The Baby Track (7 page)

Quickly she pulled her head back farther, turning her face away from him. “Let me go, Connor.”

Denied her lips, he sought the slender, sensitive curve of her neck and began to nibble. “But I don’t want to let you go, Courtney.”

It annoyed her that he was not taking her refusal or her demand seriously. And she should be far more than annoyed with him, Courtney acknowledged grimly. She should be furiously fighting this type of caveman machismo; at the very least, she ought to be a little afraid of his physical power. But for reasons she didn’t care to delve into, she was neither infuriated nor afraid.

Defensively Courtney scowled up at him. “You’re trying to
blitzkrieg
me.”

He smiled, a slow, lazy, sexy smile that made her heart turn over. “Bombs away,” he said huskily, and his mouth closed over hers.

In the nick of time Courtney pressed her lips tightly together, effectively denying him access to her mouth’s interior. She heard the muffled sound of frustration he made against her closed mouth and couldn’t help smiling.

Connor lifted his mouth a quarter inch above hers. “Ah, Gypsy, you don’t play fair,” he murmured against her lips, feathering the curve of her mouth with his lips, with the tip of his tongue. “This is supposed to be a blitzkrieg, not a siege.” His hands slid intimately over her body.

Molded against him, Courtney felt the burgeoning pressure of his thighs against her. Her breasts were cushioning the muscular wall of his chest. Maybe she was going to have to cling to him for support after all, for her legs felt almost too weak for her to remain standing.

“Open your mouth for me, Courtney.” Connor’s voice was deep and thick.

His words, bold, intimate and demanding, sent her pulse rate out of control. Sweet, hot rivers of sensation flowed

through her, deep and thrilling. If she were to let go, reason and willpower would be swept away in those seductive currents. The temptation to cede all control, to close her eyes and open her mouth and let him take her over, was almost irresistible.

Alarmingly so. She was just a hairbreadth away from allowing herself to be carried away by a tide of passion, when the shock of surrender set her metaphorically, but firmly, back on high ground.

As an army brat who’d moved from place to place and-friend to friend, she had become independent and self-reliant at an early age. Those character traits, coupled by her strong will and fierce penchant for self-control, did not make it easy for her to acknowledge that she was dangerously close to submission, however sublime it promised to be.

Her dark eyes, heavy-lidded and half-closed, snapped wide open. She stared up at Connor, who was watching her with intense sea-green eyes. He wanted her. There could be no denying the blatant physical evidence of his desire. But she saw more than passion glittering in those beautiful eyes of his—she saw challenge as well. And if she were to melt ' into him and kiss him the way he wanted
—the way she wanted him to
!—that challenge would be replaced by pure male triumph.

She recognized in that instant that Connor McKay had a will as strong as her own, that his self-control rivaled, maybe even surpassed, hers. For
he
was not the one on the verge of giving into the heady temptation of passion. He was in full control of himself, of her, and of this premeditated little tryst in the middle of a fake forest.

Courtney stiffened. “Give it up, Connor,’ ’ she said tautly. “It’s not going to work.”

Their faces were so close, their lips an inch apart. When Connor smiled, she could almost feel the warm, full curve of his mouth on hers. She wanted to feel it. Courtney was aghast at just how badly she wanted it.

“Give up now? Why should I, Gypsy? I have you right where I want you—and right where you want to be.”

She was furious, partly with him but mostly with her newly discovered sensual self, who was proving to be an embarrassingly unreliable ally. And she would never admit that his arrogant taunt happened to be the truth.

“Your ego must be the size of Jupiter if you believe that I want to be manhandled in the midst of a bunch of potted trees.” She flung the words at him, seething with temper. “Furthermore, I happen to be here with another man, remember?”

It was about time
she
remembered that fact, Courtney scolded herself. She’d been so absorbed with Connor, she’d scarcely given poor morose Emery a thought.

Connor frowned. The mere mention of her date sent flames of jealousy roaring through him.
And he was not a jealous man!

“You want me,” he growled. “You’re just too stubborn to admit it.”

“I’ll admit that you threw me off balance with your seduction skills. They were quite effective—for a minute or two. Then I recovered.”

“A minute or two?” Connor repeated indignantly. He glared into her upturned, defiant small face. Unfortunately it seemed that she actually had had a complete recovery from the soft, submissive woman she’d been only a few moments ago. Right before his eyes, she had turned into a sharp-tongued, argumentative termagant. Connor was not pleased with the transformation.

“Are you going to let me go?” She had an older brother and two older stepbrothers; she knew something about threats and intimidation, both making them and not bowing to either.

“No,” Connor replied succinctly.

She knew exactly what to say next. “Then I’ll have to
make
you let go of me.”

“And how will you do that?” Connor taunted, deliberately tightening his hold on her. A tactical mistake on his part, he silently conceded, for the feel of her softness against him was making his already-fevered blood run even hotter.

“Are you a graduate of one of those feminist self-defense courses?” he murmured mockingly. “What’s your move, Gypsy? Going to deliver a neck-cracking karate chop that’ll leave me rolling on the ground, begging for mercy?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t take one of those courses,” Courtney snapped. He obviously wasn’t going to let her go and now she had to back up her tough words with action. But how? “If I had, I wouldn’t show you any mercy,” she continued with vicarious ruthlessness. “I’d make sure you were—”

“So, no karate chop,” he cut in. “Perhaps you’ll go with a less-sophisticated maneuver like that old classic, the swift knee to the groin?” Before she could attempt to do it, he closed his thighs around hers, immobilizing her—and sending shock waves of erotic sensation through them both.

For a moment they stood still, helpless against the tide of desire and need pulsing through them. Their eyes met and held and neither spoke a word.

He cupped her bottom with his palms and locked her tighter into his body. “You don’t really want to put me out of commission, do you, Gyps?” he whispered against her ear. His tongue traced its delicate shape.

Courtney whimpered. That dangerous, languorous weakness had returned, seeping thickly into her limbs. There was a sharp sweet ache in the pit of her stomach. Being so very close to him, she could feel his body trembling, hear him drawing deep, uneven breaths. Though she didn’t know how or why, she sensed a vulnerability in him that matched her own.

He was not just playing games, every feminine instinct she possessed informed her of that. He wanted her very, very badly. The knowledge was electrifying, so was the feel of her breasts nestled against his chest and the rhythmic throbbing of his unyielding virility. Courtney’s head spun. What if she were to let go and kiss him, just once—

Her lips parted and his mouth lowered to hers.

“Look out!” The sharp warning voice seemed to come from another dimension.

Startled beyond measure, Courtney and Connor reflex-ively sprang apart. A low-flying bird, chirping madly, flew over their heads. Then another bird flew by, leaving a thick dropping that landed perilously close to where the two of them had been standing entwined.

“Damn birds.” Kieran Kaufman joined them, glaring up at the twittering, fluttering avian pair that had perched on an overhead branch. “I never would’ve let them out if I thought they were going to go ballistic.”

Courtney was shaking; she couldn’t seem to stop. Desire bubbled through her, hot and swift and unquenched. She glanced quickly at Connor. He was staring purposefully into the branches of the trees.

“You let the birds out of the cages?” Connor asked Kaufman. Frustrating as the interruption had been, he was strangely grateful for it. He felt confused and off balance, a totally new experience for him and, he decided, a terrible one.

Never had he been so stirred, so aroused, by simply holding a woman, by the mere prospect of a kiss. When Courtney had gazed up at him, acquiescence in her dark velvet eyes, her Ups parted and moist, he’d felt as if the top of his head had been blown off. Imagine what would have happened to him if he had actually kissed her.

It was definitely time to back up and regroup his defenses. The little spitfire was a living, breathing danger zone. No woman had ever affected him so profoundly, and he was damned if he would let this one get to him.
Especially not this one!
She was everything he didn’t like, he reminded himself, an uptight, quarrelsome, stuck-up intellectual who considered a twit like Emery Harcourt to be the man of her dreams!

“I opened every bird cage I saw,” Kieran confessed blithely. “I don’t think anybody’s noticed yet. When I saw that bird heading directly at you, I thought I better warn you. Sorry if I interrupted anything.”

Courtney finally found her voice. “You didn’t,” she said quickly.

“No,” Connor agreed, just as swiftly. “You didn’t interrupt a thing.”

A shout sounded from beyond the trees, followed by a shriek. “Uh-oh, I think the party guests just realized that their decorations are on the loose,” said Kieran. “Definitely time to split. Hey, Connor, old pal, I know I drove us here, but can you find a ride home? I’m leaving with my hot new babe.” He smiled wolfishly. “We’re heading to my place now.” He turned and dashed through the trees.

“I—I’d better get back to Emery,” Courtney murmured. She kept her eyes carefully averted from Connor, not daring to look at him. She simply couldn’t, not after what had just happened between them. A hot blush suffused her whole body. After the way she’d protested and threatened, to have finally succumbed to him...

For it was no use kidding herself. She’d been lost at the end, savoring the hard feel of his body against her, hungering to feel his mouth on hers. A mortified moan escaped from her throat as she rushed blindly back to the table.

There, to her utter incredulity, she saw Kieran Kaufman slipping his arm around the elegant, austere and forbidding Jarrell Harcourt—who was suddenly looking neither austere nor forbidding. Courtney blinked. Jarrell’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright; she looked nervous and excited and much younger than her twenty-four years.

Courtney met Emery’s curious gaze, then they both watched Kaufman’s hand curve audaciously around the young woman’s buttocks as he led her away. Jarrell’s girlish giggle seemed to hang in the air. Jarrell Harcourt, the woman who never smiled, had actually
giggled!
Courtney decided her mind was truly blown.

• “Who is that man?” Emery asked. “It was rather phenomenal watching him turn on the charm. Jarrell melted like a crayon in the sun. I’ve never seen her react like that to anyone.”

“Charm?” Courtney echoed in disbelief. He had to be joking! She debated sharing Kaufman’s identity with Emery and decided against it. Hadn’t the poor man suffered enough tonight without having to hear that his sister had taken off with one of the sleaziest reporters in the business?

“Emery Harcourt!” The sound of Connor’s voice, in a hearty hail-fellow-well-met tone, abruptly erased the astonishing alliance of Kaufman and Jarrell from Courtney’s thoughts. She whirled around to see Connor extending his hand to Emery to shake.

“I’ll give you ten-to-one odds you don’t remember me,” said Connor as he pumped the hand Emery offered to him.

Emery smiled vaguely. “I’m not a gambling man, but I’m terribly sorry, I can’t quite place you.”

Courtney tensed. What was Connor McKay up to now? She glared at him, but he ignored her, smiling a broad smile that she
knew
was phony.

“We prepped together, Emery,” Connor said easily. “But I was one of those quiet, nondescript guys who nobody ever remembers.”

Courtney smoldered. After that pseudo-humble remark, what else could sweet, sensitive Emery say but, “Of course I remember you. But you know me, I’ve always been terrible with names.”

“Connor McKay,” Connor supplied smoothly.

Emery smiled and nodded. “McKay, of course! How have you been?”

“McKay hasn’t been well at all,” Courtney inserted frostily. “In fact, he just got out of prison.”

She placed a protective hand on Emery’s arm. He was so naive and trusting. Anyone who thought Kieran Kaufman was charming needed her protection, especially from a manipulative snake like Connor McKay. “Let’s call it a night,

Emery,” she suggested sweetly. “I have an early appointment tomorrow.’ ’

Emery cleared his throat. “Courtney, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get reacquainted with my old friend here.” Emery, forever the well-brought up gentleman, offered Connor a chair. “Prison, hmm? Tough break, McKay.”

“Junk bonds,” Connor said, sitting down at the table, but not before shooting Courtney a mocking, victorious grin. “I didn’t know what my tax attorney was up to, but I took the fall. It’s been tough, all right. Former friends don’t want to give you the time of day after you’ve served time.” “There’s one thing you can count on from a Harcourt and that’s loyalty,” Emery said fervently, glancing at Courtney with silent reproof.

“Have a seat, Courtney,” Connor invited. “Unless, of course, you don’t want to sit at a table with an ex-con. I’ll understand completely if you don’t.”

“Don’t ever think such a thing,” finery exclaimed. “I’m quite sure Courtney joins me in welcoming you back. She is quite a fair-minded egalitarian.”

“Harcourt’s a nice guy,” Connor admitted grudgingly fifteen minutes later as he and Courtney made their way through the ballroom, which was still in the throes of pandemonium, courtesy of Kieran Kaufman’s bird-releasing spree.