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Van sure did. Tux smooth over powerful shoulders, white shirt gleaming ...
It wasn’t a conscious decision to kiss him. It simply had to be. She stood on tiptoe. She stilled when she was a breath away, savoring every eternal second of the moment to come. Van’s breathing stopped. His heart was probably pounding in time with her own. She touched his lips with her own.
Mmm.Warm.Intoxicating.Endlesslyexciting.Even though they kept their tongues to themselves.
She broke away.
“Whew!” She fanned herself. More than one eye glanced their way. “I can see I have to be more carefulaboutwhenandwhereIkissyou.Ididn’tplan for us to be the entertainment.”
Van had already pulled himself together. Or had he? Maybe nothing had flown apart for him that needed pulling together. Maybe the thunderbolt hadn’t struck him. His chiseled face did look singularly unstruck.
Maybe, though, she shouldn’t be looking at his face to find out whether the granite patio stones had moved beneath his feet too.
She looked lower.
And smiled.
Van was buttoning his jacket. Was his air of careless nonchalance a little too studied? Did his hands have the slightest of tremors? His jacket settled into place, the bottom of it hiding any struckedness in that neighborhood of his anatomy. Darn it.
It wasn’t the first time Mary had been grateful she was born female. She would hate flaunting in public her readiness to perform actions she’d much prefer to handle in private.
“We will regret this,” Van said.
What? No way. That kiss was a harbinger of wondrous things to come. Oh, wait a minute. He might be talking about the party and their debut as matchmakers.
“Those second thoughts getting you down?”
“What if she does get mar — tie the knot, and it doesn’t work out?”
Interesting. That sounded like a man who couldn’t pronouncethewordmarriage.Ofcourse.Whatother kind of man would a Samuel woman fall in love with? “She’ll join half of the rest of the human race.”
“But I’m not responsible for half of the rest of the human race.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll admit I’m worried too. What if this is the wrong guy for the experiment? I told her I’d never met him, and she wouldn’t let me tell her how much I didn’t know about him. She stopped listening when I told her his teaching specialty.”
“I know. English Romantic poets. What does that have to do with the man looking after her?” Van’s gloomy frown deepened.
“Maybe she can look after herself better than you think. And stop scowling at the food fit for the gods Uncle Brock put together. I’ve spotted half a dozen women here from my gym, the kind who have the willpowertoliveonalettuceleafadayandrunahalf marathon to work it off, and even they can’t leave the platters alone.”
“That’s because you need a whole platter to make a decent mouthful.”
“Come on, let’s head over to the receiving line. I think we should be there with Cyn when her prey arrives. In case she needs any help. Although I wonder about standing next to her epitome of graciousness. By comparison, I’ll feel like a sequined marionette extending her limp wrist for a halibut handshake.”
“Thereisnothingwrong…withyour…”Vanlooked her up and down. “Sequins.”
Mary squelched her giggle of pleasure at his reaction and headed toward Cyn.
Halfway there, she stopped cold. Their quarry had arrived. “Quick. Don’t look.”
Van darted a glance toward the exact point where she didn’t want him to look.
“I said don’t look.”
“If you don’t want me to look, don’t tell me to be quick about it.”
“Okay, look, but carefully. It’s him. We don’t want to make him feel like an elephant under a microscope.”
“Like a ... ”
