Seducing Chase (3 page)

She knew she shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, and particularly not with a man like Nate. He was way out of her league. No doubt he normally dated women well outside her social class, and probably had a different one on his arm every night. Hearth and home were undoubtedly not concepts Nate understood at all. It wasn’t as if she was searching for a baby daddy constantly, but Val was on an admittedly limited timeframe to settle down and start a family. At thirty-six, she wasn’t getting any younger. Even though her rational brain knew all this, she found herself agreeing anyway.

“Great. I’ll come pick you up at your office at six.”

“Uh-huh.” Val backed away and immediately grabbed a bottle of water from the department fridge. Downing half of it right there in the kitchen, she fanned herself.

I can’t believe I just fell for his charm like a desperate woman. This is ridiculous.
Nate was not the first handsome man she’d ever seen, and yet she’d let her baser side make a bad decision. She wouldn’t go back on dinner, though. Some insane need to see what Nate was all about prevented her from exercising her better judgment.
With a grunt at her own stupid weakness she made her way back to her office and sat down to start making phone calls.

“Can I ask you a question?” Val inquired as she and Nate headed to the parking garage later that day.

“Of course.”

“Why are you doing this? This is seriously small potatoes for you. Actually, beyond small potatoes.”

Nate turned away for a moment, debating on how much to tell her. “Doug’s been a good friend to me. We met in college and he was there for me when I was going through some stuff with my parents.”

He looked back and caught her cocked eyebrow. “Most people would send a fruitcake at Christmas, not spend several days away from their own business.”

“Doug is someone I’d drop everything for. Can we just leave it at that? Really, it’s no big deal, as long as this doesn’t interfere with my work with my clients.”

“How could it not?”

“I’m actually in a bit of a lull, so the timing, as far as that goes, was good. My business isn’t exactly steady.”

“Huh.”

Nate figured it was safer not to ask Val to elaborate, so he remained silent. They reached his Porsche and he paused. “Shall we take my car? I can bring you back here later. I have to come back anyway since I’m staying at the hotel onsite.”

“This is your car?” She regarded his 1963 Porsche 356C series with more than casual interest.
A woman who knows cars.
Nate was practically drooling.

“Yeah. Do you like it?” He found himself highly anticipating her answer, never having met a woman who thought his car was anything more than complicated than “pretty”.

Val ran her hand lovingly over the back quarter panel and an unexpected twinge of jealousy surged through Nate. He shook his head, knowing how stupid it was to be envious of an inanimate object. When he and Val had met earlier, he’d experienced a rush of lust like he hadn’t in years. Lately he’d been simply scratching an itch where it came to women. He hadn’t met one who interested him on any level, other than physical, in God knew how long. But Val was different from the models and actresses he normally dated. For one thing, she was
real
. She hadn’t had plastic surgery; she didn’t flatter him constantly. He’d come to hate the simpering of the women in his social circle.

She glanced up at him and he was mesmerized by the cat-like quality of her eyes. They were such a vivid green he would’ve sworn she wore colored contacts, but knew in his gut Val would never bother with anything that vain. Her black, straight hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun she hadn’t been sporting earlier, and her full lips had been freshly lacquered with some sort of shiny red gloss that made him want to run his tongue over it to see what it tasted like.

She was small in stature, but he had a feeling she could be a pit bull when she wanted to be. For some reason, it gave him an irresistible urge to rile her up. Despite what she probably thought of him, from what he’d seen so far he was really impressed with Val. She worked hard and obviously cared about the hospital a great deal. Nate respected people who were good at their jobs, so it was natural for him to find her interesting on that level.

But with Val, it was more. He wanted to know her, to understand why she was who she was. And that was a pretty strange feeling, considering most of the women he knew either worked with him, and his feelings for them were purely professional, or served as a stress reliever when he needed sex. He never treated a woman badly, but he wasn’t used to a woman who he both respected on a professional level and also wanted to have a deeper understanding of.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was drop-dead gorgeous. He was a man, after all. Today she’d worn a tight black skirt with black, knee-length boots and a silver sweater with little metallic strands woven through it. She looked like a Christmas present, and he suddenly
loved
the holidays. He could admit he wanted Val on a visceral level. But that wasn’t all he wanted. It wasn’t like he was picking out engagement rings, but this was different. She felt different. Nate couldn’t treat her like he did the women he worked with or like the women he dated, and found himself sometimes caught off guard, not knowing how to respond to her. It was a new feeling, to be sure.

“Is there something on my face?”

Bringing himself back to the present, he muttered, “No.”
And now I’ve been caught staring. Did I leave my cool entirely in New York City?
Clearing his throat, he continued. “So do you want to take my car?”

“Can I drive?” She gave him an impish grin and he raised a brow back.

“Can you drive a stick?”

She chuckled. “Of course. And I can probably tell you more about this car than you know about it. Classic Porsches are my guilty pleasure.”

“You own one?”

“Oh God, no. You think I make enough money to afford a car like this? No, but it’s on my bucket list. And this one’s a beauty. I hope you take good care of her.”

Nate nodded. “I do. I hate flying so she gets driven a lot, but I don’t think she minds.” He patted the car. “Tell you what. I don’t let just anybody drive my baby, but if you’re a good girl tonight I’ll let you drive back here.”

She turned to him, planting a hand on one slim hip. “A good girl? Did you just say if I was ‘a good girl’ you’d let me drive your car? Seriously? That sounds like something a lecherous professor would say to a student he wanted to bone.”

Nate could think of quite a few lessons he’d like to teach her. An image of her bent over a desk flashed into his mind and a surge of lust nearly knocked him off his feet.

Forcing his brain back to the conversation, he shrugged. “I take my cars very seriously. As a fellow car buff you should be able to appreciate that.” Even as he said the words, though, he couldn’t keep a hint of a smile from forming. He hadn’t had this much fun bantering with a woman in months. “And about this ‘knowing more about my car than I do’ thing?”

“What about it?”

“Prove it.” He pointed to the car. “Tell me about her.”

Without hesitation, Val said, “It’s a 1963 356 series. Series C, to be exact.” Nate’s eyebrows were about to push into the hair on top of his head and his lower torso region was rapidly heating as he listened to her smooth voice. “Pushrod engine, less than twenty thousand made. The flat-faced hubcaps distinguish them from the original 356 series, as does the larger coupe light.”

“I’m impressed.”
That’s the sexiest thing a woman has ever said to me.
Smart, beautiful, and she knows classic cars.
A lethal combination, at least for him, so it would seem. He leaned over her, pressing into her personal space just a little. She didn’t back down and his groin stirred further. Val might be a very dangerous distraction. Fortunately he was an adrenaline junkie. Nate pulled the passenger door open. “Get in.” His voice came out rough and husky and he could swear he saw those amazing eyes darken for a moment.

Then the spell was broken, and she threw him a sardonic look before gracefully sliding inside. Nate laughed. He couldn’t wait for dinner so he could learn more about her, and then also the possibility of what might happen
after
dinner. With a woman like Val, a man could have his cake and eat it too. Whistling, he jogged around to the other side and folded his tall frame into the driver’s seat, loving the way the supple leather seemed to form right to his body.

“Do you ever take your suit jacket off? Or loosen your tie?”

He glanced over at her. “Why do you ask?”

“You seem very…buttoned up.”

“I like to look the part in a professional setting.”

“Is this a professional setting?”

“God, I hope not,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. No, it’s not.”

“Then lose the jacket and at least loosen the tie.”

He glanced at her. “What do you care?”

She shrugged, a hint of a smile playing over her lacquered lips. He had an insane urge to kiss her. The thought of running his hands through her hair to dislodge that little bun while he plundered the depths of her luscious mouth had him tightening further, and he had a feeling he was going to regret not having the jacket on to conceal his “interest”. Nonetheless he removed it, folding it and twisting around to set it on the tiny back seat. Reaching for his tie, he loosened it and then unbuttoned the top button of his dress shirt. The process felt strangely intimate, and she gazed at him when he was finished. He looked down and saw her pulse point hammering in her throat.

Hmm. It appears the attraction isn’t one-sided…

Starting the car, he pulled out of the parking space and began to leave the ramp, then stopped and looked at her when he realized he didn’t have a clue where to go. “Where to?”

“Do you like Mexican? There’s a great place a few blocks from here.”

“I love Mexican.”

“Really? Are you sure? There are some nice fine-dining restaurants if you’d prefer to go to one of those.”

“My mother’s family was from Mazatlan. I used to eat tortillas by the truckload.”

“You don’t look like it.”

“I don’t look Mexican?”

“No,” she replied, laughing. “You don’t look like you ever ate tortillas by the truckload.”

He grinned. “What do I look like?”

“Like a guy who has a personal trainer and a chef.”

“I do work out regularly with a personal trainer, but I don’t have a chef. I watch what I eat. Tonight I’ll make an exception though.” Why is it so important to me what Val thinks? Nate took his eyes off the road leading to the ramp’s exit long enough to wink at her and she blushed prettily. He wondered idly what other parts of her supple body would blush like that.

“So if your mom was Mexican but your last name is O’Halloran, I assume your mother married an Irish man?”

“Yes. It was quite the scandal at the time, but they loved each other.” He frowned and she dropped the subject.

She gave him directions and soon they pulled into the parking lot of a small restaurant. Before she could climb out he’d bounded around the car and opened her door. “Thank you,” she stammered, blushing again. Nate made a mental note to make her blush as often as possible. Placing his hand at the small of her back, he opened the front door of the place with the other one. His hand felt good cradled into her—natural—and he didn’t remove it until they were shown to a booth in the dining room.

Val gestured to the crowd around them. “This place is packed earlier in the night. They close at nine, so it generally empties out by eight and we should be able to hear ourselves think.”

“So what’s good here?”

“The strawberry margaritas and the steak fajitas, but I’ve never had a bad meal. I just tend to stick with what works.”

“I’ll leave the margarita drinking to you since I’m driving. But the fajita sounds good.”

The waitress came over, greeting Val with obvious familiarity. She ordered a double steak fajita for them to share and he was briefly caught off guard, until he realized how silly it would be for them to order identical but separate meals when they offered the meal for two. The waitress trotted off and shortly thereafter a bus boy came over and dropped off chips and salsa.

Nate began to roll his sleeves up to avoid splashing salsa or grease on his dress shirt and Val stopped talking mid-sentence. He glanced up. She was staring at his forearms. He’d never considered arms to be a very sexy area of a person’s body, but if she wanted to look, he wasn’t going to stop her. Maybe she had some sort of arm fetish and, hey, who was he to criticize someone else’s sexual preferences? He purposely rolled up the other sleeve much more slowly, watching as her small, pink tongue darted out to wet her lips; lips that were giving him all sorts of ideas.

Their drinks arrived and Nate took a long sip from his water in a vain effort to cool his raging body temperature. Val picked up her margarita gingerly in one hand and guided the straw to her mouth with the other. It was impossible not to admire the way she caressed the bowl of the drink or how her eyes closed in satisfaction as she took her first sip. He sat back to watch the show. All too soon, though, her eyes opened and cleared.

She set the drink down in front of her and leaned forward. “So…”

“So?”

“Tell me about yourself.”

Nate made a sound of disgust, and said, “I’d rather talk about you. Are you from Buffalo originally?”

“Born and bred. I left to go to college but came home right afterward. My dad had just begun treatment for cancer and I wanted to be close by. I ended up moving into his house to take care of him until he died. He was treated at CCC and even though they did everything they could, his cancer had progressed too far. My dad needed me, especially in the final months. My parents were divorced and he was alone.”

“I’m sorry about your dad.” And he actually was. He hated his own family, but also understood some people were close to their parents and the loss of one or both could be devastating. “Do you get along with your mother?”

Val wrinkled her nose. “I was always a Daddy’s girl. I think that bugged my mom. Now she’s remarried and has her own life.” Obviously uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken, Val ducked her head and grabbed a chip, breaking it into small pieces. He clenched his fists in his lap to prevent himself from reaching out and touching her. She looked so alone. So sad. But then she seemed to snap out of it. “Tell me about what you do when you’re not slummin’ it with a job like this.”