Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance by Magdalen Braden Read Free Book Online Page B

fingertips skate along his hand, which he twitched away and hid behind his back. She glanced at his face. He looked stony enough for Mount Rushmore. She hadn’t thought Jack could get more austere—he appeared almost apoplectic with frustration. He clearly hadn’t gotten laid in a while.
    This was going to be fun.
    “That’s not why I’m here,” he insisted. He stopped trying to limit his gaze to her face. Now he was staring over her right shoulder.
    “Well, that’s why I invited you. For sex.”
    “I want to date you, not sleep with you.” He said it as though he were stating the obvious to a dim-witted defendant.
    So crusty and serious. Elise couldn’t resist teasing him. “Really? You don’t want to sleep with me? Not even a little?”
    That got his attention. He narrowed his eyes as he met her look. “Ah, the litigator’s trick. Won’t work. Of course I will want to sleep with you. But tonight, no. What I want tonight is to take you out to dinner.”
    “Funny,” Elise said, reaching down to brush her fingertips over his groin. “I could have sworn you were interested in having sex sooner rather than later—”
    He took another half step back and glared at her. “Still won’t work. That’s a physiological reaction. It doesn’t change my stated intention to take you to dinner. You said you would come on a date with me.”
    “Assuming facts not entered into evidence, Your Honor,” she objected. “All I said was okay. No one bothered to ask what I was saying okay to, and as there wasn’t an explicit offer on the table, you can’t read terms into my acceptance.”
    “Elise,” he growled.
    “Judge,” she growled back at him.
    He really was going to throw a blood clot, she thought, as his face contorted with frustration. It got almost—but not quite—ugly. She didn’t think anything could make him look ugly. Damn him. And why didn’t he want to skip straight to the sex? If she made herself any more available, she’d be draped over the couch wearing nothing but a shiny red ribbon.
    Suddenly his face cleared. His shoulders dropped a full inch and he even managed a slight smile. He folded his arms and leaned back.
    “Fair enough. You’re absolutely right. We didn’t spend enough time yesterday negotiating terms. By all means let’s do that now.”
    “I don’t want to negotiate terms. I want to take you upstairs, unwrap you like a Christmas present, and get sweaty with you in my bed.”
    “I understand that, Elise .” He made her name sound like a Gypsy curse. “I am declining that generous offer. My counteroffer of dinner at a five-star restaurant is clearly unacceptable to you. So let’s try to find some middle ground.”
    “There is no middle ground,” she protested, retreating a bit. She crossed her arms over her chest. Clearly the poky nipples weren’t working for her.
    “That’s no way to enter into the spirit of negotiation. You said yes to something last night. What was it?”
    “I told you. Hot, steamy sex.” Elise winced. She sounded whiny, like a petulant teenager. That wasn’t the way to win this war and it wasn’t worthy of her skills. She was a better lawyer than that. She released a cleansing breath, lowered her arms and got into the spirit of negotiation, as he’d called it.
    “I take your point,” she said in a calmer voice. “Let’s see. I want sex, and you want five-star restaurants, correct?”
    Jack inclined his head slowly, guarding against some stunt she might pull. It wasn’t a stunt, though—it was a calculated risk to advance the negotiation.
    “Okay, then,” she went on. “How about we trade? One date goes your way and we eat out, the next my way, namely hot and sweaty.” She figured she could resist his evil magic charm across the dinner table if she thought of it as one-week-early foreplay. Her master plan would just take a little longer, that was all.
    “But not on the same night,” he said.
    She pursed her lips to keep from smiling.