date if she got it in her head that she wanted more. He didn’t do attachments. Not anymore, not after Carla had taken his heart with her.

Beth walked away, her footsteps thudding on the polished wood floor.

“I’m going out there,” she said.

“To drag her inside?”

“I don’t know what I’ll do, but this is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as being the executive assistant to a man who wants to stay in the shadows during his entire date.”

He laughed. His plan for dinner did sound demented. But he was in the mood for it. Besides, how was keeping a distance from his date any different from getting to know all those women online? There he could be anyone, just like tonight.

No attachments, no strings. This was the ultimate safe date...and a game, if he had to admit it. And the more he thought about tonight’s game, the more turned on he got.

Beth left the room, and Adam found himself holding his breath. He let it out, shaking his head. Carla would’ve thought he was going off-balance, too. She would’ve put her hands on her hips, asking him what the hell had happened to make him this way.

But Carla had always gotten straight to the point, even fourteen years ago after he’d returned to his family ranch, mourning his father, keeping his mother from shriveling into a depressed heap while helping her to run their cattle operation and raise his three younger siblings the best he could. Carla, seven years older and wiser, with a family so rich that they had already bequeathed her the gentleman’s ranch next door, had come calling the second day after he’d settled in.

Yes, even back then Carla had offered a neighborly hand to the eighteen-year-old who was so out of his depth that he could barely catch four hours of sleep per night. And as the years went by, friendship had turned into love, then into a happy marriage.

Then she was gone.

Through the window, Beth appeared on the driveway, her skirt swishing around her legs as she strode down to the open gate and the car beyond it.

Adam held his breath yet again, watching to see if Leigh was going to get out of that car and embark on this strange date.