Mister Match (The Match Series Book 1) (18 page)

Rodney’s face went stiff, then angry, but he didn’t get a chance to retort as Adam pulled her even closer to him.

“Give my best to Becca—no, wait, Bambi,” Lisa said, snidely. “I’m sorry, it’s hard to keep your bimbos’ names straight—”

“We really should get up to our room,” Adam cut in, with a bland grin for Rodney. “Big night ahead of us, if you know what I mean. Hey, really nice to meet you, Roger.”

“It’s Rodney,” Rodney ground out, sounding pissed. “And Barbie.”

The elevators were still being hijacked by what was probably an entire herd of yoga gurus, so Lisa let Adam propel her toward the door marked “Stairs.”

Once they were alone in the dim stairwell, she went straight for the wall and smacked her palms against it. “God.
God!
I can’t believe it—two freaking times in a week,” she fumed. “All this time we’ve been apart, and suddenly he’s goddamn everywhere. And just when things are starting to go a little bit better for me. It’s like a reminder from the Universe—
Don’t get too happy, Lisa, don’t get too comfortable
—”

“Whoa, whoa.” Adam’s low voice had an instant soothing effect. “Want to give me a little more background info, here? Just to make sure I’m on the same page as you.”

She shook her head. “I’m just an idiot, that’s all. I can’t believe I ever even got involved with that guy. Did you see his pants? They were purple! And baggy, and gathered at the ankle.” She scowled. “He’s like an evil genii that somehow managed to sneak out of his bottle.”

Adam only halfway smothered a laugh. “I just assumed that was his yoga guru outfit.”

She glanced at him in surprise. “That’s what I call him. The yoga guru. Clare calls him the Rod.” As suddenly as her anger had exploded out of her, she surprised herself by giggling. “And you called him Roger,” she managed between hiccups of laughter. She collapsed against the wall. “Was that accidental or on purpose? God, the look on his face was priceless.”

Adam grinned and shrugged. “I know how to get in a little dig here and there, when I want to.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, sobering as she pictured her ex again. “I can’t believe I ran into him again. And out of town, even.” She opened her eyes to look at Adam. “And that it had to happen with you.”

He moved closer. “Who better than me?”

“Well. That’s true, I guess.”

She looked up into his eyes. Suddenly, all in a moment, things felt a whole lot more intimate. And she wasn’t sure what to do about it. They were alone, here, in the stairwell, for one thing. No reason to keep up the pretense of being a couple.

She eased away from him and raised a hand, let it fall. “So, that was Rodney. My ex-fiancé and business partner.” She let out a breath. “As you can tell, he screwed me over professionally, financially and emotionally, and I’m still picking up the pieces, a year later.” She glanced at him, wryly. “Now you know why I’m such a ball of nerves around men.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said gallantly. Then he squinted, as if trying to compute something that just didn’t. “So you were engaged to that guy?”

She sensed he was asking more than just the obvious question. His nearness was filling up the stairwell, zapping the air with electricity and putting her on the alert in an entirely different way than the Rodney encounter had. “Yeah. For a little while. And now he’s engaged to someone else. Her name is Barbie.” She snorted, humorlessly.

“Let me guess,” Adam said. “Barbie’s a little younger and a lot dumber than you, and she has a fake tan.”

Lisa frowned, watching those pretty, crooked lips of his as he spoke. “How’d you know?”

He shrugged, a slow, languid movement of his muscular shoulders. “Not too hard to guess. You can tell what your ex is like just by looking at him. He’s the type of guy who would go for young, dumb and shallow over an intelligent, independent woman like you. Barbie’s probably a hell of a lot easier for him to mold than you ever were, and easier to take advantage of.”

Which left the obvious, unanswered question: How had Lisa been blind enough to fall under his spell?

The question irritated her, and she didn’t want to be irritated. She didn’t want to talk about her ex or money or betrayal anymore. Suddenly, all she wanted was to take Adam to her room, turn down the lights, and follow Clare’s instructions to jump his bones.

The very idea of it made her nervous. She straightened and ducked past him. “We should get upstairs.”

“I guess.” He watched her as she darted up the stairs.

At the first landing, she took off her heels. “Whoever invented these things was a misogynist,” she informed Adam.

“I believe it.” He looked dubiously at the shoes, as if they might explode. “Here, let me carry those.”

Lisa giggled. “They’re not heavy.” Maybe the wine from dinner had belatedly gone to her head, or maybe it was just the aftereffects of a brush with the Rod, but she was suddenly feeling completely giddy.

By the fourth floor, she’d gotten a hold of herself a bit.

She pushed through the door into the hallway and then stopped for a breather. “Look, I’m sorry about that.” She gestured vaguely back toward the stairwell. “Until last week, I hadn’t seen him since we broke up. I guess a lot of old, bad feelings got dredged up.”

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.” Adam watched her for a moment. “There’s a mini-bar in our room. Want to have a nightcap?”

The wine had definitely had a delayed effect, she thought, giggling again. “Who in the world uses the term ‘nightcap’ anymore?”

His lips quirked in a grin. “I guess people on TV, mostly. And me.” He reached out and tugged at the tie around her waist. “Come on. Let’s go have a drink. You can tell me more about what just happened down there. Or...” He shrugged. “We can talk about something else. Or nothing at all.”

She blinked at him, befuddled. She probably shouldn’t have another drink. She probably shouldn’t have had that third glass of cabernet at dinner. Was she imagining things, or was Adam Match making a play for her?

And if so—why? It wasn’t as if their room were under surveillance by TMZ or E! Online. There was no reason to keep up their charade behind closed doors. Unless, of course, things had progressed beyond the charade, into the territory of reality.

Adam was busy sliding the key card into the slot. She heard a little electronic beep and then the sound of the door unlatching, and then Adam turned to her again. Smiling, he reached out and took her hand in his.

“Come,” he said, simply, and drew her into the room.

Chapter
20

____________________________________

L
isa stopped a few paces away from him and stood there, barefoot on the carpet, her arms at her sides, the strappy little shoes she’d refused to let him carry dangling from one hand.

She looked uncertain. Adam, on the other hand, felt more certain than he’d felt about almost anything in his life: He wanted her. He wanted to be with her, to feel her in his arms, her skin beneath his lips. He wanted to see her eyes open in the morning as they woke up together.

It was so simple, suddenly. And yet, so complicated.

They were standing near the couch, where Adam had promised to sleep tonight. The door to the suite had been slowly and automatically closing, and now it latched with a hushed little click, shutting out the light and sounds from the hallway, leaving them alone together in the room.

Lisa’s giddy mood of moments earlier seemed to have shifted into something more sober, intense. Adam felt a funny little rush as he looked at her, as if something had passed between them—some silent, unnamable passage to a higher level than the one they had just been on.

There was a new, heightened intimacy between them. He could feel it in the room like a force field. All he wanted to do was step forward and take Lisa into his arms. But something in her body language made him think he should wait for her to come to him.

“You know,” she said, her voice hesitant, her eyes enormous as she gazed at him, “dinner with you tonight... It felt real. I mean, like a real date. Not just pretend.”

Her simple observation made his heart thrill, yet she didn’t look exactly happy about it. She looked pensive.

He spoke without thinking. “If I could have my way, it would have been real. If I could have my way, we wouldn’t be worrying about paparazzi photographers and gossip magazines and keeping up appearances, and all that crap.”

“No?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “What would we be doing, instead?”

The question hung between them, and he hesitated between answering with complete honesty or trying to keep things light for some reason he could no longer name.

And then he realized it just didn’t matter. Since the first moment he’d laid eyes on Lisa, he had been following a certain and inevitable path, directly toward her. All he had to do, right this second, was take the next step forward.

“If I had my way,” he said, and took a step to close the distance between them. “We’d be doing this.”

He reached for her and pulled her to him.

A
dam’s arms went around her, hot and hard and insistent. Then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her so hungrily, it was almost like he was biting into her. Lisa nearly cried out with the ferocious intensity of it.

Since their first, public kisses, she had wanted to kiss him again, away from any cameras and stares from strangers. She’d imagined doing so, about a thousand times. But she had never imagined the joining of their mouths would be like this—all heat and unrepentant demands and take, take, take.

She gasped as he moved her backward through the rapidly darkening suite into the bedroom, and then toppled with her to the bed. His hands were everywhere, and so were hers—on his chest, her fingers sneaking under his collar to touch his hot skin, then skimming down his body, yanking at his waistline to pull his shirt out of his slacks. She wanted to touch him, his bare, naked skin, his back, his hard stomach, his chest. Every bit of him, every part she’d been imagining in detail for the past week.

“God,” she heard him breathe—it was nearly a grunt, and she grinned wildly.
She
had elicited that depth of wildness and need from him. She was making him feel as wild as she felt.

“Oh, Adam,” she said, and pulled at the buttons on his shirt, nearly popping them off in her frenzy.

He laughed down at her and moved to help with removing the garment. “Lisa. I have to tell you, I’ve imagined this moment probably a thousand times over the past week, but I never imagined it would be like this.”

She’d had nearly the exact same thought just moments before, yet hearing him say it stilled her. She was being so aggressive. Maybe he wasn’t into that. “Am I—is it too—”

He stilled as well, and his smile turned to a quick frown. An instant later, he was kissing her cheeks. “No. Whatever you were going to say, whatever you were worried about, the answer is no. You’re not too anything. You’re just right in every way. You’re perfect. God, you’re amazing. So powerful and vital and—” He stopped talking and just kissed her, making her blush, making her swoon—

But she hadn’t been with anyone since Rodney, and he used to tell her she got too worked up during sex. He’d even made fun of her red face and huffing and puffing a time or two, when she’d really worked at having an orgasm instead of just letting him have his release and not worrying about attaining her own, as she normally did. And if she got too worked up then, with the Rod, well—now she must be totally in overdrive. She hadn’t even touched a man in almost a year. She hadn’t had any intimacy of any kind except with her vibrator. Most of all, this was Adam, the man who had dominated her dreams and fantasies for the past week.

She pushed out from under him and yanked at the hem of her dress, which had somehow slid up to puddle around her waist. “Wait. Whoa. Wait just a second.”

“What’s wrong?” He sat up with her. He was breathing heavily, and his shirt was hanging open, exposing that incredible chest. His pants were adorably full at the front, with what looked like an extremely healthy erection.

Lisa made herself look away. “Nothing’s wrong.” She shook her head, pulling at her dress again, trying to make it cover her up, the way it was supposed to. “Damn DNA match, that’s what’s wrong,” she muttered.

“DNA match? What’s that?”

She felt herself blush. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Um—”

A grin crept over his face as he watched her squirm. “Come on, you can tell me. What’s a DNA match?”

“Well.” She debated in her head for a whole second whether to tell him the truth. “Willow and Clare and I have this system at work. If someone’s really, really, way too attractive, it can make it sort of hard to maintain a professional atmosphere during a massage. So we call that a DNA match.” At Adam’s confused expression, she laughed and elaborated. “You know how they say if you think someone smells good, or if you just feel an animal sort of attraction to them, it’s probably because your DNA would be a good match with theirs?”

He laughed, too. “Who says that, again?”

“You know,” she said, suddenly flustered. “Scientists.”

“Oh, scientists. Right.” Still grinning, he reached out to brush a wayward lock of her hair behind her ear. “Please, go on.”

The brief touch of his thumb to her cheek had her whole body standing at attention, clamoring for more. She swallowed.

“Well, so, on the rare occasion that that happens, we can invoke the DNA match clause and swap clients. It works out pretty well, since Will and I have totally opposite tastes in men.”

Adam nodded again. “Sounds reasonable, in an insane sort of way.”

Something about him, about this moment with him, was making her downright giddy. She tried not to giggle like an idiot. “Not insane,” she insisted. “Necessary.”

He lounged back on the bed, propping himself on one elbow. The sight of him like that, with his shirt open, his chest just begging for her to run her hands over it, nearly took her breath and her reason away. But Adam just stared at her intently, as if they hadn’t just been tearing each other apart moments before.

“So, a DNA match is someone who smells good to you,” he mused.

“I guess that’s a simplified version of it, yeah. You know how some mammals use their sense of smell to find a likely mate. Well, humans do it, too. We still have that ability on some instinctual level, even if we aren’t always consciously aware of it. So when you’re just unreasonably attracted to someone, especially if it’s someone who isn’t particularly hot, or who’s not your normal type—”

“Basically, you’re saying it means you’d make great babies together.”

He was looking at her again with that look, that one that made her feel as if he were looking deep down into the depths of her. She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Basically.”

“So should I be insulted or flattered that you had that feeling about me?”

“First off,” she sputtered, “I didn’t say I had that feeling about you. And second, why would you be insulted?”

He grinned. “Because you just said, someone who’s not your normal type, someone who’s not even good-looking—”

She shoved at his shoulder. “Shut up! You know exactly how hot you are. Don’t even try to pretend you don’t.”

“But I don’t know how you see me.” He wasn’t laughing anymore.

She lowered her gaze. Couldn’t he tell the effect he had on her? Couldn’t he see, just looking at her, how her pulse rate rose whenever she was around him, how many times he made her blush, how he made her fidgety and trembly, and reduced her to a bundle of nerves?

“I—” She stopped, her throat suddenly feeling untrustworthy.
Just be honest,
she thought.

It all came out in a rush. “Adam, I’m more attracted to you than I’ve been to anyone in a long, long time. I have been from the first time we met. So, yes, I think we have a DNA match. That very first day you came to the spa for a massage, I tried to get Willow to take over the appointment, but she couldn’t. So I had to do it. And I’ve been trying to ignore your effect on me ever since, because it—it scares me. I’m scared of how much I feel for you.”

There it was, out in the open. She waited, her breaths coming in shallow and just a little bit shaky, for whatever he might say in response.

After a moment, he spoke. “That first day we met,” he said, his voice low and intimate, “I couldn’t believe the reaction I had to you. I thought you were so gorgeous.” He grinned wickedly. “And you smelled even better.”

“That was just my perfume oil,” she protested breathlessly.

“With vetiver in it,” he said with a smile.

She felt surprise flare within her. “That’s right. You remember.”

“I think it’s safe to say I remember every single detail of every encounter I’ve had with you,” he said gravely. “You’ve made a huge impression on me, Lisa.”

Her heart kicked up a fast beat. Did he truly mean that? Could she possibly have made as deep an impression on him as he’d made on her?

“I really like you, Lisa,” he murmured, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “I’ve felt this crazy pull toward you since the very first time I met you. I don’t know what it means, but I really want to find out. And if you’re scared, well... I’m scared, too. This is a strange situation we find ourselves in.”

He was sitting up again, touching her hand, and she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her voice would probably shake if she tried to say anything at all.

“But,” he said, and looked up at her, into her eyes. “I’m more scared of not exploring this. Of never figuring out exactly what’s between us.”

Lisa didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know if she could speak, not with her heart hammering in her throat the way it was.

“You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to,” Adam said, and again she marveled at his ability to sense what she was feeling. “And we don’t have to do anything, tonight. We could just, you know.” He nodded at the TV. “Turn on the boob tube. See if we can find any
Law & Order
reruns, or some house shows on HGTV, or something.”

“House shows are my favorite.” It popped out of her mouth and made him laugh, and she would have laughed too except for the crazy pitching sensation going on in her stomach.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Back when I had cable, if I had a bad day, an hour or so of HGTV would make everything better. There’s something so soothing about those shows. About getting to look into other people’s houses and see how they fix them up.”

“So you like looking in other people’s houses,” Adam said, making her laugh.

“I’m not some kind of voyeur,” she protested, swatting at him.

“All right, all right.” He fended off her playful swats by catching her wrist midair, and then held on.

“So...you feel like being soothed, right now?” he asked.

He was watching her carefully. She could tell he was waiting for her answer. Waiting to see what she wanted to do. Whatever she wanted, she knew, he would support. He would want it for her, because that was just how he was, and for some reason she didn’t yet fully understand, he seemed to care about her.

“No,” she said, slowly. “I don’t want soothing, right now.”

“What do you want, then?”

She raised her gaze and looked him fully in the eye. “I want you,” she said, simply, lacing her fingers with his.

This connection between them—she’d told him the truth when she’d said it scared her. She hadn’t felt anything like this in so long. Maybe ever. The last time she’d felt anything approaching this, she’d gotten beyond burned. And here she was, feeling all these wild feelings for a man with whom she would be staging a very public breakup in a matter of weeks.