Open Invitation? Read online

  A brief vision of herself, walking in a long white dress toward Dan Granger, popped into her mind. He wore exactly what he wore right this minute: a tuxedo with boots and a bolo tie.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Miz Lil?” he asked her, interrupting her silly fantasy.

  “That would be lovely, Dan. Thank you. Champagne, please?”

  He nodded and made his way toward a circulating waiter with a tray. His broad shoulders were set off to perfection in the dark wool of the tuxedo, and no man had ever filled out formal slacks the way he did. She fixated on his backside as if it were a particularly delectable appetizer, and blushed as he turned with two flutes of champagne and caught her in the act.

  He raised a sardonic brow at her.

  She suddenly found the orchestra fascinating.

  “Your bubbly, darlin’.” He loomed over her, extending the glass, and suddenly her hormones rushed to the surface like the tiny bubbles in the flute.

  Lil thanked him, accepted the glass and took a quick sip. Her hormones did not belong at Claire’s formal British wedding reception.

  “Once Claire and Roddy have shown up and taken the floor, I do hope you’ll honor me with a dance.”

  She hesitated. Dance with the man and you’ll only be torturing yourself, you dimwit. But it was rude to refuse. “Of course,” she said.

  His mouth twisted. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to put yourself to any trouble, now, Lil. But I figured that we could show off what we practiced with that French fruit loop, ya know.”

  She’d offended him. “Dan, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” he said coldly. “Don’t worry about it.” And he turned on his boot-heel and walked away. She stared after him, miserable, while he found another woman to talk to almost immediately.

  It’s for the best, Lil. It really is.

  DAN DANCED flawlessly with several other women, while Lil chitchatted with various guests and tried to pretend she wasn’t watching him covertly. How had she gotten herself into this mess?

  And why did he seem so angry? He’d told her, days before, that he could take no for an answer. And he had. Pretty gracefully. So what exactly was his problem now?

  She knew what her problem was. And she needed to solve it by…by…removing her silly, unpredictable, unmanageable heart and dropping it into the punch bowl.

  Lil turned from a conversation at a light touch on her arm. A hopeful gentleman was asking her to dance with him. Though she’d rather have told him to go away, she smiled with every pretense of delight and accepted, moving out onto the dance floor with him in a waltz.

  A quick glance around told her that Dan, to her relief, was not there. Lil tried to focus on what the gentleman was saying to her, and did not enjoy his hot, sweaty hand on her lower back, nor the sticky, warm fingers clasped with hers.

  She also didn’t appreciate the way he leered at her, looking as if he’d like to lick her like a lollipop.

  She’d turned her head to avoid his whiskey breath when a large, tanned, scarred hand tapped her repulsive gentleman on the shoulder. Before she knew it, he’d ceded her to Granger.

  Dan pulled her closer than he should and glowered down at her. “How am I doin’, Teach?”

  She looked up and faltered. “F-fine. Why?”

  “Because I just live for your approval, darlin’ Lil. And I’m not feelin’ it much these days.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course not. It wouldn’t be polite for you to know what I mean. Therefore you play ignorant so you can avoid hurting my feelings, which, after all, would be rude.”

  “What are you talking a—”

  “Lemme ask you a question, Miz London. Is it proper etiquette to let a man take down your drawers and do all manner of hot, naughty, intimate things to you—”

  “Keep your voice down!” she hissed, appalled. She tried to pull away, but he held her tight.

  “—and then treat him like a dog afterward? Behave as if he’s somebody you just asked for the correct time?”

  “I haven’t treated you that way!”

  “You have,” he said, his face only an inch away from her burning one.

  She tried to pull away again, but he shook his head.

  “I guess you’ve put me in my place, then, Miss Manners. I’m good enough to go down on you, but I ain’t good enough for you to socialize with.”

  “That is ridiculous! I can’t believe you just said that, and I’m not going to dignify it with an answer.” Furious and mortified, she threw etiquette to the four winds and tore out of his grasp. Then she stalked away from him, leaving him to look foolish on the dance floor in front of five hundred people.

  She flew to a double-doored exit and into a convenient powder room, where she locked the door and hyperventilated. Her face was dark red and her whole body trembled with emotion: horror, shame and rage.

  She wanted to splash water on her face, but that would destroy her careful makeup. She settled for running cold water over her hands, which clenched and unclenched involuntarily.

  I’m good enough to go down on you but not good enough to socialize with…

  How could he possibly think that of her? How could he have said that in public? Someone could easily have overheard him! Loathsome, horrid man. She should have slapped his rude, mocking face.

  And she’d thought herself in love with him? She didn’t love Dan Granger! She despised him.

  The cold water and the privacy eventually helped her calm down. She was going to have to leave the powder room at some point and make it through the rest of the evening.

  No—that wasn’t true. She’d made her appearance, and now she could catch a cab and go back to Leighton House. The housekeeper would let her in. She could retire to her bedroom there and not have to see Dan again. She could arrange a separate flight and just send him a bill.

  Armed with this plan, Lil unlocked the door and stepped outside the little room. To the right, she saw through a set of French doors that the orchestra was outside taking a break. Several of them were smoking cigarettes. She wondered if one of them had a cell phone and could call a taxi for her. No, better to find her way to the front of Blackthorne House and request that the butler do so.

  Lil turned toward the left and froze.

  Dan lounged casually against the wall. He’d been waiting for her to come out all this time. “We need to chat, darlin’.”

  She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes at him, hating the fact that her knees had started shaking again. “We have nothing to chat about.”

  “You’re here on my payroll, and I say we do,” he growled. “Besides, it’s bad manners to refuse to talk to me.”

  “Mr. Granger,” she said icily, “First of all, I quit. And second, forcing your attentions on a lady is the worst breach of etiquette you can commit. So might I suggest that you get out of my way so that I can call a cab? I don’t wish to spend one more second in your company.” She almost added, “you obnoxious son of a bitch,” but stopped herself just in time.

  “I’ll get out of your way when I’m damned good and ready. Did I force my attentions on you when you sat on my face? Was giving you multiple orgasms forcing my attentions on you? As I recall, you begged for my attentions, and couldn’t get enough of them.”

  Her hand came up involuntarily to slap him but he blocked it.

  “Is it good manners, darlin’ Lil, to drive a man crazy, make him fall in love with you and then decide he ain’t fit to lick your stiletto?”

  “I never decided any such thing!” she shouted. “That is your own complex and your own set of problems with your mother. All I did was get embarrassed about losing my inhibitions around you, and then top it off by falling in love with you, you big stupid cowpoke! And then I didn’t know what to do about it! So move,” she bellowed, surprised at the force of her own lungs. “Because I hate you and I never want to see you again!”

  When he just stood there and stared at her,
she lost it completely and started beating him with the only thing she had available: her evening bag. “Move!” Thwack.

  He opened his big, dumb mouth.

  “Move!” she shrieked again. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  “Lil—”

  Thwack! Thwack!

  The clatter of heels sounded behind them and a beyond-furious Louella appeared. “Not another word out of either one of you!”

  “Butt out, Mama.”

  “I will not! You are being broadcast into the bloody ballroom! I will never, ever, ever live this down!” And Louella pushed past them and pounced on a cluster of clip-on microphones that they hadn’t seen on a side table. Clip-on mikes that the musicians had taken off before going outside for their break.

  Lil let out a horrified squeak and stumbled against the wall, using it to remain upright. Her heart thundered in her ears and shame hit her like a baby grand dropped from several stories high.

  The entire ballroom had heard them. The entire ballroom. Did I force my attentions on you when you sat on my face?

  Dan threw back his head and laughed, long and hard. It was a true Texas guffaw in every sense of the word.

  His mother, beside herself, slapped his face. Then she turned on her heel and left.

  It was all just too much. Lil, always calm, cool and collected in any social situation, burst into tears.

  20

  DAN WAS AT HER SIDE in an instant, his strong arms going around her. “Aw, honey,” he said, “don’t cry. Things are gonna be fine.”

  His shirt smelled of starch and the vaguest hint of cologne. It also smelled like him. Part of her wanted to run her hands up underneath it to feel his bare chest beneath. Part of her wanted to grab him by it and shake him until his teeth rattled. She was so utterly confused, furious, mortified.

  He produced the handkerchief again and kissed the top of her head. She honked into the square of cloth, stepped away from him and saw that she’d left a large, black mascara blotch on the formerly snowy shirt. She burst into fresh tears. “I’m sorry I ruined your shirt. And I hate you.”

  He tilted up her chin. “You sure about that? ’Cuz I coulda sworn you just said you’d fallen in love with me.”

  She shook her head.

  “You callin’ me deaf as well as stupid?”

  This time she nodded.

  “Are we both deaf, then?”

  She said nothing, just occupied herself with the handkerchief.

  “Because I do believe I admitted falling in love with you, too. And I can’t even ask you not to tell anyone, because the whole dang ballroom heard me say it.”

  She blew her nose. The man she hated was in love with her? The man who’d just disgraced her publicly in front of the crème de la crème of London society? Lil slid down the wall, plopped inelegantly onto her bottom and stared at him.

  Dan said kindly, “It’s socially correct in these situations to say, ‘I love you, too.’”

  She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “Even if it’s a little white lie. Remember, you’re supposed to lie in certain situations. This etiquette consultant I met once taught me that.”

  Finally she said, “How can I hate you and love you at the same time?”

  He scratched his head. “I don’t know. But you can. It’s part of the feminine mystique. You gals are all kinda squirrely in the head. Otherwise you’d have kicked us men outta your lives a long time ago. Formed your own planet and just kept us in cages for reproductive purposes.”

  Lil began to laugh weakly.

  “Wait a minute,” said Dan. “Did you just admit that you love me?”

  She nodded.

  “I hear tell that it’s customary for two people to kiss after they say that.”

  “Emily Post, page five hundred ninety-two.”

  He bent and took her hands, pulling her to her feet. “Lil, darlin’, where have you been all my life?” And before she could answer, that sexy cowboy mouth came down on hers.

  She fell headlong into the kiss, craving the warmth and the taste and the smell of him. He pulled her so hard against him that they almost fused together, and before she knew it, he was backing her toward the powder room again.

  “No!” she said into his mouth, but he ate the word and swallowed it, somehow managing to kiss her and grin at the same time. When he finally raised his head, they were inside and he was kicking the door closed with one of those black boots of his.

  “We cannot do this at your sister’s wedding!”

  He lifted her onto the marble countertop and waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “No.”

  He brushed his thumbs over her nipples and she gasped as sexual lightning streaked through her.

  “No?” His hands crept up under her skirt and found the thigh-high stockings held in place by garter straps. “What’s this? Oh, God! I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to—just let me see.”

  His plea was so heartfelt that she couldn’t refuse him. She let him lift the skirt of her dress and look with awe at the skimpy red lace garter belt that she wore, for the first time in her life, with one of those “slutty” thongs.

  Dan made a desperate, groaning sound and dropped to his knees, clutching his heart. “Matching bra?”

  She nodded. “Push up. See-through.”

  “Show me?”

  She couldn’t just take off her dress at his sister’s wedding! For all she knew, the queen herself could be out there in the ballroom now.

  “Please?”

  She wavered. “No touching. Promise.”

  “Cruel, cruel woman. I won’t touch.”

  Lil slid off the counter, feeling wicked, and presented her back to him. He eased the zipper down and she stepped out of the blue silk dress, still turned away from him.

  In the mirror, she saw Dan actually shove his knuckles into his mouth and gnaw. He moaned past them and feasted his eyes on her.

  She turned, looked at him over her shoulder and smiled.

  “I’m the scarlet harlot, am I not?”

  He shook his head.

  The smile fell off her face. “How come?”

  “You’re just not harlot material, honey. But you are the embodiment of all my fantasies.”

  “Really?” She couldn’t help the pleasure seeping through her veins at his statement. She didn’t think she’d ever been a man’s fantasy before.

  Dan stood up. “I know I promised not to touch, but your strap, there, needs a small adjustment.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll show you.” He took two steps toward her, and before she knew what he was about, he’d pulled the left bra strap off her shoulder, the lacy cup down and fastened his mouth over her nipple.

  “Ohhh!” The suction was exquisite, the heat wonderful, his tongue irresistible. Lil sagged against him, the big, fat liar.

  He chuckled, pulling the strap from her right shoulder off, and that cup down, too.

  “You—ahhhh…”

  Suddenly the cold, marble counter was beneath her almost bare bottom again and Dan was between her knees while she leaned weakly against the ornate gilt mirror. He slid the thong aside easily and stroked her while she quivered and moaned at his touch.

  She shouldn’t…he shouldn’t…they shouldn’t. But as Lil gave in to pleasure, she didn’t care if Prince Charles and the Duchess Camilla were out there. All she cared about were Dan’s hands on her, and then Dan sliding into her, and finally Dan blurring into a rainbow cowboy who rode her to nirvana.

  HE DIDN’T WANT HER to get dressed, but she drew the line at leaving the wedding of the season naked. “Just go call a cab,” she urged him. “Then we’ll slip out the back.”

  He set his hands on his hips. “It would be incredibly rude to leave without saying goodbye to Claire and Roddy. You, of all people, should know that.”

  Lil stepped into her dress and turned so he could zip her up. Her head throbbed at even the thought of entering that ballroom again after they’d bee
n broadcast news. She made an executive etiquette decision. “I don’t care.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I. Don’t. Care.”

  “You don’t care about being rude, or you just care too much about what all those bejeweled snobs out there think of you? I think it’s the latter.”

  Lil turned and faced him, her mouth tight. “You ask any other woman in the world if she’d go back into that ballroom with you. The answer will be no.”

  “I didn’t ask any other woman in the world. I’m asking you.”

  “You’re absolutely out of your mind.”

  “No, I’m not. Lil, you’ve led your entire life trying to impress other people with your manners and letting yourself get lost inside the giant book of etiquette. Your spirit has gotten flattened between the pages. Your soul has become rectangular and bound. I want to see you get the hell outta there! Now take my hand, come back into that ballroom with me, and hold your head high. Show ’em what you’ve got.”

  She shrank back from him. “Dan, no! Why are you asking this of me? Why do you want to humiliate me in front of all those people?”

  He sighed. “Darlin’, I don’t want to humiliate you. I want to free you. Don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m not doing it.”

  He took her lightly by the shoulders. “You think those people in there have never had sex?” He looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “It is possible that the English are too repressed to screw. And how do they keep a stiff upper lip while going down on each other? I guess they don’t do that, either—”

  “Dan!”

  “Yes?”

  “You need to get over this problem of yours with the English. Because I like your sister and you’re going to have to bring me here a lot.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That is so.”

  “Well, I’m not taking you anywhere unless you tilt that little pointed chin up and come dance with me in that ballroom.”

  “Dan!”

  “I guaran-damn-tee you that everyone in there has had oral sex and doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether you sat on my face or not. Now come on.” He took her hand and pulled her to the door.