Strapless by Leigh Riker Read Free Book Online Page B

suddenly thumping heart. But they had used protection. Every time. Remember, Merrick didn’t relish having kids. Darcie grimaced. Then why did he seem to have two of them? Maybe it was only her imagined children he didn’t want. Her middle-class genes.
    With a sigh, she fell back into the deep chair again.
    Twirling the stem of her glass, she gazed around the dimly lit room—and oh, as if a band had struck up the national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” would you look at that. Yummy. A lone man stood talking to the bartender, another Aussie male Darcie had noticed earlier. Now, she barely saw him. Eclipsing every other man in the room, this one had dark hair, unlike Merrick’s (a point in his favor) thicker, longer. Hair a woman could twineher fingers through, letting its sinuous silk send a message of desire straight to her achy loins.
    His broad shoulders blocked out the bartender to his left, behind the bar. He lounged in three-quarter profile to her, an amazing profile if she bothered to linger on it. Better than Merrick’s. Busily, Darcie’s gaze swept like a huntress down his long frame, from those incredible shoulders and well-developed deltoids—bunched, and nicely rounded, under his chambray shirt—to his washboard belly, then his muscled, jeans-clad legs and, finally, his feet. Boots, she saw. Good ones, if she could judge from this distance. His fingers looked lean and graceful wrapped around the beer bottle in his hand, and when he lifted it for a long swallow, Darcie watched his Adam’s apple work in his strong, beautiful throat. It was true. Australian men were not to be believed.
    Could he be any more perfect? Like a fantasy come true, even the Akubra hat from Gran’s wish list lay next to him on the bar. Darcie decided it was on her agenda, too.
    â€œYou jolly swagman,” she murmured, sending him a flirty smile.
    Heck, why not? She was on her own, for tonight at least, in an exotic foreign environment—for once in her life. No one watched her, certainly not all the executives at the next table who were telling loud jokes and laughing among themselves. Their cigarette smoke created a cloud of anonymity, like the famed Blue Mountains with their eucalyptus haze. Janet Baxter—or Darcie’s father—were nowhere to be seen. And Cincinnati, though not quite as far away as New York, could be ignored for one night. Not that she needed to care. For good measure, feeling defiant after Merrick, she tipped her glass in salute.
    She detected no response to the smile or the toast, but his steady gaze did even crazier things to her equilibrium, to her lower abdomen, and Darcie swallowed hard. With her nod in his direction— three strikes, you’re out —the beer bottle stopped halfway down and he stared at her. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if to see whether she’d been signaling the bartender for a refill, not coming on tohim. He picked up his hat. What else could she do? Darcie looked down into her half-full glass, and waited. Pulse pounding. Stomach clenched.
    Would he come over?
    When a tall shadow fell across the table a moment later, she realized she’d been holding her breath. Raising her eyes, Darcie exhaled. Seeing him up close, she struggled not to slip out of her chair onto the floor in a puddle of need.
    â€œIf you were a mate—” he pronounced it “might” “—which you’re clearly not, I’d say G’day, but we Aussies don’t use the expression between the sexes.” The word hung between them. “You’re a blow-in, eh? Welcome to Sydney.”
    â€œBlow-in?”
    â€œThat’s Ozspeak—for newcomer. Or you could say Strine.”
    Ozspeak? “A stranger is a Strine?”
    â€œNo.” He smiled. “That’s how we say Aus-tra-lian.” He tangled the syllables.
    Darcie smiled, too. “And I thought you spoke English here.”
    His