Missed Connections: Stepping Out (2 page)

Gwen returned, swaying her hips in what appeared to be an unconscious movement, because when she saw him notice her, the sway stopped altogether. She returned stiffly to her seat, giving him a strained smile.

Despite her come-hither glances and the way she had of thrusting her chest toward him when she spoke, Gwen seemed to be having a problem putting on a happy face.

Another story there. Maybe she’d gone through a bad breakup. Perhaps some guy had broken her heart, and she needed the solace of acceptance from another man. He felt his first twinge of conscience. Trying to teach this woman—whom he didn’t know at all—a lesson might be more than he should try handling.

“Your fiancée doesn’t care that you’re out with me tonight?” she asked in a purr.

The guilt disappeared. She knew about Lisa and didn’t care. “Nah. She’s tired. The kid’s dragging her down.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his, annoyed to find her skin so soft, then drew circles in her palm with his thumb. “No reason you and I can’t play together, beautiful.”

To his consternation, the touch and scent of her went straight to his head and made his pants uncomfortable.

“I can’t wait.” She winked and ran a finger down the vee of her dress.

Doing his level best not to stare at her amazing breasts, he drew his hand back and forced a smile, saved from commenting when the waiter returned with their food. They made small talk as they ate, though he noted with amusement she’d ordered the most expensive item on the menu. If she thought he was paying for it, she had another think coming. He planned on ditching her and the meal in record time as soon as he finished eating.

She took a bite of the lobster, and a drop of butter clung to her lips. She licked it off, staring at him as she did so. Such an obvious move, one that shouldn’t have worked. She was a home wrecker after his sister’s fiancé. Yet his cock didn’t seem to care. It wanted some of her tongue over him.

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So, Gwen, what do you do for a living?”

She shrugged. “I do whatever it takes to pay the rent. And I do mean
whatever
. So, handsome, let’s talk about you. How long have you lived here?”

“I was born here. You?”

“Moved down from Seattle ten years ago. My cousin and I share a house on the west side.”

“Yeah? I live on the west side too.”
Near my pregnant sister.

Gwen’s smile grew. “How convenient.”

They talked about the weather, the construction on a popular thoroughfare, and he was about to ask her about the party where they’d supposedly met and how she knew Sam, the host, when the mother of all fights broke out behind him.

Something slammed into the back of his head and took him to the floor. After a dizzy moment, he righted himself and watched two men fight while a woman screamed at them to stop.

He watched in fascinated shock. Apparently the arguing couple had been joined by a third.

Gwen tugged him back, and they stood with the other patrons out of range while the men beat the crap out of each other. He thought about interfering before he realized the trio didn’t need his help, now that two policemen had entered the restaurant behind the waiter.

“You’re a mess,” Gwen said to him.

He felt the back of his head, and his hand came away bloody.

“I think the woman threw a bottle at one of the guys, but it missed and hit you.” She pointed to a bottle on the floor nearby. “Don’t worry. Your head doesn’t look too bad.”

“Great.”

She snorted. “Yeah. Tough to explain that to your fiancée when you get home, hmm?”

Again, she admitted to knowing about Lisa, yet she had no problem sitting across from him and having dinner.

Gwen leaned into him and whispered, her breath fanning his ear and delighting the rest of his body despite his throbbing head, “But who says you have to get home right away?”

He let her tug him out of the main dining area into the hallway leading to the restrooms. She pulled him with her into the ladies’ lounge.

“Um, Gwen, I don’t think—”

“Shh.” She quickly scanned through the small lounge and the bathroom, then returned and locked the door. “It’s empty, but it won’t be for long.” She had him sit down on a chair and left, returning with a wet, wadded-up paper towel.

When she put the cold mass against the back of his head, he hissed. “Shit, that hurts.” Okay, they were alone in the bathroom. Time to set her straight with a lecture about respect and fidelity. Except she rounded the chair to face him, and he couldn’t seem to look away from her beautiful breasts and those hard nipples crying out for some attention.

“Big baby.” She gave him the wad to hold against his head while she straddled his lap. Her crotch rubbed against his hard-on, and to his mortification, he thought he might come from a few rocks of her pelvis against him. Clothes and all.

“What are you—”

“Well.”

Her smile looked less pleased than predatory, and why that should get him hot and bothered, he didn’t know.
She thinks she’s hitting on Aaron. Grow some stones and shove her off, Conlan.

“You—” he tried again.

Her finger on his lips silenced him. “I saw you looking at me at Sam’s party. Your girlfriend was right next to you, all big and round with your baby. But you didn’t care, did you? You wanted the hot girl with the big tits and tight ass.” She blew him a kiss, her laugh angry. “Well, sexy, here I am.”

She ground against his erection, seeming to wait for something. Then she swore and kissed him hard, her lips punishing against his mouth.

Despite his intentions, Conlan reacted. In a
big
way. He kissed her back, grinding up against her, the sexual chemistry between them impossible to ignore. He had to remind himself that this wasn’t the place or time for a quick fuck. And especially not with
this
woman, who had the morals of an alley cat.

But his hands didn’t seem to care. They crept up her waist to cup her breasts. He squeezed her hard nipples and drew back from the kiss so that he could breathe in her scent when he rubbed his face between her huge tits. Her moans made everything worse, because he was a heartbeat from unzipping his pants and shoving inside her. He didn’t need to touch her to know she’d be wet, as caught up in their hellish chemistry as he was.

Not totally his fault, considering he’d spent the last six months celibate, too busy working and dealing with the ex from hell to engage with a woman. Now horny, pissed off, and with the potential for meaningless sex looming right before him, he had half a mind to fuck her and be done with the whole mess. Some lesson, but then, she seemed to want it as much as he did.

Someone knocked on the door. “Anyone in there?”

They froze. She pulled back, oddly enough staring at him in both disgust and horror.

“Be right out,” she called.

He felt the way she looked.

She scrambled off his lap and put her dress to rights. “You’re a scumbag, and I wouldn’t do you if you were the last man on earth,” she spat in a low voice.

Quite the change of heart from a woman whose tongue had moments ago been down his throat.

Ignoring his erection, he stood and glared down at her, embarrassed he’d nearly come at her hands. “Same back at ya. What’s wrong? Did you suddenly remember my pregnant fiancée and realize what an unfeeling bitch you really are? Better close those legs before you catch something, sweetie.”

She narrowed her eyes, twin beams of blue death aimed his way. “Why don’t you crawl back to your baby’s mama? Even better, do her a favor and leave her alone. You’re a poor excuse for a man.”

She had the nerve to flounce away. She unlocked the door and shoved past a gaggle of startled women.

He followed, furious that he’d nearly lost his head with Aaron’s leavings. They skirted a huddled mass of people talking and circling around the brawlers now in cuffs on the floor.

“I’m not done talking to you,” he warned.

She continued toward the front door. “Well, I’m done with you.” To a nearby waiter, she said, “This guy’s trying to skip out on the check. I’d grab him before he skates.”

The waiter looked alarmed and yelled for an officer’s help.

Conlan swore as he stopped to deal with the check. Gwen kept going.

Before he knew it, she was out the door and gone, and he was stuck with a two-hundred-plus-dollar dinner bill, a headache, and the memory of Gwen’s supple body over his cock.

Some lesson this had turned out to be. What a hell of a night.

Chapter Two

Gwen glared at her cousin the next morning and considered burying herself under her blankets. At times like these, she wished Mia worked away from home. But since they were both self-employed and busy as heck running a successful blog and social media campaign, there was nowhere for Mia to go.

“So tell me exactly what happened. You know you want to,” Mia cajoled. “You were pretty vague and annoyed last night. I figured it was best to let you sleep before interrogating you.”

“Coffee. Must have coffee.”

Mia snickered and left, returning moments later with a steaming cup of java. “Here. Now talk. So there was a fight, Conlan—your date—got his head bashed in, then you ditched him in the restaurant?”

After swallowing a healthy dose of morning wake-up, Gwen gave Mia a detailed blow-by-blow, sparing herself no expense when she also detailed how she’d made out with the creep in the restroom.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Neither can I.” Gwen groaned, set her coffee on the nightstand, and tried to hide under her comforter.

Mia wouldn’t let her. She sat down on the bed and pulled the comforter off her. “He’s engaged, Gwen. To a pregnant woman.”

“I know.” She wanted to curl into a ball and die. “But I can see why he’s such a player. The man had skills. Not that I was buying into him at all, but Jesus, he was sexy. Gross, creepy, scummy, and really, really hot. Even worse, he was a good kisser.”

The universe was seriously screwed up to allow a dirtbag like Conlan to have such an amazing mouth. “All I know is that I finally told him off and stiffed him with a huge bill. So I did my part for womankind.”

“After you played tonsil-hockey, you mean.”

Gwen smacked Mia with her pillow. “Look. He caught me off guard. I haven’t had sex in forever. At least I did the right thing at the end.”

“True.” They sat staring at each other. “So now what?”

“Now we get to work. I’m going to set up the rest of this week’s posts, and I’ll start with what happened last night, then ask for opinions. Make a poll to go with it, would you?”

“Good idea. We also got a stack of advice questions. You’re up to bat.”

“Deal. And you handle the ad space for next month. We’re getting behind on scheduling guest spots too. You need to catch us up.”

Mia groaned. “Fine. Go shower and meet me in the office.”

Hours later, Gwen finished the majority of work she’d planned to accomplish for the day. She’d scheduled a meeting with her editor at the
Bend Voice
at four, so she hustled to grab both herself and Karen some coffee before walking into the downtown office.

She waved at a few of her friends, pleased to see they’d saved her a spot at the guest desk, which usually overflowed with paper and yellow sticky notes. She normally did her piece at home, but every now and then she put in an appearance at the office to make Karen happy. The
Bend Voice
ran independently of the local paper, and the weekly format went out to over a hundred thousand people. A decent platform from which she gathered blog followers as well.

“About time you got here,” Karen barked in her husky voice, worn down from years of smoking. “We’ve got a great idea for the advice section, something to broaden appeal for us and the
Insider
.” The
Insider
—the daily paper.

“Oh?” Gwen put one cup near Karen, then perched on the seat opposite Karen’s desk and downed some of her own dark roast.

“Yeah. I was talking with Ted over at the
Insider
. He’s got a guy who gives advice, and we have you. So we thought about growing our readership and throwing you two together. Advice from a man’s and woman’s point of view.”

“Hasn’t that been done before?”

“Yep, but not by either of us in years. We also got you a spot on the local news to push this. Sound good?”

Gwen was pretty happy with her work at present. But extra publicity never hurt. She could almost hear Mia yelling at her to accept. “Um, sure?” TV? She didn’t have a thing to wear. Not to mention the camera added a good thirty pounds to what she thought she looked like.

“You can plug your blog. Never hurts for an extra push, am I right?” Karen dangled the extra bait.

Like the hapless guppy Gwen was turning out to be, she jumped on it. “Fine. I’m in.”

Karen rubbed her hands together, her gray eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “Outstanding. Your new partner is waiting in the conference room. Go meet and greet and figure out how you two want to handle the TV spot. Just a warning, this one’s a looker. Check for drool before you leave him.”

“Funny.” At least Karen gave decent notice. Not one of Mia’s vague descriptions.

When Gwen wandered into the conference room a few minutes later, she saw a dark-haired man leaning over the table looking at something. From the back, he appeared tall, muscular, and, yeah, sexy, filling out a dark blue sweater and jeans. Talk about a nice ass and a set of shoulders to go with it.

Then he turned around, and her day went straight to hell.

CONLAN THOUGHT THE idea to merge advice pieces pure genius and wondered why they hadn’t tried it before. Guidance from a man
and
woman on any given subject always invited interest as well as discussion.

Seeing Gwen again hadn’t been on his radar.

“Well, well,” he said with a smile he didn’t feel. She looked shell-shocked. Good. “If it isn’t my slutty date from last night.” Yeah, slutty. He went there, though truth be told, this woman looked worlds apart from the one he’d dined with at Donton’s.

Gone was the rat-teased hair. Gwen wore her blue-black hair neat and back in a ponytail. She had a fringe of bangs that softened her gorgeous features, making her approachable and not just mesmerizing. Without all the garish makeup from last night, she looked vulnerable, innocent even.