Almost Like Love (3 page)

“Spoilsport,” Kate grumbled.

Still, she supposed her friend had a point. Ian was just the kind of guy who’d call the cops on her for taking a swing at him.

She folded her arms again. “Okay, fine. Here’s what’s going to happen. Arthur’s going to give me his number, because I’d like to get together with him sometime to talk about comic books. Then the two of you are going back to wherever you came from so I can get on with my mission.”

Ian had his poker face on. “Finding a bad boy, you mean.”

“That’s right.”

Arthur looked from one of them to the other. “Kate may or may not be drunk, but I definitely am. Too drunk to follow this conversation, anyway. But I like the part about us getting together sometime,” he added with a quick grin, fishing a business card out of his wallet and handing it to her. “My cell number’s on the back. Call me anytime.”

He clapped Ian on the shoulder. “See you back at the table, buddy.”

Kate watched him go. “He seems like a real player,” she said sarcastically. “A seducer of thousands. Thank God you were here to save me.”

The muscles in Ian’s jaw tightened, and he didn’t say anything for a moment. She wondered if he was counting to ten.

“Just tell me this, Kate. What are you really looking for tonight?”

“I told you. A bad boy.”

Once again, Simone stepped into the breach. “Specifically, she wants a guy with tattoos and piercings and bad news written all over him. She’s going to use him for sex and then dump him ruthlessly. Also, she’s going to take him to this nightmare wedding we’re both in, so she can make her cheating ex eat his heart out. He’s going to be there with his new girlfriend.”

“Her name is Anastasia,” Kate muttered.

Ian looked at her for a moment, his expression hard to read. Then he shook his head. “What the hell kind of name is Anastasia?”

She felt an unexpected rush of gratitude. “My thoughts exactly,” she said.

One corner of Ian’s mouth—that sinfully mobile mouth—lifted in a smile.

“I tell you what,” he said. “If I find you a bad boy who’ll go to this wedding with you, will that be enough?”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Enough for what?”

“Enough to . . . satisfy you. Without sex,” he added.

Kate blinked. Ian Hart was going to find her a bad boy? A bad boy who would take her to Jessica’s wedding but wouldn’t have sex with her?

“Is he gay?”

“No.”

“Then why wouldn’t he want to have sex? Are you saying a guy like that wouldn’t be attracted to me? Are you saying I’m so boring I can’t even—”

Ian held up a hand. “Hold it right there. Believe me when I tell you that every straight man in this place is attracted to you, Kate. But this particular man . . .” He hesitated. “Let’s just say he’s got a chivalrous side. He doesn’t sleep with women under the influence. Not on the first date, anyway.”

She frowned. “So he’s a safe bad boy.”

“Well . . . yeah. Kind of.”

If a guy was safe or chivalrous or whatever, could he still qualify as a bad boy?

“Does he have tattoos? I’m not talking temporary.”

“Yeah.”

“Piercings?”

“Not a lot, but yeah.”

What other fantasy elements had she been imagining?

“Does he drive a motorcycle?”

Ian grinned. “Yeah.”

Ian’s grin was rare, and, as always when she saw it, Kate’s stomach did a little flip.

“I think you should take him up on the offer,” Simone said suddenly. “With the proviso that the guy he’s got in mind is sufficiently sexy,” she added. “If not, then the deal’s off.”

“That’s right,” Kate agreed. “He’s got to be smoking.”

Ian grinned again. “I don’t know what would qualify as smoking in your book, so how about this? If the guy doesn’t meet your standards of sexiness, you can go back to your original plan and find one on your own.”

“And you’ll go away and stop bothering me?”

“Cross my heart.”

With an odd feeling that she was stepping off the edge of a cliff, Kate nodded her head. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at him.”

“Great. Wait right here, and he’ll be over in a few minutes.”

Kate and Simone watched him walk away, navigating through the crowd with his easy, loose-limbed stride.

“A safe bad boy,” Kate said musingly. “Who do you think he has in mind? It’s got to be a friend of his, right?”

“Maybe,” Simone said. Her smile, when Kate glanced at her, was more catlike than usual.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Ian disappeared into the crowd. “What do you think this guy will be like?”

Simone shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, hopping up on a barstool. “But personally, I can’t wait to find out.”

C
HAPTER
T
WO

H
e had to be out of his mind.

As Ian headed back to his table, he wondered what the hell he was doing. He couldn’t blame the alcohol; it would take more than a few shots of Wild Turkey to affect his judgment this much.

He decided it was Kate’s fault. She’d disabled half his brain cells with that damn outfit and exploded the rest by announcing her intention to find a bad boy to go home with.

Imagining her with Arthur had been bad enough. But she seemed determined to go looking for trouble tonight, and he knew from experience that if you go looking for trouble you’ll usually find it.

And he couldn’t let anything happen to Kate . . . not after the day she’d had.

Which meant he was stuck. And since the only way he could save her from herself was to produce a bad boy for her, he’d produce one.

Back at his table, he assessed the resources available to him.

Other than him, Gabe was the tallest guy here—and he was wearing a short-sleeved black tee. Perfect.

“I need to borrow your shirt,” he said, pulling off his jacket and slinging it over the back of his chair.

Gabe stared at him. “Huh?”

“Your shirt. I need it. You can wear mine instead,” he added.

Gabe frowned. “I’m wearing short sleeves. You never wear short sleeves.”

“Yeah, I know. Special circumstances.”

He checked to make sure Simone and Kate weren’t looking this way and was relieved to see them engrossed in conversation at the bar.

“This is very weird,” Gabe said, but he pulled off his shirt and handed it to Ian, who handed over his in exchange.

Gabe was narrower in the chest and shoulders than Ian was, so the black cotton was stretched a little tight. But he’d accomplished his goal: his tattoos were on full display, from his biceps down to his forearms.

Mick watched the wardrobe exchange with his eyebrows raised. “When did we take the time machine back to the nineties? I haven’t seen those tats since high school. Not outside of the gym, anyway.”

“Long story,” Ian said, looking around for the next item on his list.

He grabbed a kid walking by. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks for”—he thought for a second—“three of your earrings.”

He’d once sported a lot more piercings than that, but most of them had closed up over the years, leaving two in his left ear and one in his right that he could put a stud through without drawing blood.

The kid blinked. He was probably figuring he’d still have plenty of earrings left after giving up three, and a hundred bucks would buy a lot of beer.

“You got it,” he said. “Which ones?”

Ian chose a black skull, a silver cross, and a fake-diamond stud. The kid took them out while Ian counted out five twenties.

Gabe picked up the jewelry from the table before Ian could.

“I don’t think that guy has showered in a while. Let me sterilize these.” He dropped them into a shot of vodka and pushed it towards Ian. “Okay, that should do it.”

“Good thinking,” Ian said, fishing out the earrings and putting them in.

All the guys at the table were staring at him now.

“What the hell?” asked Stephen.

“Long story,” Ian said again. “By the way, can I borrow your Harley?”

“Hell, no, you can’t borrow my—”

“Oh, let him have it,” Mick interrupted. “You can go home in the limo with us. I don’t know what’s going on, but Ian’s obviously on some kind of mission. Maybe he’s going undercover for the CIA.”

Stephen grumbled but gave in, fishing the keys out of his pocket and tossing them across the table.

“Just make sure you take care of my baby.”

“You bet.” Ian looked at Mick. “It’s okay if I bail?”

“As long as you’re at the church on time tomorrow. Good luck on your mission.”

“Thanks, man.”

On his way back to the bar, he stopped off at the men’s room and took a look in the mirror.

He shook his head slowly. Was he really going out there like this? To help a woman who irritated him like a case of prickly heat and hated his guts into the bargain?

Oh, well, what the hell. Call it his good deed for the year.

Needing one more disreputable touch, he turned on the faucet and stuck his hands under the water for a second. Then he ran them through his hair, messing it up as much as he could.

It wasn’t perfect, but at least he matched the earrings a little better now.

He grinned suddenly at his reflection. This wasn’t the usual armor for a white knight doing his best to rescue a damsel in distress, but it would have to do.

Kate was tossing down her third shot of the night when Simone gave a sudden gasp.

“Sweet Mary and Joseph. If you don’t want him, will you let me have him? Please?”

Kate spun her barstool around to look, and her brain short-circuited.

It was Ian Hart—in the same way that Clark Kent is Superman.

He was leaning against the bar with a half smile on his face. Kate took him in from his toes to the top of his head and gave a silent prayer of thanks that she was sitting down.

Whatever fantasy man she’d been picturing in her head, this one looked better.

The business suits Ian usually wore gave an impression of size and muscle while leaving something to the imagination. Kate realized now that Ian’s secret identity as Corporate Guy had been protecting the women of Manhattan from the full effect of his sheer masculine power.

His chest and shoulders were a wall of muscle barely contained by the thin material of his tee shirt. His arms were covered in tattoos that extended to the middle of his forearms. The gleam of silver and onyx at his ears gave him the air of a pirate or a gangster, depending on your fancy. His black hair was rakishly disheveled and, along with the stubble on his jaw, presented a tactile temptation almost impossible to resist.

She curled her fingers into the palms of her hands so they wouldn’t do anything of their own volition.

“So what’s the verdict? Do I pass muster?”

Pass muster? Pass muster for what?

Oh, God—she’d completely forgotten what this was about.

She was supposed to be finding a bad boy to go with her to Jessica’s wedding. Ian had offered to find one for her, and now he was standing there, looking like . . . that.

Simone poked her in the ribs. “What’s the verdict, Kate?”

Her mouth had gone dry. “I . . . um . . .”

For the life of her, she couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence.

“You said your date for this wedding had to be smoking,” Ian reminded her.

Her brain had forgotten how to form words. “Uh . . .”

He grinned at her, and an electric rush tightened the muscles low in her belly.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, as though she’d produced a reasoned argument instead of a wordless mumble. “You can’t be expected to make a decision without dancing with me first.”

One of her hands was on the bar; the other was in her lap. He reached for the one on her lap.

“Let’s go,” he said, his warm, strong fingers closing over hers.

Before she knew what was happening, he’d pulled her off the barstool and was leading her towards the dance floor. She cast a panicked glance over her shoulder at Simone, who grinned and waved.

No help there.

He turned and stopped at the same time, and she bumped into that broad expanse of chest.

With the front of her bustier.

Heat flooded her face. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. This thing makes me more, um, convex than usual.”

“No problem,” he said.

She risked a glance at him. He was looking at her with a curious kind of intentness, as though she were a knot he was trying to unravel.

“I didn’t know your eyes were hazel,” she heard herself say. “I always thought they were green. But they’re hazel, aren’t they? Did you know that hazel eyes are a combination of Rayleigh scattering, which is the same principle that makes the sky look blue, and melanin, which is the pigment that makes brown eyes brown?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I did not, in fact, know that.”

“Oh. Did you know—”

He put his hands on her waist and said her name. “Kate.”

Between the bottom of her bustier and the top of her leather skirt was a strip of bare skin. It was there that Ian’s palms settled, the contact sending warmth piercing through her like shafts of sunlight.

She forgot whatever she’d been about to say. “Yes?”

“To everything there is a season. A time to talk, and a time to dance. Right now it’s time to give your incandescent verbal plumage a rest.”

A well-turned phrase always got Kate’s attention.
“ 
‘Incandescent verbal plumage,
’ 
” she repeated. “That’s good.”

“Thank you. Now shut up.”

If she couldn’t talk, the only thing left to do was dance—and she hadn’t been out dancing since college.

Where should she put her hands? And how much space could she leave between the two of them without looking like she was at a seventh-grade formal? She didn’t want to risk another chest bump.

But the answers to those questions weren’t left up to her.

Ian took her hands and lifted them to his shoulders. The action brought her flush against him, and a thousand tiny pinpricks shivered her skin.

When he put his hands back on her body, they went a little lower—to her hips instead of her waist.

Then he started to move.

Until that moment, she wouldn’t have said there was anything particularly sexy about the music playing in the club, which was fast with a techno beat. But Ian picked up on the bass line underneath, and he translated that slower, sexier rhythm into the sway of their bodies.

In her high heels she was only an inch or so shorter than he was. They fit together with unexpected perfection, his rock-hard contours eliciting a subtle pliancy in her body.

There was an unfamiliar ache in her breasts. They felt heavy and soft and voluptuous, but at the same time her nipples hardened into tight little buds.

Could he feel that?

If she met his eyes, she might find out. She might see a satisfied smirk or a knowing grin.

So she didn’t look at him. Instead, she closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

Mmmmmmm.

He smelled like clean male skin with a faint undernote of musk. She’d sat next to him at a meeting once and gotten a whiff of expensive cologne, but he wasn’t wearing that tonight.

His shoulder was so broad and strong. She was a tall woman, but next to Ian she felt fragile and feminine—another unfamiliar sensation.

“Mmmmmmm.”

Ian’s hands tightened on her hips, and she realized she’d voiced her pleasure out loud this time.

Damn.

She held her breath and was relieved when he didn’t say anything. But those big hands pulled her even closer, fitting her more securely against his body.

Her belly seemed to hollow out as honeyed warmth spread through her.

What was happening to her? Sure, she’d talked a good game about looking for a guy tonight . . . but she hadn’t really expected to feel attracted to someone so soon after her fiancé dumped her.

And this was more than attraction. She was so turned on her hair might be standing on end.

Another thought clamored for attention in her pleasure-fogged brain. But how was she supposed to think straight when Ian had found that place on her waist again and was stroking it softly, his thumbs making lazy sweeps against her bare skin?

When rationality finally broke through, she had to force herself to lift her head from his shoulder.

“You cancelled my show,” she blurted, hanging onto that fact as if it were a port in a storm.

His hands stilled, but he didn’t let her go.

“I know,” he said, the low timbre of his voice sending new darts of sensation through her.

“I don’t like you.”

“I know that, too.”

“If I seem to be enjoying myself that’s only because I’m drunk and . . . and . . .”

“Vulnerable,” he suggested.

“Yes, vulnerable. Because you cancelled my show,” she said again.

“Right. So that means I owe you.”

He bent his head towards her as he spoke, and his jaw brushed against her cheek. She felt the scrape of rough stubble across her flushed skin.

She took a deep breath. “Absolutely. You owe me big.”

The song ended. In the quiet before the next one began, Ian stepped back to look at her, putting a little space between them.

Kate had never been so relieved and so disappointed at the same time.

Those hazel eyes looked into hers. “So let me be your date to the wedding. I’ll make your ex eat his heart out, and I’ll make every other woman there wish she was you.”

The wedding. She’d almost forgotten about it again.

For the first time, she imagined showing up at the Ritz-Carlton reception with Ian Hart on her arm. Whether he came as Corporate Guy or Tattooed Bad Boy, there was no question he’d be the smoking-hot date of her dreams.

Which was what she’d come here looking for. Right?

She was still having trouble thinking straight. She was also feeling a little . . . disheveled. She smoothed her hands down her leather skirt, making sure it hadn’t ridden up her thighs, and then tucked her hair behind her ears.