SHE’D BEEN EYEING that beautiful, deep soaker tub built for two since they’d arrived yesterday. It was the most decadent tub she’d ever seen, with a view to a private garden area outside and candles and bath products galore.
She’d had a surprisingly fun day, beginning with a strenuous walk after breakfast with several of the wives. The two husbands of female execs and a couple of the women who golfed had taken to the greens, but she’d preferred the hiking.
After lunch, they’d been given the option to choose among the spa services and she’d gone for a facial and a body wrap involving seaweed.
After another group dinner, she was in need of some alone time. David and the other execs were safely off doing some kind of team-building exercise, so she skipped the movie-and-popcorn social and slipped away.
Oh, this room was nice. Imagine if she and David were really a couple in love. How much fun they could have.
Oh, well. A nice decadent soak in a tub was all the fun she needed right now. She poured herself a bath, watching the steam billow into the air, and, after she dumped a jar of bath salts into the tub, the scent of lavender filled the room.
They’d shoved the champagne in the fridge, and she didn’t think that she and David were going to have a romantic champagne breakfast together or anything so she might as well sample it as let it go to waste. Besides, she figured David owed her for making her come with him for an entire weekend of fakery.
She undressed slowly, putting her clothes away as she did so, and drawing on the oatmeal-colored linen bathrobe and slippers the hotel provided.
She lit the candles around the tub, lovely fat beeswax candles, and flipped off the lights. The French doors were open to the forest outside, fading in color as evening advanced.
She eased off the champagne cork and poured herself a bubbling glass of wine.
Then she slipped off the robe and stepped into the bath, sliding down into the scented water that felt like undiluted pleasure. She sighed. The candlelight danced off the water, gilding her body and the champagne. She sipped, approved. Tilted her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
For a woman who spent so much time on her feet, this was pure bliss.
DAVID WAS MORE THAN happy to have been let off tonight’s event early. Since he wasn’t officially a VP yet, he’d been perfectly willing to take the hint offered by Piers, who suggested he’d probably be more interested in spending a Saturday evening with Chelsea than in spending hours with the board. He understood and appreciated Piers’s tact.
He nodded. “Can’t complain about spending more time on that romance package.”
The older man chuckled, delighted with his surprise. “That’s the spirit. I envy you, you know. A beautiful woman, your entire future ahead of you. Make some memories, son. I’m not saying you won’t still be making them at my age, but those early years…” he said with fond nostalgia. “Well, I wouldn’t give up those memories for anything.”
He’d never had such a personal conversation with his boss and he was mildly uncomfortable to hear anything even this close to the details of Piers and Helen’s sex life. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He didn’t have much choice but to head back to the room when Piers so obviously expected him to. He couldn’t hang around in the lobby or bar without arousing suspicion, but he thought that an entire evening in a room that had been designed with sex in mind was going to be torture when he was cooped up with a woman who seriously could have been designed with sex in mind.
And he’d promised not to touch her.
What a cruel, cruel joke.
At least she was off on some movie-night thing. He’d throw on sweats and head to the gym for a couple of hours, work off some of the lust that had kept him wakeful and longing in the night.
He opened the door with his key and walked in, and then stood stupidly rooted to the spot.
It was like somebody had opened up his brain and looked into his fantasy vault and pulled out a good one. There, naked and golden in the bath, was the most glorious woman he’d ever seen. Candlelight licked lovingly at her wet skin, making him want to follow suit. Her breasts seemed to float, begging him to put his mouth on them. Even as he stared, dumbfounded, her nipples puckered, making his mouth water.
Their gazes caught and held. She was so beautiful, her eyes dark and huge, her hair pinned back to reveal that long, beautiful neck and the perfect round breasts. All this happened in the space of a couple of eye blinks and then they both reacted like actors in a bad farce.
“Hell,” he said, shielding his eyes from paradise. “Sorry, I should have knocked.”
He caught her movement as she dragged her knees up and pulled her arms in front of her glorious breasts. “I thought you were in a meeting.” Water sloshed and candles flickered.
“I was supposed to be.” He turned back to the door. “Look, I’ll go get a drink or something. I’ll come back later.”
“No…” He heard an edge of laughter in her voice. “It’s okay. This is just the most ridiculous situation. Whoever heard of putting a bathtub in the middle of a bedroom?”
“The folks who brought you the romance package.” He didn’t even let himself think about how much he wanted to shuck his clothes and climb into that tub with her. He’d show her a romance package all right.
“Give me a second to put on my robe and—”
“Are you sure? I could go to the bar and come back in an hour or so.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ve been in here long enough—I’m turning wrinkly. Besides, we don’t want them thinking we had a fight. I don’t think I could handle a lot of well-meaning advice from all those matchmakers out there,” she said, sounding mildly panicked. “Yeah.”
He heard more water dripping and sloshing and tried very hard not to think of her standing up, naked and wet and fragrant. He heard her feet running across the slate floor and then the sound of the bathroom door. “It’s safe to come in,” she called out.
“I am so sorry about that,” he said again when she emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, wearing soft sweats, her damp hair brushed off her face.
She looked mildly embarrassed and he knew they were both picturing the moment when he’d walked in and seen her naked. He wasn’t sure if she was more embarrassed about being caught in the buff, or if it was that strange moment before they both panicked when the pull of attraction had been too strong to ignore.
Maybe he’d gone into this thing by not telling the truth, but other than telling a little white lie to get ahead in his career, he tried to be an upright guy. If she didn’t want to sleep with him while they were living together, he had to respect that. And now he’d learned there was another man in the picture, he knew he’d try even harder.
This arrangement, he reminded himself, was strictly business. It wasn’t personal.
If seeing a fantastically gorgeous woman naked in the bath in his hotel room felt kind of personal, he supposed that was his problem.
“So,” she said, “do you want some champagne?”
“Might as well.” He got up and poured himself a glass, topping hers at the same time. “I thought we might watch an in-room movie.” He caught her expression and grinned. “Not porn. I’m thinking something highbrow and depressing that will not make me think about sex. Especially, since—” he glanced significantly at the huge bed dominating the room “—you know, we have to sleep together, but not, ah, sleep together.”
He knew his honest admission had done the trick when she laughed and seemed to relax.
“Good plan.”
So they put on a movie that had been a big award contender even though it had done poorly at the box office. Neither of them had seen it and after forty minutes, he could see why. He was crammed in a chair and she was very carefully on one side of the king-size bed.
“If one more person offs themselves in this movie, I’m seriously going to need therapy,” he said.
“It’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen,” she agreed. Then after a minute she said, “But the acting’s amazing.”
“You enjoying the movie at all?”
“No. I like uplifting stories with happy endings.”
“Me, too.” He thought for a second. “Or a lot of action.”
“Do you think that makes us shallow people?”
“Probably. But well-adjusted.”
For something to do he started turning over the items in the gift basket. He opened the mixed nuts and offered her some, then took a handful and while he was munching, pulled out the massage oil. “Chamomile and bergamot. Cool.” He tossed the bottle in the air and caught it. “I had a girlfriend who was totally into reflexology. I could give you a foot massage if you like.” He glanced at the screen. “It would be a lot less depressing than this movie.”
She glanced up at him. Her face was scrubbed free of cosmetics and her hair had had the style damped out of it. He thought she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. “You can give a foot massage?”
“Yep. Pretty good one. You game? I feel like I owe you something for interrupting your bath.”
“I’d rather do that than watch any more of this movie,” she agreed.
He was more than happy to flip off the depressathon and crawl onto the bed beside her.
“Normally, I’d soak your feet in warm water and Epsom salts, but I guess you were soaking them in the tub, so we can skip that part.”
He jumped off the bed and went to the bathroom, returning with one of the thick, fluffy bath towels the hotel provided.
He settled the towel under her feet, then poured some of the massage oil into his hands. Lifting her left foot, he spread the oil carefully, then, starting at her ankle, ran his hands in long, smooth strokes to her toes. He did this over and over, as Melinda had taught him, until the oil was warm under his hands and he could feel the skin and muscles in her feet begin to warm and soften.
She even had beautiful feet, he noted. Shapely and long, but they were hard-working feet, too. He felt the gnarled spots and calluses where she stood on them all day. She’d left the toe ring at home and he sort of missed it.
Starting with the top of her foot, he worked between the tendons, then he moved to the sole of her foot, running his thumbs in slow, firm circles around the pressure points, one at a time.
She was a little stiff with him at first, but as the massage continued and he clearly wasn’t trying to touch anything but her feet, he felt her relax and give herself over to him.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she moaned at one point.
“People don’t realize how much stress they place on their feet, especially people like you who stand a lot.”
He found her most sensitive spots were on the balls of her feet, so he put extra effort there, rubbing and smoothing.
He was on the outer part of the ball of her left foot, rubbing, when he felt a constriction and she sighed. “That feels so good.”
“You know what part of the body that corresponds to according to the foot reflexology chart?”
“What?” Her voice was a sexy murmur.
“The heart.”
She opened her eyes and regarded him. “Are you saying my heart’s in pain?”
“No. Confused maybe.”
She chuckled. “Maybe.”
“Your foot could be telling you that Philippe’s not the man for you.”
“A foot can tell you so much?”
“You’d be surprised.”
And if he was as lucky as Philippe, he sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting his time in France while a woman like Chelsea was a continent away getting her feet rubbed by another man.
If Frenchie didn’t watch out, he was going to be ousted by some good old American grit and determination.