Open Invitation? (16 page)

“I'll be forever in your debt if you come to England with me, Lil. Let's explore another culture together. Then you go on your own personal journey to find your roots. All expenses paid. No strings attached.”

She put down her fork, all the cake gone, and hesitated. She pulled her hand gently from his, and his face fell, the glow in his eyes dimming.

“Okay, Dan. I'll go to England with you.”

Dan blinked in surprise, then let out a whoop that had every head in the elegant dining room turning their way. Lil resisted the urge to crawl under the table.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I'm just excited. And elated. Thank you.”

She couldn't help but smile at the man, even though she wasn't at all sure what she'd just gotten herself into.

He smiled back. Then he reached a hand across the table and used his index finger to wipe something from the corner of her mouth. “You got chocolate on your face, Lil. I think it's real cute.”

He popped the finger into his mouth. “Tastes good, too. We could always ask the chef for a bucket of icing, stop to get a paintbrush on the way back to the hotel, and have a lot of fun together naked.” He waggled his brows.

Dan's inner wolf had gobbled the lapdog in a single bite. He was back in rare form…but she couldn't tell him that she was relieved.

“No, Dan,” Lil said.

He shrugged as if to say it had been worth the try, and nodded to their waiter. “Check, please.”

L
IL'S EYES WIDENED
as she and Dan entered the Terraces Lounge, British Airways' luxury waiting area for first-class travelers. As far as she knew, they were in JFK Airport, but the Terraces transported them to another planet.

A cross between a bar and a full-service spa, the lounge featured reclining lounge chairs under white umbrellas, trickling water fountains and the scent of freshly cut grass. She even heard birds chirping, though it seemed unlikely that they were nestling behind the übermodern steel bar among the pricey liquor bottles.

“Sweet, ain't it?” said Dan. “I mean,
isn't
it.”

Sweet, indeed. And exclusive.

“Would you like a preflight massage?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“They have reflexology, too.”

Lil wasn't sure she wanted some unknown person manhandling her body or her feet. “No, thank you.”

“There you go, denying yourself pleasure again. How about a drink? You seemed to like that cognac a few nights ago.”

Yes, but it had made her so drunk that she'd almost
lost all resolve and ordered that bucket of chocolate icing from the chef.

“A cognac for the lady, please.” Dan was already ordering. “And a margarita for me. Top shelf, with salt.”

She wasn't sure why, but she wanted to drink what he was drinking. Share something with him. “Actually, I'll have the same.”

Dan quirked a brow. “Gonna join me in a little te-kill-ya, eh? Well, why not. It'll help you sleep on the flight.”

They took seats on the royal-blue and silver padded bar stools, next to a man who resembled a bad-tempered sea lion. Dan nodded at him, and the man inclined his head. “What's your destination?” His accent identified him as Australian.

“Heathrow.”

“You may be delayed, mate. My flight's just been canceled due to inclement weather, and it's by no means the only one.”

Dan took a large sip of the margarita delivered to him by the bartender. “That's not good. We did notice that it's foggy out there, but they went ahead and checked us in, took our bags.”

The sea lion shrugged. “Perhaps all's well for you, then. Cheers. I'm bloody waiting to see if it'll clear out and I can get on the next flight to Hong Kong.”

Lil made a sympathetic noise and put her own margarita glass to her lips, relishing the taste of salt, lime and tequila. Little crystals of salt stuck in the corners of her mouth and she had to lick them off.

“Otherwise,” the man continued, “I'll get stuck in a seedy airport hotel overnight.”

Dan looked thoughtful, but said nothing. He turned to Lil, smiled and rubbed off a salt crystal she'd missed. Just the touch of his thumb against the corner of her mouth sent a shock of awareness through her, and she wondered how she planned to travel with the man for the next week without, as Shannon would say, jumping his bones.

They chatted idly with the sea lion for the next half-hour, during which Lil discovered that margaritas were as potent as cosmopolitans but tasted even better.

The Australian was a high-level manager for an international bank, married with children and a “vile, stinking ferret” that his wife's “bugger of a stepbrother” had bestowed upon his niece and nephews.

Lil listened politely, burying her smile in her margarita glass and guessing that the sea lion had consumed a couple too many gin and tonics. Really, people ought to learn to hold their liquor so they weren't loud in public.

She peered down at her feet, which were shod in beige Ferragamo sling-backs and seemed very far away. Surely tequila didn't cause one's legs to lengthen?

Dan shot a glance at her and she smiled happily, listening to the absurd taped chirping of the birds in the background. He pushed a bowl of mixed nuts down the bar to her. “Lil, you should eat something.”

“No, thank you. I loathe nuts. Little particles stick in your teeth.”

“Would you like some olives, then? A sandwich?”

She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Know what I'd really like?”

“What's that?”

“A bowl full of maraschino cherries.”

“O-kaay. Would you like a spoon with that?”

She shook her head and whispered, “I like to eat them with my fingers.”

Dan's mouth twitched, but he signaled the bartender. “Can we get a small bowl of maraschino cherries for the lady, please?”

The man nodded.

“When I was around eight and met Jane,” Lil confessed, “her dad would buy them for me. Once I sliced a bunch of them in half and stuck them on the ends of all my fingers. He called me Miss Cherry Jubilee.”

Dan laughed.

“Nana wouldn't buy them. May I have another margarita?”

“Do you think that's a good idea?”

“I think it's an excellent idea.” The bartender brought the bowl of cherries and she said thank you. Then she plucked one out of the bowl and dangled it by the stem.

Dan's eyes widened slightly as she held it above her lips and touched it with her tongue, feeling the slick, cold surface. She pulled the cherry from the stem with her teeth and savored it. “Mmm. I love these things.”

His Adam's apple moved convulsively as he swallowed. “I can tell.”

The wonderful, artificial cherry flavor and about a gallon of chemical red dye burst across her tongue and
she smiled. She chased it with more potent, lime-tinged margarita, and enjoyed the tartness of that flavor, too.

Dan's gaze, intent on her face, never wavered. The sea lion continued to pontificate about something and didn't notice that his audience was anything less than rapt.

Dan leaned over and murmured into her ear. “
Now
you look like a lady enjoying herself. There's nothing that gives me such a rush as watching you do that. It's very sexy.”

Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Really?” She plucked another cherry from the bowl.

He nodded. “What else do you love, Lil? Besides Krispy Kremes and chocolate tortes?”

She thought about it. “True confession time? I was never allowed to have junk food. And Shannon wasn't, either. When we went to her house, her mom did buy us croissants for breakfast. But when we went to Jane's, her dad would give us those canned SpaghettiOs for lunch.”

Dan brightened. “You like SpaghettiOs? My favorite!”

Lil nodded. “And blueberry Pop-Tarts for breakfast. Besides maraschino cherries, there's nothing yummier than a factory-produced, preservative-laden blueberry Pop-Tart.”

He laughed.

The sea lion was now describing, to his gin and tonic, the rigors of housebreaking a ferret. The gin and tonic appeared fascinated.

Lil took a third cherry and rubbed it along the rim of her margarita glass, coating its plump, shiny red skin with
salt. She bit into it and analyzed the sweet/salty taste before wrinkling her nose, which probably wasn't ladylike.

Dan shook his head at her. “Better with lime, not cherry.”

She nodded.

A white-jacketed attendant approached them. “Mr. Granger? Ms. London?”

Dan nodded.

“I'm terribly sorry to inform you that your flight to Heathrow has been canceled due to inclement weather. We can get you on another one, but not until the early morning. In the meantime, I'd be more than happy to assist you in finding accommodations for the night.”

Dan frowned and looked a question at Lilia. She supposed she should be irritated at the inconvenience, but she was at the bottom of her second 'rita, as Dan called them, and she just couldn't summon the urge to mind. They were in beautiful surroundings and quite frankly, she wanted to stay here and have another drink.

“Don't you think,” she confided to the man in the white jacket, “that Mr. Granger has the most beautiful eyes?”

“Er, quite so, madam.”

“And the sexiest mouth.”

“Indeed.”

Dan cleared his throat. “Lil, you're making me blush, I swear.”

“May I have just one more margarita?”

“Right away, madam.”

“I'm not sure that's such a hot idea,” said Dan.

Lil looked at her feet again, and they had definitely gotten farther away. Another drink would help her reach them, so she could slip off the left shoe, the strap of which had rubbed a raw spot at her heel. “Just one?” she asked.

He sighed. “Just one, then.” He turned back to Mr. White Jacket. “I think those accommodations you mentioned might be a real good idea. Thank you.”

 

D
AN POURED
a giggling, one-shoed Lil through the door of her hotel room an hour and a half later. “Here you are, sweetheart. See, I'm putting your carry-on right here, on the stand. And I'll be right on the other side of that adjoining door.”

He looked at her regretfully. Her hair was mussed and she had the sexiest little smear of lipstick mixed with salt crystals at the side of her adorable mouth. He wanted her like hell, but she'd crossed the line from tipsy to pretty much downright drunk an hour ago, and he was man enough not to take advantage of her. She'd expressed her desire to keep things businesslike between them, and while he'd have been happy to change her mind if she were sober, he needed to honor her request since she wasn't.

“You're not going to stay with me?” she looked as if he'd just run over her dog or something.

“I don't think it's a real good idea, Lil. I think you need to eat something besides maraschino cherries. Want me to order you something from room service?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“Okay.” He moved to the door. Then he turned. “You sure?”

Lil had whipped off her top, revealing a delicate, lacy, pink silk camisole with the slimmest of spaghetti straps and a low scoop neck. He could see her little pink nipples through the champagne-colored lace, and heat immediately shot to his groin.

“Will you be the mint on my pillow?” she asked shyly, unzipping her skirt. It fell to the floor, revealing that the camisole was in reality a teddy—and a skimpy one, too.

Aw, Christ.
His heart leaped out of his chest and impaled itself on his sudden, raging erection. He guessed it was a new kind of heart attack—just as immobilizing as the old kind. Dan forced himself to back slowly toward the connecting door. “Lil,” he said unsteadily. “You are not yourself. I want you to go into the bathroom, take two aspirin with some water and lie down. If you still feel this way tomorrow, then I'll be anything you want. But you should get some sleep, because we've got an early wake-up call comin'.”

She watched him with sad puppy-dog eyes as he opened the door and backed through it, then closed it again.
Granger, you are nuts. What other man would turn her down, dressed like that?

He stripped off his clothes and threw himself facedown on the bed in his own room.
Think about politics,
he told himself.
Think about the weather. Think about the kids you'll be hosting at the ranch.
Wild teenage boys, just as he'd been.

But Dan was unable to get her image out of his mind's eye. Worse, he couldn't get himself to relax and fall asleep, because his ears kept pricking, alert for any
electric buzzing noise he might hear from Lil's room. Had she brought the Day-Glo orange vibrator with attachments? And was it possible that she was using it on herself, since he hadn't obliged her?

Dan groaned and bit his pillow. Maybe it hadn't been such a brilliant idea to invite Lil along on this trip as his date.

 

L
IL WALKED
unsteadily into the bathroom to take the aspirin he'd suggested. She filled a glass with water and glared at herself in the mirror. She looked pretty damned good, if she did say so herself.

“What's wrong with you?” she asked her reflection in the mirror. “Are you going to stop living like a little old lady, or what?”

Dan obviously was used to women who were more sexually adventurous than she. He'd found her easy to turn down, and it was obviously because she hadn't…done what he'd asked her to do the other day. She was boring in bed, a prude.

Prude is one letter away from prune. Prunes are wrinkled and dried up. You never see a prune in anyone's fruit bowl. They're not attractive.

Lil visualized doing what Dan had asked, and heat broke out all over her body like a rash. She clung to the faux marble bathroom counter with one hand, not quite steady on her feet.

She eyed the connecting door between his room and hers. All she had to do was walk to that door and open it. Simple, right?

So she did.

His room was dark except for the blue, flickering light of the television, which was tuned to a blues music station.

He lay on his side, his head supported by one hand, the remote in the other. His eyes widened when he saw her, and he sat up.

“Feel like company?” she asked. “Because the old lady next door might just be ready to explore that, um, option you mentioned the other day.”

Dan seemed bereft of speech. Finally he licked his lips and swallowed. The TV began to play Ella Fitzgerald's “People Will Say We're in Love,” and Lil hooked the straps of her camisole under her thumbs. She drew them down, over her shoulders, and dropped the entire thing to the floor.

She liked the way it slithered down her body, slipping away like an inhibition and puddling on the floor.

Lil walked to the bed, her hips swaying, and he reached for her, pulling her on top of him. He seemed to be naked under the sheet, and she could feel him hard against her. His mouth found hers and he made love to her lips, his tongue gliding against hers, sweet and hot.

He trailed kisses over her neck and shoulders, raising goose bumps on her skin. He found her nipples and pleasured them, cupping her breasts in his big hands.

She wished that her whole body could fit into his mouth at once, that she could dissolve there on his tongue.