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She got some work done. Kind of. You’re the martyr. Sophie got to take Haydn’s flowers home and her selfie, with strict instructions not to post it until Haydn left the country and a reminder about the value of confidentiality in the workplace and out of it. Since Rick came back to the office with a hot blush high on his cheekbones, confidentiality cut both ways.
Back in Haydn’s suite, Teela made another discovery. When he said he wanted to help her relax with a massage, it wasn’t code for a sex act they hadn’t yet tried.
“It will help with the post-show blues,” he said.
“The what?”
The man should not get all pseudo-medical with her if he was going to take his shirt off at the same time. He’d arrived in the office in well-worn jeans and a faded blue linen shirt, attractively crumpled and making his pale eyes look otherworldly. He was swapping the shirt for a tee and the pants for cut-off sweats. He had to pass through almost naked to achieve that.
She had to not pass out because he moved with a masculine grace that made it hard to function. This is why the camera loved him.
“That weird letdown feeling you’re trying to deny that makes you restless and low even though you have no need to feel that way. We call it PSD. Post-show depression. It’s what happens immediately after you’ve finished a movie. It’s an adrenaline crash, essentially. After all the effort and stress, it’s suddenly over and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself.”
He was right. She’d started feeling it the moment she was locked out of the dinner and suddenly had nothing to do. An apocalyptic storm and a bingle and the most unexpected one-night stand ever had caused an onset delay. It was probably the reason she’d reacted badly to the words on the card and why she’d been harsh on Haydn when he’d arrived at the office. That and the shock of seeing him in her foyer, a scandal in the making.
“I thought I was going to do you,” she quipped, to keep it light and get specific.
“In time, impatient girl. How do you normally cope with a comedown period?”
Well now I just imagine you standing arms-length away without a shirt. Haydn lying on her ugly brown office couch would probably do it too.
“I usually buy something I don’t need.” Last time it happened she bo
ught an expensive slow cooker she’d used once.
“I always want to run out and get another dog. I’d have fifty dogs by now if I didn’t know about the power of massage.”
“How many dogs do you have?”
“At home with me now.” He held up two fingers. “Fred and Ginger.” Then added three more fingers. “Gene, Gregory and Channing. They’re all rescues.” All dancer’s names. He pulled a T-shirt on. So unnecessary. “Over the years, I’ve had a dozen different rescue dogs. All of them old, abandoned, sick, left for dead.” He made an up gesture. “Now, off with that dress.”
“You really want me to have a massage.” Would they have tables side by side? Did he hire one masseur or two?
“I really want to massage you.”
Pretty much all the air left the room. She couldn’t possibly have post-show blues because the show was still going on.
“You?”
“I am not just a pretty face and good with shoe sizing.”
He had a table brought to the room and he knew what he was doing. Soft music, fragrant oil and magic, magic fingers that made her feel inconveniently tense.
He started by warming her whole back with firm strokes from flattened oiled-up hands and she could not help groaning, part oh, that hurts and part oh, that’s amazing. And it’s not like she’d never had a massage before.
She’d never had a massage from someone she’d been intimate with before and that changed everything.
It put a tremor of excitement directly under her skin, a spike of anticipation in her bloodstream and every pleasure-seeking hormone she had was screaming with delight. It was impossible to stop the noise in her head that it was Haydn freaking Delany who was running his firm, slippery hands over her. That she’d had sex with him and would again, and they had a whole weekend set aside for more sex and yet he wanted to start it off by treating her to a personal massage.
“Try to relax,” Haydn said in a low murmur that woke up all her slow adopter nerve endings and made her tremble.
She made a sound more like a squeak than a reply. Was he kidding? Her body was sparking electricity and her brain was on sensory overload and she wasn’t allowed to move, only lie here with her head in a hole in the table, looking at the plush carpet and his bare feet, her heart skidding around in her chest as she waited for his touch.
“I’m a little rusty at this. Been a while,” he said, pressing his thumbs into the edges of her spine, making tiny circles in the muscle.
Because he sounded uncertain, as if her inability to relax was his fault—it was—but not the way he was thinking, she said, “I’m a little too aware of what you’re doing.”
“All I’m doing is working your kinks out.”
