This Perfect Kiss by Christie Ridgway Page B

eyes. “Did you ?” she asked.
    When he didn’t release the box or answer, she made that face again. “Anyway, I’m under no obligation to explain my personal life to you.”
    He still didn’t let go, because, yeah, she didneed to explain her personal life to him. Because, dammit, when he’d wanted to think of her only as sex candy, she’d gone ahead and shown him the soft center of her, that part of Jilly who had been a young woman who hadn’t known her mother until she’d opened up a door. Someone who brushed away nonexistent lint instead of letting him see that her mother’s death still saddened her. Someone who had taken a business and run with it.
    Thinking of her as sex candy was safer. Thinking of her as some other man’s sex candy was safer still.
    “Tell me if you had a date last night, Jilly,” he said quietly.
    At his new tone, the exasperation left her face. But she tightened her grip on the box and lifted her chin. “What about you?” she said. “Did you have a date last night?”
    Something tickled the back of his mind. Jilly, hovering in the doorway of the library at Caidwater yesterday. He’d been talking on the phone to Lisa, a woman he casually dated in San Francisco. He’d been trying to coax her into taking the next plane out and then a limo from LAX to Caidwater. If she got there by five, he’d promised her dinner at Spago’s.
    He narrowed his eyes. Sometime in the middle of that phone conversation, Jilly had disappeared from the doorway and then later had been in such an all-fired hurry to leave before five o’clock that she’d forgotten the dress they were now playing tug-of-war with. “Are you jealous?” he asked.
    She gave him a look that should have eviscerated him. “Of what? Of whom?” she said. “Of some woman you took to Spago’s?” With a vicious tug, she jerked the box from his hands, then obviously realized that she’d also just given herself away. Her fingers fumbled, and the box and its contents fell to the floor.
    Jilly looked down in dismay, her face a brighter pink than her skirt and jacket. He knew she knew he knew she’d been listening to that phone call. “Now look what you’ve done!” she said.
    Rory bent to retrieve the dress, trying not to laugh. She looked so put out with him for catching her. He should tell her it didn’t matter, that he’d always known the attraction ran both ways. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the kind of heat they generated required two. As a matter of fact, he’d made that phone call to Lisa only to prove to himself he could think of a woman other than Jilly.
    He picked up the dress by the shoulders—it was black and rustled—shaking it out as he straightened. His gaze met hers and in her eyes was equal parts embarrassment and awareness. He bit back his smile again. Jilly flustered was kind of…cute. Sweet.
    God.
    He thrust the dress at her. “Put this on for me,” he said.
    She closed her arms around the garment and held it against her. “What?”
    “Put the damn dress on.”
    Cute. Sweet. What was he thinking? Thoughts like those were as scary as the dimple. He had toremember that she was dangerous to him. She was potential disaster, his downfall, the symbol of all that could go wrong if he let down his guard in L.A. Hell if he was going to start thinking of this walking taste of sin as anything less than lethal.
    He glanced down. The dress looked bare enough. A little glimpse of Jilly’s flesh and he’d remember all over again why he couldn’t touch it. Why he shouldn’t touch her.
    He groaned inwardly. God, he hoped she wouldn’t ask him to explain all that, because it wasn’t making sense to him either. He just knew it had to be done.
    “Go on,” he said, softening his voice. “I want to see what the fuss is about.”
    Obviously puzzled, she cocked her head. He wasn’t going to let himself think of her confusion as cute, too. “Go on,” he said again. “Show me what makes this dress